Ever since the Forestry Service had adopted their experimental ‘radio perimeter’ around the Helcat’s assumed range; the Hunting Lodge’s satellite phones had been worth their weight in shit. Why the government didn’t just take everything they spent on the year’s new bullshit tech and put it fully into the Special Response Bounty, was beyond him. He guessed relying on superheroes was considered too Ottoman now.

Moose didn’t even disagree with the principle; he didn’t want the state to rely on one person with weather powers for irrigation. But a truck-sized mountain lion? Surely that fell squarely under the Special Response System’s purview.

He cursed and contemplated winging the bulky metal box into the dark woods, right off the hill he’d hiked up to try and make a call. But the Coopers needed to know he’d found their son’s backpack. Next to a knee print in the mud as well, a sign it had been dropped out of exhaustion. The kid had been sent home from school with a fever and for ‘saying strange things’ yesterday – had temporary psychosis driven him out here?

Damn, there was nothing for it, he was going to have to climb a tree. He sighed taking off his shirt and twisting it tight like a rope. They had made him do something similar in the Army, and the Rangers had even made them practice at night. That said, not like he was fucking nostalgic for those times.

“Mr. Troyer – ah!” he said. He had managed to prop the phone between his chest, his arms occupied by pulling around the tree for leverage.

“He—” Static cut in and out. “…you alright?”

“I’m up a tree,” he said gruffly.

“—see. What…you found? –a ping earlier.”

“Good, it came through. Those were the coordinates where I found the kid’s backpack. We need to get those to the Forest Service.”

There was a pause before Troyer said anything. “Are…sure that’s wise?”

Moose had known Zachariah Troyer to be a cold, pragmatic man, since the day they’d met, but he wasn’t seriously suggesting they’d cover up a teen’s disappearance, was he?

Howling echoed through the trees and leaf-covered hills. Moose quirked his head. They had found the end of the trail. One of the dogs, Welly, was dead. An ambush predator.

“The dogs found something. I have to go.”

Moose didn’t think very highly of his superpower most days. Generally, dogs had very little to communicate that they couldn’t effectively do with just their normal behaviors. Being able to talk to dogs was a bit like being able to say ‘fuck you’ in any language – most people could basically make the same claim.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He’d found it so underwhelming that sometime in his late teens he’d made the decision not to confess it to his girlfriend at the time and had never bothered to change his mind on ‘coming out’ ever since. As far as anyone else was concerned, Moose was an ordinary man who happened to be quite good with dogs.

What a bad idea, he realized now, in the middle of running as quickly as he could towards Decker, his still living companion. He probably should have insisted on bringing dogs with him to every mission he ever went on as a Ranger. Decker was better than night vision if you had the time to parse his panicked barks.

The dog bounded up to him when he crested over the ridge hiding the cave they’d tracked the scent to. He was shaking and near to crying, clinging to Moose’s legs for comfort. Poor thing was a bird-hunting dog, meant to rouse and retrieve, not to tangle with predators.

“Shh,” said Moose. Instantly, the dog stilled, all business again.

Snapping on a headlamp and pulling out his handgun, the woodsman made his way down into a crook between hills. To his disbelief, massive carved stones framed the entrance to a cave large enough for two or three people to enter standing abreast. It was one thing to have the place described to him by a dog, and another to see it in person.

The statue of the girl inside was so lifelike that it gave him a start. Without a living smell, he supposed it hadn’t stuck out to the dogs to be worth mentioning. But by god, it was beautiful. Even knowing the threat the cave contained, Moose couldn’t stop himself from running a finger through the golden lines on her face.

“Gold,” he muttered to himself with a mental sigh. People were going to lose their minds over this. And the whole thing reeked of the dark arts.

Ignoring the probably cursed statue, Moose leveled his gun at the crack in the wall his dog was whining at. Spider webs shone in the headlamp. There were no signs of a struggle, no trail of blood leading into the tunnel. If the kid had entered the tunnel, then he still had the wherewithal to crawl under the worst of the webs, which were unbroken starting two feet and up.

He got close enough to verify the type of spider, before taking two huge steps back. Of course, they were Black Widows.

“Hey, kid,” he shouted. “Salem!”

Moose waited for a reply. There was silence and then a quiet chitter that grew louder and higher pitched, almost mocking to his ears. Decker whined, taking a step behind him. He clicked the safety on his pistol off. The chittering stopped.

The sensible thing to do would be to leave and return in the morning with help, but if the kid was still injured, still alive on the other end of that tunnel…

Taking his shirt off for the second time tonight, he stepped forward and whipped it down and through the dense webs, clearing the worst of them before flinging the shirt away. He used a trick he learned as a Boy Scout, lowering his headlight so it was level with his eyes. Spider eyes reflected straight back at the source of light, twinkling helpfully for him.

He stomped the worst of them away and pulled a flare from his belt. The spiders fled from the light – the best he could do with what he had at the moment. Holding the torch forward, he swapped his gun for a knife and started to carefully make his way forward. The smart thing would have been to send Decker in first, but Moose couldn’t bring himself to make the dog suffer like that.

A shadow rapidly shifting under the red light of the flare gave him just enough notice to yank his body back, ripping bad gashes across his abdomen, but saving him from the furry eel-like creature from dropping down onto his skull. Instead, it caught his arm holding the flare on his forearm and immediately started to yank him forward into the crack.

Moose tried to stab the creature, but it kept his arm between it and the knife. It wasn’t that it was stronger than him, looking at it now, it couldn’t be much larger than his hunting dogs, but it had all the leverage in the world while he was fighting just to keep from falling forward on his stomach.

He dropped the knife and pulled his gun out again. Placing the muzzle against his arm, he aimed through himself into the beast’s maw and unloaded, shooting through his own flesh and bone.

The first shot deafened him completely, the fifth, its muzzle flash almost pointed straight at his face in the melee, blinded him. After that it was a panicked rush to get out, a mindless scramble back and away from the danger.

When he came to, he was on his back at the entrance of the cave. He could hear Decker’s pained whines from inside, the occasionally heightened yip as something bit into it, eating his good boy while he was still alive. There was a noticeable series of pinpricks on his neck he was all but certain were spider bites.

He sat up, the distant flare light from within the cave was the only real light anymore. A hint of gold shone in the dark, two streaks that he knew belonged to the weeping girl statue inside. Where he had run his finger through could be seen in the negative space, as dark as the rest of the statue’s face.

Moose made a note to not disturb the gold next time – bad luck, clearly.

There would be a next time, that was for sure. It was personal now; he had two dogs and a kid to avenge.