INTRUSION

A loud growling sound mixed with a muffled scream came rolling through the woods. It was followed by dead quiet.

“What was that?” asked Jenneta, as they all stopped in mid stride.

“It sounded like an animal,” Jeff said.

“But there was also a human sounding voice,” Jenneta replied. “It sounded like it came from up ahead and not a long way off.”

They all stood very still and very quiet as they listened. Nothing, it seemed the whole place was listening and nothing was making any noise.

“Funny how a loud noise like that makes the whole area become so quiet for awhile,” Adam said.

The noises slowly started to come alive again and soon the normal sounds were there, but nothing else.

Adam got out his knife; cut three small saplings around an inch in diameter growing right in front of them. He cut them to a length of five feet, cut all the branches off and sharpened the sticks to a point. He handed one to Jeff and one to Jenneta, keeping one himself.

“Not much, but better than nothing,” he said. “We might as well go on and see if we can find out what that was.”

“The coals are still hot, we could start a fire right here,” Jeff said. “That would give us some protection if we needed to come back to it.”

“Keep the coal’s handy, but let’s wait and see what happens,” Adam said. “I hate to take the time to build a fire here when we might not need it.”

“The fire might be a good idea Adam,” Jenneta said.

“Start one if you want, I’m going on ahead to see what happened first,” Adam said as he walked on ahead.

Jeff and Jenneta looked at each other then followed Adam. They went even slower now, trying not to make any noise. They had gone about five hundred feet when they saw where something had made quite a mess in the leaves, they were scattered all over. One little bush had been broken over like something had jumped right on top of it.

“Now what?” asked Jeff, “Something sure happened here, but what? What ever broke that bush had to be bigger than a squirrel.”

“Look over that way,” said Jenneta pointing to her right. “Something was drug that way, you can see how the leaves are disturbed and I think that’s blood on some of the leaves. If it had been an animal dragging something to eat, we would still be able to hear it.”

They stood there wondering what to do next when they heard something running through the woods up ahead.

“What ever that was, it was going away from us,” said Adam. “That means it’s afraid of us.”  Probably not as afraid as I am, he thought to himself.

They all had the sharpened sticks up in front of them not knowing if they would use them or run if something jumped out of the undergrowth. They had only gone a hundred feet when they saw something on the ground ahead of them.

“That’s a body,” Jenneta said. “It looks human from here.”