Savage Beasts - 11. You’re Sure of a Big Surprise

The boys were up with the sun and full of energy. Sean wasted no time telling the others that he and Bill were now best friends, and Gary gave Bill a sly wink of congratulations when no one was looking.

Gary asked Bill and Sean to start a cooking fire for breakfast, and Bill sent the other buddy teams out into the surrounding forest to collect wood while he and Sean gathered smaller kindling and grass for tinder around the campsite. When Bill had his nest of dry grass ready for tinder and Sean had a bundle of small dry sticks laid down in the ashes of the previous night’s fire, Gary handed the metal tin containing the magic char cloth to Bill, telling him to hold onto it and keep it safe.

Bill looked up at the big instructor with gratitude in his eyes, knowing what an honor it was that he was being entrusted with such a gift.

He opened the tin and took out a single piece of the char cloth and laid it in his nest of tinder, just as the other buddy teams began coming back with their arms full of dry wood, allowing Sean to arrange the logs on his bed of kindling.

Bill struck the steel against his flint and immediately produced sparks which landed on the char cloth and caused it to glow. Bill picked up the nest of tinder and blew on it gently until the cloth glowed bright red and the tinder became a ball of fire. He swiftly tucked the little fireball into the middle of the pile of wood atop the kindling, and all the boys marveled as it quickly caught fire.

Gary boiled water and made a big pot of oatmeal for breakfast. After the boys had eaten and they had cleaned up the campsite, Gary instructed them to fill the oatmeal pot with water and douse the fire.

“But Mr. Arnold…” one of the boys said in protest.

“Gary,” he replied, reminding them all that they were on a first-name basis out in the woods.

“Gary,” the boy began again. “Why do we have to put out the fire when we’re just going to have to make another one tonight for dinner and for sitting around the fire before bed?”

“What’s Rule 3, guys?”

“Respect the fire,” Bill replied.

“Very good, Bill. Respecting the fire isn’t just about making sure that you don’t horse around with it and get burned, it also means that you can’t walk away from your campsite for more than a few minutes and leave a fire burning. The wind can blow sparks onto our tents or into the surrounding grass and start a wildfire. You remember hearing on the news about the terrible wildfires that happen every summer out west? Well, a lot of those are started by people who forgot Rule 3.”

The boys nodded that they understood, and Sean took the oatmeal pot and filled it with water from the spring. He doused the fire, and Gary had all the boys stir the ashes with sticks until they were sure that there were no more hot coals. Then he prepared them for the day ahead.

“Today, boys, you’re just going to need your whistles, knives, and your water bottles. We’re going to take a hike through the forest without heavy packs on our backs, and when we get out there in the deepest part of the woods, I have a little game for us to play. Grab your gear, and let’s get going!”

As they hiked, Gary gave them small challenges along the way to keep their eyes open and paying attention to their environment.

“Let’s see who can be the first to point out poison ivy!” Gary said, and the boys focused their attention on every small green plant growing out of the ground. Several made incorrect guesses before one correctly spotted the poisonous plant. Gary stopped the group and described the example in detail so that they would know it in the future.

“Let’s see who can find a plant that they think is edible, but… don’t eat anything until you’ve shown it to me first!” Gary said next as they hiked along. The boys and their buddies veered off the trail as they hunted for plants that looked good to eat. Some came back with handfuls of berries, only to be disappointed when Gary informed them that they were in fact poisonous.

A pair of boys brought back a handful of young fern stalks that were curled into a spiral shape.

“Very good, boys!” Gary replied. “These are shoots of the ostrich fern, otherwise known as ‘fiddleheads’. However, you need to boil, sauté, or roast them first, or else they’ll give you a nasty case of the shits!”

“Gary?” Bill asked next. He stood in front of Sean and was holding out a pinecone.

“Now, what makes you think that you can eat a pinecone, Bill?” Gary asked, trying to keep a straight face, but still showing just the slightest crooked grin.

The boys giggled at the thought of eating a pinecone, and Bill’s face turned pink.

“Well, sir,” Bill began, “I know in cooking there’s a fancy ingredient called ‘pine nuts’. I thought that if pine trees actually made nuts, they’ll have to be inside the pinecones somehow, because that’s the only thing that grows on pine trees besides the needles.”

“Let’s see if you’re right,” Gary said, taking the pinecone from Bill’s hand. “Hold your hands out in front of you flat. Palms up.”

Bill did as asked, and Gary shook and tapped the pinecone hard over Bill’s upturned palms several times. When he stopped, the boys gathered around and saw several small oval seeds laying in Bill’s hands.

Gary took one of the seeds and opened his knife. Very carefully, he used the tip of the knife to crack open the shell, and revealed the soft, white pine nut meat inside.

“Looks like a pine nut to me!” Gary said. “That was very good deductive reasoning, Bill. Good job!”

Bill grinned broadly and looked down at the ground, slightly embarrassed, but Sean stepped up and clapped him on the back in congratulations.

****

At mid-day, Christopher spoke to his children.

“It is time to move into positions, my lovelies. We will go down to the bear and human boys’ camp and take up positions in the woods surrounding it. When they come back from their hike, we will move in on them from all sides, and there will be nowhere to run.”

The creatures followed their master through the woods. When they reached the camp, the monsters sniffed curiously at the tents and the ground around the site. The smell of humans was curious to them. Strange, and yet somehow familiar.

Christopher gave instructions to each beast individually, pointing in the direction where they were to go out into the woods no more than fifty feet, and hide themselves as well as they could. When all his children were distributed around the camp in a ring, Christopher sniffed around the tents until he found the one that was being used by his ex-lover. Christopher opened the zipper and went inside, laying down on the sleeping bag and inhaling Gary’s scent.

Christopher moaned softly, and unzipped his pants, freeing a hard and hot erection from its denim constraint. Finding a pair of Gary’s discarded undershorts, he held them up to his nose and inhaled deeply, stroking himself as he did so. It did not take long before Christopher sat up and with a muffled cry, ejaculated all over Gary’s sleeping bag and floor of the tent. He took one of Gary’s discarded shirts and cleaned up his mess. He tucked Gary’s undershorts into his pants pocket and then zipped himself back up. Sated, he sat and rested his mind, waiting for the moment when Gary would come back from his hike in the woods to receive his punishment.

****

Gary had reached the furthest extent of their hike, and he stopped the group to rest and eat lunch. He distributed the sausage, crackers and tubes of peanut butter and jelly, and allowed them to eat before telling them the next game that they would be playing.

“This will be a game of camouflage,” Gary said. “I am going to sit here in this spot, with my eyes closed, meditating for thirty minutes. Each of you will go with your buddy out into the surrounding woods, but not too far, please. Let’s say, only as far away as you can walk in five minutes. Once you have found your spot, you need to turn it into a camouflaged hiding place. Use leaves, branches, and whatever else you can find in nature to try to keep yourselves hidden from me. Remember what poison ivy looks like, and don’t hide yourselves in any patches of it, please! At the end of thirty minutes, I will begin to hunt. When I’ve found the first pair, they will join me in the hunt for the next pair, until I have eight cadets all assisting me to hunt down the final two camouflaged boys. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” They all responded.

“Good,” Gary said, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the trail and closing his eyes. “You may begin… now!”

The boys split up, running through the woods with their buddy, and soon all five pairs were headed in different directions, out of sight from the others.

Bill and Sean walked quickly for five minutes, until they came upon a thicket of thorn bushes with a shallow hole dug out in the middle of them.

“This looks like it may have been some animal’s den or sleeping place,” Bill said to Sean. “Here’s what I’m thinking. We take off our shirts and stretch them out between the bushes really close to the ground, using the thorns to hold the sides and corners in place. We then cover the shirts with the dead leaves laying around until you can’t see the shirts anymore. Then we crawl underneath into the hole and lay on our stomachs peeking out under the edge of our shirts to watch for when Gary or one of the other guys starts getting close.

Sean followed Bill’s instructions, and quickly stripped off his shirt and handed it to the smaller boy. Bill was distracted for just a second looking at Sean’s muscular hairless chest before he caught himself staring and pulled his own shirt off as well.

Working together, they stretched their shirts over the hole between the bushes, using the thorns to hold them in place. Once they were satisfied that the shirts were going to stay, and not come unhooked once they crawled underneath them, they began gathering fallen leaves and piling them on top.

They stood back and looked at their camouflage hiding place. If they hadn’t known that there was a hole dug out in that spot, they would swear that it was just a natural drift of fallen leaves laying in between a thicket of thorn bushes. Bill told Sean to crawl in, and he did so, wriggling on his belly in the gap between the bushes underneath the stretched shirt. Bill watched the pile of leaves shift and move a little bit as Sean got into position, and then it was still again. Bill had to look very closely to see Sean’s eyes peeking out at him from underneath the leaves.

“How does it look?” Sean’s voice called out from beneath the pile.

“Perfect,” Bill replied. "Scooch over, I’m coming in."

Bill wriggled underneath the shirts into the hole as well, and turned himself around so that he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Sean and both of them peeked out beneath the leaves at the gap between the thorn bushes.

Bill felt himself growing hard at the bare skin contact as he lay pressed up against Sean’s side, but he did his best to ignore it. Now they just had to remain still and wait to be found. He was sure that they would be the last team discovered, so he might as well enjoy laying shirtless next to Sean for as long as it took.

When the thirty-minute head start was up, Gary opened his eyes and looked about him. He intentionally would not use his nose for this exercise, only his eyes and his experience. He noticed several broken and bent plants at the edge of the trail to his left, so that was a telltale sign that some of the cadets had gone that way. He stood up and began to hunt.

Bill and Sean had been laying in their hiding place for nearly an hour. Surely Gary had found most of the others by now, so they were all probably hunting for their hiding spot. They heard voices and footsteps coming from the side and they held their breath, trying to remain as still as possible.

“I can smell two of them right around here,” a strange man’s voice said, "But I don’t see them anywhere."

“Keep looking, we have to find these kids and their bear guide as quickly as possible before Christopher decides to show up.”

They stomped around the clearing, and Bill and Sean were able to see that they were two very large, bearded men, dressed in jeans and flannel shirts wearing heavy hiking boots. Sean looked over at Bill, but Bill, held his finger up to his lips, silently telling Sean to remain quiet. Sean reached over in their hole and gripped Bill’s hand tightly.

A minute later, the boys heard the voice of their instructor and those of the other cadets calling their names and headed their way. The two lumberjack-looking men turned and faced them as the whole troop arrived in the clearing.

“Hello,” Gary said cautiously but in a friendly tone to the two men, “We were just looking for our last two cadets. We were conducting a wilderness survival camouflage game.”

“Hello, brother,” one of the men replied, holding his hand out to Gary, “We’ve been looking for all of you. There’s trouble in the woods.”

Gary and the strange man clasped each other by their forearms instead of shaking hands like usual, and Gary broke out into a grin.

“Let’s talk somewhere that the boys can’t hear us,” the man said.

The three big men told the rest of the boys to stay where they were, and they walked over nearly to the spot where Bill and Sean were hidden.

“My name is Rodney, and this is Marcus,” the man said to introduce themselves. “We’re from a bear enclave in Atikokan, Canada.”

“I’m Gary, and these boys are cadets at an academy for at-risk youth. I’m their instructor and we’re on a week-long wilderness survival trip.”

“Look,” Rodney said, “You’re going to have to cut the trip short. There is a rogue bear who has been creating an army of dababbi, half man, half bear monsters by breeding non-kindred humans. They’re eight feet tall, walk upright and are extremely deadly. They’ve already wiped out an entire bear village and half of a wolf pack. We think that you’re the rogue bear’s next target.”

“Why me?” Gary said. I haven’t even seen another bear in years.

“Does the name Christopher Arnold mean anything to you?” Marcus asked.

Gary’s face turned pale.

“Christopher is my Papa and my Ex. But I left him ninety years ago.”

Bill and Sean turned and looked at each other in confusion. How could Gary have left an old boyfriend ninety years ago when he looked like he was only forty?

“Christopher is getting revenge on everyone who has wronged him in his life. I’m guessing the breakup ninety years ago wasn’t amicable. You and your boys are all in danger from Christopher’s monsters. He followed you here. We found his vehicle parked right next to your academy van at the trailhead. We have to get moving and leave now before they find you.”

“Not without my last two cadets we’re not,” Gary said. “One of them is kindred.”

He stepped slightly away from the two men and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Bill! Sean! Game over! Wherever you’re hiding, come out now and blow your whistles so that we can find you!”

To the surprise of the three big men, the pile of leaves laying right behind them sprang up, and the last two boys were standing there, holding each other’s hand with a terrified look on their faces.

“Bill and Sean!” Gary exclaimed, turning around and then lowering his voice, “How much of that conversation did you hear?”

“All of it,” Bill replied, “Some of it didn’t make any sense, but we definitely got the part about somebody with an army of monsters who are looking for us!”

“I promise I’ll explain things later,” Gary said to them, "But for now, please keep that between us and don’t tell the other cadets. We’re going to go with these two men and get out of here.”

“Come on Cadets!” Gary called out to the group of boys standing a little ways away. “These men came to find us to warn us about a dangerous criminal who is on the loose in the woods. For our own safety, we’re going to have to cut the trip short until he can be caught. I promise that we’ll do another trip really soon to make up for this!”

The boys all groaned but they knew better than to talk back to Gary when he had laid down the law. Bill and Sean retrieved their shirts from the bushes and fell into line with the rest of their classmates.

“Our camp is about four miles that way,” Gary said to Rodney and Marcus. “It will be easier getting the boys out of here if we can follow the trails rather than going cross-country.”

“Agreed,” Rodney said, “But we won’t have time for you to pack. We’ll take the trail back to your camp, and then it has to be straight back to the van. We have reinforcements who are already here and moving to intercept. We should meet them about halfway, and then we’ll have twenty-five more… big, strong, men for protection.”

“Come on Cadets!” Gary yelled to the boys as they hiked back along the trail. “Double-time! We’re going to have to move-it to get out of these woods before dark!”

The cadets all followed the instruction and doubled their pace to a quick jog as they followed the two men along the trail through the woods. Gary fell back to the end of the group to make sure that no one straggled behind. He noted when he got to the end that Bill had already taken up that position, and he smiled again to himself. He didn’t know how he was going to explain things to Bill and Sean yet, but he didn’t want to give them information about were-creatures before they were ready to hear it. Bill was going to make a fine Cub someday, but he needed a few more years to finish his schooling and establish himself as a man before being faced with the choice to become a near-immortal werebear.

When the group reached the camp, Rodney and Marcus came to a sudden halt. Gary jogged past the cadets up to them and immediately knew why. There was a strange and foul odor in the camp. Almost like werebear, but corrupted and bad.

“That’s the scent of the dababbi monsters,” Marcus said in a whisper to Gary. “They’ve been here in your camp today.”

The door of Gary’s tent flapped open, and Christopher strode out.

“Hello Gary!” Christopher said. “You remember me, don’t you? I don’t have to remind you of the sixty fucking years we spent together as a loving couple, do I?”

“No Christopher,” Gary replied, “But it wasn’t all loving, was it? By the end you were so consumed with hate and vengeance against your Papa that you were obsessed. Did you ever figure out how to get one of your creatures to survive the first change?”

“Oh, you bet your furry ass I did,” Christopher replied. “Children! Come out, come out, wherever you are! Come and meet your dinner!”

Gary, Marcus, Rodney and the cadets looked all around them as eight-foot-tall monsters with sharp claws and deformed bear heads emerged from the trees into their campsite, surrounding them.

“Keep him talking,” Rodney whispered to Gary as he and Marcus began shedding their clothing.

“If I had stayed,” Gary said to Christopher, “I would only have been in your way. You never would have created such an impressive army if I’d been there holding you back every step of the way.”

“I suppose,” Christopher said, “But you didn’t even bother to say goodbye before taking our money and possessions and our car.”

“I only took what was rightfully mine, Christopher,” Gary replied. “Be glad that I left you my home. If I’d woken you, you just would have tried to talk me out of leaving, and I couldn’t have that.”

Rodney and Marcus looked at Gary and glanced at the two dababbi who were blocking the trail leading back to the van. Then they glanced at the group of cadets huddled together.

“Pardon me Christopher,” Gary said, “Your children have frightened my cadets, and I need to speak with them.”

“By all means,” Christopher replied grinning, “We can’t have them too frightened now, it spoils the flavor of the meat.”

“Bill!” Gary whispered, “Do you remember how to get to the fire tower from here?”

Bill nodded silently; his eyes wide.

“In a few seconds you’re all going to see something very strange. Try to ignore that, and just take note that the two monsters blocking the trail are going to be preoccupied for several moments and won’t be paying attention to you. When that happens, follow Bill and run for the fire tower as fast as you can. Climb the stairs to the top and wait for help. Understand?”

The boys nodded, and Gary gave the signal to Rodney and Marcus, who immediately shifted into giant grizzly bears and charged at the two dababbi blocking the trail.

“Run boys! Run!” Gary shouted as the bears and the monsters fought.

Bill took off in the lead and the rest of the cadets followed him past the fighting monsters and down the half-mile trail to the fire tower.

Christopher chuckled.

“You’re only delaying the inevitable, Gary,” he taunted as his monsters slashed and clawed at the bears. “They’ll never be able to get out of these woods in time. My children will track them down and then I will have them feast upon their flesh while I make you watch.”

Marcus and Rodney both lost their battles, and fell bloody and panting to the ground, shifting into their human forms and crawling back toward Gary.

“Thank you, brothers,” Gary said quietly to the injured pair. “Let’s hope your reinforcements find them before Christopher sends his monsters to track them down.”

“Let’s make things interesting, shall we?” Christopher said, staring at Gary. “Let’s see just how good of a wilderness survival teacher you are. I’m going to count to one hundred. When I reach the end, five of my children are going to hunt your children down. Each of my children will return with two of yours, and when all five of mine have all ten of yours, it’s dinnertime!”

“Fuck you, asshole.” Gary replied.

Christopher just smiled. “We’ll see, won’t we?

“One, two, three, four, five…”