A/N - If you don't like the holes in the story, read A Walk in the Woods. The two are written for each other. Enjoy.

Chapter 3 – Unexpected Company

I followed her. On and on I followed her. It got harder and harder to do, though, even the bright green of her top (bodywarmer, I think they call those things. I can think of better ways to keep a body warm, but hell, whatever) and denim blue of her skirt got harder to see. The fog was definitely thickening. Hell with this, I thought, and started running to catch up to her. I had been planning to make the meeting a kind of accidental-like thing. A kind of 'Oh! Hi! Didn't expect to meet anyone out here! What's that, you live around here? Well maybe you can show me round the place.' That sort of thing. Fuck it, I'd have to adapt the plans. That or stay lost in this damn patch of weeds for ever.

I hurried up, trying to keep that glint of golden hair in sight before it got lost in the mist. Stupid. I shoulda been watching my step, not the damn blonde. I dunno how it happened, though, I'm normally so sure-footed, it was almost like the forest wanted me to fall. Yeah, sure, go ahead and laugh. You go walk in those woods, see if you can call me a liar. So there's me flat on my face sprawled like an ass all over the dirt, hands out on the ground, and the hard metal of my revolver digging into my hips. Damn, that stuff hurts. I wouldn't have brung it if I hadn't heard about all the wildlife out here in the woods, but you can't be too careful, a man never knows what he might come up against. I was about to find out. From behind me, I heard, crisp and clear, footsteps as of a tall guy walkin slowly up a road. The kinda slow, deliberate step you see in a priest walkin up an aisle to an altar, or a monk in a monkery. With the wind knocked out of me and my vision blurred, I couldn't make out much of things, and I sure as hell couldn't move to see. The guy kept comin on, step after horrible step, till he stopped right by my right hand.

A low chuckle, and he shifted his weight. All his weight, right onto my hand. It still twinges even now, and that musta been a day or three ago, though it's hard to keep track of time out here. The pain woke me all the way up, I can tell ya, though I still couldn't move much at all. I screamed out at the pain, I don't mind telling ya. I'm not too proud to admit I yelled out. He kept the weight on, shifting it slightly without ever taking it off. Guess he wanted to keep it interesting for me. How nice of him, the bastard. And then he spoke. I'll never forget that voice. It wasn't a thunder, nor a roar, it weren't a whisper neither. A still, calm voice, sayin loud and clear.

"You cannot go home again. Not now you've crossed the river. You are in our world now, with all that that entails, with all that you must now gamble. That choice you have made, and thus no longer have. However..' He paused, and shifted his weight again, makin me yell out again, "However…you still have some choices. The girl you're following, you're following for low reasons, evil ones. Leave off following her, pursue your own path, face your own battle and your own demons. If you don't, they'll hunt you down anyway." He stepped off my hand, and I could feel the blood rushing back into the battered veins, which just added one kind of pain to another. I can still see those boots now, that long black trenchcoat hanging down.

"One other thing," the bastard said to me, still calm as a frozen lake, "You might be thinking that you've got nowhere else to go, that I'm not offering you a choice. You'd be wrong. When you stand up, you'll see a corridor in the fog. Take that path and you'll be a lot better off than if you follow the girl to the Mother of the God. Remember that, and you might make it out of here alive" I blinked groggily, and rolled my head to look up at him, maybe even, if I could get in enough strength, tell him what I thought of his 'choices', but there was nothing there. Just footprints, and a black silhouette disappearing in the direction of my golden angel, my new favourite wildlife.

Still all shot to hell, I got up. Slowly. I swayed once, twice, and looked around with clearing vision. Off to my right, the fog cleared, and I could see a whole patch of forest with real afternoon sunshine falling through it. No long legged wildlife, but no crazy sadists in trenchcoats, either. I shook my head in self-disgust, I ain't proud, but I've never been one to back down to arrogant threats, neither. Turning my back on the corridor, I followed the bootprints of the moron who'd taken off after my girl.

Some time after that I lost the tracks under the underbrush, and had to stick close to the dirt to still see them. After a while, though, even those disappeared, and all I could see were wolf tracks, lots of them, like a whole pack had run through. They were runnin in the same general direction, though, so I kept goin in that way. It was about ten minutes after that that I ran into company. Monsters, I guess you could call them. They looked like…well, I guess they looked kinda human, if you covered a human with yellow-white plastic and put a blowtorch to it, so that the stuff ran. Except this wasn't plastic, it was skin, the eyes lidless and red, running with blood, their mouths opening in shrieks I've heard in my dreams every night since, and probably will till I die. They weren't clothed, neither. Just a kind of mottled green colour across the groin and most of the chest. They swung their arms at me, long long arms, and one caught me, and pulled me into itself. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move anything cept my head, and that thing had sharp teeth, breath like an oven, and it was gonna bite me, and bite hard. So I panicked. I kicked, yelled, trashed my head back and forward, and musta caught it a knock on its own head, cause it let me go and fell back. The other two started to close in, and I fumbled my revolver, my hand screamin at me in agony.

Oh, the fear. Friends, I can't tell ya how much I feared at that moment, it was beyond anything you've ever known, almost a pleasure, though a pleasure of hell herself. Eventually I got the gun under grips, and fired off a shot at the one on the right. The slug went straight through, and it shimmered and vanished. I looked to the other one, and could hardly see it against the fog, and it looked like it was fading. The one I'd hit, though, was getting its strength back and moving in on me again, so I raised the gun, took as good an aim as I could, and fingered the trigger. The damn thing's head exploded like a watermelon, and the shade of the other monster to my left let out a shriek that went right through my heart, freezing it cold for an instant, and faded entirely. Slumping down, I looked for the tracks I'd been following, and couldn't find them. I couldn't find anything, and felt my stomach start to bubble and chill within me. Lost! And lost with such monsters for company! It couldn't be, it mustn't be, there must be something. Just then I heard a howling go up, ahead and off to the right from me. The wolves had found something, and it might be my girl. Mine, not theirs. I had to protect what was mine, so I ran.

As I ran, I could see, just out of the corner of my eye, a monster on either side, keeping up with me, though making no sound but for a low squealing. When I turned my head to see either one properly, though, it faded right out. A ghost of a horror. A couple times I almost ran smack into a tree from looking out to those…those things, and so I had to listen in to the sounds of the wolves and hope I didn't get there too late. Eventually I arrived at a clearing of fog, and could see into a clearing of trees, where my blonde angel was lying sprawled on the dirt, arms by her sides, legs open, feet drawn in close. Waiting for me. I stopped and looked at her, just looked, and as I looked I saw the rest of the clearing and the wolf pack. They'd been… I dunno what they'd been, but they were sure all over the place, generally hanging out. Heads and furry limbs all over the place, intestines falling out through massive gouges in their sides, and in the middle, sleeping, a massive black… dog. Or wolf. Or something. Too big and bulky to be a grey like the ones lying in pieces around it, and too powerful, shaggy and wild to be a dog. One last wolf was still alive, though, making a last effort to reach my girl. My heart leapt into my mouth, I can tell ya, to come all this way just to lose her to some bloody animal wouldn't have been fair. Not after all I'd been through. I woulda gone in to save her myself, you know. If it hadn't been for that massive black abomination in the middle of the dirt. Just looking at it, I knew it'd kill me as soon as look at me, maybe quicker.

It woke, saw the wolf, and watched. It musta thought nothing of it, or that the thing would die trying to get to my girl, cause it made no move. No move at all till the thing was almost on her, then it jumped. No, I don't mean it got up, growled and sprang. I mean it straight out leapt. It dove straight into the wolf and ripped it apart from the inside, the blood spattered everywhere, even on me. The head rolled up against her boots, against those beautiful legs, and then the Thing did something I still can't figure. It brought the head back to the body. It looked straight at Her, at my girl, and wiped its snout, just like I'd wipe my mouth at a dinner table table. It sniffed the air above it, and turned to look straight at me. Those eyes…my dear God, those eyes. Like the outermost emptiness of space. Nothing but nothing, black as death and hot as hell. It growled at me, the Thing growled and I felt all the earth shake and all my body tremble in the presence of that awful Beast. My nerve broke, I turned tail and ran, its barking after me like shouts of contempt at my back.

After running a while, I stopped and leant against a tree. It felt…friendly. As though it knew me, and wanted to help me. I straightened up, and felt my pride return to me. My resolve strengthened in me, and I turned and followed my tracks back to the clearing. I felt my fear come back as I returned, and I shook at the memory of that terrible Thing. But I had my pride, didn't I? I had to go on, or I'd have just been some whipped little boy. I followed their trail out of the clearing, they seemed to have walked out together. I shuddered, and walked on. Eventually I could see them up ahead, almost walking hand in paw, Beauty and the Beast in a smalltown forest. Suddenly they stopped, and It raised its head again, sniffing the air once again, while my girl leant down to mutter something to it. Yeah, good doggy. Right. If I could just be sure I'd hit you, I'd shoot you down right now you damn mutt. Then they ran, it was all I could do to keep up. I lost them in the end, though, and had to follow their tracks from the earth again, with my head right up against the dirt every step of the way.

That's why it was that I came to find a pair of empty boots with no further prints, cept save those of that damned Beast, that hellhound and, standing bewildered, felt the cold prickle of a knife-tip against the base of my spine, froze solid, and heard a young, steady voice speaking firmly and deliberately from behind me.

"You just stay where you are, pal. Don't you move a fucking muscle. You and me, we're gonna have us a little chat…"

A/N - So? You likee?