V: *laughs victoriously in the background before squealing*
R: WHADDYAKNOW. A Tremors fic?!
So, I've been posting a LOT over in the Forever fandom lately (can you blame me? It's nice getting some attention) but I haven't abandoned you Tremorites. I've been kind of forcing Vlad into being my posting slave lately so I wrote this up for her. I quite enjoyed it myself. Enjoy!
Tell Me a Story
As Burt Gummer tied off the make-shift bandage over the gash in his partner's leg, he had to restrain himself from covering Tyler's mouth at the pained cry that escaped him. "Tyler, please, be quiet," he implored, looking towards the opening in the cave they were sheltered in. Rain poured down outside, though they were lucky enough to be higher up than the ground out there, and the inner cave was at most a bit damp.
At least they had caught one break.
"You try slowly bleeding to death and see how quiet you are," the tour guide grumbled, wincing. Burt sighed, watching worriedly as blood slowly soaked through his impromptu compress.
"Don't say that, Tyler," Burt practically growled. "You are going to be fine and I have enough to worry about."
Tyler squeezed his eyes shut, shifting, only to grunt when a somewhat heavy weight landed on his chest. He shot his eyes open to see a cream, whiskered face and copper eyes staring at him. "Uhg, Dillie," he groaned. "Please."
Burt hefted the rather large female cat off of Tyler, telling her to stay at his side, where she promptly sat down.
"When I gave ya a cat," Tyler mumbled, closing his eyes again, "I didn't expect ya to bring her on assignments with us."
"Dillinger has proven to be a better companion than I anticipated," Burt countered, stroking the feline's back.
Tyler let out a breath. "Yer welcome," he said shortly through gritted teeth. Burt frowned nervously. "Geez, B, I don't like to complain, but... God, this hurts."
Burt put a hand on his friend's shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. "I know, Ty. Just hold in there. Help should be coming soon."
Tyler looked up at him, taking in the rare comforting expression on the survivalist's face. It wasn't Burt's strong suit, but he was trying. "Could you just, keep talking? Please, to keep me focused on something else."
Burt looked a bit confused. "What do you want me to talk about?" he asked.
"Anything. I don't care. I don't even care if I don't understand what you're talking about," Tyler said. "Just anything."
Burt went quiet for a long moment - at least, it felt long to Tyler as he tried to ignore the pain in his leg and other areas of his body - before finally speaking. "Well, did I ever tell you about the time I made a very, very unusual friend?" he asked.
"Burt, I know how we met," Tyler responded with a weak, joking quality to his voice.
The survivalist just made a face through the gloom of the cave. "That's not what I meant. It's something that happened to me as a teenager."
"It's hard to imagine you as a kid. I'm pretty sure you were always this age."
Burt puffed out his cheeks in annoyance. "Tyler, you're the one who wants me to talk. You keep interrupting and I'll let Dillinger sit on your chest." At her name, the cat pricked her ears and looked towards her owner before stepping over to curl up in his lap.
"Fine, fine," Tyler huffed. "Just start the story already."
"So, it was 1973, I believe, because I was about sixteen," Burt began. "I was hunting whitetails with my uncle in Iowa - as I used to do every year up until my twenties - but this year was the first I didn't stick by him the whole time..."
Burt Gummer moved quietly through the green woods, stepping lightly and casting his gaze around slowly. He listened intently and held his thirty-ought-six rifle levelly, taking in his surroundings as he had been taught to. A light breeze blew through and he turned, walking into it to keep himself down wind. He had been out for at the very least two hours without so much as a sight of a deer, and he was beginning to seriously doubt his ability to do this on his own.
A sudden, familiar sound met his ears and he froze. He searched his field of vision, only moving his upper body to keep himself silent. Looking through his scope, he didn't see anything for a few tense moments and started to believe he imagined or mistook the noise. However, he caught a hint of tan pelt out of the corner of his eye and excitement leaped up inside him when a full-antlered buck stepped into his vision. Not able to believe his own luck, the teenager stared for a few seconds before remembering what he was to do. He leveled his rifle, steadying his breathing and peering down his scope at the animal. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, he prepared for the shot as the deer nibbled at a fern.
A sound from a nearby bush made the buck look up with a start and begin to take off. Burt swore under his breath as something blurred in front of him and knocked the whitetail from its feet.
A large, tan feline gripped at the larger animal with claws as it's jaw's met is throat. The boy watched in frustration as the cat locked down on the buck's neck until it stopped kicking. He raised his weapon and peered down the scope at what he quickly recognized as a mountain lion, cursing it in a hushed tone. Before he could pull the trigger, the cougar looked up at him, amber colored eyes meeting his own brown ones. They stared at each other for a few heartbeats - he took in its tan coat, lithe body, a definite scar over one eye - before Burt lowered his gun with a huff.
"Fair and square, I guess," he said out loud before turning and walking away.
"That's it? You just walked away? You really know how to choose a story, Burt," Tyler said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Burt glared at him. "That's not it, Tyler. Just listen."
Burt returned to those same woods the following year. He was a year older, a bit taller, but otherwise unchanged. He used the same rifle, the same technique, and practically the same path. Even then, he showed himself as a man of habit, of preparation.
He walked carefully, quietly, purposefully, constantly scanning the area for a flash of buckskin pelt. One wrong step left him cracking a twig under foot, and a second after he was struck by an eerie silence that passed over the forest. The bird song halted, the bugs no longer buzzes, and the only sound was a whistling breeze through the trees.
That is, it was silent until a loud, angry huff sounded from directly behind him.
The teenager stopped, turning around slowly. His eyes fell upon the dark, hairy form of a bear. A fairly large black bear to be precise. It let out a bone-shaking growl as it took a step towards him.
Burt backed away, admittedly trembling slightly at the sudden, unexpected animal. It reared up and he tried to line up a shot, but the bear suddenly lunged forward, knocking the gun from his grasp with ease. Burt fell backwards in surprise, scrambling away through the leaf litter.
What the young man could only describe as a screech filled the air. Burt looked around in shock, trying to place what the roar-like sound was when a tan blur smacked into the side of the animal attacking him. A familiar felid form scratched and bit at the bear until it decided to turn and flee.
The mountain lion stood for a moment after the black bear fled, turning its eyes to Burt. He instantly recognized the amber eyes, one of which was marked over with a long scar. After staring at him for half a moment, the puma took off with fluid movement similar to running water.
Burt just sat there, watching where the cat had disappeared as he collected himself.
"Oooh." Tyler nodded. "I get it now."
Burt silenced him with a glance.
The following year, Gummer returned to the woods, this time keeping out a purposeful eye for the cougar that he now felt he owed his life to. He hadn't told a soul about the cat - it was no one's business but his and the lion's - and he wondered if he would have another fleeting encounter with her. He didn't know what exactly gave him the impression it was a female, but he felt that to be its gender.
When he had gotten a buck around noon that day, he lost hope of encountering the mountain lion, however. He had just begun to gut and bleed the animal when, lo and behold, she seemed to appear out of nowhere in front of him. Amber eyes barely glancing over him and his kill, she walked on past and he felt the sudden need to track her. After her he went.
Leaving his buck with the hope it would be there when he came back, he followed her to a rocky outcropping. He looked around for her, catching a tan tail disappear into a hole dug out underneath the stone. Watching and waiting, she exited what he assumed to be a den quickly after. She slunk away and he cautiously approached the outcrop. Peering into the hole, he saw nothing for a moment.
When his eyes adjusted slightly, though, three little silhouettes stood out to him. A little speckled face poked out into the light, sniffed at him, and then pulled back.
He was right. She was a she, and she was a mother.
Burt backed away and retraced his steps back to his buck. When he got to back to the body, he stared at it momentarily before grabbing it by an antler and dragging it in the direction of the den. He abandoned the carcass not far away from the cubs and watched it just long enough to see the lioness find it.
"Yer such a softie, Burt," Tyler said with a grin. At his partner's continued silence, he added, "No, seriously. It's adorable. I can totally see why yer a cat person."
The survivalist glanced down at the purring tabby curled up on his legs. "Hm, I suppose I see what you're talking about." Bringing his eyes back to his partner's, he was relieved to see the bleeding seemed to have pretty much stopped. "Is it still hurting bad?"
"Well, yeah," Tyler said. "But that helped. Keep going."
"But that's the overall end of the story."
"Did you ever see her again?" Tyler prodded. "Did her cubs survive?"
"I thought I saw her again two years later," Burt answered, "but I was never positive that it was, in fact, her. And I did see another mountain lion that year, it was younger and definitely not her."
Tyler nodded slowly. "Okay. Come on, keep talking, tell me another story."
Burt resigned himself to the realization this would likely go on all night. It was for his partner, though, and he owed him that much for getting him into this mess. "Let me think for a moment, Tyler. Did I ever tell you how graboids were discovered?" The younger monster hunter smiled and shook his head. "It all started on a Monday in 1989. The town was much the same as it is today. Same store, Nancy lived in the same house, I still lived up on the hill, Melvin was still a little turd, and we were all still scraping to get by. Our two handymen, Earl Basset and Val McGee, decided they wanted to get out of town..."
V: By the way, I'm workin' on an installment of this too, next chapter shall be HILARIOUS. Stay tuned.
