Chapter Text
“Hey you! Stop!” the police officer shouted at the scattering group of twenty-somethings, none of whom obeyed the command.
Raven picked up the pace as she hoofed it across the grass towards the treeline. She didn’t stop to catch her breath until she was a good few meters into the forest. With her chest heaving slightly, she leaned against a nearby tree and scanned the area.
Shit? Was that a flashlight? Her heart skipped a beat as her eyes picked up a small beam of light in the direction of where she had come from. She took another big breath before she started moving again, cursing the fact that she was wearing heavy boots that were absolutely not made for running.
In fact, everything she was wearing was not particularly suited for running through a forest at night. She had just come from a pre-Halloween party that a few of her coworkers had invited her to. She had come dressed as Sam Manson from Danny Phantom, which had been a hit at the party, but as twigs whipped her exposed midriff, Raven was starting to regret the choice.
The party had been going normally until the drinks started flowing and someone suggested they go TP houses to honor the spirit of Mischief Night. That had been a blast right up until the cops showed up to ruin the fun.
As she ducked under a low hanging branch, her hair fell in front of her face and stuck to the beads of sweat on her forehead. Annoyed, she blew it away and vowed to cut her hair back to a more manageable length tomorrow morning. She usually wore her hair in a short pixie cut, but had decided to let it grow out for her costume. Another bright idea that was coming to bite her in the ass now.
She knew these woods well, having grown up in the town surrounding it. It had always been a frequent haunt of hers, whether she was simply exploring or if she was sneaking around with her high school friends. It was dark out now, though the light of the full moon shined through the treetops and lit her way. She picked her way through the brush and made her way to one of the wide dirt paths that could be found throughout the forest. Taking stock of her surroundings, she saw a large outcropping of rock that she lovingly referred to as the ‘butt rock’ due to the fact it looked like, well, a butt. There was a cave of sorts that was around the back of the butt rock. It was far enough away from the path that it was completely hidden and she and her friends had often used it as a place to smoke weed without getting caught. Now, it seemed like a good place to lay low for a little while in case the cop was still on her tail. She didn’t think she had any more running in her for tonight.
While there were no large predators in these woods, she and her friends did once have a run in with an aggressive, coked up homeless man who had chased them away while spewing a bunch of nonsense about the end of the world. She wasn’t eager for a repeat of that tonight, so she paused at the entrance to do a quick scan to see if there was anyone - or anything - inside.
Once she was convinced the cave was empty, she ducked inside and perched herself on a rock, not venturing in too deep so that the light of the moon still reached her. She started out squatting above the rock, not wanting to press her bare thighs to the rock, but her legs soon got tired and she reluctantly sat down with a sigh.
There was a wet sound as the back of one of her thighs landed in a puddle of something slick and she immediately jumped up, already frantically brushing whatever it was off of her.
“Ew, ew, ew…” Whatever she just sat in was thick and slippery and very, very gross. She brought her fingers up to her face to examine the substance and found them coated in a bright green fluid, almost glowing with how neon it was. She took a tentative sniff of the substance and felt a slight metallic taste in the back of her throat. She was half tempted to give it a little taste as well, for science of course, but quickly abandoned that line of thought. What if it was the slime from a radioactive snail or something equally as gross?
She turned back to where she had sat and found a small puddle of the same green fluid there, almost as if she had sat on a tiny version of Slimer from Ghostbusters. She fumbled in her pocket for a moment, fishing out her phone and turning the light on to get a better look.
The puddle was bigger than it appeared, though ‘puddle’ wasn’t quite the right word. Whatever this was, most of it had started to dry, the outer layer of it hardening and turning a darker shade of green, which explained why she hadn’t seen it before she sat down.
Had something been dripping from the ceiling? She pointed her phone’s light up but found nothing there but smooth, grey rock. She looked back down at the green stuff, this time noticing there was more along one of the sides of the rock. There were five streaks of green emanating out from the main puddle, four of them spaced close together and one set apart from the rest. Almost like…
A handprint.
She felt her blood run cold as soon as the thought came to mind. That was definitely a handprint. Four fingers and a thumb, curling around the edge of the rock as if whoever left it had used it as a handhold.
No it couldn’t be a handprint, it was way too big. The only person who could have left a handprint that large was Andre the Giant and last she checked he was dead. Maybe it was his ghost, come back to life on All Hallows Eve? No that was stupid.
Well, she must have been pretty damn stupid because she was actually debating looking deeper into the cave to see if whatever had left it was still inside, instead of high tailing it out of there like any sane person would do. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Raven swung her phone’s light towards the back of the cave, her hands shaking slightly.
Her light illuminated a black object hunched in the back of the cave.
Fuck! A bear!
She was pretty sure her heart stopped beating for a moment before she jumped back. Or well she tried to jump backwards, but it ended up being more of an awkward fall due to the uneven ground. She almost dropped her phone in her panic, fumbling to catch it before it clattered to the floor.
She sat there unmoving for a moment, her fight or flight response obviously deciding that freeze was a great third option. The thing hunched in the corner didn’t move and she was starting to reconsider it was alive at all. It was probably just someone’s coat that they left behind, and here she was giving herself a heart attack over it.
Oh god, it definitely just breathed.
Raven wanted to chalk the slight rise and fall of the object to a trick of the light, caused by her shaking hands, but it happened again. There was no doubt about it, whatever was in the cave with her was alive and breathing.
Okay, so now she had to focus on getting out of this damn cave without getting mauled. She took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart and tried to focus. She took another look at the thing in the back of the cave, and now that her head was clearer she started noticing more.
Whatever it was, it was covered in that same green fluid. There were bright green slashes along the side of it, the edges starting to dry and darken, though they still glowed brightly in the middle.
Either this thing had just come back from Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards or it was injured and its blood was green. Or radioactive, maybe? Was it some sort of weird escaped lab experiment? There was a military base a few towns over and rumors had always swirled that they got up to some weird stuff there. Like the town’s own Area 51. Granted, most of those stories were told to her by former classmates who had started posting flat earth shit on Facebook, so she was reluctant to believe them.
Every possibility that crossed her mind was more out there than the last. She always had an active imagination, and it was quickly making her thoughts spiral into crazy town. No matter what explanation she came up with, she would never be sure unless she got closer. The last sane part of her mind told her that she could just run away and never think of this again, but she was far too invested to just leave now.
Since there was still a chance this was just some wild animal, she decided to play it safe and try to wake it up before going up to it. She scrabbled around in the dirt on the floor of the cave before her fingers closed around a small rock a little bit bigger than a quarter in size. She turned it around in her palm once, asking herself if this really was a good idea before she just simply decided to hell with it and chucked the rock at the black lump in the back of the cave.
As soon as the rock left her hands she readied herself to make a run for it, but it turned out she didn’t need to. The rock plinked off something that sounded like it was metal before clattering to the ground, but nothing happened. The shape didn’t move or react in any way. Okay.
Felling it was sufficiently safe to approach it, Raven started picking her way over the uneven ground. She turned her flashlight towards her feet so she could see where she was going and spotted a few more droplets of the dried green stuff spattered about. If this was blood, this thing had lost a lot of it.
When she finally stood next to the creature, she pointed her light down at it and let out a gasp as her mind took in the details. She could tell it was humanoid in appearance, able to make out two arms, two legs, and a head despite it’s awkward hunched position. It seemed like whatever - no whoever - this was had initially sat down with their back against the wall but had slumped down once they passed out. Raven suspected it was from blood loss, having decided that the green stuff was in fact blood when she saw that what she thought were slashes were in fact trails of blood. Up close, she could see that the blood was oozing out of holes that riddled the creature’s back.
Bullet holes , she realized, a pit forming in her stomach. Maybe her Area 51 idea wasn’t so crazy after all.
With a shaking hand, she reached out to grip the creature’s shoulder, finding its skin warm and rough to the touch. It reminded her of the pet snake she had growing up, though it felt more pebbley than scaly. Hide was honestly a better word for it than skin, since it seemed thick and leathery, pulled tight over the creature’s strong back muscles.
She gently tugged on its shoulder to flip the creature onto its back, their heavy arm landing in her lap with a thump. She winced as soon she saw their other side, their whole left flank a mess of torn muscle that bleed heavily. It appeared that the creature had been holding something in their other hand, as there was a clank as whatever it was slipped from their grip and landed on the ground.
Raven leaned over to pick it up, turning the object around in her hands. It was a case of some sort, one clasp already flipped open. She flicked the other one up and opened the lid, finding it filled with various syringes as well as what looked like forceps.
She felt a stab of sadness as she realized they had been trying to heal themselves. And they had passed out before they could do anything. She ran a hand along their chest, feeling a strange four-part heartbeat throb weakly against her palm. They were still alive, still fighting. And Raven wanted to help them.
She turned to the medical kit for a moment, thinking if she could use it. But she decided against it with a shake of her head. For all she knew, half of this stuff was poison or something. If only they had been holding one of the syringes in their hand, then she would just be able to inject it, problem solved. But things would not be that simple.
The best thing to do would be to bring this creature back to her apartment. There she would have some medical supplies she actually knew how to use. If she could just patch them up enough for them to regain consciousness, maybe they could show her how to use their kit.
That was easier said than done, however. It would be a challenge to get them through the woods, but a plan was already forming in her mind.
Yeah. She could do this, she told herself as she placed the creature’s arm back on the floor and stood up, already making her way out of the cave.
At the mouth, she stopped and turned back towards the cave for a second to whisper, “Hang on for a little longer, big guy. I’m gonna help you.”
She took a deep breath and started her journey back to her apartment, breaking out into a jog as soon as she made it back on the path.
So much for no more running.