Zodiac Story

Take Up This Terracotta Armour, For The Hunt Begins Part 2

CW: Potentially graphic scenes

A half-hour later, Willa and Clara found themselves next to a shaded clearing. Jenny was examining the corpse of a massive grizzly bear, its jaws agape. Willa waved her hand against the flies that started to buzz around her head. The stench of decaying flesh hit her nostrils, as she narrowed her eyes against the black haze. Clara was shepherding the children away from the bear's corpse.

"Willa! I was just about to call you!" Jenny waved, her latex gloves stretching to her wrists. "I found the bear that everyone was looking for, but now a rogue moose is roaming around near Upper Waterton Lake. Most of the park rangers are tied up there, so I would like a helping hand."

"Willa's here?" A voice piped up. Although the carcass' scent masked numerous scents, Willa recognized the characteristic cologne and bleach scent of Jenny's brother. She waved.

"Yeah, you're not the only person here who had her siblings show up." Jenny nodded. "I would have sent him away, but he wanted to learn more about animal decomposition."

Caleb stuck his head above the bear's stomach. "Nice to see you again! You should come to look at this. The rate of decomposition is fascinating."

Willa trod over to the belly of the bear. Caleb was wearing a face mask, a cap, and latex gloves. Currently, his hands were deep inside the bear's intestines with gaping holes. She sighed. Willa had accepted a long time ago that Caleb and dead things were a package deal.

"So what did you want to show me?" She asked.

"Alright, so according to Jenny, your bear has been dead since yesterday, right? Using this guidebook, the decomposition of this bear matches that of a bear that has been dead for longer. This is a bit weird, right?" He pointed at a wriggling section of the bear's innards. "If you see here, that section of the intestines has become a maggot colony, and there are empty pupae inside. Those flies are black blow flies, which have a lifespan of two to four weeks. So this bear has been dead for longer than yesterday, I would say about two or three weeks. There are also beetle larvae inside the stomach, which helps to date the time of death. And there's something else as well!" He gestured to the bear's head. "Look into its eyes, and tell me what you can observe."

Willa peered into its eyes, or rather, its eye sockets. It had no eyes. "There aren't any eyes."

"Yes, and that is a great mystery. I would have expected the eyes to remain, but here they were gone, without any trace." Caleb looked at Willa in his 'So what do you think?' way.

"It's...different." Her interest in deceased things only extended to being aware that people die. Her shoulder had been a place to cry for her sisters and cousins and Jenny, although Willa often found herself dry-eyed. She grieved, but not outwardly.

Certain that Caleb was done showing her the parts of the corpse that interested him, Willa inhaled deeply—and the wrongness of the scent sent her head twitching. If she had dog ears, they would have been flattened. The wrongness permeated the entire glade, and its potency threatened to make Willa gag. Something was wrong, she thought, turning her head back and forth. Jenny was mourning the dead bear, while Caleb kept examining the insides of it. Clara was chewing out Liza over taking the children near the trail. Why doesn't anyone notice how wrong this place was, she thought. The decaying flesh was sloughing off, and the wrongness grew stronger. Willa remained alert, her eyes darting quickly between her friend and the shadow-casting trees that surrounded them.

"Something's wrong," she stated.

"It's a dead bear, and some of the other rangers are heading up here. Don't worry about me. I have PPE, and it doesn't appear that the bear was diseased." Jenny gave Willa a thumbs up. "Caleb, can you go with Willa?"