As we rounded the corner of the hill, we heard a loud explosive roar. It was unlike anything I had heard before visceral, primal. It stopped us dead in our tracks. Then the acrid smell hit us.
“Don’t move,” Tabitha whispered, “if we stay perfectly still, it won’t register that we’re here.”
Then the monster appeared. It was huge, with large teeth, and relatively small front claws covered in large feathers.
I don’t think that I could have moved even if I wanted to, I was frozen with fear and a sickly feeling life was coming to an end.
It slowly moved its head to the left and then to the right. Fortunately, it didn’t sense our presence.
“Come on, get moving,” Tabitha demanded, “it’s gone now. We were very lucky that we were upwind or it would have smelled us.”
Grudgingly, I put one foot after another and began to move wondering how I ended up in this crazy situation knowing I had nobody to blame but myself.
Trudging up and down hillsides, sometimes traversing small streams. It was arduous. My feet were sore from walking around my hands were getting cut.
It took another hour to reach the campsite. and it was Tabitha who saw it first.
“No,” she roared out.
It lay in a valley between three peaks and most of it lay in ruins. The tents that provided shelter lay scattered around. Many were tainted an ominous red.
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