PROWL

The sign at the edge of town was rotting from the bottom up. It's wooden posts were green with slick moss and soft with decay.

Written were the words;

'WELCOME TO BLAKE FALLS — POPULATION 2,100.'

Alan Cooper eased his foot off the gas pedal, letting his rusted truck coast down the winding descent of Route 9. The tires crunched over fallen branches and loose gravel.

Above him, the late afternoon sun struggled to flash it's rays through the trees. The daylight didn't fade out here; it was swallowed whole, casting shadows across the asphalt.

Two years away, and the town looked like a photograph left out in the rain. Faded, damp, and slowly dissolving back into the wilderness that surrounded it.

Alan gripped the steering wheel tight with his right hand. His left arm was pulled close to his chest, wrapped tightly in an old, grease-stained shop rag that was quickly turning dark red.

He exhaled loudly as he tried to process what happened moments earlier.

Just five miles back, right as the pavement gave way to the sharp turns of the mountain pass, something had stepped out of the tree line.

It hadn't been a deer. It hadn't moved like a bear. It had been a blur of massive, low-slung muscle that seemed to flow across the road like liquid dark.

Alan had yanked the wheel in pure panic, sending the truck sliding sideways until it slammed hard against an overgrown steel guardrail. The impact had blown out his driver-side window, showering his forearm in a spray of jagged glass.

Shaking his head to drive the memory off, he drove the truck into the lot of the Blake Falls Municipal Clinic, a squat, single-story brick building standing between the trees and a shuttered hardware store.

Pushing open the heavy glass entrance door, the sharp, familiar scent of the place hit him immediately.

"Damn." His stomach churned as he made a low groan.

The smell of rubbing alcohol, floor wax, harsh disinfectant, and the vague, metallic tang of old radiator heat instantly pulled him back to hospital waiting rooms and the worst years of his life.

Shaking his head violently like it's would get rid of the smell, he advanced towards the reception counter.

"We’re technically closed for intake," a soft feminine voice called out from behind the counter. "If it’s an emergency, the county facility in Oakhaven is open, or I can radio the duty paramedic—"

The red-headed nurse stopped mid-sentence as she rounded the partition, a clipboard clutched against her chest. Her mouth flew open as her sharp green eyes locked onto Alan’s face, and for a moment, it seemed she forgot how to breathe.

"A...Alan?" Her lips trembled in disbelief.

"Hey, Vera." Alan tried and failed to offer a casual smile. He raised his wrapped left arm just an inch. "I, um... brought you a gift from the road."

Vera Tyrell stared at him. The emotions flickered across her face happened so fast it left her expression neutral; shock, anger, pain, and a sudden swell of relief. She set the clipboard down on the counter with a heavy thud.

"Two years," she said, her voice almost a whisper.

She stepped out from behind the counter, her rubber-soled nursing shoes squeaking against the polished floor. "Two years without a phone call. No text. No note on the door. And you walk back into this clinic looking like you fought a windshield."

"I swerved," Alan said. "Something was standing by the tree line. Big. Low to the ground. I lost my backend on the gravel."

"There are a lot of big things living in these mountains, Alan." Her tone sharpened with every step she took. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his right wrist, guiding him away from the lobby and towards an exam room. "Most of them have more common sense than to jump out in front of a moving truck."

"Hey, I'm serious." He scowled. "It didn't look like anything from around here."

"Sit," she instructed, pointing to the vinyl-covered exam table.

"But-"

"Sit." Her voice almost rose and the usual sparkle in her eyes that he used to know was absent.

Logical thinking taking over, he obliged.

Vera reached into the pocket of her scrubs, pulled out a pair of trauma shears, and carefully began snipping through the blood-soaked shop rag. Her movements were smooth and clinical, a stark contrast to the nervous energy humming under Alan’s skin. But he could see the tension in her jaw and the way her shoulders were held tight under her coat.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, peeling the cloth back from the raw, shallow lacerations crisscrossing his forearm.

"Only when I think about how long it’s been since I saw you," Alan murmured.

Vera paused, the shears hovering an inch from his skin. Her eyes flickered up to meet his. For a second, the wall she’d built up over twenty-four months of silence crumbled. It was as if it was back to being the girl who used to sit beside him on the hood of his truck down by the river, laughing until her ribs ached.

"Don't do that." Her eyebrows knitted together to form a deep frown. She picked up a bottle of antiseptic and a stack of sterile gauze. "Don't try to charm your way out of ghosting a town that cared about you."

"I wasn't trying to ghost you, Vera."

"You ghosted the town."

"You know it's more about you than the town."

Vera paused again, her heartbeat intensifying for a bit. She looked up once again, through her long eyelashes, to spot something in his eyes. Something hollow. Pain, maybe?

"You know why I left." His voice was almost hoarse. "After the fire... after my parents... every corner of this place felt like it was suffocating me. I couldn't breathe here."

"I know," she said, her voice softening just a bit as she poured the cold antiseptic over his cuts. He winced, clenching his jaw, but she didn't slow down. "I know it broke you, Alan. But you left me here to breathe it alone. You left all of us."

Alan exhaled heavily, the guilt stinging him deeper than the alcohol on his skin. For a moment, the sadness in those eyes of hers added more pain to the sting.

"I'm sorry," he finally spoke. "I came back to finally sign the papers for the property, settle the estate, clean out my dad's old tools in the garage. Then..."

A light frown marred his features. "Then, I don't know."

"Then you leave again?" she asked, looking straight into his eyes, her gaze demanding an answer.

Before he could utter a response, the heavy double doors at the front of the clinic slammed open.

"Vera! Where are you?"

Sheriff Miller slammed through the swinging doors of the hallway, his uniform disheveled, his duty belt jingling loudly, and his face drained of every drop of color.

He was a man in his late fifties who had spent thirty years dealing with nothing worse than drunk, rebellious teenagers and missing equipment. But right now, he looked like he was staring into an open grave.

Vera snapped back into professional mode in a heartbeat, dropping the gauze and stepping out into the hall. "Sheriff! What is it? What happened?"

"Get the gurney. Get the trauma kits, the heavy sutures, all the blood expanders you’ve got in storage," Miller panted, clutching his side as if he’d just run a mile. His hands were visibly shaking. "We’ve got a bad one. County ambulance is twenty minutes out and he won't make it that long."

Alan pushed himself off the exam table, ignoring the sharp twinge in his arm, and followed Vera into the hallway. "Sheriff? Who’s hurt?"

Miller blinked at Alan, taking a second to even register who he was looking at. "Cooper? Christ, when did you get back? Never mind."

He glanced at Vera. "It's Old Tom from the lumber yard."

"Tom?" Vera asked, her hands already flying across a metal supply cart, pulling down thick rolls of gauze and antiseptic trays. "Did a rig tip over at the yard?"

"No." Miller shook his head. He reached for his two-way radio, his fingers clumsily fumbling with the dial. "Deputies found his log truck parked on the shoulder of Old Logging Road 4. The engine was still running. The driver-side door...the door was torn clean off its steel hinges."

Alan frowned, his brow furrowing. "Torn off? By what? A winch? A falling timber?"

"Trees don't leave four-inch gouges in reinforced sheet metal, Cooper," the Sheriff snapped. He turned his eyes toward the dark glass of the clinic entrance, looking back into the gloom of the parking lot as if he expected something to be standing right behind him. "His legs are... they're shredded. He lost half his blood before we found him crumpled in the brush fifty yards from the cab. We barely got a tourniquet on him."

*******

Out in the parking lot, the gravel crunched violently as a department SUV pulled up sideways, its emergency lights painting the dark pine trees in rhythmic flashes of blue and red.

Vera grabbed the handles of the heavy stainless-steel gurney, her clinical composure holding firm despite the dread filling the room. "Help me pull him in, now!"

Alan grabbed one side of the gurney, assisting Vera as they rushed toward the front doors. Two deputies stumbled through the entrance, carrying a stretcher covered in a blanket that was already soaked through with dark, heavy blood.

The man lying on it was barely recognizable.

It was Tom. A giant of a man who had spent forty years working the timber lines, was pale as ash, his breath coming in shallow, wet rattles.

As they transferred his broken body onto the clinic table, Tom’s eyes suddenly rolled back into his head. His calloused, blood-stained hand shot up out of nowhere, locking onto Alan’s jacket collar with a desperate, terrifying grip.

"Tom, stay still," Vera urged, slamming a oxygen mask over his face and ripping open a pack of trauma shears to cut away his shredded denim pants. "We’re going to help you, just stay with me—"

Tom didn't look at her. His wide, bloodshot eyes were fixed on Alan, staring past him into the shadows of the room. He pulled Alan down until their faces were inches apart, his breath smelling of copper and terror.

"It didn't... it didn't bite like a bear," Tom choked out, his voice a ragged whisper behind the plastic mask.

"Tom, don't talk," Alan said as he gripped the old man's trembling shoulder. "Save your strength."

"No... listen to me!" Blood pooled at the corners of Tom's mouth. His fingers dug deeper into Alan's jacket. "It wasn't a bear. It was fast... so fast... It came from the trees above..."

The room went dead silent except for the frantic beep of the heart monitor Vera had hooked up.

"What did you see, Tom?" Sheriff Miller whispered from the doorway, his hand resting tightly on his holstered sidearm.

Tom’s eyes rolled toward the dark window pane behind Alan, his body shivering uncontrollably as his pulse began to flutter out.

"A strange shadow," he wept softly.

His grip finally slipped from Alan's coat as his head fell back against the pillow.