The Hunger in the Woods

The forest didn't sound right. As the sun made its way down and out of sight of the world, the creatures of the night should have started stirring. Waking up to hunt, tend to their young. Instead, the woods were quiet. Eerily so, in fact. None of the usual inhabitants were to be seen or heard anywhere. Well, almost none. Heavy footsteps made their way through the trees, the sounds of branches breaking and foliage tearing from the soil, the sounds stopping every so often to be followed by an animal sniffing. A predator looking for its next meal. The other animals know better by now. When it's out in the world, you better not be.

It was starting to get dark. They had planned on making it to the campsite much earlier, but an unexpected storm a few days ago had caused some debris to block off sections of the path that led to their destination. This caused a significant delay while they found a way around it. Their intended path was long enough without taking detours. The forest itself covering just over 800,000 acres of land, it was easy to get lost and hiking anywhere took a significant amount of time. That time was, unfortunately, and unavoidably, extended due to the storm. But eventually, they made it, with just enough light left to get started on setting up. They needed the campsite to be ready before the last of the sunlight vanished.

The term "campsite" was a generous one. It wasn't official, there wasn't an office you could go to and request a few nights stay. You wouldn't see any other campers there and they were going to have to clear some of the foliage away in order to properly set up their equipment, but it was exactly where they needed it to be.

David and Samantha were classmates, friends, and sometimes more. They had made the decision to camp out in the forest in order to do some research into some local myths and legends they had been learning about in school. Their English Teacher had been teaching local myths, legends, and lore. Neither of them seemed particularly inclined to believe the stories, despite the popularity of them and the surprising number of locals who, in fact, did believe.

The rumor was that somewhere in the area was an abandoned facility where scientists had been conducting some kind of research or experiments. The details were vague, as myths and legends typically are.

One very popular version was that the facility was used to study monsters and weird things, like Bigfoot. David and Sam wanted to see if there was any truth at all to any of the stories. So here they were, in the middle of a forest with tents, lights, and cameras, hoping to find evidence of something. In fact, they had gotten directions to the area from a local and told that if they explored far enough, they would be able to see the facility for themselves.

The plan was to stay for a couple of days. It was Friday and having a long holiday weekend they knew they didn't need to be back before Tuesday morning for class. Three days should be long enough to see evidence of anything that was wandering around in the woods at night. Then during the day, they would explore the area around the campsite and see if they could find this facility.

David looked up at the Horizon and frowned. They still had some equipment to set up, but they also hadn't collected any firewood yet. He wanted to get the lights set up before they lost the sun completely, but he didn't want to have to scavenge for firewood after dark either.

"Hey, Sam. Can you handle the camera and light set up on your own? I'm going to grab some wood for the campfire."

Samantha looked up from the camera she was currently working on. "Yeah, I can handle the setup. But are you sure you want to go by yourself? It's starting to get pretty dark. I can come with and then we can finish setting up when we get back."

David shook his head and replied, "No, we don't have the lights set up yet, which leaves us with just the flashlights. And the light from those doesn't reach that far. You should finish that. I won't go too far. If I need help, I'll just yell for you."