The Corrupted Soul

Chapter 3

Martian rolled happily in the previously untouched snow, just far enough from the pond that there was no worry of him rolling onto the thin ice. Olive and I watched him carefully as he roamed off leash. We weren't worried though, no one else was here, Martian had never gotten into trouble this way before, and we were both faster than he was in the off chance he attempted to bolt for something.

This was technically a public park, and dogs should have been leashed, but there was hardly another soul in sight at the moment, and most people agreed two Crawlers likely knew how to deal with an energetic pitbull better than most people, purely because we understood how instinctive reactions worked. Yes, Crawlers and dogs were quite different in many ways, but instincts only covered so many areas in a creature, thus many would overlap from species to species.

I inhaled slowly as I smelled the air. I was not surprised to find I could smell almost nothing but snow. The thick blanket seemed to have a way of hiding scents better than many sprays or covers made for the purpose. The only scents I could pick up were my own, Olive's, and Martian's, as well as a faint smell of water damaged wood and rusted metal.

I glanced at Olive, who was sitting on one of the park benches from where the two scents originated, having brushed the snow off the grainy wood and disturbing the surface. I stood behind the bench and leaned against it on my elbows, eyeing up the young Crawler in front of me that clearly thought I was dense as the clouds overhead, "Olive, we both know you didn't want to come out here purely to get Marty out, you're thinking about something, you always get this look on your face when you think too hard about something."

She looked over her shoulder at me. She studied me from behind her dark sunglasses. She paused, and sighed heavily, "Was it that obvious?"

I shrugged absently, "Pretty much. I know you aren't the biggest fan of the cold, neither am I. You'd rarely offer to walk Martian in the cold, let alone the snow."

"Hey, I walk him when it's cold out, I'm not going to make my mom do all the work."

I raised an eyebrow, "Correct, but you rarely offer. Your mom asks you to, and you have no problem doing so. There's a difference. That, and there does seem to be something we agreed not to talk about in front of your mom.."

She sighed again, somewhat growling in the process. She began fiddling with her black hair as some strands slipped from her ponytail, "Just...the Shadow Ferals. Clearly they know what they're doing. They aren't anything like the actual ferals from how you've described them back then! They are way too sneaky, they know."

I nodded slowly, "That is true, but if this is somehow a nest that survived three hundred years, they would change from being quote 'Ferals'. We all know how freakishly fast Crawlers adapt. We must have talked about this a million times over the past two years, this isn't new information, especially not for you."

Olive looked over at Martian again as he bounded through the fluffy snow, blissfully ignorant of the serious conversation taking place behind him, "But, what if it isn't that at all? We have too many equally likely theories. Riley, something happened yesterday that could be really bad news. I meant to tell you sooner, but we were with my mom."

There was an edge to my friend's voice that I didn't like, it put my instincts on edge. I sat up a bit, confused, "What? What happened?"

Olive took a long pause, I could see she was thinking of how to turn her thoughts into words, "...A family member of mine, an uncle we handing heard from for several years until this point, contacted us. He lives quite a ways out into the country, and he has a small farm. He told us that as the sun started setting, and he was bringing his cows back into the barn, a massive shadowy figure launched out of the woods, stole one of his bulls, and ran off!"

My jaw dropped and I dug my nails into the old wood of the park bench, I tentatively asked, "Pardon?"

"You heard me! He got attacked by a Shadow Feral all the way out there! They aren't just here, they're a bigger problem than we realized. Not only are they around more areas than we thought, or they are willing to travel at least, but they are also taking people's animals as food instead of hunting bears, deer, eagles and whatnot."

Olive had a point. If these crawlers were willing to take domesticated animals from right in front of humans as their prey, how long until they targeted humans themselves? It was possible that some of the missing pets on the city could have been stolen by Crawlers.

The Crawler in the lab was very good at hiding in the shadows, and at times almost seemed to vanish. We were already positive it and these sightings were connected in some way, but now it seemed much more likely. The location at which we originally found this Crawler was much closer to the country Olive had referred to than the city.

I groaned silently, and looked at Olive out the corner of my eye, though she couldn't tell through my glasses. She stood up, knowing exactly what I was thinking and disliking it just as much.

"We are going to have to tell the others about this..."

I pulled my phone from my pocket with a heavy sigh, "I'll tell Clem we will be there soon."

She walked off to collect the snow-covered dog ahead of us, "Better tell Felix while you're at it. He should be in on this too."

"Duly noted."