That's No Deer

At Amberly's insistence, they took trail meals from her pantry. By dusk, they were deep in the mountains, following something that wasn't exactly a road any more than the Not-Deer was supposed to be a deer. The Not-Road admitted the truck, sturdy and indefatigable as it was, and with Amberly's approval they were loathe to abandon it, preferring to not carry the Not-Deer far before it could be secured in the animal pen in the back.

Just after dark, they stopped the truck, and the three of them had dinner, laughing and talking like it was a childish camping trip and not the hunt for a deadly animal. All the same, they kept their weapons on them – Amberly with the tranquilizer gun, Siobhan with her shotgun, and professor Anders with his .44 revolver.

“So,” Amberly said, “ya wanna be a vet?”

“Yeah,” Siobhan said, “Probably sounds kind of dumb, right?”

“Heck no,” Amberly replied, “critters get sick just like we do, and somebody's gotta look after 'em. Cow or chicken, dog or cat, it don't make no difference when a friend's ailin'.”

Siobhan smiled.

“I wish my parents had that kind of perspective.”

“Your mammy and pappy give you a hard time?”

“Yeah,” Siobhan said, “Said I should do something really important with my life. They wanted to raise a doctor – human doctor – or a lawyer, or a senator, not somebody who'd make blue collar wage and never make the cover of some national magazine.”

“Well,” Amberly said, “I reckon this could get ya on the cover of a nature mag. That oughta make 'em happy. And if it don't, to heck with 'em!”

Siobhan laughed. She sipped her coffee from the thermos, the professor began an impromptu lecture on the history and evidence of the southwest's chupacabras, and all was right with the world.

Two hours later, they reached the end of the Not-Road. The professor turned the truck around, ready to make a quick getaway if they had to, as Amberly assured them they'd have to, and the trio began to stalk out into the woods.

The professor carried a flashlight, and Amberly and Siobhan each had an electric lantern clipped to their belts, but none of those lights were turned on. The night was dark and the canopy of the forest darker, but darkness was the environment that the Not-Deer preferred. The ones that Amberly and her cousin knew of seemed to be fearless, or were reported as such, but in other accounts they rarely entered a well-lit area willingly, so it was a matter of ensuring that the eyes of the hunters were adjusted for the light of the moon and stars filtering through the trees. When they found their quarry, then they could light it up.

Their search pattern kept them close enough to the truck, always with a dead reckoning of how to go directly back, sweeping out area around it. They moved slowly, carefully, and silently as they could, Amberly shushing even the Professor's low voiced stories of other things that went bump in the night.

It was after midnight when they saw it. At first, per all the accounts, it looked like a simple deer, the third that they had spotted. But unlike the others, who were simple wholesome creatures, as the moonlight played over the thing, Siobhan could see it was wrong. She could see that the thing was no deer.

It did look like a deer, very roughly. It cast a similar shadow. The first wrong thing that Siobhan noticed were the legs. Its back legs were more deer like, but there was still something malformed about them, looking almost like emaciated human legs until the feet were replaced with the tip-toes of a cloven hoofed creature. The forelimbs, Siobhan would not quite call legs. They were more human still, and also less. They were furred like a deer, as was its body, and they were as long and thin as the legs of a teetering doe, but they were unmistakably arms.

It pawed at the ground with slender-fingered hands that had opposable thumbs. It was like someone had taken a starving child and stretched their arms out even further like putty, until the creature stood tall and narrow even compared to a deer.

Its head however, reached the ground, and a moment after sighting the Not-Deer, Siobhan realized that it was not leaning as far as it ought to, its neck being more like an overly thick serpent extending from its shoulders. It also wasn't grazing. Instead, it was tearing at some kind of carcass, of what animal Siobhan had no prayer of telling, greedily ripping hunks of meat and viscera away from the bones.

Then, it stopped. It raised its head, and it looked straight at Siobhan.

Its face was human, or not quite human, pale skin stained with mud and gore, human teeth filling its mouth. That mouth, though, was not human. It had no lips, and if it had cheeks they were pulled far back, leaving a toothy grin far wider than any human could ever smile, exposing far more teeth than a proper human had.

The lights went on at once, and Siobhan looked into the creature's eyes.

They were black eyes, except that they weren't. They were dark, empty sockets, except that they weren't. Siobhan was certain the creature could see, absolutely certain that it was looking straight at her, the abyss looking into her soul. The eyes were black with no shine, even in the flashlight reflecting absolutely nothing, a black that when illuminated was even darker than the darkness around, more black than the deepest shadow, the impression of two bottomless, featureless holes that consumed everything given to them.

The Not-Deer opened its mouth slightly and made a sound, a cackle that was an unholy hybrid of a human's laugh and a deer's bray.

Amberly took the shot. A tranquilizer dart struck the Not-Deer clean in its hideous elongated neck. It writhed and bobbed its head and paced towards them, delicate hands reaching out, threatening terrible speed. Amberly fired again, burying a dart in its chest.

The Not-Deer cackled again, and then fell forward, its muscles limp.

All three of the hunters went to it. Its breathing was labored and weak, and its limbs didn't even twitch. It was possible that two darts had been too much, and silently the three debated over whether or not to consider their quarry claimed.

Then, a cackle echoed across the mountainside, and another came in reply from farther away.

There were no second chances. Amberly grabbed the monster around its shoulder, and Siobhan grasped its back legs, and following the professor they ran back through the broken ground and twisted trees in the direction they trusted the truck would be.

As they ran, more cackles filled the air, the cries of the Not-Deer across the mountains. They grew closer, sounded more frantic with every leap and bound the party took.

Finally, they came to the truck, and without so much as a stop Amberly and Siobhan hurled the creature into the bed. Amberly climbed up, flung the pen doors open, and began to drag as Siobhan pushed. In the struggle, with the tail gate down, they knocked the ammo case to the ground. Once the thing's hips were over the hump, Siobhan grabbed it, but several boxes had spilled out.

The cackles sounded again, seemed almost right behind Siobhan. There was no time for the rest.

“I'll keep an eye on it,” Amberly said, as she dragged it fully into the pen and closed its doors, “you blast anything that chases us out of here!”

“Right!” Sobhan called. The professor was already starting the truck. Siobhan leaped into the bed and pulled up the tailgate behind her as a shield. Then the truck sped off, down the Not-Road towards the byways and highways out of the Not-Deer's territory.

The cackling followed them. Closer and closer it came as Professor Anders swerved though the Not-Road and finally exploded out onto some historic macadam that predated what Siobhan knew as proper pavement, kicking up stones and a cloud of dust as he sped down the road, hopefully towards civilization.

This was not how Siobhan Teague expected to spend her summer internship. The truck barreled onward, and Siobhan held on to both her place and her gun for dear life. She hazarded a glance down at the ammo case. There were two boxes left – fifty rounds. With any luck, that would get them to the dawn.