Chapter 5 - The Last Mile

Natasha wakes up in her car the next morning with a burning headache. There are two bottles of cheap gas station liqueur next to her, one empty, the other almost.
She slowly rises from the backseats where she had been sleeping and climbs out of the car.
She tries to alleviate her headache by rubbing her temples but comes to the conclusion that she'll just have to live with it. She decides that the hangover is worth it, though, as she is pretty optimistic that nothing foreign could have survived inside of her - if that creature even did actually implant something like she fears. She'll still get herself checked out of course, but for now she's feeling better.

She locks the car door and walks over to Andrea's motel room. Today, she doesn't even try to freshen up and make herself look like she didn't sleep in her car. She only stops by a vending machine to get a small bottle of water that she downs in one go and then throws into the next bin.

After that, she knocks on the door to the motel room. She has no idea what time it is. The others might still be sleeping or they might have been waiting for her for a long time.

Calvin knew he needed sleep so he went straight to his room and crashed. Every time he dozed off, visions of Sean appeared, accusing Calvin of killing and leaving him. Or maybe even worse, he would see that...creature attacking Natasha and feel that helplessness again.

Finally he got up and watched CNN. He eventually must have dozed off, because he jerked awake at 9:00 am. He grabbed a shower and headed to Tony's room.

Tony looked sleepy when she opened the door to the motel room. Her hair was wet from the shower, and she wasn't wearing shoes.

"Come on in. Andrea went out for breakfast. We're on our own for coffee."

Tony stepped back away from the door to let the hunters in. There were a dozen shotgun shells spread out on the poorly made bed, along with a short barrel 20 gauge shotgun. There was a full box of shells on the nightstand.

"I packed these twelve with salt, in case salt works against this creature. We can split the shells three ways, stack them in the shotguns so that ever other shell salt. Did y'all bring a map?"

Natasha walks in and sits down on the bed right away, leaning against the headrest, and looks over Tony's preparations. "I don't know if salt will help. In my experience it's mostly a myth with little to back it up. But we can try. It certainly can't do less than our bullets did yesterday."
She closes her eyes. She really hopes this headache won't get in the way of her work today but she also knows that it almost certainly will.
"I have a map but I don't think it covers the swamp. I forgot it in my car but I can get it and check."

Tony shrugged. "Sean sure thought salt would help. Who knows? Maybe he was right. Like you say, it can't hurt."
"How about Google Earth then?" She looked at Calvin. He was the computer guy. "Maybe the guy at the front desk would let you print something. We could sketch it by hand if we had to."

I will go check to see if he will let us print something. Better yet would be a business center. Or even maps that may show the whole area.

Calvin does a quick Google earth search and emails the link to himself.

Be right back.

Calvin walks to the front desk. If there are maps he will take a couple. Then ask about a business center or letting him print something.

Natasha leans back against the headboard and closes her eyes as she waits for Calvin to come back.
"Next time you have a vision of something unnatural going on, Tony...", she says. "...make sure it's somewhere nice, the mountains maybe. I've had enough of swamps."

"With more of that weed, there won't be anymore visions." It didn't sound like Tony was making a wish. It sounded like she was stating a fact she was sure about. "I can find the place on the Calvin's map. We'll get in, kill the beast with some salt, and get out. It will be over soon."

Tony stood up and stretched. "I need coffee."

Natasha needs some coffee as well but when she sees the option they have available, she says: "Let's quickly pinpoint the location you saw and then we'll get coffee on the way."
She looks over the maps that Calvin brought. "This seems to be the water tower", she says, pointing at a small structure on the picture. "And the cabin we were at last night should be around here."

With the help of Google and Calvin's hacking from before this hunt began, Tony was able to approximate the place where the 'gator hunters found the body. Then she drew a straight line from the water tower to the location of the body.

"If my visions are right in terms of geography . . . and that's a big 'if' . . ." She put her finger on the map between the water tower and the body. "Then the cabin we are looking for, that I saw in my visions and where the creature is, is right here."

"Even if we get a boat, we wouldn't be able to find our way through the swamp and would probably get stuck somewhere", Natasha thinks out loud. "Maybe we can convince a local to lead us there. I'm afraid the locals might know more about this creature than they tell us, however, so they might realize where it is that we're planning to go and refuse to help us or they might even alarm the hunters."
She rubs her temples. "Should we maybe get some coffee first before we discuss this? Or, Andrea, do you have some water at least?"

Suddenly, an idea comes to her mind: "The hunter that Calvin and I talked to yesterday definitely knows about the creature. He was terrified of it. We can try to get information out of him, maybe even make him show us the way to get to its cabin. We just have to be scarier than the monster."

I have no problem going to talk to the guy, but there is no way in hell we will be scarier than that...thing.

"We have GPS," Tony said. "I don't know how hard it would be to navigate right to the spot with GPS and a boat, but we wouldn't get lost." Tony had a lot of confidence in GPS and no experience with boats in the swamp. "Getting stuck would suck though."
Tony pointed toward the sink and the hotel cups that were still stacked up beside it.
"I think that's the play here. The hunters, or someone like them, could get us straight to the location where the body was found. We can find the water tower and the cabin from there with a compass. I don't know that those hunters know about the monster though. They shot at us after we knocked on the door and tried to talk to them. They didn't think we were the monster. I'll bet they thought we were the old man and his boys from the lake." Tony shuddered at the thought. "That's my guess. The hunters get us to the cabin and the old man, and the old man gets us to the monster."

I'm in. I am not so sure we can intimidate them, but I have zero other ideas...so your plan it is.

"I dont know why those hunters would be so scared of this group if they didn't know at least something about the monster", Natasha thinks out loud. "I wonder if we can use that to our advantage somehow. Tell them we're in league with the creature, or something."

As she thinks, she looks at Tony. With a half joking half pained smile, she asks: "Can you do anything, you know, outwardly creepy? If so, that could help us."

She's not really serious about this suggestion, just throwing out ideas. But just barging in to the hunter's cabin with a gun might not be enough to Intimidate him into helping.

Tony laughed. "Sometimes I think that everything I do is creepy."

She listened to Natasha's line of thinking and then added, "We know the dead girl was connected in some way to the old man at the lake. She died. They killed her or the monster killed her, but the hunters found the body and turned it over to the police. That put them on the defensive. For some reason after that, they were ready to shoot first and ask questions later when someone showed up at their door. I don't know if the hunters know about the monster, but they know about the old man at the lake and they are afraid of him showing up at their house. Maybe we could leverage that to get their help, but I'm guessing that will make getting their help all that much harder. Only one way to find out, I guess. Or we could ask the sheriff to get us there. That would take some serious lying, but you never know."