Out of the Hedge, pt 2

Later in the evening, he summoned the energy and courage to start walking again. Because St Abraham Park was to the north of the city, he kept the sun to his right, reasoning that since he'd walked here it couldn't be that far. He was still struggling to explain his strange outfit. He'd found that he had some kind of short sabre as well as a type of firearm he didn't recognize. At first he'd thought it was an antique or at least a replica of something Napoleonic, but it had a revolving cylinder like a six-shooter. For lack of anything better to do, he had taken out the rounds and seen that one was spent. That probably meant a bullet had been fired from the gun that was now hanging from his belt. That scared him. What scared him even more was that he seemed to know how to handle a gun. He'd never touched a gun in his life before today. He wasn't some sort of lone gunman, he was a scientist.

Thinking back to his laboratory, Charlie let slip a sigh. He wanted nothing more than to be back there, perusing an abstruse white paper and absent-mindedly sipping a camomile tea. He could almost smell it now. A cautious smile spread across his face, easing the wrinkles between his eyebrows, as he took a long whiff of the imaginary tea. Exhaling, he even thought he could hear some of the more rambunctious students chase each other down the hallway, laughing and screaming. He opened his eyes, stopped cold and cocked his head. The laughter was real. His ears only caught snatches of it carried on the wind, and most of it was drowned out by the whispering trees, but he was most definitely hearing the sound of laughing children. They seemed to be somewhere straight ahead. Charlie forged on through the undergrowth with renewed strength.

He felt affirmed when he stumbled across a path going roughly the same direction he was. Now in high spirits, he followed it. He was getting close, he could feel it. He was sure that the forest changed around him as he moved down the path, another sign of nearing civilization. After a short while, he realized that he no longer heard anything other than the wind in the trees, and the path ended abruptly in unusually dense vegetation. Thinking that it might have grown over, Charlie pushed against the leaves ahead of him, but only managed to open a large and painful scratch along his left arm against the unyielding thorny branches. Cursing, he held his other hand against the bleeding wound and turned around. He froze. Before him was something like a wolf, but with jet-black skin and mandibles like an insect. It padded soundlessly towards him on single-taloned paws, the waning sunlight through the leaves mottling its slick skin, and suddenly Charlie's eyes adjusted to the perspective. His blood turned to ice. The thing was huge, its startlingly blue eyes level with his own. It opened its mouth, clicked a pair of mandibles the size of his forearm, and laughed like a baby.

Before Charlie could react, he heard a loud crack echo through the forest. Then he smelled the smoke, saw the gun in his hand and the wolf-thing recoiling in pain, an oozing hole in one of its hind legs. Adrenaline took over, and Charlie ran. Somehow he found an opening beside him and squeezed between the branches, holding up his arms to avoid poking out his eyes on the thorns, the gun still in hand. He could hear something crashing through the bushes behind him. His neck stiffened and his arms flailed, trying to gain momentum. From somewhere in the back of his panicked mind, the math of four legs against two screamed for attention. He crouched down, almost going into a tackle against a tree ahead, but then shoved his foot down hard against the grass and turned at a right angle, hoping to outmanouevre the large beast. He heard a deeply satisfying thud and a grunt, a moment's silence as he gained some headway, and then something breaking into a gallop.

He was stuck on a straight stretch bordered by trees and high thick bushes. There was no way to go but forward, and the wolf-thing was sure to catch up. It was making that sound again, the sound of an innocent child's laughter coming from that dark glistening maw hungry to rend his flesh and break his bones. Just as he thought he would be impaled on the beast's mandibles, hoping for a quick death, he saw a red staff dangling from a treebranch.

"Grab on!" someone bellowed, and Charlie did.