Blood of Gato

"I smell rust and rot, yeah," Cain muttered, his nose wrinkling as he tested the air, "but that's all."

Leticia stepped closer, slow and cautious, as if approaching an animal foaming at the muzzle.

"Will-yum, baby… maybe we step outside, jus' breathe some fresh air, cher? Come on back after. Nothin' gotta be rushed."

"You don't get it!" William's roar echoed up the steel walls. His pupils were blown to thin slits, vibrating with animal terror. He jerked his head side to side, eyes chasing shadows that weren't there. "It's here! Can't you smell it? That stink—burned venison—Jesus Christ! It's choking me, it's wrapping around me!"

He hissed the words through clenched teeth, ripping his own forearms open with hooked claws, blood sliding down his wrists in sharp drops.

Cain sucked in a breath through his teeth, grimacing.

"Man, I don't smell jack. Just old meat and rust and—"

"Wait." Leticia's voice cracked like a whip, cutting him off when William spit out the words burned venison. Her eyes snapped wide, panic drowning the warmth in her face. She lunged, grabbing William by the collar like she could yank truth out of him.

"What you just say, boy? Deer? You smell deer on fire?"

William only nodded, his jaw locked, eyes flickering like lamps in a storm.

"Lawd above…" Leticia's whisper cracked into a scream. She spun toward Cain, her roar booming through rust corridors.

"WE GOTTA GO! NOW!"

Cain froze, knife half-drawn, prisoners twitching on the ground. He raised his hands as if she'd pulled a gun instead of words.

"What the hell is wrong with you two tonight? You're spooked like strays. Somebody wanna explain before I—"

"I SAID NOW!" Leticia bellowed, the syllables thundering down steel like a hammer on a coffin lid. And from the black maw of the slaughterhouse beyond, something shifted in response—a groan, or the scrape of titanic breath. The shadows trembled as if aware.

Cain, unsettled for the first time, scowled.

"Alright, alright! Jesus. But what about Tweedledee and Tweedledum here?" He jabbed his blade toward the two trussed men trembling on the concrete.

"Kill 'em or leave 'em, I don't care!" Leticia snapped, half-dragging William by sheer force toward the light of the lot. Her eyes glistened like oil-slicks. "But if you keep standin' there gapin', Cain, you'll be dead before you blink."

Cain muttered a curse, spreading his arms like a comic on a dying stage.

"Well, hell. You boys picked the wrong day to audition. Tonight ain't theater night. Tonight the damn hive woke up."

The knife flashed once, clean and merciless. Short screams tore free—stifled, wet, ending fast, like cloth ripping down the middle. By the time William and Leticia were hauling themselves into the van, William's sharp ears picked up the last sticky gurgles, dragging at the air.

The van door slammed shut with a steel moan. The cab filled instantly with fug and sweat. William shook, gasping ragged breaths, palms pressed white-knuckled to his knees. His voice came cracked, prayer-like:

"The woods… I've seen it in visions… running…"

"Quiet!" Leticia snapped, fear blistering her tone. She slapped her trembling hands against her own legs, trying to knock the panic out. "Shut up, boy! It don't matter now. I seen enough. I know what clawed at ya. An' sugar…" Her voice dropped to a rasp, full of old church graveyard dread. "You in worse trouble than you ever dreamt. Lord help us—how in hell you catch the eye of that thing?"

She struck Cain with her gaze like a whip crack:

"DRIVE!"

"I'm driving!" Cain barked, banging the wheel as the engine stuttered to brutal life. The whole van rattled as if something heavy brushed against its skin. "Goddamn circus—if I'd known y'all were gonna melt down, I'd stayed home with a beer!"

"Better we'd all stayed the fuck home," Leticia muttered through clenched teeth, her nails gouging ruts into the seat leather. Her accent thickened, rising like swamp fog. "Better we never set foot 'round this cursed place…"

William swallowed blood and spit, his voice glass-shard raw.

"It started recently. Just days. That smell—it followed me. Kept getting stronger. Then the dreams…" His throat closed; words dragged. "I dream—something huge chasing me through the forest, always just behind me. No matter how fast I run, it's closer. I can't—can't describe it, but…" His eyes went wide, quaking, wet. "…but it knows the way. It knows how to find me."

His voice cracked, and for the first time the predator in his face stripped away, leaving only a child's terror.

And from somewhere behind them, in the direction of the meatpacking husk, came a low, pulsing groan. It was not the voice of man or machine, but the sound of something vast and hungry stirring awake.

"God almighty… how the hell did I get tied up runnin' with you two idiots?" Leticia whispered hoarse, voice cracking like she might burst into tears. Then she screamed, voice tearing at the steel of the cab:

"Cain, step on it! GO, cher! Go, goddammit!"

Cain's hands tightened on the wheel. Their panic, even if he didn't understand it, was crawling under his skin like ants. A sharp metallic taste coated his tongue — copper, blood, as if the smell had slithered inside his mouth.

"Jesus Christ," he spat through his teeth, "somebody better explain this shit! Who — or what — are we runnin' from?"

Leticia snapped her head toward him, her eyes wide, burning with a witch-light frenzy.

"From de spirit o' hunger an' winter itself, baby. From de beast born in them mines an' cursed forests. From de hunter stepped clean outta da other world." Her words shuddered through the cab like freezing wind. "From… de WENDIGO!"

The word cut through Cain's chest like a knife of ice. His heart slammed against his ribs.

"Wendigo…?" He tried for a lopsided grin, but his mouth betrayed him, torn and trembling. "Like — what, some cannibal-bogeyman, right?"

"Yea!" Leticia's broken shriek filled the van, shoving all the humor out into the cold. "Cannibal that eats everythin', boy! Your bones, your brains, your guts — it swallows you down whole, laughin'. It don' stop. Its belly ain't never full!" She slammed a shaking fist into her thigh, words trembling. "Winter's closin' fast, you hear? Beast didn' get fat enough, didn' feed. Now it huntin' somethin' rich, somethin' juicy!"

Behind them the night poured like heavy tar, thick and black in the windows. Dark enough you could imagine something running alongside the van just out of sight, keeping step with every hiss of the engine.

"Far as I ever heard," Cain muttered, weak, stripped of any smirk, "those things — they stay out there, backwoods, mines, ass end of nowhere. They don't come walkin' into city limits."

"Forget them pretty stories them tribes polish up for tales 'round a fire," Leticia snapped, gnawing her nail till red welled. Her accent poured out thick and guttural, smoke wrapping each syllable. "Half them myths are rubbish. Wendigo don' keep borders. Wendigo don' keep maps. It plague, cher. A curse become hunger. It go where its chosen goes. To de city, to de ocean, to whatever meat-house ya hide." Her eyes cut into Cain until the wheel jumped beneath his grip. "If William smellin' its stink — it mean de damn thing already wit' us!"

She turned toward William, hunched against the rattling glass, shuddering. Her voice softened, whisper trembling:

"You fool child… you already marked by it. Marked by fear, an' that scent stronger than blood."

From behind the van came a low, droning moan — too long, too heavy for any wind. And then that moan sharpened, stretching into a drawn-out scrape. Something dragged talons across blacktop. The van rattled with the sound, and Cain felt his bowels knot. Wipers squeaked across glass, useless against the dark pressing in.

"Goddammit," Cain snarled, flooring the gas. "Fuel's burning like hellfire! Tank ain't endless!"

William pressed his sweat-slick forehead against the window. His breath fogged the glass, leaving sticky ghosts. Fingers shredded, nails snapped, he shook like he was unraveling. Every bump of the wheels he didn't hear shock absorbers — he heard it breathing outside. Heaving, rotten breaths. Huge. Running on all fours.

"It's here…" he whispered. His hand shot out and clamped onto Leticia's wrist so hard she hissed in pain.

The roadside trees blurred into ribs, jagged bones of a corpse forest. And then — in a clearing between the trunks — a shape. Too tall, too thin, wrong angles folding into each other. Gone in an instant, like it was never there.

"You saw that?" William croaked, throat raw.

"Shut yo' damn mouth!" Leticia barked, but her eyes burned on the glass, wide, glassy, caught staring all the same.

From the rear of the van came another sound: a shrieking, oily SKREERRRCH, claws dragging concrete apart. Metal shuddered, the van juddered sideways. Cain cursed like spitting blood, jerking the wheel.

"What the fuck was THAT—"

Bang. Another scrape at the back doors — hard enough to make them rattle, soft enough to know it wasn't an attack yet. Just a stroke, almost teasing.

Leticia's voice quivered, low and broken.

"It playin' wit' us now… testin' de meat. Smellin' us. Decidin' if we worth the feast."

Another stroke crawled along the metal skin behind them, casual, intimate, like a hand you couldn't see reminding you — I am here.

"Hold on!" Cain bellowed, slamming the pedal flat.

The van lurched, tires screaming against the wet blacktop. The air filled with the stench of burning rubber, and the whole frame bucked like it wanted to roll over. Shadows clawed past, and still there was the sound, that goddamn sound — something pounding after them, tireless, steady, intent.

Then the engine coughed. A sick, hacking choke. The roar under the hood faltered, then whimpered, fighting to keep rhythm. Cain floored it, and the pedal bit back, fierce, defiant — yet the van itself groaned like it was tired, like it already knew what was behind them.

William lifted his head, his face pale under the golden glow of his predator's eyes. His voice was low, steady, but stripped raw:

"It's gonna catch us."

As if answering him, a sound rolled out from the woods behind. A howl. Not wolf, not deer — nothing with a body that belonged to this world. A sound stitched from hunger and winter's emptiness, a grief so sharp it bent the air.

Leticia's lips trembled white; when she spoke her voice cracked like torn cloth:

"If it scream like dat… hunt already begun, cher…"

Darkness rippled in the rear window. Then, just at the knife's edge where headlights faded into black, a shape gleamed through: the suggestion of a face. Not flesh, not animal. A skull warped in ways bone shouldn't bend, patched in spots with clinging tatters of skin. Its jaw unhinged too far, splitting into a cavernous pit of teeth. A gape that didn't stop at the mouth but seemed to pull through the air itself, reaching toward them.

Cain clutched the wheel so hard his knuckles cracked. His breath came sharp, breaking with a squeak as panic strangled it.

"Fuck! I saw it— I saw it, I swear to Christ! It's real, it's right there!!!"