Chapter 27

Moving down the five, Natalie felt relieved. The bruise she got on her leg the day before had not swelled during her sleep, and seemed to be mostly gone. It would probably cause a little discomfort later, but nothing that would really hinder her. She did not choose to travel on top of the road, as then she would be visible for miles. Instead the ditch became her pathway for travelling eastward. Thankfully, there was not much for the first leg of her journey to meet up with her friend. The only things stationed between her and Cardston was a couple of villages, a small private campground, and the occasional private piece of property. Otherwise, it was an area filled with rolling foothills and rivers, pocketed with smaller lakes all around. Waterton had really been on the edge of civilization before everything went natural and wild.

Unlike before, Natalie did not walk this lonely road alone. Shadow and Ash walked on either side of her, checking the area around for both threats or new meals. The wolves had agreed that if Nat could do this with the type of meats they had, that they wanted more of the meats they already loved to be amplified. Therefore, the two traveled with her, while Maia and Emily were on standby. Whether a threat or potential prey came by, they could be called out in an instant. Otherwise, they kept themselves preoccupied in the Soulscape. Maia watched over the pups, doing her best to give Kali as much time to rest and recover as she could. Emily spent all of her time with Bryden, either supporting him with what he wanted to do, or just relaxing beside him. There was never any objection from him, so she did not hesitate nor did Nat try and intervene. Secretly though, even if he asked for help, Natalie planned to leave him to Emily's machinations and not interfere in the slightest.

The travel was smooth, and six kilometers were traveled at a pretty decent pace. The lack of sounds or recent tracks led them to believe that the monster going wild in the Waterton area caused a lot of the animals to clear out. Rounding around a corner on the road, the travelling party slowed down to a stop. They had come across the campground. While it was usually pretty dead this time of year, they decided not to take any chances. The whole goblin horde at the golf parking lot had shown that they were not capable of just ambushing everything. There were so many near death experiences in that moment alone that everyone agreed to take it slower. Shadow took point and started to lead the group into the campground, who was shortly followed by Natalie and then Ash.

They moved slowly up the ditch of Range Road 292 on the opposite side from the camping area. Looking across, it appeared to be as empty as they first thought. Nothing was sitting in the clearing except for the main building itself. Having already decided as a group to loot everything as a precautionary measure, they crossed the road one at a time, keeping watch as each other crossed. Nothing out of place, they made their way warily up to the shack at the back of the lot. While they saw no tracks in the dirt, they did not lower their vigilance. With the appearance of the monsters, nothing was the way they knew. At any point, something could happen that there was no way to predict, and all that they were capable of doing was in how they respond to the event. Preparing for the unknown is a lot like going on a blind date. Nothing interesting could happen, they could be a decent person and be totally chill, or you could think that someone set you up with a serial murderer and wanted to see what would happen.

Arriving at the office, they found the door locked and the closed sign up. Not seeing the owners vehicle anywhere in area, Natalie did one final check around her before bringing out the axe. Originally a fire axe was designed to be used by a proficiently trained individual to either break down burning debris or to gain access to a locked building so that emergency crews could deal with any fires or other issues. There was only two problems with this. Firstly, Nat had the wound on her arm, making her wielding of the tool clunky and unfocused. It just took a bit more effort on her part to get the proper power and aim when going for the door. The second problem, was that Natalie was absolutely not a trained individual who knew how to open a door with it quickly.

Hit after hit, Nat slowly made a hole in the door. It took her much longer than she expected to get in to the building, though her entry time was based off horror movies where the killer used an axe. Her sore and tired self was not the best example to compare time estimations with the never tiring monsters that those films had as the murderers. There was a good reason few got away from them. They were designed to kill and be unstoppable. She was by far not designed for that. After fifteen minutes of swinging the axe at the door, the last remaining strands of wood and glue that were holding it together snapped. Dropping the axe, Natalie just walked into the office and collapsed on a chair. The newfound exertion placed upon her muscles was causing all of her limbs that were finally recovered from the digging to start to ache once more.

Natalie sat there for a short while before getting up. Grabbing her axe from the now very open doorway, she made her way through the small interior, grabbing anything that would be of use. There were a few more maps of the area, but the ones she grabbed from her work were far more detailed. The few survival supplies, whose price was grossly inflated, were grabbed and stored. She almost tore apart the chairs for the cushions, but Kali said not to bother as they were apparently not up to par. The cheap office chairs lacked the base amount of comfort required to make it worth tearing them apart for the cushions. Noting that there was not much to be had when it came to this building, the group of three wrapped up the looting spree and continued their journey eastward down the highway.

Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Jake, Viktor, Nikolas, Saganatsu and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times.