Fear that man

goggles.
        I stood very still, listening. Then it struck me that the Beast might be hunched below the dense brush line, moving along the pathway to a point where it could more easily leap-and dismember me. I cursed myself for missing, tried to reassure myself that it had moved too fast for any marksman to hit. Rather than wait for the attack, I began moving backward through the brush, gun drawn, eyes watering as I kept them pinned to the weeds and flowers, trying to sight anything that would give me a target.
        Behind me, a hundred yards away, a small knoll rose in a clearing. If I could back to that, I would be looking down on this area and could spot the mutant as it stalked me, blast it before it could get close. Carefully, I moved toward that knoll. No use in yelling for help. The dense woods would cut that shout to nothingness before it had passed over the ridge that separated me from camp.
        The wind was not just cold. The wind was laden with the freezing steam of dry ice. I shivered inwardly and outwardly.
        When I reached the knoll, I found it was not a knoll at all. The clearing was filled with a dense clover-like vegetation that was only inches tall at the edge but which grew higher toward the middle until it reached a mushroom-like peak of about five and a half feet. I stopped, turned to go back the way I had come. But I stopped again. Somewhere ahead of me lay the Beast, waiting. I couldn’t know where, and it would be certain suicide to try to go back the way I had entered. My only hope was to continue back through this clearing, out of it, up the ridge, down the ridge and into camp. I backed.
        It was not as simple as it sounded.
        Halfway into the clover stuff, with thick, bushy vegetation up to my shoulders, I became aware of the growling and snuffling that boomed ferociously somewhere very close at hand.
        I stopped, stood perfectly still, trying not to breathe even. Somewhere in this clover, somewhere beneath its almost sea-like surface, the Beast moved-and searched. I panicked, fired wildly into the growth. A spot the size of a man was burned away, leaving a black, shadow-filled hole in the sea that did not refill itself. There was still growling, closer now. I forced myself into calm. Shooting without a target would do me no good and might serve to give the Beast a fix on me.
        Ice wind whistled around me.
        Finally, I saw what I was looking for. A ripple in the surface of the clover. A body as large as the Beast’s, moving crouched through the clover, would leave a wake on the top that should be noticeable. I pointed at the ripple, steadied my hand…
        And reeled sideways as the Beast leaped! It missed me only by inches, crashing into the clover and disappearing beneath the green surface. I fired at the spot where it went in, but it had moved now and was somewhere else. Heart pounding, I started to survey the surface again.
        And again it jumped. This time, though I twirled wildly aside, it caught me a bruising swipe with its claws before crashing into the brush again. Blood spurted from my shoulder, then subsided into a steady, thick flow. Fire shot through every muscle in my arm, and I transferred the gun to my good hand.
        Forcing myself to ignore the pain and find the ripple in the clover that marked the enemy, I searched the surface again, half resolved to being mauled by the Beast before I could locate it. Then, just when aching fatigue began to creep upward from my feet, I saw it. Sighting carefully on the lead of the wake, I fired. The Beast staggered erect, clutching its arm, reeled sideways. Shivering, I fired again, opened a wound on its leg. It was bleeding as badly as I was. I sighted for another shot.
        Then, suddenly, everything went into a slow, syrupy, fogbound set of events that registered only indirectly on my mind. The Beast was trying to stagger away… I could not shoot… the Beast had done something so that I could not shoot… the trigger was stone to me… the night swallowed him… I passed out.
        Later, the sun was up and the birds were singing, and Lotus was pouring something warm into my mouth, forcing me to wake to a beautiful scene: her face. Then Crazy spoiled it by sticking his horsey mug into the picture. “What happened?”
        “We found you in that clover, almost dead. What was it?”
        I struggled to sit up, managed with their help. My head spun, settled