Black Hog – James Calloway

She found Cole standing in what used to be the station’s conference room. One entire wall was covered in a massive, floor-to-ceiling topographic map of the Everglades. It was old, yellowed, and peeling, showing the water flow patterns from the 1990s. But the map had been updated. Tess stopped, her breath catching in her throat. The paper surface of the map was covered in scratches. Deep, deliberate gouges that had been carved into the wall with a sharp implement—a claw, or a tusk.

The scratches weren’t random. They formed new lines, new channels, new boundaries. “Look at Sector Four,” Cole said, pointing his light at the center of the map. Tess looked. The area where the “Void” was currently expanding had been circled. Radiating out from that circle were long, straight lines that cut across the natural flow of the water. They matched the trenches she had seen on the satellite feed. They matched the road they had just walked.

“It’s a blueprint,” she said, the realization staggering her. “It comes back here. It comes back to check the plan.” “It’s not just a plan,” Cole said, moving his light to the bottom of the map. “Look at the coast.” Tess followed the beam. The scratches extended all the way to the saltwater line. The creature wasn’t just rearranging the swamp; it was designing a drainage system to flush the freshwater out to sea.

It was terraforming the peninsula to create a dry-land empire. “It knows,” Tess whispered. “It understands the hydrology better than we do. It knows that if it cuts the levees here and here…” She traced the gouges. “…it drains the aquifer.” “Tess,” Cole said, his voice dropping. “Look at the floor.” She looked down. In the center of the room, amidst the debris, was a pile of fresh fruit. Pond apples, still green. Palmetto berries. And a pile of freshwater mussels, unopened. “It’s an offering,” Cole said.

“Or a stash.” “No,” Tess said, backing away. “It’s a lure.” The building shook. It wasn’t a rattle this time. It was a lurch. The entire station tilted five degrees to the south, the metal groaning in protest as the pylons shifted in the bedrock. A computer monitor slid off a desk and smashed onto the floor.

The heat in the Everglades did not simply exist; it occupied space. It was a physical weight that pressed down on the shoulders of anyone foolish enough to remain stationary, a heavy blanket smelling of wet decay, sulfur, and the ancient, fermenting breath of the swamp. The horizon line where the sawgrass met the white-hot sky was blurred by a shimmering haze, making the distant hammocks of cypress trees look like they were floating on a sea of mercury.

It was mid-July, the time of year when the humidity climbed so high that the air felt less like a gas and more like a liquid that had forgotten how to flow, trapping heat and sound in a suffocating embrace. Dr. Tess Price sat in the bow of the anchored research skiff, sweat pooling at the base of her spine and soaking through the collar of her UV-shielded field shirt. She ignored the discomfort with the practiced discipline of someone who had spent fifteen years fighting for funding in environments that actively tried to kill her.

Her eyes were locked on the high-resolution tablet screen resting on her knees, her fingers moving in quick, agitated swipes as she adjusted the contrast on the live video feed. The glare from the sun was relentless, forcing her to hunch over the device like a protective bird, shielding the digital window that was currently her only view into the inaccessible interior of Sector Four. “Battery is at eighteen percent, Dr. Price,” the pilot said from the stern.

Miller was a grad student with good intentions and terrible heat tolerance; he had spent the last hour swatting at horseflies with a lethargy that suggested he was slowly losing the will to live. “If we don’t turn the drone back in five minutes, the headwinds are going to drop it into the mangroves, and I really don’t want to explain to the department why we lost another unit.” “Just one more pass,” Tess said, her voice rough from dehydration despite the water bottle sitting untouched at her feet.

She didn’t look up. “The water quality sensors tripped a localized alert here forty-eight hours ago. Turbidity levels were off the charts, implying a massive sediment disturbance, but the satellite imagery shows clear skies. No storms, no wind events. I want to know what stirred up the bottom.” “Probably just a gator thrashing a python,” Miller offered, wiping his forehead with a rag that was already saturated.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: e41b3a277e51da11
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 689,848 bytes (0.658 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 97
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 153.18 minutes
• Total Words: 30,635
• Total Characters: 176,017
• Average Words per Page: 315.82
• Average Characters per Page: 1814.61

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