Monsters in the Mountains Ch. 04

"If your great-great grandfather Enoch had heard that battle cry before he went into the mine, he may have survived to meet his son. Just be thankful that Missy loves you. She would die for you. She's proven that enough now. I think any one of the Bigfoot in the mine feel that way about you."

"Why?" Jordan wondered. He felt Kaitlin hug him, and Missy put a protective arm around his waist. "I'm not strong enough to be their alpha. If they keep having to protect me, to rescue me, how am I supposed to protect them?" Jordan felt a tear form in his eye at his own self-doubt.

"You do more for them than you know. We knew that the Bigfoot had complex social structures, but we never could have guessed the depth of their... of your relationships, just how human they are. You're special, Jordan. Never doubt your value to each and every one of the women in your life. Human and Bigfoot alike."

"Thanks Doctor." Jordan said.

"That's advice as a friend. Please call me Jim." Jim responded. "And I'm going to move up the timetable on getting you some self-defense lessons. Nothing that would help against a moose, but something to put the female Bigfoots' mind at ease if you get into another situation.

"I'm going to see if I can get back to sleep now Jordan. I look forward to reading your report as soon as you can get it to me."

"Alright." Jordan said, and the two said goodbye.

Kaitlin and Missy clung to Jordan in the morning light. Jordan was surprised that Missy was out right now. The Bigfoot would come out sometimes around dawn and dusk, but the sun was well into the sky.

"Are you hungry?" Kaitlin asked over his shoulder.

"Actually, I am. Starved." Jordan admitted.

"Come on. I think Megan left us some eggs in the old cabin." Kaitlin said, and led Jordan down towards the cabin where they kept most of their food. To their surprise, Missy left the rest of the Bigfoot behind sleeping in the cave and followed the two humans out into full daylight.

***

Breakfast was freeze dried scrambled eggs, which Kaitlin reconstituted with boiling water. They tasted nothing like the real thing, but Jordan was so hungry that he didn't care.

Missy surprised them both by entering the musty old cabin. The giant had to crouch to fit through the doorway, and once inside, she sat on the wood floor, watching Jordan closely.

"Why do you think she's acting like that?" Jordan asked Kaitlin. "This is her first time inside the cabin."

"She's worried about you. You're family now, and she's been losing a lot of family the last few years. It's only natural that she wants to keep an eye on you." Kaitlin replied.

Jordan nodded. He didn't feel like he needed the protection, but he was grateful for the loving gesture that he was getting from the matriarch.

Jordan stood to wash his bowl once the eggs were gone, and Missy stood too. She made the same sign that she had the previous night: pinched fingers at the corner of her mouth.

"I meant to look up what that sign means." Jordan told Kaitlin.

Kaitlin looked to Missy, who repeated the sign. "Home. She's telling us she wants us to go home with her."

Jordan rolled his eyes. "We're not going to get much done on the cabin today if we're holed up in the mine."

"She's worried about you. Let's take a day off. Write your report, check your email and take a nap. We can try to get some work done this afternoon." Kaitlin said cheerfully. "You're not supposed to be working on that shoulder anyways."

Jordan nodded. He was tired, and could use a rest after the short night of sleep.

"And let's get that blood washed off of you." Kaitlin said, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the sticky brown patches on Jordan's arms.

The three walked down to the pond. In the daylight, Jordan could see the torn-up earth where Missy and the moose had battled. Jordan was surprised at all the blood on the ground, and even found a few patches of bloody antler velvet.

He stripped and splashed the cold water on himself, rubbing to remove the blood. Missy copied him, washing the blood off her hands and fur.

"Can those Fitbits get wet?" Jordan asked. Pointing at the elastic band on her wrist as she dunked her arms in the water.

"I think so. They're specially made for the abuse, so they should be water-proof." Kaitlin replied. "They have extra-large batteries, but I know Megan has had to swap them out to charge them at least once now. Everyone but Pebbles and Bam-Bam have been pretty good about wearing them."

Jordan nodded and got dressed. He allowed Missy to escort him back to the mine. Everyone was asleep, the toddlers tucked into their mothers' arms. Missy crawled into the nest and cuddled up to her sister, Ginger.

Jordan took out his laptop. He had an email from the university. He had been assigned an advisor, who wanted to meet to discuss his master's program curriculum. Kaitlin had received a similar email, and they had the same graduate advisor.

Jordan responded to the email. There was an available slot Thursday late morning, and Jordan asked to meet with her at that time. Kaitlin asked for the slot immediately following Jordan's appointment.

Next, Jordan pulled up the email from his old job. They had additional projects for him to look over. Two were straightforward, and he found small corrections to his replacement's work. A third project took a little more time, and he had to email a few old coworkers for clarification. In all, he spent about two hours working on his part time job.

He wrote a complete report of the Bigfoot's fight with the moose, and how they saved him. He even included the details about his gut reaction to their 'battle cry' as Dr. Stein had called it. When it was finished, he emailed it to Jim Stein.

Around noon, Jordan was feeling drowsy, and he crawled into the nest. He found a spot in the nest between Missy and Sarah, and both women seemed to shift unconsciously in their sleep to move closer to him.

***

Kaitlin woke Jordan sometime in the late afternoon. She was talking on the phone.

"It looks like he's coming around." Kaitlin said, smiling at the blinking Jordan as he roused from sleep. 'Megan.' Kaitlin mouthed to Jordan when he looked up at her.

He was back to back with Sarah, and face to face with Missy. As he stood, Sarah woke, and sat up too.

By unspoken agreement, the Bigfoot seemed to be on protective detail of Jordan. Sarah left Bam-Bam with Missy, and followed the two humans back out of the mine, sitting on the rock with them in the afternoon sun.

Jordan expected her to disappear back into the mine, but she stayed, squinting in the daytime sun, her pupils little pinpricks in her big brown irises.

Megan switched her phone to speaker phone.

"Hey beautiful!" Jordan greeted Megan.

"Hi guys." Megan sounded worn out and just a little down.

"Is everything okay? Did you get some sleep after we talked last night?"

"No, I'm running on adrenaline and caffeine right now." Megan said sleepily. "I got a call from Jim. I want to hear every detail Jordan. From the moment you and I hung up until you were back in the mine."

Jordan told the story again. He told Megan about Missy's protective behavior that morning, and finished telling her how Sarah was sitting outside in the evening sun with him.

Megan was quiet for what seemed like too long when Jordan finished his story. "Megan, are you there?" He asked.

"Huh? Yeah. I'm..." She trailed off.

"Go to sleep sweetie." Kaitlin said, and Jordan agreed.

When they had hung up, Kaitlin stood. "Do you want to work on the cabin now?" She asked.

"Kind of. I'm still tired from yesterday, but it's July already, and classes start in a month." Jordan said.

"Come on." Kaitlin said. "You tell me what to do, and I'll be your hands. Let's get a little done before the sun sets on us again."

They stopped at the old cabin for a quick lunch of old bananas and granola bars, and with Sarah in tow, they went to the construction site.

"Should we work on the cellar so that we can get flooring in place?" Kaitlin asked.

"Actually, I kind of forgot about this, but the floor boards I want to use are still living trees right now. We need to cut them so that we can start them drying." Jordan admitted.

Kaitlin went to the shed and pulled out the chainsaw and protective gear. "You just tell me which trees, and I'll start cutting them." She said with a smile.

Jordan spent the afternoon helping Kaitlin cut trees, and remove all branches. They cut dozens of lodgepole pines for the floor boards and exterior siding, and Jordan had her cut aspen for paneling the interior walls and ceiling.

Sarah was a big help with dragging trees over to the construction site, easily carrying logs that Jordan and Kaitlin struggled to drag. The Bigfoot barely seemed to exert herself.

By the time the sun was starting to set, both humans had sweat, dust and sawdust sticking to their skin. They cleaned up tools and stripped naked, skinny-dipping in the chilly pond where Jordan had been attacked just the previous night. Sarah joined them, swimming out to the deepest part, where the water was deeper than she was tall.

She was a strong swimmer, and Kaitlin and Jordan took turns chasing and racing her across the pond. Sarah was faster than both. Jordan was normally a faster swimmer, but he had to breaststroke to save his shoulder.

They were soon joined by the rest of the group, even the little toddlers jumped into the pond. They could swim, but had more fun splashing and wrestling in the shallow water along the bank.

Jordan was the first out of the water, and the rest of the group soon followed. Wilma came out of the water carrying a large Rainbow trout with its head dangling from its body by a thread, bitten nearly in half. She ate it raw, and Jordan guessed that their appetites were starting to return.

Dinner was once again freeze-dried stew, eaten outside of the old cabin. All the females seemed to stick closer to Jordan, and touch him often. He caught little motions of sign language tossed around among the group. Bam-Bam especially loved this new form of communication, and seemed frustrated when anyone didn't understand what he was trying to tell them. Jordan reminded himself that he needed to get up to date with the words that Megan had been teaching.

Jordan found a bag of apples, and the Bigfoot passed them around. Even Brutus came over from where he had been grazing nearby and pushed his way through the crowd, looking for a sweet handout. Jordan gave him two, and after eating them, the big silver horse lay down at Jordan's feet where he sat in a folding camp chair.

Jordan was a tall man, used to looking over heads when he was among humans. Sitting here with a giant horse laying at his feet, and five huge Bigfoot, he was starting to get a complex about his size.

"I've seriously never seen a horse act that way." Kaitlin said. "I'm not convinced he isn't the world's biggest dog."

Jordan reached down to scratch behind Brutus's ears, and he tossed his tail twice, almost reminiscent of a dog's wagging tail. That brought a laugh from Kaitlin.

Missy stood, sucking the last of the juice from her apple off her fingers, and called out with a whistle. The rest of the group stood, and started to run, following their leader downstream, through the trees, and Jordan could hear their calls as they started running up the hillside.

Pebbles and Bam-Bam stayed behind, wrestling at first, but then they approached the horse laying at Jordan's feet. They climbed up on his side. Jordan stood ready to catch them if Brutus stood up and knocked them off, but he simply raised his head and let the little bigfoot climb all over him.

"Aww, he even makes a good family dog." Kaitlin joked. "Ooh. Wait here. I have a surprise." She said, and jumped up, running into the cabin. She came back out with two cans of cola.

"That's your surprise?" Jordan asked, disappointed.

"Part of it." Kaitlin smiled, and took a hip flask out of her pocket, sloshing the liquid at Jordan.

"Whiskey?" Jordan asked, smiling.

"Moonshine. The foreman on my family ranch makes it. The guys drink it straight, but I always preferred it mixed with a little soda." Kaitlin said, opening each can, taking a sip from each to make room, and then pouring from the flask into the cans. She handed one to Jordan, and sat sipping the other.

"We worked hard today, cutting and dragging trees. We earned this." Kaitlin said.

"Sarah worked hard too. Should we save her some?" Jordan asked.

Kaitlin frowned. "I asked Megan about bringing beer, and apparently BFRO has a 'no alcohol' policy up here, so this is our secret."

"Why?" Asked Jordan.

"Apparently, almost all animals are naturally alcoholics, human included. Megan was telling me that archaeologists have found pieces of the oldest pottery from permanent settlements in caves in Turkey. Do you know what they found on the sherds? Wine residue." Kaitlin answered her own question.

"They also have analyzed skeletons from those regions around the times when humans were first settling down and growing plants. The bodies were wracked with chronic malnutrition. The theory is that the first humans to make permanent settlements didn't settle down to grow crops or herd animals, they settled near grape vines to make wine.

"Apparently there is a gene which gave some of those early farmers resistance to alcoholism. It was heavily selected for, and may have been the final evolution for the human species. You and I can drink this moonshine, and not crave it tomorrow and the next day, but one or two beers for a Bigfoot, and Dr. Stein is worried that they'll be hooked, doing whatever it takes to get their fix of booze." Kaitlin took a little sip of her drink.

"Wow. Alcoholism runs in my family." Jordan said. "My dad's uncle Ira." He looked behind him at the little building. "The one that built this cabin and left me this land in his will, he was an alcoholic. I wonder if that's genetic, or if that was just from his experience up here?"

"How long ago was that?" Kaitlin asked.

"That he was up here?" Jordan thought. "1973. That was 43 years ago."

"Megan thinks Missy is in her late 40's." Kaitlin said. "I bet she was here when your uncle was here. Maybe it was her father that beat him up. Either him or Ginger's father."

"Don't they have the same father?" Jordan asked.

Kaitlin looked at him. "You really don't read those reports, do you?"

"I read Megan's summary reports, the scientific papers are so dry. I didn't see anything about family trees of my girls." Jordan responded.

"It was in there." Kaitlin replied. "One of the weekly newsletters." She looked at Jordan, and had to smile at his expression of embarrassment. "Okay, so Missy and Ginger are sisters. Jane is Missy's daughter. All the females except for Sarah are related.

"But no, Missy is older, and her father was not Ginger's father. They actually both have a lot of the markers for the Pacific population of Bigfoot, which they think is where Missy gets her size and Ginger gets her red fur. Jim thinks that their mother was at least partially of the Pacific subspecies of Bigfoot, and that each of their fathers were pure central Bigfoot. Wilma and Jill are pure central Bigfoot subspecies." Kaitlin took another sip from her can.

"Wow. It's amazing that they can tell that much from their DNA. All those family relationships and population stuff." Jordan said. He looked down into his can, lost in thought.

"You're thinking about Jane again, aren't you?" Kaitlin asked. Jordan just nodded. "She's going to be fine once they get her back here to us."

"What if the baby's mine?" Jordan asked.

"What if it is?" Kaitlin asked.

"What kind of life could the little thing have?" Jordan asked, looking down at the two toddlers pulling on Brutus's mane, and throwing sign language at each other. "It won't be able to pass for a human; my parents will never get to meet it.

"It will be half human, maybe nocturnal maybe not. What if it can't keep up with the pack, or needs to eat more often than they do? What if it can't hibernate with them? - If that's even what they do. What if it's furless and they take it out in the cold? What if it's sterile? Unable to ever have a family of its own?" Jordan could feel the alcohol in his system, and it just added to his emotional state.

Kaitlin set her can on the ground, and knelt on the ground. She crawled over to Jordan past the silver horse, and lay her head on Jordan's lap.

"I know that whatever that baby is, that it's going to be just fine." She squeezed Jordan's hand as he started to protest. "It will be just fine because it has you for a father. It will have Jane for a mother, and Missy will be a grandmother, and it will have more aunts doting on it that it knows what to do with.

"Whether it's pure Bigfoot or a hybrid, its place is here with its family. All of us."

Jordan let out a huge sigh, trying not to let the weight of the situation overwhelm him. He understood his responsibility, and he accepted it, but the price of his potential failure was... unacceptable. He would do right by Jane, and by her baby, regardless of its paternity. For a brief moment, he hoped that it wasn't his. That it was pure Bigfoot. That it's place in the world was black and white, not the muddled-gray between human and animal.

Jordan held Kaitlin's head, stroking her still-damp locks, gingerly running his fingers through, easing tangles out.

"Hmm. I love the effect my hair has on you." Kaitlin whispered, her head still on his lap.

Jordan had been so focused on her long red hair that he hadn't even noticed the sudden tightness in his shorts. His erection was pushing into Kaitlin's cheek, and she was smiling against it.

Her hand came up, rubbing Jordan's bare knee. Slowly, she walked her fingers up Jordan's thigh, under his shorts and boxers until she reached the head of his cock.

For several minutes, she stroked it, drawing her finger along the top and bottom until she could feel Jordan shaking in anticipation.

"Mm. I need these shorts off, now." She said.

"What about the kids?" Jordan asked, looking down at Pebbles and Bam-Bam, who were sitting next to Brutus's head now, trying to feed him leaves and grass.

"I don't think we've been intimate up here yet when they haven't been present." Kaitlin laughed. "No reason to break that streak."

"But we're babysitting." Jordan said.

"Haven't you ever wanted to fool around on a babysitting job?" Kaitlin asked, pulling the fabric back enough to expose the head of Jordan's cock. She sucked it into her mouth, and swirled her tongue around the sensitive skin.

Jordan gasped, and lifted his hips enough to allow Kaitlin to remove the garment. She pulled hard, taking his shorts and boxers down to his knees in one motion. Jordan's cock sprung free, and she was on it, sucking it deep into her mouth, while one hand held the base.

Jordan kicked to get the fabric off his legs, and he lifted his shirt over his head. He resumed running his fingers through Kaitlin's red hair, focusing on the feel of it between his fingers.

Kaitlin was a master at blowjobs, not better or worse than Megan, just pleasantly different. She worked her hand and mouth against each other, stretching and compressing Jordan's cock. She toyed with him, racing fast to take him close to the edge before backing him off, slowly stroking him to ease him away.

"Kaitlin!" He cried out the third time she teased him away from the precipice of an orgasm.

Kaitlin smiled around a mouthful, and stroked him furiously, her hand a blur, and her mouth sucking hard. Jordan came with a deep groan that he couldn't have held back if he tried. His head spun as he filled her mouth, and she accepted every drop, sucking hard to milk the last of it from him.