Secrets

"Hey, Matthias, can I talk to you for a moment?" I knew I was interrupting his work, but fuck it. It was important. He nodded sure and followed me to the side of the field. "I wanted to ask you if it was possible to build something."

"Oh, yeah sure. Fire away." He seemed to be really happy that I'd asked him. They'd been on the farm three weeks already, and I'd never given him any other work than that of a farmer. 

"Can you build a radio, that could connect with other people who might have been able to do the same?" My question made a grin spread over his face. 

"I sure can."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'd just need time and some equipement. Thing is, I'd need to connect it to a satelite, because there's no way of getting all of the radio towers working. Unless they still do, but where we were in NYC I know for a fact they didnt."

"Alright. I don't really know anything about technic, but I belive in you. If you could get us connected, that'd be great." 

"Of course it'd be nice, like you said. But what's up, Mack? You seem a bit nervous, I noticed that yesterday already." He asked me. I knew he was trustworthy and could keep a secret so I confided in him.

"When I went behind the stables last week I first saw these giant tracks, I don't know which animal left them behind. I went again on sunday and there were much more of them. Something big is prowling around the farm at night." 

"But it never got anything?"

"Nope. Didn't wreck anything either. I don't know if it's just some peacefull big-ass animal or if it's checking us out." 

"How about you and I stay in the stable tonight. There's a small window in the loft we could look through."

"I guess we could. We'll just take the guns-."

"You're such an american." He scoffed but he laughed. "If you need guns we can take them."

"Why? Would you not?"

"It's not going to be nesecary. Believe me." But I didn't.

It would of been hard to explain our grown-man-sleepover to the others, so we remained silent about it. We left to our rooms after dinner but met out about half an hour later, with our sleeping bags. Matthias wore sunglasses, beat me why. I had one of the rifles over my shoulder. He smiled at me but didn't say anything. I knew what he was thinking:  that american.

So we climbed up to the hay loft over the horses heads. Crystal snorted a hello but the rest were silent, already sleeping maybe. We lay out sleeping bags out and zipped ourselves up in them. Then we crowded around the tiny window. It wasn't much bigger than one of our heads but that was good in a way. If the thing looked at us we could just drop our heads and immediatly be out of sight. 

I didn't know how the fuck I was supposed to stay awake. I felt myself tire in the blink of an eye. Matthias didn't seem tired at all. After what felt like an eternity of silence between us he broke it with the (possibly) most german question ever. "Want a beer?" I accepted and we both opened the cans. "Prost!" We drank the stuff which tasted like love on my tongue. 

The next two hours were uninteresting. We drank four beers each, just under the ammount that would have been critical. Matthias kept his sunglasses on. 

"Hey, what's with the glasses?" I drawled. He smiled, took them off and handed them to me. 

"Look." So I did "look". And all of a sudden I could see everything. They were night vision glasses, and fucking good ones too. 

"Damn." I breathed. And then my breath was cut short. Something was moving in the trees at the edge of the field the stable stood on. "Matthias." I said quietly and pointed. He squinted, but couldn't see anything yet. There was quite a bit of moon-light but it wasn't enough to see so far. 

And then the rustling was gone. No more sounds came from the woods for a good ten minutes. That's when I realized  no more sounds were coming from the woods.  Animals know if something bad is coming. They know it way before we can see it, even with night-vision-goggles on. I prodded Matthias in the side and whispered my theory. Whatever it was was in the woods. Waiting.

He snatched the glasses off my head and peered into the darkness. I waited. He waited. No owl who-hooed, no crickets chirped, no twigs creaked under the soft paws of little mice. Nothing at all.

"Maybe this was a bad idea." I said. He nodded slowly. But we were too boyish to really belive that yet. For us it was an adventure; it was scarier than what we usually dealt with, and that made it interesting and surreal. 

But the second the creature stepped out, right into the moonlight, which made us be able to see if perfectly even without matthias glasses, both of our hearts ceased to beat and our brains refused to connect the dots. 

Had we been outside, even just to take a piss, we would be dead men.

We could be dead men.