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[url=http://horror.ambient-mixer.com/tackett---forest]Though the rain had long since subsided into a mist, the leaves shook off their collected rainwater with every branch pushed aside or root kicked by the men stomping through the forest, and quickly became a much more irritating presence than before. The crows circled overhead and intermittently squawked in disapproval, settling on a treetop for a few moments to caw and cackle at the two, before taking off in flurries of sporadic energy, shaking the branches and showering the two with icy droplets.[/url]

In the distance there is a low gurgling, only occasionally rising above the rain and wind. About sixty yards away from the men, hidden by the thick brush of the forest and camouflaged by a fairly autumnal outfit stands a man, supporting himself with one hand on a tree. His hair is short and brown, but matted and oily. His skin is an unhealthy pale, the same shade as the underside of a mushroom or a tree stripped of bark. He wears a dark red and gold plaid shirt, a rawhide vest, and a dark khaki pair of pants. His shoes are indiscernible, as his lower body up to his knees is caked in mud and dirt that have dried into a layer of thick black clay. His arms up to his elbows, are the same.
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Peter didn't remember how he found himself in the forest. It didn't matter. He smelled something in the forest. [i]Food[/i]. He was always hungry, though he hadn't remembered how long [i]always[/i] was. He didn't remember anything, in fact. He held no memories of his former life, and made no new memories. His thoughts, if they could even be called thoughts, were sporadic and short-lived, and mostly focused on one subject alone. [i]Hunger[/i]. His hunger was maddening. All he could focus on was hunting and [i]food[/i]. Warm, life-giving, flesh and blood. He drooled at the thought, continuing his aimless shuffle. He had lost the scent he had picked up earlier, but was now tracking a noise. It sounded living. If Peter could have formed words, "prey" would have come to mind.

Something was moving up ahead.

Peter's head turned ninety degrees, snapping in place almost instantly. Two targets. Instinctively, the smell of blood filled his nostrils, as if he had bashed the back of his head. His vision began to turn red. His hands sprung open, cracking his joints with tension. He lowered his posture, growling all the while, advancing towards them. They hadn't seen him and they hadn't heard him, though unbeknownst to Peter, they had began to smell him -- the stench of stale urea and rotting meat clung to him as readily as the clay covering his limbs. Though Peter didn't possess the intelligence to consider if his prey could smell him, he knew that he could not afford to lose the two. He was too hungry to lose them. He slowly crept closer, shambling quickly from one patch of bushes to the next. 

There was little he understood outside of the hunt, though he understood the importance of surprise, as primitive of an understanding as it was.

His red eyes blinked with an emotionless intensity, scanning the two men. He was so hungry. [i]So hungry[/i]. He grinded his teeth together, now only about sixty yards away. The closer he got, he could feel his adrenaline rising higher and higher, filling his nostrils with the scent of their ambrosial blood and warm, marbled layers of [i]meat[/i]. He grinded his teeth more.

He stood up, supporting himself on a tree, staring at the two men with a wolfish gaze. His stomach rumbled softly as he growled, clenching his hands into fists. Images of violence and nourishment flashed through his mind, instinctively urging him to infect the men. He was too hungry for that. [i]He would eat them[/i], he planned to himself in silence.

[i]Eat them[/i].

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[center][h3][color=f7976a]Clay Jameson[/color][/h3][/center]
[hr]

Clay had been too late to enter the baseball game, though he hoped that being the one to find the ball would grant him access into the next inning. While Henry and a large farmhand Clay hadn't met scanned the forest's edge, Clay took it upon himself to search [i]further[/i]. After all, the two were taking a while.

Clay began to look through the forest floor. It was covered in the dead leaves of an early winter to come, painting the ground in shades of black and brown. [color=f7976a]"Should be easy, finding a [i]white[/i] ball in all this [i]muck[/i]."[/color] the wiry man groaned to himself, lifting the branches of a small shrub with a stick, hoping the small white shape he had seen through the foliage was the ball.

Luck was not on his side today. It was a small white toadstool, covered on the underside with a thick blanket of cobwebs. Clay sighed and sat on a small stump, taking a rest from his search as he continued to scan the area, pulling a long piece of grass out of the dirt to chew on.

There was a groaning in the distance, quiet at first, but picking up steadily. Clay looked over his shoulder nervously, darting his eyes around the landscape. He chuckled to himself. There was nothing to worry about. Even if there was, what man would shake in his boots in the light of day? Surely not Clay.

He stood up and began his search once more, drawing closer to the two men still searching, though still about twenty yards away. He raked through the ground with his stick steadily, hoping he would recognize the ball's distinct shape in the dirt. The groaning grew louder, and was now joined by unsteady breathing. Clay looked around once more, now worried. What if it was one of the deer he had heard about?

[color=f7976a]"You fellas find anything?"[/color] He called out, turning to face Henry and Julian. In that moment, he felt a great weight slam into his side, a tearing pain in his neck, and then [i]nothing[/i]. 

Clay's neck had been grotesquely snapped, wrenched to an impossible angle. His attacker wasted no time in beginning his feast.