Five years into his search, Maverick Casey took an old map of the city and divided the mass of wood and brush behind his home into quadrants. His search area increased, composed of seventeen quadrants, with certain areas that contained territorial alcoholics and wannabe survivalists marked with an X. He wanted to make history, not end up shot for crossing the wrong barbwire fence.

Although to be fair, the member of the North Nobility Resistance Movement he encountered, wearing a camouflage jacket and Gadsden flag shirt, carrying an AR-15 slung over his shoulder, did end up filling Maverick in on the best places to purchase most of his Wildman hunting arsenal.

"They got MREs, they got night vision, they got guns. Shit, son they got guns. And if they get a good feeling about ya, they'll show you the stuff they keep in the back. You not a cop, right?" The man said. He narrowed his eyes. Sweat ran down from under his Harley Davidson bandanna.

"No, not a cop," Maverick said.

"You're all right. Just stay away from this fence, 'kay?"

Maverick did, and forever avoided the dreaded quadrant five. Roman loved that story. Maverick thought his father would have got a laugh at it, too.

"Well goddamn, Maverick."

For today's trip, Maverick chose quadrant eight. The fields and flat spaces broke up the dense brush. Trails crisscrossed the woods, worn down by animal and man. He carried a rifle and a canteen that once belonged to his father. The fur on the hide wrapping the canteen was rubbed away; the metal canteen was now simply wrapped in a pale strip of leather.

Cushing felt his clothes cling to his back. His side was sore from big steps necessary to move amid the tall grass. He felt like a character in a Monty Python sketch, following his comrades in long, high steps. Only the steady drone of the cicadas drowned out his heaves.

"How far...have we walked?" Cushing asked.

The walk even rendered Brian quiet, who sat down the phone rig for a moment and took in the scenery.

"I don't know," Maverick said. "Maybe half a mile?"

"You're kidding. I might die," Cushing gasped.

"You're a decade younger than me," Maverick said.

"More like twenty. Which makes it worse," Cushing said.

"What happened to that walking stick I gave you?" Maverick rested his rifle against a tree.

"It had a bug on it," Cushing said.

"Right. That was a good walking stick. Just brush it off."

"What if there were more? Hiding? They watch me kill their friend and are suddenly thirsty for revenge!" Cushing scanned the ground around for a bare spot to sit down.

"That is a completely logical thought process, Mr. Cushing," Maverick said.

Insects and exhausted television hosts aside, the woods were quiet. They must not be working today, Maverick thought. No machines to silence the animals and run them off.

Maverick thought about marking quadrant eight off his search grid. At first, he assumed the noises would scare the creature away, driving him deeper into the bottoms, farther from Maverick's reach. But he remembered that the first time the term "bigfoot" was coined, it was due to a similar creature sniffing around a construction site, leaving prints.

"How do you move through this stuff?" Cushing asked.

"Yeah, the growth is pretty thick down here. Closer we get to the deeper parts of the creek the worse the mosquitoes will get too, so heads up."

"Lovely," Cushing sighed.

"Just nature, boss," Brian said.

"Fuck off, Brian," Cushing said.

"Did you spray yourself?" Maverick asked.

"Yeah," Cushing said. "We both did. I picked up the stuff for sensitive skin. Smells like summer rain, according to the bottle."

"Awesome, better hope it has DEET. Ticks are thick out here."

"Ticks?" Cushing stood up and examined his pant legs.

"Yeah. Don't worry, just check yourself when we get back."

"How do you check for ticks?"

"I'll be honest, it's going to get awkward. You want a drink of water?"

Cushing nodded and grabbed the canteen from Maverick. Cool water moistened his lips. He handed the canteen to Brian and considered telling him to film some woods for B roll footage, but the surrounding mass of limbs and leaves seemed squat and ugly. Even the grass around them refused to bob gently with the wind, as everything was bent and yellow.

Welcome to Texas, Cushing thought. An oasis of ticks and mosquitos. Oh, and monsters, apparently. Cushing still questioned how he would bring the film together. Is his subject deluded or mad? Does he play up the mystery or remind the audience from stage one that monsters don't exist, except in the fever dreams of a sad few?

In another universe, is he married to an up and coming actress and receiving a Golden Globe nomination?

Maverick looked at the same view and felt the presence of something ancient. When they moved into the dense thicket, the trees would entwine and block out the sun, as they had for centuries. Even the ground beneath their feet was packed with layers of twigs and leaves and debris, layer after layer, decade after decade. Only fire could remove them.

Everything around was older than him, older than his parents and their parents as well. Even the thing ducking into the brush, that unsettling blend of man and animal, was a newcomer as far as the woods were concerned.

Even when Lake Kenneth was complete, this place would remain, preserved in cold water and sealed with a calm, stagnant surface.

"In the 1800s, people would talk about the wildman that lived in the woods. Indians said they were a lost tribe. Old stuff. Ancient stuff," Maverick said, his back to his water guzzling companions.

Maverick repeated the wildman claims verbatim, as his father had whispered them breathlessly decades before.

"I'm tellin' ya, boy. They're real. Not like when I said I saw that Mammoth on the creek. That was a fib."

He had lots of fibs. Maverick also seemed genuinely surprised when talking to Jet years later that neither she, nor anyone she knew, ever heard about a wildman before meeting Mav.

But he knew when his father was joking. His lips pursed as he struggled to suppress his laugh, especially if he felt Mav was falling for it. But when he talked about the Wildman he wasn't joking. Maverick knew it.

"Yep," Maverick said. "Ancient stuff."

"Crazy stuff," Cushing swatted at a gnat humming in his ear.

"Such a sad way to see the world," Maverick snatched the canteen from Brian. Maverick could tell from the swishing inside they left none for the walk back. I should tell them to drink from the creek, Maverick thought. That'll be fun.

"So, tromping through the woods sweating my ass off is enlightenment?" Cushing asked.

"Could be. Works for me," Maverick said.

"So, your dad believed all this stuff too, right?" Brian hit record and nudged Cushing with his elbow.

"Come on, buddy. We're going exploring."

"Yeah, he told me stories about them when I was little. When I saw the monster, he wasn't surprised. He always said if enough people saw it, they wouldn't build the reservoir. They'd just leave it alone. Leave us alone. But since he was kind of a joker, people didn't believe us."

"Well, it took a long time. They're just now doing it."

"I suppose," Maverick said. "Can't fight progress, right?"

"They're flooding all of this?" Brian asked.

"Yep. It'll be one, giant lake. Lake Kenneth, actually."

"Who was Kenneth?" Cushing asked. "Such a random choice. Kenneth."

"Kenneth was a nineteen-year-old killed in Iraq a while back. Word is, they named it after him so anyone fighting the reservoir would look bad."

"If they named it Crying-Eagle-9/11 they could turn this state into a lake."

Maverick smiled and nodded. Poor bastard, he thought. They used that kid over there, and now they're using him here.

Maverick reminded Cushing to watch for snakes. The recent rain brought out the snakes, chilled and looking for sun. Copperheads were lazy, usually opting for cool garden to lounge in. As they moved closer to the creeks, they and their equally poisonous brothers would slither near the muddy banks.

Cushing now took each step as if the still-dehydrated topsoil was going to strike.

"I thought you would be used to this kinda stuff, from all that work you do on American Myths and Monsters," Maverick said.

"Work?" Cushing laughed. "We usually set up in a park. Throw on some night vision filters, film me chasing our guy in a suit, or have some intern hitting trees with sticks for wood knocking."

"You fake that stuff?"

"Trade secrets," Brian whispered to Cushing.

"Seriously? Yes! You don't think those close encounters are real, do you? Every show like ours is fake."

"Well, this is real," Maverick said. All fake? He thought as much. Shows like Cushing's offer too many close calls to never uncover anything of note.

"Serious question," Cushing asked. "You think you'll find it? No one's ever found it before. Believe me, we've talked to everyone."

"Hey, government already caught one," Maverick said. "1999. Forest fire in Nevada. A fire crew found an injured one and next thing you know, big brother spirited it away."

"That didn't happen," Cushing said.

"There were witnesses," Maverick said.

"There always are," Cushing said.

Approaching the tree line, Maverick stopped and fumbled with a shell, loading the gun with a click and snap.

"Are you allowed to bring a gun out here?" Cushing asked.

"Guns, not my thing," Brian said.

"Keep recording, you damn liberal," Cushing said.

"Friends?" Brian said.

Cushing sighed. "I am sorry, friend. Please forgive and continue to do the job I am paying you from my dwindling retirement, friend."

"Yeah, anyone can have a gun out here," Maverick said. "Although, technically I'm not. There was an...incident..."

In a later interview, both Brian and Cushing would obtain more clarification regarding the "incident".

Cushing: Tell me again, what happened?

Wes W: He shot me, duh. Yeah, like a year ago. My friends and I thought it would be funny to dress up like Bigfoot, you know, mess with Mr. Casey a little bit? Got shot in the leg. Hurt. Bad.

Maverick felt the entire incident was blown out of proportion. He barely nicked the kid, a worse injury could have happened falling off a bike.

However, he enjoyed how quickly the laughter in his direction ceased once the boy first screamed that he had been shot. Nevertheless, Maverick had to sign an affidavit saying he would never carry firearms into the bottoms again.

"Well," Sheriff Glaser said as Maverick signed. "Beats jail, right?"

He also earned his most loathed nickname, killer. The name stung.

Fortunately, Maverick was the only person, beside the construction crews, who ever went into the bottoms.

"But he started it! Running around the woods like that, what did he think would happen?" Maverick said, fuming.

"Apparently not that he would get shot by a trigger-happy monster hunter," Cushing said.

"But I did get a shot at it. The real thing."

Cushing urged Maverick on and Brian moved closer, framing a wide shot of Cushing and Maverick and hoping the battery wouldn't die.

"It was the second time I saw it, and I got a shot in. It fell, and ran away."

"How old were you?" Cushing asked.

"Just a kid, around twelve."

Years later he marked off the quadrant where the shooting occurred, quadrant nine, never returning.

"Did you kill it?"

"I don't think so," Maverick said. "Never found the body. I was so close to proving it. I could have saved our land, made us rich. Proved I wasn't crazy. Instead, dad left. Mom drank. And I stayed in the woods."

"See you after work, buddy."

"He just left?"

"Never heard from him again."

There were the false hopes. The sightings in bars a few towns over, the potential John Does cropping up in morgues in Oklahoma and Louisiana. Once he had his driver's license, Maverick would often spend his weekends chasing down leads, always returning home, always telling his mother the same thing.

"Not this time, momma. Sorry."

Her face registered neither shock nor disappointment; instead she simply pulled a cigarette from a crumpled package and lit up.

She got down. That was how his father described his own mood swings. Franklin could be jovial, likely to wake Maverick up in the middle of the night to go exploring or dump square hay bales in front of someone's door as a joke.

Then he would be quiet, sitting on the couch like another piece of furniture. Until Maverick made a noise or set him off, then he exploded, as if every bit of laughter in his body was equaled by rage he buried until it roared to the surface.

Like her husband, Paula was down. And she would stay that way. Cushing asked Maverick if he ever saw the creature again.

"I saw it again in 1993."

He thought. He heard the brush, the snapping twigs. He swore the smell, urine and body odor, filtered into the air. There was a shadow, but no pause. No lingering look like before.

Cushing felt surprised that Maverick carried a gun, and more so that he was willing to kill the monster. Most of these types he interviewed were firmly in the "no kill" camp.

"What if it's the last of its kind? Or it has a baby or something?" Cushing asked.

"How else am I going to prove it? I'm not going to my grave with everyone thinking I've lost my fuckin' mind. All I have are blurry pictures and a plastic tub of footprint casts. That don't cut it."

"Puts you on the outs with other Bigfoot hunters, right?" Cushing asked.

"Not around here. Hell, the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, or whatever they call themselves these days, they're all about it. March into those woods armed to the teeth, like they're serving a warrant."

"That's messed up," Brian said.

"What if nothing is out there?" Cushing bit his lip in feigned concern. Maverick didn't answer. Cushing asked again.

"Then what did I see?" Maverick finally answered, watching the brush for a sign of movement, as if the creature would step into the open and greet them.

"A bear? Who knows? You said yourself you were just a kid."

"Too late to stop now," Maverick said. He thought of Jet. It was far too late to stop.

"That's not true," Cushing said.

Jet.

"It is!" Maverick cried. "I spent too long in the woods, lost too many years in the trees and creeks looking for it."

Maverick gripped the rifle firmly. His arms shook.

"I understand, just calm down," Cushing said.

"There's no stopping."

"Okay, calm down," Cushing said. "You're scaring Brian, he's good people."

"Afraid I'll shoot you, Brian?" Maverick asked, gun in hand. "What about you, Mr. James Cushing? Afraid of the crazy man?"

"A little," Cushing said. Behind him, Brian tensed, sucking air and holding his breath.

"We're all friends, here," Brian whispered.

"You seriously think I'm crazy, don't you?"

Cushing opened his mouth, leaving it agape for several seconds as he perfected a reply.

"Is there an answer that guarantees you won't shoot me?" He finally asked.

Around them, cicadas sang in a chorus and gnats made sounds in their ears like speeding cars. Maverick lowered the gun and walked away. As his footsteps grew quiet, Cushing turned to Brian. "Did you get that?"

"Yeah, man," Brian said. "I got it."

"Were you planning on intervening at any point when the crazy man was waving a gun?"

"When the moment was right," Brian said.

"If I die, you don't get paid, remember that, friend," Cushing said.

"Then stop badgering the crazy guy," Brian said.

"Speaking of which, we better find him. I have no fucking clue where we are."

"Sure you do," Brian said. "The middle of nowhere."