Monster by Frank Peretti

couldn’t even be sure she was still in Idaho.
    But the creature was hurting too. She hobbled and wheezed, swaying unsteadily as she walked. Beck had the uneasy feeling she was sitting high in a tree that was about to fall over.
    She was right.
    With her last feeble steps, the big female pushed into a scrubby clump of trees, spun a few dizzying turns, then collapsed like a condemned building imploding, her legs giving way beneath her, her nostrils huffing clouds of steam. She bumped on her behind, teetered there a moment, and then, with a long, breathy groan, slumped onto her side. Her arms wilted like dying plants and Beck rolled onto the moss and uneven rock. Her clothes were dampened with the creature’s sweat, and she ached in every muscle, wincing from the pain in her ankle, and amazed she was still alive.
    Her hair-covered captor sounded like a locomotive leaving a station, chugging and laboring for every breath, holding her side. Her eyes were watery, filled with pain and unmistakable fear.
    Beck stared, unable to make sense of it. The beast is afraid? What could a beast of such power and size be afraid of?
    The female looked back at her, never breaking her gaze, until her expansive rib cage began to settle into a quieter, more restful rhythm and her eyes softened from fear to a kind of resignation. With a deep sigh and a swallow, she pushed herself into a sitting position and began peering through the trees like a soldier in a bunker, scanning the expansive landscape below, the deep amber eyes searching, searching, searching.
    Beck sat up as well and followed the creature’s gaze. The view was spectacular from here. Below them stretched a vast valley under a thin veil of blue haze, and beyond that, so clear it seemed one could touch them, a range of granite peaks took a jagged bite out of the sky. It even sounded vast up here: dead quiet except for the all-surrounding whisper of air moving through the trees and the trickle of a stream nearby. If Beck wasn’t so miserable, fearful for her life, and occupied with trying to think of the “right” thing to do, she could be enjoying this.
    The right thing to do? She wanted to cry. The right thing would have been to stay home where she had a warm bed, a latte machine, fuzzy slippers, and a nice shower with brass handles. This was unthinkable!
    The shadows were long now, the mossy rubble outside their hiding place almost entirely in shade. Not comforting. She’d learned the hard way what to expect in this weird, wild world at night, and she did not relish facing that alone and lost.
    She looked at her smelly, unknowable, unpredictable host, who was still looking out over the valley as if expecting an enemy. What were her plans? Had she captured Beck for a meal? Beck remembered something she learned at a zoo once, something about gorillas being vegetarians. This creature seemed to like berries.
    But so did bears.
    Keep thinking, Beck; keep thinking!
    Okay. What was it going to take to survive? Shelter. Water. Food. In that order.
    She considered shelter. If she could move, if she had some tools, if there was anything with which to build a shelter . . .
    Well, what about the next one? She hadn’t had any water since last night, and that stream was calling to her. She craned her neck but couldn’t see where— Whooa! Hands wrapped around her like a big sling, and she was in the air again. No freight-train speed this time, though. As the creature ambled with smooth, bent-kneed strides through the trees, over rocks, and down a shallow draw, Beck felt a sensation much like floating over the ground on a ski lift.
    They found the stream, sparkling and splashing over broken rocks and forming pools from which to dip water. The big female set her down on a large, flat stone and then squatted next to her, dipping up bucket-sized helpings in her hands, slurping them down. Beck watched, wondering if it was safe to move, to take a drink herself. She leaned over the water, then