This happened back in March of 1991. I was working as a fisheries observer up in Homer, Alaska. Kachemak Bay area, if you know it. My job was basically walking stretches of beach after storms, cataloging what washed up. Dead seals, sea lions, sometimes whales. Checking for disease, tracking populations, that kind of thing. It wasn't glamorous work. Cold, wet, smelled terrible most days. But I didn't mind it. I'd grown up in Anchorage, so the weather didn't bother me, and I liked being alone with my thoughts. Just me, the gulls, and whatever the tide brought in. The beach I'm talking about was remote. You had to hike in about three miles from where I parked my truck. No houses, no other people. Just rocks, driftwood, and the sound of the water. I'd been working that section for maybe six months at that point, and I knew every curve of it.
It was early morning when I headed out. Sun wasn't up yet, but there was enough light to see by. The storm the night before had been rough. I could hear it from my cabin, wind rattling the windows. I figured there'd be a lot to document. I was right. When I got to the beach, there were three harbor seals washed up within the first quarter mile. All of them in pretty bad shape. Bloated, starting to decompose. Normal for what I dealt with. I took my samples, made my notes, moved on. That's when I noticed the tracks. At first I thought they were bear tracks, but they were wrong. Too long, too narrow. And the stride was massive. Six, maybe seven feet between prints. I'd never seen anything like it. Whatever made them was big, and it had been moving along the waterline, same direction I was heading.
I followed the tracks for maybe half a mile. They led to another seal carcass, this one fresher than the others. Died maybe a day or two ago. But here's the thing. Something had been feeding on it. The seal's belly was torn open, organs gone. But not in the way a bear or wolf would do it. The edges of the wound were too clean, almost surgical. And there were these marks. Like something had scraped the flesh away methodically, working from the inside out. I crouched down to get a closer look, and that's when I smelled it. Not the dead seal, that's a smell you get used to. This was different. Sharp, chemical almost. Like ozone mixed with something organic I couldn't place. It made my eyes water.
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