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“We’ll make camp here tonight,” Rowan said. The excitement had worn off. He was tired and hungry. “We’ll establish a perimeter, but we need to comb this entire area for additional evidence. We need castings of each of the prints. I want to preserve that handprint somehow. Be sure we photograph everything. Be careful where you sit or step. There are prints literally everywhere. We don’t want to disturb any of them before we can get them sampled and make plaster castings.”
Morrison stepped up. “We need to be diligent with our watch tonight. Whoever, or whatever did this could come back.”
“I agree,” Pauline nodded.
“We need to get all this evidence to a lab,” Jean-René said. “How are we going to do that?”
“I’ll radio the ranger station in the morning and have someone drive up and get them. They can have them delivered via USPS or FedEx,” Derry said.
Lauren shook her head. “The chain of custody has to be maintained. No one touches these samples but one of my team.”
Bahati stepped up. “I’ll take them to the lab. Just get me a ride out of here before this mountain blows up.”
Pauline knitted her narrow brows. “You know I was joking, right?”
“I’m not,” Bahati said. “Volcanos are nothing to joke about.”
“Bahati’s right,” Rowan said. “She’s the best choice for the errand. She knows the procedures. You can take the blood and prints back to the lab and stay there until the results come back in.”
“I can’t call you back, though,” Bahati said. “We haven’t had a signal since we got here.”
“We should be able to at least get a radio signal to one of the watchtowers. We can have them send a chopper to pick you up and bring you back,” Derry suggested. “How long do you think the labs will take?”
“It could take a couple of days once I get them there. It might take me a day just to get to the lab.”
“I’ll take care of all the travel arrangements,” Katie said. “I have some connections,” she smiled. “Bahati, we’ll hike up to the Bivouac tomorrow. There’s a clearing there. I’ll stay until the chopper picks you up and I’ll meet you back there in a few days.”
“I’ll go with you,” Joshua said.
“The sooner I get out of here the better,” Bahati gulped. Rowan could understand why.
* * *
To keep Bahati busy and keep her mind off the volcano, Lauren had Bahati set up the perimeter cameras and the warning beacon system. They needed to set the trap cams. The evidence around them needed to be processed.
They found large footprints in several locations. It was suspicious to find so many. Lauren insisted they cast them all.
As she was waiting for one of them to dry, she found herself scanning the area looking for anything else out of place. There was a narrow path that beckoned her. It was nothing more than a game trail, but she found herself drawn to it. As she walked, she noticed there were broken branches on the trees. Blades of grass were bent over from something that had passed by less than a few days before.
Then she noticed the beer cans. Crumpled along the trail, they were the cheap kind. The aluminum had been crushed and tossed aside. There were littered in twos or threes here and there. She found more a few hundred yards down the path. In all, she counted almost two dozen. The trail of cans stopped at the edge of a wide, shallow stream. That’s where she found the most telling evidence of all, a large footprint set in the mud ... and then she found another. There was a whole series.
She reached for her walkie-talkie. “Lauren to Rowan ...” There was a long pause followed by a wicked squelch and static.
“Where the hell are you? We’ve been looking for you for the last twenty minutes.”
“What? Why didn’t you radio?” She glanced at her watch and discovered it was much later than she thought it to be. Sunset would be on them before they could get the evidence collected, if they didn’t hurry.
“We have been. Did you have it turned on? Where are you?” She looked up and realized she had no idea. “I followed an animal trail out of the campsite, right by where Bahati and I were casting prints. There are beer cans scattered along the path, there’s a small river at the end of the trail. There are prints everywhere.”
“Are you ... lost?” Rowan’s voice held genuine concern.
“I’m not lost,” she snapped. Lauren couldn’t get lost. “Are you lost?”
The radio squelched again. “Stay where you are, I’ll find you.”
“Bring more dental stone powder. Have Jean-René bring the cameras. We’ve got to document this.”
* * *
Rowan’s ire faded the moment he saw her. He rushed over and wrapped his arms around her. “You scared the daylights out of me.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I was following the evidence. Look what I found, Rowan.” She pointed to the first print, and then the second.
“Oh my God,” he breathed, walking around the tracks. “This is unreal.”
“Tsul’Kalu has been here,” she said. “He watches over this place. It is sacred.”
“Sacred? Why do you say that?”
She turned and raised her hand toward the horizon. The sun over the valley, cast an almost magical glow over the volcano, a plume of steam billowing from its peak. It mixed with the red rays of the setting sun and cast a brilliant pink pallet over the entire valley. Even the trees seemed to glow. The ash beds of pyroclastic flow from the 1980 eruption looked ethereal. Something he could only describe as magic tingled through his nerves. Lauren’s face reflected the glow, and her eyes seemed as black as the night sky. She took a deep breath, drinking in the beauty of the scene before them. “Sacred.”
* * *
“How many Bigfoots drink beer, seriously?” Rowan picked up one of the cans with a gloved hand, inspecting it. The can was crushed, but not completely flattened. “Let alone skunky beer.”
“Now you know why they are called skunk ape.” Jean-René chortled.
“Do you think we can get DNA off the cans?” Bahati asked, inspecting one of the cans she had collected.
“If anything, it could be used as evidence if it turns out the same person or persons did all the damage to the campgrounds,” Lauren shrugged.
Rowan arched a brow and shook his head. “Alright, let’s bag ’em and tag ’em.”
Lauren’s eye was drawn to something else, and she went to inspect it, leaving Rowan to collect the beer cans. “Jean-René, your camera,” she called, gesturing for him to come over.
“What did you find?” He followed, pausing when she stopped and knelt. He raised the camera to his shoulder, clicking it on as he approached and came around behind her. He zoomed in over her shoulder as he neared. He paused. He had to look out over the viewfinder to make sure he was seeing it. “Is that ...?”
“Poop,” Lauren said. “It’s cold. It’s been here a while.”
“Human poop or Bigfoot poop?” He took a reflexive step back. Returning his attention to the view finder, panning in as she inspected it.
“Hard to tell,” she said. Lauren leaned over it, pulling her long braid back to keep it out of the way. She sniffed and recoiled, turning away. “Smells like poop.”
“I thought we’d already established that it was, indeed, poop,” Jean-René laughed, and for the first time in a few days, Lauren smiled brightly.
“I stepped in that one. Didn’t I?” She chortled, looking up at the camera; pleased at her own joke.
“I sure hope not,” Jean-René said. Everyone had a good laugh. Even Lauren relaxed.
“There’s not a lot of plant matter in the scat. Our quarry is known to be omnivorous, but I would expect more fibrous matter in the mix,” Lauren said. “If the Bigfoot has had good hunting, he could have wiped out a whole elk or deer. That could explain it.” Lauren poked the sample with a stick.
Katie came down the trail and came to see what everyone was looking at. “Looks like someone took a dump.”
“Someone ... or something,” Lauren raised her poo covered stick in emphasis. “I need a sample kit.”
“You’re bagging poop?” Katie’s brow arched.
“We’re bagging beer cans too,” she stood. “It’s all DNA evidence. Maybe it’s nothing, but we won’t know until we get it to the lab.”
“It’s probably human poop.” Katie said.
“What if it isn’t?” Lauren retorted.
“What makes you say that? How can you be so sure?”
“No toilet paper,” she pointed around the area. “Not even a hand full of poo-covered leaves.”
Rowan gave Jean-René a dirty look and the cameraman grinned from ear to ear. “She has a point,” Jean-René snickered.
“Well, then, it’s definitely not lady poop,” Rowan grinned, his teeth shining in the fading light. “I’ve been known to do without in worst-case situations.”
“That’s why I make you do your own laundry,” Lauren turned up the edge of her lip and wrinkled her nose.
“Ew. TMI, you two,” Jean-René shook his head, recoiling.
“Don’t forget to protect the sample in alcohol,” Rowan said, before returning to what he was doing.
“I know how to preserve fecal samples.” Lauren snapped.
“Silly me. Of course you do.”
* * *
Jean-René stayed with Lauren while she finished her evidence collection. It was dark when she and Jean-René returned to base camp. It was Rowan’s night to cook, and the smell of fried eggs, corned beef hash and warm biscuits greeted them. “Breakfast for dinner?” Lauren asked.
Rowan held out a plate. “It sounded good,” he smiled.
She held up her hands a moment, still holding the bag containing the poop samples. “Let me wash,” she said. He nodded, setting the plate down on the one undamaged picnic table in the whole campground. Lauren disappeared into the bath house, returning a few seconds later. “It sure smells good,” she said. She sat down beside him and took a bite from one of the biscuits. Rowan was an excellent cook.
“Coffee?” he asked. He reached for a cup, already knowing the answer.
“Yes.” She accepted it gratefully. It’d been a long day, and after all the excitement, she was starving.
Jean-René came over and sat down beside her. “I hope you washed your hands.”
“I did,” she said between bites. “At least there’s running water, despite the damage in there.” She reached for her cup and took a sip. “Bahati and I were discussing getting a hot shower after dinner. Pauline said there should be cleaning supplies in the janitor’s closet, and it wouldn’t take much to get it where we could use it.”
“Oh, God,” Rowan rolled his eyes. “A shower sounds like heaven.”
“The men’s shower is wrecked, but you could get into the women’s shower after we get done.”
“Of course. Ladies first,” Rowan said. “Do we have any soap? Shampoo?”
Lauren grinned. “I never leave home without it.”