| |
A somber howl echoed over the mountain. Heart-shaped aspen leaves trembled. Pine needles fell like rain on the team’s heads as the deep timber reverberated through their branches. For a time, the forest grew quiet, and only the thundering clamor of his pulse echoed in Rowan’s ears. The hike was hard enough in the higher elevations without the fear of a monster lurking in the woods. Another round of howls seemed to follow from the other side of the valley as Rowan and Chance returned to base camp. This time it was farther away, a comforting distance that allowed the team to breathe a sigh of relief.
Chance looked a bit peeked, and true to Rowan’s prediction, a growing bruise spread around his eye, accented with a goose-egg forming just above his temple. There was blood running down his brow and along the side of his face where it was beginning to dry, the stain on his gray t-shirt turning dark.
Rowan put on gloves and got out some sterile gauze while Lauren sat Chance on the tree stump for a closer look. She handed him a bottle of water and he drank from it greedily. Lauren put a reassuring hand on his shoulder as Rowan knelt at his knee. He tore open a blister pack and handed him two pills.
Chance took them and swallowed hard, washing them down with the last of the water. He handed the empty bottle back to Lauren. “What was that?” His voice trembled as much as his hands.
“It’s Tylenol for the headache you’re sure to get. That’s the best I have,” Rowan said.
Chance nodded, taking a deep breath as Rowan came at him with an antiseptic wipe. It stung and he swore loudly. Rowan steadied him with a hand on the top of his head. “Hold on buddy, this is the worst part. I want to see if you’re going to need stitches.”
“No wonder you dropped out of med school. Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired,” Chance muttered as the wound was cleansed. “At this rate, I’m going to need something stronger than Tylenol. Got any whiskey?”
“I’ll buy you a beer when we get back to town.” Rowan set aside the antiseptic. “It doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “I’m going to butterfly it. I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”
“Is it going to leave a scar?”
“Chicks dig scars,” Lauren said, patting his shoulder.
* * *
The rest of the team set up perimeter barriers and strategically placed night-vision cameras along the trail by where the footprint was found, as well as other parts of camp. Once the work was done, they reported to Lauren at base camp.
They discussed their evening’s plans over tin plates of spicy red beans and rice. “We have barrier monitors set up around base camp. If anything comes in, it will set off the alarm. We’ve also got trail cameras set up with night- vision lenses and all our gear is ready to go,” Jean-René said.
“After dinner, we’ll break up into teams. Team One will follow the trail Rowan and Chance were on earlier. Team Two will go to the west and see if they can find anything along the trail to the mountain, where hikers reported seeing the creature a few months back. We need to determine where the creature might take shelter, find out what it’s eating, where it hunts.”
“We’ll follow standard protocol,” Rowan announced. “Everyone checks in with base camp on the half hour. If you’re more than five minutes late reporting, we come looking for you. Keep your transponders on, and don’t turn off audio or video.”
“I want each of the teams to carry the dart guns. We’ve already had one attack today. If we need to tranq the damned thing to take its picture, we will.”
“Imagine the press we’d get if we brought in a live specimen.” Jean-René rubbed his hands together maniacally.
“That’s not why we’re here,” Rowan grinned, knowing he wasn’t serious. “We use the tranquilizers only to save our lives. Bringing one in live would be nice, but our primary mission is to gather evidence. This isn’t a monster hunt.”
But really, it was.
* * *
Lauren kept everyone in line, but it was dark by the time everyone completed their final AV tests. All the shoulder mounted stedi-cams were pointed back at the faces of their carriers, equipped with night-vision capabilities and audio. A good portion of their production budget was dedicated to electronic equipment, another chunk went to travel, while the rest went to insurance, just in case something went horribly wrong.
They’d had mishaps before. Bahati and Lauren taking ill in Peru had been only one among the many illnesses and injuries they’d seen in their adventures. Jean-René had been bitten by a barracuda and lost part of his big toe while filming in the Bermuda Triangle. Rowan had broken his ankle in Nepal looking for the Yeti. Their former production director, Gerald, had gotten West Nile virus searching for el chupacabra in Mexico. Malaria, altitude sickness, dysentery, water-borne parasites—they’d been through it all.
“Remember, stay together. Don’t let this thing sneak up on us. Base camp, call if you need anything,” Lauren gave final instructions. “Let’s go out there and see what we find.”
* * *
“Ape Canyon had a sordid history.” Lauren penned the words in her journal. “In 1924, a group of miners were attacked by what they described as hairy apes, but the legends were much more ancient. An American missionary named Elkanah Walker retold the stories of the local Spokane natives in his journal in 1840.”
Even before leaving San Diego, Lauren interviewed a number of the local residents she’d been referred to by the local Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, or BRFO. She’d found their contact information online and they had been keen to help her with her research. One member she’d interviewed claimed to have been the descendant of one of the men who’d claimed to have captured a young Sasquatch in British Colombia in 1884. “The captors called him Jacko and described him as being half man, half beast, four feet, seven inches tall and weighing 127 pounds.” She added in the current codex she kept documenting their travels.
She’d also talked to geologists and National Park staffers who told her about the 1980, Mt. Saint Helens. One of the rangers told her about his own personal encounter near Ape Canyon that had been heavily impacted by the blast. He said, “I was on patrol when something I still can’t explain crossed the path in front of my ATV. It’d moved so fast and crossed the path in two strides. To this day, I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.”
Sitting on the side of a mountain, looking out over the valley, she could only imagine how barren the moonscape might have appeared. Today, it had returned to a verdant wilderness. There was much debate as to whether the local Sasquatch population would have been able to survive such an eruption, or if they fled in advance of the cataclysm.
She continued writing. “It could be no coincidence that there has been a long dry spell of sightings after the volcano went ballistic and ejected more than 2.4 million cubic yards of ash and pyroclastic flow over twenty-three square miles. In some places, the ash cover layered the landscape thirty feet deep.” She felt like at least half that was in her shoe. She set her pen and journal aside and kicked off her hiking boot, dumping the fine grains out. Sliding out of her sock, more grains fell away. She brushed her foot off and redressed it before taking up the codex again.
“Five more eruptions between May and October of that same year sealed the area’s fate. But the fate of the indigenous legendary Bigfoot remains unknown.”
Not so long ago, a young boy crayfishing on a nearby river looked up and noticed a white Sasquatch peering at him from the opposite bank. He said the creature stood well over six feet tall, with a potbelly, bloodshot blue eyes, and a pink complexion. The boy had been so frightened, he threw down his belongings before scrambling onto his dirt bike and peeling out of there. He later returned with his father, too afraid to return alone. They found footprints which suggested the creature had a crippled foot.
Sometime later, two more sightings of the white Bigfoot were reported. In all three cases, witnesses reported the white Bigfoot had a pronounced limp. Ten years passed since the white beast’s appearance. Lauren wondered if, even after all these years, the white Bigfoot could still be alive. The reports they received, the ones that summoned them to the volcano, involved reports of frightened hikers, chased from the trails —sightings of a dark hairy beast dashing across valleys in broad daylight; howls in the night.
One of the interviews Lauren had done was with a local man who’d run into the beast while spelunking through one of the caves. The eyewitness had been so shaken up that he still had a hard time talking about it, even though it happened many years before. He claimed the beast grabbed him and roughed him up before he managed to escape the cave, certain the beast would have eaten him alive, if he hadn’t gotten away.
Who’d want to eat that?
* * *
Lauren and Jean-René were assigned to survey the area east of base camp. The terrain was rugged and grew more so as they gained elevation. Trees were thick and lush. Pine needles littered the forest floor. Birds and bugs sang a raucous cacophony all around. The night air was cool, and the distant gurgle of water could be heard from a nearby stream. Lauren found a narrow trail and blazed her way beneath the massive pines and diminutive aspens. The going was slow, and it took more time than either expected to reach a spot where they could stop and rest.
Just as Lauren tipped back her canteen for a much-needed drink, a distant growl in the trees off to their left startled them both. Lauren turned, wiping her chin on her sleeve. She caught the flash of movement in the distant trees out of the corner of her eye. A dark shadow moved between two trees, as if hiding, or watching. She could feel eyes piercing her soul and it chilled her to the core.
Holding out a hand to signal her camera operator, she raised a finger to her lips to silence him. She gestured toward the sound. He turned his camera on and pointed it that way. Lauren realized the forest had suddenly gone quiet.
She screwed the lid shut on her canteen and tucked it back in the pocket of her backpack, setting it aside, as she watched for the shadow in the trees to move again. There was a heavy crash of footfalls as something lumbered through the trees. The decrescendo of footfalls told her whatever made the noise was moving away. She froze and her heart raced, thumping so loudly in her chest she was sure her mic would pick it up.
Jean-René gasped. “Did you see it?” she said, just above a whisper.
“What?” His eyes shifted, the whites glowing in the almost nonexistent moonlight. “It’s so dark, how can you see anything out here?”
“Shhh.” she ordered over her shoulder. “Anything on night vision?”
Jean-René turned his camera in the direction she nodded, changing the setting with the flick of his thumb. The telltale figure, really more of a nondescript blob, was hunkered down in the brush. It could have been an elk or a bear, but it was hard to say. On the FLIR, it glowed in shades of blue, yellow and red, based on the infrared signature of the form. Suddenly she was aware of a low deep grumble, like a large dog growling deep in its chest.
Lauren squeaked, cupping her hand over her mouth. “I see it,” she whispered. “Don’t move.”
“Team One to Team Two.” The walkie-talkie squawked loudly. Jean-René and Lauren both gasped. A crash in the thicket thundered in their direction. A dark flash of something large barreled at them. Jean-René turned to run, falling flat on his face, the camera tumbling wildly down the hill. He let out a yelp of pain and fear.
“Team Two, we heard yelling. Lauren? Was that you?” There was a long pause. “Come in, Team Two. Team Two? Report! Report!”
Jean-René saw the red light of the walkie-talkie in the fallen leaves and scrambled for it. “Team One! Team One! Mayday! We’re about two miles east from base camp near Ape Cave. We’ve just seen ... something ... I don’t know what it was!” He panted, breathlessly dropping to his knees, looking around. He froze. “Rowan ... we need you here, now!” He threw the walkie-talkie down and leapt to the form laying halfway down the slope in a heap, unmoving.
“Team Two! What’s wrong? Come in Team Two! Come in Team Two!” The radio squelched. “We’re coming!”