Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One

by W. Michael Gear

  Sam didn’t think Bill Tappan missed it, either.

  An amused smile crossed Tappan’s lips. “Something tells me you’re in for a really interesting two months. Not one of you is going to leave here unchanged.”

  A vivacious woman with flaming red hair and skin-tight Levi’s burst out the door. If she was fifty, it wasn’t by much. She fixed them all with excited green eyes as she grabbed up Bill Tappan’s hand in a familiar clutch.

  “So this is the crew, huh, Bill?” she exclaimed. “Never had a bunch of archaeology students from back east before. Welcome.”

  Bill inclined his head toward her. “This is Meggan, and her only fault is piss-poor taste in men. Probably why she married me.”

  She elbowed him, grinning the whole time. It hit Sam that it didn’t come off as an act.

  “Until you get your legs under you,” Bill continued, “don’t go fooling with the horses and don’t wander off. We had bear sign back of the stack yard—”

  Dr. Holly interjected. “He means they had a grizzly bear just over there behind the haystack.”

  “—and there’s been a cat lurking around on the slope yonder.”

  Dr. Holly interpreted: “When he says cat, he means a mountain lion. A cougar.”

  “Hell, Evan,” Bill said sourly, “I told ‘em in English, didn’t I?”

  Amber—a curious look on her face that Sam couldn’t quite decipher—said, “In other words, people, beyond this yard and these buildings, it is wilderness. So don’t go wandering. Understood?”

  Sam’s gaze fixed on the places where Dr. Holly had pointed. Grizzly bears? Mountain lions?

  They had all known the forest service had rules about bear-safe food storage up at the field camp, and that bear spray would be provided, but damn they’d also been told that even seeing one would be a miracle. And the things were prowling around the ranch house?

  “We’ll have an orientation after you get settled in,” Bill was saying. “Evan? You got anything to add?”

  Sam had been watching Meggan, who’d been watching her husband. That glow stayed in her green eyes, a worshipful smile on her face.

  Dr. Holly said, “Anyone who had too much coffee for breakfast and needs the facilities, they’re inside through the main room. Down the hallway. Then to the right.”

  Meggan turned loose of her husband long enough to clasp her hands together as she faced the crew, adding, “Um, we’re on a septic system. There’s a sign on the toilet. ‘If it’s wet, let it set. If it’s brown, flush it down.’” Her grin narrowed. “Should speak for itself.”

  “It does,” Amber told her, turning. “When you’re done, we’ll start unpacking.” With a gesture of the hand, she indicated the crew was released.

  Stepping in the door, the living room was spacious with a big couch covered by some kind of tan hide. A thick wooden coffee table stood before it, and to Sam’s absolute surprise an eighty-inch curved-screen TV dominated one entire wall. A stuffed elk head with huge antlers barely fit in the far corner of the room. A rack of rifles hung on the wall by the door, which caused him a double-take. A chill went down his spine. The damn things were real. He had no doubt they were loaded.

  Another furry brown hide covered the plank floor. Big. And it hit him: buffalo!

  The overstuffed chair by the window had an ornate floor lamp behind it. On the end table beside the chair lay a copy of Thucydides, open to about halfway.

  While the rest ooed and awed in a wide-eyed procession and crowded their way into the aforementioned hallway. Sam glanced through the arch on the far side of the room and into a dining room with a rough-hewn table and mismatched chairs that would seat ten. Dishes filled a hutch on one wall. A doorway in back led into what looked like a fully stocked and completely modern kitchen.

  Going down the hall, he glanced through an open door. The room was a library, shelves from floor to ceiling. And in the middle of it, back-lit by a window, sat an antique and expensive-looking desk made of some exotic wood.

  He stepped in, amazed at the titles. One entire wall was dedicated to the Civil War. On both sides and above the door, the titles were all scholarly works about the American fur trade and Wyoming history. World history and philosophy covered the wall to the right. Military history, World War II, and Vietnam were shelved in every square inch surrounding and above the window.

  That’s when he noticed that the top of each volume bristled with bits of paper. Pulling out Josephus, he flipped it open to a page where the note said, “Bad translation. See Whiston.” The text was talking about the Jewish revolt in 70 C.E.

  Sam almost jumped out of his skin when a voice behind him said, “You really have to translate Josephus from the original. Even Whiston had an agenda.”

  Sam spun, gulping, to find himself face-to-face with Bill Tappan. The man had a mildly curious look on his face, the piercing eyes reserved.

  “Sorry,” Sam almost stuttered. “I just...I mean, this is awesome. I didn’t expect...”

  “History is a hobby of mine. More so before Frank bought that damn TV and hooked it up to the satellite. TVs are like vampires, they suck up a person’s time and intelligence...and maybe a bit of the soul as well.”

  Sam looked over at the desk to see another note-feathered book on the waxed surface: The Road to Disunion: Vol. II Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861.

  Stepping over, he ran reverent fingers over the dust jacket.

  “Not the most inspiring of reading,” Tappan said wearily. “The parallels between then and today are uncannily familiar. Same jingoist quotes. Just as mindless and inflammatory...only the names are different.”

  “How so?”

  “Look at the Congress in the late 1850’s. Read their statements and speeches. Compare it to Congress today. Read their statements and speeches. The words and invective are the same, just different names. As if the intervening hundred and fifty years—let alone the Civil War—had never happened.”

  “What do you think will happen now?”

  “Those of us who know history are doomed to watch those who don’t repeat the same insane mistakes over and over.” Bill Tappan gave a slight shrug of his rail-thin shoulders. “Movements create momentum and inertia until they can’t be stopped. Sort of like a tidal wave, there comes a time after which you can’t damp it down. I think we’re past that, and we’re going to have to pay for it.”

  Meggan leaned in the library door, asking, “Bill? Do you know if Frank dropped that check off at the bank when you and he went into town last week?”

  “I know for a fact. Hannah, the gal that works the drive up? She gave me two extra dog biscuits for Mack and Talbot. Why?”

  “I finally got through on the computer to order that stuff from Amazon. Some kind of problem with the credit card.” She slapped a hand on the doorframe. “I’ll call the bank on Tuesday. See what the problem is.”

  Sam said, “No one’s taking credit cards. Something wrong with the system. We had to pay cash for the last part of the trip.”

  “Probably someone updating a system somewhere.” And Meggan was gone, all energy and smiles.

  “You’re welcome to read anything here,” Tappan gestured around after turning his attention back to Sam. “Only one rule: Nothing leaves the room.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Back at the door, it was Amber’s turn to lean in: “Hey, Sam. Let’s get these people organized, huh?”

  “Be right there.”

  Amber hesitated then, eyes alight as she took in the books.

  As if Sam would ever get the time to just sit in the comfy chair behind that waxed desk and read.

  The site to which the crew was headed was called “The Penthouse”. A large prehistoric Native American village, it sat at an elevation of eight thousand five hundred feet and was located above a low pass where the Owl Creek Mountains met the Absaroka Range.

  Amber’s goal was to map and test the site. She’d found it through remote sensing using algorithms and LiDAR satellite d
ata.

  Sam’s goal was to find a dissertation topic, and he needed something desperately. His father was irritated, Mama had cut off the money, and the debt was piling up.

  “This anthropology stuff is crap. If you’re gonna waste your life? You come home and waste it in the kitchen, huh? What kind of raising did you get, chico? Family comes before everything else.” Those had been Papa’s final words just before he had slammed the receiver down.

  Some of the things said by the chair of Sam’s committee weren’t much better. Somewhere up there on that mountain, he was praying he would find the answer.

  How desperate was he?

  Enough that he had signed on to the project with Amber Sagan as the project director. Sure, she was a co-principal investigator on the Forest Service research permit with Dr. Holly, but—given the rumors about her history—she was also the scariest woman Sam had ever met.

  The Way it Worked

  Here’s the genius: Corrupt maybe ten percent of accounts, electronically adding money to some, emptying others. If you are VISA, Mastercard, or American Express, the careful balance between debit and credit can’t be trusted. The “big-six” banks can’t guarantee the accuracy of the balances in their depositors’ accounts. The only way to stem the damage is to freeze all credit transactions.

  Just four hours of cards not working, of more than a trillion dollars of transactions stopped, and America was in chaos.

  In a nation divided, where progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, Pro-life and Pro-choice, where second amendment and gun control, urban and rural, antifa and boogaloo, BLM and Proud Boys, were all battle lines, the stage was set: Americans already hated each other.

  The credit collapse struck the spark that set off the conflagration.

  — Excerpt from Breeze Tappan’s Journal.

  Chapter Five

  Here’s the bunks,” Bill Tappan said, pointing. The students stood in the “bunkhouse”. Rough-cut lumber had been nailed to the log walls to create a rack of beds three-high on either side of the room’s long axis. Each space had a mattress, no sheets. Sam thought it looked like something out of a prisoner-of-war movie.

  “And that’s a fold out,” Bill continued as he indicated a cabinet beneath the far window. “Makes things a mite cramped when it’s opened, but you can still sneak past.”

  The French windows at opposite ends of the room provided light, as did the trio of bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling ridgepole.

  “You won’t need to use the stoves,” Bill said, pointing to the cast-iron heat stoves at either end. “But if you get chilly, there’s baseboard electric heat. Just be sure to turn it off before you leave in the morning.

  “The toilet’s behind that door next to the table. Remember we’re on a septic system. TP’s okay, but paper towels, Kleenex, tampons and the like will plug it up. There’s a shower stall there, too. Um...my advice is don’t linger. Hot water heater’s kind of small.”

  He touched a finger to the brim of his battered hat as if in salute. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  They all watched him leave the room, his cowboy boots thumping hollowly on the plank floor.

  He was barely out of hearing before Shanteel asked incredulously, “This is not happening to me. Sleep here? Shiiiit!”

  As if someone had thrown a switch, Amber turned hard. “Yeah, we’re going to sleep here. And not a word. Not a single damn complaint from any of you, especially within hearing distance of the Tappans.”

  “I mean, this...” Kirstin was gesturing around at the wooden beds. “This is primeval.”

  Amber stepped in-her-face close, expression grim. “Believe me, kid, there’s a whole lot worse. When I was locked in...”

  Amber closed her eyes. Fought for control. She’d been a nurse for an NGO medical clinic in northern Syria when she was captured by ISIS. They held her in a basement prison outside Raqqa for most of a year before she had been rescued. She wore long sleeves and high collars so that people couldn’t see the scars.

  In a strained voice, Amber stated, “In the world of living quarters, this is a paradise.”

  To change the subject, Sam said, “Six beds, Amber. One fold out. Are you going to make assignments?”

  She seemed to catch herself on the verge of an explosion. “Call this the women’s dorm. Sam, you and the guys set up your tents on the grass out front.”

  “Out front?” Court whispered. “Didn’t he say something about bears? A mountain lion?”

  Amber whirled on him, voice deadly. “Any lion or bear comes by, it’ll have to deal with me.”

  Eyes went wide. They couldn’t tell if Amber was joking. Sam thought that for the most part, they were pitying any grizzly bear that might be willing to risk pissing her off.

  He had only seen Amber lose it once, in graduate seminar, when a visiting professor had been lecturing on cultural reaction to climate change. Some question about the Middle East had started him off on a defense of Islamic radicalism and the benefits of Shariah law. Amber had launched into him like a Saturn rocket, her blue eyes glittering, fists clenched, voice a half-strangled squeal. Like, she was out of her chair, headed for the speaker when Dr. Hammond and Dr. Don leaped up and escorted her out of the room.

  A lot of them had wondered what would have happened if she’d got her hands on the guy.

  Amber broke Sam’s reverie by saying, “We’ve got a couple of hours before lunch. Now, move, people.”

  Like a troop of Egyptians building the pyramids they tramped back and forth from the college van and Dylan’s truck, carrying sleeping bags, tents, coolers, backpacks, and suitcases.

  While Sam and the guys set up tents out front, they could hear the chatter from within the bunkhouse as the females picked bunks and unrolled their sleeping bags.

  Amber had insisted the crew put up their tents on the lawn behind the anthro building back on campus, had called it a trial run to be sure they knew how the tents went up and that all the pieces were there. Court, apparently, hadn’t been paying attention.

  The guy was twenty-two, brown eyes and hair, and just sort of loomed over things. Sam wouldn’t call him obese, but he was definitely over-weight. Court hailed from Greenwood, an up-scale suburb of Indianapolis.

  “You’re a computer science major,” Sam said as he helped him thread the poles through the loops on his tent. “What made you sign up for an archaeological field school?”

  Court gave him a sheepish grin as he perched on hands and knees on the grass. Think eager and oversized dog. “I lost a bet. I mean, it was more like a dare, you know? I lost at Pharaonic Curse.”

  “What’s that?”

  Something lit behind Court’s brown eyes. “A killer good game. Wish I’d designed it. You have to get into the pyramid, shoot all these tomb robbers trying to beat you to the treasure, and figure out the magical power that will nullify or destroy the Egyptian gods guarding the tomb. And then, if you get that far, you have to figure out how to get the gold out of the tomb. That’s the tricky part.”

  “So, how do you do that?”

  He grimaced. “That’s how I lost. Matt figured it out first. You assemble the chariot that’s in pieces on the tomb floor. And once you toss the mummy out, load the sarcophagus on the chariot and pack it with the treasure. Then you roll the loot out.”

  “After you dump the mummy out? I mean…Tomb robbing? You ever even taken an anthropology class?”

  He looked at Sam with clueless eyes. “No.”

  “Just a word of advice. Anthropologists don’t really get off on tomb robbing, Court. We call it looting. Think, like, big-time bad. Okay?”

  At Sam’s raised eyebrow, Court looked away. “I get your point. But dang, I thought I’d be turned down. I mean, I’d never had any of the prerequisites.”

  “Who needs prerequisites? Amber had to have a minimum of ten students or the university wasn’t going to approve the class. Like everything else in the world, it’s all about numbers and money.�
�

  “Oh,” Court murmured and watched Sam slip the pole into the loop on the tent floor. “Sam, you know, actually doing archaeology? Might give me just the edge on my next design. This could turn my whole career around.”

  “You ever been west before?”

  “Sure, Comicon in San Diego. Guess I’ll miss this year’s. And I go to the trade shows in San Francisco. You know, where they introduce the new games? If I can keep my 4.0 and win enough championships in the tournaments, there’s a chance that one of the companies will take me on as an intern. So much of the business is networking.”

  He looked around. Everyone was checking his or her phone. “Nobody’s getting cell service.”

  “Nope.”

  “A friend of mine was supposed to send me an upgrade of Death Soldier IV. It will be one of the games at the semi-finals. They’ve added a new dimension to the silicon zombies. I really have to get into the strategy and figure out how to take them down.”

  “It’ll be waiting when we come down off the mountain.”

  “I’ve never slept in a tent before.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Sam told him. But then, that could be said for all of them, couldn’t it?

  He stepped over to see that Dylan had his house in order and was rolling out his sleeping bag inside. Jon needed help with the complex crisscrossing of tent poles that gave the thing structural integrity. It ended up being a roomy dome.

  Jon had packed his guitar over, and the case was propped against the bunkhouse’s log wall. The guy was good. He played gigs in the bars and coffeehouses around campus, sometimes paid, but most often picking tunes for tips.

  Jon sat back on the grass, looking up at Sam with his wide brown eyes; the sun glinted in his long blond hair where it was pulled back in a ponytail. A first-year graduate student, he worked as a lab assistant in the zooarchaeology lab, got good grades, but had a reputation for a total lack of motivation.

  “Holy shit, look at that.” Jon’s eyes had gone wide.