by Ann Gimpel
She bit her lower lip. No point dancing around the issue. Not detonation, a dry rather clinical term, but bombs. The noise on Mount Darwin sounded like bombs, and maybe that’s what they’d really been.
“Crap. Crap. Crap. What the hell is going on?”
Jake whined sympathetically and moved closer to her. She arranged her sleeping bag, laying it out on a foam pad on the hut’s floor, before leaning into the dog’s warmth. Things had only gotten creepier since her retreat into the hut. Another shudder racked her, and she got inside the bag, trying to regroup.
She’d been in tough situations before. Hell, backcountry life was one tough situation after another, but she’d never felt so out of control.
Right after the ship left her line of sight, she’d retrieved her mostly-erected tent and shoved it sideways through the door of the hut. Once it was upright on the stone floor, she’d gone back outside and tossed her other belongings—scattered on the dirt, snow and rocks—after the tent. It didn’t take a genius IQ to understand there was something about the stones of the hut that masked her presence from whatever was in that ship.
The next day, Sara packed up at first light and headed anxiously down the trail with Jake at her heels. She hadn’t gotten a quarter of a mile, though, before the dog began to whine. Scanning the surrounding mountains, she didn’t see a thing—until she glanced upward. The ship, the fucking abomination of a ship, was on its way back. With the memory of the vaporized pica fresh in her mind, Sara sprinted up the switchbacks toward the hut. Fear clawed at her, making her stomach ache. As she ran, she fought against a helplessness that threatened to immobilize her. Once she and Jake got back to the hut, she sat inside it for a long time, trembling.
They’d beaten the ship to Muir Pass by the narrowest of margins, not an experience she was anxious to repeat.
Days passed.
Four long days, where it required every ounce of Sara’s willpower not to simply take her chances and make a dash for freedom. Despite trying the radio regularly, it never came back to life. There were other things that worried her too. Like no other hikers on the Muir Trail. It was only mid-September and there should’ve been at least twenty to thirty backpackers on that part of the trail each day. She remembered the wilderness permit rosters transmitted via satellite to McClure Meadows daily. Yes, there certainly should have been hikers. There weren’t any airplanes, either. This part of the Sierra was on an east-west flight trajectory across the country. Normally, planes passed over regularly.
Sara experimented. The longest she was able to stay outside, before the ship reappeared on the horizon, was sixty-five minutes. Sixty-five minutes wouldn’t even get her back to Evolution Lake. She needed at least two hours to make the nine-and-a-half miles to McClure, and that would have to be running, not walking.
Lying in her sleeping bag at night, she wondered if it was the same ship. If there were more than one of them, what did that mean? Had the United States been attacked by alien life forms? Was that why there were no other hikers and nothing else in the sky?
...I tried to leave, but the ship chivvied me back. I don’t mind telling whoever may be reading this, I’ve never been so frightened—ever. And I don’t scare easy. If it hadn’t been for Jake, I would’ve really lost it. By the fourth day, I was running out of food and fuel for my stove. No fuel meant no water. Jake was out of kibbles. He was pretty handy at catching rodents, but I had to do something. And that something meant leaving the hut. I didn’t know if I’d be smarter making a run for my cabin at McClure, or if I should head for the LeConte Ranger Station, two-and-a-half miles closer. If I got lucky, I just might be able to make the seven miles downhill to LeConte in ninety minutes. My other option was to climb out over Echo Col and head for Lake Sabrina where there was a paved road and, maybe, people.
I thought about it a lot that night. The next morning thunderhead clouds brewed on the western horizon. I didn’t know if the alien craft could see though cloud cover, but I packed up everything to be ready and, for the first time since I was a child, I prayed. Not to any sort of organized type of deity, just to whatever might be out there listening to a forty-something woman, who desperately needed help.
By ten, the clouds were thick, and it started to snow. This weather might give us our only chance to escape. We’ll be heading toward LeConte since it’s closest, and likely to have food. I’ll bring these pages with me and add to them as I can...
Chapter Two
Wondering if she’d ever see the Muir Hut again, Sara pelted down the trail, careful not to twist an ankle on the slick, wet rocks. She scanned the skies anxiously, but the clouds were so dense she had trouble seeing the trail at times, let alone what was above her. Keeping a close eye on her watch, she was grateful when she passed the small string of no-name lakes below Wanda Lake in forty minutes and got herself below timberline shortly thereafter. She figured it would be much harder for the ship to find her and Jake as the protective canopy of the forest thickened.
Panting, and dripping with sour-smelling sweat, Sara followed the winding side trail to the LeConte station and banged peremptorily on the door. She wasn’t surprised no one answered, but she was taken aback to find the door locked. LeConte should still be manned. While a station was manned, it was always left open, unless the Ranger left a note telling travelers where to find him. The board by the door, magic marker dangling by its string, was blank. Heart thrumming like a trip hammer; she yanked her pack off her back and dug into the recesses of the top compartment for the master key that unlocked all the stations. As soon as she got the door open, she called for Jake, who’d gone off to hike his leg against a tree.
What she found inside shocked her. Sara knew Stuart Palmer. He’d spent just about as many years at LeConte as she had at McClure. Of an evening, they often spoke on the radio. A wiry, mousy character, Stuart—with his bald head and sharp, dark eyes—was always neat as the proverbial pin, yet his station looked as if a tornado had blown through it. Papers, dishes, clothing, and park paraphernalia mingled together on the rough, wooden floor. Sara’s tolerance for clutter was pretty high, but the stark departure from normalcy in that small cabin made the mess appalling.
“What the fuck happened here?” she blurted, casting about for something, anything, to explain the chaos. Jake bounded into the hut then stopped cold as he, too, seemed to sense the wrongness troubling his mistress.
Sara pushed her pack inside. Drawing the door shut to keep the snow-rain mix out, she stepped gingerly through the mess and stripped off her parka, shaking it briskly over the stone hearth. When it was as dry as she thought it could get, she hung it on a hook near the cold stove. Next she laid and lit a fire. Thank God there was kindling and wood near the stove. At least that part of Stuart’s tidiness was intact. She pulled Jake’s pack off, pumped some water for him from the kitchen sink, and culled through Stuart’s debris for clues, staring with the corner where the radio was.
Without much hope, she tried to raise headquarters, but all she got for her efforts was static. When she began reading the dispatches, though, her heart fluttered oddly and her knees buckled, depositing her unceremoniously on the floor.
There had been an attack, a major one. Alien ships—squadrons of them—had bombed both the east and west coasts. Pandemonium reigned.
As best as she could tell from thumbing through dispatches that had begun right about the time Lonnie ordered her to check out Muir Pass, millions were dead. Everyone who wouldn’t surrender to the aliens and adopt their lifestyle—whatever that meant—had been killed. Apparently Earth’s world leaders had reneged on some sort of ultra-secret intergalactic trade agreement. But the dispatches stopped right after mentioning it, so she couldn’t figure out what the aliens were so upset about.
Sara’s fingers trembled as she clutched the flimsy pieces of paper. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. No wonder her radio hadn’t worked atop the pass.
“Aw, shit,” she groaned, wiping her eyes. “Are Jake and I t
he only ones left?”
Stumbling to her feet, she dropped the radio transmissions in an untidy heap. It felt as if she were choking as she moved to the rear of the cabin and pried open the door to the subterranean cellar that was part of every ranger station. Realizing she’d need light, she retreated to scrabble through her pack, extracting her headlamp. Reassured somewhat by its warm, yellow glow, she let herself down the ladder to take stock of what Stuart had left.
It turned out he left pretty much everything. Sara let out a breath she wasn’t even aware she’d been holding as she shined her light over tidy rows of canned goods and dried, backpacking foods. In another corner of the cellar was a regulation chain saw and two five-gallon cans of fuel. Hefting first one, then the other, she was relieved to find them mostly full. Stuart likely hadn’t had too many fires this summer as it had been pretty warm.
Lucky for me, she thought, realizing she was planning to stay at LeConte...at least for now. What choice did she have?
Sara checked the ammo shelf. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath. Her luck, which had been running pretty strong that day all-in-all, had just petered out. Stuart had taken his service revolver and virtually all the ammunition. She had her gun and about twenty shells, but it wouldn’t be worth much after she ran out of bullets. Scanning the floor for strays that might’ve fallen off the shelf, she lectured herself grimly about making every shot count when she went hunting.
She needed to eat before she could figure much more out, so she snagged two cans of pork and beans—one for her and one for Jake—some freeze-dried fruit, and a box of tapioca before heading back up the ladder.
Once her belly was full, really full for the first time in days, she dragged the big pot from the back of the woodstove over to the pump and filled it. As water heated on the stove, she stripped off her clothes, determined to clean nearly a week’s worth of sweat and grit off her body. Dumping her clothes into the pot once she was done bathing, she searched for a comb to untangle her hair. Stuart had one, along with a small hand mirror.
The face that stared back at her was disturbing. Familiar, yet not. The blue-gray eyes were the same, but her cheeks were sunken. Lots more lines radiated out from her eyes than before she’d left her cozy lair at McClure. Where had the fine gray streaks in her dark hair come from?
“Damn!” she sputtered. “I look five years older than I did a week ago.”
And that, sister, is the least of my problems.
“Thanks,” she told her inner voice. “You can keep your opinions to yourself.”
She hauled a change of clothes out of her pack, layered one of Stuart’s jackets over her long john top, and went to wring out her laundry. She’d spent enough of her life in situations where survival was iffy to know she needed to focus on the present. She had food and shelter for herself and her dog. It was more than she’d had that morning and, since she was flat out of other options, it would have to be enough.
...It’s been a week since Jake and I ended up here, and I haven’t been keeping this journal up like I meant to. I’ve been pretty busy. If winter comes early—and it could—I need meat for Jake and me and firewood. So far, I’ve cut and split about four cords of wood. I haven’t done as well with the meat side of things. I never was much of a shot at a moving object. It’s a bit late in the game for target practice, so I guess I just need to do better at finding animals that are standing still. I did set some traps I found in the back of the station. That netted us a few marmots. And I caught and salted some fish. If I could just get a couple deer, that would likely last us through the cold season.
I still try the radio once a day. It recharges via solar panels, so no worries about running out of juice. No one ever answers. Some days I’ve had to remind myself to do the radio. It would be a shame if someone was there, and I missed them because I got lazy. Still no backcountry travelers, but as the season grows later, I’m less and less hopeful. From time to time, I’ve tried to tell myself this whole attack thing was bogus, but I know that’s just a fairy tale to make myself feel better.
It took several hours to get things in order here at LeConte. I read through all the radio dispatches, then arranged them chronologically by the date and time they came in. I picked up everything, and the place is clean enough Stuart wouldn’t find fault with me if he came back.
I wish he would—come back that is. I always thought I didn’t like people very well, but when I let myself think about, maybe, being one of the only humans left on earth, it makes me crushingly sad...
Toward the end of their second week at LeConte, Sara took stock of the fact that she and Jake had been out-of-doors for hours nearly every day. There hadn’t been even one ship in the sky. She hadn’t seen any since leaving Muir Pass, and she’d certainly looked. The first few days she’d been so focused on the sky, it had been difficult to get anything accomplished.
She wondered if being well below timberline in a thick, evergreen forest might be the reason, and decided to try the radio once again. This time, to her amazement, it crackled to life, and Lonnie’s voice came over loud and clear.
“Sara, that you, sweetie? We were all wondering what happened to you. I sent someone to McClure, but they came back and told us it looked as if you never returned there. Where are you, anyway? We need to clear out the forest before winter.”
“Lonnie? Oh, Lonnie,” she managed, before dissolving into tears.
“Sara, what’s happened to you?” Lonnie’s gruff voice was filled with concern. “I’ve never heard you cry before, pumpkin.”
“I...I...” She didn’t know where to begin, so she started with the simple questions. “What happened to Stuart?”
“Uh, his wife was in an automobile accident. He raced out of there in a godawful hurry since the doctors weren’t sure she was going to make it.” A long silence, then, “Is that where you are? LeConte?”
She stiffened. An accident wouldn’t have been a reason for Stuart to take all the ammunition. Rangers used their guns so infrequently, she’d been known to leave McClure without a weapon. A hard, cold edge of suspicion bit deep.
Divulging just where she was seemed like a bad idea. A very bad idea.
“Sara?”
“Yes, I’m still on the air.”
“So, where are you?”
“I—I’m not sure I want you, or anyone else, to know.” Silence sat heavy between them for so long, she checked the bars on her radio to make sure they were still connected.
“Okay-ay,” Lonnie said finally in a probing, single, drawn-out word Sara didn’t like much.
“I, uh, I’m going to sign off for now,” she said, severing the connection and turning off the set. It had an emergency override. She stared hard at the radio, half expecting Lonnie to engage the emergency frequency to call her back. But the only thing she heard was the sound of her own ragged breathing. Even though she hadn’t told Lonnie where she was calling from, she was sure he could figure it out. It had been incredibly stupid of her to ask about Stuart. Nothing like a dead giveaway.
Riding on intuition, she gathered up Jake, a jacket, and her gun, then went to a tree she was using for a hunting blind about a hundred yards away.
Sure enough, within half an hour she heard the whump of helicopter blades. Resisting an urge to just shoot the chopper out of the sky when it got low enough, she forced herself to wait. What if she was mistaken? What if there was something wrong with her, and this past month had been some bizarre mental breakdown on her part?
Nope. That doesn’t explain the radio transmissions, or Stuart’s precipitous departure with all the ammo.
The helicopter banked, hovered, and then finally landed. What came out of it made her breath catch in her throat and almost stopped her heart. Pulling Jake close, she motioned the big dog to silence. Lonnie and Stuart stood in the yard in front of the LeConte station looking about. Lonnie even called out, “Princess?” When she didn’t answer, the two bent close, talking with one another.
Ther
e was something grotesquely wrong with them. Their faces were the same, but those familiar heads were attached to reptilian bodies with short, squat rear legs and long tails. Sharp red-tipped talons glistened on dinosaurish forelegs, and the pale autumn sun shone off copper-colored scales covering their trunks and extremities. How the hell had they managed to fly the chopper? She swallowed down bile. The low hum of their voices was so chilling, she fought an almost irresistible urge to run.
Finally understanding the reality of what she was facing, Sara gave Jake the hand sign that meant stay. Jaws clenched so her teeth wouldn’t rattle and give her away, she scooted silently closer to the two men—or whatever they were. It was easy because they faced away from her. Taking two deep breaths, she raised her Colt, clasped in both hands to shooting stance, and aimed for their heads. She’d have to be fast and sure. Whoever she didn’t shoot first was sure to rush her.
As first Lonnie’s, then Stuart’s, heads dissolved in twin sprays of gore, Sara shut her eyes against the horror of what she’d just done. Gulping down air, she strode to the helicopter, with Jake hard at her heels, growling. Thank God he’d stayed put while she was shooting. Unsure whether the two abominations had been the sole occupants of the chopper, she kept her gun up, ready to annihilate anything that moved.
It only took a few seconds to determine Lonnie and Stuart had been alone. Relief that she wasn’t going to die—at least not today—spilled through her as she walked toward the bodies. Pushing at one of the strange corpses with a booted foot, she muttered, “Here’s food for us, if I can find something to cut through those hides.”
As if to test her assumption about the bodies being edible, Jake was already licking up blood and nibbling at a thread of something that turned her stomach if she looked too close.
