SALIENT

by Simon Rosser

  “Is there a problem?” Tom asked.

  “Not really Tom. As suspected, the military have set up a checkpoint on the main route up. Bruce, the Channel Five kid, has been listening in for us. My father knows an alternative route about five miles up from our current location, takes us through the forest and right up to the base of the mountain, bypassing the main road. Nobody will know we’re there, unless they have radar or motion detectors.”

  “Sounds good,” Tom replied.

  They drove on for another ten minutes before Casey, in the lead Tacoma, braked and slowed. On the left side of the highway was a sloping grass bank, which appeared to lead nowhere. Casey drove his vehicle off the highway and down the bank, bringing it to a stop in an open area of grassland, some thirty feet away from the main road.

  The radio sprang to life again, and Arran grabbed it from the dashboard. “Follow me down, but be careful, it looks steeper than it is,” Casey’s voice cracked from the device.

  Arran manoeuvred the truck towards the bank and then drove, and half slid, down the bank and onto the flat grassy area, the two Mercedes trucks following slowly behind.

  With all the vehicles parked up, Arran, Tom, and Jess got out. Casey was already standing alongside his vehicle, observing the forest through a pair of binoculars. Richard Armstrong, Bruce, and Alicia, the make-up artist, got out of the trucks and walked over to join them.

  “Hey! Hello again, guys. It’s a great day for an adventure eh?” Alicia said, smiling.

  Armstrong strode over. “What’s the plan then?”

  Casey lowered the binoculars and handed them to Armstrong. “See that large fir tree directly ahead. Just to the left of it there’s a small opening. It doesn’t look large, but once we’re through, it opens up to an old mining route that leads directly up to the side of the mountain. It’s a bit bumpy, but we can avoid the military.”

  Armstrong looked through the binoculars, and after ten seconds or so nodded. “I see it. I like it,” he said, handing the binoculars to Tom.

  Tom looked through the binoculars in the direction of the large pine tree and noted a natural arch formed by the trees, which opened into a dark space beyond. The route was all but invisible to any vehicles that might pass along the highway.

  “Where exactly are we heading?” Tom asked.

  Casey stretched his arms. “Well, we’ll be setting up base around mid-point between the camp site where you guys were attacked and the eastern flank of the mountain. It’s a remote location, part of a hundred-year-old mining trail. The creature is unlikely to be anywhere near where we’re going.”

  “Well I hope it's not anywhere near the mining trail either!” Jess said.

  Tom felt his smartphone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out. Gerry’s name was displayed on the screen, and the start of a long text message appeared below it.

  “Okay guys, let’s get a move on,” Armstrong said, heading back to the truck. “We'll follow you up.”

  Casey nodded and headed back over to his Tacoma.

  “Don’t worry Jess; these guys have enough firepower to stop a small army. Come on, I’ve just had a text through from Gerry,” Tom said, as they followed Arran back to the vehicle.

  Arran pulled off after his father, negotiating the vehicle around a fallen tree and proceeding under the low, pine tree canopy, and into the dark forest beyond. The film crew following slowly behind.

  Tom pulled his phone out and opened the text message from Gerry.

  JESUS, TOM, I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT I'VE JUST BEEN TOLD. I CHECKED IN WITH MATT OVER AT SETI. HE CONFIRMED THAT A SIGNAL HAS INDEED BEEN DISCOVERED. THE SOURCE OF IT APPEARS TO BE A GLACIAL REGION ON THE EASTERN FLANK OF MOUNT SHASTKA, NEAR THE COBALT RIDGE GLACIER. THE SIGNAL APPEARS TO TERMINATE ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON. BUT THERE’S MORE. A SECOND SIGNAL HAS JUST BEEN DETECTED CLOSE TO THE POINT AT WHICH THE FIRST SIGNAL TERMINATES, APPARENTLY DIRECTED AT THE CONSTELLATION OF CASSIOPEIA, 21 LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH. TOM, THIS IS MASSIVE! THIS AND WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU GUYS LAST NIGHT, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!

  Tom had to read Gerry’s message twice to make sure he understood it properly. This is crazy. He showed the text to Jessica. “Unbelievable, eh? It confirms what Bruce overheard the military saying.”

  Suddenly, the truck hit something large, jostling them about in the seat. “Sorry, fallen tree; didn't see it,” Arran apologised, slowing down a little.

  They continued following Casey along the overgrown track, which was only just wide enough for the vehicles to travel along. Dense pine forest stretched out on either side of the hidden route, blocking out any view from main highway.

  Arran’s radio squawked to life and he pulled it from the dashboard. It was his father.

  “Yep okay Pa, understood,” he said, returning the handset.

  “We’re about two miles past Pine Crags now. There’s an old mining hut and mineshaft coming up where an old wooden bridge crosses one of the tributaries of the Sacramento River. We need to stop and check the integrity of the bridge before proceeding over,” he said.

  Five minutes later, Arran pulled up behind his father’s vehicle and cut the engine. They climbed out of the vehicle. A fragrant smell of fresh pine filling the air. The two Mercedes trucks stopped a short distance behind and their engines fell silent, allowing an eerie calm to descend. Just a faint gushing sound from the river a short distance away drifted across and permeated the surrounding forest.

  Tom looked around. To their right was an old steel corrugated hut, overgrown with creepers that rose from the forest floor. Directly ahead he could make out the wooden bridge that traversed the small tributary of the Sacramento River, the reason they'd all stopped. Casey was already heading towards it.

  “Come on, let’s take a look,” Tom said, taking Jessica’s hand.

  Arran grabbed his sawn-off shotgun from the front passenger seat and they followed him towards the bridge.

  When they arrived at the old bridge, Tom could see the reason for Casey’s concern. The old timber that formed the structure of the bridge had badly rotted and was covered in lichen for the most part. A sizeable hole where the timbers had completely perished had formed on the left side of the span, about quarter of the way across. There was no way the Mercedes trucks would get across.

  “Any problem?” Richard Armstrong’s deep Welsh voice made Tom and Jessica jump.

  “Yeah, looks as if we might have to do a bit of repair work,” Casey said, checking his watch.

  “Well come on then, let's get it sorted,” Armstrong replied, looking around them all, and the quiet, dense forest beyond.

  CHAPTER 12

  September 18, 3.45 P.M.

  TWO AND A half miles southeast of their location, through the forest, a U.S. Army truck was parked on the side of the mountain highway; its eight occupants had been busy setting up a small temporary guard post together with a lever controlled barrier, which now blocked the route up. Four soldiers were offloading supplies from the rear of the truck; prefabricated sections that would form a small, but solid, and quickly erectable sleeping hut.

  Two of the soldiers lit up cigarettes and started inspecting the side of the highway; the other two were still erecting what was about to become a guard post. One of the soldiers, with the name Ed Eastern sewn onto his green and brown forest- camouflaged jacket, pulled his standard issue Iridium Extreme PTT satellite phone from his belt, and tapped in a ten-digit number. The phone connected after five seconds. “Sir, its Sergeant Eastern. Check-point Alpha is secure and up and running. No problems as yet,” he confirmed.

  He nodded and ended the call. “They’re setting up a check point close to the town, so we should be pretty quiet up here. Nobody gets through unless they have direct clearance from Major Grant himself,” Eastern confirmed.

  The other soldier nodded, adjusted his sunglasses and pulled his M14 from the gun rack. “No problem Sarge. Let’s go and join the guys for a smoke,” he said.

  “That might do it,” Casey puffed,
as he tied the last piece of rope he had around the most appropriate diameter tree branches the five of them had helped gather from the surrounding area.

  “Okay, I think we’re just about done,” he said, wiping mud from his hands on an old towel he’d taken from his truck.

  Tom checked the time. It was approaching 2.30 p.m., the repair job having taken almost two hours to complete.

  “Okay, let’s get moving. Dickie, you take the trucks over first so we can keep an eye on the bridge,” Casey shouted. “Once we’re all over, we follow the winding route through the forest to our camp site. It’s about four miles farther up.”

  “Okay,” Armstrong said, heading back over to the truck. “You guys can cross by foot, keep the weight down.”

  Alicia and the two other members of the film crew; cameraman Doug Scott, and lighting technician John Adams headed back to the trucks. The two fresh-faced guys were in their mid-twenties, and virtually straight out of university. Getting to ride along on this trip was the experience of a lifetime for them.

  “Bruce, you can follow me over,” he added, as he jumped into the van.

  Armstrong pulled the Mercedes up to the flimsy, wooden bridge, that must have been constructed using wood from the surrounding forest a hundred years ago, and very carefully edged onto it. Tom looked on. The drop to the river below was only ten feet or so, but if the thing collapsed, it would be the end of their trip, and the documentary, especially if all the filming and recording equipment ended up in the ravine.

  The wooden bridge sections creaked as the heavy truck crept onto the structure. Casey and the others watching as the passenger side wheels rolled over the make-shift repair they’d carried out.

  A loud and sudden, crack, emanated from one of the thinner branches as it snapped under the weight of the truck.

  “Hold it!” Casey screamed, as he and the others checked to make sure the repair was going to hold. After inspecting the snapped section, Casey waved Armstrong safely over to the other side.

  “Nice work, boys and girls,” Casey said, a large grin returning to his face for the first time in two hours.

  Bruce pulled up in the second truck and they waved him over. Casey and Arran then drove the Tacoma’s over.

  The journey thereafter was uneventful, apart from the vehicles having to swerve around the odd item of equipment left over from the route’s one-hundred-year-old history as a copper mine. Old lanterns, steel buckets, and even an old, discarded ivy-covered mining cart littered the route. Tom assumed the tracks it had run on had long since been removed, the steel no doubt recycled into something else, or maybe stolen.

  After another ninety minutes of driving up a fairly steep incline, they reached a small, level clearing in the forest. Mount Shasta rose up out of the pine trees almost directly ahead, its snow covered flanks in stark contrast to the surrounding forest, which stretched out like a verdant expanse to the small town and the valley below.

  The three of them jumped out to stretch their legs. As Tom got out he noticed another old metal shack close to the edge of the forest, thinking it probably concealed the entranced to an old mineshaft. He made a mental note to go and take a closer look later on. The Mercedes trucks nosed up to each other and their engines fell silent a short distance away.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Jessica, who’d been fairly quiet since they’d left the bridge.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. No offence, but I’d just rather be home with my family right now to be honest,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “I know. I did give you the option to go home though,” The excitement of Gerry’s earlier text message was still fresh in his mind. Nothing else seemed important right now. He was hungry to find out what the hell was going on, and being close to the mysterious signal source overrode anything else.

  “Let’s just get this documentary done and have a bit of an adventure along the way. We’ll be home in no time. The four of us came out here for adventure. We owe it to Conner and Madison to see this through don’t we?” he said.

  “I guess,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes.

  Armstrong and Bruce started unloading items of film equipment from the back of one of the Mercedes trucks. Tom watched them unload two movie cameras, complete with tripods, and some lighting equipment, which the brunette, Alicia, carefully lowered onto a flat area of grass. She then went back to the truck and fetched what looked like more film equipment and a couple of small trunks.

  Casey removed a large hold-all from his truck and unzipped the top. Inside were a number of black radio-alarm clock sized devices. He tipped them out on the ground and arranged them in a row, twelve of them in all. “Guys, can you give me a hand with these,” he asked.

  “What are they?” Jessica enquired.

  “Motion sensor detectors. We need to attach them to the trees, say four feet off the ground, at equal distances around the clearing. They will pick up anything of significant size that approaches the camp,” he added.

  Jess looked at Tom. "I hope he's not seriously expecting anything to turn up?" she said, anxiety returning to her voice.

  “Don't worry; it will help alert us to any animal, especially bears, that might stray too close to the clearing. I seriously can't imagine that thing showing up again, but if it does we’ve got guns this time to deal with it if necessary,” Tom replied, trying to allay Jess’ fears.

  He wasn’t surprised she was frightened; he wasn’t exactly feeling relaxed by any stretch of the imagination, but his scientific mind was ruling over his emotions and doing a good job of suppressing most of his fear.

  An hour later and Casey and his son had set up all the motion detectors in a large oval around the small clearing, using the adjustable plastic straps to fix the devices to suitable pine trees surrounding the site.

  “Okay, let's record some footage. Tom and Jessica, can you come over here? Alicia will make sure you both look good. It's just a few straightforward questions for the intro,” Armstrong said, thrusting a laminated A4 card with a set of questions which had pre-typed responses on it, briefly detailing the events of the night before. “Are you happy with what's written on the sheets?” he asked them.

  Tom studied the questions and responses. There wasn't anything too controversial, just details of their journey, time and details of where they'd set up camp, what they’d seen etc., stuff they'd discussed the evening before.

  “No, all looks okay,” Tom said, shrugging at Jess, who nodded her agreement.

  “Okay, good. If you guys can stand over here, we'll capture the clearing and the top of the volcano rising from the pine forest. It looks perfect,” Armstrong said.

  Tom and Jess did as instructed.

  “Let's roll,” Armstrong shouted, to Doug and John who were already behind the cameras.

  Armstrong then moved across them and in front of the camera being managed by John. “This is Richard Armstrong bringing you one of the most exciting editions of, ‘The Planets Greatest Mysteries’, directly on location in the pine forests of Mount Shasta, in the Cascade Mountain Range here in Siskiyou County, California, USA.”

  Armstrong then took Tom and Jess through the questions on the sheet whilst the two cameras rolled. Five minutes later they were done.

  “That wasn't too bad was it? You both did well,” Armstrong said, nodding at Alicia. “We’ll edit the entire thing back in the U.K. and you can see the final version before we sign it off,” he added.

  “Fine,” Tom said, nodding at Jess.

  “Okay, let’s get our tent pods set up, then we can relax a little, plan the next forty-eight hours that we have up here,” Casey shouted from where he was standing by his vehicle.

  Forty minutes later, Casey and Arran had set up two robust-looking four-man tent pods, complete with plastic windows and hard plastic doors. They looked almost solid, certainly less flimsy than the tents he and Jess had slept in the night before, but by no means good enough protection against that thing if it decided to return.

  “What a
bout you guys?” Casey shouted over to Armstrong, as he slotted the final door into a set of solid plastic-moulded hinges.

  “Our accommodation is courtesy of Channel Five. Luxury bunk beds and goose feather quilts in the back of these mothers,” Armstrong replied, patting the Merc’s hood.

  “You think we’d be staying in tents with that bloody Bigfoot roaming around?” Alicia said, grinning.

  “Okay, okay, enough idle chit chat,” Casey said, let's get dinner on the go. I'm sure everyone's hungry," he added.

  It was approaching 6 p.m. by the time they were all seated around the fire, which was now glowing brightly in the middle of the clearing, crackling and popping as the wood burnt.

  Tom sensed a growing feeling of Deja Vu from the evening before, which he pushed to the back of his mind.

  Thirty minutes later, and Alicia started serving everyone some thick, vegetable stew, which she’d been cooking.

  “I never knew about your hidden talents,” Armstrong said, spooning some of the stew into his mouth.

  “Yeah well there’s lots you don’t know about me. I used to live on a farm remember. My sisters and I often cooked our ‘Grampa Johns’ stew. Good isn’t it?” she said, smugly.

  “Fills a hole,” Bruce said, smiling, a white cable trailing from one of his ears, the other end of which was plugged into a shoe-box sized device by his side. A large aerial extended out at a forty-five degree angle from it.

  “Don’t you ever stop eavesdropping,” Alicia retorted.

  “Someone has to do it.”

  Alicia forced a smile and raised her middle finger at him.

  “So, I know it's not easy for you guys, but can you tell us again exactly what happened two nights ago up here?” Armstrong asked, clicking his fingers at John, who grabbed his handheld video camera from by his side in response.