McKean 02 The Neah Virus

by Thomas Hopp

  McKean nearly stuck his nose inside while Curtis played his light around the interior. “Ah!” McKean exclaimed, pointing a long index finger at the far corner. “A sword.” I craned my neck to look past McKean and spotted a tarnished metal object - narrow, slightly curved, and almost three feet long. It crossed the upper space of the box and lay across the pile of bones that had presumably been its owner.

  “Spanish, late seventeen-hundreds,” Curtis explained. “A basket of silvered metal filigree protecting the grip, green and black enamel on the scabbard. Military. Officer’s issue. Undoubtedly European and therefore not covered by NAGPRA.”

  McKean continued to peer inside the box. “So most Makahs must agree this grave is not subject to NAGPRA jurisdiction. Who’s been down to see it?”

  “Not too many people I know of,” said Curtis. “Out of respect for the dead - or fear. Pete Whitehall was the first, but he’s not a Makah. He’s a construction contractor from Forks, hired to bring his dozer here and clear the lot. When he saw what was down here, he fetched the land-owner, who got the Makah Museum involved. They contacted me.”

  “Anyone else been down here?” McKean asked.

  “Just that old coot, Gordon Steel. Came down and performed a ceremony a couple days ago. Chanting, drumming, some incantations to communicate with spirits. He came back up and declared that since it’s a Makah coffin, it’s a Makah burial no matter who’s inside. I pointed out the crypt isn’t like any other Makah grave and the remains don’t look like those of a Makah. See that?” He pointed his flashlight at the skull. “Gold-capped tooth.” One of the skull’s front teeth was covered in green tarnished metal that had once been bright gold. “I’m convinced the guy’s Spanish. And some Makahs agree. But Gordon Steel still says no.”

  McKean observed the gold cap carefully. “I suppose Steel argues the dental work was done on a Makah by the garrison’s surgeon and the sword was a gift from a Spaniard.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “Steel’s resistance is all the more reason to get my DNA sample quickly.” McKean pulled an orange-capped plastic test tube from an inner pocket of his field coat along with a pair of purple rubber gloves. He put on the gloves, retrieved a clear-plastic freezer bag from another pocket and took a large pair of forceps from it. He peered intently into the coffin. “Now then, Senor,” he addressed the skull, “if you don’t mind.”

  He reached his long arm into the box and gently probed the bones for a suitable spot from which to take a sample. While he did so a rumbling noise came down the staircase.

  “Hmm,” Curtis murmured. “I wonder why Pete’s firing up the dozer?” He handed me the flashlight and moved to the staircase. “I’ll go see what’s up.” He ascended the steps and squeezed out the opening, leaving me shining the light into the box while McKean probed the bones. A musty, dank stench came from the coffin. Another look at the skull’s hollow eye sockets and grinning teeth set me on edge. Bits of skin remained, grayed and tightened over the bones of the face. The eye sockets had eyelids within them, sunken and shriveled against the bone. Desiccated lips stretched away from the gaunt teeth. A few wisps of dark hair hung from the dome of the skull.

  “Hold the light steadier, please,” McKean said.

  “I’m trying,” I replied in a voice seemingly too small and spooked to be my own. In contrast to my reluctance to be in this place, McKean showed no hint of disgust or anxiety. Instead, he coolly described what he was doing. “Ah. Here we go. Right clavicle with several bone splinters adherent. I’ll just take a small bit with attached dried dermis.” He probed the forceps into the bone pile, gingerly pried loose a tiny fleck of bone, and then withdrew his hand from the coffin and dropped the bit inside the test tube. Then he sealed it one-handedly with the orange cap and put it back in his coat pocket. While the bulldozer rumbled louder above, he stripped the gloves off his hands and put them and the forceps in the pocket as well. “That’s it,” he said. “I took a piece just big enough for DNA analysis. No one’s ancestral spirit will miss it.”

  What had started as a faint rumbling above had grown to an earthquake-like vibration shaking the vault around us.

  “Is it coming this way?” I called to McKean as dust fell from between the ceiling stones.

  Above, Leon Curtis shouted, “Hey! Watch out!” I hurried up the staircase with McKean close on my heels. When my head emerged past the cover slab I gasped. Twenty feet away, the bulldozer’s blade was churning up a mountain of muck and pushing it straight at my face. Above the blade was an even more unnerving sight - Pete Whitehall tugged the steering levers with jerky, maniacal motions, his eyes wide with a demonic gleam. A taut grin on his mouth seemed to match the one I had seen on the skull. When Pete saw my head protruding from the hole, he accelerated the bulldozer.

  Curtis shouted again, but there was no need to warn of the all-too-apparent danger. As the blade and its pile of muck surged to within inches of my face, I stumbled backward down the steps to avoid decapitation and backed into McKean at the bottom of the staircase. He grabbed my coat sleeve and pulled me away from the muck spilling through the opening and blotting out the triangle of daylight above us. In my frantic haste, I dropped the flashlight. The torrent of mud, rocks and roots cascading down the steps quickly covered it. Cast into total darkness, we backpedaled to the far wall. As the colossus rumbled over us, it shook the crypt and the pit of my guts as well. I was certain we would be buried in suffocating muck. But once the bulldozer had run completely over us, the roar of its engine and the clank of its treads subsided. The slurch of inrushing mud stopped. We were left in relative silence with a mountain of earth rising to the ceiling and completely plugging the opening, blotting out any trace of daylight.

  “My God, Peyton,” I gasped, staring into the darkness where I thought he was standing. “We’re buried alive!”

  “Yes, we are,” McKean agreed in an unexpectedly calm voice, which came out of the blackness at right angles to where I thought he was.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Let’s wait to be rescued,” he replied in a calm and calculated tone.

  “No way!” I cried. My heart was pounding to the point of bursting. “We’re trapped in a black hole with a grinning corpse and snake-demons! I’m not waiting for anyone!” Leaving McKean to contemplate when and how rescuers might reach us, I threw myself at the pile of mud. I dug in with both hands to the elbow and pulled down masses of yielding muck. Soon, my arms and legs were completely smeared with clammy wet goo but the blackness around us remained absolute. “Maybe that shaman guy wants us buried,” I called back to McKean while I dug.

  “Maybe he does. But my advice is still to wait for help.”

  I kept at my task but each time I swept an armload of muck down, more replaced it from above, increasing my hopelessness and panic. After several minutes of futile digging, I sat down on the stone floor, panting, covered in muck, and almost frozen by the chill of the wet earth.

  “It’s a simple proposition, Phineus Morton,” McKean explained. “If Gordon Steel or some other Makah wants us to stay in this fix, then Leon may not be able to help us immediately. On the other hand, if Leon is free to act…”

  Clank! The sound of a shovel on stone came from above us. Seconds later, a small shaft of daylight shone in at the top of the steps.

  “You must be superhuman,” I wheezed at McKean as a hand in a black rubber glove pushed more mud aside. “How can you stay so calm?”

  “Fear is a useless sentiment,” McKean replied. “I try to avoid it.”

  Leon Curtis’s face appeared at the opening. “You guys all right?”

  I was too out of breath to speak, but McKean said calmly, “We’re doing just fine.”

  “Good,” said Curtis. His face vanished and the shovel reappeared, scraping mud off one step and then another, working down from the top. I joined in, pulling mud off the lower steps with both hands, unconcerned about my clothes, which were already wet and encased in muc
k. After a few minutes of mutual effort, the staircase was cleared and the crypt was lit by daylight again. McKean, now visible standing in a far corner, was calm and untouched by mud. He looked me up and down and smiled.

  When Curtis reached the bottom of the stairs, McKean asked him, “What happened up there?”

  “Pete Whitehall went nuts.”

  “Apparently so,” McKean remarked, deadpan.

  Curtis pulled off a glove and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of a hand. Then he turned to go up the steps. “C’mon,” he said. “I’m not sure what Pete’s gonna do next.”

  I slogged up the steps after Curtis, glad at least that we didn’t have to wriggle past the cover slab, which had been carried off by the bulldozer. Emerging into daylight, I looked around for the dozer and saw that it had run the length of the lot and stopped near the road.

  “He drove right over us!” I wheezed, still trying to calm my pounding heart.

  “Obviously not Pete Whitehall’s day,” McKean said from behind me. I expected McKean to be coated in as much muck as I. Instead, he emerged from the opening with his canvas field coat unmarred, his olive denim pants unbesmirched and his safari hat unsullied. In fact, there was no mark on his clothing at all to suggest he had been imprisoned in the same hellhole as I - with the exception of a small spot of mud on the toe of one of his hiking boots.

  He chuckled, appraising my condition. “Just look at you, Fin.”

  I glanced down at my body, which was encased in thick chocolate brown mud from chest to toe. Feeling a warm blush of humiliation rise in my face, I touched a cheek with mud-sodden fingers only to find the cheek already smeared with as much muck as the fingers that touched it.

  “That’s my friend Phineus Morton,” McKean quipped. “Never too shy to throw himself into the middle of the action.” He laughed heartily and Curtis joined in. I began to laugh too, struck by the ridiculousness of my condition and the stark contrast of McKean’s cleanliness.

  “You see, Fin,” McKean said between chuckles, “the second alternative was the correct hypothesis. There was no shamanistic spell cast, so logically, Leon was able to help us without hindrance.”

  I lifted my face to let a misty rain wash some of the mud from my cheeks. “Peyton McKean,” I muttered, “one of these days you really will get us killed.” I inhaled fresh sea air, beginning to regain my composure.

  McKean said, “I wonder what’s up with Pete Whitehall and the old man?” A glance at the bulldozer made my blood heat up. The machine was idling at the front of the lot and Pete Whitehall sat in the driver’s seat in an unnaturally stiff posture, his face hidden from us by the hood of his poncho. Gordon Steel stood nearby, saying something to Pete that was inaudible from our distance. The two ravens stood near him, cawing occasionally, as if they were joining in the conversation.

  Curtis cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, “Hey, Pete!” He got no reaction. Steel glared at us disdainfully.

  Rage replaced my fear. Without a plan in mind, I ran for the bulldozer along one of the tread-tracks it had left after running over us. McKean and Curtis followed, picking their way over the uneven ground more carefully. I sprinted, driven by fury that grew at every step. Steel turned to face me and appeared about to intervene. “Out of my way, old man!” I warned him as I moved onto the road and circled to the front of the bulldozer. I shouted at Pete Whitehall, “Hey, man! What’s your problem?”

  He didn’t reply. He sat rigidly, staring at the two ravens as if they were mesmerizing spirits in control of his mind. His hands gripped the steering levers tightly. A continuous tremor coursed through his body like an electric current running through him. His face was white as a sheet except the flesh around his eyes, which had taken on a sick hue somewhere between pink and purple.

  “Hey!” I shouted again. “I’m talking to you.”

  Curtis approached and put a big hand on my shoulder. “Easy, Fin. He doesn’t look too good.” Curtis called Whitehall’s name but got no response other than a quick, convulsive twitch of the man’s head to one side. After that, Whitehall resumed his forward stare at the ravens.

  “Peculiar behavior,” McKean said when he joined us. “Notice the dazed, absent look in his eyes, and how he blinks repeatedly?”

  “Does that mean something to you?” I asked.

  “Answer: no. Nothing obvious, anyway. But they’re peculiar symptoms when coupled with the pallor of his skin and that purple discoloration around his eyes.”

  Curtis climbed up on the treads beside Whitehall and switched off the ignition key. Even killing the engine got no reaction from the man. But when Curtis put a hand on Whitehall’s shoulder, the effect was immediate. Whitehall jolted to life, making a noise somewhere between a moan and a Frankenstein’s-monster growl. He lashed out with arms flailing and legs kicking, driving Leon down off the bulldozer.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I cried, shocked by the mad-dog look in his eyes.

  “Unclear,” McKean replied.

  “Oh, I think I know,” chortled old Gordon Steel, who stood off a few paces watching Whitehall. “He’s lost his soul.”

  “Quit talking like that!” growled Curtis, whose good humor had finally run dry. “You’re not helping!”

  “Bahh!” snapped the old man. “You don’t know nothing.”

  Whitehall, given a little room and some time, calmed down. He sat back in his seat and then shook himself. He glanced around in a disoriented way, like an immobilizing spell had just been broken. “Where - ?” he sputtered. “Wha - ?” The look on his face transitioned from vacant to confused. “How did I get here?” After a moment, he climbed down from the dozer in jittery, jumpy movements. Then he stood on the pavement with small tremors running through him. His head twitched involuntarily to the side again.

  McKean appraised him thoughtfully and then said, “You’d better see a doctor.”

  “Yeah,” Whitehall agreed. “I’m not feeling so hot.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I muttered.

  “Come with us,” said Curtis. “We’re going to the Makah Elder Center to show them the sample Peyton took. Somebody there can help you.” We turned and walked along the road toward the middle of town and Pete Whitehall fell in with us, trailing Leon like a whipped puppy. Old Gordon Steel stayed behind, chatting amiably with the ravens as if they were friends.

  “What’s up with him?” I whispered to McKean, eyeing Whitehall learily as he doddered along behind us.

  “Answer: uncertain,” McKean replied. “Delirium tremens, perhaps.”

  “DTs? From drinking?”

  McKean shrugged. “That’s my best guess, given limited data.”

  “He’s got to have the world’s worst hangover, then,” I said.

  McKean’s diagnosis did nothing to improve my attitude toward a man who had nearly killed me, but I let my anger cool as we walked the three-block distance along the shore drive to the elder center.

  Chapter 2

  On the way, our attention was diverted by a blaring noise and an odd sight. Across the bay, two boats were coming in from beyond the harbor’s mouth. The first was a wooden dugout canoe about twenty-five feet long, paddled fast by a crew of eight men. Not far off the canoe’s stern and dwarfing it was a ship shaped like a coast guard cutter but painted with eye-popping murals of spouting whales and leaping dolphins. She followed the canoe at an unsafe distance. Her engines streamed black smoke and a man’s voice crowed over her loudspeaker, “We stopped you today and we’ll stop you tomorrow. Makah whaling is history!”

  “That,” Curtis muttered, “is an unwelcome sight when I’m trying to be diplomatic. It’s the Righteous, flagship of Whales First.”

  “Ah, yes,” said McKean. “The anti-whaling protest group. Captained by Wayne MacGraw, the computer mogul. He’s worth billions. And his first mate is nearly as rich. Michael Cohen, the Hollywood movie magnate.”

  “Guaranteed to stir up hard feelings around here,” Curtis said.

&nbs
p; The two craft came straight for us but as they neared a small dock below the bank where we paused to watch, the Righteous veered away and slowed to a stop in the middle of the harbor. The paddlers brought their canoe in beside the dock and stopped by back-paddling. The canoe was an interesting craft, painted black on the outside and red on the inside. Its tall bowstem rose to a prow carved in the shape of a wolf’s head, while the pointed stern rose to a lesser height. On the sides of the bow - where ancient Greeks would have painted eye spots - the Makahs had carved and painted a red, black, and white design in geometric Northwest Coast style, depicting a Thunderbird with wings spread wide and a whale clutched in its talons. The boat, carved from a single huge log, was wide enough for two men to sit abreast on a half dozen cedar plank seats.

  Some of the debarking crewmen wore Tshirts and shorts. Others wore wetsuits, some peeled to the waist. Their shoulders, arms, legs, bare feet and faces were dark bronze, their long straight hair was dark brown or black. Some wore their hair in Indian braids or tied in a knot on top of their heads. Some wore woven cedar-bark hats, headbands or armbands.

  “Now, wait a minute,” I said. “I thought a court in San Francisco banned whaling by Makahs.”

  “Thanks to a lawsuit brought by MacGraw,” said Curtis. “Maybe you missed the fact that a Federal Appeals Court overturned that verdict just last week. So the whalers are back in action.”

  McKean said, “I’ve seen that canoe on TV. It’s the Makah Pride.”

  “Right you are,” said Curtis. “The Tribal Whaling Commission and the International Whaling Commission have given the crew permission to take a whale.”

  “Hence the protesters.” McKean pointed at the cutter, which was dropping anchors at its bow and stern.

  “The Righteous,” Curtis said ruefully, “is the floating home to the angriest bunch of whaling protesters you’re going to find. They’ll probably stay here for as long as the Makahs try to hunt whales. MacGraw, Cohen and their movie-star friends have deep pockets.”