“Yes, I’ve got it logged,” he said. “I’ll get the trap-cams set up. How long until dinner?”
“Always worried about your stomach.” Lauren rolled her eyes at him, grinning.
“I think it’s Lauren’s night to cook, right?” Rowan winked at Jean-René. “I can pull the cast when it’s dry. Why don’t you go start dinner?”
Lauren’s eyes flamed, as did her cheeks. “Do you think I’m your wife or chef or something?” She narrowed her eyes, staring them both down. She spoke intentionally to their Director of Photography and avoided looking at Rowan.
“It’s only because you’re such a good cook,” Rowan said, clearly letting the comment go.
She softened. “Was someone going to start me a fire?”
“Bahati is in charge of setting up base camp, and that includes getting a fire going,” Rowan said. “I don’t smell smoke yet.”
“Why can’t she cook dinner? Oh, right ... she can’t cook. My bad.” Lauren rose, turning away from the casting. “What sounds good?”
“Red beans and rice,” Jean-René and Rowen said in unison. It was always what they asked for when it was Lauren’s turn to cook.
“Red beans and rice it is,” she said, pulling on her backpack. “Make sure you bag it and fill out the chain of custody records,” she called back.
“Do I look like a rookie to you?” Jean-René asked. She flipped him off over her shoulder as she headed back to base camp.
* * *
Bahati had set up the tents in a semi-circle around the fire. A pile of wood had been collected by the team and sat ready for a fire to be built.
“They sent you to camp to cook, didn’t they?” Bahati asked. She swore under her breath, but all Lauren heard was, “Men.”
“No kidding,” Lauren said. “Where’s the chow locker?”
“Over by Jean-René’s tent. I found a tree stump that would make a nice stool or prep table. Looks like loggers have been through here before.”
Lauren studied the stump and nodded. “It’s been a while.” She started building a fire. “Funny how some place so isolated from the world has ever seen man’s touch ... yet, here’s proof.”
“There’s no wild planet left anymore,” Bahati agreed, putting bed rolls out in each tent.
A blood-curdling cry broke the stillness of the afternoon and reverberated in the pines. The trembling of the branches made the needles fall like snow. They froze, wide eyes locked on one another. Bahati scrambled into the tent, spinning around on her hands and knees. Her eyes widened and her skin seemed darker against the white of her frightened gaze. Lauren rose, turning her head in the direction of the sound.
Jean-René appeared with the cameras rolling to catch her reaction as she searched for the source of the eerie cry. “You guys heard that?”
“What was it?” Bahati asked. “Wolves?”
“That was no wolf,” Lauren said. She would know. She spent several years in Yellowstone studying the wolf population when she was doing her internship as researcher for PBS on the science program, Nova. She’d filmed wolf populations in Alaska as well. If there was one animal she knew better than any other, it was the wolf.
“What was it, then?” Bahati’s voice trembled, and dwindled to a frightened squeak when the somber cry broke the trees again. Birds scattered and the woods went quiet.
Lauren reached for the dart pistol on her belt, loosened the clasp, but kept it holstered. Her eye went to the locker she knew contained a can of bear mace. The dart gun should be enough, but she only had two shots before she would have to reload. The mace would be easy to reach, but would it be as effective on a cryptid as it was on a bear?
“That was closer.” Jean-René’s voice was strong, but Lauren recognized his growing concern by his thickening accent. He moved in, still keeping the camera on the women. Bahati huddled in her tent, while Lauren stood fixed, ready for battle.
“Where are the digital recorders?” Lauren asked. Bahati scrambled out of the tent to one of the piles of packs that had been hauled up the mountain on the backs of the technicians and Sherpas who accompanied the team. They established a base camp where most of the support crew would remain while the production team continued on, carrying only what they needed on their backs. It kept unnecessary parties from ending up in a camera shot but left them close enough to provide additional support if needed.
Bahati brought her one. Lauren clicked it on. “We’re in the Cascade Mountains in central Washington State on the lower fringes of Mount Saint Helens.” She hesitated when the howling reverberated again, this time to her left. Still distant, the creature was obviously on the move...or there was more than one.
“Camera rolling,” Jean-René said. Lauren nodded and set the voice recorder on the stump.
“Is it possible,” she asked, still watching the tree line cautiously, “that a giant, hairy creature called Bigfoot could inhabit the forested lands of our planet? Many people think so. This reclusive, unpredictable animal is the subject of much debate, and though often called a hoax, the legend of Bigfoot continues to be perpetuated by eyewitness encounters, scratchy audio, and grainy photographic evidence.
“The name Bigfoot,” she continued, “is often interchangeable with Sasquatch, a word derived from the Salish language meaning hairy man—a bipedal creature, rarely seen, yet often discussed. Many disbelievers claim that ample evidence does not exist to substantiate the existence of Bigfoot. The Veritas Codex team is here in the mountains of the northern United States on the trail of the elusive Bigfoot. If there’s evidence out there, we intend to find it.”
“Good,” Jean-René lowered the camera while Lauren returned her attention to the trees, searching for any sign of movement or eyes watching them.
“Where’s Rowan?”
Jean-René sat the camera down, rubbing his shoulder. “He was collecting the cast. When we heard that noise, he sent me to you.”
“We need to stay together until we figure out what that was and where that was.” Lauren’s hair stood up on the back of her neck. A sense of dread washed over her. She wasn’t prone to such flights of discontent, but when she felt this way, she knew it was important to act on it. “We need to find him.”
“I sent Chance to take over the camera when I passed him on the trail,” Jean-René said. “So, it’s not like he’s alone.”
Lauren reached for the walkie-talkie on her belt. “Base camp to Rowan.”
There was a long pause. “Rowan here.” The audio crackled and he sounded winded.
“We’ve got audio set up. Where are you?”
“We had rocks thrown at us about the time all the howling started. We followed something into the woods across the river, but we seem to have lost whatever it was.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No. But Chance is going to have one hell of a shiner. Whatever it was, it’s a good shot. They really do throw rocks.”
“We need everyone back to base camp to set up the perimeter and get ready for sunset. If anything else is going to happen, it’s more likely after twilight.”
“We’re on our way back now,” he said. “I’m gonna need my medic bag.”
Chapter 6
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 o
f 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.
The Veritas Codex Series, #1 Page 5
