Nothing.
A sudden and terrible silence descended over the forest. In the three years since coming here Annie could not remember it ever being this quiet, this still. Not even in winter, when the deep snowpack muffled most sounds.
“We need to go, Mama.” Ariel was standing rigid, wary as an animal, a three foot tall kid, but every bit an adult by the look of complex concentration on her face. “We don’t have much time.”
Spooked, Annie scooped Ariel up in her arms and continued her run up the trail toward the caves. There were weapons there, and deep dark sections of caverns to hide in, if necessary.
A pile of burning rubble was all that remained of the cabin when Doug arrived, out of breath and close to panic. The heat was intense. No way could he get close enough to see if Annie and Ariel were in there. He circumnavigated the cabin anyway, his heart hammering in his chest.
Of course they’re not in there. You heard her say she was on her way to the caves.
He searched anyway. Once he was positive they were nowhere in the immediate vicinity, he keyed the two-way’s talk button. “Annie, where are you?”
No answer.
Perhaps she was too busy running with Ariel in her arms to answer his call or maybe they were already inside the caves. And then another thought struck him. Unpleasant as it was, he had to consider it. Perhaps their pursuers knew everything about them. Perhaps they knew their plans and had scoped out the caves long ago. Maybe the drone had only been part of the plan. Perhaps they’d had men waiting at the caves or had sentries stationed along the trails and had intercepted Annie before she could reach them.
Doug’s mind was running wild on him. His adrenaline was up and all sorts of unpleasant scenarios were coming at him.
He needed to step back and look at the situation rationally.
He knew that the very nature of the ice caves made it almost impossible for radio signals to get through. They’d tested them long ago. If Annie had made it to the caves, and they were inside, then there was no way she could hear him. In any event, he had only one option left; make his way up there and see for himself.
He walked to the edge of the woods before stopping to take one final glance back at the destroyed cabin. Something caught his eye. He’d seen movement on the far side and just to the left of the burning building. Doug crouched down in a thicket and waited for a better view, both hoping and not hoping that what he’d seen was Annie and Ariel.
It was not. At first he could not fathom what he was looking at. There were at least four of them. They were men carrying weapons, this was clear, but there was something odd about them. As they inched cautiously closer to the cabin he saw what was different. They were all wearing strange suits and face masks.
Not waiting around to ponder why these men were wearing hazmat suits, Doug slipped into the forest and began moving quickly up the trail. It was not an easy trek, several miles of rough upward terrain, and in this high summer heat it was even worse. Over the years they had resisted the urge to keep a couple of all-terrain vehicles for these treks. There were two reasons. First, they knew that the trails and the heat signatures created by ATVs would be easy to spot from the air or satellites in space. Also, they had opted for walking because it kept them in great physical condition and gave them a chance to alter their routes so as not to leave a definitive human trail.
The ice caves were a series of caverns that cut deeply into the earth on the side of a wooded mountain. The terrain here was beautiful, almost primordial, as if time had passed it by. And in a sense, it had. Doug always expected to see some sort of prehistoric creature in these deep dark woods.
The caverns were originally discovered by Rick Jennings’s father sometime back in the 1940s. On exploring them he’d discovered one in particular that contained a narrow opening and a fairly large chamber inside big enough to set up housekeeping. He hadn’t taken it seriously until he’d begun taking his son Rick there years later. As Rick had grown older and taken an interest in the caverns the two of them had built a cozy little hideaway in the main cavern with bunks and storage pantries supplied with pretty much everything they would need if they ever encountered an emergency situation that called for its use.
As a boy, Jennings had derived an immense amount of pleasure playing in and exploring the caverns. He’d discovered that they cut deeply into the earth, a maze of tunnels too complex to ever explore thoroughly. Later, after Jennings’s father had died and Rick had begun bringing Doug here, Doug had become as fascinated with the caverns as Rick had been. They were a treasure trove of underground passages, a place made for exploration, and over the years the two of them had mapped out a good portion of the maze.
For now, as far as they knew, the caverns were still a private place, but both Doug and Rick expected it would only be a matter of time before the outside world discovered them. In the meantime they would covet and protect them at all cost.
Doug supposed that this was the emergency situation they’d been preparing for. He knew the caves would provide safe haven for an extended period of time, but he was not fool enough to think they wouldn’t be discovered if enough bodies were to comb these rugged hills looking for them. By then they would hopefully be well on their way to plan C.
One of the most amazing features of the ice caves was the ice that stayed in parts of them year round, hence, their name. From above, rain and ground water in the form of springs filtered down through the earth and rock and dripped through cracks in the cave’s ceiling, providing an endless supply of clean drinking water. In winter the water froze and built up. Parts of the caves were so far beneath the mountain that even on the hottest summer days a good portion of the ice stayed frozen and built up over time to form what could only be described as miniature subterranean glaciers that provided natural air conditioning, refrigeration to keep food fresh, and clean fresh water year round. It was really a miracle of nature. But the real miracle was what lay deep beneath the ice caves, an amazing ecosystem that defied both definition and explanation, a place that neither Rick nor Doug had ever shared with anyone.
Since coming here nearly four years ago, they had been stockpiling supplies for just such an eventuality. Food rations, medicine and enough weapons and ammo to hold off a small army—perhaps not indefinitely—but at least for an extended period of time.
Now, a little more than an hour into his climb, as Doug was entering the last leg of his journey, hoping upon hope that he would find his wife and daughter alive and safe, he stopped to catch his breath. He was sweat soaked and breathing in spasms, and his mind was spinning with terrible possibilities. He kept glancing back, but so far he hadn’t seen any evidence that he was being followed. He knew, however, that the government had all sorts of state-of-the-art tracking technology and most likely it was just a matter of time before they were found.
Normally the hike up to the caves from the cabin took a little over two hours. Adrenaline and a need to see Annie and Ariel alive had cut the journey nearly in half.
He knew the lay of the land here and realized he was about ten minutes away from the well concealed cave entrance. From here he slowed his approach, moving like a cat stalking prey, keenly aware of all natural forest sounds, able to separate them from those that did not belong here: the sound of a man breathing, or an errant cough; the shifting of a body against the trunk of a tree.
He heard none of these sounds, nor did he detect any unusual movement. But no matter how keen his senses were, Doug knew that there were those who were better at this than him, those who were trained from the time they were no more than kids, to hide better and fight better and kill better than he ever could.
Doug was a carpenter who only wanted to be left alone to love Annie and live a quiet and happy life. He would always love Annie, true, but sadly, his dream of living a quiet and uneventful life was not to be. He was a man who had been thrust headlong into events that he was powerless to control, and now his life was about protecting one of the most important human beings in huma
n history, their daughter Ariel.
As he approached the cave entrance he hoped with all his heart that he hadn’t failed her.
The entrance was impossible to detect unless you were specifically looking for it. Doug carefully made his way around the obstacles and booby traps they had, over the years, installed to hide the cave’s opening and warn them of intruders, watching each footfall, careful to cover every track he made as he proceeded. Once there he located the tripwire and carefully stepped over it. Reaching down and grasping it he pulled 1, 2, 3 times, a prearranged sequence that said, ‘I’m not just someone stumbling in here, I’m a friendly.’
While Doug stood and waited for Annie’s reply he set his ear to listening. A twig snapped behind him. He spun and raised his rifle almost pulling the trigger. Dear God, it was just a running deer, flag up. Perhaps it had gotten his scent, or maybe the scent of someone else approaching. Then he saw another deer, and another. Very strange to see so many deer at once.
Spooked, Doug waited and watched. In the distance he heard the unmistakable droning of an aircraft engine.
CHAPTER 2
St. Petersburg, Florida, July 2nd.
Thirty-six hours before the arrival.
Dr. Danielle Peterson never expected her grandfather to die in such a heartbreakingly gruesome manner. He was going to die. There was no doubt about that. Considering his age and his terminal condition, she knew that it was only a matter of time. She had, however, expected him to hang in there for at least another few months. He was, after all, still mobile and coherent, and the pain hadn’t yet become too debilitating. Danielle had been keeping it under control with drugs, and thus far he’d proven surprisingly resilient.
But the way he had died had been so brutal and so unexpected that for two days running Danielle had been a total basket case, unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to even think straight, avoiding her well-wishing friends, shunning her work—although she had patients who needed her—grieving unmercifully, crying at just the thought of Grampy Joe.
Someone had jimmied the lock on the back door of Grampy Joe’s house, entered under the cover of darkness, put a gun to the sleeping man’s head and pulled the trigger. Then, whoever had done the horrible deed had proceeded to ransack the place, pulling clothes from the dressers and closets, smashing dishes, overturning furniture and ripping the upholstery to shreds. Danielle had found him the next morning when she’d come to pay him her daily visit and administer his medication.
This was Florida’s Sun Coast, after all, and Danielle knew, given the huge number of retired people who resided here, that some of them would always be victims. The area drew crooks and scam artists for just such purposes. There were stories in the papers every day of robberies and other heinous crimes perpetrated against some defenseless senior citizen, usually for the money or prize possessions these people owned, collected over a lifetime.
But dear God in heaven, why Grampy Joe? As far as Danielle knew he didn’t have much to take. Why hadn’t they just robbed him? Why did they have to kill him in his bed? Grampy Joe was such a kind and gentle old fellow. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly.
It was obvious to Danielle as well as to the police that the person or persons who’d committed this gruesome crime had been looking for something specific. Why else would they have ripped the place up so badly? The police had wanted Danielle to take an inventory for them, inform them of items missing; it would help them in their search for the guilty parties, they had explained, but Danielle had not been much help. Although she’d grown up in his house, it had been years since she’d lived there and she’d never been one to pry into Grampy Joe’s personal affairs. She had no idea what private things he might have kept, and furthermore he had never confided in her. At first glance there didn’t seem to be anything missing, just a lot of senseless destruction, and that’s what she told the police, and they were as baffled as she was by the entire episode. But the rest, whatever money or private things he may have kept to himself and might now be missing was beyond Danielle’s ability to determine.
It had been her duty, however, considering the fact of her being his one and only heir, to go through his things—a heartbreaking and daunting task—and try to make some sense of the whole mess. And it was while she was doing this, two days after his death—still numb and grieving for the wonderful old man who had raised her to womanhood—that she found the file, and the object. In the very top of one of the kitchen cupboards—where he kept fancy stemware and crystal that was rarely used and was now lying shattered to bits on the kitchen floor—Danielle had noticed an anomaly in the cupboard’s back wall. A closer inspection revealed lines of suspicious origin. She’d noticed also that the back wall seemed slightly thicker than the cupboard wall on either side of it. Anyone else might never have noticed, but Danielle had a keen eye for detail. She took a kitchen knife and pried into the crack, and the entire board popped free, revealing that it was indeed a false back. In the cubby behind the false wall she found the file inside an old manila envelope—addressed to her—and wrapped delicately in a soft piece of cotton flannel, a strange object.
She set the envelope aside, transfixed momentarily by the object. She had never seen anything like it. It was made of some metal she did not recognize, gold in color but lighter than gold, almost airy. It had a decidedly futuristic look about it, molded into the shape of a triangle, or perhaps an arrowhead, with markings on one side that were like nothing she had ever seen. To Danielle they looked like some sort of hieroglyphs. Some inner sense told her that she was looking at words or symbols of a language that did not belong here on Earth. She reached her hand out tentatively, and touched the object with the end of her index finger. It began to glow and pulse with a strange alien light, as though a switch had been flipped on. Startled, Danielle pulled her hand back. The pulsing ceased immediately. Experimentally she touched it again, gingerly, with the exact same result. Finally deciding that it was not going to harm her, she picked it up and cupped it in her palm. It glowed and pulsed there like a tiny living extension of her very being.
Suddenly a myriad of mixed and confusing emotions that transformed themselves into visuals began moving involuntarily through her mind like a video on fast forward. It was as if she was suddenly able to see her emotions rather than just feel them. But it was more than that. Something told her that she was seeing events that had not yet occurred. The sensation was at once enthralling and chilling. And as the object pulsed in her hand it did not take Danielle long to realize that the pulsing was in perfect sync with her own heartbeat. And the device emitted a slight heat, giving her an instantaneous feeling of well-being, even as the visuals disturbed and confused her. She could not imagine what the object was, from where it had come, or even how such a thing could possibly exist in this world. It was like nothing ever before in her experience.
Getting down from the cupboard, she set the object aside and opened the rather thick file, scanning quickly through it with trembling hands. Some of it was written in Grampy Joe’s own hand but most of it had been typed. The handwritten part was addressed to Danielle, and it was a stern reminder that if she was reading this, then he, her grandfather was more than likely dead, and if she cared about her own well-being she would absolutely not confide its existence to anyone, period. “Trust the object,” her grandfather had written. “It will show you the way.”
The first page of the file was a brief account of her grandfather’s secret work as a scientist for the United States Government. And it ended with the words: “I just wanted you to know, Danielle, that in his life your grandfather was an important man; he was something other than the common laborer you were led, out of necessity, to believe. Please forgive me for the deceit. I did it for you. I hope the account that follows will explain why I had to do what I did, why I had to conduct my life in the manner that was so familiar to you.”
Danielle was stunned. For as long as she could remember, her grandfather had been retired and she’d always been und
er the impression that he had been a machinist at some huge auto plant in the north, forced into early retirement by a back ailment. She had never had reason to doubt or question this. It is what he had told her, and up until now she believed that Grampy Joe did not lie.
Getting her wits about her she went back to the file and leafed quickly down through it. There was a lot of technical stuff in it that she did not understand; drawings and formulas, mathematical equations that baffled her. It was unlike anything she had learned in college or medical school. Then she came to the part that referenced something Grampy Joe called “The Gift.” She read down through the document quickly and her knees weakened and her bladder relaxed. She almost peed her pants.
After WWII, Grampy Joe was recruited by the U.S. Government and was sent to New Mexico to work on a number of secret projects. In 1947 an alien spacecraft was shot down by the air force near Roswell New Mexico. Grampy Joe, along with several other scientists had been called in to assess the damage and authenticate the findings.
Unbeknownst to the government an alien survivor had escaped the wreckage and hidden in the New Mexico hills. Several days following the crash, Grampy Joe and his team of scientists were visited by the alien. Somehow it had managed to get past base security and found its way to the scientists. It was injured and afraid but decidedly alive and extraordinarily intelligent. To the team, the alien passed along a body of prophetic knowledge and something it called a gift.
The body of knowledge contained a warning that if mankind continued on its present course it would be besieged by a terror, a plague so heinous that few, if any, would survive.
The gift, on the other hand, could be mankind’s salvation, but only if placed in the right hands and only if mankind mended its evil ways.
In urgent need of medical attention, the alien was forced finally to surrender. According to the account, the alien subsequently fell into a black hole of secrecy. Rumors were rampant, however, and some told of interrogation and torture. It was Grampy Joe’s assessment that the alien died before giving them anything.
The Haunting of Sam Cabot (A Supernatural Thriller) Page 16
