He let go of the key and sat back. The battery, indeed, was nearly dead. He took a deep breath in then slowly let it out. “Come on, old girl … what say we have one more big adventure together?” He turned the key again, and the engine caught, then backfired and roared to life.
“Yes, I knew you had it in you!” Putting the transmission into drive, Cameron slowly took his foot off the brake. The truck, easing forward, began a tight right turn within the hold area. By the time it began its descent down the ramp, the ship’s rear hatch was already closing. Cameron watched in the rear view mirror as his last connection to safety—maybe even survival—disappeared.
As the front tires made contact with the loose rocky soil, he fed the truck more gas and began moving away from the Primion. He dug his iPhone from his pocket and plugged it into the hanging loose charging cord attached to the dash. The phone dinged. He saw the little lightning bolt, an indication it was charging. Using one hand, Cameron scrolled through his playlists and found what he was looking for. A moment later, Marvin Gay began singing about sexual healing. Smiling, he tried not to notice how close the sheer cliff resided just beyond his right-side fender.
Cameron drove slowly, his hands properly on the wheel at ten and two. Two hundred feet ahead, on the now downward sloping ridge, something seemed to be blocking the road. A large boulder? Getting closer, he could see the object definitely was not a rock. It was, or once was, something alive.
Chapter 29
Braking, he brought the truck down to a slow crawl. From this distance, maybe a hundred feet out, he now saw what was blocking the way: A Great Plains Bovid. One from the same herd that stampeded above the Primion then fell to their deaths onto the valley floor below. He’d looked the breed up while still recuperating within the HOD. As suspected, they were of limited intelligence, which put them at the bottom of the food chain. What they did have in their favor was a voracious appetite to breed. Subsequently, they were plentiful in numbers. Cameron briefly wondered if their actions—leaping one after another over the side of a cliff—would eventually have an impact on that growth assessment.
Somewhat closer now, he noticed the dead Bovid looked different from all the others he’d encountered. Its white hide was covered in red polka dots. Cameron, smiling at its somewhat whimsical appearance, sang along with Marvin—pondering how to move the big animal out of the way.
His singing suddenly stopped, his smile falling away, as he braked to a complete stop twenty feet from the dead animal. No, not polka dots—and definitely not whimsical. The carcass was covered in semi-circular bright-red bites. Large portions of hide, along with chunks of flesh underneath, had been chewed away by sharp teeth. Cameron, studying the ravaged animal, considered how excruciatingly painful the attack must have been. What a terrible way to die. He said, “Dude, you’d have been far better off if you’d just jumped off the cliff, with the others.”
A distant sound caught his attention. Turning off the music, he leaned his head out the window and listened—some kind of high-pitched squealing. He then saw them coming up the road. A pack of ten—no, closer to twenty—furry creatures, the size of white-and-brown bowling balls, that skittered back and forth across the road on unseen legs. Only when they grew closer could he discern their heads amidst their round fluffy bodies. Heads comprised of prominent, glistening, white teeth. Obviously back now for a second feasting on the Bovid, there was plenty of leftover meat for round two.
Cameron watched as the first of the pack reached the carcass, causing many more red polka dots to erupt—one after another. Jeez, they’re like terrestrial piranha, he thought. Transfixed by the barbaric scene before him, he almost missed as several of the piquet sprint rodents jumped onto the hood of his truck. The rodents hesitated, noticing him inside the windshield glass, sitting in the truck’s cab. Cameron’s sense of safety was short-lived, realizing the driver’s-side window was open most of the way. As a fight-or-flight spike of adrenalin hit his bloodstream, sudden fear nearly paralyzed him. Careful not to make any sudden, noticeable movements, he reached for the electric window controls, fumbling for the up-switch. He’d opened and closed the driver-side window thousands of times over the years, so when the passenger-side window began to open instead, he cursed his own ineptitude. Momentarily alarmed, two piquet sprints flashed their impressively pointed teeth. Cameron, venturing a glance downward at the window controls, finally got both front windows to slowly rise.
The two rodents split up. One moved right—closer to the passenger side windshield—while the other hesitated, then moved left, to the driver’s side fender. Cameron, glancing back and forth, frantically willed both windows to ascend faster. In one hop, the right piquet sprint was on the windshield. Scurrying around to the right-side window, it hung on there, like it was doing a pull-up, as the window all too slowly ascended. Its small sharp rear claws made scratching sounds as they tried to find purchase. The critter pushed its head and one stubby arm inside the cab as the window inched the rest of the way up—pinning it there by the neck.
But Cameron’s attention was now fully focused on the second rodent, trying to navigate onto the driver’s side window like its vicious-looking comrade had. The window passed the halfway mark and Cameron was almost ready to celebrate. But in a daring two-hop—one onto the outside mirror and another over Cameron’s shoulder—the piquet sprint dropped somewhere behind him, in the narrow space behind the seats. Cameron spun around, desperately attempting to focus on where it went, buried somewhere in the layers of junk he’d jammed back there for another semester of school. He saw his stack of clothes move. Then both the pinned piquet sprint, caught in his right side window, and the sprint beneath his stash of clothes, began to make horrible squealing noises. He thought about the bloody bites, covering the Bovid, and frantically tried to think of something, anything, he could do. Catching a blur of brown and white in motion, suddenly the rodent was next to him—on the passenger seat—standing atop the plasma pistol he’d purposely put there for his protection. What the fuck is wrong with me!
He had seconds—probably less—to act, or he was surely dead.
Above, behind the now distracted piquet sitting next to him, the other rodent was making good progress. Pushing down even farther on the window pinning it, the piquet squirmed more of its chubby body inside. Cameron could only watch. The slightest movement would bring their attention onto him. The window moved farther and farther down as the squirming intensified. And then the passenger-seat piquet bared its teeth. Hissing, its furry hairs stood on end. As the window-hanging rodent successfully made its final wiggle to freedom, the two began to attack each other in a frenzied jumble of teeth and claws. More high-pitched squealing ensued. Together, they rolled down onto the floor, in front of the passenger seat. With that, Cameron, the plasma gun in hand, took aim. Fuck aiming—he fired once, twice, thrice.
Nothing remained of the two piquet sprints, except for a bad smell of burnt hair and charred flesh. Now, through three amber-glowing holes in the truck’s flooring, he could see the ground underneath the truck. Each hole would be large enough for a determined rodent to squirm up through.
Gazing out over the dashboard, toward the feeding frenzy taking place, Cameron found instead only the mostly devoured Great Plains Bovid and nothing else. The pack of wild varmints had apparently run off. Leaning back into his seat, he sighed. “That was way too close.”
Chapter 30
The most recent attack by the pack of piquet sprints reduced the dead Great Plains Bovid’s bulk down to a more manageable size. With a little back and forth maneuvering, Cameron got the F150’s front bumper positioned behind the dead animal’s posterior. Now, applying a fair amount of pressure to the gas pedal, he was able to plow the beast closer and closer to the face of the cliff. The trick was not to misjudge, drive over the edge himself. Inch by inch, the truck shoved the Bovid until its body teetered near the rim. Gravity then took over and, ass-over-teakettle, its carcass fell below. Cameron, backing the tru
ck up, spun the wheel and proceeded following the ridge road down.
He drove both slowly and in silence for the next thirty minutes or so. The windows were cracked just enough to allow fresh air to swirl around within the cab. His thoughts began reflecting back—how reached this point in his life. Examining his sordid past, his life in general, Cameron had no problem being totally alone. The truth was, he’d grown up being accountable for himself. Alone, yes—but never lonely. Becoming fully self-sufficient was a necessity. He’d learned to deal with things, even big things, all by himself.
At the age of eight, he’d witnessed a murder—actually, two murders. After his parents were killed in a car wreck, he’d gone to live with his father’s half-brother. Cameron’s sole living relative, Harley Decker, sometimes worked at a truck repair depot. The same place the black family, arriving in their station wagon, had almost been killed. Cameron found out later the truck repair shop was really a chop shop. Harley definitely was not suited for parenthood. Cameron learned early on his uncle had multiple pastimes, including one that transported dismantled American truck parts across the border. Another provided a gateway for desperate young Latina women, seeking to better their lives in the U.S., the land of opportunity. Only later did he learn they were sold into varying types of human slavery. Mostly sex trades, by very bad men. Harley, too, was a bad man, though he’d been relatively tolerant of Cameron’s presence in his hovel of a house, in downtrodden Progresso.
Uncle Harley could be funny—had a big personality. Cameron was just beginning to like him when, one evening, a deal went terribly, terribly wrong. Three cronies, along with Harley, were sitting at the kitchen table where business took place. Cameron, later, was never certain if that particular meeting was most associated with their chop shop business, or with their human trafficking business. Wearing his one-size-too-small Iron Man PJ’s, he’d watched in horror from a darkened hallway as Harley pulled a revolver, shooting one of the three Latino men in the face. No sooner had the mess been cleaned up, the body carted off to God knows where, when someone new arrived within the hour. An older man, he spoke only Spanish and had a seriously pockmarked face. Then another terrible confrontation took place—one ending with Uncle Harley’s throat being cut, from ear to ear.
Cameron witnessed it all from a hidden vantage point in the dark hallway. Watched as his uncle unceremoniously bled-out—died right there on the cracked and peeling linoleum floor. He and his uncle had briefly made eye contact, seconds before he died. Cameron imagined Uncle Harley was trying to tell him he was sorry, in a final, desperate way. But that might be nothing more than an eight-year-old kid’s hopeful imagination at play. If his presence had become noticed, he too would be buried in a patch of scrubland, somewhere south of Progresso.
Placed in a distant home afterward, by family services, he simultaneously was put in a form of witness protection for kids. The selected home was two thousand miles away, in rural New York.
Cameron’s thoughts turned next to his foster parents. Just turning nine, when he arrived in the mountain town of Larksburg Stand, his empty nester foster parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he was always treated cordially, like a guest. Living in their guest room, he wasn’t allowed to claim the room as his own. He had limited access to an old black-and-white TV, only on Saturday mornings, and absolutely zero-access to the Internet. Instead, he found solace re-reading his World Book Encyclopedias. He’d start at the beginning—keep going till he reached Volume W.
He remembered sitting on his bed, in front of a flimsy TV stand in the guest room, able to see his foster parents, sitting at the dining room table where they ate nightly dinners together. Foster parent Loti Park sometimes waved at him, asked him if he liked his pork chops and mashed potatoes. Early on, he realized he’d need to be free of that house. Living alone became a number one priority. So, with perfect high school attendance and perfect academic grades, scholarship offers began eventually to roll in. The Parks weren’t aware he’d even applied. They’d made it really clear that Cameron, by his eighteenth birthday, was to pack up whatever personal items he had and to be on his way. The only reason he had to return to Larksburg Stand, during semester breaks, was to see Heather. The Parks agreed to let him stay in their guest room. Somewhat interested in his life in California, they also let him sit with them at the dining room table, whenever a special occasion arose.
Cameron, focusing straight ahead, followed the ridge road down until it began to narrow. He figured he was near the valley floor. Off to his right, scores of humungous, granite-like boulders rested. They probably had rolled down from the high, rocky ridges on the two flanking mountainsides. Holding his breath, he carefully maneuvered the truck around the tight bend. Getting stuck there would be both inconvenient and surely life threatening. The truck made it safely through, losing little more than a few scrapes of paint on the left front, and rear back, quarter panels.
The valley floor, composed primarily of beach-like sand, spanned almost two miles. Earlier he’d noticed, when still higher up, three meandering streams running across the entire length. The truck’s four-wheel-drive was engaged, so traversing the sand shouldn’t be much of a problem. Approaching the first stream, he eyed the three holes in the truck’s floor and became a bit uneasy. As he slowly progressed, water began to enter the vehicle by several inches. Driving both in and out of the water, he approached the center stream that looked closer, size-wise, to a small river. He decided to gun the engine—get some added momentum going. The wheels, spinning and churning up the riverbank, eventually achieved sufficient traction and speed. All seemed to be working fine until he was halfway across. Water then began to flood the cab fast, not only entering through the floor’s holes, but through seams under the doors.
Cameron accelerated the engine as more water gushed inside. This was really a lame idea. With his shoes under water, he pleaded, Oh God … Don’t stall … Don’t stall … Don’t stall, old girl …
Chapter 31
The tires were beginning to lose traction—slipping and sliding on the riverbed below. The truck seemed to be almost floating as hidden currents pushed it farther downstream. Yet Cameron continued to accelerate—hell, no other options were available. With the water level rising up to his knees and lapping onto the seats, he was only three-quarters of the way across. Still, he was surprised to see, albeit minimally, that forward progress was being made. Finally reaching the farthest bank, the tires caught and the truck lumbered free of the water and up onto the riverbank.
Cameron gave the dashboard several affectionate pats. “I never doubted you … knew you could do it.” He drove forward, toward a midway-point on the sandy peninsula, where he’d decided to let his waterlogged truck dry out some. He would not be attempting any further river forging, at least not for the time being. Allowing the engine to continue to idle, he climbed out to look around.
The trees around him were far denser than those up on the mountain. Above the sound of rushing water, wilderness sounds greeted him from all directions. Animal sounds he’d never heard before. Cameron listened, tried to imagine what sort of creatures made those strange noises. Suddenly, on the far side of the third stream, a black animal—perhaps the size of a small dog, maybe a fox—looked about frantically. Sprinting fast, it cut left, then right. In quick pursuit was a larger animal close on its heels. Cameron watched as the large pursuer, somewhat akin to a mountain lion, abruptly leapt and caught its quarry. The kill was quick—a wide bite to the smaller animal’s neck. The big catlike creature, only now noticing him standing across the rushing stream, dragged the dead animal away and into the trees.
Probably he should be more frightened than he was, but at the moment Cameron was mostly fascinated. He knew he was witnessing a thriving ecosystem. He knew something about such things thanks to his “Ecosystems and Outside Influences” course. It was a fairly recent Stanford University course that not only dealt with ecosystems as a whole, but also with the impact of man—the chief predator in
an ever-changing world. On Earth, wild predator numbers were quickly dwindling—had been for many years. Especially in places like Africa. But right now he was witnessing a thriving ecosystem, one where man had yet to be a detriment.
Cameron recalled one of the most dramatic examples of man’s influence on nature—a 1995 wolf re-population experiment in Yellowstone National Park. Early on in the twentieth century, through over-kill hunting activities, the North American wolf had become totally extinct within that massive park. Subsequently, over the following decades, the once flourishing landscape changed, and not for the better. Without deer and elk’s natural predator on the scene, keeping their populations in check, most willow trees and other flourishing vegetation—such as Hemlock, a keystone species within the biodiverse hardwood forests—soon were nearly gone. A cascading effect occurred that over a relatively short period of time changed a once-flourishing ecosystem into one out of balance: existing wildlife dissipating at an alarming rate. Most important, perhaps, any stream’s fish populations had all but disappeared.
Later, with the controversial reintroduction of thirteen wolves, remarkable changes began to take place over a relatively short span of time. In mere decades, deer population numbers were kept in check. Flora returned. Nearly lost indigenous tree species were given a new chance to take root along stream banks. The leafy shade enabled water to drop to cooler temperatures, better suited for trout populations, and, in turn, encouraged the return of beavers to the deserted ponds. Soon long-absent amphibians. Eventually songbirds, flying overhead, had a reason to land. It was reported that dramatic variations to the landscape had ensued—including the rerouting of small streams and rivers.
As Cameron gazed out into the beautiful and undoubtedly dangerous landscape, he knew he was looking at a thriving ecosystem—one possessing both predator and prey, both necessary. He briefly wondered where he stood within this incredibly biodiverse community. One single man, albeit unwillingly, had just been thrown into the mix. How would that change this world’s particular biodiversity over time?
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