Anomaly

by Scott Prussing

  The colonel had been awake for the better part of an hour. He had big decisions to make, and he had not wanted to waste precious daylight making them. So he had sat on the sand in the dark, wrapped in his survival blanket, watching the dawn slowly unfold as he ran all his possible choices through his head. He had two primary goals: to find Leah, and to get the Miracles to Alcatraz, even if he had to do the latter without his daughter. He hoped he could do both.

  If Leah had survived—and something inside him told him that somehow she had—she could be either north or south of where the company was camped. The problem was there was no way to know which. The one thing he did know was that she would head north, trying to reach San Francisco on her own if need be. He didn’t see how she could possibly make the journey alone, but he knew his daughter would try.

  If Leah had made it to shore to the north of the encampment, then his decision was a simple one. Head north at as fast a pace as they could with the Miracles in tow, hoping to catch up to Leah as quickly as possible. But what if she had landed to the south? It was doubtful she would be able to travel fast enough to overtake the company.

  Colonel Gallway was loath to split his already diminished force, but he saw no way around it. He had to send some of them south to look for Leah, just in case. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he should probably split the north group as well.

  He had spent the final part of his musings doing the math. Counting himself, there were twenty-nine Marines and five sailors left. Despite his love for his daughter, he knew that getting the Miracles safely to San Francisco was his number one priority, so the majority of his force needed to stay with them. In the end, he decided he would send squads of seven Marines each to the north and south. The rest of the company would remain with the Miracles.

  He stood before his gathered men and explained his plan. When he was done providing the basic outline, he turned to Lieutenant Gregerson, who knew the strengths and skills of the men better than he did.

  “Lieutenant, pick out your seven fittest men for me.”

  Gregerson quickly selected six Marines and a Navy Seal. One of the Marines was a drill sergeant, who would command the squad. They gathered in front of Colonel Gallway.

  “You men have the toughest job. I want you to go twenty-five miles south. If you don’t find any sign of Leah by then, head back this way to rejoin us as quickly as possible. If you do find her, the same thing goes. Either way, you’ve got a lot of double-timing ahead of you. Leah’s fit, but she’ll need to be carried at least part of the way to keep up with you.”

  The sergeant nodded. “You got it, Sir. We won’t let you down.”

  “Stay on the beach until it ends, looking for any signs. Once you leave the beach, there should be a road not too far from the coast. If Leah is around, she’ll follow the road. Go now.”

  The sergeant saluted, and the squad set out immediately down the beach, spread out in a wide line to look for sign.

  Colonel Gallway turned back to Lieutenant Gregerson.

  “Now give me your next six fittest.”

  The lieutenant moved a step closer and spoke softly. “Jordy would be in that group, Sir.”

  Colonel Gallway nodded. “Skip him. He stays with Radar.”

  Gregerson nodded and stepped back to select six more men. These were all Marines.

  “The Miracles can’t travel as quickly as Marines can,” Colonel Gallway said, “so you men will be going north ahead of the rest of us, again looking for Leah.” He dearly wanted to command this squad himself, but as fit as he was, he knew he was not quite as fit as the younger men, who would be able to cover more ground without him. He also knew his place was with the Miracles. “Lieutenant Gregerson will be in command.” He nodded to the lieutenant. “On your way.”

  Gregerson saluted and pivoted away, leading the second squad north along the sand in the same spread out formation as the first.

  “Okay,” Colonel Gallway said to the remaining company. “We’ll be leaving the beach through that shallow gully behind us. Once we’re at the top, I expect to find Highway 1 pretty close to the coast.”

  He assigned a squad of six Marines to take the lead, and another squad to bring up the rear. The rest of the soldiers would flank the Miracles, keeping them protected from all sides.

  “Keep a sharp eye out and your weapons at the ready,” he continued. “We have no way of knowing what kind of creatures might inhabit this area. If we’re anywhere close to where I think we are, there won’t be much cover for at least the first few miles. After that, the road should begin climbing, and the landscape to the east of the highway will grow much more hilly and wooded as we begin to enter the Big Sur area. We’ll be less exposed there, but any foes will have more places to hide.”

  He looked out over his assembled men and the Miracles, making quick eye contact with every one of them. “That’s it. Let’s go.”

  The company headed up into the gully and off the beach, toward whatever unknown fate awaited them.

  CHAPTER 20

  AS LIEUTENANT GREGERSON LED HIS SQUAD at a rapid walk to the north, the highway soon began climbing, and groves of trees started to fill in the land on the east side of the road just as Colonel Gallway had predicted,. The incline was gradual, and not exclusive by any means. There were plenty of places where the highway descended, but never for as long as the inclines. The result was a steady rise in the height of the cliffs above the ocean, as well as a hillier, more wooded landscape on the other side.

  The lieutenant was in a bit of a quandary. The supremely fit Marines were capable of moving at a much more rapid pace than the one he had settled on. He knew that the faster he and his squad travelled, the more quickly they would overtake Leah if she was somewhere ahead of them. And the sooner they overtook her, the sooner they’d be able to protect her from any danger. But if they moved too rapidly, they risked missing any trace that Leah—or anyone else—might have left in the dirt and weeds growing along the shoulder of the roadway.

  If she were alive, Lieutenant Gregerson knew Leah well enough to be pretty certain she would be heading north toward San Francisco. She would probably walk along the edge of the highway, staying on the asphalt where the footing was surer and easier. But he could think of any number of reasons why she might have stepped off the road at least temporarily and perhaps left a footprint behind. Since she was wearing Marine-issued boots, any such tread marks would be instantly recognizable. Even more importantly, if she left the highway for some reason and took another route, he did not want to miss it.

  So he and his companions moved at walk so quick-paced it was almost a jog, allowing them to move as rapidly as possible while still watching the sides of the road for any sign. Three of the men moved along the left edge of the roadway; the lieutenant and the remaining three travelled along the right side.

  By midday, Lieutenant Gregerson estimated they had travelled fifteen miles or so, without any trace of Leah or any other living thing other than a few deer tracks in the dirt and an occasional bird winging its way overhead. The highway had climbed to at least one hundred feet above the crashing surf, and the land on the other side of the road had grown thickly wooded. He called his squad to a halt for a short break. They moved a few yards into the trees to give themselves cover while they rested and munched on energy bars from their packs.

  They had no way of knowing they had come to within ten miles or so of the spot where Leah had awoken on her narrow beach that very same morning. Had she chosen to walk south instead of north, they would have been very close to meeting up already. Instead, unknown to either party, she was moving away from them. The gap between them was closing, but not at the pace either would have wished.

  The afternoon was waning to a close when one of the soldiers on the coast side of the roadway suddenly knelt down and called out to Lieutenant Gregerson.

  “Lieutenant, over here,” he shouted.

  The man’s excitement was evident, so Gregerson hurried
across the highway to where the Marine was down on one knee a yard or two from the shoulder of the road. Behind the man, a field covered thinly with tall brown grasses and stringy green weeds stretched more than a hundred yards to the cliffs. The open area was easily the widest they had passed all day on that side of the road. Just in front of the kneeling soldier was a small patch of bare brown dirt.

  Gregerson saw the faint footprint in the soil immediately. The striped tread mark made by the front half of the shoe was instantly familiar—it was the same mark his boots made, the same one that would be left behind by any Marine boot. The print was pointing straight to the adjacent highway.

  He put his foot next to the mark. The footprint was only about three-quarters as long as his boot. None of the Marines who had been aboard The Star of India had feet that small. This print could belong to only one person—Leah.

  Lieutenant Gregerson stared out across the grassy field. Now that he was looking for it, he saw a faint line of bent and broken grasses leading across the flat area all the way to the edge of the cliff. Leah must have come ashore at the base of the cliffs and climbed up here.

  “Looks like Colonel Gallway’s feeling was right,” the lieutenant said to his men. “Leah survived, all right. How she got this far north I have no idea.”

  He took a few moments to debate with himself whether it was worth the effort to backtrack Leah’s trail to the cliffs and see if she had left any sign down below. In the end, he decided it was probably worth a short delay, especially if the climb down was not too difficult. If they found any trace of a camp, they would know she had probably spent the night there and would be less than a day ahead of them now. They could also make sure there were no tracks leading back in that direction, which could mean that she might have returned to the beach for some reason. He couldn’t risk heading north while Leah might be down below.

  As they moved toward the cliffs, they found a few other scattered tracks, all made by the same small boots. Every one of them pointed to the highway.

  At the edge of the escarpment, they found the rotting remnants of a wooden stairway. Lieutenant Gregerson sent two men down to the beach to see what they could find. When they returned fifteen minutes later, they were both smiling.

  “We found the remains of a campfire,” one said.

  “From the amount of ashes left over,” added the other, “it seems pretty clear she probably spent the night down there.”

  The lieutenant nodded, pleased to know for sure now that Leah was less than a day ahead of them. He gazed out across the sea at the setting sun and sighed. They had less than half an hour of daylight left. He wished they could travel through the night, but knew he couldn’t risk missing some sign in the darkness that Leah might have left the highway.

  He wondered if he should send a runner back to Colonel Gallway to let him know what they had found. It would be a dangerous mission, travelling alone like that, but that’s exactly what Leah was now doing—travelling alone. He decided to ask for a volunteer.

  When he explained his need, all six of his men raised their hands, which was nothing less than he expected from a squad of Marines. Private Pendergrass was a decorated long distance runner, so that’s who Lieutenant Gregerson selected.

  “Go as far as you can until dark,” the lieutenant ordered, “and then find a safe spot to hole up for the night. Don’t try to be a hero—too many creatures from There hunt during the night.”

  Pendergrass nodded and then snapped off a brisk salute. “Yes, Sir,” he said before turning on his heels and racing back toward the road. With almost half an hour of light left, he figured he could cover four miles or so, even burdened by his heavy pack and automatic rifle.

  Lieutenant Gregerson faced his remaining men. “We’ll do the same as Pendergrass. Except that we can’t afford to run. We need to keep an eye out for any sign that Leah left the road. We’ll go until it’s too dark to look for a sign.”

  They headed north for about twenty-five minutes before the fading light forced them to halt. Turning from the road, they pushed their way a short distance into the woods and made camp. Every one of them had trouble falling asleep that night, knowing that if everything went well, they might overtake their colonel’s daughter tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. That Leah was also the first of the Miracles added to the importance of finding and protecting her.

  MOVING ON

  CHAPTER 21

  CLIMBING THE STEEP RIDGE above the destroyed bridge and pushing my way through the thick underbrush is slow and exhausting work. The foliage high above me is so dense that I can only see tiny patches of blue sky. I could easily get lost in these woods, but by keeping the chasm I’m trying to skirt to my left and continuing to move upward, it’s not too difficult to keep to the proper direction.

  I’ve ascended only two or three hundred feet in twenty minutes or so when I come across a narrow game path. I hope it’s been formed by deer or something equally harmless.

  The trail heads up the slope in the general direction I’ve been going, so this is indeed a nice break. The path is barely wide enough for a person, which is just fine with me, because that means it’s not used by monsters like the giant reptile thing I barely escaped. I suppose vampires or werewolves could use it, but I’m not sure what those kinds of creatures would be doing out here in the middle of nowhere. Running into a mountain lion or some other predator might be a more realistic danger.

  I proceed carefully up the path, constantly scanning the ground for any tracks. Green weeds and dead leaves cover most of the trail, but every now and then I come upon a small section of bare dirt. In the fifth or six one I come to, I spy a hoof mark that looks like it probably belongs to a deer. I relax, but only slightly. There are still predators to worry about.

  Even moving cautiously, following the game path allows me to make far better time than fighting my way through the undergrowth. I figure I’ve been walking for maybe a mile, always uphill, when the trail makes a fairly sharp bend to the left. I’m expecting it to curve back to the right, but it doesn’t. Evidently, the deep chasm has finally petered out. It seems like the animals that formed this trail have been using it for the same purpose I am—to skirt the ravine. Sure enough, after a hundred yards or so, the path bends to the left again and begins heading down the ridge.

  The woods are beginning to grow dark, so I increase my pace. I want to try to make it down to the highway before nightfall, to see if I can find some sign of the mysterious archers who saved my life. Despite my more rapid pace, I continue to move as quietly as possible along the trail. When the path curves right and stops going down the hill, I leave it and continue heading downward. Fortunately, I don’t have far to go.

  I reach the bottom of the ridge just as the sun is beginning to settle onto the steel gray horizon. I quickly search the edge of the woods at the end of the bridge for any trace of the archers, but once again, the weeds and dead leaves covering the ground make my task difficult. Finally, just before darkness would have ended my search, my persistence is rewarded. In a tiny dirt area in a spot that provides a clear view of the entire length of the bridge, I spy a single footprint. I feel my eyes widen in surprise. There is no mistaking the shallow impression of five toes. At least one of the archers was barefoot!

  I continue looking around, but find no other sign that anyone was ever here. A skilled tracker probably would have found something, but tracking is not one of my talents, and besides, it’s rapidly growing dark. Frustrated, I head back into the trees looking for a safe place to spend the night. Any further search for my rescuers is going to have to wait until morning.

  I don’t have to go far, which is a good thing because it’s nearly pitch dark in the woods now. I find a spot where two fallen trees form a tight V-shape. I quickly pile handfuls of dead leaves into the narrow end of the space, which I will burrow into when it’s time to go to sleep. First though, I enjoy another delicious dinner of half an energy bar and several swallows of water from my new wate
r bottle.

  I’m pretty exhausted, so as soon as I’m done eating I wrap myself in my survival blanket and crawl into my pile of leaves, keeping my machete unsheathed beside me. Unlike the previous night when I had trouble falling asleep, I drift off almost immediately.

  Despite the ease with which I fall asleep, my sleep is troubled by more nightmares. It’s no surprise that a cyclops invades my dreams, as do a pack of snarling wolves larger than any wolf should be and a giant fire-breathing dragon. I’m about to be engulfed by its fiery breath when my dream shifts to a more pleasant vision—one that’s as easily understandable as the rest. Instead of roasting me, the dragon’s fire broils a nice plump turkey, which I proceed to feast on. I guess energy bars can only take a girl so far before imagination takes over.

  I wake up in mid-meal, but strangely enough, I still smell the tantalizing odor of roasted meat. I open my eyes and see a young man sitting on one of the logs that form my nocturnal nest, watching me. I grab my machete and push myself up into a sitting position, scrunching back against V of the logs for whatever protection they will provide.

  Thin shafts of sunlight are slanting in through the canopy above, telling me I’ve slept at least an hour or two past daybreak.

  The stranger makes no move toward me. The wooden bow strapped across his back and the bare feet dangling over the side of the fallen tree immediately tell me who he is—he’s one of the archers who saved me from the cyclops.

  He doesn’t appear threatening at the moment, so I study him more closely. He’s a good-looking guy, a few years older than me, I guess, with long black hair held off his face by a braided leather headband around his temples. His straight dark hair, sculpted features and headband make him look a bit like an Indian, except for his skin, which is incredibly pale. He looks like he’s never spent a day outside in his life, but his muscular shape and the bow and arrow give lie to that. I can also see the hilt of a sword sticking up behind his right shoulder, and he’s got a big knife in a leather sheath belted on his waist. This guy is ready for battle, for sure.