Yellowstone Standoff

by Scott Graham

  Randall’s headlamp moved up and down. “Nonviolent confrontation, that’s what I settled on.”

  “You didn’t achieve it.”

  “I tried. I really did.”

  Chuck fought his nerves, seeking focus. The tiny, plastic computer chips, the ones implanted in the wolf and Chance, they matched up perfectly with Randall’s high-tech skills. “The chips. Those are yours, aren’t they?”

  “Bing-go,” Randall said. “I use a crossbow and a projectile point made of beef cartilage. The cartilage dissolves and the projectile shaft falls out, leaving the chip in place.”

  “I don’t see...”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re an archaeologist, stuck in the past. This is about the future. About making things right in Yellowstone after all these years.”

  “Making things right for who?”

  “For the wolves, the grizzlies.”

  “By scaring people out of the backcountry?”

  “The concept is simple, really. Tiny electrical pulses applied where the spinal cord meets the brain. I can make the animals do what I want. My chips are based on the neurological biosensor chips developed for humans by Effiteon Technologies. The developers at Effiteon don’t understand the true potential of their work. My improvements are straightforward—circuitry upgrades, a transistor boost, paint-on battery power. My enhanced chips create what’s called cortextual suggestion in my animals, setting them on certain paths based on the strength and directional intensity of the pulses I deliver.” Randall lifted the control console in its holster at his waist. “At their base operational level, the pulses free the animals to follow their natural instincts, minus their fear of humans. From there, I can use the pulses to encourage the animals to do more. Much more.”

  “But how…?”

  “Standalone computer chip design and manufacture is simple these days. You don’t need a factory anymore. You can lay circuitry on individual chips now. And you don’t need a big lab to test chips prior to implantation, either.”

  “But why Chance? Why the dog?”

  Randall dropped the console back to his side and again gripped the gun with both hands. “I chipped it the first night, outside on its sleeping pad, while Keith was in his tent. It didn’t make a sound. Not even a yelp.” Randall’s teeth flashed white below his headlamp. “Did you see the way that thing took off across the thermal basin? Like a shot. Talk about natural inclination.”

  “But Chance isn’t one of your predators.”

  “No. But the dog’s tracking ability was going to be a problem.”

  “So you tried to kill it.”

  “I gave it its freedom, that’s all—though, I admit, I did wait until we reached the basin to do so.” He laughed.

  “But you launched the drone to herd the dog back to safety.”

  “That was Kai’s doing, not mine. I had to go along with her.”

  Chuck worked backward in time. “The Territory Team—Kaifong wasn’t there to stop you, was she?”

  “I chipped the grizzly when it was on a kill in Lamar Valley, right next to the road. The wolves were just as simple, and more grizzlies, too. It’s a sin, really, how comfortable all of them are around humans. It’s so easy to get close to them. Each chip is GPS-enabled. I know the location at all times of every single one of my test subjects.”

  “So you knew the grizzly had taken over the wolves’ carcass.”

  “I knew its locational coordinates, sure.”

  “You gave Notch a pulse when the Territory Team was scheduled to arrive, didn’t you?”

  Randall shrugged. “They’re the ones who chose to hike into the heart of grizzly country. They gave me the chance to test the chip in real-world conditions.”

  “You killed two wolf researchers, two people, Rebecca and Joe.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I simply freed the bear to do what its natural tendencies told it to do—defend its food source.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “On the contrary, I may be the only sane researcher in all of Yellowstone National Park. I was a kid when my parents first brought me here. The wolf reintroduction program was only a decade or two old at that point, but the good the wolves were doing for the park already was obvious. Even so, the wolves were under assault. Anytime one of them wandered outside the park boundaries, it was gunned down.”

  “Everything was going well inside the boundaries, though—the elk population declining, beavers rebounding, the rivers coming back.”

  “But they couldn’t leave well enough alone, could they? They couldn’t just look around and realize things were on the mend. No way, man. They had to do all their darting and collaring. They had to treat the park like one, big, human-run science project.” Randall took a deep breath. “Yellowstone’s predators are not zoo creatures. They’re not.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “It’s not what nature intended!” Randall said. “I watched it play out when I was in college. I visited the park, chatted up everybody, went on to grad school. I got the posting here with the Yale program three years ago. Finally, I was where I needed to be. I could set up my own protocol with my own subjects.”

  “You decided to play God.”

  “Wrong. All the other scientists were playing God. The goal of my study was, is, to restore equilibrium, to turn the grizzlies and wolves back into the free, kick-ass predators they were before the white man showed up here.”

  “The white man?”

  “Back in the day, the Indians who left the baskets you came here to study knew who was in charge. They came up to the central plateau a few weeks each summer, picked nuts and berries, harvested a little meat, and headed for lower ground.”

  Despite the gun aimed at him, Chuck thought of the loamy contents of the Trident One baskets—contents that might well have been meat. “The ancient Indians who came up here may have done a lot more hunting—and killing—of your animals than you want to admit.”

  “What are you saying?” Randall demanded.

  “Your precious predators may not have been so kick-ass compared to the Indians, back in the day, as you’d like to think.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Randall jutted his jaw. “The bears and wolves did just fine until the Europeans showed up. They were the ones who screwed everything up. Instead of allowing nature to take care of itself, the white dudes destroyed the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. We knew it was time to fix things. So we set to work.”

  “We?”

  “Of course, we. I couldn’t do it alone. But it took me a while. Everyone at Yale, Harvard, Brown was too citified. They didn’t understand the first thing about the natural, animal world, and they didn’t care, either. They just wanted to do their science. They had no appreciation for what was really happening in Yellowstone. Finally, I met Kai at a conference. She was from Stanford, out here in the West. She’d seen the crowds at Yosemite and Sequoia; she knew what was at stake. We decided to team up. She understood—for a while.”

  Chuck’s eyes widened. “When you slapped her on the shoulder and she fell into the lake,” he said, “that was no accident, was it?”

  “I—” Randall’s voice caught in his throat. “I had the idea in mind, but I don’t think I knew if I would go through with it. It was so easy, though. I barely touched her shoulder.” He released the gun with one hand long enough to squeeze the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “She thought we were only studying wolves. She was convinced they wouldn’t attack humans. She believed grizzlies were too dangerous, too unpredictable.”

  “She was right.”

  “I’d say the data is still inconclusive.”

  “You’ve been documenting all of this, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. It’s a study. And, I must say, its design is flawless. The data we’ve collected over the last three years is fully suggestive that my primary theory is one hundred percent correct.”

  “Your theory?”

  “That given the freedom t
hey deserve, the park’s top predators will assert their dominance over all other animals in the park, humans included. Once they’re chipped, all I have to do is give them the tiniest of jolts to set them off. Sometimes, not even the pepper spray stops them. It helps that firearms are outlawed on the research teams, of course. Or, it helped—until you came along with Toby’s gun.” Randall’s voice sharpened. “You killed two of my study subjects, Number 6, the wolf, and Number 1, Notch, my very first chip placement. There’s no excuse for what you did, Chuck. None whatsoever.”

  He raised the rifle, aiming at Chuck’s face, his finger on the trigger.

  43

  Chuck looked down the barrel of the gun, its mouth a small, black hole aimed at his forehead.

  The lower portion of Randall’s face, visible in the light of his headlamp, was slack, his breathing steady. Chuck didn’t move. Randall lowered the gun back to his waist.

  Chuck said accusingly, “You sicced the wolves on us when we were trying to get Kaifong back to the cabin, didn’t you?”

  “Even after the lake, she didn’t get the message. She kept asking questions. She claimed I’d summoned too many animals here too quickly, that I was abusing the pulses. I tranqued her water bottle. When she got groggy, I led her away from camp. I wanted you and Lex to go after her. With the three of you out of the way—plus Toby, as it turned out—I’d be able to take care of everyone else. When you reached her, I pulsed the wolves and got the drone out of there.”

  “But they didn’t attack. At least, not right away.”

  “That’s the difference between wolves and grizzlies. Pulse a grizzly, it goes berserk. Pulse wolves, they go on a hunt. They’re very methodical about it.”

  “They sent one in on its own first.”

  “Number 6. Testing the defensive ability of the prey.”

  “When I fired past the others, they held off.”

  “It’s called cortextual suggestion. There’s no guaranteeing the precise effect the pulses will have on test subjects, especially in the face of gunfire.”

  Chuck gritted his teeth. “The first day, the wolf and bear below camp, that was you, too, wasn’t it?”

  “Yabba dabba doo. The griz—Number 11—and the wolf—my Number 9, the Wolf Initiative’s Number 217. I used a pulse sequence that synchs the species. I thought if I could show everyone how bitchin’ cool grizzlies and wolves were together, people would understand.”

  “When we went after them that evening, I heard growls behind me, and I saw eyes, too, in the dark.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. I was busy, busy, busy—pulsing the dog to keep it moving ahead while I brought the two of them around behind.”

  “But they didn’t attack.”

  “I made sure they didn’t. That was still for show. But I kept the two of them together too long. My mistake. I knew there was trouble when Number 9 stopped moving. I came along with everyone when the vultures revealed the carcass location. The lead group was lucky the griz only bluff-charged despite all the pulses I gave it.”

  “You pulsed the Stander Pack wolves after the bear backed off, didn’t you?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “But the wolves didn’t attack, either.”

  “They would have before we reached camp, I’m sure of it. I was ready for them to attack at that point, with Number 9 dead. I was finished trying to impress people. It was time. I kept pulsing them, but your gunshot from the boat was too much.”

  “You were going to have them attack even though you were with us?”

  “I’ve incorporated a paired-charge, repellant force field around the control console that interacts with the chip circuitry to keep test subjects a few feet away.”

  “The walls of the cabin will repel your test subjects, too. It doesn’t matter what you do to me out here. Everyone will be safe inside. Your chipped animals won’t be able to get to them in there, no matter how many times you pulse them.”

  “With my help, they will—now that I’m armed. By the time the emergency responders show up, no one will be left alive. The predators will have asserted their dominance in an overwhelming way, which will keep humans out of the Yellowstone backcountry for decades, longer maybe, the way it should be.”

  “But when your body isn’t found with the others, they’ll come looking for you.”

  “I’ll leave a trail to the river, then wade upstream before I leave the water and head south, out of the park. They’ll assume I was chased in and drowned, my body swept downstream to the bottom of the lake.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. And it all starts with you. I appreciate how predictable you are, Chuck-a-dee, bringing me what I needed.” Randall put the stock of the gun to his cheek and aimed down the barrel. This time, the lower half of his face was stiff, his lips a flat line, his breaths coming hard and fast through his nostrils.

  Chuck sensed Randall’s finger tightening on the trigger and ducked as the gun spit a burst of flame. The blast echoed through the trees and the bullet seared the air just above his head. He hit the ground and crawled, elbows and knees digging into the dirt.

  “Nice effort, dude,” Randall said from behind him. “Very commendable.”

  Metal slid on metal as Randall worked the bolt, reloading. Chuck spun and sprang, wrapping his arms around Randall’s legs. Randall pulled the trigger as he tumbled backward. The gun blasted again, the bullet flying into the night sky.

  Chuck scrambled atop Randall, who rolled to his stomach and clutched the rifle to his chest, the barrel protruding past his shoulder. Chuck tugged hard on the gun. He couldn’t free it from Randall’s grasp, but the rifle’s chamber was empty, affording him time. He leapt to his feet and sprinted for camp. At his back, the rifle snicked as Randall chambered another round.

  Chuck dug for the cabin, putting trees and distance between himself and the gun. A third shot rang out, struck a tree, and ricocheted away. He kept running.

  Behind him, Randall laughed. “You can run as fast as you want, Chuck,” he called, “but you can’t outrun my wolves.”

  Growls sounded from the darkness to Chuck’s left. Adrenalin surged through him as he dashed headlong through the forest. He broke out of the trees and sped up the tilted meadow toward camp.

  “Chuck!” Clarence yelled from the front of the cabin.

  “It’s Randall,” Chuck hollered. “He’s—”

  A wolf struck him from behind, sending him to the ground. He wrapped himself into a ball and folded his arms over his head. The wolf tore into his back, ripping at his jacket. Chuck peeked between his arms. His headlamp illuminated four wolves—one black, one white, and two gray—padding out of the trees toward him. He ducked as the wolf on his back shifted position, gnashing at his forearms.

  A second wolf wrapped its jaws around his upper arm. The two wolves growled as they tore at him, their snarls vibrating through his body. Another vibration joined the growls of the wolves, this one rising from the earth beneath Chuck. The wolves paused. The tremor became audible, its sound increasing from a distant hum to a thumping beat.

  The wolves released Chuck. He twisted and squinted through his crosshatched fingers at a bright floodlight, aloft in the sky, approaching up the valley from the direction of the lake. The light shone from the front of a helicopter swooping in from the north, framed by the starry night sky.

  The two wolves bolted back into the forest with their pack mates. Chuck sat up. He pressed his forearms, bruised through the thick, torn fabric of his jacket, against his stomach as the helicopter skimmed the tree tops, heading for the clearing in front of the cabin.

  He struggled to his feet and ran toward the descending helicopter, waving his arms to warn the aircraft’s oblivious occupants. The chopper’s floodlight was trained on the crowd of researchers gathered in front of the cabin. The thrum of the aircraft’s rotors deepened as it slowed to a hover above the meadow.

  A whirring noise sounde
d behind Chuck, blending with the low-pitched beat of the hovering helicopter. He turned and his headlamp beam lit Randall, standing at the edge of the forest with Toby’s rifle at his feet. Randall balanced the drone at a forty-five-degree angle in his left hand while the fingers of his right hand worked the console at his waist.

  The drone hadn’t wrecked after all. Rather, Randall had settled it safely to the ground in the forest.

  Chuck ran at Randall. But he was too late.

  The whirring noise increased to a loud whine. The drone rose from Randall’s hand, leveled, and shot toward the hovering helicopter. Chuck turned, tracking the trajectory of the drone as the helicopter settled toward its landing, still twenty feet off the ground.

  “No!” he cried out.

  A metallic ping reached his ears as the drone struck the helicopter’s rotor. The whop-whop-whop of the helicopter blade became erratic and the chopper sank sideways toward the grass. The spinning rotor blade struck the ground first. The rotor snapped off and the freed drive shaft sped to an ear-splitting screech. The long, aluminum tail crumpled to the meadow with a metallic crunch. The body of the helicopter settled on its skids, its battered tail in pieces on the ground behind it.

  Chuck ran toward the craft as someone inside cut its engine and the screech died away. The helicopter’s side doors opened and two people tumbled out and scurried away from the downed craft. The smell of spilled fuel permeated the air. Flames licked from beneath the damaged chopper, engulfing it and climbing into the night sky.

  Two men ran from the helicopter toward Chuck. He backed from the heat of the burning aircraft with them. Fit and in their thirties, the men wore blue flight suits. Framed by their white helmets, their faces were pale, their eyes panicked.

  “This way,” Chuck told them, pointing at the cabin. “Run.”

  A rifle shot rang out. One of the men screamed. He gripped his upper leg with both hands and fell to the ground.

  Randall advanced across the grass toward them. He worked the rifle bolt, chambering another round. “Don’t move,” he said.

  The uninjured man, backlit by the flames, waved his hands at Randall. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t. We’re here to help. There was an emergency call.”