Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1)

by Christopher Kerns

  She quickly surveyed the pattern and clicked on a stationary Wi-Fi signal towards the center of the camp. The resulting pop-up showed details for the selected node—it was a router named ‘BG-ArtStudio.’ That’s not what I want.

  Looking again, she clicked on another node. ‘BG-maintenanceStaffOnly.’ Nope.

  She checked to the right of the clusters’ center and tried again. This pop-up read: ‘BG-MainLodge.’

  Bingo.

  Peering over the side of the cliff, Haylie could see the outline of a utility path running along the lake; if she stayed low enough while making occasional checks of her phone, she should be able to have a straight shot over to the Main Lodge. There was one problem, though: the Main Lodge sat less than a hundred feet away from the torches on the lake’s shore and hundreds of Bohemians. Of course it did.

  She made her way back to the path, hiking slowly down into the valley, sneaking into the enormous shadow cast by the imposing owl statue. Another quick check of the drone’s feed showed the coast was clear, and she took a sharp left at the base of the hill. She quickly found the utility path, moving as fast as her hunched-over posture would allow.

  The drums grew louder as the crowd continued its chanting, the Master of Ceremonies’ voice booming across the water’s surface. Haylie could now smell strong waves of incense and fresh, green burning wood. The flickering torches lit her path as her feet moved quickly across the dirt, closer and closer to the center of the camp.

  > > > > >

  A thousand feet above, BusyBee hovered in a circular pattern, illuminated only by a small blue diode from its onboard computer. As the motors sent a dull, whining buzz into night sky, the blue light flicked off the blades as their edges rotated and pivoted slightly here and there to maintain a steady position.

  BusyBee battery level: 56%

  The wind shifted, pulling the drone across the night’s sky like a floating tin can catching a wave towards the shore. BusyBee crested up and was dragged through the air, shooting east.

  The flight controller got to work, struggling to push the vehicle back to its assigned coordinates, fighting against the building wind. The onboard computer increased the battery power to the rear rotors, forcing the craft to push even harder against the oncoming gusts.

  If BusyBee’s front-facing camera had been live, it would have shown Haylie a view of the oncoming wave of storm clouds heading in from the coast, with steady winds approaching twenty knots. The drone continued to increase power to the rotors, pushing back against the wind, bobbing up and down.

  The motors reported a high-pitched whine as the drone fought the face of the oncoming storm. BusyBee’s flight controller was finding the edge of its maximum rotor capacity to simply remain hovering above the Bohemian Grove, eating away at its most precious resource.

  BusyBee battery level: 45%

  It took two minutes at full power to get back to the assigned position, and even then, the motors ran hot, trying their best to keep the craft on-task.

  > > > > >

  Haylie kept a steady pace down the worn path, sneaking an occasional glance at the crowd to her right. The flickering orange light of the torches painted faint outlines of a few buildings directly ahead as she crept to the edge of the clearing and pulled out her phone. No heat signatures in her immediate area; she was free to explore, for now.

  She walked a few steps into the foliage to her right, pushing aside branches for a partial view of the lake. The robed, hooded men now all stood faithfully facing the owl, giving their undivided attention to the Master of Ceremonies who was perched atop the steps, ascending to the owl’s massive feet.

  “Hail, Bohemians! With the ripple of waters, the song of birds. Such music as inspires the sinking soul; do we invite you into Midsummer’s joy.”

  There was a burst of booming laughter that rumbled across the lake as the crowd joined in. A forced, hollow cackling echoed off the trees, the valley, and the night.

  Haylie scanned the crowd as she crouched low, picking a few stray twigs from her hair and wiping her glasses clear of dirt. Her pulse raced as she checked back into the main camp, her eyes flicking between the paths and silhouettes.

  That stupid school trip to Germany sounds pretty good right now, doesn’t it?

  She stood upright and crept towards the compound. The lake’s activities lit up the worn paths and corners of the camp like a distant sunset. The wooden buildings each varied in their size, construction, and craftsmanship. It seemed that the camp had been built over the course of many decades, adding a building here and there as needed. Each structure had a door facing the main road, with hand-carved signs—‘CRAFT SHED,’ ‘CIVIC CENTER,’ ‘FIRE HOUSE’—resting to the side of, or in some cases above, a small front porch.

  Working her way deeper into the camp, Haylie peered down two dirt pathways snaking into cul-de-sacs of buildings on either side.

  The lodge will be by the lake. I’ll need to stay close to the–

  From behind her, Haylie suddenly heard the muffled tones of two people approaching. She scrambled, searching for a place to hide.

  There was only a single, small cabin wedged between her and the lake. As the approaching voices grew louder, she sprinted across the path and stepped onto the porch. She quietly slid her feet across the hardwood, turned the worn brass knob to enter, and clicked the door shut behind her.

  Leaning back, she listened for any trace of approaching visitors. She heard nothing. Checking her phone, the view from above showed two blobs of heat walking past her location, meandering in a circular pattern around the camp’s main road. They were gone, for now.

  She looked up into the pitch-black nothing of the cabin, fighting to make out any shapes. The smells of mildew and wood shavings hung still in the dead air. Pointing her phone screen into the darkness, she saw a few scattered desks in the middle of the room, and a collection of file cabinets littered across the back walls of the structure. The sign hanging from the ceiling read: ‘ARCHIVES.’

  Turning to her left, she saw a large, sepia-toned photo of a wooden statue. Haylie recognized the photo’s location: it must have been taken on the lakeshore, with the huge owl looming in the distance. The figure looked like a saint, draped in robes and wisdom, with a single finger pressed to its lips. Haylie could almost hear the saint hissing “Shhhhhh” as she stared into its eyes.

  She tiptoed forward towards the file cabinets, sliding open a random drawer to take a peek. The steel tray rang out a metallic squeak as she lifted and pulled, revealing a deep row of multi-colored folders. Her fingers ticked across the tops of the files, hunting for anything that might be helpful.

  The folders were organized by peculiar names, with labels like ‘HILLBILLY,’ ‘THE LOST BOYS,’ and ‘DOOM.’ Haylie kept searching until a familiar name caught her eye: ‘UTUKURU.’

  These are organized by camp name.

  She kept thumbing through and stopped her hand on a thick folder. ‘MANDALAY’ was scribbled across the tab in pencil. She shrugged, pulling the file and titling her phone for better light as she opened the manila folder. Flipping through the pages, her eyes grew wider as she turned each yellowed sheet.

  The folder held meeting notes that went back for decades, all with the same format: hand-written records of the date, members present, agenda, and a list of discussion topics. The names she read were almost too good to be true: Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, William Randolph Hearst, Teddy Roosevelt. Some notes she could decipher; others she couldn’t make any sense of.

  Opening a drawer marked ‘R-S-T,’ she searched over each label scrawled across the faded manila folder tabs. ‘ROLLINS,’ ‘ROOSEVELT,’ ‘SHULTZ.’ Haylie figured these must be member files, with labels and names that spanned over a hundred years; some were typed, some written in faint pencil or pen. A few new folders shone bright in the sea of older documents. As she scanned the labels, her eyes lit up as she saw a familiar name: ‘STERLING.’

  She pulled the file and placed it on to
p of the others, cracking the folder open with a gentle flip of the cover. Inside, she studied the top sheet: a detailed view of Andrew Sterling and his time at the Grove, with a few more loose documents nestled behind. The brothers will get a kick out of this. She folded the stack of papers into fours and slid it into her back pocket, returning the folder to its place.

  She slid the drawer shut with a slight squeak. Haylie made her way back towards the cabin’s door, checking BusyBee’s view to make sure there was no one outside.

  She gave a sideways look to the photograph of the shushing saint, still standing tall above her, begging her to keep the camp’s secrets quiet. Haylie flashed a quick middle finger as she passed. Good luck with that, buddy.

  Haylie snuck back into the chilled night, carving a semicircle down the main path. As she rounded the corner, she could see a huge lodge in the distance. The structure was poised above the lake with a long front porch adorned with rocking chairs, tables, and benches, complete with steps leading down to the lakeshore. A white, wooden sign read: ‘BOHEMIA,’ flanked by markers on either side indicating ‘TO SAN FRANCISCO: 77.54 MILES’ and ‘ELEVATION: 41 FEET.’

  This has to be it.

  Glancing down at the drone’s view, Haylie saw no heat signatures inside the outline of the lodge. Her eyes darted back and forth between the well-lit front porch and the crowd to her right, standing less than fifty feet from the steps.

  Creeping around behind the building, she spotted a rear entrance perched above a small, wooden porch. Haylie swung open the screen door with a slight squeak, propping it open with her shoulder to turn the knob of the main door and push into the lodge. She stepped in, feeling the hollow thump of her boot on the ancient hardwood floor, and walked inside.

  > > > > >

  As the storm continued its push towards the coast, BusyBee struggled, fighting to remain airborne above the camp. The problem wasn’t the gusts of wind hitting the craft from time to time, it was the steady wall of air forcing the drone to keep its engine levels at a constant sprint.

  With the increased workload, the four motors were approaching the point of overheating. The flight controller toggled the power to each blade in a pattern that would minimize the chance of overload, but one motor had already come close to its failure point.

  BusyBee battery level: 13%

  As the dark clouds enveloped the drone, BusyBee fought to push against the current, struggling back towards its ordered post.

  Huffing and puffing.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Monte Rio, CA

  March 8th, 9:48PM

  A musty smell—the mix of burnt tobacco, old smoke, and soil—filled Haylie’s nose as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Luckily, the dark room was highlighted with shades of silver from the row of windows facing the lake’s shore. To the left, Haylie could see a hallway leading to a large kitchen. To the right, chunky tables and chairs cut from thick tree trunks were fastened together at right angles and arranged in a semi-circle. On the far right wall stood a large stone fireplace, formed by a mosaic of smooth river rocks.

  Squinting, she could see the outlines of hundreds of picture frames lining the walls, filling every square inch with a mix of sizes and shapes; like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

  Ok founding father … where are you?

  Haylie worked her way across the wall, leaning in close to make out the figures in each photo. Her eyes flew across the tiny, faded brass plaques underneath each frame, not even sure which name she should be searching for.

  She paused to examine a photo dated ‘1915,’ picturing a collection of men proudly posing and surrounded by burning candles and hand-drawn banners fastened to a tree trunk. These people are so weird. Haylie moved along, dusting off another photo labeled ‘SONS OF TOIL, 1910.’ The scene showed six men, adorned in tuxedos, sitting in a v-formation across the front steps of an unmarked building. They had the nervous appearance of men halfway between childhood and responsibility.

  How am I going to find this guy? I may not even be in the right building. This is ridiculous.

  Shuffling her feet, she moved down the wall and struggled to make out the subject of the next image; it had no brass plaque, but had a faded, handwritten label across the bottom reading ‘WINGS, 1925.’ The photo was of thirty club members, all adorned in white and posed on the shore of the lake, each with one hand pointed towards the sky. They were arranged on all sides of the Owl statue, the massive structure looming high above them, covered in gray moss and staring down on the scene with its fixed, stone eyes.

  It would have to be an older photo, something from the early times of the camp.

  She breezed past a color shot of Ronald Reagan addressing a small crowd. The next frame held a photo of men sitting around a tent, beers raised high in a toast, with white banners and flags adorning the trees around them. Scenes of campfires, men in robes, and grand speeches by the shore. One of a man that resembled Richard Nixon, but Haylie didn’t have time to double check.

  Haylie came to the end of the wall and cursed under her breath. Where the hell is this guy? As she turned to face the south side of the lodge, she could see the fires still burning bright outside. She narrowed her eyes to look across the center of the dark lodge, focusing on the stone fireplace and the collection of frames perched above the mantle.

  Her eyes locked on the large painting hung high on the rock. It depicted a man sitting back confidently in a wooden chair. His three-piece suit wouldn’t have been out of place, except for the fact that he was sitting in the middle of a redwood forest flanked by six assistants on either side. Beneath him there was a large, brass plaque simply reading ‘OUR FOUNDER, OUR BOHEMIAN BROTHER.’

  There you are.

  Grabbing the closest thing she could stand on—an old wooden rocking chair that rested in the corner—Haylie headed towards the fireplace. She dragged the chair across the floor with a slight squeak and steadied it in front of the painting. She placed a boot on the sloped seat, and then the other, pushing her weight with each foot, back and forth, as the chair rocked with each shift. Leaning over against the mantle, she pulled the painting up and out to unlatch the hook on the back. As she pulled, the frame tugged back, remaining confidently attached to the wall.

  She angled her weight in the direction of the fireplace, lifting the frame as high as it would go. Haylie pushed it up against the back wall with the tips of her fingers to free the wire from its hook. Edging up on her tiptoes, balancing and shifting, straining to push higher.

  With one last push upward, the frame released, taking Haylie with it. She fell back off the chair and onto her back, sounding off a series of echoing booms as each body part—her back, her elbow, her knee—slammed into the lodge’s dusty floor. She quickly lifted her arms off the ground to catch the falling frame, but with no luck. The rip of the canvas echoed through the lodge as she pierced the center of the painting with the crown of her head.

  She pushed the painting back, revealing a huge hole directly at its center. Whatever, it was ugly anyway. She stood, snatching her glasses from off the floor, and spun the painting on its corner. The back was empty.

  Seriously?

  Her fingers brushed over the canvas, searching for the next clue. An envelope, a carving … anything. She flipped the frame onto its back, catching the torch light shining through the front windows, but saw nothing. Haylie yanked at the canvas around each side of the frame, feeling with her fingers.

  “There’s got to be something here,” she whispered, her eyes looking back up to the empty fireplace. As she scanned the river rocks above the mantle, she found what she had been missing.

  A second, smaller picture frame hung in the dusty outline left by the painting, still fixed to the wall above the mantle. The frame held a simple white piece of paper with no glass. On the paper were two figures: the familiar raven image she had seen back at the hangar, and a black and white square, filled with small patterns like a crazy game of Tetris. It was a QR code.

 
Just as Haylie caught her breath and cracked a smile, she heard a man’s voice at the back side of the lodge, moving from window to window, left to right.

  Someone was heading towards the back porch.

  In one move, she jumped up and grabbed the top of the paper, feeling a pop as the glue released from the back of the frame. She landed on the wooden floor with a thump, folding the paper into her pocket. She picked up the large painting and stretched up to the wall, propping the frame up on the mantle to cover the missing clue.

  Haylie ran for the front porch, dragging the rocking chair back to its original location along the way. She crept outside, falling to her hands and knees and crawling below the front porch’s wooden wall.

  As she lay still, she heard the back door slam and felt the bumps of footsteps vibrating through the floorboards. Haylie took a few deep breaths, tasting incense and ash from the breeze rushing in off the lake. She checked to make sure the clue was still safe in her front pocket and looked across the camp to plan her escape route. She crawled down the south side of the porch steps, staying low, slithering down to the edge of the beaten path.

  She rose to her feet, finding herself a stone’s throw away from the backs of the hooded Bohemian Club members. Haylie stared at the crowd, drawn to their silhouettes.

  In the distance, a thirty-foot boat with a small ornamental tent now stood front and center before the Owl statue, piloted by a hooded man and illuminated by six torches. A rectangular-shaped object—was that a coffin?—rested under the boat’s cloth roof. The boat’s captain chanted as he rowed, throwing his paddle up with dramatic gestures, commanding the attention of the crowd.