by Nick Thacker
“Right. And this job of yours. You and Rivera were supposed to deliver a bear somewhere?”
Ben smiled. “Well, relocate is the right word. A grizzly, actually. One we’ve run into before. Mo is his name.”
“His name?”
“Yeah, we give names to some of the frequent offenders. Mo’s got three strikes now, but we got him moved up there pretty far. Hopefully he was okay after the, uh, incident.”
Julie scrawled some notes in a miniature notepad she’d taken from her back pocket. Ben sipped his coffee, waiting for her to finish. He listened to the gentle commotion emanating from the front lounge, bits of conversation floating in from rangers and park staff.
“...Was probably nuclear, right?”
“No way, too small — I mean, could have been a test or something gone wrong...”
“...Government’s probably gonna try to cover this one up and sweep it under...”
Julie looked up and caught Ben’s eye. “This wasn’t an accident, but it certainly wasn’t a government test or anything. They’re going to be all over this place within the hour. By tonight, Yellowstone will be crawling with FBI, CIA, DoD, every acronym you can think of.”
Ben cringed.
“By the way — you have any questions for me? I feel like I’ve been asking you everything all morning.”
“You have, but that’s your job.” Ben smiled. “What’s BTR?”
“BTR is the Biological Threat Research wing of the CDC. Not exactly top-secret, but it’s a new program the CDC’s trying to get funding for. We’re keeping it quiet until we have some victories under our belt.”
“Like trying to figure out who bombed Yellowstone Park?”
She laughed. “Well, more like trying to analyze the long-term negative environmental effects of possible radiation in the fallout zone.”
“Hmm, not exactly tabloid-worthy.”
“No, it’s pretty unexciting stuff, and that’s why it’s just an idea at this point. But if I — we — can write up something the brass likes, they might just make it a formal department.”
Ben nodded. “And your office is in Billings. Seems like a pretty small city for a CDC office.”
“It is, and that was part of the attraction. It’s a skeleton crew right now, just me and my team. I run a group of five others, including two part-time assistants. Then there’s my boss —”
A loud shout came through the corridor from the other room, followed by a growing commotion and more voices. Ben and Julie both stood, walking toward the cafeteria door.
“Get him inside, on that couch!” one voice shouted.
“Who is it?” Ben heard.
The voices grew hectic, then calmed a little as Ben heard the deep voice of his boss, George Randolph, deliver orders over the din. “Get him down and get some water. Pull his shirt off and let’s get a look at that rash.
“How much is covered? Hands, arms?”
Ben heard someone confirm.
“And his head — look at his neck!”
Ben pushed on the swinging door to the hallway, but Julie grabbed his arm. “Wait. We don’t know what that is, but it’s not going to do anyone any good if we walk in there, and it’s contagious. They’ve got enough people in there anyway.”
“But —”
“Stop. Trust me. Let’s just get out of the park for tonight. Like I said, this whole place will be crawling with suits within a few hours, and we can use a little space. And —”
She stopped when her cellphone started ringing. “Crap, this is my boss. Hang on.” Julie moved toward a cafeteria table but didn’t sit down. “Richardson,” she said as she brought the phone to her ear.
After a minute, she banged her phone on the table.
Ben stared at her. “A bit one-sided for that to have been an argument.”
“Come on,” she said. She didn’t wait for Ben to follow as she slid out the cafeteria’s rear door, through the commercial kitchen. They exited the building and were met by a bright noon sun, covered by a thin layer of smoke and reddish dust from the morning’s blast.
Chapter Nine
NORTHWEST TERRITORY, CANADA, ONE YEAR Ago
The rest of the afternoon faded quickly into evening, but thankfully, their excavation moved at a brisk pace as well. Before nightfall, the team of six — five students and the professor — had uncovered most of the Russian camp.
It was arranged traditionally, in a semi-circle around a central opening, in which one student found the remnants of a campfire. Another student found a nearly-complete flap of canvas tent, with tie-downs and a large tent stake. Next to it, a small pouch containing five silver coins — a miraculous find. They shared the information about depth, soil density, and procedure as they went, and just as dusk approached, the team found three more tents, all collapsed onto themselves and preserved reasonably well beneath layers of the cold soil.
Together they marked, documented, and mapped the entire area, eventually creating a computer model of the landscape and coordinates.
But it wasn’t the tents, artifacts, or even the coins that caused the most commotion.
Instead, it was what the team had found beneath the tents.
As two students carefully removed the canvas from the ground under the watchful eye of Dr. Fischer, the ground beneath the tent, having been protected and thus undisturbed for three centuries, was visible.
And on that ground, lying solemnly in a semi-preserved state, were the corpses of the Russian expedition. Some of the bodies had been preserved better than others, but it was clear from the clothing, cranial structures, and some of the additional artifacts and books found nearby, that it was the lost Russian expedition of the early 18th century. Dr. Fischer was ecstatic; this was a discovery that, to him, surpassed anything he’d ever done in his professional career. He would write a book — maybe a volume of books — about this expedition. What it was attempting to accomplish, where it had been, and what had led to their eventual demise.
Of course, there were questions to answer before these secrets would reveal themselves.
They had pieces of maps, journals, and scraps of clothing, but they could use a little more to piece things together. And now that Dr. Fischer had committed to exploring the nearby caves tomorrow, they had even less time to spend at this site.
He moved to another rectangular opening in the earth; a new hole they’d dug to continue exploring beneath the earth’s surface. Another three tents were revealed, and another six skeletal bodies were uncovered. In one, a student had removed a carved bone smoking pipe and a small journal. The student gave the pipe directly to Gareth, who was hard at work logging the items into the computer database and mapping the precise location they were found. But the journal he handed to Dr. Fischer.
“Thought this might be interesting to you,” the student said.
Dr. Fischer donned a pair of fresh latex gloves and held the journal delicately between his two hands. He felt its leathery surface, noticing the fine craftsmanship and attention to detail. After so many years, it really was remarkable.
Most remarkable, however, was the fact that some of the paper inside the journal was still intact. Dirty, smudged, and difficult to read, but intact nonetheless.
He held the journal open, barely enough to peer inside, as he did not want to damage the worn spine, but he moved the book around to let enough light in to see what was on the right-hand page.
“Anyone read Russian?” he called. “This is too small to see.”
“Losing your vision already, old man?” one of the students yelled.
Dr. Fischer laughed.
Gareth stood from behind the computer and stretched. “I got it,” he said. “I can use a break anyway. Anyone want to take over?”
Another graduate student fell in behind the computer screen and continued to document the dig site.
“You read Russian?” Dr. Fischer asked.
“Yeah, it was an undergraduate minor. Something I was interested in.”
“Why?”
“Girl. Hottie, too. Too bad she was into German.”
Dr. Fischer shook his head and grinned. Whatever it took... he handed the small book to the student and waited.
“Okay, yeah, I got this. Pretty good handwriting, actually. Let’s see... ‘One more eventless day. Full moon last night, and one of the men has caught a rabbit.’” Gareth looked up. “Pretty exciting stuff, Doc.” Some of the other students who had gathered around chuckled.
“Keep reading,” Dr. Fischer said.
“‘One other place in my life I have found solace such as this...’ Can’t read that word; I think it’s a town or something. ‘The wind whispers through our ranks; the snow crunches beneath our feet, and you would imagine it was the loudest noise in the forest.’ Let’s see if we can find anything interesting,” Gareth said.
By now, the other four students were gathered around Gareth and Dr. Fischer, each leaning on a shovel or sitting on the ground.
“Flip to the end,” Dr. Fischer said.
Gareth nodded, turning pages in the small leather journal. “Here we go. Last entry: ‘The baskets were full of some sort of powder, along with the coins. It has consumed us all. I am to die here alone, with my words and my comrades, without so much as a hope to return to my homeland...’” Gareth’s voice trailed off just as the words of the journal entry had. His eyes were wide, a look of surprise on his face. “Woah. Pretty intense.”
“Damn,” another student whispered.
Dr. Fischer was replaying the words in his mind, trying to commit them to memory. They’d found baskets somewhere. Somewhere close to where they now stood. Whatever was in them, besides these coins, was deadly. He looked up sharply, finding a young woman’s face in the crowd. “Steph — did any of you find any of these baskets? Or more coins?”
She shook her head. “No, we’ve been scouting the area around the dig site but haven’t found anything yet…” her voice shook.
“No, no, that’s fine,” Dr. Fischer said. “There’s nothing to worry about, then. The coins were out in the open, so they should be fine. But we need to change our plans a little. I’m not sure excavating any more of this area tomorrow is such a great idea.”
The students nodded, solemn looks of grief on their faces. It was as if they suddenly understood the horrible massacre they were standing in. It wasn’t the peaceful, silent death of twenty-seven men and explorers they’d come across. It wasn’t a simple gravesite; one created when the group died of starvation, natural causes, or both.
The men that lay beneath their canvas tents, caught in eternal sleep, weren’t men who’d given in to their fate. It was the site of men who had been taken by something sinister that had been hidden away for so long.
It was the site of a massacre.
Chapter Ten
“DAVID LIVINGSTON,” JULIE SAID TO Ben as they walked across the parking lot, “is pretty much exactly what you think of when you think ‘bureaucracy by the book.’ He’d rather fail doing it the right way than succeed by not following the rules.”
Julie turned left and started walking down a row of parked cars, Ben in tow. He could see only sedans and small station wagons and wondered which was Julie’s.
“He’s not exactly the easiest person to work with, either,” she continued. “Actually, you don’t work with Livingston at all. You work for him. In his world, that means everyone’s working against him, and it’s up to him to right all our wrongs.”
“Sounds like a stand up guy,” Ben said as they passed yet another Subaru Outback. “Which one’s yours?”
Julie laughed, then clicked the button on her key fob. A beep sounded from down the row, and Ben stopped short. Ahead of them lay a monstrous Ford pickup. A lifted F-450, extended cab Lariat, from what he could see. It was dark gray and loomed over the minuscule cars around it.
Julie threw him the keys. “You drive,” she said. She reached for the back door on the driver’s side and opened it, grabbing a laptop case and bag. “I’ve got some work to do. You, uh, think you can handle her?”
Ben grinned as he opened the door to the driver’s seat and stepped in. He tried not to seem impressed. He turned on the engine and waited for Julie to enter on her side. Once seated, he threw the truck in reverse and backed out of the spot.
“Anyway, Livingston’s making us do these reports.” She opened the laptop. “He’s got this idea that if we write everything down and email it to him, he’ll be able to ‘crack the case,’ or figure out whatever it is we’re supposed to figure out. It’s pretty annoying, to say the least.
“Then, just now, he called to tell me he wants an in-person report every forty-eight hours. Can you believe that? He said if we can’t make it face-to-face, we have to call in. I’m already up to here with processing, reports, and government forms, not to mention actually doing my job. And he thinks if I’m too busy to actually get to the office I have enough time to give him a play-by-play update over the phone?”
Ben listened as she vented, guiding the truck out of the parking lot and down the curved path leading from the staff facility. As he turned onto the main park road, he turned to Julie. “Where exactly are we going?”
She looked back at him. “Oh, uh, I guess I should ask you first.” Ben waited. “You have plans? I could use your help back at the office.”
Ben couldn’t hide his surprise. “The office? You mean, back in Billings? That’s, what, an hour and a half drive?”
She shrugged. “Just over two, actually. I didn’t think you had anything going on, what with the park needing to be closed for a while. I’ve got more questions to ask you, but I can’t wait until after I get back — Livingston will want to know as soon as possible.”
He was silent for a few minutes as they drove toward the park’s eastern boundary. “I need to swing by my place for a bit to pick up some clothes. And I don’t want to get involved, Julie. I’m serious — I’m here to help you out for a few days, tops. Just because I don’t have anything else going on doesn’t mean I want to play chauffeur for you forever.”
“I promise. Just to the office, and then I’ll buy you a plane ticket home — I can get my report prepared and sent on the way, and if anything comes up I can just ask.”
“Deal, but hold the plane ticket. I’ll rent a car.”
Julie frowned, but didn’t question him. They drove on in silence for another twenty minutes, finally coming to a gas station on their left. “One other thing,” Ben said. Julie jumped, then looked over.
“What’s that?”
“You get to pay for gas.”
Chapter Eleven
DAVID LIVINGSTON SAT IN HIS executive leather office chair and cracked his knuckles — an old habit. He ran his hands through his thick, oiled black hair and shifted in his seat. His computer dinged once — the sound of an incoming email — but he ignored it.
Clicking away from the news site, he read through the dossier on Juliette Alexandra Richardson, native of Montana. Other than a brief stint in California during and after college, she’d lived in Montana her entire life. He’d had the data center send a copy up to his office, where he scanned it and shredded the paper — a wasted tree and no doubt a waste of productive time. After five years at the CDC, he still had no idea why it was so difficult to just email everything through a secure connection. The data lead, Randall Brown, had tried explaining it to him several times, but it never took.
He reached the end of the dossier, not finding anything unusual or out of place. He shouldn’t have been surprised — this was the third time he’d read it. It was similar to what his own looked like five years ago. Clean, simple, and without a black mark.
He had reached this point in his career through determination, hard work, and then bad luck. At first, he’d applied to the CDC as an investigator, hoping to land a job that allowed him to travel, study, and research the kinds of terrifying things the rest of world paid them to keep hidden. He’d started out following a team of scient
ists and biologists into the Andes, but couldn’t get his name in the paper that was eventually written. After graduating and finishing his internship, he was passed over three times before landing a desk job at the Atlanta campus — CDC headquarters. He toiled there for four years, e-signing his boss’s expense reports and preparing meeting agendas.
Then his boss died. A man of sixty-one, a sudden heart attack left the department without a manager. Rather than replace him, Livingston found his and his coworkers’ jobs outsourced and the department all but shut down. Floating around, he landed a brief position as a “research specialist,” effectively a news and media junkie who speculated on which outbreaks and natural disasters would lead to the next Mad Cow Disease or Bird Flu.
During his tenure, there were none.
Finally, his luck turned — or so he thought. What appeared to be an opportunity to lead a brand new, recently brainstormed section of the CDC became the mind-numbing middle management job in which he currently served. They’d been relegated to the backwaters of the CDC — southern Montana — and asked to “provide guidance on environmental and biological threats to the nation.” To Livingston, it was the worst place in the entire world.
In other words, he and his team were glorified storm chasers.
Julie, on the other hand, had come through his doors as a young CDC employee three years ago, still wet behind the ears with the usual “change the world” mentality. He wouldn’t have picked her himself, but she had come highly recommended by people above his own pay grade.
Plus, her looks certainly didn’t hurt her chances.
Livingston pushed back from the desk and stood up, stretching his back and popping his neck. He pressed a button on the small intercom next to his computer and waited a moment.
“Please grab Stephens and tell him to come up here.”
The intercom crackled and a woman’s voice responded. “Yes, Mr. Livingston.”
Livingston knew it was an act of arrogance, but he didn’t care. Their office space was so small that the only closed-door office rooms inside were his own and Julie Richardson’s, which was, of course, currently unoccupied. The administrative secretary, technically charged to serve the entire staff of seven, had been given the nameplate “Executive Administrator” by Livingston, in order to help specify to everyone in the room who exactly she — and everyone else — really worked for.