Down In The Valley

by James Strauss

  “Slippery,” Arch complained, almost falling on the first step he attempted.

  “We’re covered in mud and these are always wet anyway,” Matisse joined in.

  They used the railings to climb, almost more than the stairs themselves. Matisse counted off backwards, singing the words to “Ninety-Nine Bottle of Beer on the wall,” until Arch couldn’t take the sing song, repetitive, idiocy of the lyrics any longer.

  “Will you shut it, they’re going to hear us!” he almost yelled. The higher they’d climbed, the greater the winds velocity.

  “Oh sure, they hear us,” Matisse laughed from just behind him. “High wind, rain, mud and muck and we’re so far above this crazy island that a plane’s likely to hit us, and they gonna hear us. Sure boss.” But he stopped singing.

  It took a couple of hours for them to reach a place close to the top. The stairs, without warning, abruptly stopped well before reaching the edge of the peak. With their goggles, they stared back and forth along the inside of the top of the ridge. A very faint path ran along the edge about fifteen feet down from the very top. Along the path, as far as they could see, ran an almost four-inch-thick cable. It was brand new and colored to match the foliage. Arch squatted down to closely examine the cable, shifting around to look back in the direction they’d come from. Where was the cable from and where did it go?

  “Kaneohe’s all lit up,” Matisse pointed out, looking in the same direction. The base seemed to have every light turned on, although there was no activity visible from such a great distance. Kam Highway was lit from place to place, as it meandered the length of the island before disappearing near Turtle Bay. Only the fact that the highway lights abruptly ended, marked where that location must be.

  “They’re down there,” Matisse said, his goggles aimed down the stairs.

  “Yeah,” Arch agreed, seeing a glow of faint light emanating from the platform they’d so laboriously gone around.

  “Which way?” Matisse asked.

  Arch looked around. “Haleiwa way,” he said, finally. There being no point in going in the other direction. The valley was between their position, and that of Pearl Harbor, which was more toward Haleiwa than Diamond Head. Without further discussion, they got up and moved to the narrow path. Arch led, holding his damaged hand against his stomach, and using his right arm for balance. They came to a point where the path began to rise. Looking up, they saw that the very top lip of the mountain range ran both ways about forty feet higher up. Arch stopped and crouched down again.

  “We might as well climb up and wait,” he said. Matisse didn’t reply, simply continuing to wait behind him on the path.

  Very slowly, and gingerly, Arch and Matisse worked their way up to the edge, again using the cable to push up from. The ridge ran, broken here and there by breaks, like the Pali cleft, which ran from Bellows Beach beyond Hawaii Kai, all the way across Oahu to finally expire just above the North Shore town of Haleiwa. Arch eased the Leica binoculars from one pocket, and his camera from the other. He breathed in and out a few times, without giving in to his desire to look back, or down, from where he sat wedged into the rocky, muddy bracken with Matisse. He set the camera lens to its maximum optical enlargement of twenty times, and then ‘pushed’ that out to forty using digital enlargement as well. The knob for those adjustments was located right next to the shutter button. What he might get from the beautiful German device without being able to read the settings properly he didn’t know. All he could do was set the enlargement to max, and hope that putting the rest on automatic would capture something.

  Arch dug both Tevas deep into the mud, and angled forward and up until his shoulders were level with the top of the sharp rock ridge. Matisse surged up beside him. Arch removed his night vision goggles carefully, knowing he’d probably never need them again. The distance down into the valley below was too great for the night vision device to return any image of distinguishable quality. Matisse had his pair of binoculars, but no camera. If there was anything to be permanently recorded, it was up to Arch’s Leica.

  He looked down through the lens of his binoculars, but it was too dark to see into the valley below. The sun was set to rise off of Honolulu, and the blackness of the sea there was distinguishable beyond the city’s outline. It was easy to tell where Pearl Harbor was, but Diamond Head was barely recognizable only because Arch knew exactly where to look for it. Arch let his binoculars hang down from the safety cord around his neck. Matisse did the same.

  “Too dark down there,” Arch observed.

  “Not for long, dawn’s almost here,” Matisse observed, scratching his head and then popping two spam musubis out of his shirt pocket. Breakfast boss?” he offered, holding one out in his right hand. “I’m really tired. Maybe there’s nothing there. All of this for nuthin’ except to be messed with by the bitch’s goons.”

  Arch took the musubi and bit off a piece. He was too tired himself to argue. He shifted his position to favor his damaged hand, but slid part way back down the slope.

  “Come on, let’s tie ourselves to some of this shrubbery so we can rest a bit,” he instructed Matisse, unlimbering the rope from around his neck after taking off his binoculars.

  The securing job only took up a few feet of the thin but extremely strong climbing rope. Matisse tied the two ropes together, around them and then up and around the base of a low Ohia tree, located right near the very top edge of the mountain ridge.

  “Special Hawaiian knot,” Matisse said with satisfaction when he was done. “One pull on that loop and we are free.” He dropped the remainder of the joined ropes down the cliff face beneath them. Arch watched the rope snake down until the bottom of it settled onto a steep decline, covered with a green carpet of taro plants and ferns.

  Arch nodded off, letting the rope take his weight, but was awakened only seconds later, or so he thought at first, until he saw Matisse fully asleep next to him. It was barely light out. They’d slept right into early dawn.

  “Matisse,” he hissed as silently as he could, reaching around to poke the big thick Hawaiian in the neck with the index finger of his good hand.

  Matisse jerked awake, and they both struggled to crawl the few feet back up to the lip, after Arch recovered his binoculars from the mud next to him, thankful that the Leica’s hadn’t fallen to the valley floor below.

  Arch peered through the lenses down into the valley on the leeward side of the range. He took a quick scan and then pulled his glasses down to try to clean them. The lenses were clear. Bringing the Leica’s back up to his eyes, he looked down into the valley again.

  “Jesus Christ,” he breathed out, and then said the words over and over again, staring into the distance.

  “What is it?” Matisse asked, his own eyes glued to the scene below.

  A silver object lay isolated inside a circle of heavy foliage in the valley below. Arch figured the object to be about a hundred feet long and about twenty in diameter, judging from the few pieces of heavy equipment working around it. Both ends of the object were rounded. It looked like a giant silver hot dog with raised circles protruding around both ends a few feet from the ends. The raised metal circles looked like giant rivets. The area around the object was cleared red dirt but the backhoes and caterpillars weren’t clearing forest. It became obvious that they were burying the object as quickly as they could.

  “Shit,” Arch whispered, dropping the glasses to his chest and reaching for the camera. He touched the shutter button. The camera’s lens extended out to its maximum and its back screen lit up. He hit the autofocus button and the object zoomed up at him. “Shit,” he said again, this time without whispering.

  “Brah, that’s not right. Not right. There’s something wrong,” Matisse followed, his voice matter-of-fact, his inflection dead flat.

  “God…good God…it’s not real,” Arch said, his own tone one of shock and disbelief.

  The object was changing. The ‘rivets’ slowly faded and then re-appeared and then did it again. Arch mo
ved the control for video in order to catch the changes.

  “They blinking,” Matisse whispered, “they blinking like lights but not lights. Here and not here. Man, this scaring me.”

  “I’m getting it on video—” Arch said, until the bullet hit and blew a large chip form the lip of the ridge between he and Matisse. The sound of the shot came seconds later from behind them. Arch cringed but managed to hit the off button on the camera and slide it into his pants pocket. A split second later Matisse, in a panic, pulled the Hawaiian loop he’d carefully tied into the climbing rope.

  Arch fell, sliding down to hit the cable he’d seen located just above the path twenty feet below. He slid off the cable and onto the path itself, which instantly gave way. There was nothing to hold onto. For the half second he was seemingly stationary Arch’s body rotated outward until he was looking out over the entire expanse of the leeward side of Oahu coming alive with the morning sun. The soft beauty of the scene was instantly replaced by total terror in Arch’s mind. He plummeted downward facing out, his body having no contact at all with the cliff face as his speed increased. He heard Matisse scream from somewhere nearby but all he could do was watch the green carpet they’d viewed from above come up at him with tremendous speed.

  Just before impact Arch felt a huge jerk at his waist, twisting him completely around, and then the pressure was gone. Arch hit the severely angled green carpet on his back and kept going. Head first his body plunged, wildly sliding down the face of the Koolau Mountains, his view only of the clouding blue sky above. His arms were pinned by the speed of his passage and his back felt like he was receiving the worst Korean massage of all time.

  The slide seemed to take minutes but Arch knew it could only be taking a few seconds. Seconds before death. Then he was in the air again, this time tumbling until he impacted the water. He didn’t know how he hit or where, all he could feel was pain all over so bad he couldn’t move.

  “Matisse,” he squeaked out to the sky, lying on his back in the stream, his head somehow indented into the soft mud of one bank.

  “I’m here. Oh, this is bad,” Matisse responded from nearby.

  “We’re alive,” was all Arch could get out in reply.

  “We’re back in the stream where we started, back in the valley,” Matisse concluded.

  Both men lay within yards of one another. Matisse had landed with his face in the bank. Arch rolled to all fours and looked over at him, and then started to laugh. Matisse began to laugh with him until they were shoulder to shoulder facing downstream. Tear runnels formed on both of Matisse’s cheeks.

  “I can’t walk,” Matisse said, “I can’t make my body move.”

  Arch looked behind Matisse. “Your part of the rope is around a tree,” he said, starting to laugh again.

  They slowly untied themselves from the remnants of the climbing rope. Even without the rope they were too weak to get up and walk, so they crawled.

  “Just like last time. We crawl in the streambed. Haole God has a sense of humor.”

  “Haole God. Racist!” Arch replied. “You prayed to Pele or whoever that Hawaiian God is. The forgiveness God, the God of love. How did that work for us?”

  “We alive,” Matisse concluded, his voice growing stronger as they crawled under the heavy growth, the coolness of the fresh water bringing life back into their abused bodies. “Nobody could live through that. Hawaiian warriors were thrown off of the Pali and they all died. Not one warrior lived. Pele was on Kamehameha’s side. Now he on our side.”

  “I can’t argue with your logic, but I think we aren’t out of trouble yet. In fact, after what we saw we may be in deeper than ever.” Arch agreed.

  “What did we see?” Matisse asked, stopping to wash the mud from his face. “Better?” he asked, looking over.

  “No. I like you in that browner shade,” Arch answered.

  “What we see?” Matisse asked again.

  “I could say anything, because that’s what we saw. Something different. Little green men come to mind. If it was something out of our own inventory they wouldn’t be burying it like that.” Arch stopped for a moment to consider after trying to answer Matisse’s question. He pulled himself to a nearby tree of some species or phylum he couldn’t identify, and slowly raised himself to a vertical position. I think I can walk. Your legs okay?”

  “It’s not my legs bad,” Matisse complained, getting to his own feet. “It’s my head. I no want what’s in it. The bitch said we didn’t want to know. She was right about that.”

  It took all morning for them to reach the area of the parking lot where they’d left the Lincoln. It was still there.

  “Where we go?” Matisse asked, getting into the passenger side of the hot car.

  Arch turned the air on full. “There’s only one place to go. Now we know why the Marine base is a hive of activity. Nobody knows what’s going on there except a few people but everyone knows there sure as hell is something happening. The big plane at Bellows? The nuclear reactor aboard, if that’s what it is? The cable up on top? We don’t know a whole lot except we know a whole lot too much. We’re either in this thing or we’re dead. I knew Virginia was in way over her head but I had no idea it was this deep. There’s never been a ‘this deep’ before.”

  “The bitch’s house?” Matisse asked.

  “Where else,” Arch answered, accelerating away from the school with his foot on the floorboard.

  “More better!” Matisse exclaimed with a laugh.

  When they arrived at the Sunset House Matisse noticed right away that the Pontiac was gone.

  “They stole my car! They took my Bonneville. The best car on the island. My convertible.”

  “Will you shut up,” Arch ordered. “We’ve got more serious stuff to consider than the heap of junk you call an automobile.”

  Two Suburbans were parked outside the gate but the gate and garage door were both closed. Arch pushed the buzzer but nobody answered.

  “Assholes,” he whispered to the inert box.

  They walked all the way back to Sunset Beach and came to the rear of the house. The sliding glass doors were open and the drapes billowed out.

  “See, just like before. We in time warp,” Matisse noted, pointing.

  “Stop with the science fiction crap,” Arch said, forcefully. I don’t believe in aliens. So, they might have been here before. So what? They’re not flying around over our heads all the time watching us. I don’t believe that.”

  “Not over our heads. Down in the valley,” Matisse corrected.

  “Shit,” was all Arch could think to reply.

  They walked through the double doors. Sitting around the great room table just inside was the whole collected group they’d been encountering since the beginning. Virginia sat on the couch next to the general. He was attired in light khaki uniform for the first time since Arch had met him. On the other couch Kurt and Lorrie sat, with Kurt cradling his arm similar to the way Arch held his own, but not oozing blood

  Arch stopped at the shorter base of the coffee table when Frank, his former partner walked in from the kitchen.

  “What’s he doing here?” Arch asked of Virginia, glaring into her eyes.

  Frank walked across the room and took a seat at one of the empty chairs at the end. He said nothing about Arch’s remark or in his own defense, only murmuring, “Arch,” as he took the seat.

  Arch was about to explode when the drapes parted and Ahi came through the double doors and walked to his side.

  “Gentlemen, if you would please sit down, we’ll talk,” the general said, his voice gentle but seeming to possess a core of iron.

  Ahi and Arch took the last two seats.

  “So who talks first, and about what?” Arch asked.

  “You just did and that’s two questions,” the general answered. “The second question is the one were all here about.”

  Arch looked around the table and sized everyone up according to body language. He started and finished with Virginia.
He’d lost her. He could see it in her movements next to the man she was obviously with in more ways than one. She moved as if she was a part of the man, even though they were separated by inches. The meaning of life was all Monty Python’s and Arch could not get those movie images from his mind to the point where he almost laughed out loud.

  “And so?” Arch asked, since nobody else said a word.

  “We don’t know, and we know you don’t either,” the general stated matter-of-factly. “You’re in because you know. Your opinion and advice would be appreciated. It’d be appreciated from all of you,” he said spreading his hands to encompass the whole group.

  “Oh great, not just a few hours ago your people took a killing shot at us up on that mountain,” Arch forced out, his anger and disappointment in Virginia coming through in his acidic tone.

  “That was Kurt being personal,” the general commanded. “Apologize to the man Kurt and tell him you’re glad you missed. And you too Frank. You were under orders but what they hell, the man has a point. Everything’s changed. This isn’t about personal animosity, the Marine Corps, Hawaii or much of anything else other than the potential survival of the human race.”

  Arch let his shoulders slink down. There was just no point in demanding anything of anyone in the group or recriminations. The general had stated things the way they really were as clearly as possible.

  “What about the cable running across the top of the Koolau range, and the huge plane and nuclear plant aboard it at Bellows?” Arch asked, not giving either Kurt or Frank the opportunity to mouth meaningless platitudes of apology.

  “The plane’s powering the radio interference antennas you couldn’t see,” the general responded, “he one’s suppressing radio transmissions coming out of the object. The plane’s carrying the nuclear power plant for that but also a nuclear weapon in case it’s needed, since they don’t store them at Pearl anymore and the Navy hasn’t been brought into this yet.”