Ron shook his head and chuckled lowly. Brandon said, “Well, at least we don’t have far to go to look for ourselves.”
Olaf asked Ken, “May I see the map?”
Ken tossed it to him wordlessly and stalked on ahead. What the fuck am I doing out here? he thought. I’m so damn rusty I’ve gotten us lost. I mean, it’s not like we’re unprepared, but Christ, why the fuck did I agree to do this?
Behind him, he could hear his group gather around the map and speculate.
“There’s no terrain this wide and flat anywhere on here,” said Tom.
“This could not be so bad,” Lee stated. “Lack of terrain identical to our own could indicate that we’ve merely wandered beyond the search parameters. That could also explain the lack of radio contact.”
“That also means they don’t know where to look for us,” said Kara.
“We carry provisions for no less than two days, plus shelter,” Olaf said. “That’s plenty of time to be found.”
Brandon leaned in to Lee. “Explain this, genius boy.” He pointed at the scale. “How the hell did we walk out of the search area? That kind of march would take twelve hours on level ground.”
“A keen observation,” Lee returned. “Yes, you’re right. It would have taken us at least two full days to ‘fall off the edge’, as it were.”
“Not with your choking and wheezing,” Ron shot from outside the circle.
Kara asked, “Did anyone get a compass bearing when we came out of that gully?”
Ken grimaced and pulled out his compass. He flipped it open and mentally lashed himself for his stupidity.
When no one answered, Lee said, “Well, we could always backsight.”
“Got it,” Ken called. He returned to the group, adjusting the wheel on his compass. He looked at the path they walked and sighted on a far tree. As he opened his mouth to read the number, the arrow twisted around twice and pointed in a different way entirely.
“What the fuck?”
Tom and Kara stood shoulder to shoulder with Ken. He twisted the casing and tried again. All three saw how the compass needle rotated to and fro, then stopped, pointing in another new direction from before.
“You saw that, right?”
Kara blinked. “Yeah! How can that happen?”
“Jesus,” Tom worried.
Lee came forward to witness Ken’s spinning needle. “Interesting,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Me neither.” The needle in Ken’s compass continued to twist around like some crazy broken watch. “Everyone, check your compasses,” he said. “I have a really bad feeling about this.”
One by one, they each all tried their own. All of them behaved in the same way.
“A localized magnetic field, perhaps,” Lee said. “I’ll admit, it would have to be very powerful, but such things are not unheard of.”
“What would cause something like that?” Kara asked.
“A meteorite would be the most likely,” Lee said, “but the markedly flat terrain isn’t consistent with a crater. Such a magnetic field may also account for the disruption in our communications.” Lee thought for a moment. “A large concentration of iron ore in the rocks, perhaps. Nothing else seems to make sense.”
“Who said The Twilight Zone has to make sense?”
“Knock that shit off, Brandon,” Ken said. “I’m just as spooked by this shit as any of you, but we’re not going to do the subjects any good if we find them and we’re lost too. I say we do one more voice check. If they’re not close, we do our best to backtrack. All right?”
Everybody nodded, and after a moment, let loose with a loud yell. They listened to the terrible silence of an empty forest.
“All right, pack it in,” Ken said. “Let’s see if we can’t find that gully and get the hell out of here. Once we do, we’ll call Search Base and tell them what happened.”
It should have been easy to backtrack seven people tromping through the woods, but after ten minutes, it became clear that retracing their footsteps would be impossible. Ken looked in all directions to see only the contiguous and undisturbed forest. He imagined something following them, righting the plants disturbed by their passing and sucking their footprints out of the soft ground. The dull fog hung in stasis overhead, making the wide forest feel like a damp and colorless room.
Ken led the team within twenty feet of the cliff before he realized it. No gully. The cliff stretched higher above them than he remembered, straight up into the fog. Ken considered trying to scale it without his pack, but with no rope, he couldn’t bring the others up safely with him, and he couldn’t leave them alone. He had the team spread out along the cliffside, yelling to stay in voice contact. When they still could not find the gully entrance, he gathered the group together.
“There’s a good chance that if we parallel the cliff, we will find a way up and out. We have two choices, left or right. You guys got any preference?”
The teens looked at each other, and variously at the two choices.
Except Ron. “Why don’t you fucking pick.” He glowered at Ken. “You led us here.”
The others didn’t say anything, and to Ken, their silence was a sign of support for Ron.
“Look, I’m frustrated too. Nothing about today has turned out like I wanted it to. But I’m the adult here and I’m still in charge. But the truth is, I’m about out of inspiration.”
“Well, if it doesn’t matter, let’s try that way,” Kara pointed. “It looks like the cliff may be easier to climb if we keep going that way.”
Ken nodded and they set out. But Kara was wrong, and if anything, the cliff face grew more treacherous. They occasionally tried the radio (no response) and their compasses (still spinning). Ken looked at his watch: 4:30 p.m. He had been awake for more than twelve hours and it would be dark soon.
Ken stopped. His team gathered near him; their breathing, punctuated by Lee’s use of his inhaler, was the only sound.
“What do we do now?” asked Kara.
“Nothing more we can do,” Ken said. “Obviously, we—I—fucked up. We should make camp and wait to be found.” He looked around at their faces. The prospect of spending the night had wiped clean the perpetual smirk on Ron’s face. In fact, none of them were smiling now.
“Here’s as good a place as any.” Ken shrugged off his backpack. “Olaf, I want you, Brandon and Ron to clear out some of the brush and gather rocks for a fire pit. Kara, you and Tom…”
Lee raised his hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Ken, but is what I’m seeing the result of a smudge on my glasses, or not?”
Lee’s finger rose away from the cliff, beyond Ken. He turned to look. The sun was making one last attempt to break up the fog that dappled the trees. Shadows played among the lower branches. “What?”
“It almost looks like,” Lee paused, “Christ. Up in that tree, over there.”
Ken continued to look while the others closed in around him. He shielded his eyes, and through the now drifting fog, he could see…something. He was sure it wasn’t just branches. It looked big enough to be a man. What held Ken’s attention more was a shape above the figure—large and oblong and, if Ken wasn’t mistaken, safety orange. Both hung suspended in the trees.
“You’re seeing things,” Ron said. “It’s the fog.”
“What is that above it?” Kara asked. “Look, it’s sort of round and orange, see it?”
“The heavenly host,” Brandon said.
“Whatever it is,” said Ken, “let’s check it out. It might have something to do with this search.”
Omega Team walked toward the shape. After closing half the distance, Ken held out his hand to stop them.
A man hung from the trees, yes. He was tangled in parachute chord, the nylon above him holding him aloft some twenty feet. It had once been white and safety orange, but now that white was either torn away or colored green with age. A snag held him off kilter, but the team could see that his eyes and scalp were missing. The rest
of his shriveled flesh clung to his bones like a fungus. He wore the tattered remnants of a pinstriped suit. From the man’s wrist an open metal suitcase dangled, attached by a handcuff. The team could see thousands of dollars, perilously close to falling to the green pile below. As they watched, a likeness of Benjamin Franklin joined his hundreds of identical brothers on the ground.
But that was not all. The ground was littered with bodies, some just bones, others with flesh wet with ground fog. They lay scattered, skulls and feet pointed all different directions. And there were vehicles. The skeletons of two horses lay in piles in front of what once might have been a stagecoach. Ken recognized one of the cars as a Pontiac Phoenix, another as a Ford Galaxie and another as some kind of Studebaker or Desoto. He could see bodies slumped behind the wheel of each.
The most astonishing was the DC-3. It sat at the apex, still shiny, its US Army Air Corps insignia clearly visible. It sat there, like the Desoto and the Ford and the Pontiac, as if it had always been there: evergreens, some perhaps a hundred years old, grew around and between them and the bodies, disturbing none of them. The DC-3 could not taxi without shearing off its wings.
Nothing in the forest made a sound.
“Jesus Christ!” Ron finally shouted. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
Moans of awe and disgust crept from everyone’s lips, except Lee’s. He bent down and threw up.
Ron went for the green pile under the parachutist. Brandon followed, then Kara and Tom, hand in hand. Olaf stood woodenly above Lee.
Ken knelt beside the crouching searcher. “You okay?”
A brisk nod. “Yeah.”
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“No.” Lee stood, helped up by Olaf. The Swede removed the boy’s pack. Lee stretched his arms and thanked him.
Ron’s voice echoed across the scene. “Jesus Christ, do you know how much money this is?” Heads turned to watch him scoop up the bills.
Ken said, “Ron, leave it alone. Don’t touch it.” His voice lacked conviction as he tried to make sense of what they were seeing.
Ron challenged him with a defiant look. Ken didn’t take the bait.
As Olaf and Lee held back, Ken knelt by the closest body. It was entirely skeletal, but still clad in a green jumpsuit. A shovel with a rotten handle lay at his side. Some of the jumpsuit was torn away, but Ken could still read the patch on his shoulder: US Forest Service.
“How much?”
“Hundreds,” Ron told Tom. “Hundreds of hundreds.” Ron picked one up and wiped it clean of fungus. Kara turned away, making a noise of perfect revulsion.
“What year?” called Lee. “How old are they?”
Ron looked at the crisp bill carefully. “1968.”
“What is this place?” Kara asked.
Ken stood. “I don’t know,” he said. “Some sort of graveyard, I guess. But nothing like I’ve ever seen.”
In the silence that followed, they surveyed the site, picking their way through the bones. There has to be a hundred bodies, he thought. He could see now that the DC-3 was not rusty; her tires were fully inflated. The same with the other vehicles. While not fresh out of the showroom, they did look operational. Like they were stolen out of time. Only the wagon had decayed.
“What killed these people?” Tom asked.
“Animal,” Olaf said. All faces turned to him.
“I disagree,” Ken told him. “These corpses have decayed. No animal in these parts would allow that.”
“A serial killer, then?” asked Ron, now filling his pack with bills.
“How would he get all this stuff here? Especially the plane,” Kara asked.
“If I’m not mistaken, the DC-3 began production in 1936. Since this area was forested in the fifties, it’s possible the plane was present before the trees grew.”
“No way, Lee,” answered Ken. “With all the rain we have, that plane would be a pile of rust by now. All of the cars would be. Plus, how are there plants growing under it? Wouldn’t the lack of sunlight have killed them by now?”
Lee narrowed his eyes. “You believe they fell from the sky, then?”
Ken was silent. “I don’t know what I believe. Let’s keep looking around. Spread out.”
They separated and slowly walked around the site. This was far more grisly than any find Ken had ever made as a searcher. They found lumbermen, construction workers, foresters, rangers and hikers. One corpse even had a patch from the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Pontiac held two bodies in the front seats, the Desoto two in the back. The Galaxie held a single man. The skeletal horses were the only animals they found. The DC-3, its side door open, revealed a row of men in brown leather jackets and woolen caps, each with a parachute attached to a line that would pull the cord if they left the plane on judgment day. There were scatterings of other victims: designer jeans and cowboy boots, Nike sneakers and crampons, plaid flannel shirts and rayon blouses, outdoor gear of all makes and vintages. However, there was no discernable trace of the Petersons. Still, all of the corpses had obvious wounds, wounds Ken did not like to look at, even in bone. It was obvious that whatever happened to these people, with the exception of those in the plane, and maybe the Galaxie, it happened to them violently.
“Okay,” Tom said to Ken after he brought them all together. “You’re the leader. What the hell do we do now?”
“What can we do? We don’t know where we are, so we can’t mark this place on the map, or give out our position in case, by some act of God, the radio works again. With our compasses all screwy, and night coming on, there’s no way to be sure which way we go. I say we stay here until they find us.”
“Stay here?” Brandon asked in disbelief. “What the hell kind of horror flick do you think this is? You think we should camp in this,” he swallowed hard, “graveyard?”
“This isn’t a graveyard,” Kara broke in, clinging tightly to Tom all the while. “Graveyards hold the buried dead.”
Ken nodded. “That’s right. And no, I don’t think we should stay here. But let’s stay close enough to point out to the searchers what we found.”
“As if they could miss it,” Ron said.
Lee spoke up suddenly. “Yes, graveyard is definitely incorrect. This reminds me of a valley of lost souls.”
The group listened to the stillness of the trees. Ron started off.
“Stop,” Ken commanded, taking his arm.
Ron nearly shook it free, but a second before he did, there came a sound. A rustle, faint but close. Something in the brush.
Ken’s face communicated quiet to the rest of the group. Their eyes scanned all directions. The underbrush was shin high. They saw nothing.
“Where is it?” Ken whispered.
“Close,” Olaf replied lowly.
“What is it?” Kara half-spoke.
Olaf swung his head around. “Over there,” he said. “Behind the car.”
The Ford Galaxie sat sixty feet away. Nothing moved.
“Are you sure?” Ken asked, audible only to the group.
Olaf nodded. “I saw something move.”
Ken let go of Ron. “Start walking, all of you. Now.”
The group obeyed. Ron went first, then Lee, then Kara and Tom. When they had moved behind him, Ken called, “Hello? Is anybody there?”
The retreating searchers stopped to hear the answer. There was none.
“Okay,” Ken spoke at a normal volume. “Paranoia reigns supreme. Let’s go make camp.”
Ken moved to gather Brandon as the ominous rustling returned, louder, stronger. Ken saw the brush moving now, moving fast and heading right toward them. Only nothing was making it move.
“Look out!” Olaf grabbed Ken and pulled him to the ground. Brandon, stunned, watched the underbrush rustle with rapt fascination until something closed around his throat.
Ken could see it now. Nearly transparent, its body distorted the light. Ken struggled to understand its misshapen body. All of them watched as it grabbed Brandon by
the neck and raised him up off the ground. He screamed and convulsed, flailing and writhing like a seizure victim. Ken tried not to watch as the invisible, jelly-like thing disemboweled the boy with unseen limbs.
Then Brandon dropped halfway to the ground, exposing his wounds to all his stunned teammates before being dragged off by his assailant like a five point buck.
Ken scrambled to his feet, pulling Olaf with him. “Run,” he yelled.
Lee pointed weakly at the departing corpse of their teammate. “What about…”
“Run,” Ken repeated. “Run now!”
The searchers dashed back they way they came, jumping bodies and dodging trees to do so. Suddenly Ron stopped them, flinging his arms out to keep them back.
“What? What is it?” Kara breathed.
“Look,” Ron pointed.
A transparent shape stood before them. The angles of light made it look like its arms—some of them, anyway—were extended. Waiting.
“What is it?” Kara asked again.
“How many of them do you think there are?” Ron asked Ken.
“God only knows.”
“I think it’s the same one,” Lee said. “Things like these could have picked us off at any time.”
“That means it’s fast. We’ve got to get out of here,” Tom said.
“I say let’s kill the bastard.” Ron drew his machete.
“Jesus, did you even see what it did to Brandon?”
“Why isn’t it attacking us? We should strike now. Either it gets us, or we get it. You saw what it did to Brandon. Now who’s with me?”
All eyes turned to Ken. He swung his head to see Brandon’s bloody remains draped on the trunk of the Galaxie.
“Lee, take my pack. Olaf, find us some weapons, fast. The rest of you, get ready to run.”
Ken kept his eyes glued to the blurry, still shape as he helped Lee into his pack. Seconds later, Olaf returned with a trench shovel and a pick ax. Olaf held the shovel in his left hand and a buck knife in his right. Ken gripped the pick ax and nodded to Ron.
“All right, whatever the fuck you are,” Ron shouted. “You got one of us but you’re not getting me. Now get out of the way!”
Lost and Found Page 3