The Invasive 2: Remnants Page 11

  He hoped he’d spot Angela downstream, but she had already gone around a bend. For now, it was just himself and his invasive stalkers.

  The swirling current carried Bishop closer to shore, and he immediately began kicking and paddling away. But the river was too strong. A pigra crouched ahead on the river bank, extending a lone claw, ready to slam it through Bishop’s skull. He floated closer to the pigra, unable to fight the current, as the pigra drooled and grunted. At the last moment, Bishop gave into the current and submerged. A giant pigra claw cut through the water, frothing bubbles coalescing around it. The cold water stung Bishop’s open eyes as he could hear the claw scraping the riverbed. Short of breath and lungs pounding, he surfaced and gasped for air, but not before smacking his head against a boulder. The world spun and dimmed on him, and then he felt himself in mid-air as curtains of water shimmered in sunlight all around him. He splashed into the depths of a waterfall pool, grunting and cursing as his weight carried him to the bottom, where he smashed a knee into the river bed.

  He fought hard to recover, and surfaced as fine mist filled his nose and lungs. He found himself facing a mossy-slick algae wall, and turned and swam to the edge of the pool. When he pulled himself up, Yutu licked his face. Bishop gave him a bear hug, then checked the waterfall and riverbank to see if any other invasive had followed.

  Nothing.

  Yet.

  “Come on, boy,” Bishop said, trying to get his breath back and dripping cold mountain water. “Show me where those two went.”

  Yutu bounded off into the woods on their side of the bank. Bishop limped along behind him, his knee aching. Shit, Bishop thought. He wished they’d planned this better. He wished they had more help. And he wished this had never happened to the valley. He thought of his father, wondered yet again what he would do. But perhaps it was time for Bishop to stop wondering what his father would do, and to start making decisions based on what Bishop would do.

  He knew that Angela would be following Baring Creek to the trailhead. It wasn’t the one they’d hiked up in, but it didn’t matter. They needed to get the hell out of the mountains for now. And he also knew Angela would expect him to handle himself up here. So he’d do just that.

  Yutu led the way down-mountain, leaping over deadfalls and branches. Bishop had no problem breaking through various branches, but the log-leaping hurt like hell, and he winced and held his knee on the downside.

  Having left their packs behind, Bishop didn’t have the necessary equipment to spend the night out here, so he’d have to implement basic backwoods’ survival skills if it came to that. His phone was in his pants pocket, and even though the manufacturer claimed it was waterproof, he didn’t think they meant the whitewater of Baring Creek.

  The good news was it appeared they’d evaded their pursuers for now. The bad news, he wished he hadn’t let Angela out of his sight.

  After a hundred yards of hard, rocky descent on a game trail (and with no bear spray, Bishop had to be extra careful of grizzly bears), a metallic object caught his eye. Bishop bent over and picked up the object, realizing it was a piece of Dr. Avery’s telemetry gear.

  He was saddened at Angela and Dr. Avery not having the safety device functioning, but he was also glad to be on the right path. He placed the broken piece into his pocket, and limped down-trail as Yutu stopped, ran, and stopped again to wait for him.

  “Good boy,” Bishop said. “So smart.”

  Yutu spun and headed downslope again, racing past aspens and pine trees, and at one point shooing a porcupine off the path and up an aspen.

  “Easy, killer,” Bishop said, wondering if Yutu wanted a snout-full of quills.

  After a half-mile downhill, another object on the trail caught his attention: a yellow piece of nylon, pinned into a tree with a red thumb tack. Angela must’ve cut it off from her windbreaker, so Bishop would know he was on the right track.

  “Nice,” Bishop said to Yutu. “We’ve got ourselves a good one.”

  Yutu turned and looked at him, as if to say, Other way around, bud, she’s got you.

  The stinging and burning in his right knee let up as he climbed over more deadfalls. As he descended in elevation, his lungs felt looser, and not as constricted by the thinner air. He ran faster, leapt further. He was certain he’d left the invasive’s behind for now. He sensed a return to an entirely native ecosystem.

  As it should be, he thought.

  Apex Wilderness (129 BPM)

  Bishop made good time, although it wasn’t enough for him to escape the mountain wilderness before dark. The sun had set behind the Apex Range, casting the valley and forest in an otherworldly dusk. Rock formations loomed from the woods like geysers frozen in time, the trees mere mortals scattered amongst them.

  Bishop wondered if he should continue, or look for a place to sleep. He was lucky to still have his waterproof headlamp in his pocket, a positive moment in a day filled with negative ones. He and Angela were all about the simple things. He hoped they’d get back to it, and soon. He stretched the elastic band over his head, then flipped the switch. A large cone of light lit his way, freeing him from the unseen snags and forest deadfall that occasionally tripped him up.

  Yutu shone in the light cone, sniffing and panting away. A ground squirrel darted in front of the pooch, and he gave chase for several feet, before returning to the trail. Bishop wondered if Yutu had Angela and Dr. Avery’s scent. Anything was possible. Yutu’s snout had a way of performing miracles.

  A pair of golf ball-sized eyes glimmered in the headlamp’s cone, and Bishop halted. Yutu growled and backed up, as a sub-adult grizzly bear stood on hind legs and huffed at them just off-trail to the left.

  “Holy shit,” Bishop said as he slowly backed away.

  Yutu retreated to Bishop’s side and growled.

  “It’s all good, grizz,” Bishop said in a forced, calm voice as he continued to back away. “We won’t hurt you.” Bishop almost laughed at himself for the sheer absurdity of his comment. But he meant it. And he also meant for the deliberate steps backwards that put more and more deadfall and ferns between himself and the bear.

  To put things into perspective and tidy order in his mind, a sub-adult grizzly was bigger than most adult black bears. And unlike black bears, grizzlies were far more territorial. They were known to charge within inches of a person, then pull back. Or, they might choose to complete the charge and inflict punishing blows that could knock a person’s head clean off.

  Bishop still had his .357 holstered to his hip. As he backed up, he reached for it, and aimed it at the bear. It made him sick to do it, and he so wished he had his second container of bear spray. This was the grizzly’s home. The bear was simply trying to do what grizzlies do, and repopulate what was left of their population in these mountains.

  But instead of charging, the silver-tipped bear dropped to all fours and bolted through ferns until it could no longer be seen.

  Bishop sighed, and re-holstered his .357. He wanted to proceed forward, but instead of taking the main trail, he cut into the woods and veered around the encounter point with the grizzly. He’d read stories about grizzlies acting like they were fleeing, and then circling around as curiosity, or perhaps hunger (in the rarest of cases) got the best of them. Bishop knew he had a better chance of being killed by a car, or dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound than he did from a grizzly. But he wasn’t going to take any chances. This had already been a day of taking too many risks.

  Insects fluttered in his cone of light. Occasionally a flying squirrel’s marble-sized eyes appeared in the cone, and maybe a hint of their outstretched skin-wings. Off-trail, spider webs brushed against his face at a greater frequency, and sometimes he felt the tiny feet of a spider across the base of his neck, or on his scalp. Keeping his mouth closed helped.

  He wondered how many of the white-winged and other insects that fluttered ahead of him were native. He hoped all of them, although the initial invasion had released who knows what, and how many of
what into the ecosystem. He also wondered if Dr. Werner was focusing on those creatures too, or if he was primarily focused on the megafauna like most scientists or documentaries. These species were known as the “glamour species”: grizzly bears, wolves, bighorn sheep, moose, tigers, elephants. It was easy for the public to focus on them, based on their sheer size and magnificence. The smaller critters, like insects were not so sexy. But oh, they could be oh-so-deadly.

  Yutu had the benefit of a low center of gravity, so the pooch missed most of the spider webs. Bishop stopped and clicked off his headlamp for a moment. He let himself catch up to his breathing, and stared at the sky. The Milky Way had already made its presence known, imprinting stars upon stars in the inky blue depths of time. Birds chittered out to him from the woodland, with a few calls he didn’t recognize.

  Off to his right, in the darkness, came a flashing red light. Bishop counted to 129 BPM as the light drew nearer.

  He unholstered his .357 and crouched as the red light lit up the nearby trees. Yutu cocked his head and watched, tongue lolling.

  “Chill on the breathing,” Bishop whispered to him.

  The red light flashed against the pine trees twenty yards away.

  Then ten yards.

  Then five yards.

  Bishop gripped his .357 and prepared to fire. But instead of unleashing a six-pack of lead into an invasive, he held back. One of the goofy birds stared at him with its huge eyes, and the tuft of hair on its head that always seemed windblown, even with no wind.

  “Hey you,” Bishop said, feeling an awful gut-punch of guilt. He reached slowly into his zippered thigh pocket, and grasped the vial of ER18. The bird watched him with curious and friendly eyes. Bishop held up the vial to the bird, as the red flashing tag reflected in the murky contents. The bird jumped back, then made a weird cooing sound. Bishop prepared to thumb the vial cap off, but the bird angled its long neck downward, rubbed its head on his shins, and shook it’s rear-end plumage.

  Shit, Bishop thought. Freaking shit.

  He couldn’t do it. At least face to face. He zipped the vial of ER18 back into his thigh pocket, and a sense of complete failure overwhelmed him. Double shit, he thought.

  He was starting to see things how Angela did, and to feel things he had not felt before.

  The goofy bird watched him, maybe even giving him half-eyes, like the bird really, really liked him. Bishop reached his hand out and gave the bird a pat on the head. The bird cooed. Yutu joined in, and rubbed himself on the bird’s odd legs while wagging his tail.

  Numerous thoughts spun through Bishop’s mind: What if the friendlier animals might benefit mankind? What if they did something for our planet…what if they contained disease-fighting capabilities that would save millions of lives? That was the thing with an ecosystem. People simply had no idea, NONE about what scientific benefits might be harnessed. Sure, they’d all seen the significant negative effects of the invasive, but Bishop couldn’t help but wonder.

  The bird gazed at him and cooed.

  Bishop backed away, a chill running down his limbs. The stars reflected in the bird’s eyes, and then it turned and sprinted into the woods, crunching branches, and leaving a tracer of flashing red along the trees until it was no more.

  What are we doing? Bishop thought. The good have become the bad.

  Apex Wilderness (135 BPM)

  Bishop cut back to the main trail. He was long past the initial grizzly encounter now. Any hiker worth a damn did two things when hiking solo in grizzly country: make noise, and carry bear spray. Well, he had the less effective .357, but he wasn’t so sure about the noise part. If this portion of the wilderness contained escaped or stasis-invasive, wouldn’t making noise only serve to draw them to him? Obviously he wouldn’t care about the friendly or benign invasive. But he didn’t want to be hunted, or make things easy for the hunters.

  Bishop chuckled as he hauled ass down-trail.

  The absolute dumbest thing he could do if any fliers existed was to make noise. A cold chill spidered up his back. Oh, how he hated the fliers. They were the worst of the lot, with no place here in the valley. They were killing machines, no more, no less. People and fliers were never meant to exist in the same landscape.

  So if he wasn’t going to make noise, what about grizzly bears? Whipping around a bend and surprising a sow grizzly with cubs would be certain death. That was one place where the great bears did not mess around. A hiker must simply respect a sow with cubs by having the self-awareness to give them space. This was exactly why so many outdoor magazines and articles insisted on making noise in low-light conditions…or better yet, not hiking during crepuscular periods at all if one could help it.

  In Bishop’s case, he really couldn’t.

  Bishop took a deep breath, and decided he couldn’t risk surprising a mother with cubs.

  So he talked to Yutu.

  The pooch looked back at him every so often, with a look that said, Yo, why you talking to me so much?

  Apex Wilderness Trailhead (140 BPM)

  Several hours later, Bishop reached the trailhead. Angela had thumb-tacked another piece of yellow fabric to a pine tree, and Bishop smiled. He sat on a fallen log with Yutu, then slid down on his butt and laid flat on the ground, his chest heaving.

  His body ached like it hadn’t in a long time, and he realized now just how cold he’d gotten. All that running and adrenaline had kept the chills temporarily at bay. Yutu sensed him shivering, and curled up on his stomach to keep him warm. Bishop scratched him behind the ears. “Good boy,” he said.

  Bishop reached into his other zip pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen powered on just fine, but as expected, no reception. He figured Angela would be back shortly with the pickup. A shooting star arced overhead, fading into the horizon like dusk’s last firefly.

  He wondered about Colbrick. Did he make it out of that shit show? Knowing Colbrick, yes.

  A shiver wracked him, and then another. He wondered if the infected pigras and secapods had met other invasives, and infected them as well.

  Only time would reveal that, he thought.

  The bird, he thought, feeling sick in his stomach. Did they infect the bird too…?

  As soon as Bishop told Dr. Avery and Angela about his failed attempt, he’d be yelled at. And perhaps rightly so. Even Angela, who was soft on the friendly invasives, would ask him what the hell he was doing.

  Another shooting star arced the sky, and a realization flooded into his mind, like a door opening into the sea. He knew the valley would never be the same. Not in their lifetimes. Perhaps not in anyone’s lifetime here on Earth.

  When he felt his toes and fingers again, Bishop stood and stretched his aching muscles. Yutu copycatted him, and Bishop couldn’t help but chuckle. Then he set off down the national forest road in the dark, with the Milky Way lighting his path.

  Apex National Forest (145 BPM)

  He’d walked for miles. Every so often, strange noises called out to him from the thick mixture of pine and aspen bordering the gravel road. Bishop sensed an awakening in the ecosystem. Sure, the remnant, stasis-invasive were awakening, but he sensed something intangible, as well. Perhaps a feeling that the remaining invasive and the native animals were co-existing, and creating something new…something they might just have to live with.

  Several flashing red tags intermingled amongst far-off tree trunks, illuminating them at 145 BPM. This too, was part of the awakening feeling. Creatures stirred here in the Apex Valley, a land of giants, and a land of aliens. The entire ecosystem was coming back to life. He could feel the thrum of it in his heart, in his lungs.

  Bishop raised his .357 as the red tags flashed closer.

  Twenty yards now, twigs cracking.

  Ten yards.

  Bishop crouched, and aimed as the embankment lit in red.

  Four or five marsupial invasives skittered across the road, their tags lighting up their triplicate pupils.

  “Whew,” Bishop said.

&n
bsp; Yutu whined, but didn’t give chase.

  “Smart boy,” Bishop said.

  Bishop re-holstered his gun, but that decision was premature. A bigger branch cracked in the forest, and two larger shapes huffed their way up the embankment in the direction of the marsupial-like family.

  Yutu growled.

  Bishop went to reach for his gun, but his lips ticked upwards, and his legs spasmed uncontrollably. Yutu mewled as the frequencies hit him, and Bishop watched in horror as the pooch entered a seizure. Bishop tried to yell for help, but his words emerged garbled. He collapsed to the gravel road as the two frequency seals slugged their way towards him, their heads eerily framed by the Milky Way that had seemed so serene before.

  How foolish, he thought to himself. The marsupial-like invasives had clearly been angling away from a predator. Instead of focusing on a benign species, he should’ve been paying attention. Now he’d pay for it with his life.

  Or maybe not.

  A flood of light beamed down upon him in his seizure, and Bishop watched helplessly as dust motes floated in the outline of Yutu’s fur. Poor pooch, he thought. What had he done?

  A pair of car doors slammed, and then a fury of gunfire.

  Then nothing except the bittersweet scent of gun smoke and an idling engine.

  “Bishop,” Angela said, reaching down to him in the flood of light.

  He tried to speak, but his mouth and lips still weren’t working right. He was so freaking embarrassed to be found in this condition.