The Invasive 2: Remnants Page 3

  Colbrick punched the gas, and the SUV roared north on Highway 81.

  “That’s what I’ve been wanting to hear all along,” he said.

  Apex National Forest, Northern District (14 BPM)

  Bishop, Angela, and Colbrick hiked up the trail, admiring the tall stands of green pine and spruce. Yutu bounded behind them, equipped with his own backpack.

  Angela furrowed her brow at Bishop. “We have adulting to take care of,” she said.

  “The business will be fine,” he said. “Adah knows what she’s doing.”

  “It’s not just the business I’m worried about,” Angela said.

  Each of them were strapped into internal frame backpacks, complete with lightweight food items, Alaska Forest Ranger-approved bear spray, tent, sleeping bags, water filtration devices, and a .357 holstered their hips. In addition, Bishop carried a Canon DSLR. The plan was to document any evidence of remnant invasives, when applicable. Bishop wished he’d gotten photos of that small pigra that chewed on him. Maybe he’d get another chance.

  Up ahead, a lodgepole pine tree shook. Yutu perked up and cocked his head.

  Colbrick aim his sawed-off shotgun up towards the tree’s branches.

  A moment later, a porcupine ambled down the lodgepole pine, and disappeared into the woods.

  “Good boy,” Angela said as she patted Yutu on the head.

  Colbrick slid off his pack, and opened up an Apex National Forest map, Northern District.

  “We’re on Forest Trail 311,” he said, pointing a scarred finger at a series of contour lines. “If we meet up with Trail 316, we’ll veer southeast, and have a sort of canvassing effect.”

  Angela nodded. “Okay, sounds good to me.”

  She unzipped a little side pocket on Yutu’s special dog backpack, and fished out a treat. Yutu licked his chops, and snarfed the treat down.

  “You little pig,” Angela said.

  Bishop had hiked this trail before, and knew exactly where they were going. But Colbrick enjoyed playing leader, and Bishop was happy to oblige for now.

  Two miles up-trail, they came across Stinson Creek. A pair of rainbow trout finned in a foot of water, the multi-colored riverbed reflecting the sun’s rays beneath them.

  With each mile, the scenery turned more spectacular, and Bishop could feel himself locking into that special alpine-mysticism so many hikers talked about. Everything came into view in hyper-definition, clear and vibrant. Greens were simply greener, the mica specs in rocks brighter, the sky a deeper shade of blue.

  “Well,” Angela said, “So far, no sign of any invasives.”

  Colbrick turned to her, hands on his hips, his mouth hanging slack. “Shit,” he said. “That doesn’t matter. There could be any number of them just hiding behind the trees over there.” Colbrick picked up a hefty rock and chucked it into clump of lodgepole. “See, I bet they all just ran from that.”

  Bishop shook his head and chuckled. “Okay, man,” he said. “Okay.”

  The group took swigs of filtered mountain water, and headed up-trail. Far below them, a forested valley swept, the southern fringes scarred by fire, as if ember fingers had touched the forest, and raked backwards.

  Yutu led the way, but soon came to a halt on the trail. His ears perked up, and he cocked his head again.

  For a moment, Bishop caught sunlight gleaming off more than mica specks.

  He nudged Angela. “You see that?” he asked.

  “I see something, maybe man-made,” Angela said as she shaded her eyes with her hand and fixed her gaze.

  Yutu broke from his stoic position, and trotted off-trail to the southeast.

  “Oh boy,” Colbrick said. “Looks like the luckiest dog in the world has caught himself a scent.”

  As Bishop followed Yutu, he couldn’t help but flash back to that burning apartment hallway, and how he’d almost died from asphyxiation. He thought of the moment Yutu sacrificed himself up near the Hoodoos, only to return once more to the burned apartment to wait for his dead owner.

  He was proud of himself, and proud of his awesome dog.

  Up ahead, Yutu poked through a clump of bushes, and wagged his tail. There, rising eight feet above the bushes stood a fence, complete with rolls of razor barbwire at the top.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Colbrick said.

  Yutu fell behind the group, and Bishop lead the way southeast, parallel to the fence’s perimeter.

  “This is an official wilderness area,” Bishop said. “All of the protections afforded this federal land were passed by congress, and signed into law by the president. That means no motors. No construction. No man-made objects. So in short, what the hell is this doing here?”

  “Could be one of the quadrants,” Angela said. “And I’m guessing the nation’s defense takes precedent over The Wilderness Act in their eyes.”

  “More than likely,” Bishop said, as he unholstered his .357.

  Colbrick tossed a stick up at the barbed wire, eliciting a zapping sound and hot sparks.

  “Damn thing’s electric,” Colbrick said. “And all the way up here.”

  With each step, Bishop gripped the gun harder. When they’d beaten the initial invasion, he figured the valley would recover.

  And it did.

  In a way.

  But this fence, this barbwire-topped monstrosity, was an affront to everything he’d ever known about the valley, and to his father’s memory as well. For three-quarters of a mile, they skirted along its perimeter. Rows of trees had been cut down to make room for the fence. Tractor tread-marks crisscrossed what should’ve been a pristine montane life zone.

  “This stinks,” Angela said as she peered beyond the fence. “And I’m not seeing anything.”

  The group entered thicker forest, as light dimmed. This part of the valley had been untouched by fire. Ferns swished against their hips, and rays of sunlight cut through the green canopy and illuminated monarch butterflies perched on mossy logs.

  Bishop stopped, and put his arm out like a gate to block Angela.

  “I hear something,” Bishop said.

  Colbrick stopped at once, and almost knocked into Yutu.

  Up ahead, a clump of ferns rustled. Bishop aimed his .357, but Angela placed her hand out flat and nudged his arm down. “It’s a man,” Angela said.

  The group stood and stared, expecting the man to realize they were there at any second. But the man was preoccupied with an object in his hands, a sort of telemetry device Bishop had seen in wildlife documentaries on the Discovery Channel. The man pointed the device towards the fence.

  Bishop didn’t care for how the man behaved. He looked spooked, and kept checking to the south, as if he knew something down there, deep in the woods watching him.

  “Hey,” Bishop said in a calm, even tone.

  The man jumped, and almost dropped his device. He was short, with greying hair, and a windproof alpine jacket.

  “Holy moly,” the man said. “Did not expect anyone else up here. Roger that.”

  The group approached him, and he seemed relieved. Bishop stuck out his hand.

  The man held up his telemetry device, as if to say, sorry, can’t right now. “Hold on,” he said. He slipped out of the telemetry strap across his chest, and set the equipment down carefully upon the mossy forest floor.

  “Dr. Avery,” the man said. “But most people just call me Aves.”

  The group shook his hand, and offered him water. Dr. Avery waved them off. “My camp is a mile from here,” he said. “But thank you regardless.”

  Colbrick stepped forward and pointed at the equipment. “Whatcha tracking there?” he asked.

  Dr. Avery fidgeted. “Oh you know, the usual,” he said. “Wolverines, grizzly bears. The megafauna of the Northern Rocky Mountains.”

  Colbrick raised his thick finger at Dr. Avery. “Whatcha really huntin’?” he asked.

  Dr. Avery went to speak (and tell another lie), but Colbrick stopped him.

  “We’re the good guys,�
� Colbrick said. “Recognize our faces?”

  Colbrick brought Angela and Bishop tight to him with his enormous arms, and grinned like a goof. Bishop waited for a light to go on in Dr. Avery’s eyes. If he had followed valley news after the invasion at all, he had to know who they were.

  Or maybe not.

  “Don’t you recognize us?” Colbrick asked. “Heroes of the valley, or so they say.”

  Dr. Avery tapped two fingers to his temple. “Wait a second,” he said. “You three disabled the clone ship, didn’t you?”

  Angela smiled uneasily.

  Bishop knew it wasn’t easy for her. Sure, there had been a lot of bad invasives, but there’d been some good ones too. Bishop still thought of this every night, and that ridiculously goofy bird that helped them in the end. The thought tortured Bishop, that if humans couldn’t protect the good, and the righteous, how would they be any different from the master alien race that sent the clone ships to begin with?

  Dr. Avery nodded. “Okay, I get it now,” he said. “You three probably know more about what happened then I do.” And in a flash, Dr. Avery’s enthusiasm twisted into just plain spooked. “I need to keep quiet,” he whispered as he gazed around the woods. “I’ve seen other invasives.”

  Bishop’s heart pounded, and a lead ball of dread rolled in his stomach. Yeah, there was always the pigra that had chomped him, but he held out hope that might be the last.

  But, of course not.

  This was not how the Apex Valley rolled these days.

  The mountain air cooled, and shadows devoured the sun rays that once speared the forest canopy.

  “What. Kind” Angela asked through clenched teeth.

  “All species,” Dr. Avery said. He picked his telemetry device, slid the earphone band around his neck, and held the antenna component towards the south. “This device is specifically engineered to pick up on the invasive’s tags. It can detect electromagnetic pulses, exactly what the tags effuse.”

  “Slick,” Colbrick said. “Real slick.”

  Dr. Avery checked their surroundings with wide eyes. “You have to whisper,” he said. “I’ve been picking up an intermittent signal the last two days.”

  “Really?” Angela asked, taking a nervous look around the darkening woods.

  “Really,” Dr. Avery whispered.

  “How long have you been out here for?” Angel asked.

  “Two months, three days,” Dr. Avery said. “What I have witnessed, you would not want to witness.”

  Bishop sighed. He wanted to know everything. He could smell danger, like some foul soup boiling over. “Let’s skip the theatrics, Doctor. No one needs to be more anxious than they already are. I’d like to know about the danger. What do we need to know, right now, at this very minute?”

  Dr. Avery nodded. “Follow me,” he said.

  The group followed Dr. Avery south along the fence perimeter, and then veered east deeper into the woods. When they reached a clearing, Bishop couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Fifteen acres of old growth forest had been uprooted, the trees tossed around, laying on each other like broken fibulas. Isolated sun rays cut through thin slats in the clouds, and illuminated motes and the occasional winged insect. Birds chittered across the clearing, and a rabbit foraged at wood’s edge. The sheer upheaval and loss of forest made the perimeter trees look even bigger and more ominous, like some woodsy courtyard for the damned. Gigantic boulders had been forked from the earth and lay spilled across the clearing. Blood soaked a cracked and splintered tree, the exposed bark still fresh at the trunk.

  “What the hell happened here?” Colbrick asked.

  But Bishop already had a pretty good idea.

  Dr. Avery aimed his device at all points of the clearing, and then removed his headphones.

  “What do you all think?” Dr. Avery whispered. “And please step back into the tree line. We don’t know what’s watching us from the other three corners.”

  Colbrick spit. “Well, ain’t that comforting,” he said.

  Yutu backed up into the protection of the shaded forest, and watched the clearing.

  “Looks like a war zone to me,” Angela said.

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Dr. Avery said. “I saw eleven of Connelly’s men here, trying to capture something.” Dr. Avery shook his head, and fished out Tic-Tacs from his jean’s pocket. He offered them to the group. Colbrick took the Tic-Tacs and dumped half the package into his palm, then scarfed them down. Dr. Avery raised an eyebrow at him.

  Bishop asked a question he knew the answer to anyway. “So what was the something?”

  “They call it Vastus,” Dr. Avery said. “Several times larger than an elephant, and closer to B. excelsus in size, only much nastier in every evolutionary perspective.”

  “B. excelsus?” Colbrick asked.

  “Brontosaurus,” Dr. Avery said. “15 tons, 70 feet long.”

  “We saw Vastus at Quadrant 6 in the containment facility,” Angela said.

  “Heck of a system they have over there,” Dr. Avery said. “The finest the United States Military can buy.”

  Angela fed Yutu a biscuit, and patted him on the head. “And who exactly do you work for?” she asked Dr. Avery.

  “An independent bio firm called Natural Corrections.”

  Hmmm, Bishop thought. Where have I heard that name before?

  Before Bishop could ask another question, a muffled BEEP emitted from Dr. Avery’s headphones. Bishop’s heart thudded so loud, he wondered if anyone else had heard.

  Dr. Avery scrambled to pick up his gear, and held the antenna to the forest.

  “Four second intervals, Dr. Avery said.

  “…and fourteen beats per minute,” Angela said.

  “Precisely,” Dr. Avery said as he studied the readout device.

  “What’s wrong?” Angela asked.

  “It’s coming this way.”

  Yutu backed up into the darkened woods, and cocked his head. The group stood quiet, honing in on the beep, and the flashing sphere on Avery’s telemetry readout screen.

  “It’s just meters away,” Dr. Avery said as the group scanned their periphery and stepped back.

  BEEP.

  Four seconds.

  BEEP.

  “It’s just feet away now,” Dr. Avery said, his voice cracking.

  Bishop turned. Behind him, one of the marsupial-like creatures scurried through the understory, its tag flashing once before it disappeared. Yutu gave chase, only to be called off by Angela.

  “Whew,” she said. “That could’ve gone much worse.”

  Dr. Avery let his earphones slip around his neck, and locked eyes with Angela. “Oh, I’m afraid it’s going to get worse. The beats per minute are increasing every day.”

  Bishop took Angela’s hand and squeezed.

  Here we go again, he thought.

  Apex National Forest, Northern District (15 BPM)

  Dr. Avery led the group deeper into the Montana forest.

  “Come on, I have to show you all something,” he whispered.

  Bishop had the feeling they’d all be seeing things they didn’t exactly want to see from here on out. He palmed his holstered .357 every few steps, listening to forest noises that, after months, had finally stopped spooking him out.

  So much for that.

  The forest canopy loomed overhead, and a red-eyed goshawk glided from branch to branch until it was out of sight. Yutu sped ahead of them, and growled.

  Before Bishop could raise his weapon, a camouflage drone whirred from the western canopy, and hovered thirty feet above them. A camera underbelly snapped photos before the craft disappeared.

  “Cute,” Colbrick said. “Smile for the camera, kiddos.”

  Dr. Avery turned back to the group as Yutu trotted past him. “It’s one of Dr. Werner’s drones,” he said. “He’s got his fingers in many, many pies. And I’m about to show you a slice.”

  Bishop recognized the wild, almost manic look in Dr. Avery’s eyes. It was the look o
f a man who’d spent time in the wild, alone. But this wasn’t a factor that deterred Bishop from trusting the doctor. Bishop had heard of Natural Corrections before. The conservation group had stopped a poaching ring in Montana that had wiped out half the endangered species near Yellowstone National Park. Good people. And these kinds of leaders had a trickle-down-effect to even more good people with plenty of brains, and maybe too much heart. Like Dr. Avery.

  They hiked up a narrow trail, through a boulder field at the base of a talus slope. Clouds filled the sky, casting a grey light upon the rugged Apex Mountains.

  A chill spidered up Bishop’s spine. During the initial invasion, boulder fields had provided ideal ambush locations for eels and other man-eating invasives. Great, he thought.

  Yutu worked the rocks up ahead, as Colbrick, then Dr. Avery, followed. Bishop and Angela stayed behind, checking the dark crevasses that appeared in the boulder field like infected wounds.

  “What do you think?” Angela asked.

  “I think he’s good people,” Bishop said.

  “I agree,” Angela said. “And we’ve heard of Natural Corrections before.” Angela bit her lip, and tapped her fingers on her hiking pants. “But I wonder what else he’s up to. This isn’t just a sightseeing mission for him.”

  “I suppose not,” Bishop said.

  “And the drone,” Angela said. “That’s new.”

  “It makes sense,” Bishop said. “But now I’m wondering if we’re part of Dr. Werner’s experiments too.”

  Angela took Bishop’s hand as they worked the rest of the talus slopes. Soon the trail dipped downhill back into the thick montane-level forest. An elk calf bounded away from Yutu at wood’s edge, followed by a cow elk, which had been bedded down in a patch of ferns.

  “Good to see,” Bishop said to Angela.

  Dr. Avery turned back to face Bishop and Angela, then waved them on.

  A moment later, Dr. Avery led them through thick gooseberry bushes and fern, until they came to the electric fence from before.

  Except this fence had a hole at its base the size of a couple bowling balls.

  “You’ll have to take off your packs to crawl through,” Dr. Avery said. “The fence is dead here thanks to a wind-blown pine fifty yards down.”