Pestilence

57

Rick Bolton wrapped his tent and rolled the sleeping bag tightly. Early-morning Yosemite always had a certain vibe to it, especially far away from any cabins and parking lots. Something in the pine-scented air or the way the breeze whistled through the trees brought him a sense of calm that he really needed.

He’d been there a lot as a kid and remembered the murders that had taken place. A mother and her fifteen-year-old daughter, an exchange student, and another young woman who worked for Yosemite had been killed. The decapitated body of the fourth victim had led police to Cary Stayner, who was later convicted of all four murders.

The number of visitors to Yosemite had declined when word got out about the Yosemite Killer. When the brutal sexual assault and torture details came out, camping in Yosemite became almost non-existent. Rick still went. His father had said they’d caught the killer, and he had only targeted females, so he and Rick were fine.

Rick was excited he and his father would have the entire park to themselves one summer when he was ten, but he hadn’t enjoyed it much. A darkness, something heavy that seemed to stick to the skin, hung over everything when they were there. Two days into a six-day trip, his father packed up and said it was time to go.

Rick looked over at the final tent and saw the feet of his son and daughter sticking out. His thirteen-year-old son, Marcus, was snoring so loudly that Rick was amazed his daughter, Trudy, could sleep. He peeked in through the lip in the tent. Sure enough, they were both passed out. Taking out a water bottle, he spilled a few drops on each of their foreheads, and they groaned and stirred.

“What time is it?” Marcus asked.

“Seven o’clock,” Rick said, then took a sip of the water before replacing the lid.

The six-day trip seemed to fly by. His work as a professor of anthropology routinely took him out of the state or country for long research projects and sabbaticals, and he tried to take his children with him whenever he could. Since their mother’s passing two years before, he was all they had.

His boy sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Did you get what we came for?”

“Sure did,” Rick replied, taking a small plastic container from his backpack. Wrapped up in cellophane were several arrowheads. “Anasazi. They weren’t believed to be up this far north. They’re mostly found in New Mexico. This is definitely their handiwork, though. It’ll be an exciting paper.”

Marcus swirled his finger in the air and said, “Yay.”

Rick smacked him playfully, and Marcus tried to tackle him. Rick lifted him off his feet and got him onto his back. He pinned him, then held him there while one of his hands went down to his armpit and tickled.

“Eight years of wrestling, boy. You can’t take your old man yet.”

Marcus was laughing. “Stop, stop! I’m gonna piss myself.”

Rick stopped and got off him. He helped the boy up, then smacked his bottom and told him to pack up the tent and his gear.

Trudy got up and went over to the edge of the trees to brush her teeth. When she was done, she got on her phone and mumbled something under her breath when she couldn’t get reception.

“You know, there are other things to look at than a phone screen.”

“I know. I’m waiting for a text from Alexis ’cause Brian asked her to that dance I was telling you about, and I wanna see if she said yes.”

He shook his head. “You’re eleven. You know what I was doing at eleven? I was outside, digging stuff up to see if I could find anything cool.”

“Good for you, Dad. But you guys didn’t have iPhones.”

He grinned and helped Marcus finish packing.

When they were done, they headed out of the national park in their RV. Soon, they were on the I-5, going south, back to their home in Westwood in the heart of Los Angeles.

Marcus watched movies on his tablet, and Trudy played games on her phone. Rick frequently glanced back at them and smiled to himself. But occasionally, a pain would tug at his belly, and he would feel sullen and heavy, as though his thoughts and movements were working their way through water.

Trudy looked like her mother.

The drive wasn’t that bad. But along the way were abandoned jeeps and roadblocks with no one tending to them. An uneasiness came over him, but he didn’t know what else to do other than drive.

When he finally admitted to himself that no other cars were on the freeway, as if it had been abandoned, his uneasiness turned to panic.

“Either of you getting reception yet?”

“Not me,” Marcus said.

“Me neither.”

They were back in Los Angeles in five hours. In fact, he had never made the drive in that amount of time.

He parked at a truck stop outside the city and stretched his neck. Trudy was dozing on the bed in the back. He kissed her, then headed outside to the bathroom; hoping to find some other people that could tell him what the hell was going on. He wondered if the freeways had been closed because of some terrorist attack or natural disaster and they just hadn’t gotten the message.

As he stepped outside, he noticed two empty cars in the lot. Rick went to the restroom and pissed at one of the urinals, yawning and stretching his shoulder, which had been injured in a college wrestling bout and never been quite the same.

When he finished and turned toward the sink, he saw something on the wall. Dark and dry, a smear led down into the stall. Spread over an enormous portion of the wall, it looked like blood.

From where he was standing, Rick couldn’t see in. He walked over slowly. “Hello? Is someone there?” No reply. He crouched lower for some reason and felt stupid for doing so. So he stood up, went right over, and pushed the stall door open with his boot.

Inside, a man was huddled over a toilet. He was wearing a suit and fancy Italian leather shoes. His head was hanging over like a wet rag, and the entire stall was caked in dried blood. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling had been spattered.

“Um, hello? Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

Rick glanced to the door of the bathroom and then back to the man. He wondered if he should try to call the police or check on him first. But what did it matter if he was alive or dead? He would call the police, just the same.

He swallowed and took a step forward. Approaching the man from behind, he reached down to grab his hips and flip him over.

The man let out a gurgled, horrifying scream and spun onto his back. Rick jumped, and the man reached for him as more blood shot out of his mouth. But it barely looked like blood.

The man was covered in sores or chicken pox. But Rick had seen chicken pox when Trudy had them, and that wasn’t chicken pox. The man’s skin was bumpy, but it appeared to have been burnt. Some of it was falling off.

Rick ran out of the bathroom to get his phone and call the police. Then he heard his daughter scream.