Primeval

PROLOGUE

The grass was tall and abundant. The men watched as the herd of giants grazed on the sweet, salt-laden growth close to the edges of the warm seas. The waters lapped at the north and south shores of the narrow spit of land as it traveled eastward toward the new and unknown world where the sun was reborn each day. The land was widening as it traveled east, expanding into a vast plain of tall grass. The giant wall of ice lay to the north and was clearly visible from the vantage point of the lowlands. Soon, that wall would start its slow move south as the ice would return once again to the world of man.

The herd, far larger in stature and strength than the tusked, woolly creatures of their old home to the west, stood their ground, too ignorant to fear man even after one of their old males had succumbed to spear and stone.

The elder of this nomadic tribe suddenly straightened from the day's kill. The evening breeze had brought with it a scent he had come to know well since their trek began more than three months before from the steppes of Asia. It was They Who Follow—always within two miles of the band of forty men, women, and children, but never close enough to see or hear. The only evidence of their being near was the massive prints left by their alpha male: Prints so large, that two of his younger hunters could place their feet end to end into the eight-inch-deep depression.

A strong, young hunter stood next to his grandfather and followed his gaze to the west, toward the home they had been forced to leave. There was nothing there for the people except starvation and ravenous creatures driven mad by the same predicament as they themselves. The younger male sniffed the air, but the telltale scent was gone, blown away by the shifting evening winds.

The old man gestured for his grandson to continue the butchering and harvesting of the giant kill. His attention was still focused on the western horizon. He knew that the great man-beast was watching, waiting for the scavenger's chance at their kill. The elder didn't know for sure how many mouths the alpha male fed in its roving clan, but he knew that when he and his grandson backtracked, the carcasses of their kills were always stripped bare of meat, the marrow sucked from the bones.

As the young hunters bundled the meat from the old bull into the tough and woolly outer skin of the tusked one, the old man reached down and stayed his grandson from picking his ration of meat from the tall grass. The elder shook his head, his long hair flying free with the wind. The boy of sixteen looked from the familiar lined and chiseled brown face to the west, and immediately understood. They would leave one of the bundles for They Who Follow, an offering of goodwill to a clan of man-beasts that could easily kill them all if that was the path chosen, but had thus far let their small roving band be. Their only offense till now had been that of curiosity. The old man had puzzled over their strange behavior, never having come across this breed of creature in their old homeland, and had come to the conclusion that it may be the beasts only sought the comradeship of beings not far removed from themselves.

The grandson tossed the meat to the grass, nodding his understanding of the elder's intent. He turned to the other men and gestured with his spear that they should move back to their camp before the sun dipped below the hills far to the west. Before moving off, the boy thought a moment, then placed his hand inside the leather pouch draped over his shoulder and brought out his prize for bringing down the woolly beast. The liver, wrapped inside the slippery stomach, lay beside the bundle of meat. The delicacy was an offering of highest honor for the followers of men.

The old man nodded at the boy's offering, then turned and watched the tall grass behind them. He knew the eyes of the giant were on them. He sensed it — felt the presence of the creature that had picked up their trail in the northern reaches of the high country well over a year gone, following and forever watching.

The elder raised his arms to the sky, the sharpened staff crowned with the feathers of the great winged eagle held high as he swept his arms low, indicating the offering to the great creature he knew was watching. Then he moved the staff to the south and the band of hunters moved away, leaving only the bones of their kill and the offering to the great beast.

The giant creature stood over eleven feet tall. Its sheer weight alone was equal to eight of the humans it followed. The massive head had a broad brow, indicating the possibility of it carrying a brain near equal to that of a man's. Its ability to walk upright made the animal quick of foot and steady on uneven terrain. The eyes held the spark of intelligence like no primate before it. The mouth was filled with teeth capable of chewing the harsh grasses, twigs, and bushes of the western continent — being flat and broad — as well as the large, sharp incisors of the meat eater.

The great beast was not usually a scavenger. In its natural element of forest or jungle, its kind excelled at providing for its females and its young. The art of camouflage came naturally to the hairy beast, blending in well no matter the terrain due to its thickness of fur and its ability to vary the crevasse and valleys of that fur, creating many broken lines and never a clean silhouette.

The great creature watched as the old man gestured toward the spot from where he was crouching, hidden from the humans. The creature's brown eyes narrowed as the stick the man held indicated that there was something on the ground. The giant huffed, deep in its throat. The large, thick lips were pursed, as it thought and puzzled something through. Then it relaxed when it saw the old man follow his young away from the spot of their kill. When the humans were far from sight, heading toward the dunes of the southern sea, the beast stood to its full height. Its brown and black hair rustled as it tilted its head. The great beast liked the evening and its coolness. The large hands reached out, touched the tall, sweet grass, and ran its powerful, thick fingers over the tops of the growth. It blinked, sniffed, and looked as if it were enjoying its moment alone in the soft evening of this new world.

Then, like the old man a few moments before, it froze and sniffed the wind. There was a scent it had never smelled before — a heavy musk that was similar to the great cats of the beast's home region, only different somehow. The giant crouched and smelled the air, but as it did, it knew the scent was gone, vanished on the breeze as if it had never been at all.

The creature felt the approach of the three males and six females of its own clan, as they came from the taller grass where they had been hiding from the band of men. The two offspring, the last of their young, ambled out on unsteady legs and watched as one of the largest of the males in the group turned toward them. It eyed the male and female young, then turned around, and smelled the air once more, turning in a slow circle, huffing and sniffing at the air. Satisfied that there was no danger to their young, it grunted and then ambled toward the offering of fresh meat left for them.

As the alpha watched, the second largest male pulled the liver from the grass, tearing at the stomach lining to free it. The young ran for the huge broken skeleton and wrestled with the giant ribs, shaking and pulling as the adults watched. Their eyes were kind, but aware, always aware of their surroundings. The alpha knew the others felt it, too. Something lurked in the gathering darkness around them… something that stalked for its sustenance.

The great beast looked to the south once more. The scent had vanished, but not before the giant gleaned which direction it was heading: to the place where the men had chosen to lay for the night.

The alpha grunted several times until the other adults stopped feeding and looked up from their squatting positions. The bundled meat had already been pulled open and the portions given out without any fighting or snarling. They watched as the alpha grunted again, then turned and left. Heading south, its huge strides followed the childish footprints of those of the old man and his people. They knew the alpha had caught the scent of something large and dangerous stalking the unsuspecting men.

The fire was high. The old man kept sending out the younger of the men in groups of four to bring in more wood. For him, the fire pit could not be high or hot enough for the dark night coming. The group of men and women were happy in anticipation of a good meal, one they hadn't shared since the last full moon. Over twenty suns of dried meat, grass, and berries. These items had been mashed into soft dough that hardened after only a few hours of lying in the sun. The promise of cooked meat was what made the group relax, not heeding the old man's worries about what may be lurking in the night around them. The men and women of the clan had faced the creatures of their own world and conquered all, so what could this new land offer that could outfight or outthink them? They knew they were safe around the night fire that all animals, except man, feared.

The elder scratched the side of his face and drew his light coat around him as a wisp of breeze blew in from the sea to their campsite. The coat was old and wearing thin — the small wolf that had provided it had done so in the summer months, so it lacked the fur of a warmer winter coat. The chill in the air was becoming more perceptible every day, but with the promise of heavy fur from the great tusked ones, winter coats and warm shelter should not be a problem.

The old man nodded when his grandson laid three large cooked rib bones beside him. The grease was running thick and hot, and the marrow was bubbling free of the bone — just what his aching stomach needed. As the old one picked up one of the large rib bones, he heard the rustling behind them. As he froze, he could see his grandson had heard it also. He watched the boy's eyes as they traveled along the line of tall grass. In the firelight, the old man could see the grass reflected in the boy's dark eyes as something pushed the heavy vegetation aside with its massive bulk. The heavy and wild smell of a cat hit his nostrils as he dropped the rib bone and reached for his sharpened staff.

The boy turned and was about to shout a warning to the others when the grass parted and the ground trembled slightly as the largest, most fearsome cat the old man had ever seen in the western lands, leaped into the midst of the humans, actually turning in midair just before it landed. Its roar filled the night with horror. The canines of the great cat were the length of a man's forearm and they curled into lethal cutting knives that hung from its gaping upper maw. The cat's eyes glowed with golden heat in the firelight as it swiped at a female, gutting her before the men could react with spear and stone. The seven-hundred-pound cat then turned and roared at the men returning from wood gathering, its twelve-inch claws raking the air.

The old man tried to bring the women and children closer to the fire that the cat so clearly feared. As a girl of ten ran with her mother, the great cat reacted with lightning speed, jumping clear of the spear-toting men and taking the screaming child in its massive jaws. It shook the girl, trying to break the child's back, but she kept screaming, fully aware of her horrible fate. As the men poked and prodded at the giant cat, the women were terrified, screaming at the nightmarish scene. The thick hide of the animal was like hardened leather and the spear points lost all momentum as they pierced the cat's side and shoulders. The cat was starting to become enraged as the men inflicted pain such as it never felt before.

The long-toothed cat was about to leap clear of the huge fire and disappear with the struggling child, when an even louder, defiant bellow of rage filled the night air, freezing not only the panicked men and women, but the cat as well. The growl was deeper than anyone had ever heard. The great beast, seen for the first time in all the weeks of it following them, jumped into the midst of men and cat. The men drew their spear arms back, ready to attack, when the old man started screaming and gestured wildly for them to concentrate on the cat.

The spear-toothed cat crouched low to the ground, defending its meal against the strange creature before its murderous eyes. The giant manlike form bent low to the ground, mimicking the cat's offensive posture. The large brown eyes stared at the girl clutched in the cat's mouth; the child was growing weaker, the air to her small lungs cut off by the smaller teeth of the cat. The giant was trying desperately for an opening, feigning right, and then left — its instinct to save the child outweighing the danger to itself.

The strange creature charged the cat, throwing up sand and dirt as its huge feet tore into the ground for purchase. The cat launched itself at the same moment, the dying child still in its mouth. The weight of the cat struck the giant but it was like two great boulders colliding during an avalanche. They both hit and rolled through the fire, the giant bellowing. The hair-covered creature pounded the cat on the back and sides, making the animal want to spit its meal from its mouth, but through sheer animal menace, it held on. The great creature tried desperately to wrap its powerful arm around the thick neck of the cat as it swiped at its antagonist, leaving three-inch-deep bloody furrows along the giant's back. Then, finally, the creature gained a firm hold on the cat. It grasped with all its strength the cat's neck, bringing bone-crushing power to bear.

The cat finally did as the giant wanted: it screamed, loosening its thick jaws just long enough for the rescuer to pull the child from its maw. It tossed the girl into the sand and rolled with the giant cat into the tall grass. The men rushed forward but the elder held them at bay as the sounds of the fight continued. The roar and screech of the cat and the deep, booming bellows of the giant continued for twenty minutes as the two magnificent animals fought for domination in the tall grasses of the new land, out of sight.

The girl child was barely breathing. The cat's smaller teeth had punctured deep into her chest, and every time the girl child breathed, she exhaled blood. One eye had been lost, and one arm and one leg lay useless and broken in the sand, but the old man thought the child might have a fighting chance to survive.

As suddenly as the night had exploded around them, it became still. The men watched with raised spear and stones at the area where the two frightening creatures had vanished, but there was no sound, no movement. The grandson started to move forward, spear at the ready, but the old man once more held him back. Even if the great creature had survived the awful teeth of the cat, it might be so wounded it would strike out at anything or anyone who came near. No, they would stay near the fire.

The elder watched as the fingernail moon rose into the sky, and in the distance, he thought he could hear the sound of wailing. Humanlike in tenor and woman-sounding, it gave the old man chills as he knew there was anguish etched in those cries.

The man lowered his head. They would move on tomorrow, furthering themselves from their ancient homeland, distancing their hunger, and keeping pace with the easily moving herd. However, for some reason the man could not fathom, he felt the days of They Who Follow were at an end. Why the great creature had saved one of their own, he would never know, and now he would think on it no more that night.

As he watched the men build up the fire and the women tend to the injured girl, the old man turned to the west and listened as the sad sound of death continued to fill the night. The strange noise of many large sticks slamming into the ground and the few trees on this small, thin plain joined the wailing. The constant beat sounded as if a herd of creatures ran through the night. Both the thumping and the cries unnerved the group of men.

The clan of giants had lost one more of their kind and was fast dwindling to almost nothing. The beasts, unlike any animal in the world, had an instinct — not unlike that of man — about the inevitability of death. With little hope of finding the new world to the east any better than the barren land they left behind, the giant humanlike animals, the most intelligent creature next to evolutionary man, could soon vanish from the face of the earth. However, the elder was wrong about one thing: The clan of giants was now attached to his band of wanderers, and they would forever seek the companionship and warmth of men.

The royal family was allowed out of the confines of the house to enjoy the morning air. Crown Prince Alexei was bundled heavily against the chill, while constantly being attended to and pestered by the family doctor. His father watched from a distance. They were in the large courtyard, and he never liked being far away from the children. He watched two of the Bolshevik guards as they strolled lazily by his four daughters, giving them a quick appreciative glance, then knowing they were being watched by the royal family, the guards continued on their way with a sneer and chuckle as might be expected from the lowborn men they were. Last year at this time, these very same men would have been shot for their arrogance.

Tsar Nicholas II accepted his fate as the last tsar of the great Romanov dynasty — however, he did not have to accept that same disgraced destiny for his children.

He waited by the tall wall, and was tempted to shift his weight from one foot to the other in nervousness, but finally he forced himself into stillness. He looked without turning, catching the small dark eyes of Commissar Yurovsky watching the family from the ground-floor window of the large farmhouse. The small man was paying particular attention to the tsar, but that was no surprise; the beady ferret eyes of the commissar were forever watching, studying.

Nicholas saw the tall man walking toward him down the garden's lone path. The tsar could tell that the big man also knew the eyes of the commissar were scrutinizing his comings and goings in the courtyard — therefore the large man paused to converse with the girls, nodding as they spoke to him, smiling in the coquettish way they always had. His daughters found the blond-haired Bolshevik irresistible. He was able to put everyone — highborn and lowborn — at ease. It was a talent Nicholas himself had never attained through his many years of rule in Russia.

Finally, the tsar saw Yurovsky turn away from the window and he relaxed — to a point — as he knew there were several other sets of eyes watching from places he could not guess. The large man, Colonel Iosovich Petrov, was respected even among the ruthless guards, largely because they feared what he was — a member of the dreaded Cheka, the secret police of the new Communist Party. What the Bolsheviks did not know, however, was the fact that at one time the handsome colonel had been on the payroll of Tsar Nicholas himself.

The large man with the easy gait, standing tall in his knee-high polished boots and splendid green uniform, nodded his greeting to the tsar, half bowing, a simple gesture that the guards saw as mocking the royal, but it was actually a sincere greeting as taught to him by his superiors while he was training in exile with Vladimir Lenin. This did not stop him from moving his blue eyes to the far window, looking for the pinched features of the commissar.

"Young man," the tsar greeted in return. That simple gesture was something new to him — something that should have been incorporated long before his abdication. Small things like that little greeting, employed over his reign, may have been beneficial to his understanding of the classes that were far beneath his station. Creating a road to understanding his own people is exactly where he had failed so miserably.

"Sire," the man said as he straightened his hat, "your family looks well this morning."

Nicholas cleared his throat, raising his gloved hand to his mouth, and then nodded once. "Thank you… comrade — uh, that is the proper word these days? Comrade Colonel?"

Petrov smiled. "Yes, but just Colonel will do for the time being… as in the old days?"

The tsar turned and started walking, the uniformed colonel, without hesitation, walked along casually with him, towering over the smaller Nicholas. They both placed their hands behind their backs. The colonel, without turning to face the tsar, spoke in low tones, saying what he had to say.

"I was only able to get the one girl from Tetrovisk. Your cousin's family, including his daughters, had already left the country from the port of Vladivostok in the east three weeks ago. The one daughter I have was left behind in the local hospital; she was too ill to travel with the rest of her family. She is just recovering from pneumonia. She has fully recovered and I have explained to her the task ahead. On your behalf, she has agreed to cooperate — it must be nice to still have loyalty, even among your lower relatives."

The tsar was quiet, ignoring the thinly veiled reference to his royal nieces and nephews. Instead of commenting, he closed his eyes in an effort to fight back the despair he was suddenly feeling at Petrov's news. He swallowed, then smiled as best he could and forced himself not to look the part of a dejected and desperate father. The news meant that only one of his precious daughters would survive their possible black fate. As ruthless as the plan was — the killing off of relatives to save his own children — was the only hope of having his direct bloodline survive the madness that had swept his country.

"The boy?" he finally asked, looking out of the corner of his eye at the two guards watching from the garden's main gate. He desperately tried to keep from choking up as he waited for the fate of his son to be announced.

"There, I was able to secure you some good news. The British intelligence service was much helpful in getting us the son of your cousin's mistress — the little man even has the same blood type as the crown prince."

"Does he resemble my son?" Nicholas asked through clenched teeth, an almost desperate question.

The tall man smiled and looked over at the guards, and then he lowered his head so his lips could not be seen.

"It was as if I were looking at the bastard son of a mistress of yours… Your Highness."

The tsar closed his eyes and fought a desperate battle with his rising anger, as again he had to endure the insults to his royal dignity.

"Apologies… very rude of me — yes, the boy looks like Alexei. They could even be twin brothers."

"Only two children? There is no chance of finding any more to match my other daughters?"

The large man stopped and looked at the back of the once powerful tsar.

"Two of your children are guaranteed to survive tonight. That is how you must look at this. Any other way would be foolish, and may cause you to falter at the wrong time, and that could lead to all of them getting killed. Tonight, above all else, you must be braver than your reputation."

Tsar Nicholas stopped suddenly, felt the eyes on him from around the courtyard, and again turned back to face the Bolshevik colonel.

"Tonight?" he asked as his lips and left cheek twitched under his closely trimmed beard.

"A Czech contingent of the White Army is drawing too close. Commissar Yurovsky has his orders. I delivered them myself just this morning. I am sorry — murder is a despicable business."

"Tonight," Nicholas repeated, head turning to look at his family as they admired the flowers lining the broken wall. He looked at his wife and she glanced at him. The tsarina saw the look on her husband's face and turned away, looking at her daughters and only son. When asked a question by one of the girls, she cleared her thoughts and smiled brightly. Nicholas knew his brave Alexandria understood.

"Which of my daughters is to live?"

"The one girl that matched in features, age, and weight is Anastasia."

Nicholas grew silent, only nodding his head as his eyes went to his smiling daughter, and he saw her through the tears that formed. Quick witted and vivacious, Anastasia. Yes, he thought, that is who it was meant to be. She is the one who will carry on in her family's absence.

"The commissar will wait until close to midnight when most of the miserable souls here and in the village are asleep. Then he will send for you, your family, your family doctor, and even your servants."

"No one is to be spared?"

The large man grew silent. He wanted to ask the tsar how many families had been awakened in the middle of the night by his own secret police, to be taken away for questioning and never heard from again. However, what use would there be in that?

"The arrangements are all concluded?" Nicholas asked, his eyes never leaving his family.

"The two children and I will travel overland many days. We will have safe conduct papers signed by Comrade Lenin himself. We will travel to Nalychevo, where a ship is already waiting on the eastern coast."

"The contents of my will are also secured there?"

"The portion of the royal treasury you were able to convert to American gold double eagles, have been successfully smuggled out of Moscow and will arrive three days before us. Your children will be very well cared for — on that, you have my word. Even after my comrades take their half of the bounty, they should be satisfied with dividing six million dollars in American currency."

Nicholas turned and resumed walking, retracing his steps back in the direction of his family. Meanwhile, Petrov held his ground, facing in the opposite direction.

"Noble of you, Comrade Petrov," Nicholas said and then stopped. "Your destination?"

"America is where your royal relatives will receive your children. I cannot tell you more than that."

"Colonel Petrov, if it were still in my power, I would reward you—"

"It is not in your power, however. I will give my accomplices the portion of the treasury reserved for them, and that for your children's upbringing, and that is all. I suspect that the Twins are intact, your people were able to secure them with the gold that will meet us?"

"The Twins are there, both Twins with the weight of forty diamonds. They reside in a gilded and ornate three-lock box."

"Then, indeed, the legend of the Twins of Peter the Great is true? Imagine, twin diamonds the size of ostrich eggs. I fail to see how your family kept them a secret for so long."

Nicholas was not interested in telling the colonel about the great Twins of the tsar's. What matter did the diamonds hold for him now other than payment to the man who would save two of his children?

"When will you take my children from—?"

"That is not your affair. You will be awakened sometime before midnight by your executioners, and your son and daughter will be at your side with the others of your family. Mind that you, your wife, or your daughters show no difference in the treating of these two imposters. If they can accomplish that much, I will hopefully be many kilometers away with—"

"My two children," Nicholas said, cutting him off as he turned to look at Petrov, who nodded his head, half bowed, and then abruptly walked away.

The tsarina greeted Nicholas before he came to his family and took the crook of his arm with both of her white gloved hands. Her wide-brimmed hat was tilted against the freshening breeze and the falsely joyous sun.

"Is there news, Nicky?" she asked.

"Tonight, my love," Nicholas answered with bowed head, his cap hiding his distraught features.

Alexandria's only reaction was a quick twitch of her lips, and then she tried to smile brightly.

"The children… our plan?" she asked through the falsity of that smile, swallowing desperately to keep the sob she felt trying to escape from deep inside of her.

"Two."

"Oh, Nicky, no," she moaned.

"My son… and Anastasia," he replied with only a brief movement of his lips. "They were the only matches found."

They walked arm in arm to join their children, each silent with his or her own thoughts of the coming horror.

"When?" she asked, opening her umbrella, not trusting herself to allow the scream to escape her lips at the murderous insult to their children.

"Midnight," Nicholas answered, quickly swiping away a tear with his white gloved hand.

At exactly thirty minutes after midnight, Commissar Yurovsky stood over the eleven bodies inside the dank and bare basement. He knelt down and removed the tsar's hand from around the head of the crown prince. He quickly moved his hand away when he saw the boy twitch and draw a quick, shallow breath.

"The heir is still alive," he said angrily as he looked closer at the features of the boy. For a reason the old man could not grasp, Prince Alexei did not look the same. Even with a bullet in the side of his head, he could still make out his features clearly.

Suddenly a guard, one of Petrov's men, whose job it was to make sure all went as planned after the colonel and his young charges left the house, stepped up and fired three quick shots into the upturned face of the crown prince.

Yurovsky was so taken back at the sudden action of the guard that he fell onto his bottom side. He quickly recovered, and then stood and faced the man who had fired his pistol.

"You fool!"

"You said the boy wasn't dead; now he is," the guard replied quickly and sternly to the local communist official, a man that was as despicable an official as any the guard had ever known.

"I wanted to examine him for official reasons!"

The guard looked down. "Dead, four gunshots to the head and face. In your report to Moscow, you can say it was natural causes. In this day of communist glory, what difference would there be… Comrade?"

Yurovsky turned and looked at the guard with murderous rage, then quickly stormed out of the basement, threatening to add the guard's name to his report.

The guard smiled, holstering his pistol, and then he gestured for the others to start removing the two servants, the maid, and the doctor. Then he examined the bodies of the four girls and found them quite dead. It had been a close run thing, the girl posing as Anastasia had actually called the tsar "Uncle." Yurovsky, thank the heavens, hadn't heard the girl's remark. He knelt down and then saw that Tsarina Alexandria had somehow managed to reach out and touch her husband's extended hand. Such devotion, he thought, clinging to him even after death.

Crown Prince Alexei, or the child that posed as the prince, was quite unrecognizable. The girl, Anastasia, wasn't that much of a concern, as the imposter had been shot in the face, a rather cruel way to go for such a pretty child. The guard stood and motioned for the men to take the royal family out.

"The crown prince, and that one," he said pointing to Anastasia, "place them in the last truck; we have orders to burn and bury them separately."

He watched as the last of the Romanov dynasty was removed from the cellar, far from the glamour and royal standing of the grand social gatherings in the cities they had been accustomed to. He shook his head and then pulled his pocket watch from his coat. He had to move quickly because he didn't want his portion of the royal treasury to depart for America without him accompanying it.

Missing pages. Recommence with page 231—

Last remaining page of journal—

The large colonel checked the loads in his pistol, and then closed the hinged breech, snapping the barrel into place, and then he placed it in his heavy coat. He then walked over to the fire and knelt beside the boy. He lifted a hand and felt Alexei's forehead. He smiled as he pulled his hand away, and then pulled the woollen blanket closer to the boy's chin.

"Well, the fever has calmed; you just may make it," Petrov said in a low voice, looking from the dull eyes of Alexei to the sad eyes of Anastasia. He stood and walked toward the girl who had become a woman in the short time away from her parents.

Anastasia watched, making sure her brother could not hear, and then turned to the tall man beside her.

"Colonel, my brother is ill; he shall not recover. We need not be told things that are mere flights of fancy because it eases your mind to do so. I am afraid we left our childhoods back at a dreary farmhouse in Russia."

The princess looked around her and saw the stark white faces of the emaciated men that leaned against the broken wagons and fallen snow-covered trees. They were down to thirty-four men and they were starving. Anastasia remembered the horrible stories of the dark and forbidden woods read to her at bedtime, with the absolute worst, Hansel and Gretel, never far from her mind as she looked at the brutal, soulless men watching them.

"No, he shall not die. I believe he is of stronger blood than you know, young one."

"Once more, Colonel Petrov, he is sick. He is a hemophiliac and is prone to infection. The finest doctors in the world from France, England, and America have treated my brother, and declared it so. He also has developed pneumonia." She looked at the men surrounding the large fire again, placed the coat's collar up around her neck, and held her small, delicate hands out toward the warm fire. She turned her head slightly toward the colonel, framing her beautiful face in the firelight, and then she looked into the blue eyes of the Bolshevik. "It would be best for us, I think, if you would place a bullet into both of our heads. We are brave, like my mother, my father, and my sisters. The fate of the bullet is far more merciful than the fate those men will have for us. It would be a kindness, Colonel."

Petrov swallowed.

"You are far beyond your years for one so—." He caught himself patronizing the girl and knew she would call him on it. "Your imagination is running wild. You will feel better with a hot meal in your stomach."

"We wish to join our mama and papa. We do not fear the reunion, only the manner in which we begin our journey."

"Anastasia, such talk will do no one any good."

The girl ignored the colonel and leaned over the crown prince. When his dark eyes fluttered open, he tried to smile at his sister.

"Papa — he would have been very proud of you," he whispered in his weakened voice. "So tough a girl."

"No, it would be his pride and joy that shone brightly in his eyes. You, Alexei, were his and Mama's entire lives. Why, they would have been so—"

"Colonel, we have come for the children."

Petrov looked up into the face of Geroden — the sergeant — the very guard who had been left behind by Petrov, and the only one in their lost expedition to have actually taken part in the elimination of the Romanovs.

Colonel Petrov raised his left brow and stood. His knee-high boots cracked with cold and stiffness. He smiled as he placed his hat on his head, and then squared it up as if getting ready for an inspection.

"Is that so, Comrade?"

"Yes," answered Geroden. The smaller man then looked away from the children, took Petrov by the elbow, and steered him away from the fire and their young ears. "I have convinced the men that you are not to blame for our… situation. I was able to sway them to the idea that the Romanov children have cursed us, making us lose our way." He smiled, showing the four gold teeth in the front of his mouth.

"You know I am originally from the aristocracy myself, so why am I accorded such lenient treatment, Comrade?"

"Because, Iosovich Petrov, you left your family for the ideals of the revolution, just as we."

Petrov laughed loud and heartily — strong, as if he had had a large meal just that evening and was feeling its strength, like a horse full of wild oats.

"The ideals of the revolution… Is that how you and those fools are justifying your avaricious actions of the past months — for the revolution?"

"Comrade, all we want is the children. There is no need for you to—"

"Hypocrites! All of you, hypocrites! You betrayed your revolutionary ideals the moment you heard this plan and did not report it," he said, but ceased his maniacal grin. "Just as I did," he finished with distaste.

The smaller Geroden sneered and gestured behind him. Ten men started forward toward the children. Anastasia placed her hand on the chest of Alexei and closed her eyes in prayer.

Petrov never hesitated as he removed the pistol from his holster and emptied it into the approaching men. Five of the ten dropped into the powdery snow and the others dove to the ground behind the high wall of flames of the campfire. On the first click of the empty chamber, Petrov swung the pistol wildly at the stunned Geroden, striking him cleanly in the face and dropping him. Then he quickly grabbed up the boy and ran into the thick forest, quickly followed by the fast-thinking Anastasia.

Three men rushed forward to assist the bleeding Geroden to his feet. He angrily shoved them away, and spat blood and two of his gold teeth into the freezing snow.

"After them!"

Eight men broke away from the camp and spread out into the thick, ancient forest. The men remaining grabbed their bolt-action rifles and long knives, and went in the opposite direction as the first group. They knew Petrov was a master of deception and a skilled soldier, thus they thought he would try and work his way back to the last four mules and try to make his escape.

Geroden drew his pistol from its holster and angrily pushed away the men who had tried to help him. Then he gestured angrily in the direction where the colonel had vanished. As the three men reached the first line of thick trees, the clacking of wood started once more. Geroden stopped and listened. The noise was far louder than any previous night. As he listened, the cold wind picked up in intensity, but it wasn't the wind that forced a chill to run down his spine; it was the closeness of the strange knocking.

"It's all around us," one of the three men said as he pulled the bolt back on his rifle, chambering a round, never realizing he had just ejected an unfired bullet from the rifle. He flailed the British-made weapon in all directions.

Except for the banging of wood against the trees and the wind in their branches, the forest seemed dead. The sound of the men crashing through the underbrush was becoming fainter as Geroden tried to pierce the night with his eyes. The man in front of him had backed toward the warming fire, still rapidly swinging the rifle toward any sound he heard. Geroden took hold of the man's rifle and stilled it.

"Careful, you fool; you'll shoot one of—"

The horrible scream of a man chilled the blood of Geroden and his hand slid slowly from the barrel of the frightened man's weapon. The screaming went on for three seconds, and then abruptly stopped. The noise of the sticks striking the large and ancient trees continued. They seemed to be drawing closer and were very much louder, doubling the fear that was near to crippling them.

Several of the first group of men came rushing back from the surrounding woods and into the large circle of firelight, backing in as they trained their weapons on the woods behind them.

"Did you see it? Did you see it?" one man yelled at another as even more of the first group backed into the camp, their rifles also pointing into the forest.

Geroden strode quickly to the man that had spoken. He was wide-eyed and terrified.

"Why have you returned?"

The soldier didn't hear the question. He shrugged the sergeant's hand from his sleeve and continued to stare into the woods. The fear of the sergeant had disappeared as something far more dangerous had arrived.

"You," Geroden said, pulling on the arm of another of the frightened men, "what is the matter with you?"

"There is… is… something out there… more than one I think."

"What do you mean something?"

Before the man could answer, screams of pain and terror filled the darkened night once more. The men still out in the dark forest started to fire their weapons, making those in the camp stoop low and aim at anything that looked menacing, which of course was everything.

Suddenly, the large fire exploded as a shapeless object flew from the woods and struck. Flames and burning embers shot high into the air as the men saw what had hit: the mangled body of one of their own. His uniform and hair quickly caught fire as the men stood watching in stark terror.

The striking of wood against wood became louder. The beat was not uniform but it seemed as if whatever was out there was herding them together. Then came the first sounds other than the screaming of men, or the strange beating of the trees — a horrendous bellow of something inhuman. Other growls and roars answered the first cry. More men ran in from the trees, from front and back. They were all looking behind them in absolute terror. The night became alive around them, the beating of wood sounding as if it were right at the very trees next to the camp, just out of the large fire's circle of illumination.

"For God's sake, what is out there?" one of the men yelled just as a shot rang out.

Another, then another rifle exploded, and Geroden flinched as the second gunshot went off next to him. All of the men started firing into the woods, striking trees and snow-covered underbrush.

Two more bodies of their comrades were thrown into camp. The first struck a tree, sticking for a moment before flopping lifeless to the snow-covered ground. Then the second landed at Geroden's feet. As he looked up in shock, the giant animals attacked the camp in force.

Geroden had taken aim at a darker-than-night shadow as it traveled from the thickness of one tree to another when warm blood struck him in the face, unnerving the sergeant. He turned and ran, running over one of his own comrades, knocking him into the fire as he tried to escape through the back of the camp. Behind him were the cries and defensive fire of his men. The nightmare of the past few weeks had made its presence known, and the reason man feared the dark forests of the world was made evident as the night became death.

Colonel Petrov held the children close to him as the murderous rage of whatever had been tracking them attacked the men inside the camp. The screams of terror and pain seemed to last all night as men fled, and then were taken down and butchered just as others died, trying in vain to find and to kill the invisible intruders.

"Colonel, what is out here with us?" Anastasia asked, holding her brother hard against the large man's body as they cowered behind two large trees that seemed to grow twisted against one another.

"Satan may have come for us this night," he mumbled as he pointed his pistol into the night. Petrov found himself sliding back into his childhood — the days when he had been forced to pray at the cathedral with his family. The thought and memory made him wish for those times once more, the comfort in the belief of good.

"I'm frightened, Anna," Alexei cried.

Suddenly the screaming stopped. There was one shot, then one more — then silence.

Petrov cocked his pistol and waited, sure that whatever had killed the men, would soon make him and the children their next target.

A crashing came through the woods and Petrov knew he had to try to save the children. If they remained with him, he knew they didn't have a chance. He quickly stood Alexei up and pushed him into the arms of Anastasia. Then came a louder and harried sound of something crashing through the underbrush. While looking into the woods, Petrov reached in, pulled out his journal, made sure the oil cloth covered the leather book, and then thrust it into Anastasia's grasp.

"Take this — you and your brother must run. Hide until morning and then head to the south, down the river as it flows toward the sea. Find other men — they will know what to do. Show them my journal and they will see to it you are reunited with family in America."

"Colonel, I'm scared," Anastasia said as she pulled Alexei to her.

"As I am also, child, now go. God hasn't been with your family of late, but maybe now he will have mercy — now go!"

Anastasia pulled Alexei along by the hand and vanished into the trees just as Geroden tripped and stumbled into Petrov. He caught the large colonel's coat sleeve and arrested his fall.

"God… oh… god, they are coming, Comrade Petrov, they are coming!" he breathed heavily, trying to force the words from his bloody mouth.

Petrov looked at the cowering fool and then, shrugging him away, he placed the pistol against the sergeant's head and pulled the trigger, sending the smaller man crashing to the ground without even a grunt.

When the colonel looked up, he was satisfied that he had done his duty to the children. If they were to die, it would not be by this man's hand.

He swallowed and looked up. He saw the giant looking at him between two large trees. The massive and muscle-bound arm was perched against the two thick trunks. The eyes glowed with an internal fire that cast them in the shade of yellows and reds. The creature could not be any smaller than eleven feet as it watched the Russian. The great head tilted to the right, as if trying to figure out what the man had planned. As the cries of the escaping and frightened children came to Petrov's ears, he saw the giant's eyes narrow and look in the direction where they had vanished. It sniffed the air in all directions and then it grunted deep within its massive chest. The great beast tilted its head, and something akin to a nod made its chin drop to its collarbone. That was when a small rock struck the colonel from behind, dropping him easily.

The beast took two large steps and stood over the two fallen men, and then watched them closely for any sign of movement. When there was none, the giant grunted once more. It easily stepped over the one dead man and the unconscious Petrov, and went in the direction the children had fled. It saw the small prints in the snow as if they were glowing bright green. As the great animal disappeared, blending into the darkness, several of the other giant beasts showed themselves from their hidden places and came forward, dragging Petrov and the dead sergeant away into the night.

Anastasia tried her best to keep Alexei moving. The boy was dead on his feet as they broke through the last of the trees and onto the stony riverbank of the Stikine. The smell of the water made Anastasia pull even harder on Alexei's hand and arm. She thought she could maybe traverse the thicker of the ice flows and get across to safety. It was foolhardy, but she knew it was their only hope of escaping the horror she knew was following them.

Just as they reached the river's edge, she came to a stop. Alexei collapsed against her legs as she cried, "Oh, no… no."

The ice had melted during the day at the river's edge, or was so thin she could see the moving water beneath in the moonlight. They would fall through if they tried to escape over the ice. She tried to get Alexei up. He refused. She angrily tossed Petrov's journal away, where it landed on the thin ice, then slid until it hit the water through a large crack ten feet away. The journal lodged against the side of the ice for a moment, and then the swifter current caught it and dragged it under, sending the record of the last of the royal family on a long journey south.

Alexei was still refusing to move, so Anastasia just simply gave in to the boy and slowly sat down beside him on the snow-covered rocks that made up the shores of the Stikine.

"Our journey away from Mama and Papa has come to an end," the young girl said as she placed her hand on the cheek of her little brother. As she did, she saw the giant step from the trees. It stood, watching the children. "It will be nice to see them and our sisters once more, won't it, Alexei?" She made sure the boy's face was covered so that his eyes could not behold that which could not really exist.

"I am sorry I was not stronger for you, Anna," Alexei said in a whisper, his large eyes looking up and then holding hers. He started to turn away, but Anastasia held his head and made him look at her, most desperate that he not see the giant horror that watched them from twenty feet away.

"You are the strongest boy I have ever known. To be as sick as you are, you have done the most amazing thing — you have traveled half the world. Even Colonel Petrov said he would be proud to have you in his combat regiment any day."

"Really?" he said as his eyes slowly closed in exhaustion.

"Yes," she answered. She looked up and saw the beast was now coming toward them, slowly, menacingly. She rubbed her gloved hand along the boy's face and watched their destiny as it came at them, and soon they were surrounded by the only inhabitants of this area of the world for the past twenty thousand years.

Anastasia Romanov closed her eyes and waited.

In the small valley, hidden in a snow-covered covered cave, were four large wagons filled with gold. The bulk of the smuggled treasure of the last tsar and tsarina of Russia would stay hidden for almost a full century until future men of greed found it, and the hidden world of the past would once more run with blood.

The Forest Primeval had not changed for 20,000 years — always hiding its secrets well, protecting whatever lived amongst its woods and streams.

In the night came the nocturnal cry of They Who Follow, as they, too, waited for their lands to be visited by men from the outside world once more. The woods swallowed them, and they became one with the world that nurtured and protected them.

Thirty-five armed USAF air police had most of the base maintenance personnel cornered in a giant hangar outfitted for one of McChord's many Globemaster cargo planes. Most of the men had noticed that the M-14 automatic rifles carried by the police unit had their safeties in the off position. But even stranger was the fact that there were thirty U.S. navy flight technicians waiting just inside of the giant hangar door. No explanation had been offered as the men were rounded up and placed inside the hangar. They waited twenty minutes, and then a loud horn sounded.

A U.S. navy officer in class "A" blues and a white saucer cap nodded at the captain in charge of the air police, and he in turn waved his men into action. In thirty seconds, the hangar was cleared of all air force personnel with the exception of the base commander and ten of the air police. They were soon joined by twenty men in civilian attire. The men went straight to some very large crates that had been unloaded thirteen hours earlier after they had been delivered from March Air Reserve Base in California. They quickly started uncrating the shipment.

As the group of base commanders and air police waited, they heard the loud whine of twin jet engines as they spooled down. The roar was loud enough that all inside knew that a beast was demanding entrance to its dark lair. As the giant twin hangar doors started to slide apart, the men inside were blinded by the landing lights of a powerful jet as it barely waited for the doors to open wide enough to fit its extraordinary wing design. The aircraft cleared the doors by mere inches as it made its way inside, flanked on both sides and also front and back by United States Army Special Forces soldiers who had been waiting just off the runway for the arrival. The president of the United States himself had instituted the new concept of the Green Berets, and the group was newly arrived from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and they trotted inside with the aircraft with their weapons at the ready.

As the technicians and security men watched in silence, the scream of the twin J79-GE-8 jet engines bounced loudly from one corner of the giant hangar to the other. The pilot of the brand-new Navy F-4 Phantom made a fast maneuver with its nose wheel, and made a complete and precise 180-degree turn until it was facing the now closing hangar doors.

The newest and only version of the Navy F-4 was loaded with the new AN/APQ-72 radar, its bulbous nose standing out dramatically from the front end of the fighter. Every technician noted the package the Phantom carried under the centerline hard point. The plastic-covered, steel-framed object was hidden from view, but every man present was aware of what the disguised monster was, and they all had that deep-seeded fear upon seeing it only feet away. They were even aware of what the package and also the very operational name of the mission was called, a name thought up by air force and naval intelligence — Solar Flare. It was a five-hundred-megaton nuclear weapon, and was the most powerful nuclear device ever created. For the moment it was harmless, but its potential as a man-made hell on earth shook them all to their core.

With the brakes finally set and the giant General Electric engines winding down, the cockpit canopy started to rise. The lights from above shone off the Phantom's gleaming dark blue paint scheme, and all present saw that the aircraft had not one identifying marker on its aluminum skin. No navy serial number, no numbers of any kind. The stars and bars had been removed as well as every single etched engraving that would identify the origin of the flight or its manufacturer. As the canopy rose, the navy pilot didn't wait for the ground crew to assist him from his seat. He stood as soon as the large Phantom stopped moving, and was quickly stepping onto the wing. He avoided the ladder that was placed for him and hopped nimbly down from the slick wing. He waved several of the crew away.

"Bathroom!" he called out as he ran in the direction he hoped was appropriate.

A man ran to catch up to the helmeted officer, still dangling his oxygen line and directed him to the right door, and then they both disappeared.

The ground crew from the navy and several of the civilian technicians ran for the Phantom and started removing small plastic covers along the Phantom's wing hard points. The caps hadn't been off more than four seconds when the ground crew rolled up seven experimental fuel pods specially designed for the Phantom. The fiberglass and plastic pods were extremely lightweight and each of six was fifteen feet in length and was capable of carrying a thousand gallons of JP-5 jet fuel. The seventh fuel pod was designed to fit under the Phantom's belly to the rear of Solar Flare, and was only ten feet in length. With every hard point of the fighter filled with fuel pods, the aircraft had not one single defensive or offensive weapon onboard — not counting the strange object hanging hidden under the Phantom. Even the defensive flair and chafe system had been removed. With all of this, the massive twin-engine fighter would have to fight the forces of gravity to even get off the ground.

The pilot soon emerged from the restroom and was met by a navy doctor and medical corpsman. He was directed to a closed-off area where a catheter would be inserted into his bladder for the long flight awaiting him after his next fuel stop. That was where the pods would be fully loaded and the mysterious shroud would be removed from Solar Flare. The next stop for this most secret mission of October 1962, would be Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. At that point, Solar Flare would become active upon the order of President John F. Kennedy, and then Solar Flare would vanish into the night sky, its destination — the Soviet Union, its mission — to advance beyond its fail-safe point and to destroy the top military leadership of not only the Soviet military, but the KGB and the high command of all Russian strategic rocket forces.

As the pilot cleared the medical area, he felt uncomfortable with the attention of everyone as they followed his every move. He didn't know if it was because of the mission he was chosen for or the fact that he just had two feet of plastic line shoved up his penis — he hoped it was the latter.

Commander John C. Phillips, fresh from the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was preparing the largest strike package ever issued by the U.S. navy. The weapon was far beyond the scope of detonations delivered by the U.S. Army Air Corps at the end of World War II. An experimental device loaded upon the newest supersonic jet fighter in the American inventory, and with the aircraft loaded with so many secret and technical devices, Phillips knew he was more than likely to blow himself and half of either Washington State or Alaska into oblivion than he was the intended target, the head of the chicken, or as it was officially known — the Soviet high command.

As the commander was approached by two admirals, a general, and three men in civilian suits, he took advantage of the little time he had to wolf down a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of energy orange drink.

"Commander, your final orders: You will unseal them ten klicks before you cross into Soviet airspace."

Phillips handed one of the flight crew the empty glass and wiped his mouth onto the sleeve of his flight suit. His eyes took in the admiral and didn't flinch.

"And the members of the high command targeted are going to be where they are supposed to be?" he asked, still not reaching for the orders. As he watched the brass before him, the rumor mill was being proven right, and all of the hard work and training was about to be realized if the negotiations in Washington and Moscow failed. Phillips knew he was the only member of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that really counted, and it made his stomach queasy.

"Assets inside the Soviet military apparatus have informed our intelligence services through the French DGSE that everyone from Khrushchev down to his valet will be there. Yelteli is your target, commander."

"And if they're not in Yelteli?" persisted the navy officer.

"They are, buried underneath five hundred feet of reinforced concrete and two hundred of clay, with nothing else but trees protecting them. They didn't think we knew about their little hiding spot, but thanks to the head of French intelligence, we do."

The commander had no doubt that he was carrying the payload to do the job. He knew it would create a crater the size of the meteor hole in the desert in Arizona, only deeper. He was just concerned about his mission being the one to initiate a full nuclear exchange.

"What if the president gets those stupid bastards in Moscow to back down?" he asked, almost, but not quite reaching for the plastic-covered orders.

"He won't," said a man in a black suit.

"Your name, sir?" Phillips asked.

The man remained silent as he looked from the commander to the admiral, and then turned and walked away.

"In that case, Commander, you'll receive the callback—Genghis. Are we clear? Everything is explained in your orders. Now, your mission will continue with no further communication from here on out. Your layover at Elmendorf is only fifteen minutes, so you will not even leave the cockpit. After the strike, if you successfully egress from Soviet soil, your training in ice landings will become perfectly clear to you. The coordinates for the ice-pack landing are included. Sorry that couldn't be explained to you during training."

Phillips finally nodded his head and took the offered orders, feeling them under his gloved hands and knowing the impossibility of it, and also knowing full well he would never make it past Soviet defenses after his bird laid its nuclear egg. There would be no ice landing, and he doubted very much if there was even a plan for him to do so.

"Will you gentlemen excuse the commander and me for a moment, please," the small rear admiral asked.

The men surrounding the pilot walked away when asked and didn't bother with protesting the time restraints they were under.

"Listen to me, Commander, the president has been backed into a corner here. Hell, he has Soviet merchants and armed combatants charging to the Cuban quarantine line, and he doesn't think those bastards are going to stop. If they don't, this may be the only chance we have if the Soviets strike in Germany or, God forbid, the U.S. You're the first option for stopping this before it really gets started." The admiral paused for the next words he would speak. "Commander, if you have any doubts, it's worse than we thought in Cuba. At least four sites there are fully operational, and the ranges of the missiles are not what have been reported. They can hit as far away as Seattle."

Phillips didn't respond to the admiral's pep talk because he knew the Soviet military, no matter how much of the command structure he destroyed, would strike back. It was what he would do, and he knew the Russian soldiers and airmen would feel the same.

"Yes, sir," Phillips said as he gave the admiral a salute, crisp and sharp. He didn't wait after he let his hand slip to his side; he stepped away and joined his ground team.

Ten minutes later, under cover of darkness, and no runways lights save for every thousand yards as an aiming point, Operation Solar Flare roared down the McChord runway. As the wheels lifted free of the concrete, Phillips felt a small pop from somewhere in the aircraft as it rose into the sky. Unbeknownst to the highly trained pilot, the restraining bolt holding the nose of Solar Flare to its hard point broke free and tumbled into the woods surrounding Fort Lewis and McChord.

Two hours later, the aircraft passed over the most desolate and unexplored region of British Columbia on its zigzag course in order to avoid the Russian trawlers off the coast toward Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, when the nose of the most secret weapon in the American nuclear arsenal broke free and dropped three feet. Now its center and rear bolts were the only restraints keeping the weapon from tumbling into a large river that wound its way across the northern face of hills and mountains below.

Commander Phillips knew his aerodynamics were shot as the weapon hung, suspended half on and half off its hard points and was pulling the aircraft into a nose-down attitude. The problem started in the planning stages of the operation as the Canadian government knew nothing of the American flyover of their territory and airspace, so the commander was under orders to stay "in the weeds," below the Canadian radar. It was a good plan, but it doomed the mission and Phillips. He just didn't have the altitude to maneuver.

"Snowman, Snowman, this is Arrowhead, mayday, mayday," Phillips called out as calmly as he could as the Phantom rolled hard to the right side. He fought the control stick as hard as he could but knew he was losing the Phantom far more quickly with the heavy load. The design of the extreme aircraft was so radical, it naturally didn't want to stay in the air anyway, and he knew that. "My position is—"

The heavy F-4 Phantom clipped the tree line with its right wing and then Phillips felt his face flush and his heart freeze as the heavy jet fighter, with Solar Flare still attached, slammed into the Stikine River and then bounced three times as it came apart, spreading fire and debris into the desolate reaches of the surrounding woods and finally smashing into pieces against the facing of the small rise that sloped into a barren plateau.

The code name, Operation Solar Flare, would be lost forever, never to be mentioned in the annals of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, nor would the official histories of the U.S. navy and air force have anything placed into their archives telling the world that the United States was prepared to strike first against the Soviet Union. Even with the massive four-decade search for the lost superweapon, Solar Flare, the cover-up of an event of that magnitude would be kept secret — until fifty years later.

L. T. Lattimer was the last of the old miners who had worked the goldfields from Nome to South Dakota. Like most, Lattimer had spent twenty-four years of his life, his life savings, and a good portion of his family's fortune, and again, like most, had absolutely nothing to show for it. Raised in wealth and educated in ivy, the Boston-born Lattimer knew he could never go home again after such a monumental misjudgment. The burned bridges and a family alienated by his arrogance have assured him of a life of loneliness.

Reduced at times to hiring himself out as a guide to men who used to be his equal in the wealth department, he contracted out for the rich on fishing and hunting expeditions to the many lakes that were fed by the Stikine River.

In between these excursions to the tamer areas of the basin, Lattimer worked his illegal claims and panned, mined, and subsisted on the forested slopes of the valley. Every few months he would strike a small deposit and that was usually just enough to offer a faint glimmer of hope that he was onto what he knew was out there — the mother lode that had supplied the strikes in Nome and the rest of the great Alaskan goldfields. However, as always, the small deposits he had found turned out to be nothing more than that: a deposit, left there by the flowing waters of the Stikine, a mere shadow of the lode that awaited the right man. It was enough, however, to keep the nightmare alive in his heart.

Just recently, he had hired out to a group of graduate students from Stanford University, a subpar institution in his Ivy League mind. Most of the students were studying wildlife that flourished in the Stikine area without the intervention of man; others were there to study the way of the Tlingit Indians. They called themselves anthropologists. They had walked the southern shore of the Stikine for twenty-two days, taking notes, setting up equipment, and listening to loud music half the night. Lattimer suspected they were using drugs, but as long as he was paid, he didn't really care. However, the rock-and-roll music drove him absolutely nuts as he suspected it did also the wildlife they were there to study.

Lattimer was frustrated beyond all measure on this afternoon. He was walking the riverbank with a long-haired and thinly built student everybody called Crazy Charlie Ellenshaw. He was one of the anthropologists that kept him awake at night with his music and social philosophy, but he was a brave sort that had broken away from the others that day out of boredom and followed Lattimer on a quick look-see of the new area. He had even braved the swift current of the Stikine as Lattimer waded across the shallowest spot he could find. Ellenshaw looked as if he were a drowned rat, his crazy long hair was wet and disheveled, but as Lattimer took the boy in, he knew him to be what he called a gamer.

"So, after all of these years, you have never found anything worth being here for so long?" Ellenshaw asked as he looked north toward the large face of a plateau. As he observed the small rise before him he tied his crazily arranged hair back with a leather tie.

"Tracer bits and pieces, nothing to scream and jump for, I'll tell you that," Lattimer answered as he reached down and ran his hand through the river gravel at his feet.

Charlie Ellenshaw watched the guide and then he, too, looked down at the gravel. He saw glittering bits of rock and he also reached down and scooped up a small handful that he held out toward the bearded Lattimer.

"There's gold right here."

Lattimer didn't even look back at the graduate student.

"They don't teach much to you Stanford students, do they, boy?" He laughed out loud and then finally turned to face Ellenshaw. "That's pyrite, sonny. Fool's gold; iron sulfide. It's everywhere, and has sent many an idiot off screaming claims of massive strikes. Sorry, son, finding gold's not quite that easy."

Crazy Charlie let the gravel and fool's gold slide from his hand. He then followed Lattimer toward the tree line. As he did, something caught his eye. It was sticking out from under a large rock that looked as if it had been smoothed by a million years of rushing water. Charlie walked over and kicked at the rock, but it didn't move. Then he bent over and rolled the heavy rock away and then saw the crumpled metal underneath. He reached down and picked it up and rolled the shard over. He saw some black numbers standing out against a lighter black paint.

"Hey, I thought men have never been in this area before?" he asked, looking at the back of Lattimer.

"I never said no one was ever here. Just that you can count all the fishermen and sportsmen on one hand's all." Lattimer irritatingly looked back at the young student. "Why?"

"Aluminum, and look, there's more right there." Charlie pointed to the ground not far from where Lattimer stood.

"Trash — maybe washed up here from someone north, way north." Still, Lattimer walked over and picked up the metal that lay dull in the sunlight. It was crumpled and looked as if it had been in a fire. As he looked from the twisted aluminum in his hand to the stretch of gravel that made its way to the trees, he saw even more of the garbage that had washed up along that stretch of riverbank. "What in Sam Hill is this?"

The young Ellenshaw dropped the piece of aluminum and looked around. He saw something else farther away and walked over. It was also under a rock, washed by a long-ago flood of the Stikine and buried. He knelt down and felt the material. It was rotted and came off in his hand. Then he lifted the rock, not expecting much, and that was when he saw it. The book was old. Its leather was covered in some sort of material that had aged well, but was now deteriorating to the point he saw the pages through the cracks. He lifted the small book and looked it over. The pages for the most part had vanished over time. Some looked to have been torn out, and some appeared to have just turned to dust. Even the pages that remained were almost illegible because of the ink having been wet, dried out, and then wet again over the many years of being exposed to the elements. He raised the small book to his face and saw that some of the writing looked to be in Cyrillic — Russian.

"Mr. Lattimer, do you read Russian?" he asked as he carefully thumbed through the six remaining pages. "Looks like a journal of some sort."

"Living here, you have to speak a little bit and read at least the basics — I was taught by Helena Petrov down at the fishing camp, 'nough to get by, anyways."

"Yes, we met her and her very large son on the way in. Didn't know she was Russian, though."

"Well, she is. Hates the damn Ruskies, though. I mean, she really hates 'em, even though she's one of them."

Charlie walked over and handed Lattimer the journal. Then he looked around him as a sudden breeze sprang up. As the wind ruffled his drying hair, he felt something strange come over him. It was as if he had instantly stepped back into a world he didn't recognize. It wasn't a feeling or thought that Charlie could explain — it just was. He also knew, or felt, they were being watched.

"Well, I can tell you it belonged to a Russian named Petrov. By the looks of it, he was a colonel of some sort."

"Can you read it?" Ellenshaw asked, still looking around him, finally settling on the trees and the plateau beyond.

"It'll take some studying, but maybe, yeah."

"Are we about finished here?" Charlie asked, feeling uncomfortable.

"Yes, we had better get back to your friends before they get themselves lost out here," Lattimer said as he closed the journal. "Look, uh… Charlie?"

"Yeah?" Ellenshaw answered as he kicked at another piece of the black aluminum while turning for the river.

"Let's keep this between you and me. I mean, give me a chance to see what this thing says… okay?

"Whatever you say," Ellenshaw said as he continued walking away, looking around at his surroundings nervously.

Lattimer watched the young man wade back into the Stikine. Then he raised his head and looked around him. He had the same thoughts that Ellenshaw had had a moment before: that feeling of being watched. Or was it nervousness at the few words he had read from the journal that he hadn't mentioned to the kid. He turned to follow the grad student across the river, repeating the one word he had read that stood out clearly from the rest of the water-stained passages and one that he kept muttering, the lone word keeping him warm as he crossed the cold waters of the river—Gold.

While the other graduate students from Stanford sat around the large campfire, the song "Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock, wafting through the moonlit night, Charlie Ellenshaw was somewhere else. As he sat on a large rock, he kept taking off his thick glasses, wiping them clean, and then replacing them. The others didn't think much of the quiet Ellenshaw because he always seemed to be somewhere else, and after his return to camp late this afternoon he had virtually been antisocial.

Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III waved away the leather bag full of cheap wine. The girl who had passed it to him looked at him strangely.

"Charlie, what's with you tonight?" she asked, taking a swallow of the bitter-tasting wine.

Ellenshaw acted as though he didn't hear her as he scanned the woods. They were camped three miles downriver from where he had been this afternoon with L. T. Lattimer. Instead of answering, he stood when he thought he saw something move just inside of the tree line, a darker shadow among many.

"Charlie!" the girl said loudly enough to be heard over "Incense and Peppermints." She quickly handed the Volta bag of wine off to the next person in line. "You're starting to freak me out, man."

Ellenshaw saw that he had been fooled by the wind in the trees. The shadows they cast made it seem as though something was standing near a large tree trunk and every time he tried to focus on the shadow it would slip back behind one of the ancient trees. He had been seeing things like this all night. He swallowed and then finally looked down at the girl.

"You did your thesis on the Tlingit tribe, right?" he asked, about the local Indians that inhabited the Stikine River. As he waited for her answer, he slowly sat back down onto the large rock.

"You know I did, you helped me with the research. You know that thesis as well as I do."

"Not everything. What about their legends of this area, did you find anything…" — he paused, almost as if afraid to broach the subject—"strange… you know like—"

The girl laughed, making Charlie shrink away.

"You mean the Bigfoot legend?" She tried to stop her chuckle, but between the wine and being stoned she was having a hard time keeping the laughter in check. "Charlie, you kill me. Are you attempting to tell campfire stories to scare me?" She finally got herself under control. "I think that's so cute."

Ellenshaw didn't say anything. He turned away and shook his head. He then looked back at the young student and he was showing no humor in his asking of his next question.

"Are they firm believers in the legend?" he asked.

"Charlie, the Tlingit aren't the only ones that have a Sasquatch legend in their shared history; the Apache as far south as Arizona and Northern Mexico have the same. There has been eyewitness accounts handed down by the plains tribes, too. The Sioux and Northern Cheyenne have their own legends about a large creature that inhabits the highlands of the continent. That doesn't mean that they are grounded in solid fact. Besides, most of the old stories have been cast off by the newer generations of Indians; it's just not politically correct these days. They're trying to be taken seriously."

Charlie was about to retort when he saw their guide, L. T. Lattimer, placing items in his pack on the far side of the campfire. Ellenshaw scratched his head and stood, ignoring the girl when she asked him where he was going. He strode quickly to the old guide.

"Where are you going?" he asked Lattimer.

Placing his old brown fedora on his head, Lattimer looked up and frowned.

"You again?" he asked Charlie as he straightened up, and then shook his head. "Look, most of you kids are staying close to camp tomorrow doing paperwork, so since none of you were going to be much in the way of danger, I thought I would take another look-see at that area we found today. Figured I would start out tonight… no sense wasting time."

"It's after midnight."

"Ooohhh," the older man joked as he shrugged into the straps of his backpack. " 'fraid the ghosts in these woods will get me?" Lattimer laughed and then held Charlie motionless with his gray eyes. "Son, I quit being afraid of the boogeyman many years ago."

"Okay, you're a tough guy. But I'm tagging along with you."

Lattimer looked at Charlie as if he had been a bug climbing out of his kitchen cabinet.

"The hell you say."

Charlie turned and ran toward his tent as Lattimer stood there stunned. He quickly returned with his own pack and stood next to the old prospector.

"You got the gold fever, sonny?" he asked.

"This has nothing to do with gold," Charlie said as he squirmed into his pack.

"Ah, I see. You're interested in monsters aren't you?"

"Shall we go, Mr. Lattimer?"

Lattimer looked at the kid and shook his head.

"Well, if you want to make a fool out of yourself, I can't stop you. But if we find any color, don't think you can stake a claim, boy."

Charlie swallowed and looked up at the swaying trees and then quickly back down at Lattimer.

"No, sir, I'm only interested in the boogeyman."

After saying good-bye to the rest of the graduate students, and with the four track tape player belting out "a Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)," by The Swinging Medallions, Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III stepped into the woods lining the Stikine River, and he and L. T. Lattimer headed north toward the plateau, which was just visible in the moonlight.

Once they arrived at the site south of the plateau and had crossed the river, Charlie used his large flashlight to pick out the aluminum they had discovered that day. Whatever it was, the pieces were easy to see even though they were covered in black paint due to the river-washed white rocks of the riverbank.

"I don't know, but it looks like all that aluminum trash may lead us in the direction we want to go," Lattimer said as his flashlight picked up the same trail.

Charlie started picking out larger pieces of the strange debris as they entered the tree line. He really didn't know how much he wanted to observe in the three hours leading them to daylight. As he shone his light around, he had noticed the cool breeze had stopped completely and the surrounding woods seemed to become oppressive.

Lattimer was moving fast, making Charlie nervous as he tried to keep up with the prospector. Then Ellenshaw struck something about three hundred yards into the thick woods. He hissed through his teeth as he stumbled back and then looked down, his light picking up what looked like a chair. Charlie angrily kicked out at it, wanting it to be Lattimer for hurrying foolishly through the trees. When his boot struck the chair, it slowly slid over onto its side, almost in slow motion because of the twisted vines that had curled through its base. When it hit, Charlie felt his bowels almost let go. He fell back as the eyeless sockets of a skull stared back at him. He fell backward, his light never leaving the body. He struck the ground and stared at his grisly discovery. The crash helmet was missing its faceplate. The torn oxygen hose dangled away from a rotted rubber mask that had once covered the features of the pilot. The face had a massive crack in the bone that ran from the brows to the jaw, where the lower half was missing.

"Jesus," Ellenshaw said. Then he nearly crapped himself as he heard a crashing noise coming from the woods ahead of him. He braced himself to see the devil incarnate coming for him.

Lattimer came through the last of the trees and shone his light first on Charlie, and then on his discovery still strapped into the ejection seat.

"Well, I thought as much. All that aluminum, and up ahead the rest of the plane is all smashed up against the base of the rise. It's a mess." Lattimer moved the light toward Ellenshaw. "Hey, you alright?" he asked moving to assist the boy to his feet.

"Just didn't expect it, that's all."

"Yeah, it's not something you expect to find on your daily hike in the woods, is it?"

The humor was lost on the young anthropologist. He shook his head and then reached down and rubbed his shin. "How long has it been here, you think?"

"No tellin', quite some time I expect. Look at that flight suit, rotted through in places. And the rubber, it's seen too many hot days and cold winter months to be cracked and falling apart like that."

"Poor guy," Ellenshaw said as he shone the light onto the mangled remains.

"Yeah, but he's long past caring, son. Now let's see what there is to see here."

Charlie swallowed, and then giving the corpse due respect, walked past the ejection seat. His light caught and held on a small spot on the shoulder of the aging flight suit where there was a darker spot than the other areas around it. He could tell there used to be a patch or something there, but it had vanished long ago. He turned and followed Lattimer away from the final resting place of a pilot who had died almost six years before.

Lattimer waited for Ellenshaw this time. He knew that finding the corpse of the long dead pilot had made the boy far more jittery than he had been.

"Now, wait till you see this," he said as Ellenshaw stepped up beside him.

The older man shone his large flashlight onto the wreckage of the downed aircraft. It was in so many pieces that Charlie just assumed it belonged to the dead pilot and the ejection seat. The thickest of the wreckage was imbedded into the base of the plateau, looking like it covered a crevasse of some sort. Lattimer shone the light around the bulk of the smashed aircraft and then smiled. He stepped up and pulled a large section of what had been the plane's fuselage away from the rock. He quickly stepped back when it fell free and hit the soft floor of the forest.

"I'll be goddamned and go to hell. Look at that, son."

Charlie stepped up and saw that the wreckage had been jammed tight into the opening of a cave. It was a broad expanse of darkness beyond. Ellenshaw saw Lattimer as he opened the old journal they had found earlier that day. He studied a small drawing that was sketched on the back of the last page. The old man smiled and slapped at the old leather-bound book, sending one of its rotting pages to the ground. When Charlie reached for the dislodged page, Lattimer placed his large boot on it. When Ellenshaw looked up, he saw the look in Lattimer's eyes that froze him cold. It was as if he was having his pocket picked and had caught the man in the act. Ellenshaw straightened, leaving the handwritten page where it lay. Lattimer never lost that murderous look as he slowly reached down and picked it up. He seemed to relax when he had the page safely in hand.

"Don't want it torn is all," he said by way of explanation. "Now, are you ready to go see what's inside?"

Just as the words escaped Lattimer's mouth, the beating of wood started. It was close and it totally unnerved the young student. He looked around wildly as he thought the noise was right behind him. Then he looked right, then left. The noise was coming from all directions. Ellenshaw never considered himself to be a coward, but the noises he was hearing drove a hard wedge in between what he wanted to be and who he really was.

"Good God, what is that?" Charlie asked, trying hard to keep his nervousness in check.

Lattimer, looking just as astounded as Ellenshaw, only turned and walked toward the opening of the cave.

As Charlie watched the man leave in amazement, he turned and saw a flitting shadow among the trees. The darkness moved again, this time to his right. Whatever the shadow thing was, it was large. It moved from tree to tree. Then Ellenshaw saw what the strange noise was as a dark figure raised something to the sky and then swung it. The object hit the tree with such force that Ellenshaw actually felt it through his boots. The club struck the tree again and then he heard something that chilled him to his bones: the thing in the trees growled. It was a deep, menacing, and primal sound that sent Ellenshaw stumbling backward toward the cave's opening. He backed into the total blackness of the interior and immediately bumped into Lattimer. As he watched the opening, there was no movement, only darkness. Charlie was even afraid to shine the light there for fear of what he would see. As much as the thought of a missing link intrigued him, he didn't care to meet it in all that inky blackness that was prevalent between moon fall and sunrise.

Lattimer moved away deeper into the cave. Charlie turned and started to follow as silence descended from the outside. The beating of wood on wood had ceased, and even that sudden silence was frightening. As Ellenshaw turned, he saw designs on the wall in the glare of his flashlight. The depiction was that of ancient man — hunter gatherers of the last ice age. Ellenshaw had seen many examples of this kind of historical documentation before in a hundred different sites from Colorado to New York. They depicted man for what he was, a skilled hunter of the animal life that inhabited the Stikine River Valley.

As he moved back along the caves wall, the paintings became older looking, and far more faded. The years depicted on the wall must have covered four to five hundred years of prehistoric life. Many scenes of snows and the baking sun, repeated over time, told Charlie that this cave and surrounding area must have been home to a large group of ancients.

As he moved deeper, forgetting all about his terror of a moment before, and losing Lattimer as he moved farther and faster, Charlie began to see paintings of a large animal, always standing away from the hunters, but never too far away from them, either. The beast was humanoid. He saw it was bipedal and was far larger than the small humanoid group. Ellenshaw tilted his head and was sure he saw in the faded paintings that the beast seemed to be watching the activities of the men. Charlie smiled, intrigued by the facts before him that the men and the giant beast seemed to live in a harmonious environment. He ran his fingers over the ancient depiction of the large animal. He quickly pulled his hand away when Lattimer screamed. Ellenshaw turned at the loud noise, then he realized it wasn't fright: It was an exclamation of pure joy. As he approached the bend in the cave, Ellenshaw heard Lattimer as he talked loudly to himself.

"Hell, I don't even have to dig it out! Just pick it up and spend it!"

Ellenshaw saw an amazing sight. Lattimer was standing up in an old, broken-down wagon. He lifted a sack into the air and then allowed its contents to fall out. The gold coins made loud thumping sounds on the wagon's wooden bed. The laughter came flooding through the sound of the thumping noise.

"Look at this, boy! Uuuuunited States gold double eagles — must be a million of 'em!" Lattimer said, letting the empty canvas sack fall to the floor of the wagon with its former contents. He looked up through the flashlight's glare at Ellenshaw. "Okay, okay, you can have some, but I get the mother lode here, boy… the mother lovin' lode!"

Charlie didn't know why; he just started backing away. He felt they were no longer alone in the cave. What in the hell was the gold doing this far from civilization? He thought about the possible downed aircraft and its long dead pilot. Could the two be related somehow? As he looked around the strange drawings as he left Lattimer, he saw the shadow of the second wagon farther back. How much gold was there, and why was it here? As he backed away, he saw more wreckage — it was if the pieces were brought into the cave. He saw an oblong container, or what looked like a container, lying against the far wall. He also spied backpacks, canteens, torn and shredded tents, and all manner of camping gear. As strange as it seemed to him, it was if something were collecting the trash from outside and storing it.

"Boy, I got a mission for you."

"Huh?" Charlie said as he found himself staring at the collected pieces of lost humanity lying on the cave's floor.

"If you do it, you'll never want for anything ever again; all I want you to do is take this" — he held up the journal—"and mail it to my father in Boston. He'll know what to do. I've written instructions on the last page by the written map. That will give me the Providence I need. He'll get my lawyers to get the claim filed in Ottawa. I have written my account of finding the cave and doubled the description of this area." Again he looked around wildly. Then he reached out and handed Charlie ten golden double eagles. "I think that will cover the postage," he said as he started to laugh crazily.

Ellenshaw shook his head as he gained his feet. He knew then that the years of loneliness and failure had driven the old man insane, maybe even murderously so.

"I'm going to stay here and get the gold ready to move out, I'll hire some of the locals to help me get it downriver. First, I have to make sure they don't know what it is they're moving."

"Don't be crazy, Mr. Lattimer. Come back now; don't stay here alone," Charlie said as he looked around the cave nervously. "I don't know what's out there, at least I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I don't think they like us being here."

"Son, superstitions don't scare me. I've heard the stories these Indians talk about, they're made to keep the young ones in line and out of the woods at night. Now, you go and take this with you. You kids can find your way back easily enough." Lattimer pressed the journal into Charlie's hands and then his face became a mask of menace. "And you will take care not to spread the word about my find, right, boy?"

Ellenshaw didn't answer. He clutched the old journal in his hands and was sure Lattimer would just as easily murder him right there if he failed to give him the answer he wanted to hear.

"Yes, sir, I'll tell no one, and I'll mail the journal to your father."

The excited glee came magically back into Lattimer's facial features. He smiled and slapped Ellenshaw on the back.

"Good luck, son. Get across the river as quick as you can and put some space between you and the north shore, understand?"

Charlie didn't say anything, he just turned and walked as quickly as he could through the darkness, shoving the journal into his shirt as he moved while hoping beyond hope that there wasn't anything out of legend waiting for him outside.

Lattimer looked at the stacked bags of golden double eagles. The American currency would not be hard to pass off without garnering too much attention. He would claim to be an investor in gold and that he had bought up the double eagles years before. He shook his head and then ran his hand over his beard.

He had made several torches and slipped them inside cracks in the cave walls. The flickering light showed the paintings that had captured the attention of that kid, Ellenshaw, and for the first time Lattimer studied them. When he stood and took one of the torches from the wall, he held it to the last of the cave paintings and examined it. As he brought the fire closer to the large slothlike beast, he froze. The grunt was a deep-seeded hollow sound and it had come from behind him. He froze and then closed his eyes as a wild, pungent smell assaulted his nostrils.

When a loud scraping sound struck his ears, he turned in the direction of the cave's opening just as the light from the day was shut out. Someone or something had covered the cave opening. As he started to move toward the front of the cave, he heard the sound of his treasure as the coins slowly slid from one of the many bags. Something behind him had upended one of the sacks and was pouring its contents onto the ground.

He swung the torch toward where he had stacked the thousand bags of double eagles and saw the owner of the many sounds he had heard through the many strange nights in the woods lining the Stikine. The beast was well over ten feet in height and stood with its powerful arms at its sides. As Lattimer watched the empty sack fall from the beast's enormous hand, he saw that the eyes were fixed on him — the yellow glow of the eyes shone brightly in the torchlight and they seemed intelligent. The deep seated orbs moved only slightly when Lattimer brought the flame of the torch higher so he could see more clearly.

"You leave my gold be," Lattimer said beneath his breath, the insanity of his own words making his eyes go wide. He wasn't seeing a magnificent beast standing before him, he was seeing only a thief of a lifetime find.

The great ape grunted and took a step toward Lattimer. The large left arm raised, it was as if the animal was offering something to Lattimer, but the old prospector refused to give the thief any benefit of the doubt. He swung the torch at the large creature and struck its massive hand, making the animal roar in anger. The large muzzle rose into the air and the cave shook with the powerful, voiced exclamation of pain and rage.

Suddenly, before Lattimer knew what was happening, several more of the giant animals appeared in back of the first, and that was when the old man's mind finally snapped. He screamed and went wading into the beasts of that long-told legend, an animal that supposedly died out tens of thousands of years before that summer of 1968. The animals closed in on L. T. Lattimer and soon after, the secret of the Stikine would be left for others to uncover.

They Who Follow waited for mankind to return to the lost valley that had been their home for twenty thousand years.

The graduate students had been frightened when they hadn't seen or heard from Charlie Ellenshaw until he stumbled into their camp in the late afternoon. As much as they questioned him on where he had been, the more Charlie clammed up. He sat on the same rock he had the night before and held the old journal in his hands. He had wrapped it in a handkerchief and wouldn't let anyone near it.

When the others started packing for their return trip downriver, Charlie reluctantly started to help. His silence unnerved the others but they didn't press him as to why Lattimer hadn't rejoined them. Charlie had told them that the old man had continued upriver, searching for his gold.

As the rubber boats shoved away from the shore of the Stikine, all thought of the plane wreckage had escaped Charlie's thoughts; only the vision of the cave's paintings and what they depicted remained. He watched the trees surrounding their camp slide away from view, with only one thought going through his mind: They were watching.