The Chimera Secret

40

‘He’s gone.’

Ethan stood alongside Lopez and watched as Kurt Agry pulled the stretcher’s plastic cover over Simmons’s face, his skin now pale and his eyes ringed by blotchy purple sclera. The rain pattered down on the plastic sheet and ran in rivulets into the mud as they stood in a forlorn circle around the body.

They had walked only for an hour before Corporal Jenkins had noticed that Simmons had stopped breathing, his lips turning a dull blue.

Kurt stood up and stared vacantly at the stretcher for a few moments. Ethan watched the soldier for a moment before speaking.

‘We’d have never got him back in time, even if the valley weren’t blocked,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t going to survive this mission once we lost our radios.’

Kurt nodded, ignoring the streams of chill rainwater streaming from his shaven head to run down his face. He finally ran a hand over his head, the motion sounding like sandpaper rubbing against drywall, and turned to the group.

‘We push on,’ he said. ‘The way home is blocked, but without the stretcher we can take the high ground and push over the valley, then head north.’

Ethan glanced up at the sky, heavily laden with clouds, the forests forever entombed in their foggy grip.

‘Why not just head north right now?’ he asked. ‘Pick up Highway 14 and get back to Grangeville?’

The climb back up into the valley, weighed down by the stretcher, had taken all of the morning and most of the early afternoon. Everybody was exhausted, especially Dana and Proctor.

‘Because we’re not done yet,’ Kurt growled back. ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll let Simmons, Willis or Lieutenant Watson’s lives be lost in vain. We finish what we came here to do, then we head home. We can send a recovery team for the stretcher when we’re done.’

Duran Wilkes, his beard glistening with beads of water, gestured back down the valley.

‘What makes you think that thing is going to let us head back down anywhere? It blocked our route, Kurt. It did that for a reason.’

‘It’s an animal!’ Kurt yelled as he whirled on his heel and marched up to the old man, getting right in his face. ‘It’s a creature, a big, hairy son of a bitch but nothing more. It’s not thinking, it’s not planning and it’s sure as hell not chasing a vendetta against us!’

Duran Wilkes stood for several long seconds, not averting his eyes from the soldier’s raging gaze.

‘Then why are we running away from it, back up the valley?’

Kurt stood immobile in front of the old man, and Ethan sensed his chance.

‘It’s time to come clean, Kurt,’ he said. ‘You’ve lost three of your men and we’re stuck up here being chased by God knows what. If you’ve got some other reason for being here then now would be a great time to share it because we might not survive this if we don’t work together.’

Kurt turned away from Duran and looked at Ethan.

‘Our task is to protect your team from harm and—’

‘Bullshit!’ Lopez snapped. ‘Do you really think we’re all just goddamned idiots, following you and your team up and down this mountain like sheep? Right now I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you.’

Kurt watched her for a long moment and then glanced across at Dana and Proctor.

‘That a universal opinion?’

Dana nodded once beneath her tightly tied hood, and Proctor shrugged. ‘Guess so,’ he replied nervously. ‘Y’all seem like you’ve got something on your minds other than the man-eating creature from hell that’s on our case, which surprises me a little.’

‘That part wasn’t in our briefing,’ Kurt said. ‘Guess they must have omitted it.’

‘And what are you omitting, Kurt?’ Duran pressed him. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’

‘I don’t have to tell you a goddamned thing,’ Kurt snapped.

‘About your mission, no,’ Duran replied. ‘But I’m eight thousand feet up in the mountains with low supplies and my granddaughter to think about, and that wasn’t in my briefing either. You’re the commander of a heavily armed team of soldiers, so I’m going to ask you again: why are we running away from that thing, back up the mountain?’

Kurt swallowed, seeming to quiver on the spot with impotent rage before he turned away and looked at his men.

‘Good question,’ he snapped. ‘I’m about done with this shit. Any of you guys fancy making a stand and sending that goddamned thing back to hell?’

Ethan heard a chorus of ‘Hell, yeah’ ripple through the soldiers as they gripped their rifles tighter. Kurt turned to Ethan.

‘You, marine. My suggestion is that we find somewhere to hunker down and use Duran’s advice. Let it come to us.’

Ethan stared at Kurt for a moment. ‘You asking me, or telling me?’

‘Both,’ Kurt said. ‘We’re not leaving until the job’s done and right now we’re three men down.’ He reached to the ground by the stretcher, lifted Simmons’s M-16 and tossed it toward Ethan, who caught it instinctively. ‘You’ll take his place, and your partner there can cover the science team and our guides. Oh, and one more thing.’ Kurt gestured to Simmons’s bergen. ‘That’s yours now.’

Ethan walked across to the bergen and hefted it onto his shoulders. Despite the overall weight of the backpack, maybe sixty pounds or so, he could still feel the twenty pounds extra from the stashed explosives.

Sergeant Agry turned to Duran Wilkes.

‘Okay, old man, this is how it’s going to play out. One way or another we need to get out of this valley and we’re going to do it in the direction that I tell you because that’s where I need to go. We may find some kind of shelter in that direction and a place where we can rest and reorganize ourselves defensively. What I need from you is everything you know about this damned thing that’s following us.’

Duran hesitated for a few moments and then nodded.

‘That, I can help you with.’

Kurt turned to his men. ‘Wrap the body real tight in the stretcher bag. We’ll rig a line up into one of the trees and hoist it off the ground. Last thing I want is for his family to be handed his corpse after it’s been chewed into little pieces by wolves.’

Ethan and Lopez helped the soldiers with the body-bag, double-wrapping the body and then rigging a jury line. One of the soldiers weighted the end of a para-cord and used it to loop a rope over a large tree branch in the forest some twenty feet above the ground.

Moments later and the body was dangling out of reach of anything that lived in the woods.

‘A bear might plausibly climb up for it,’ Duran said as he got his breath back, rubbing his hands from the rope. ‘But hopefully it won’t detect any scent of food for a few days with all that plastic around it.’

Kurt hefted his bergen onto his back.

‘Let’s move out. Duran, with me. Ethan, you too. Lopez, you join Klein and Jenkins as rearguard.’

Lopez scowled irritably but obeyed, heading to the rear of the group with her pistol drawn.

Ethan fell in alongside Kurt and Duran as they led the way up an animal trail that climbed a slope through the forest. The rain was still falling heavily but within the dense trees it was reduced to fat, heavy drops that splashed down around them in a constant patter.

‘Talk to me,’ Kurt said to Duran. ‘Everything you know.’

The old man took a long breath before he began.

‘Sasquatch is not a modern myth like most people think,’ Duran said. ‘Encounters with large, reclusive bipedal creatures are found among the stories of our earliest ancestors. Members of the Lummi tribe of Washington State speak of the Ts’emekwes. The stiyaha, kwi-kwiyai and skoocooms are all ancient tribal names given to species said to live in the forests, and in 1840 a Reverend Elkanah Walker spoke of stories of nocturnal, hairy giants among the native American Indians living in what is now Spokane, Washington. The natives said that the giants lived near the peaks of mountains and sometimes stole salmon from the fishermen’s nets. Even the name, sasquatch, is derived from an ancient tribal name for the creatures the Halkomelem called sásq’ets.’

‘Fascinating,’ Kurt uttered without interest. ‘Now tell me what I actually need to know. What does it eat? How does it live? Does it hibernate, or make camps, or sleep?’

Duran sighed as they walked.

‘There are so few confirmed, recorded sightings that fine details are hard to figure,’ he replied. ‘It’s omnivorous as far as we know. Large scat samples have been found that do not correspond to any known creature that contain everything from wildflowers, nuts and grasses to the remains of carpenter ants, rodents and fish. That matches other wild primate species like gorillas and chimpanzees, which are generally herbivores but will eat meat when it becomes available.’

‘Do they hibernate?’ Ethan asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ Duran replied. ‘They’re very large creatures, living in a region with harsh winters where food of any kind would be extremely hard to find. I’d say it’s likely that their activity is greatly reduced during the winter months, but sightings persist so true hibernation is unlikely.’

‘Camps,’ Kurt pressed. ‘Do they have homes or are they wanderers? Do they have territories?’

‘Every now and again in the woods I’ll find cedar trees bent over at the trunk with incredible force,’ Duran said, ‘the branches wedged beneath another tree’s branches alongside. That can’t happen naturally. Nature also doesn’t plug the gaps in the branches with smaller bushes and twigs, so yes, they make camps out of trees and they’ve been photographed and documented regularly. As for territories, it’s possible. Most reports show that they will remain in one area for a number of months. Other wildlife tends to vacate the area when they’re around, and there are literally hundreds of recordings of sasquatch howls and communications during these periods.’

Kurt nodded, taking it all in.

‘Any evidence of causing harm to humans?’

‘Almost none,’ Duran said. ‘Some people claim to have been pursued but those claims are unsubstantiated. Almost all sightings end with the sasquatch moving off as quickly as it can. They seem almost intimidated by humans despite their physical size, or shy of contact.’

‘You said they were inherently curious,’ Kurt said.

‘They are,’ Duran shrugged, ‘just like us.’

Ethan peered across at Kurt. ‘What are you thinking?’

A grim smile flickered across the soldier’s face as they walked. ‘Curiosity has a habit of killing things,’ he murmured. ‘We need to even the playing field here. This thing has wrecked our equipment, killed three of my men and we haven’t even had a good look at it yet. If we can see it, we can kill it.’

‘Why would you want to kill it?’ Duran asked. ‘You said it yourself, it’s just an animal. If it’s just an animal then it will only have killed your men out of instinct or perhaps defense. You can’t have it both ways, Kurt. Either it’s intelligent or it’s not.’

‘I want to complete this mission and return to base,’ Kurt replied, ‘and whether it’s a monster or a genius I need it dead because it’s in our way.’

Ethan chuckled as he clambered over a damp, dark tree stump.

‘Good luck with that. So far it’s outwitted us completely.’

Kurt nodded. ‘That’s what I’m counting on.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ethan asked.

‘You dangle a carrot for long enough, something’ll come looking.’

Ethan frowned in confusion and then glanced over his shoulder. Dana and Proctor were just behind them with Mary Wilkes, with Lopez and the other two soldiers were further back. Ethan did a rapid head count and realized with sudden certainty what Kurt had done. Two of the soldiers were missing.

‘You baited it.’

Duran understood immediately. ‘The body. You weren’t protecting it from vermin, you were using it as a lure.’

Kurt nodded and abruptly stopped walking. He turned back the way they had come.

‘Time for payback,’ he uttered, then raised his fist with one finger pointed at the sky and twirled it around.

All of his remaining soldiers immediately began backtracking along the animal trail.

‘We’ve gone two hundred yards,’ he said as he started back along the trail. ‘In five minutes we’ll all be on the ridge above the hillside with our weapons trained on whatever goes near that body-bag. Archer and Milner are already there.’

Ethan felt a sudden unease trickle like nausea through his guts.

‘We’re all going back?’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Kurt said. ‘We know what we’re up against now.’

‘You said we should stick together,’ Duran snapped. ‘You’ll be sitting ducks back there.’

‘We’re trained men,’ Kurt replied. ‘We know what to do.’

Ethan stopped in the forest and pointed back the way they had come.

‘Damn it, Kurt. It’ll probably see us long before we see it.’

‘I doubt that,’ Kurt replied, not stopping. ‘That thing will be dead before the sun goes down. You want to come watch?’