Occultation (37 page)

A half-hour later, he’d carefully picked his way down the hillside and walked across the basin to the former CSI team campsite. The team pulled stakes months before. Signs of its presence were mostly erased by the elements, the proliferation of weeds. He flipped an empty soda bottle with the side of his foot. There was a fire pit, its ashes washed to gray mud and baked hard, and nothing else. This was where the team of fourteen men, women and dogs spent the better part of a month taking core samples and ground X-rays, sniffing for elements of organic decay, and snapping a thousand photographs. Yes, she was right—definitely creepy. He was glad their own camp was at a good, safe distance. It was irrational, and that didn’t bother him. In the animal kingdom, paranoia equaled sanity.

Why had he come to Site 3? No reason except curiosity, an overwhelming urge to reconcile his curiosity and fear. Fear was such a strong word, yet an appropriate one. That he carried a weapon and was trained to survive any conceivable scenario, that there was no visible threat, did nothing to pacify his mounting anxiety.

He was alone in the wilderness, yet when he spied the set of human tracks, he wasn’t surprised. He followed for a while—the prints of a large male in boots were made within the last seventy-two hours. The trail eventually led into the hills. The Family’s hideout lay in that direction: long-gone tepees, tarpaper shacks, and caves. He looked at the sky. Sunset creeping along, it would arrive within forty-five minutes. He told himself discretion was the better part of valor and turned away. 

Later that night a storm rolled in as he lay awake, listening to the wind tear at the module. —You fool, he said. —There’s not a damned thing to be afraid of. He closed his eyes and slept. In his dreams, he stood in a field and regarded the carcass of a black bear. The bear lay on its side in several inches of jellified gore. Green rot wafted and a cloud of blowflies orbited the remains. From his angle he couldn’t tell if the head had been chopped off.  A woman laughed and her hand clamped upon his shoulder. The hand was all rawhide and bone.

He spent the next day in a tree on the ridge overlooking Site 3. The branches were steamy from rain, but the stony earth had already drunk the puddles and pools. A hawk circled so far overhead it was a black grain against the superheated blue sky. A couple of coyotes padded along the basin floor. He contemplated shooting one, removing its blood and tissues and shipping them to HQ for analysis. He replaced the bunting lens caps on his rifle scope, and drowsed. When the light thickened and dimmed he lowered himself to the ground and walked back to camp.

—There’s no video of…of you know what, she said.

Stars cluttered the sky and the air was almost too crisp. They sat on lawn chairs at the edge of a dying fire. They smoked cigarettes from her carton of Pall Malls and drank many tumblers from his bottle of Laphroaig. A light wind swirled from the mountains and stirred the fire, occasionally scattering cinders upon their clothes. The wind tasted sweet, like ashes of a green tree.

—Of what happened at S3? A guy showed it to me, all right, he said. A third of the scotch was in his belly.  He didn’t care if she believed him. He thought about the two ragged coyotes, the circling hawk, the coyote den empty as a forgotten mausoleum. He thought about the lone set of boot prints winding  among the rocks, impressions coagulated in the soft earth. He wondered what it all meant.

—A guy? What guy?

—I don’t remember his name. He was with somebody. Oh, yeah, Bleeker, or Blecher. One of the CSIs. I think.

—Bleeker showed you a video.

—Not Bleeker. The guy with Bleeker. Lab rat type. Pasty, soft.

—Bleeker’s pal showed you a video.

—The Site 3 home video that those freaks shot in ’72.

She puffed on her cigarette. The light from the fire glowed red in her eyes.

 —When did this happen? We were sitting together at the briefing.

—During the lunch break. He took me to an empty conference room and played it against one of those pull-down screens.

—The dude was walking around with the tape in his pocket?

—Maybe he’s stalking Michael Moore. Gotta be ready to demo at the drop of a hat, right?

—
The Religious Freaks and Me.
But, the lunch break was like only fifteen minutes.

—The film was a short-short.

—Well, hell. Now I know where you went to smoke a cigarette. Wish I’d followed you.

—No, you don’t.

—The Family didn’t film anything. That’s an urban legend. No photographs, either. Buncha dirt-munching, tree-hugging druids. I hear one of ’em worked in the Army motor pool before he got a Section Eight. Crazy fucker kept the school buses running. Otherwise, homeboys didn’t have a pot to piss in, much less a camcorder. If you actually watched anything, it was a fake. Guy was yanking your chain.

—It looked authentic. Really horrible.

—Um-hm. She extended her glass and he poured. —I take it there was some Dario Argento-style mayhem going on. 

He filled his own tumbler until whiskey quivered at the rim, and closed his eyes and considered her voice, how it lately came to him deep in the darkness when he was alone on his cot. Her voice was breathy and harsh, like a breeze combing through dry leaves, a raspy lullaby. He said, —You’re right. It was a hoax. Hamburger and catsup in papier-mâché dummies. Smack that shit with a sledgehammer, watch it splat against a wall. Fooled the hell out of me.

—Catsup?

—Corn syrup and chocolate, he said. —I was a baby when the Family made the scene. Rabbits and wolves are more my thing. Starvation, predator/prey dynamics, I understand. Rabies, I understand. This psychobabble, religious bullshit, not a damned bit.

—Not me. I loooved my psych classes. People, bugs. Step back far enough, it’s all the same. I did a midterm paper on the cult. Honestly, I was kinda sweet on the D.A. He came to the university and lectured us about the case. Real sexy older guy. I wasn’t paying much attention to what he said, but luckily my dorm mate was pathological about taking notes. Anyhow, what they did was lure kids from parks and concerts. The Old Man sent his followers to train stations and bus depots on the lookout for runaways, war vets, anybody down and out and desperate for a meal, a place to crash. The Family brought ’em here, to the ranch.

—And then?

—And then? She smiled and threw back her head so her hair fanned over one shoulder. —I dunno. Mostly sat around eating peyote buttons and reading those anti-establishment pamphlets Father wrote by the bushel. Fucking and dancing to wild flute music. Some of the visitors converted, joined the cause. The shit that went down in Portland—

—At the retirement home.

—The Pleasant View Massacre. Yeah. Three of the four killers had joined the Family the preceding year. Probational members. A lot of the indigents stayed awhile and then moved on. How many wound up getting tortured and murdered? A few. Gets a mite boring in these parts, I reckon.

He watched her closely, drawn to the way she rubbed the glass against her collarbone, how perspiration gleamed there. The whiskey in his own glass lay black as blood. He gritted his teeth and took it all in a gulp.

—You figure, the Family had a following in the hundreds during the late ’60s. At least double
that
left or disappeared. I think, in my heart of hearts, you can take all the death scores by Dahmer, Bundy, Gacy, that crowd—and add ’em together. What’s buried on this range is probably way worse. Plain old math.

—But why?

—Thrills. The core group were anarchists, the kind who want to watch the world burn. I bet a lot of unpleasant talk occurred around the campfire. Those who heard the gospel and acted squeamish got the ax, literally. I also think the Family was paranoid about Fed narks infiltrating the ranks. Motive enough to bury a few.

—Could be another reason. You called them anarchists. They weren’t anarchists, they were a cult. Satanists.

She finished her whiskey and regarded the glass. —Damn, you had to go and do that, didn’t you? Here we are, miles from civilization and you gotta suggest those freaks were sacrificing people to the Devil. 

—Would it have been more acceptable if they were splitting people open to satisfy Jehovah? Wasn’t thrill-killing scary enough for you?

—I hadn’t thought of it like that. Satanism freaks me the fuck out. 

—No need to be scared, baby. We’ve the computer, a radio, cell phones. We’re wired.

—Lot of help that shit will be if cultists sneak in and cut our throats in the dead of night. I don’t need any more nightmares.

—Wanna cuddle? I’ll protect you from the bogeymen.

—Thanks anyway. Sadist.

The coals faded and after a while, the two sat hunched, separated by a gulf of darkness. She began to reminisce about the good old days in college, how her parents disapproved of her career in biology; lawyers both, they’d expected her to attend an Ivy League school and carry on the family tradition. Her mother had died last year of complications from diabetes and her father remarried a drunken witch who really, really enjoyed money. Stepmom was evil incarnate, of course. 

—I always hated my real mom, she said. —Worse than evil stepmom, even. You haven’t asked about the puppy you gave me. Rex. I named him Rex.

He wasn’t listening.

—Look at this, she said. Neither had dressed after breakfast; just a plain white t-shirt and shorts for him; an Army gray sports bra and faded green panties for her. Rain spackled the dome and the humidity didn’t do much to soothe his hangover. —I meant to play this for you earlier.

—Well, why didn’t you?

She frowned at the blurry image on her computer monitor. —I dunno. This is footage from the probe at B5. Watch closely, ’cause it happens fast.

His temples throbbed. The image shot by the infrared eye ring was static, taken long after he’d positioned the device. The picture stuttered, revealed a ghostly vista of roots and rock of the den interior. Five or six seconds in, a shape in the frame. A mud-encrusted human face. The person grinned or snarled, perhaps aware of the lens, perhaps not. Either way, he was worming along on his belly. Then the recording ended. —Don’t try telling me that’s a man, he said. 

—Here it comes again. And…freeze.

—No way, he said. —No way. The lighting is so poor. It’s a coyote.

—I don’t think so, she said.

—Fuck that noise. He leaned over her and killed the recording. —You’re going stir crazy. Hit the trail with me today. We’ll have a picnic.

—That’s a person.

He stroked his beard, mastering the impulse to smash the monitor. He said, —I’ve spent many precious hours of my life wiring that den. If a human being came within a hundred meters, I would’ve seen their tracks. I would’ve seen evidence at one of the entrances. There’s nobody hiding in that den.

—For Chrissake, run it again. You’ll see.

—Oh, we’re gonna run it again. 

She flipped her chair and paced to the opposite end of the enclosure. —Somebody’s crazy, and it’s you. 

He started the recording and set it to loop. —Say it with me: It’s a coyote.

—I know how to process film and I know what that is.

—Come here.

—Kiss my ass I’m coming over there.

—Come on.

Her eyes brightened. She went through the hatch and let it slam behind her. He unclenched his fingers and whistled. The creature in the den sneered at him, then vanished, over and over. After a while he decided it actually resembled a feral woman, her lank hair obscuring vulpine features, a mouth twisted in rage. He couldn’t tear his gaze away.

She returned a few minutes later and dressed. She stood next to him and stared at the monitor. Her jaw twitched. —You’re right. It’s a coyote.

—Exactly.

Her face was dark with sunburn and this magnified the shine of her eyes. Her pupils were black holes eating the whites. She said, —Where do you go all day?

The supply helicopter landed in the field at daybreak. The pilot, a wiry man who wore yellow-tinted aviator glasses, briskly unloaded three crates of supplies and handed over a manifest list. The pilot glanced around, nervous as a dog accustomed to dodging rocks. —Cripes, this place is spooky. Good luck. He jumped into the helicopter and zoomed away.

He watched the helicopter make a broad arc. He could grab a rock and chuck it at a rotor. What would happen? In the movies, there’d be a fireball. Shrapnel would sizzle past and shred the module, leaving him unscathed. In the real world? Probably nothing, even in the unlikely event he could actually throw a rock that far. He wondered if he ran inside and got the rifle how many rounds he could fire before the helicopter escaped. It was a bolt action. The magazine held five rounds. 

He sighed and hefted his crowbar and began levering apart the crates. She stared after the helicopter until it vanished into the horizon.

Today he changed the tapes in his remote cameras. He carried the tranquilizer gun. He’d decided to zap the first coyote he saw. Unfortunately, none ventured from their lairs by early afternoon, so he enjoyed a long siesta under his favorite tree above the killing grounds. Ants scuttled across his legs. None of them bit him.

He walked into camp a few minutes before sunset and saw it there, leaning against a boulder. He removed his hat and fanned his face, and stared. —I don’t understand, he said.

—It’s my revenge, she said.

—Revenge about what? he said.

—You’re treating me with disrespect. Your asshole-ishness. I’m sick of your eccentricity. Up to here. She made a slashing motion under her chin.

—That’s good. Let it all spew out. I really think we’re making progress.

She laughed and strode to her trophy. She braced her foot next to it on the boulder and said, —Look at this freakin’ thing. I stumbled upon a footpath that leads to a gulch, a bit west of here. A secret path, beaten hard like pavement and screened in juniper and thorn bushes. The trail ended at a cave. Not so much a cave as a deep, vertical crevice. They held ceremonies there. Fuckers left kerosene lanterns hanging from branches and in niches. Wrote a bunch of crazy occult symbols on the walls in chalk and paint. Foul, foul shit, too. I went inside. This was lying, broken, near a big, ugly rock with a groove chiseled into it.