SODIUM:1 Harbinger (9 page)

For an hour they sat at a distance just seeming to stare at us through the darkness. They stayed in the shadows where all we could see were those two piercing red demon eyes. We sat ready for an attack that never came. The eyes blinked once and then disappeared from sight for the rest of the night.

Only one night earlier and Bull would have brazenly walked over to where the demon was and cut loose with his .45. But Bull had spent much of the day making himself fearful. A growing fear was normal given the current circumstances. I had been shaking almost the entire night and I knew it was not from the cool night air. If Bull was to be labeled as scared then I would be labeled as terrified.

First light began to show and I was ever so thankful as my large bundle of firewood was now down to the last few pieces. I was not about to go out looking for more with the demon on the prowl. The fires remained burning just enough until the first bit of sunshine began to show on the upper ridges.

What was this thing that was following us and what had it done with Kyle? Those questions looped endlessly in my mind. Were we going to make it back to civilization before it came for us? I really didn’t want to know because as it currently stood I knew we at least had a chance of making it out.

I stood lookout while the others made food on the remaining fire. We ate, broke camp and were once again on the trail out. Every step we took back towards civilization gave me a tiny bit more hope. As far as Kyle went, I tried not to think about it as any scenarios I came up with would just make my outlook and demeanor worse and none of us were in need of that. Again, in my thoughts, my ingrained selfishness reared its ugly head.

The trail going back was downhill which made our pace faster. If we just went straight around Hetchy Hetchy reservoir we could be at the dam and get to a telephone by mid-afternoon. The weather had actually turned on us during the course of the early morning. The bright blue skies were now a cloudy overcast gray and it looked like they would be bringing some heavy rains with them. I felt that it was all the more reason for us to get out of the area quickly.

By the time we reached the reservoir the temperature had dropped a few degrees and a light drizzle was beginning to fall. Within half an hour the drizzle turned into an all-out heavy downpour which slowed our progress considerably.

The dirt turned to mud and along with the rocks it became a slippery mess. In the span of several hundred yards I had fallen three times. I now sported a bloody elbow and a few extra bruises. I was miserable and the cold rain was soaking me to the bone.

We kept looking behind us and up on the ridges for any sign of the demon. The heavy rains had reduced our visibility to tens of yards. It was quite possible that the demon was near to us, but we just could not see it. My teeth had been chattering for an hour when Bull put out his hand for us to stop.

I looked in every direction, but could not see a threat. Bull was in deep thought about something. I waited for him to finish before asking what it was. After almost a full minute of us standing there silently in the miserable pouring rain he finally turned and told us his thoughts.

He reasoned that instead of us going to the dam that we should instead retrace our steps to where I had first spotted the meteor. I thought it was a terrible idea as we were getting fairly close to the dam… and possibly a phone. With a phone we could call and get some real help to find Kyle.

In my mind I reasoned that it was not good for me to be running myself ragged out here when there were much more qualified people that could be summoned. I was not about to let that little thought out though, so I tried everything else I could to convince him that it was best to go directly for help.

My excellent salesmanship was not working that day. Bull had decided we needed to try to find Kyle as quickly as possible. He reasoned the longer it took the less likely it was that there would be a good outcome for Kyle, if he was even still alive at that point.

We reached Wapama Falls about noon. We pulled out one of the tarps and stretched and tied it between four trees. It was angled to allow the rain to run off the downhill end. Everything was wet and cold and there would be no wood for a fire.

I desperately wanted the warmth of a raging fire, but we were stuck with having to be happy with not having the rain fall on our heads. We were also now without any fishing or hunting to help out our food supplies. It was dry rations for lunch of which we had very little.

I had a few crackers and some cheese and we opened a can of spam. The food was all coming out of my pack so if anything I would be a pound or two lighter after we ate. For a little energy boost I put down a chocolate bar that I had been saving.

I felt a little guilty for not sharing it with the others, but I would get over it. I reasoned that if they had wanted chocolate they should have brought their own. It was rotten reasoning on my part and I knew it, but they were dragging me back into the wilderness. So, I allowed myself to feel entitled to it. Again, my selfishness dominated my thoughts.

As the rain fell we each filled our canteens from the rainwater as it ran off the edge of the tarp. Despite my new loathing for anything wet I managed a few very big gulps of the water before refilling the canteen. We rested for 20 minutes and then got ready to get back on the trail. I wanted desperately to stay under the tarp, but I knew that the sooner we moved the sooner our misadventure would be over.

As we sat under the tarp for a few final minutes I began to reflect on the trip. My first day at Yosemite had been a disaster. But each new day had brought with it a new appreciation for the beauty of the area. I had more than a few moments where I imagined how great it would be to have a house on this or that big ridge. The fatigue of the hiking would quickly change my mind, but then the next wonder would appear and I would imagine it all over again. That all ended with Kyle’s disappearance. I could not wait to be away from the miserable place that Yosemite was.

Just after lunch we hit the trailhead that would take us back up to Lake Eleanor. I was dreading it as it was once again an uphill climb. If we had continued on to the dam which was only another hour in this cold heavy rain we would have been out of the dreadful place for good.

The climb up the trail away from Hetch Hetchy was awful. My boots slid with almost every step and the cold rain continued to fall, occasionally sending a torrent of rushing frigid water across our path. As we reached the first crest the rain let up for several minutes so we stopped for a moments rest. We now had visibility of a half mile. It was then that we got our first real look at the demon.

It was standing by a rock on the next ridge looking directly at us. I don’t think it had expected the slack in the rain and it had been caught out in the open. It was like nothing I had seen before. It was silvery in color and stood on three spindly legs. It was also not an animal, but was instead a mechanical beast.

Since the suspected Roswell crash in 1947 I had always been fascinated with the possibility of alien life being out there. It was just a fascination and I had never really dreamt that I would one day be looking at something from elsewhere. I had immediately convinced myself after seeing it that it was not of this world.

Bull and Allie were also bewildered. What was this mechanical thing and where had it come from? I wanted to know how it was moving around on its own; it was obvious to me that it was not a living thing. It was instead something that someone had made. But it clearly had reasoning abilities as it was able to move agilely about on the rough terrain.

Bull speculated that perhaps it belonged to the military, or some secret lab, but I was confident that this was well beyond man’s abilities for 1957. Perhaps our science would one day progress to the point where this was possible, but it was not possible for the day. We knew that mechanical things still required a human brain to operate in anything more than a simple straight line or pattern. This beast, did not have a human brain, it was unlike anything we had ever seen.

I then began to think about the dead animals that we had seen. It suddenly it popped into my mind that if I was going to explore an alien world, I would probably do the same thing. I would send out a probe to gather as much information as I could.

At that moment I had no doubt in my mind that this demon was an alien scout. And with that thought I began to think about the meteor I had seen the few nights before and how it seemed much bigger than this beast. I began to feel that Bull was right and that we needed to make every effort to find Kyle.

What if he was still alive and this thing was preparing to dissect him? What if it had just taken him prisoner and was going to take him back to its own planet? Was there a mother-ship of sorts? The questions were coming to me faster than I could make sense of them. For some reason I found myself now suddenly into the whole mess. It was now exciting and I just had to know what was going on. My fears quickly melted away, turning instead to fascination. It was like every scary story where you knew the person should not go down in the dark basement, but for some reason they just had to look.

As we stood staring at the beast, Bull turned and looked at me. He knew that I now knew that we had to go ahead and try to find Kyle. He knew that I would no longer be the grump or the one who wanted out. Bull had known me for most of my life and he knew that when I latched onto something it would be difficult for me to let go. It was my obsessive compulsion to meet this challenge head on.

Bull pulled out his mini binoculars and stared at the demon as it stared back. It was almost seven feet tall and had three spindly legs. The legs had three such joints aside from the one where it attached to the body and each joint had what looked like three tools. He could make out what looked like pliers, scissors, a six inch long blade with a serrated edge and a drill.

There were other appendages, but he was not sure what they were. At the bottom of the legs were the small triangular feet that had left the smudge marks that we had followed. On top of the three legs was an upside-down, shallow, dome shaped head. At least we thought of it as a head, but it was really the body and head of whatever this was.

It could be described as a giant, three foot diameter, upside-down, moon hubcap with a flat lid on top. The eyes were situated just under the rim of the flat top. It would no doubt have to tilt its head backwards in order to look upwards to any degree. We would later speculate that this might give us an advantage, if we could somehow attack it from above.

As Bull watched, the eyes of the beast protruded slightly and then turned in opposite directions. One of the eyes then turned downward as if looking at the rocks it was standing on while the other eye turned back towards us. Then, as if moving like a gazelle, it turned and ran away from us, up and over the ridge and out of view.

The demon was fast, faster than us. And it was agile given the way it bounded over the rough terrain so effortlessly. Even though I was excited to be there a feeling of apprehension crept back into my mind. It did not look nearly fast enough to outrun bullets and it did not appear at first glance to have any weapons. But who was I to be happy about confronting it when all I was carrying was a bat.

I had come out of my trough of misery that I had held me for the past 24 hours only to get onto a roller coaster. But at least I was no longer pining for home. This was an adventure and even though it involved grave danger I was somehow drawn to continue.

We had a small valley ahead that we had to climb down into followed by another climb to the top of the ridge on the other side. It would then be a long walk back across a plateau to get back up to Lake Eleanor. We would also have to deal with the heavy rains which had returned with a vengeance.

When we got down into the valley below we were met with a once small stream that was now a raging torrent. The rains had swollen it from six feet across to more than twenty. The water was crashing and churning over and around what were the large rocks that lined the normally quiet flow.

We walked upstream for several hundred yards, but as the rains persisted the torrent just seemed to grow. We could not cross so we instead set up the tarp to sit out the rains until the torrent died down. It rained steadily for more than four hours before it slowed substantially.

But the torrent had not gone down. It seemed like an endless stream of water coming down into this ravine that had trapped us from getting across. As we waited, the day turned to night and the stream continued to rage. We would have to wait until morning before moving on.

The sides of the valley were steep in the area surrounding us which meant an attack could only come from one end of the valley or the other. Because of the canyon’s shape they would have a difficult time attacking from above, so we had lucked into a very defendable position.

We had taken the time when the rain had slacked off to also build a rock wall just out from either end of the tarp. I remember at one earlier point thinking that I was glad that we had bright red tarps. They would be easy to spot from the air if anyone had to search for us. At our new location and with the new situation I was thinking a nice forest green or granite gray would have been better.

But the demon already knew where we were, so it wasn’t like we needed to hide. I then had the realization that even though we had been sitting there under the tarp all afternoon and even though I was still soaked to the bone, I was no longer shivering. Maybe it was the adrenaline from the excitement or maybe I was just fatigued earlier, but either way I was once again somewhat comfortable.

As the night came the temperature didn’t drop much from where it had been. It had been cool all day with the rain. With nothing dry to use in a fire we would be spending the night in the cold. With the overcast skies and the lack of a fire, the night became pitch black. I could not remember having ever seen such blackness as I could not make out my hand in front of my face.