The Mad and the MacAbre (17 page)

“
That’s not exactly true.
There are specifically no bodies of water one might consider
similar to seawater or that of the Great Salt Lake, but these
mountains are rife with mineral springs with high contents of
naturally recurring salts like sodium chloride, carbonate, and
sulfate, and additional carbonate salts from calcium, magnesium,
potassium, and lithium. If you’ve ever been to the hot springs in
Glenwood or Idaho Springs, you know what I’m talking
about.”

“
So if we can find this hot
spring, we should theoretically find this microorganism,” Jess said
from the back. “And that should confine our search enough to
presumably locate the remainder of Nathan’s body, and hopefully our
family members as well.”

“
Exactly,” Cavenaugh said.
“Of course, that theory is predicated upon the assumption that
Nathan’s femur wasn’t moved from another location to begin with. If
it had simply been discarded there by someone or some other
creature like a bear, then it may just be a wild goose
chase.”

“
There’s another
interesting fact about haloarchaea we suspect may apply to this
microorganism. They have an inordinately high concentration of
carotenoid pigments for protection from ultraviolet rays, which
cause them to take on a reddish or rust-colored hue. If we find our
spring, we should know it right away.”

“
And from there,” Cavenaugh
said, nodding toward the equipment behind Gabriel, “the real work
begins.”

☼☼☼

They had spent the afternoon learning how to
use the equipment. The GPR had taken some serious practice, but by
the time dinner rolled around, they all had a pretty decent
understanding of the various signals on the readout and were at
least able to recognize the differences between ice, packed dirt,
and various rocks. Human remains would be a different animal
entirely, but there were no test subjects available. They could
only hope they would be able to identify them when the moment of
truth arrived.

After a meal of boiled hot dogs and baked
beans, during which conversation had been sporadic at best, they
had decided to retire early and gather again before sunrise to
formulate their plans. They were all eager to begin, but the storm
had intensified to the point that the blowing flakes obscured even
the major landmarks. The first thing they were going to need to do
was study the satellite images in hopes of finding the hot spring,
and then make notes of the clues in the bible verses that might
have led their missing family members to it. For now, Gabriel was
content to allow the day to end. Granted, they had accomplished
nothing, but simply being there in the cabins again had taken a
physical and emotional toll on all of them.

Gabriel closed the outhouse door and threw
the hood of his jacket up over his head to shield it from the
onslaught of snow on the shifting wind. If for nothing else, he was
thankful the flies had died off for the season. He had horrible
memories of the buzzing sound and the tapping of insect bodies
against his bare rear end. As he trudged through the accumulation,
he tried not to wonder what the coming day would bring.

He was nearly to the back door of his cabin
when he noticed a figure standing at the edge of the forest,
staring off into the trees. At the sound of his approach, the
figure turned and gave him a halfhearted wave. He was able to see
just enough to identify Jess by her profile.

“
This wasn’t what I had in
mind,” she said.

“
What’s that?”

She wrapped her arms around her chest and
walked toward him.

“
The snow,” she said. “It
was in the fifties when I left Denver. I nearly didn’t pack all of
my winter gear.”

“
This is definitely going
to make our search more challenging.”

Silence hung between them for a long moment.
Gabriel was just about to excuse himself when she finally
spoke.

“
What aren’t you telling
us?”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Earlier, when you were
talking about the bacteria they found on Nathan’s bone, you said
they were ‘similar to’ haloarchaea, ‘like’ haloarchaea.”

Gabriel nodded.

“
You never once said this
microorganism was haloarchaea.”

“
I don’t know where you’re
going with this,” he said, but it was obvious.

“
I’ve been thinking about
this all afternoon, and I can only come up with two options: either
you don’t know what kind of bacteria they found, or you’re just not
telling us.”

Gabriel didn’t know how to proceed. He had
promised Cavenaugh he wouldn’t mention their theory about the
origin of the microorganism, but he had only done so because they
agreed the others might not join them if they did so prior to
arrival. Now that everyone was here, though…

“
This is hard enough on all
of us as it is,” Jess said. “We don’t need secrets between us to
make it worse.” She took his hand and looked directly into his
eyes. “I lost my sister here, too.”

He took a deep breath and glanced back over
his shoulder toward the cabin. Before he consciously made a
decision to do so, he started to talk.

***

Gabriel stared at the exposed wooden planks
of the ceiling above. His mind wouldn’t keep quiet long enough for
him to sleep. Cavenaugh’s clock ticked monotonously from the other
side of the bed, metering the rhythm of his wheezing exhalations.
The light from the wood-burning stove in the main room had faded to
a weak glow through the open doorway, and if he turned just right,
he could see the cloud of his breath. He rolled over and pulled the
covers up over his face, primarily to drown out the sounds of the
man lying on his back scant inches away in the queen-sized bed.
With any luck, Jess was having better luck on the couch.

She had responded to the details of the
halophile about as he had expected, as he was sure he would have
had their roles been reversed. Had he not seen it with his own
eyes, he would have shared her disbelief. They had left the
conversation in such a way that he still didn’t know exactly what
she thought. Whether the microorganism had once originated on a
different planet or not was irrelevant anyway. It was merely a tool
to help them locate the bodies. Maybe once he was able to formally
close this chapter in his life, he would be able to convince the
university to write him a grant to study it in the field. Or
perhaps he would be happy enough to never return to these
godforsaken mountains again.

There was a scratching sound, faint at
first, like a bare branch raking the siding outside the window. But
there weren’t any trees within ten feet of the cabin.

He pulled down the covers to better hear.
Even over Cavenaugh’s snoring, he could discern it, louder now.

It stopped abruptly.

Gabriel sat up and craned his head to
listen. Was there someone outside the cabin trying to get in? His
heart was pounding, his breaths coming shallow and fast. He leaned
over the side of the bed and grabbed his flashlight from the
floor.

Thump.

The hollow sound originated somewhere behind
a wall, or possibly under the floorboards. It was hard to tell. He
could only be sure he had heard something bump a wooden board in
some sort of recess.

A minute passed. Then two. The sound didn’t
repeat.

Gabriel climbed out of bed, slipped on his
boots, and shrugged into his jacket. He switched on the flashlight
and directed it around the room. Nothing. Mustering his courage, he
exited the bedroom, passed through the living room and kitchen, and
opened the back door. The wind buffeted him with a swarm of
snowflakes as he stepped out into the night. He swept the column of
light across the glimmering white mat, spotlighting large flakes
that cast strange, shifting shadows. Easing along the side of the
building where the snow had begun to drift, he continued moving the
beam from side to side until he was nearly directly under the
window, and stopped.

There were tracks in the snow.

He knelt and examined them. They belonged to
some sort of animal for sure. The prints were too deep to clearly
see the imprint of the paws, but he could tell it couldn’t have
been more than a foot tall based on the uneven sweeping marks the
fur on the animal’s belly left atop the snow between the tracks.
They probably belonged to the fox he had seen earlier.

The snow had been cleared away from the base
of the cabin wall, where there was a small, dark opening between
the ground and the siding. He flattened himself to his stomach and
shined the light into the hole. Weathered planks, upon which the
wooden interior floors were braced, stretched off into the darkness
beyond the reach of the flashlight. The ground beneath was bare,
leveled dirt. He smelled mildew and turned earth, and underneath, a
foul organic stench that suggested something had crawled under
there to die.

He pointed the light to the right and caught
a flash from twin golden rings. There was a hissing sound and
something slashed his cheek. Dropping the flashlight, he rolled
away from the hole in time to see a furry orange animal dart across
the clearing and disappear into the storm.

“
Jesus,” he whispered. He
dabbed his left cheek with his fingertips. They came away damp, and
only caused the pain from the wounds to intensify. He retrieved the
flashlight from the snow and shined it on his hand to confirm what
he already knew. His fingers were covered with blood and he could
feel it beginning to run down the side of his neck.

Did that thing bite him? All he remembered
was the reflection of eyes and a blur of movement. He had barely
managed to close his eyes before it struck his cheek.

At least that accounted for what he had
heard from inside.

Cautiously, he shined the beam back into the
hole, half expecting to see an entire litter of those monsters
waiting to tear off the rest of his face. There was only a small
burrow worn into the dirt, a shallow cavity filled with short,
knobby sticks. He tipped the light down just a touch and
gasped.

Those weren’t sticks in that nest.

He took several deep breaths to steady his
nerves, reached under the house, and closed his fist around the
first object he felt. Rolling away from the hole, he directed the
light onto the object balanced on his open palm.

Three small bones, articulated with rotting
knots of cartilage. No sign of the flesh remained, and the cortices
were scarred by grooves from an animal’s teeth.

There was no mistaking what he held.

It was a human finger.

November 14th, 2010

Sunday

“
Ouch.” Gabriel winced as Maura
swabbed his cheek with alcohol. It felt as though he’d been
attacked with a series of dull, rusted razorblades. Fortunately,
the lacerations were fairly superficial, but that didn’t mean they
didn’t sting like hell.

“
I may not be a doctor,”
Maura said, “but I think you’re going to live.”

She opened the medical kit Cavenaugh had had
the foresight to bring and taped a couple squares of gauze over the
side of his face. It was frightening how well-stocked the kit was.
Not only were there bandages, but syringes, splints, vials of
lidocaine and epinephrine, and enough needles to make an
acupuncturist jealous. What kind of trouble did Cavenaugh
anticipate they would get themselves into up here?

Again he pondered what Cavenaugh might know
that he hadn’t divulged.

Maura closed the kit, took it back into the
kitchen, and set it on the counter. Gabriel remained seated in the
doorway, oblivious to the snow blowing in his face as he was too
busy watching the others where they crouched beneath the window.
They had widened the hole under the house substantially, and were
now excavating the small recess. Cavenaugh wore a pair of
non-powdered latex gloves, and wriggled in and out of the orifice.
Each time he returned with a few more small bones, which he set on
the pillowcase Kelsey held stretched open in front of him. Will
pointed the flashlight over Cavenaugh’s back and directed the beam
under the floorboards, while Jess stared intently at the growing
collection of skeletal remains.

“
Hand me another baggie,”
Cavenaugh said.

Will passed him a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag,
and a moment later Cavenaugh scooted all the way back out of the
hole and stood. He grimaced as he stretched his back.

“
Let’s get out of this
snow,” Cavenaugh said, leading the others toward the back door of
the cabin.

Gabriel rose to allow them to pass and
followed them into the living room, where Maura had the fire stoked
to a roaring blaze. Cavenaugh opened the grate to light the room
and gestured for Kelsey to spread out the pillowcase on the floor
in front of it. Will shined his flashlight at the collection for
good measure. Carefully, Cavenaugh began to separate the bones by
species. There were thin rib bones, beaks, leathery claws, and
wings that still bore feathers, which he moved all the way to the
right. Other smaller mammalian bones, a hodgepodge of rodents, were
placed to the left. The remainder, in a jumble in the center, all
appeared to be human. There were more than a dozen phalanges, most
of which appeared to be from fingers, while the shorter ones were
obviously from toes. Some were still articulated with cartilage
that had long since turned black, but the majority were loose and
disjointed. They were all scored with the same teeth marks in the
manila surface, and there wasn’t even a hint of flesh.

“
Do you think…?” Will
asked.