Cabin Fever, Pt. 5
"The other cabin!" Scott pointed. The cabin behind heirs still had power, that much was obvious from the glow in its windows. Perhaps it had phones, as well.
Brickel punched the accellerator and the Explorer nosed forward, spraying gravel into the trees behind them. The SUV bounced up the path and over the lane to the other drive in less than a second. The front door of the cabin opened and a man stuck his head outside. He sheilded his face as the Explorer's headlights blinded him, and then the truck pulled up along the wide porch steps. The porch of this cabin was only a few feet off the ground, and would offer more room to maneuver. Wiley opened his door, closest to the porch, and scrambled up the steps.
"Emergency, we need your phone." He said and turned to cover the woods with the gun. Brickel clambered out the open passenger door and helped Penick open the back one. Together with Scott they wrestled the unconcious Frank out of the car and carried him up the steps with surprising strength. Wiley, backstepping, followed.
"Where's the phone?" Scott panted, looking around.
"Get your family, bring them to this room. If you have a gun, bring it too." Wiley said, backing away from the front door.
Penick bent over Frank, trying to gauge the extent of his wounds, stop the bleeding, anything.
"Damn. I've never said this before, but Frank needs to eat a few more salads. He weighs a TON."
The original occupant of the cabin was still standing by the door, trying to handle the situation. "What's going ON?" He hissed. "Are you robbing me or ... ?"
"There's a psycho out there. He cut our phone, our power, and broke in. He stabbed our friend pretty bad. We chased him off but he's armed and still out there, and he blocked the road down. We need to call the police before he cuts this line too. We need to all be together, so get your family before HE gets them. I don't doubt he'd break in through a window to try and get to us all." Penick said, looking up from Frank. "If you have a rifle, get that, but just MOVE. This guy is nuts."
******************
Dr. Jerri Thaves punched the code on the note into the keypad. The gate in front of her car swung open silently, ABOVE her. "Mildly disturbing gate." she thought, and began to pull forward.
She had found the note in her faculty mail box that evening. It had been sitting there for almost two weeks, but she had been in the field performing research and her first day back had been spent grading papers. It wasn't until she was walking out the door that she had thought to check her mail and found Joshua's note:
Jer,
I think I've finally gotten these things figured out.
I wasn't WRONG, all these years, my timing was just off. The things ARE alive ... they're just ... asleep. Hibernating. I don't mean that they're Alive-alive, but that they're still functional. With all the heightened activity we've been documenting the last few months, I think they're starting to 'wake up' a little.
I haven't been asking the wrong questions, they've just been too far gone to answer. I got a few strange readings the last battery I ran, but I don't think EKGs and spectranalysis is the answer, here. I need to go back to the begining. Maybe old ways ARE the best ways.
I can't really expect the ancestors to speak to me in brainwave pattern recognition software, can I? I'm going somewhere that I can dance and burn the herbs without getting flack from the rest of the faculty.
I should be back Sunday evening. If you decide not to go to your dig site, come up. I think they'll talk to you. I'll be staying in Maggie Valley ...
The rest was address ... a rental cabin in the mountains. Privacy enough for vision questing. But it was Friday, almost a week after Joshua had said he would be back. No one had seen him for almost two weeks. No one on campus was worried; Dr. Joshua Tehnoah was often off doing research for weeks at a time, and he had no teaching load this semester. He wouldn't, however, leave Jerri a note and not call or write if he were going to be delayed almost a week.
Artifacts are dangerous and unpredictable things. Old relics, cast aside, forgotten and unused. Heritage, history. Dr. Jerri Thaves knows this. She is half Seminole, with her own heritage and traditions. She is a professor and researcher at Weygandt-Ellis University's North Carolina campus. She knows the danger of forgotten knowledge through experience. Years ago, perhaps, there would not have been much danger in these relics for a trained parahistoricist like Joshua. But things have been awakening all over, and perhaps these days old ways aren't best ways after all.
And when she reaches the fallen tree in the road, she knows something is not right. The lines in the bark look like claw marks, in her headlights. Dr. Thaves knows they probably are.
***************************
Peter Kincaid looked out the window at the city below. Old Susan wasn't usually wrong. She was never, perhaps, as clear as Young Susan or Marty, but her accuracy was top notch. "Something" would be awakening in the Smokey Mountains. Something dangerous, something old. Marty and Young Susan saw it too. Unfortunately too clearly, too closely. Young men, one wounded, children, perhaps a family, a church group? An old Dodge Ram, luggage, a broken door, a fire-poker. A few minutes ago, Old Susan had attempted freewriting, but the only things that made any sense were the words "John Whitemankiller". A name? African or Native American. Perhaps a name for a spirit conjured up during the slave days, but the Library hadn't turned up anything on it.
On the roof a helicopter sat, fueled and ready. In a mess room a floor below it a small strike team was assembled, men in black BDUs and tac vests, small arms at hand, and a few black metal-cased government laptop computers. And there they sat. Waiting.
Old Susan was never wrong. Department Seven was ready, but there was nowhere to go. And so they waited. For something.
Floors below, three people sit in a room. A man, a woman, and a crone. The man sits with his fingers at his temples. His head pounds, he mumbles without knowing he does so ... and nothing comes. The younger woman paces. She is worn out, her visions will not come, she has done all she can, but it is not enough. And the crone ... she sits quietly, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. She could be sleeping, she MAY be sleeping, but not truly.
"He shall lie." She says, clearly, loudly for the others to hear. "The truth will bring no help. He will say they face a man, and that this man has a ..."
*********
"... machine gun. Yes, a machine gun." Scott said. The phone worked, 911 had answered. "I saw it. And he has a knife. This guy is a real psycho. He's got some kind of body armor, too. My friend has a gun, and we shot him, but he just ran off into the woods. I know he's still out there, we heard him chopping down a tree in the woods. The road is probably blocked coming up. You really have to hurry, my friend's hurt bad, he might be dying."
The voice on the phone told him to stay calm. The voice on the phone was, herself, calm. Help was on the way, he should stay on the line.
"I will, but he's OUT there. We're calling from another cabin, he cut the phone and power to our cabin before he attacked us. We scared him off, but he's blocking us in ..."
The lights went off, and the children screamed.
"... oh God, he's h..." The phone went dead.
**********************
"We've got a 911 out of Maggie Valley, North Carolina. Some people stuck on a mountain. They say they've got a psycho with a machine gun and an axe. He's stabbed one person." The dispatcher said. Peter Kincaid turned from the window. Susan Crane, "Young Susan", stood in the doorway to his left. She had just delivered Old Susan's latest vision.
"That's the one. Get me GPS, send it to the chopper." Peter Kincaid said. Agent Kincaid.
He grabbed his coat and ran for the elevator.
