The woods wailed and cracked thunder. Scott lifted up from his sleeping bag. He wore clothes from the day before–the better to get up quickly, he thought. Scott checked his watch. 1:00.

A blue-white flash lit up the cabin and blinded Scott for a moment. The cabin shook under a tremendous explosion of electricity.

"Thunderstorm," Scott said out loud, almost expecting a response from somewhere in the room.

Scott tentatively opened the cabin door. Another flash and this time Scott saw the bolt, a horizontal blaze of electricity miraculously shooting through the trees. Scott had never seen anything like it.

The air was cool and still. Scott squinted into the darkness. A half-moon lit the trees where there was no movement, not even a breezy rustle of leaves.

Strangest thunderstorm you ever saw. You’re crazy–you don’t know anything about living in the mountains. You haven’t even been camping since the Boy Scouts. You don’t even remember if you like camping.

Another flash, brighter than the first. Even with eyes closed, the lightning bolt image burned into the cones and rods of Scott’s retina.

Pain seared behind Scott’s eyes. He felt his way back into the cabin.

Must be how they felt at Hiroshima. A hundred miles from ground zero, where only the flash burned the eyes.

Fear crawled up Scott’s back into the base of his brain.

They’re blowing the hell out of the world and you’re just seeing the last trace. Cold War over–hell–the generals went berserk. Lead shield. Duck and cover. No time. This can’t be happening.

It wasn’t, Scott decided. It’s a lightning storm and your eyes aren’t used to the darkness. Too much light in the city. A constant glow even in the middle of the night. That’s why they build observatories in places like this–for the darkness and the clarity of the air.

An ungodly, end-of-the-world silence followed the noise and confirmed Scott’s worst fears. Scott crawled back into his sleeping bag.

Should dig a trench. A couple of feet of solid earth would help. No shovel. No rake either. Snakes would crawl into the pit. Stay in the bag. Likely to get killed walking around in the dark. Maybe it’s for the best. Don’t want to live in the world alone. Go with the others. That’s ridiculous. You want to live, even if the world’s dead. Besides, there’s always hope, the chance of meeting another human amid the rubble. The blue-eyed girl. Wide hips built for breeding.

Something sounded like a tree creaking in half, then snapping in two. A coyote howled, or maybe it was a wolf–Scott didn’t know. Possibly an owl. Something barked, or maybe a tree groaned in the wind, though there was no wind.

Scott remembered a story he’d read to Kathy. A man went to the country for peace and quiet, only to be tormented by a rooster, hens, farm-dog, cows and an owl at night. Scott couldn’t remember how it ended.

"Maybe the guy went stark raving bananas and killed a couple guys," Scott said aloud, just to hear his own voice.

Investigate tomorrow, on your walk. You’ve never seen a mountain storm, that’s all.

Still, Scott slept very little.

"Quite a storm last night," Scott said to the grocery clerk the next morning. Her badge said "Marjorie."

"I didn’t see a storm," Marjorie replied, adding up the goods on the ancient cash register. "You see any storm, Bill?"

Marjorie’s husband shrugged and stamped prices on jugs of anti-freeze.

"Couple lightning flashes over Mount Harris, that’s all. Wouldn’t call it a storm," Bill said.

Ganging up on you. They’re going to be provincial and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Scott parked on the road where he had the day before. Alter the pattern. Don’t stick to one routine. What are you hiding from? Footsteps in the woods, that’s what. Lightning and thunder at night.

Scott pulled groceries from the back of the Jeep. When he’d insisted on paper bags instead of plastic, Marjorie and Bill had acted like Scott had invited them over for group sex.

They can’t be blamed. Well, maybe they can. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. "Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?"

Scott went back down the hill for the other two bags of groceries. Can’t carry four paper bags at a time like you can plastic.

At the road, Scott again felt someone watching him. Marjorie and Bill had set him on edge.

What was that movie? Deliverance.

Scott shivered. Ignorance and suspicion. A moonshine still–no. Marijuana patch. Some kind of incest going on in the back woods. Or something else.

Scott unloaded fruits and vegetables into the refrigerator left by the previous tenants. There was no electricity, but Scott had bought a bag of ice and had been careful to only buy foods that would last a few days on their own. No more meat. Fruits, vegetables, dry cereal and beans. Get a book on vegetarian eating. Make sure you get all the nutrients. Put it on the list.

His food put away, an apple in his hand, Scott stepped out onto the porch. Now he’d walk, fear or no fear.

Scott marched down the trail, taking a big bite of apple, crunching loudly in defiance. Whistling past the graveyard.

Across the road Scott found his footprints from the day before. He followed them to where the others joined his.

Scott tossed the apple away. Organic. The birds will like it. Or the squirrels. The footprints were now four pair. Headed the same way.

Scott paused a good ten minutes. Should follow them.

But it would kill him to chicken out again.

"It’s nothing, really," Scott said out loud and was surprised how the great pines swallowed his voice. "You’re just being silly."

He expected the roar of a fiend, but there was only silence. Where are the birds? Where is the rustle of leaves and the patter of harmless animal feet?

Just the time of day, Scott told himself. His knees shivering, his legs aching, Scott followed the tracks up the hill.

He stopped, right where they had. They’d changed their minds. The footprints branched off. Brushed away!

Scott shivered despite the harshest heat of the day.

Hiding their tracks. Not a good sign. Up to no good. They know you’re following. Maybe they’re just paranoid. Like you. Respect their privacy. Respect your own fear. It’s no crime to be afraid of the unknown. Strange things are happening here. You know it. You feel it.

Scott whistled. He started off in the other direction, still uphill, but definitely the other way. Picking up the pace until his thighs burned, Scott felt easier. He was harmless, it was obvious to anyone. He’d just happened to follow the same path. Let them watch and see for themselves.

It’s then Scott saw the crater. It was right in front of him, in a little clearing, ten feet deep, thirty feet across, burnt along the edge and empty except for cinders and dirt in the middle.

Man-made? Scott couldn’t tell. Lightning strike? Then why hit the ground rather than the hundreds of enormous trees all around? Perhaps there was a tree there once. Would a tree explode and disintegrate into nothingness, leaving a great big hole?

Meteor. The thought excited Scott. He stepped tentatively on the edge of the crater. No heat under his new hiking boot. Scott knelt and touched the ground. Cool. Scott sifted dirt in his fingers. The ground itself was burned, the dirt black as if flamed in a kiln. Tremendous heat. Scott took a step into the hole, kept his balance and took another step. This part was no warmer than the edge. If it happened last night, there’d still be heat.

In the center of the thing, Scott could only see the tops of trees and Mount Harris to the west. Are they looking at you? Are they laughing or are they as puzzled as you are?

Scott knew he’d stumbled on something terribly important. Scientific find–no mere meteor. The lightning had something to do with it and the footprints were part of it too, though Scott couldn’t imagine the crater was man-made.

Scott peered over the edge of the hole. He expected to see the makers of the footprints waiting for him. Only the vast indifference of the forest appeared.

Scott searched the ground for explanation. He looked for tracks of earth-moving equipment. How a back-hoe or tractor would make it into this part of the woods Scott didn’t know, but he had to rule it out. Helicopter? Why?

No tracks were evident, not even the tell-tale footprints of the two strangers.

Scott sat against a redwood–a giant, ancient one–and stared at the crater. For the second time in two days, Scott wished he had a camera.

A steady stream of ants marched past Scott’s knee and up the five-hundred year old tree. Scott looked to their destination, but the sun made Scott glance away. He kept his eye on the hole, as if it would yield its secret spontaneously.

Maybe animals you don’t know about dig huge holes. Then burn the hole? With tremendous heat?

Another stream of ants paralleled the first, heading back down the redwood.

Scott looked at the bottom of the crater. Fresh, Scott decided, or else the dirt would have filled in and softened the clean, inverted point at the bottom.

Scott walked alongside the ants. They found their hill on the other side of the crater. A long walk for them. Scott calculated how many times a day they could make the journey.

Scott jumped at the sound of a woodpecker hammering the redwood’s thick bark. Scott wondered if the ants made it up that far. Would they continue to climb, to be eaten by the woodpecker, or would they alter their course? How do they know? How long does the danger signal take to get back to the hill? Scott felt a peculiar empathy for the ants at that moment.

Leave it alone. None of your business anyway. Work to do. The project.

Life is too short for conflict, Scott told himself a hundred times by the time he reached his cabin. He had far more important things to concern himself with than a hole in the ground.

He would start on the project. Actually, many projects. He hadn’t planned to begin so soon. He’d wanted to wait awhile, get his head together–more Sixties thinking, Scott scolded himself. It was the woods that did that to him, sent him back to his teen years, when success was a dirty word, money was a curse and ambition a character flaw.

Scott stepped into the cabin. He fished out the leaflet the girl had given him less than 48 hours earlier. Already it had taken on the aura of an artifact. It read:

Half of the Earth’s species will be extinct in the next 30 years.

THE TIME TO STOP THE DESTRUCTION IS NOW!

Every second, an acre of forest falls.

THE PLACE TO STOP THE DESTRUCTION IS HERE!

Every year, an area the size of Washington State is cleared of timber.

OUR FUTURE IS AT STAKE!

Americans drive the distance to the planet Pluto and back every day.

YOU ARE THE ANSWER!

In Mexico City, 7 of 10 infants have blood lead levels in excess of World Health Organization standards.

DIRECT, MILITANT ACTION IS THE WAY!

The Earth is warming!

LAY YOUR LIFE ON THE LINE!

Scott didn’t feel like working on any projects. Too much work for one man. Scott picked up his guitar.

"I was born in West Virginia, North Carolina I did go. There I met a fair young maiden, Her name and age, I did not know."

Back at the office, he’d have brainstormed it with Terry. They’d have ordered coffee and stayed late, ignoring their families. They’d have designed a plan of attack. They were good at that, the two of them. They’d get to the heart of the issues, find the salient research to be done, decide who was best to design each piece until the whole project came together.

"Her hair was dark of color, Lips they were a ruby red, And on her breast she wore white lilies, Where I longed to lay my head."

I miss the office, Scott decided as the sun went down and a breeze finally cooled the cabin.

"I don’t want your greenback dollar, I don’t want your silver chain. All I want is your love darling, Won’t you take me back again?"

Scott lit the camp stove and boiled water for coffee. He sat on the porch and watched the light fade on the trees. He was being too hard on himself, he knew. He’d been up there less than a week and hadn’t saved the world. Big surprise. New thinking–that’s what is needed. It will come to me.

Scott’s mind drifted to the footprints in the dirt. Who are they? What are they doing here? Watching, from the mountain somewhere.

Scott rested his head on the pillow with a kind of exhaustion he hadn’t felt in years.

copyright 2007 Brenda H. All rights reserved.

[tags]Brenda H, sci-fi, science-fiction, fiction, thriller[/tags]