David Golemon - Primeval

"Jesus," Ellenshaw said. Then he nearly crapped himself as he heard a crashing noise coming from the woods ahead of him. He braced himself to see the devil incarnate coming for him.

Lattimer came through the last of the trees and shone his light first on Charlie, and then on his discovery still strapped into the ejection seat.

"Well, I thought as much. All that aluminum, and up ahead the rest of the plane is all smashed up against the base of the rise. It's a mess." Lattimer moved the light toward Ellenshaw. "Hey, you alright?" he asked moving to assist the boy to his feet.

"Just didn't expect it, that's all."

"Yeah, it's not something you expect to find on your daily hike in the woods, is it?"

The humor was lost on the young anthropologist. He shook his head and then reached down and rubbed his shin. "How long has it been here, you think?"

"No tellin', quite some time I expect. Look at that flight suit, rotted through in places. And the rubber, it's seen too many hot days and cold winter months to be cracked and falling apart like that."

"Poor guy," Ellenshaw said as he shone the light onto the mangled remains.

"Yeah, but he's long past caring, son. Now let's see what there is to see here."

Charlie swallowed, and then giving the corpse due respect, walked past the ejection seat. His light caught and held on a small spot on the shoulder of the aging flight suit where there was a darker spot than the other areas around it. He could tell there used to be a patch or something there, but it had vanished long ago. He turned and followed Lattimer away from the final resting place of a pilot who had died almost six years before.

Lattimer waited for Ellenshaw this time. He knew that finding the corpse of the long dead pilot had made the boy far more jittery than he had been.

"Now, wait till you see this," he said as Ellenshaw stepped up beside him.

The older man shone his large flashlight onto the wreckage of the downed aircraft. It was in so many pieces that Charlie just assumed it belonged to the dead pilot and the ejection seat. The thickest of the wreckage was imbedded into the base of the plateau, looking like it covered a crevasse of some sort. Lattimer shone the light around the bulk of the smashed aircraft and then smiled. He stepped up and pulled a large section of what had been the plane's fuselage away from the rock. He quickly stepped back when it fell free and hit the soft floor of the forest.

"I'll be goddamned and go to hell. Look at that, son."

Charlie stepped up and saw that the wreckage had been jammed tight into the opening of a cave. It was a broad expanse of darkness beyond. Ellenshaw saw Lattimer as he opened the old journal they had found earlier that day. He studied a small drawing that was sketched on the back of the last page. The old man smiled and slapped at the old leather-bound book, sending one of its rotting pages to the ground. When Charlie reached for the dislodged page, Lattimer placed his large boot on it. When Ellenshaw looked up, he saw the look in Lattimer's eyes that froze him cold. It was as if he was having his pocket picked and had caught the man in the act. Ellenshaw straightened, leaving the handwritten page where it lay. Lattimer never lost that murderous look as he slowly reached down and picked it up. He seemed to relax when he had the page safely in hand.

"Don't want it torn is all," he said by way of explanation. "Now, are you ready to go see what's inside?"

Just as the words escaped Lattimer's mouth, the beating of wood started. It was close and it totally unnerved the young student. He looked around wildly as he thought the noise was right behind him. Then he looked right, then left. The noise was coming from all directions. Ellenshaw never considered himself to be a coward, but the noises he was hearing drove a hard wedge in between what he wanted to be and who he really was.

"Good God, what is that?" Charlie asked, trying hard to keep his nervousness in check.

Lattimer, looking just as astounded as Ellenshaw, only turned and walked toward the opening of the cave.

As Charlie watched the man leave in amazement, he turned and saw a flitting shadow among the trees. The darkness moved again, this time to his right. Whatever the shadow thing was, it was large. It moved from tree to tree. Then Ellenshaw saw what the strange noise was as a dark figure raised something to the sky and then swung it. The object hit the tree with such force that Ellenshaw actually felt it through his boots. The club struck the tree again and then he heard something that chilled him to his bones: the thing in the trees growled. It was a deep, menacing, and primal sound that sent Ellenshaw stumbling backward toward the cave's opening. He backed into the total blackness of the interior and immediately bumped into Lattimer. As he watched the opening, there was no movement, only darkness. Charlie was even afraid to shine the light there for fear of what he would see. As much as the thought of a missing link intrigued him, he didn't care to meet it in all that inky blackness that was prevalent between moon fall and sunrise.

Lattimer moved away deeper into the cave. Charlie turned and started to follow as silence descended from the outside. The beating of wood on wood had ceased, and even that sudden silence was frightening. As Ellenshaw turned, he saw designs on the wall in the glare of his flashlight. The depiction was that of ancient man — hunter gatherers of the last ice age. Ellenshaw had seen many examples of this kind of historical documentation before in a hundred different sites from Colorado to New York. They depicted man for what he was, a skilled hunter of the animal life that inhabited the Stikine River Valley.

As he moved back along the caves wall, the paintings became older looking, and far more faded. The years depicted on the wall must have covered four to five hundred years of prehistoric life. Many scenes of snows and the baking sun, repeated over time, told Charlie that this cave and surrounding area must have been home to a large group of ancients.

As he moved deeper, forgetting all about his terror of a moment before, and losing Lattimer as he moved farther and faster, Charlie began to see paintings of a large animal, always standing away from the hunters, but never too far away from them, either. The beast was humanoid. He saw it was bipedal and was far larger than the small humanoid group. Ellenshaw tilted his head and was sure he saw in the faded paintings that the beast seemed to be watching the activities of the men. Charlie smiled, intrigued by the facts before him that the men and the giant beast seemed to live in a harmonious environment. He ran his fingers over the ancient depiction of the large animal. He quickly pulled his hand away when Lattimer screamed. Ellenshaw turned at the loud noise, then he realized it wasn't fright: It was an exclamation of pure joy. As he approached the bend in the cave, Ellenshaw heard Lattimer as he talked loudly to himself.

"Hell, I don't even have to dig it out! Just pick it up and spend it!"

Ellenshaw saw an amazing sight. Lattimer was standing up in an old, broken-down wagon. He lifted a sack into the air and then allowed its contents to fall out. The gold coins made loud thumping sounds on the wagon's wooden bed. The laughter came flooding through the sound of the thumping noise.

"Look at this, boy! Uuuuunited States gold double eagles — must be a million of 'em!" Lattimer said, letting the empty canvas sack fall to the floor of the wagon with its former contents. He looked up through the flashlight's glare at Ellenshaw. "Okay, okay, you can have some, but I get the mother lode here, boy… the mother lovin' lode!"

Charlie didn't know why; he just started backing away. He felt they were no longer alone in the cave. What in the hell was the gold doing this far from civilization? He thought about the possible downed aircraft and its long dead pilot. Could the two be related somehow? As he looked around the strange drawings as he left Lattimer, he saw the shadow of the second wagon farther back. How much gold was there, and why was it here? As he backed away, he saw more wreckage — it was if the pieces were brought into the cave. He saw an oblong container, or what looked like a container, lying against the far wall. He also spied backpacks, canteens, torn and shredded tents, and all manner of camping gear. As strange as it seemed to him, it was if something were collecting the trash from outside and storing it.