Brynjar Gustav Lennart was the local yokel. He was older than any one else still buying speed and eating every meal from the dumpsters behind the pizza spot. He would come into town with his pack of wild dogs and shopping cart full of strange things scavenged from the military base. He kept a long grey beard and walking stick capped off with a large geode, like something you would see the the fantasy art of Judy King Rieniets. Brynjar was probably in high school when Eisenhower was still a General but he was part of the cool underground of hermits, mystics and survivalists up in these mountains waiting for the end of time. He got every thing he needed on the mountain. As a strict pacifist he would only skin mountain lions, foxes and deer found dead on the road. Still highly illegal but didn’t make him a poacher. He lived where the trees were so tall they blocked the sun with triple canopy. Where nameless rivers spider webbed the landscape, disappearing into caves. Where old fire towers were now staffed by snipers for illegal canibus grows from the local biker gangs. It was not a place for hunters, only the lawless and savage living rough made these mountains home.

His home was a huge tree house made out of pieces of cars and airplanes that went down around here. His domain was beyond the old mines on Surveillance mountain. He lived in a place where you could find hand fulls of rubies, garnets and sapphires scattered across the ground. He had fooled a couple truckers with bags of fools gold he traded for a boat, horse or donkey. This made him a thorn in the side of the cops who had to go up into the hills to arrest him. Today he had a story to tell about bodies he had found who got up and chased him. Deputy Ch'ák’ thinks he might be schizophrenic. He spoke with the clipped air of an intellectual leaning heavy into mad scientist territory. Brynjar always has outlandish lies to tell about tribes of proto-human cannibals living in the Washing Machine creek, nuclear bombs being tested in the endless miles of exposed sea floor beyond the island or finding some kind of downed man made UFO he wanted to part out for scrap. Countless times the Sheriffs office had to break up fights between him and loggers encroaching on his woods. Brynjar had a bad habit of sabotaging bull dozers and burning surveyors vehicles and tents, he went to prison for it twice. He was an early member of the Earth First terrorist group.

Despite years of false accusations, outright lies and wild goose chases… reports of bodies warranted a visit up to the mountain. Brynjar was feeding his yelping mongrels pieces of tuna he was fishing from a can with his fingers. Sending them away with a hand full of gravel. He looked out to lunch, barely acknowledging the police lights. Coming peaceful he rode in the front seat and mostly stared up at the sky and making cryptic statements under his breath when asked what his raving phone call to dispatch was about. Having Brynjar in his Bronco was not pleasant. The man smelled sharp like old beer, piss, vodka and rotten shoes. Like some kind of legend from the three wise men in the bible he wore layers of old world silk tapestry for clothes. Odd colors you don’t see often like Lavender, Cerulean Blue, Amethyst, Indigo like he was clothed in the night sky. He had all kinds of costume jewelry made of plastic, plated gold and glass. The worst fashion of the 1960s all concentrated into one specter of bad life choices.

Brynjar was dressed so preposterous. He actually had on the wizard hat from Fantasia, blue with yellow stars on a pointed nome cap like a goddamned maniac. He wore vintage spectacles with extra armatures for old fashioned jewelers lenses. Attached to John Lenon style circular reading glasses like some kind of 19th century Bavarian alchemist or Carl Jung. Now when asked questions he was playing the silent treatment except when it was to point to sudden turn offs or to note a rare bird in the sky. Brynjar was originally from Europe. No one was sure what country but he used to run the rides at Red Erik Raggnarsen’s Silly Scandanavia, back then he wasn’t such a nuisance. He lived in town and used to seem halfway normal. That was before his common law wife was struck by lightning while out at sea. Her body needing to be identified is what set him off. Looking into her fish chewed and blackened eyes is what made him move into the hills and live in a homeless camp.

Crossing bridges that hadn’t been maintained since the 30s was scary. Deputy Ch'ák’ wasn’t having much luck cracking the cases of the women found murdered recently, this would only add to the pressure. Mainland news crews hadn’t caught on to their epidemic of missing and exploited women. This was a hot spot for disappearances. Locals had all kinds of stories about why this archipelago had so many deaths and unexplained phenomenon. Every thing from Yetis and Giant Birds, to Government Tests and ancient Druids who found Alaska and built underground complexes of tombs. Deputy Ch'ák’ liked to read about these mysterious stories but didn’t buy into it. When they make movies about Alaska they don’t come here. It isn’t the iced up desolation you think of when you picture Alaska. This was a wetter and more rocky terrain. Full of fjords, thousands of little islands and bunkers built to fight the Japanese during ww2.

Coming to the end of the drive, Ch'ák’ asks how Brynjar hikes up and down the mountain to his camp a couple times a day? Brynjar laughs, this isn’t his camp. There was no way he would bring the fuzz back to his domain of solitude. This was just a place he liked to fish and take in the scenery. They hiked up and down several rises and places where flash floods had wiped out the trail to a place where sure enough there were pieces of bodies. In the ravine where Brynjar has come across the mysterious bodies he claimed got up and chased him like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

There was some miscellaneous signs of violence, claw marks in mud, stains of blood and pieces of what looks like broken teeth. There were shards of metal, canvas from parachutes and equipment that Ch'ák’ couldn’t place. Looking around there were certainly people here bleeding out, and a chase. There was something unpleasant all over the ground, in pools and dripping from the trees. It was slime, some kind of clear gelatin that when caught in the beam of direct sunlight had something barely visible swimming around in it. Like primitive one celled organisms that cause brain parasites in standing water. Hearing sounds like pops and mechanical shrieks they move farther up the trail where they see a large white cloud rising from a valley beyond the trees. Closer they get there is signs of fire and impact but too far off to see clearly.

Coming to a break in the trees… its clear a large plane had gone down, military from the looks of it. Ch'ák’ can see the tail end intact. Some kind of fine particulate was coming off the wing still. Making a powerful stream of the sprayed gas into a tower of white mist, hitting the edges of a cliff and drifting up in a concentrated column into the sky. There was a debris field hundreds of meters long that splintered trees and had smoking layers of twisted metal, still red hot. There was something eerie about this. Ch'ák’ knows a military flight wouldn’t be lost long, and the markings on the plane don’t have any writing system he can read. Among the smashed crates, massive canisters in the steel fuselage and rows of dislodged empty seats… there is something else. Glass vials, rubber tubing and broken containers of embryos. There is a bad smell in the air like chemicals, when Ch'ák’ gets a whiff he covers his nose and orders Brynjar to do the same. What ever this fluid and fumes these corpses were bathed in wasn’t smart to breathe. They tried to cover their faces with their shirts but it was a fools errand. Breathing this in made them both feel weak, itchy and sweaty all at once. The cloud manifesting above them was a warm gold and white from the setting sun, but inside it were all the iridescent colors of the rainbow, like an oil spill.

Ch'ák’ knows the radio signal would be scrambled up here, he does his best to get coordinates based on landmarks he can see on the horizon. Taking pictures of the site, Ch'ák’ is startled by movement. He sees people far off in the wreckage. He starts to call to them when Brynjar stops him. Looking around the edges of the forrest, they see silhouettes. Their skin is black with spot of sharp pink, like exposed flesh. They look like pictures you see of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Burned, naked and many with out lips, showing exposed teeth and eyeballs. The group he had first seek are crouched down tearing through piles of twisted metal. In a shock, Ch'ák’ realizes what is happening here. They are eating the survivors alive. The group in the treeline stand silently, watching with glassed over eyes. His first thought is zombies, dead creatures in some optical illusion that seemed to be standing upright. Looking back at the first group, he can hear screams of people trapped under the wreckage. Firing a shot and warning who ever is over there to stand back. A shiver of abject terror fills him, all at once a roar comes from the darkness in the trees. The ones he saw are gone and Brynjar is already half a football field away, sprinting back to the Bronco.

Ch'ák’ panics. He isn’t sure what the protocol is for unarmed / injured people gone feral, but he instinctively runs back to the trail. He can’t see any pursuers but he feels a need to look back, like teeth and fetid breath of survivors driven mad by third degree burns were about to dig into the back of his neck. Its now the end of dusk, where the golden light tricks your eyes into missing the moving shapes in the blackness of shadow where your eyes cannot adjust quick enough. An odd thought crosses Ch'ák’s mind. A story about a tribe called the “Jaak̲w x̲'eix̲’ Jee-g̲aas x̲eitl’” “Unwelcome” or “Uninvited,” that had the same burned flesh and exposed facial bones. Its an old story, going back before the first European trappers from Russia came here before the foundation of America. Far out in the most unreachable depths of the forrest were wild men. People totally insane with ravenous cannibal ritualistic murder cults. A tribe who mutilates their own faces with horrible wounds, who would set on hunters who strayed into their territory. A kids story every one around here knew.

Hearing scrambling up the rock face bellow them. Ch'ák’ loses his footing and goes tumbling down into the midst of the crash. All around him he can hear snarling, sounds of limbs being wrestled from smoldering corpses and running. Pulling his service weapon and flashlight he is thinking if he has flash bangs in his belt or more likely left them in the truck because they were heavy and caused severe burns if triggered accidentally. In the darkness beyond the burning bodies and trees reduced to cinder he sees movement like wolves, circling the site, hunting him or worse as a distraction for actual killers just out of her peripheral vision. He spins around ready for contact but sees nothing that poses an immediate threat. Cautiously backing up the rock face he slides back down several times. Feeling that moment when your adrenaline goes stale and turns to pain in the face. He is ready to provoke a confrontation as violence he understands. Its the waiting to be leapt upon that terrifies him.

As the wind kicks up he hears thumping engine above. Rotors cutting the smoke and fumes to reveal a blinding spotlight. Before he can judge his proper response, men in yellow rubber hazmat suits with machine guns pour from the darkness. Where he was sure there were some unconnected tribe of burning men, what he sees is a full strike group of soldiers and chemical responders in space suits. Before he can identity him self. He is slammed into the ground, disarmed and arrested. Brynjar is nowhere to be seen. First sign of trouble he melted into the shadows. Another group in pale blue paper suits stands back from the men with guns. These must be feds or military scientists. Ch'ák’ knows they see his uniform, so indignant he stands silent when they violently seize him up from the ground. He doesn’t know how or why but when he awakes he is back in his Bronco at the foot of the mountain. He felt bruises all over his body and smelled something unpleasant on his uniform. He knows this was no dream. He was spirited away from scene by military spooks.