The Anomaly(98)

A man sat down near me on the wall. I didn’t turn to look, but I could tell he was very tall. He didn’t say anything.

“So now what?” I asked after a while.

“There will be no repercussions.” The man’s voice was deep but modulated. “From us, anyway.”

“Why?”

“What would it gain? Damage done to the site has more than likely rendered it nonfunctional. Congratulations, Mr. Moore. You managed to break the most important thing ever found.”

“But Ken only smashed the console in the smaller pool.”

“The larger pool creates those that come before—the ones that clear the Earth in preparation for a new beginning. To unleash them without the others would be planetary suicide. All evidence of what occurred has been removed. We have sealed the cavern.”

“Kinkaid tried that.”

“It has been done far more thoroughly this time.”

“But there are others, right?”

“Yes. We discovered a room at the site. It seemed like it might have been a map. It was dark, lifeless. Did you see it?”

“We may have.”

“Were any markers lit on it? Indication of where other sites might be?”

“No,” I said. “It was just dead rock.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I turned my head to look at him. I saw a man, and yes, he was unusually tall—but not so much that people would stand and point. His face was big and bony, but again, within normal parameters. You’d have to have witnessed the creature I saw, the one who nearly killed me in the final run out of the cavern, to glimpse the genetic ghost of something not human in it. To anybody else, he’d just look like a basketball player.

“Okay,” I said. “Does that change the situation?”

“Not for now. I’ll put this in a way you’ll understand. It’s always cheaper to not make the movie. And it’s generally better to not kill people. Unless they talk.”

“Who’d believe us?”

“Nobody. But we’ve spent a very long time keeping this quiet. Our mission and purpose is not only to find, but to then keep it hidden afterward. Now is not the time for renewal, and it must never be within one man or woman’s power to take matters into their own hands. This needs to be secret. Keep it that way.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Be careful, Mr. Moore. Turn your attention from this, forever. And make sure we never have to meet again.”

He got up and walked away.



I sat a little longer, looking out at the ocean. After a while I realized that although there had been moral heft to the decision I’d come to about the deaths we had been involved in, a portion of what I’d felt had been provoked simply by fear. I’m not proud of that, but neither will I deny it.

I didn’t write the email to Ken.

And that night I did not dream at all.





Chapter

57



A couple of days later Ken and I were sitting across a table in the courtyard of #ColdBruise, a dumbass new hipster bar/restaurant in Santa Monica. We both agreed it was even more annoying than the previous dumbass hipster joint it had replaced, but it had a nice terrace and included a wide range of alcohol among its wares and so it was good enough for me. For now—though I knew the effect was bound to wear off as the injuries and memories faded—pretty much anywhere was good enough.

I’d called Ken as soon as I got back to my apartment and told him about the meeting I’d had with the man on the promenade. We’d discussed what it might have meant, and whether we had any reason to trust him.

Our holding conclusion was probably yes.

We’d discussed it further over lunch without changing that position. We’d talked about many things and were not yet done. When Ken got back from visiting the john for about the fifth time, he looked serious. “Here’s a thing, though. Yesterday I discovered that entire section of the canyon has been declared off-limits, for the foreseeable future, due to ‘seismic activity.’”

“The balls dropping could have triggered a response.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What? You think the Foundation got the area closed?”

“It’s not out of the question. And here’s something else.”

He put a sheet of paper in front of me. A printout from a well-known website specializing in offbeat news, describing how the battered remains of a strange creature had been found in the canyon. Except it turned out to be an exceptionally convincing model, lost by a film crew who’d allegedly been shooting a sci-fi/horror movie in a cavern nearby.

“Bullshit,” I said. “They planted that. You know damned well that the things we saw weren’t special effects.”

“Of course I do, mate. But this is out there now. Anything we say is going to be laughed at. And here’s another thing: I sent them an email last night.”

“Who? This website?”

“No. The Palinhem Foundation.”

“Why, Ken? Why would you do that? Did we not agree that we’d keep our heads down?”

“We did. But after a couple of drinks I thought to myself—and this is a direct quote—‘Shit on that.’ I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone’s going to creep up on me in the night and bash my head in. Okay, the guy you met seemed to push back that possibility. But I’d like a little more confidence.”