Monster Nation(3)

While he sat there wondering what to do he nearly missed a flash of movement in the rear-view. He turned around as fast as he could and saw a teenage girl come flailing out of the scrub growth on the side of the road maybe two hundred yards behind him. Her hair was a mess'well, she had just emerged from a stand of juniper bushes'and she wore an over-sized parka that was too heavy for the season. She had some trouble getting out of the bushes, her sleeves tangling up in the mazy branches until she had to yank hard just to get clear. That sent her tumbling to the ground. She got up and without even brushing herself off started walking. She didn't even glance in his direction, just started stumping down the road to the south. He remembered seeing some cars back there. Just a hiker, he thought. Plenty of them got this far up and decided they wanted to go home. He even smiled at the thought. There was something strange about the way she was walking'like her knees were stiff with arthritis, maybe, though she was much too young for that. He watched her go until she had passed around a corner and out of sight and only then wondered if he should have gotten her attention, offered some help if she needed it.

He never really got a solid look at her face.

Whatever. At that point in a hike Dick knew he personally never wanted to talk to anybody. Let her be, he decided. If she wanted his help she would come back and ask for it. He still had to find the track and now he had a pretty good idea where to look for it. Idiot girl was hiking alone, which was a pretty bad idea in general, but hell, Dick wasn't a park ranger. If people wanted to be stupid they had a right.

Back to the problem at hand. Nothing for it but to inspect the site on foot. He groaned as he unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed his gloves and coat from the litter-strewn back seat but in truth he loved this shit, always had. From endless hiking adventures as a kid to summer stints as a park ranger in his college years to his current post with the National Institute of Health he had spent more of his life outside and above ten thousand feet than most people spent in their homes.

The second Dick opened the door of the white Jeep snow blasted across his face and hands in a fine crystalline spray, making him squint up his eyes until he got his sunglasses on. Outside he was trodding on snow with every step, crunching it down. When he stood still he could hear nothing at all. The shadows of clouds roamed over the mountains, startlingly huge.

When he found the track he wasn't surprised that he had missed it. The juniper bushes had completely obscured it from the road and anyway there wasn't much of it to see. It looked like it had been gouged out of the slope instead of graded. Gravel had collected in spots along its length'maybe it had been a real road once but now it was hard to even think of it as an acceptable hiking path. No wonder the girl had been so anxious to get off of it and back to the road. When you knew it was there you could follow it with your eyes as it snaked up the side of the mountain and disappeared around a bend. It didn't look too steep. Dick headed back to the Jeep to get his daypack and his cell phone. A nice walk in the mountains: all part of the job. He just wished he could stop thinking about that girl and the crazy way she was walking.





Monster Nation





Chapter Two


UNEXPLAINED FIRE IN IDAHO SPRINGS CLAIMS RIVER GUIDE, SIX SONS: Gasoline cans found on scene and 'the front door was nailed shut' [The Coloradoan (Fort Collins), 3/17/05]

Bannerman Clark, Captain Bannerman Clark of the Colorado Army National Guard to be precise, placed his cloth napkin neatly on his thigh and lined up his steak knife next to his silver fork. Once a month he treated himself to a twenty-dollar cut of beef at theBrownPalace ,Denver 's finest hotel and restaurant, and he had a standard checklist of tasks to complete in the proper enjoyment of the meal.

First: a sip of a good if moderately priced French wine. Next he took a pinch of sea salt from the cellar on the table and crumbled it liberally over the bloody red meat. Finally he blew out the table's candle so the light wouldn't dazzle his eyes and distract him.

He was that kind of person. The fact that he was aware of his nature and took steps to keep his behavior from becoming too extreme kept him from being mocked too openly in the barracks. Bannerman Clark had begun his adult life in the Army Corps of Engineers, serving an undistinguished but flawless term of service in numerous overseas theaters before choosing the closest thing to semi-retirement open to a man of his temperament: a lateral move into a post where he could do some good without having to deploy so often. He hated traveling.

He loved a perfect slab of rare steak, even though at the age of sixty-one his personal physician frowned on his ritual. When his cellular phone began to vibrate in his pocket he was tempted to ignore it long enough to take at least one bite.