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  REMAINS

  A Thriller

  Michael McBride

  Remains copyright © 2013 by Michael McBride

  Cover artwork copyright © 2013 by udra11

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Michael McBride.

  For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.michaelmcbride.net

  Also by Michael McBride

  NOVELS

  Bloodletting

  Burial Ground

  Innocents Lost

  Predatory Instinct

  The Coyote

  Vector Borne

  NOVELLAS

  Blindspot

  Brood XIX

  F9

  IMMUN3

  Snowblind

  The Calm Before the Swarm

  Xibalba

  ZERØ

  COLLECTIONS

  Category V

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  REMAINS

  For my little sister

  Special Thanks to: Jeff Strand, for dreaming up this project; Brian Cartwright; Leigh Haig; Tom Moran; Brennan, Blake, Trent, Madison, and Kyler, for putting up with the omnipresent laptop; my wife, for tolerating my mood swings during the writing process; my mom, for always reading and believing; Shane Staley; Don Koish; and, most importantly, all of my readers, without whom none of this would be possible.

  REMAINS

  On May 21st, 2011, seven graduate students in Religious Studies set out from the University of Colorado in Boulder in search of God. Armed with only their faith and the scriptures, they rented a small cluster of cabins on the western side of the Continental Divide, twenty-eight miles northwest of the nearest town of Pine Springs. Their website allowed their friends and family to track their progress via daily video blog updates, the last of which was made on July 11th.

  None of them were ever heard from again.

  On July 14th, a forest ranger was dispatched to check on the students at the urging of their concerned families. He found the cabins abandoned, though all of their belongings remained, as though they had simply walked away and never returned. Forty-eight hours later a formal inquest was instigated. Rangers and volunteers combed the surrounding National Forest beneath the thunder of the Search & Rescue helicopter, while policemen tore apart the cabins looking for clues. After ten days, only the families remained to wander the woods in futility. A week later, even they were gone.

  On July 11th, 2012, a ten-foot cross was erected on the summit of Mount Isolation. The bronze placard affixed to its base listed seven names above the inscription: Seek and ye shall find.

  All great truths begin as blasphemies.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

  —Charles Baudelaire, The Generous Gambler

  The great enemy of truth is often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

  —John Fitzgerald Kennedy

  October 29 th, 2013

  Saturday

  Rand Armstrong had picked up the tracks in the fresh dusting of snow two miles east of the edge of his property on Rocky Mountain National Forest land. There had been no mistaking them: three-lobed heel pads; teardrop-shaped toes in uneven lines; no appreciable claw marks; and the feathery halos surrounding the prints from the fringe fur. No doubt this was the mountain lion he was after. Damn prints were nearly the size of a tiger’s. No way this wasn’t the bastard that had snuck over his fence and torn apart his huacaya alpacas. He’d already lost three in as many weeks, and he wasn’t about to risk losing any more. Breeding those fluffy llamas may have sounded like a pathetic way to eek out an existence, but he was pulling twenty grand a head. Even with that kind of income, he sure as hell wasn’t about to blow another ten thousand bucks electrifying nearly five miles of fencing like the Forest Service suggested. If they weren’t going to come out and relocate that blasted cat, then he was just going to have to take care of the problem himself.

  He’d been hunting big game in these very hills his entire life, but he had to admit the mountain lion posed more of a challenge than his standard prey of deer and elk. The cougars were more like big horn sheep in the sense that rather than skirting rock formations and seeking the route of least resistance, they just as often went up and over. There were points where he lost the tracks entirely under the dense canopy of pines where the snow didn’t reach the ground and in the clusters of scrub oak where the lion could wriggle through and under the branches while he couldn’t, but it never took him very long to pick them back up again. Best he could figure, the prints were about two hours old, which put the mountain lion passing through here right about half an hour before sunrise. It would have been back in its den before first light, so he had to be getting close.

  A steep embankment rose about a mile ahead. The Rockies beyond were all gray rock and snow above timberline, where only sporadic pines grew at severe angles from the slope.

  Rand paused to rub the blood back into his stubbled cheeks and stomp some feeling into his toes. His Gore-Tex camouflaged jumpsuit may have helped him blend into the forest, but it was useless against the frigid wind, which knifed right through his skin and into his bones. He imagined how red his hands must have been inside his gloves. His trigger finger still worked just fine though. A pull from his hip flask and he was on the move again.

  He slung the Remington Model 70, Sporter Deluxe .30-06 off his back and carried it across his chest.

  Not much longer now.

  One quick shot and the deed would be done. Dragging the carcass back down to the ranch would be a bitch, but he looked forward to incinerating that infernal cat for all the trouble it had caused him. Maybe he’d even cut a chop or two off its flank. It did butcher his alpacas after all. Turnabout was only fair.

  He lightened his tread on the detritus and advanced at a crouch. Mountain lions weren’t as cumbersome as elk. They could distribute their weight on those fat paws to such a degree that they could practically float across the snow. He was going to need to hear everything he possibly could. And unlike a deer, if he cornered it without knowing, it could blindside him with a barrage of slashing claws and sharp teeth.

  More likely than not, it was curled up in its den licking alpaca blood from between its toes, but he wasn’t about to take that for granted. The walk back was more than long enough to bleed to death.

  A skeletal aspen tree bore the telltale gouges from the cat’s claws. Twenty feet up there was a smear of dried blood on the trunk to mark the passing of a squirrel.

  The forest faded to the left as the valley wall rose to the right, growing steeper with each step. Large boulders had fallen from the lip above to line the base of the embankment, creating dark crevices and caves, any one of which would have proven a suitable temporary den. At least mountain lions were solitary creatures by nature and he didn’t have to worry about stumbling into a dozen of them. Besides, he only wanted the one.

  He pulled back the bolt silently, chambered a round, and eased it back home. Seating the butt against his shoulder, he slowed his advance and scoured the hillside along the barrel of the rifle. The wind tapered and the world around him assumed an unnatural calm.

  Movement drew his eye from up the rocks to the right. He knelt behind a boulder and made himself small. Nuzzling his cheek against the stock, he looked through t
he scope and traced the contours of the haphazardly assembled rock slope with the crosshairs.

  A flash of white, and then it was gone.

  Slowing his breathing, he steadied the scope on the spot where he had seen it.

  His finger found the trigger and gently pressed it into the sweet spot. Even the slightest pressure now would do the job.

  He saw the black triangle lining the ear first, and then the creature raised its head. Golden fur over the smooth crown of the skull, a cold black eye, white muzzle—

  Crack!

  A spray of crimson raced up the rocks behind the lion as it disappeared from view.

  The report echoed through the valley over the tinny ringing in his ears.

  Rand rose, chambered another bullet, and advanced cautiously. The scope never left his eye as he crawled up and over the obstacles in his way. He attuned his ears to even the slightest sound, but only heard his own tread. When he reached the boulder, he leaned over it and looked down. The cat was sprawled on its right side. Its left front paw carved at the ground in twitching movements. Blood drained down the rock behind it toward the crater where its left ear had once been. The better part of its cranium was gone, and its left eye and the surrounding fur were scorched.

  It shivered and made a meek mewling sound, then became still.

  Rand climbed over the rock and pressed the barrel of the rifle to the soft flesh behind its front leg for a quick heart shot if it even flinched. He kicked its rear haunches, but it made no effort to move. One more kick for good measure and he lowered the rifle.

  He smiled and slung the gun back over his shoulder.

  “Sixty thousand dollar cat,” he said. “Damn.”

  He kicked it again…and again.

  Momentarily satisfied, he shoved his hand into his pocket and produced the big game strap he used to haul deer up by their hooves to be gutted. He looped it around the mountain lion’s back legs. It was nearly as large as a wolf, so he was going to have to drag it.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the mouth of a small cave barely large enough to accommodate a grown man in fetal position. There was a collection of broken bones near the opening, most likely from a rabbit. Beside them was another, much larger bone. He felt a surge of anger again at the thought of it belonging to one of his alpacas and stormed over to investigate.

  He bent over to grab it and froze.

  It wasn’t an alpaca bone.

  Not even close.

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.

  He was totally screwed now.

  November 4 th, 2013

  Thursday

  “Office hours don’t start for another twenty minutes,” Gabriel Hartnell said without looking up from the following day’s lesson plan. He was going to have to insert an image of staphylococcus aureus into the Power Point presentation as an introduction to those depicting MRSA if he expected his students to follow the lecture.

  He heard the door close and again focused on the task at hand. There was only so much depth he could provide in a two hundred-level Intro to Pathology class, but he couldn’t glaze over the actual pathology portion. Maybe he simply wasn’t cut out for this teaching thing after—

  An impatient sigh.

  “I said come back in—,” Gabriel started, but his words died at the sight of the man, who waited just across the chipped oak desk from him. Rather than a timid undergrad with the fear of potential failure etched upon his face, he stared into the eyes of a man in his early thirties with thinning black hair and several days’ worth of stubble. He appeared so sleep-deprived he could have passed for a grad student. Gabriel hadn’t seen the man in more than a year, and honestly hadn’t expected to ever again. The man’s mere presence elicited a fresh wave of the pain Gabriel still struggled to hide, even from himself.

  “Been a while, professor,” the man said. He wore a charcoal polyester suit, the creases betraying how long it had been since he had last changed it. His pale blue tie hung loosely around his neck. A tuft of curly hair peeked out over the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.

  Gabriel rose so quickly he knocked his notes to the floor and banged his hip in his hurry to get out from behind the desk. He proffered his hand and the two men shook abruptly. There were so many thoughts racing through Gabriel’s mind that he couldn’t formulate any of them into words. He could only think of one reason why Brent Cavenaugh would have driven all the way out to Boulder to see him face-to-face. His stomach clenched and he felt the room start to spin. He steadied himself against the edge of the desk and ran his fingers through his shaggy, sandy-blonde hair, slicking it back with the cool sweat beading his forehead.

  “Can we sit down?” Cavenaugh asked. He gestured to the twin chairs in front of the desk.

  Gabriel nodded and they sat side by side. He felt the heat of Cavenaugh’s hazel eyes upon him, but couldn’t force himself to raise his eyes to match the stockier man’s stare. Cavenaugh was with the Denver Police Department, a detective with the Pattern Crimes Bureau of the Criminal Investigations Division, and had a way of looking through a man rather than at him. While Gabriel had an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Denver and a master’s in Cell and Molecular Biology from Colorado State, Cavenaugh had joined the force after earning an associate’s degree in Criminal Justice from Front Range Community College, and what he hadn’t learned in the police academy, he had picked up in a hurry on the streets. The only thing they had in common was the overwhelming sense of loss, the hole in their lives that the past two years hadn’t begun to fill.

  Gabriel tried to ask the question out loud, but couldn’t find the strength to voice it.

  Did they find the bodies?

  “I want to show you something,” Cavenaugh said. He reached under his jacket and produced a manila folder, which he passed to Gabriel. After a moment of expectant silence, Gabriel opened the folder. “Tell me what you see in that first picture.”

  It looked like the crater-pocked surface of the moon with a long, segmented mealworm crawling across it.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Gabriel said. “There’s always at least one student every semester who thinks he can stump me with this. It’s an unclassified extremophile found on a meteorite speculated to have originated on Mars. The closest living microorganism we can find on Earth is a halophile, a species of haloarchaea. What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Look at the next picture.”

  Gabriel flipped the page and studied the image, which showed five of the microbes on a lattice-like substrate. Some were curled into crescents while others were elongated.

  “And the next,” Cavenaugh said.

  The following picture had the exact same background, however the microorganisms had assumed different shapes and positions. He noticed a time stamp on the bottom of the image and turned back to the previous page. It had been stamped only one minute prior.

  “They’re alive,” Gabriel whispered. “That’s impossible.”

  “You aren’t the first to say that.”

  Gabriel finally met Cavenaugh’s eyes. The expression on the man’s face was unreadable.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Gabriel asked.

  “Those images were taken through an electron microscope on samples of bone prepared from a human femur that was found just outside of Pine Springs.”

  Gabriel drew a sharp breath.

  “DNA testing confirmed it was Nathan Dillinger’s.”

  “Did they find anything else?”

  “You mean anything belonging to one of our sisters? No. Just the one bone. No other parts of Nathan Dillinger or the other six.”

  “Are they investigating the site where they found it? I mean, if they discovered one bone, then surely—”

  “Calm down, Gabriel,” Cavenaugh said. His eyes softened and he placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “They scoured the National Forest for two straight days and came up with nothing. I would have told you at the time, but I didn’t wa
nt to get your hopes up.”

  “I don’t understand any of this. How did this microorganism that by all rights shouldn’t even be alive get onto the disembodied femur of one of the people who disappeared with our sisters? Where’s the rest of Nathan, and where is Stephanie?”

  Saying her name was a self-inflicted wound.

  “I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on that.”

  “What do you mean? How the hell would I—?”

  “An anonymous tip led us to the mountain lion den where we found the bone. Of course, it didn’t take long to track the call to the man who poached the animal. It was tagged and being tracked after all. It took all of about an hour to place it on his property prior to its death and perform a ballistics match on the bullet, but here’s the interesting part. Mountain lions are nomadic. They tend to move around when food becomes scarce. The Division of Wildlife had been monitoring its movements for more than a year, and twice in that time it passed within five miles of the cabins. The most recent of which was only two weeks ago.”

  “You think it came across Nathan’s remains during that time.”

  “Stands to reason,” Cavenaugh said. “But here’s the kicker: they performed an autopsy on the mountain lion and found it riddled with those microorganisms. I figure that’s our most substantial link. We’ve had cops scouring the mountain lion’s trail, but haven’t had any luck. I was thinking you might have some stroke of genius that could help us find where these microorganisms can live.”