CHAPTER 41
THE BLACK PIT
We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
- Will Rogers
Early in the morning Bates was buzzed out of bed by a wake-up call from Latanna, who told him that most of the Team was already gathering in the Lodge restaurant for breakfast. Bates mumbled a reply of some sort. Then, in a daze, he tried to figure out who, why, and where he was and what he was about. Suddenly remembering his failure to see Janet the previous night, he cursed and kicked a solid wood chair leg with his bare foot. Then he hopped in pain to the windows and looked out.
It was beautiful weather for a December 22 in the Appalachian Mountains, sunny and already well above freezing, based on the thermometer thoughtfully mounted outside his window. Surveying the area in daylight, it became apparent to him for the first time that the Skyward Lodge was perched very advantageously atop a high mountain ridge, for from his window he looked down upon miles of forested valleys shrouded in mist, punctuated by other neighboring mountain ridges that rose into the clear blue skies. He noted to himself that this was yet another part of the country that he'd like to visit someday under less hurried circumstances, if he lived long enough and it wasn't all soon destroyed.
There would be no time for sightseeing today. There were less than three days left to save the Earth, and he, the leader of the rescue effort, still didn't have the foggiest idea how to do it, other than to continue somewhat willy-nilly on the current Jigs-based quest. Ryan was right to be worried. This morning the situation felt much bleaker than it had seemed last night, when free chilled shrimp and beer were in play.
After running cold water on his injured foot for a few minutes, Bates quickly dressed. Milo, still stretched out comfortably in the middle of the King sized bed, was less than eager to begin another adventure. Bates finally had to promise his companion an Egg McMuffin in order to get him up. Hopefully the Lodge restaurant had something comparable to Milo's favorite breakfast. After obligatory stretching, yawning, and scratching, both Bates and the dog were finally ready to go.
Leaving his room, Bates knocked on Janet's door but received no answer, so he concluded that she must have already left her room. His window of opportunity to see Janet privately was now confirmed to be totally gone. Instead of seeing Janet, Bates had to settle for a brief but necessary walk outside with Milo before they were ready to join the others.
For breakfast the Team had their own separate room, complete with an army of Jigs security people that turned away non-Team intruders. Bates was glad to see that the entire Team was up and about and busily fueling up for the day. Breakfast consisted of a well-appointed buffet that pleased everyone, human and non-human. After filling a plate for Milo, Bates circulated among the Team as he munched down mouthfuls of scrambled eggs, pancakes, cornmeal mush, and sausage. Krog was consuming mountains of hard-boiled eggs, shell and all. He and Wink assured their concerned hosts that they could get along quite well for several weeks on Earth food before beginning to feel and any ill effects.
After eating, the Team was outfitted at the Lodge Sports Shop for hiking in rough terrain. Jigs brought the Team an assortment of hiking gear, including sturdy hiking shoes. The shop even had custom made shoes for Wink and Krog. Johnny and Dooley were already wearing Goth Mountain-needed hiking gear and acquired nothing from the shop, but they helped outfit the other Team members. Breakfast and hiking preparation took less than an hour, for there was an unstated sense of urgency and apprehension that even food and clean new clothes couldn’t dispel.
Finally the Team set off on foot with John Gibs, Jigs' lead Black Pit investigator, to interview Jake Whitcome, wilderness hermit and witness to the suspected location of the Black Pit. Jake was something of a legend in this part of the country. Jake claimed never to have slept under a roof or to have anything to do with store-bought goods of any kind since he was a small child. As he had to be well over seventy years old, that was an impressively long time to be 'living off the land' in the Eastern United States. Bates couldn't decide if the man sounded like some sort of hero or a complete idiot.
As Jake would have nothing to do with civilization, he would come no closer to the Skyward than a small glade a kilometer to the south and totally out of sight of the Lodge, roads, and everything else that even hinted of civilization. That meant that talking to Jake first involved the Team hiking through rougher country than Bates had experienced since he was much younger, and he and a few of the others were already a little done-in as they finally approached the rendezvous point. Bates fervently hoped that Flood would be able to fly them in the Bus most of the remainder of the day, otherwise he didn't think that he would last until noon.
Whitcome was suddenly in their midst; he seemed to materialize out of thin air. He was a tall, thin, shaggy, hawk-nosed older man, dressed in animal furs and carrying a long hiking staff. "Jake," said Gibs, "these are the folks I told you about.” Despite Jake's outlandish appearance, he immediately reminded Bates strongly of someone; but he couldn't quite place who it was. Bates stepped forward to introduce himself with his hand outstretched.
The mountain man evaded Bates’ reach, and with a look of disgust on his face quickly sized up the pudgy scientist and his entourage. "You didn't say it'd be a whole dag-gum mob of city folk, Gibs! I can't deal with the likes of them!” He started to briskly hike away.
"Won't you stay a bit and talk with kin, Uncle Jake?" asked a voice.
The mountain man stopped dead in his tracks. "Who's that claims to be my kin?" he asked, without turning.
To the surprise of the others, Hank stepped forward. Now Bates realized why Jake Whitcome looked so familiar. Add a decade or two, a foot of head hair, and a fur outfit, and Hank would be a dead ringer for 'Uncle Jake'. Also it explained why both men had the same last name. "It's the Hankster, Uncle Jake!” exclaimed Hank.
Jake faced his younger double with a big, tooth gapped smile on his face. "The Hankster? Hank Whitcome? Jim's boy? Where the hell you been keeping yourself?”
The two men exchanged hugs and a few playful bats on the head, and then sat down on a nearby log and talked for several minutes. Bates could hear much of the conversation, but had some trouble following it. Mostly it seemed to address what this or that cousin, brother, or sister was up to and where.
Hank finally persuaded Jake to help the Team, though Jake insisted that he lead a party of no more than a dozen or so hand-picked individuals on foot to the suspected Black Pit site. Bates was severely disappointed that they would have to hike further, but Jake insisted that flying busses were out of the question, as far as he was concerned.
Exactly who would go to The Pit was resolved by a few minutes of haggling. At first, it seemed that Bates himself might not be acceptable to Jake. The lean mountain man looked Bates over critically, pinched his fat cheeks, patted his plump stomach and behind, and shook his head. However, Jake and Milo immediately took to each other, which helped smooth things for Bates, even though both man and dog were obviously soft city slickers. “I reckon I can put up with this feller if’n his dog can,” reasoned Jake. The Pit- party was at last reduced to Jake and Hank, Bates and Milo, Latanna and Winnebago, Krog and Pru, Johnny and Dooley.
After confiding with Bates that 'the Boss' told him that they should, Commander Flood was insistent that Janet and the twins Elizabeth and Don also go. Why the billionaire wanted them to go, Bates couldn't imagine, but it was agreed to anyway. Besides, once the issue was raised, Jake seemed enthusiastic that the women go. Apparently women were scarce in the Smoky Mountains.
The final Team member to be added to the party was the spirit of Goyahkla. Jake didn't even flinch when Goyahkla materialized for a few moments so that they could size each other up; in fact he didn't seem to be at all spooked by the unusual make-up of the group. The mountain man remarked that over the years he had met with lots of unusual folk in the mountains, including space aliens, kin to Fen and Pru, and a wide assortment of Am
erican Indians and ghosts.
Just a week earlier, upon hearing such a claim, Bates would have dismissed Jake as a complete crackpot. Now he had to wonder at the limitations of his own background, which had apparently been quite narrowly defined by a life that centered on his apartment, his job at the Base, fast-food restaurants, and a few other 'normal' 21st century influences. He had long understood that the world was filled with wondrous things; that's why he had become a scientist. Now he was finding out that there were wonderfully quirky things and people that defied conventional expectations and stereotypes.
As the rest of the Team started back towards Skyward and the Bus, disappointed but at the same time relieved to have themselves escaped the Black Pit quest, Jake took charge by laying out some rules for the remaining hikers. His two-dozen or so rules could actually be summed up as two: (1) keep quiet; and (2) don't damage the forest. As to keeping completely totally quiet, Jake conceded that it would be impossible for this big motley group; however, he did ask that talking be as subdued and as infrequent as possible. Bates approved of Jake's thoughtful, reverent attitude towards the forest. He could never understand why some folks liked to loudly and destructively rip through forests on ATVs or motorcycles.
To minimize forest damage, Jake insisted that they walk single file. He led, followed by forest-savvy Johnny and Dooley, Krog, Bates, Janet and the kids, Latanna and Winnebago, and Hank. Pru soon melted away into the forest, in the way of the unicorns, and Goyahkla appeared only occasionally. Bates could only hope that they would both re-appear if and when they were needed.
Milo ranged all along the line of hikers, stopping frequently to literally stick his nose into anything interesting. Bates never did understand why Milo felt compelled to smell every whiff of urine and pile of poop that he ran across; it was evidently a 'dog thing'. At least the canine Team member was enjoying himself.
The group steadily traversed incredibly beautiful but inconveniently rugged country. Once brilliant fallen leaves were mostly brown now, but there was still plenty of rich green evergreen growth. Bates was amazed to find that this included large patches of bushy, green leafed Rhododendrons, which he had always thought of as delicate, domestic plants of a sort only to be found in select yuppie yards. Apparently he had them all wrong; they were much tougher than they looked. This mountainous terrain was evidently their natural habitat. He found this comforting, as that was exactly what the B-Team would also have to be; soft city folk for the most part, who were tougher than they looked.
Bates also observed a remarkable directness and a relative ease of passage in their route through the mountains, compared to the Team's relatively short hike to the rendezvous point with Jake. Not that the hiking was easy, but their route seemed to avoid most major obstacles, though at the same time it was phenomenally direct. Elizabeth explained to her father that they were following deer trails, and now that he knew to look for them, an amazing network of deer trails became evident, as paths marked by fall leaves that were crushed to corn-flake size, footholds carved by sharp hooves into steep slopes, and openings stubbornly pried through otherwise impenetrable brush. The trails the creatures made were remarkably straight. Evidently the sensible creatures also traveled single file, because the trails were also very narrow.
On and on they went endlessly, with hour after hour marked by periods of ascent and decent for hundreds of meters. Bates became so tired that he couldn't tell and didn't really care what was actually 'up' and what was 'down'. He didn't give a crap any more about nifty plant-life, or deer trails, or anything else; there was only the next step and the next deep breath, and the seemingly endless struggle to keep up with Krog well enough such that the big alien remained in sight.
His backpack, which was only five kilograms in mass, felt more like fifty. Its initially soft, padded straps bit into his shoulders with numbing force, and it seemed to shift his entire center of gravity tremendously, such that each step was distorted and awkward, causing exercise of forgotten muscles much more accustomed to lounging around an office at this time of day. The hiking boots which hours before were incredibly light and comfortable were now leaden weights that crushed his poor sore feet unmercifully.
At first, Bates had been 'gentlemanly' and lent Janet and Elizabeth a helping hand in traversing the more difficult slopes, ravines, and fallen logs. He now feared that they would soon be helping him, an event that would deal a severe blow to his manly pride, what little was left of it. He envisioned himself soon being dragged or carried along by Janet and Elizabeth like an infant or a decrepit oldster, but he vowed that he would drive himself to complete collapse before he would let that happen.
Just when Bates had determined that he could not possibly last another minute, old Jake stopped his long, effortless strides at last, and announced that the clearing just ahead was the Black Pit. The group gathered around Jake to catch their breath and get a look at the infamous 'Pit'.
After the big build up and long hike, the suspected 'Black Pit' area was, at first sight, a major disappointment to Bates. It appeared to be simply a relatively flat, open glade in the forest about forty meters across, covered in green, knee-high grass. It wasn't black, and it wasn't a pit. Geologically speaking, maybe it had been a pond at one time but had gotten filled in over the years.
For the moment anyway, Bates didn't care. He gratefully fumbled off his backpack and plopped down flat on his back, an action that the rest of the group interpreted as a call for rest and lunch. Soon they were sprawled about on boulders and fallen tree trunks, and pulling sandwiches and soda-pop out of their back-packs as they eyeballed the alleged Pit area.
Jake pulled some nasty looking hardtack from a leather satchel that he carried in his backpack, and offered some to Hank. "I'll trade one’a ya some critter jerky for one’a them-there Cokes," he announced. "I ain't had me a Coke in five, no, six years.”
After a drink and several minutes of rest, Bates was fit enough to sit up and examine the area ahead. It seemed to him that they had previously passed through several very similar glades. "Mr. Whitcome," he asked, "what makes you think this is the Black Pit?"
Jake sat aside his third Coke for a moment to reply. "Well young fella, you folks are calling it that, I ain't. All I know is it just ain't normal. So my guess is it might be yer odd-ball Pit place you want to find. Or maybe not. There’s always odd-ball places here and there in these here mountains of this sort and that. You-ens can take a look-see and figure out if this be yer fancy Pit or no."
"What's abnormal about it? It looks just like several other places we passed through earlier,” Bates remarked.
"It's definitely abnormal; I can't sense anything there," said Johnny Goth. "It seems like a hole in the universe."
"Not to me," said Don. "It looks perfectly normal."
Jake laughed. "Well young fella, it sure does look that way to city folk, don't it? But look closer and maybe you'll notice that the deer trail we been following don't go through it."
Sure enough, the Team noted that the deer trail veered sharply away from the glade.
"It's the kind of place where deer would like to be in, if it were a normal place, with plenty of nice tall green grass to eat and lay down in and hide," remarked Dooley. "But the deer don't like it one bit."
"Dooley and I can see the grass but we can't feel that it's there at all, added Johnny. It's a weird place; that's for sure." Indeed, it reminded Johnny of space/time disturbances near a mysterious object back home on Goth Mountain.
"We need to walk into it for sure then," concluded Bates.
Everyone in the spunky group volunteered, but based on their heightened enthusiasm and woodsman experience it was decided that Steve Latanna and Hank would make the first exploration, while linked to the others by two stout lengths of nylon rope.
Steve reported back to the rest of the group as they slowly walked into the suspect area. "Five meters. Nothing strange so far!” he reported. "Ten meters. Nearly half-way in, I estimate. E
verything is still normal, I think.” But there was a tinge of uncertainly in his voice. "I just feel a little dizzy."
“Hey you two, you’re veering too far left,” admonished Bates. Sure enough, for the next few steps the pair had changed direction, and were now walking at right angles to their intended path.
“But we haven’t turned at all!” complained Latanna, though he followed the shouted instructions of the onlookers.
“Once yer finally started in, head down-hill,” advised Jake, as he chuckled at the antics of the group. "The center is at the lowest spot."
The pair made continued to make turns as directed, though they protested they were on course when their companions redirected them. Despite corrections they repeatedly exited the area entirely.
Dooley sat watching, grinning, and laughing at their antics. Bates had to keep reminding himself that this was deadly serious business to keep from laughing himself.
After four tries, the pair finally appeared to the onlookers to be headed to the center of the area. Latanna called out that they were twelve meters along, by his reckoning. To Bates, Chief Latanna looked and sounded much farther away than twelve meters. As he sat watching in astonishment, it also seemed to him that the two men were slowly vanishing, simply fading away as though they were stepping into fog, though there was no fog to be seen!
"Shunshu, katana!” Steve's shouted something in Apache, sounding very far away indeed. Then there was total silence. Except for the tall grass, the mysterious glade appeared to be empty. The two men had totally faded from sight.
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