The Tunguska Mission

My first thought was that the old man had knocked me out of bed with a log from the woodpile. I had been waiting for something like that to happen, crazy bastard that he was, even as he had helped me regain my strength in those first few weeks. My eyes began to adjust to the moonlit darkness, and as I looked up from the floor I realized he wasn't even in the cabin. The door was shut, but I felt a cool breeze on my cheek. The cellophane window hung in tatters. Had he jumped out the window after attacking me? 

I pushed myself up onto my knees, and the sound his dogs barking began to make its way past the ringing in my ears. He was outside trying to calm his pack. The dogs were lunging at the darkness, taut chains snapping them back from mid air. I was watching him through the broken window when he turned and locked his eyes on mine. 

"Finally did it," he growled, "Finally did it. Been waiting." 

I tried to ask what the hell he was talking about, but I could barely formulate a thought, let alone speak.

"Have to find a cave. Fallout's coming. We'll bring the dogs."

His gaze lingered on me for a moment as if he expected me to do something, but when I opened my lips to ask what, he turned back to the dogs. 

"Might have to eat 'em"

I fell back to the gravel floor, trying to make sense of what was going on. There had been a blast. It knocked me out of bed, blew out the windows, and terrified his pack of half-wolf huskies and bear dogs. Just as this picture became clear, his words caught up with me and I broke into tears. Fallout. This can't be real. Hundreds of miles from a paved road, and we're under nuclear attack? My head was throbbing, that one word an agonizing echo, and all I could do was shut down. I passed out. 

---

I woke to the far off sound of an incoming [name of the kind of plane it is]. I held out brief hope that the pain in my head was the result of a fever, and the events of last night nothing more than a fever dream. When I saw the large pile of gear and provisions the old man had laid out over a buckskin in the center of the floor, ready to be tied into a massive pack, I knew it was real. Though he must have been at least 75, his pile was twice the size of mine, which was about the size of the bundles strapped to the backs of the larger dogs. He was outside listening, rifle propped on one knee, waiting to see whether this was a sortie in whatever conflict had erupted last night, or if it was a messenger with information about the attack. I watched him from just inside the front door of the cabin.

The moment the plane came into view, he laid the rifle down and sprinted toward the lake. It looked like a rescue might be necessary, the plane wobbling precariously on its approach. When it disappeared behind the stand of spruce that protected the cabin from the harshest winds off the lake, I held my breath in anticipation of a crash. Instead, the only sound was of skis gliding across flat water, followed by the gradual tailing off of the propeller. A few minutes later the old man exchanged excited yelps with the pilot, and I started down toward the lake. I met them bursting through the line of spruce, the old man half dragging the stumbling pilot with him. 

"Come on!" he commanded, grabbing my arm roughly and spinning me back toward the cabin. The crimson-faced pilot, seemingly in the throes of some sort of attack, looked through me with bloodshot eyes as the two men passed. He reeked of whiskey, and he was clutching an empty bottle. A few steps later, the pilot fell to his knees and vomited with a roar. The old man yanked him standing, and pilot looked back at me and sputtered, "There's been a mistake! We're left behind!" My better judgment suspended, I followed them back to the cabin.

The old man set to unchaining his pack. "They're no sinners," he yelled to the pilot, who had just run behind the cabin. 

"What's going on!?" I demanded.

"Got to go. Go now." 

"Why?! Where are we going?" 

"He came in on a comet last night but there's been a mistake. We need to get to the impact site right away." 

These were the longest and most complete sentences I'd ever heard him speak, and also the most nonsensical. But as I weighed my options in the urgency of the moment, waiting here at the cabin alone or following these madmen, the answer was far from clear. I ran to the cabin to grab the bundle of gear he'd made for me, but he called angrily after me,

We didn't know whether to be amused or alarmed when the film came out. To those of us who had seen the apes, it was so obviously a fake as to be humorous. It was surprisingly convincing to everyone else, though, and this raised the concern that it might inspire just the kind of popular interest we had worked so hard to prevent. This fear was reinforced by the media boom that followed, but it soon became apparent that with only a few exceptions it was all camp, b-movie drive-in material, unlikely to inspire the kind of elite expedition that would have been necessary to capture proof of their existence.

The animals were unmistakably simian, and in fact spent more time high up in trees than they did leaving footprints near logging camps. They were almost unbelievably powerful. A chimpanzee is four times stronger than a man at half the size; the old silvercrowns weighed as much as 900 pounds. The few times I saw one in full display--arms up, hair on end--I was impossible to feel anything but terror. Outside of these displays, though, we never witnessed any aggressive behavior, or even any hunting. Mainly they scavenged, and the best time to observe them was during the hours they would spend pulling nuts out of pine cones they'd shaken down from the upper reaches of the black spruces. With our best glass, we would sometimes watch them combing the scree fields for moth nests, like a grizzly. It seemed impossible they could support their enormous mass on such a diet, and in fact it was.

Many who reported a sighting emphasized the rank scent that preceded the encounter. This was one of the few accurate descriptions in the accounts we read. It was not the apes, though, but rather their food caches. We discovered that it was in fact the proximity of a witness to a cache that caused an encounter, rather than a simple crossing of paths. With their immense strength they were able to drag carrion high into their trees, even large bucks that had been taken down by wolves, and with their terrifying displays they could sometimes drive grizzlies off a kill. Only the ravens were permitted to share the bounty, and we came to believe that this accounted for the special relationship between the two species. Though they had many human characteristics, their ability to subsist on rancid meat was definitively animal, and their caches would attract other scavengers from miles away.