Remains

Winslow pulled up to the police barracks around three forty in the morning. He sat for a moment, the events of the evening replaying in his head for the hundredth time. As he shut down the engine he caught a look a himself in the rear view. He was unrecognizable compared to the squared away rookie he’d seen in the bathroom mirror this morning. He was a combination of dirt and scratches, a couple of the latter still oozing blood. His uniform was torn and spotted with pine sap. Usually he wouldn’t be caught dead looking like this in uniform, but at the moment he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had experienced the most horrific night of his life and he felt lucky he was even breathing. Damn lucky. With some effort he hauled himself out of the cruiser, putting on his hat, also smudged with dirt and sap. He shambled toward the front doors where he was surprised to find Carswell, the medical examiner, sitting on the front steps. She had always reminded him of Julia Roberts, but tonight she more resembled Mrs Roberts grandmother. She was sitting on the top step lost in thought, shoulders slumped, leaning against the wall, the ash on her cigarette comically long, or would have been on any other night.there was a large envelope laying on the step next to her. He was within poking distance before she realized with a start that he was there. She placed a hand on the envelope as if he were going to take it from her.

“Winslow. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come up.”

“You OK? You look like I feel.”

She nodded, pulling her phone from her pocket and giving it a small shake. “I was waiting for a damage report. Dispatch gave me bits and pieces but he hasn’t been able to reach anyone at the hospital for about thirty minutes.”

Winslow sighed. “It was really bad. Still is.” Carswell gestured at the step next to her. Winslow plopped down, surprised at just how weak he felt. The adrenalin has worn off, he thought. He looked at Carswell and began. “ Both the canine units were killed. Ramirez lost his hand. They were talking about reattaching it when I left, bu there was some complication.”

“And Mason?”

Winslow dropped his head even lower. “He didn’t make it.”

Carswell let out an involuntary exhale. “Christ.”

“It was..” he shook his head and started again. “ I can tell you what happened but I still don’t really know what happened . I know one thing. If Sergeant Crane hadn’t been there we all would have died. I thought that he abandoned us at first, you know? When we came over the ridge and saw..the suspect, he turned and ran away. Nobody called out, we just watched him run into the woods. When he was out of sight we continued on. I thought he couldn’t handle what we were seeing. I didn’t blame him, I was half ready to run myself. Ramirez was in the lead and that’s how it got him first. The suspect. That thing. He raised his weapon and yelled something at it. He didn’t have a chance. It moved so fast. It bit him for Christ’s sake. Bit through his wrist like it was a stick of gum. His hand just snapped off and hit the ground. It was still holding the gun. I couldn’t stop staring at that. His hand laying there holding his weapon. After that everyone opened fire on that thing, but it was like it didn’t even feel it. It lunged at Mason.. it took him down quick. Tore his throat out with those .. claws it had.. There was so much confusion by then, shooting and screaming, it was hard to tell. Then we hear this deep yell and there comes sergeant Crane, running back over the hill, only now he has his shotgun across his back and a molotov cocktail in each hand, I shit you not. He ran right at that nightmare until he was about five feet away then he threw one of the bottles, hit it right in the face. Its head goes up in flame and that’s the first time we hear any sound of pain from it. Sarge throws the other one and it hits it high on the shoulder. The thing was still yelling and it turned to run but it got caught in the brambles and fell over in the ravine. Sarge didn’t skip a beat he jumped down right on top of it, jammed his shotgun in its mouth and fed it both barrels. It was over after that. I rode with him to the hospital and I asked him how he knew that fire would hurt it. He said it wasn’t trying to burn it, he was using the fire to suffocate it so he could get close enough to use the twelve gauge.”

Carswell nodded, a pained smile on her face. “Sarge is the only one left from the original group of officers besides the Chief that dealt with those bastards the first time. Everyone else has retired, moved on or passed on. I’m sure old sarge has thought a lot about how to kill them over the years, if the need ever arose. ”

Winslow tried to process what she had just told him. “The first time?”

Carswell was lost in thought. “He was just a rookie then, a little younger than you I think. We started the same year.”

Winslow looked at her, shocked. “What are you talking about? Carswell? Are you- are you saying this happened before?”

Carswell looked at him. Appraised him. Then nodded to herself. “Yes, it happened before. I figured I’d take this story to my grave, but then I never thought it would happen again. And after what you dealt with tonight I think you’re owed an explanation, or the best one I can give. One of the officers that was there the first time did me the same courtesy, after I had to perform the autopsies of our friends and those things. And I guess ill be doing that again too. God I wish I had a drink.” Carswell shivered and lit an new cig from the butt of the old one and took a deep drag. She gave Winslow a long look before switching her gaze to the stars. She began. “Missing hikers get the short end of the stick, you know that? You go missing on a busy city street, its all hands on deck, but you go missing on a weekend hike through the mountains or a national forest, you have about three days before they chalk you up as a just another yahoo that overestimated his survival skills. This goes double for any male in their twenties that drops off the grid. After two days, they’re dismissed as either a suicide or a bored young man wanting a change of scenery. Missing person cases are higher on our mountain, did you know that? Not by a large amount but but higher than the national average. And the majority of those? Males in their twenties. Families make a stink when they go missing, who wouldn't. And we have to inform at any one time there are six men at most patrolling the entire mountain. That averages to about one man per thirty five hundred acres. The odds are against us ever finding their kids, as sad as it is. And something we never say to the parent, the trails are marked with huge red signs. Travel at your own risk. Getting lost is the least of it. Bobcats, rock slides, Bears.. hiking on the mountain is dangerous. But Back in ninety one, the year I became a Snoqualmie county medical examiner-God has it really been thirty years- there was a trifecta of disappearances on the mountain no amount of soothing words or big red signs was going to fix. The first happened near the end of January, a park ranger named Jeffery Fields. He’d been an avid and experienced hiker his entire adult life. Knew that mountain like the back of his hand and his mother was not buying the fact that he just disappeared without a trace. Within a months time she had gone to the newspaper, appeared on two morning radio programs and even made it on the local news. She extolled the ineptitude of the county police, the state police and any other law enforcement agency she could think of at the time. she gained a small following and ended up leading a group of protesters in front of city hall, complete with big red signs of their own and ‘Wheres Jeffery?’ buttons on every lapel. The higher ups decided to wait her out and after a month the public's short attention span drifted on to other tragedies. Then there was Kristoff. Kristoff Bonhem was a foreign exchange student that had been in America a half a year when he had gone up the mountain with a couple friends from school. He was a few feet ahead of his friends when he walked off the path to take a leak. Told them he’d catch up. They never saw him again. Boy did that get mother Field’s base rejuvenated. Jeffrey’s mom joined up with the exchange students parents, who had flown in from Germany and were staying with the sponsor family in the missing boys room. They were very popular on the news shows. The protesters had doubled. The news dubbed us death mountain and before the mayors office could even get out a proper response about the exchange student the last domino fell and it was a two-for. A newly wed couple on their honeymoon. A couple last seen hiking their way up death mountain. A couple with rich parent and lots of connections.”

Winslow perked up. “Wait a second, I’ve heard about the newlyweds. Cody talks about them at least once a month when we have to up on the high roads. He said they died in an animal attack.”

Carswell smiled again, that haunted little smile. “Thats the story. Just not the real one. The newlyweds were the last straw. Their parents arrived at the end of their children’s first full day missing and by the morning of their second day there were no less than one hundred state and local police combing the forest, not to mention a few dozen volunteers. They spent the better part of a week hacking their way through the brambles and thorns that cover the woods off either side of the trails, not to mention the torrential rains that had been blowing through. They hadn’t found so much as a candy bar wrapper for their effort. Pressure was mounting and there was talk of bringing in the F.B.I. when a volunteer quite literally stumbled onto a lead. One of the volunteers thought he saw a pair of legs sticking out of the leaves at the foot of a ravine and went tearing down the slope, probably with visions of the recently announced reward money dancing in his head. He ended up taking a header in the mud and slid the last twenty feet on his face, giving himself a concussion for what turned out to be a half buried muffler. One of the paramedics strapping him in for the ride out discovered the tunnel. It was cut into the brambles at a weird slant, almost like some optical illusion you couldn’t see looking at it straight on. Our boys decided what with the injury and the bad weather that the local police should handle it from there. They didn’t get much of an argument. The tunnel was roughly three feet high, so the officers had to crawl through it on hands and knees. They had barely made twenty yards before they found a shoe. It belonged to the exchange student.

It was two hours before the officers crawled out the other side of that strange tunnel and into a clearing. The sun had set by then but the rain had settled into a light mist and there was still enough light to take in the surreal sights. There was a large tree with a rectangle of wood nailed to it, the word Keybuok had been shakily carved into it. We never found out if it was their name or some kind of warning to stay away. There was no other literature found at the site. The sign itself looked ancient, the tree had begun to grow around it, swallow it. Beyond the tree were the bones. They were everywhere. Hundreds, maybe thousands of bones. Bears, cats, rabbit, dogs, foxes, coyotes, mountain lions, Stephens said he even saw a couple wolf skulls, though even in the nineties wolves were a rarity on the mountain. Some placed in patterns, some laying in piles, others just strewn around on the ground. The remains weren’t all skeletal. Some of the animals were in various stages of decay. Some had been skinned, some had bits carved off of them, some had chunks bitten out of them. Past the bones were the houses. Well, hutches is more accurate. Both structures looked like they had fallen out of one of those reenactments of life in the sixteen hundreds, only with none of the maintenance. To say they were dilapidated was an understatement. The rooves on both structures were collapsing, one side of the smaller hutch had caved in entirely. If there was ever any glass in the windows it was long gone. As they made their way up the side of the main hutch they found more bones. Human this time. Three skeletons, two male one female, never identified, were propped against the side of the house, arms wrapped around each others shoulders, like good friends who sat down for a siesta and never got up again. Then they discovered the park ranger. He had been stripped naked and staked across a large tree stump next to what was left of the front porch. Something big had gnawed pieces off of him, it was hard to tell what. His eyes were gone, most of his fingers. His genitals.’

Winslow rubbed his eyes, shaking his head. “Jesus.”

“Animals always go for the soft parts first. But animals don’t usually stake their prey to tree stumps beforehand. Everyone was on edge and not just because of the body. There was an energy.. like a cloud of dread that that had drifted down around them as soon as they crawled out of that tunnel and after discovering the ranger the men in that dooryard were as close to panic as experienced officers ever get. They looked to the door, half off its hinges, opening into the darkness of the room beyond. As they eased forward they heard something in that darkness shifting its weight, maybe deciding what to do. They heard a deep snort like a boar giving a warning, then it exploded through the doorway and it was upon them.

It looked like someone had covered the trunk of an old pine in yellowed, calloused flesh. There was no neck to this thing, just one long unjointed segment connecting head and torso. The arms were average size but muscled, ending in one large razor sharp talon. The legs could best be described like a grasshopper, twice as long as they should have been, knees bent to the sides and folded under its body. And the smell.. “

Winslow, who had been nodding wide eyed as she described the thing let out a low whimper “Yes. My God I’ve never smelled anything like that..”

“It was feces and urine and decay and ammonia and all the fetid inhuman filth from the deepest sewers. That thing was my second autopsy ever. The first was an elderly woman who had fallen down the stairs. The paramedics that brought her in said that was about as exciting a body as I should ever expect to find on my table, besides the occasional car crash.” Carswell laughed/coughed around her cigarette, shaking her head. “If he only knew. I unzipped that body bag and the full extent of that stench hit me and I threw up. No, I projectile vomited. No warning, no retching, just instantly throwing up. I at least had the presence of mind to spin around and avoid contaminating evidence, not that any of it saw the light of day. The senior M.E. was an old bastard that thought no woman should be in an autopsy room and he would have loved telling anyone that would listen how the new girl lost it all over a corpse.”

“Fuck him who ever he was. Anyone would have lost it. Smelling it. Seeing it. What did it do? When it came outside, what happened?” Carswell took another deep drag and prepared herself. “Wilkies was our first casualty that night. He was on the first step of the porch when it came out. He froze, just for a moment, but it was enough. As it flew past Wilkies it swung its arm out, tearing off his jaw as easy as a kitten swatting a ball of yarn off the table. Wilkies flipped backward off the steps, dead before he hit the ground. Someone yelled out and then the shooting started. Men were firing, diving out of the way of other shooters and forming a line, advancing on it. But as you know bullets don’t have an effect on those things. They shot for what must have seemed like an eternity, when one of the rookies, Terrance noble, had a thought that ended up saving everyone's life. While the bullets were flying Terrence said that thing turned and stared right at him. It scared the shit out of him but it also gave him an idea. He dropped to his knee and aimed right for that ugly bastards eyes. He figured it didn’t matter how tough the outside was, its eyes looked normal to him. He yelled at everyone to follow suit and they did but no one had a better chance than Terrance. He still holds the county sharpshooter record. The thing seemed to know who the biggest threat was and it charged right for him. He was down to two shots with no time to reload and had resigned himself to dying when the things left eye popped like a cork. Blood sprayed from the socket and Its body jerked to the left, one leg collapsing. It let out this croaking noise, like some enormous bullfrog, then it fell over on its side. gray foam poured out of its mouth and it was done. Every one gave Terrance a clap on the back and he ended up getting a certificate of bravery. They had to change the reason, of course. We found out later that the bullet hadn’t actually gone in. It had bounced off the eye socket and some of the shrapnel had ricocheted around in its skull. As far as everyone was concerned that didn’t diminish the act one bit but when Terrance found out he broke out in a cold sweat. He said he only took it down by pure chance. I told him that was crazy, to hit a target that small, moving that fast and in the dark was skill none of us had ever seen, but he wouldn’t hear it. He practically lived at the shooting range for the next six months. Anyway, after Terrence brought it down everyone took a beat. They covered Wilkies, reloaded their guns and headed for the entry, all of them giving a quick look at the thing laying in a pile of bones as they passed. Seven men went inside, five stayed in the yard, checking the perimeter. The stench was a hundred times worse inside, and a few of them retched in corners. It wasn’t going to damage the aesthetic of the place. It was a ruin, vines growing through the walls, rats and bugs skittering through excrement and over other small dead things. There was an ancient wood stove primarily composed of rust standing in what at one point must have been a kitchen. It was also taken over by vines and something large was thumping around in the oven, maybe a racoon. Hopefully a racoon. On the opposite side of the room was what could best be described as a cauldron. It was full to the top of some unspeakable thick liquid. Somehow it smelled worse than the dead thing in the yard. They ran their flashlights across the entrance to two other rooms, bedrooms I suppose, neither one with a door. In the corner of each room was a large pile of leaves and mud crafted into nest of sorts. it was in the second bedroom that they found the missing bride, or what was left of her. She had been disemboweled. The skin had been stripped from her legs and back-”

Winslow stood, holding his hand up. “Just.. just give me a second.”

“Take your time, son.” Winslow paced back and forth in font of the stairs, running his hands across his face. Carswell looked at the horizon. The sky had begun to fade from black into a dark purple over the trees. She suddenly felt exhausted. Winslow sat back down. He looked at her with a pained expression. “I’m sorry, it was just.. too much for a second there. Carswell, you autopsied these things.. what the fuck are they?”

This time Carswell held up a hand, gently. “We’re almost there. Back outside a rookie, maybe the Sarge himself, I don’t remember anymore, walked toward the back of the smaller hutch. As he did he heard a twig break, then another. Something was moving around back there. He pulled his flashlight but the rain had killed it. He was about to shout for some assistance when there was a flash of movement, what it was he couldn’t say, I was full dark by then. It let out a screech and then it was gone in the tangle of trees. He sent two bullets in after it, but they never found anything. Later he said he was pretty sure it was just a bobcat, but... Inside one of the officers was examining the bride while his partner moved in on the nest. It was at this point that the rookie began shooting at the mystery runner. The men in the room spun and were about to sprint outside when the nest erupted and another of those things leapt onto the closest mans back. This one was one smaller than the one in the yard and it had course, matted hair running down its back. It tried to bite the officers neck but everyone was ready this time. They pried the thing off of him, careful to keep those talons secured. It took six officers to drag It into the kitchen. One of them yelled for them to put its head in the cauldron. It had eyes, so he was hoping somewhere in that hunched, yellowed body it had a pair of lungs. They tilted it up and slammed its head into the brown muck. It fought hard, thrashing and kicking but they held tight, throwing up from the unbelievable stench that was now all over them. After a few minutes the thrashing stopped and there were no more bubbles drifting up through the filth. They kept it under for another few minutes. Then they yanked it out and and put a bullet through its eye. Just to be on the safe side. We didn’t know at the time but we incurred our second fatality in that kitchen. Two of the men that drowned that thing had some deep cuts from crawling through the brambles. They caught an infection from whatever was in that cauldron.. Tore through them like wildfire. Cassidy died early the next morning. The other… his name was Bill, I think..How can I not remember… he was in the hospital for six months. Lost both of his arms. Bill or maybe Will.. I cant remember.. But that was all later. For now the search of the property continued. The smaller hutch proved empty. There was a half hearted attempt at a nest inside but nothing like the ones in the main structure. they assumed that there were just the two. After tonight's events I suppose we were very wrong about that.”

”You think the one we dealt with tonight was the one that ran off?”

“I do. After the search everyone stood in the yard, looking at the thing laying on its side. Without a word they put on their latex gloves and drug it inside and laid it in the kitchen with the other. The lieutenant happened to have a brother in law that was a paramedic, they were pretty close . He called him out specifically. He knew he and and his partner could be trusted to keep whatever they saw to themselves.”

“So… everyone just spontaneously decided to cover it up?”

“Yes. I cant tell you exactly why, They didn’t talk about it, they decided, with out anything more than a nod to keep this a private matter. This horror had happened on our mountain so we handled it. Of course we still had to deal with the parents. the remains of the bride, the park ranger and the exchange student were taken out by the paramedics, along with officer Wilkies. The groom was never found. Not so much as a drop of blood. As for the killers, the officers took care of them. One of them had some rope in his trunk, someone else had a tarp so they wrapped them up and took them off the mountain and on to my table.”

Winslow was astounded. “ I cant believe you were able to keep this a secret. Monsters. Literal monsters caught roaming the woods and killing people and it all just disappeared.”

“The only people that knew trusted each other with their lives. And if at some point down the line someone got a little too drunk and let any details slip out, who the hell would believe them? And remember, son, this happened in the early nineties. No internet, no camera phone in every pocket. Speaking of, did you take any pics tonight? Anyone?”

“No. No one did that I saw. I didn’t need a reminder of that..”

“Of course not, I’m guessing no one else did either. At the hospital, what did you say happened to Mason and Ramirez?”

“...Animal attack. We told them we couldn’t see what it was.”

“And everyone went along?”

“Yeah.”

“So you do know how we hid everything. It’s instinctual, I believe, the urge to keep it a secret, to not subject other people to this nightmare.”

“Maybe. But no civilians were killed tonight, back then, the parents of the victims, didn’t they want answers?”

“Yes, and they had every right. So we told them the truth.”

“What?”

“Not Jeffrie’s mother, nothing we could have done would have satisfied her at that point, but the others.. We brought them in to identify their children’s bodies. That was rough. After they had composed themselves somewhat we took them into a room and told them we had found the perpetrators and that they had been killed. Then we showed them those bodies as well.”

Winslow stared at her, shocked. “You showed the victims parents those things? What the hell did they do?”

“One of the mothers screamed, one of the fathers collapsed. They were horrified, disgusted. And they wanted it kept a secret as well. The grooms mother said we should say it was a pack of coyotes that killed their children and toss those two things in the incinerator. Everyone else agreed. Better that than any of this getting out and their children become an urban legend for the next five hundred years. The exchange students parents talked to Jeffries mother. It took some convincing but with the news coming from them and not the police she eventually relented. After the parents signed on to our conspiracy, I falsified the autopsy reports on the hikers, a career ender and possible jail time if I was caught, but I wasn’t too worried since the police were my accomplices. Two of the officers went back to that clearing and burned the hutches to the ground. The next day the official story went out- A pack of coyotes had gotten the taste for people, it happens. They had been put down and the mountain was safe again. Though the trail the missing hikers had taken was permanently closed to the public. Just to be on the safe side. Six months later most things had gone back to normal.”

Winslow scoffed. “Normal. Right.”

“It might not seem like it now but it will. There were times when I thought id never stop seeing those things when I closed my eyes at night, but then one day, I did. Now, the last part. Its the worst part of it for me, but you wanted to know and I think you should, though I know you aren’t gong to like it. Winslow, these weren’t some creature that crawled up from the bottom of a lake or out of some ancient cave. They were people, son. Humans, just like us.”

“That’s impossible Carswell. Thats fucking impossible.”

“I wish it was, but its true. I opened them up myself. Thy were mutated beyond comprehension but they were people. It took two bone saw blades to crack the big ones chest. It was like someone had started to carve a person out of a hunk of stone then gave up halfway through. When I finally got through and pried him open I got the shock of my life. I don’t know what I was expecting but what I got was basic human anatomy. The placement of the organs, the blood, the tissue. It was a man. The heart and lungs were both enlarged, which is usually detrimental but seemed to benefit them. We ran DNA tests through a guy we could trust and it came back human. Severely damaged but human. But.. the DNA, there was something. We ended up having them run it three times. The male was older than the female, by at least twenty years. But their DNA strands were the same. Identical.”

“Identical? I thought only twins had identical DNA.”

“That’s true,and yet... I can only assume the male was her father. Even with what had to be centuries of inbreeding I would think offspring would eventually become sterile before they were able to became one stunted branch on the worlds worst family tree. And they weren’t sterile. There weren't just two strands of DNA. There were three”

“Oh, no.”

Carswell nodded. “The female was pregnant. The baby also had identical DNA. I’ll spare you the rest of the details.”

Winslow looked like he wanted to scream, but to his credit he kept himself composed. Carswell put her hand over his. “Son, you’re still new at all this and tonight was a trial by fire if there ever was one, but I know there’s one thing you’ve been aware of for a long time. Sometimes people are monsters. We see it every day. People that beat their wives, kill children, hurt someone just because they want to cause pain. These things just happen to be monsters on the outside too. Now I think you should probably head home. Get a shower and some rest. I’ll call you if there’s any news.”

Winslow nodded, wiping his hand across his eyes. “Yes ma’am. Thats a good idea. Thank you. For telling me. You didn’t have to.”

“You had a right to know. Go on now, get some sleep.”

Winslow headed for his car. Carswell watched him drive out of the parking lot as the sun began to ease is way over the tree line. She grabbed the envelope off the stairs and went inside. As she passed the Chief’s office she peaked inside and saw him at his desk, looking as exhausted as Winslow. She rapped on the open door, bringing him out of a daze. “Chief. I didn’t know you were here.”

“I came in the back, had to make some calls to the brass, fill out some paperwork on the incident. Heading back to the hospital in a few.”

“Any news?”

“Nothing good. They went from reattaching Ramirez's hand to amputating his entire arm.”

Carswell closed her eyes. “The infection?”

“Yeah. Just like last time. It spreads so God damn fast.. He’ll be lucky if he makes it till morning.”

Carswell looked out the window. “It’s already morning.”

The chief attempted a smile. “I saw you talking to the rookie. How is he doing?”

“Shaken up but taking it better than we all did back then.”

“The worlds a lot uglier than it was thirty years ago. We’ve become desensitized.”

“Even to shit like this?” She held up the envelope.

“Even to shit to like that.” chief pointed at the envelope. “You show him what was in there?”

Carswell laughed. “The kid’s gonna have enough trouble sleeping for the couple weeks. I didn’t feel the need to make it worse.”

“Probably a good idea until we figure out how to approach this.”

“Might I suggest a tank. Maybe a B1 bomber.”

Chief let out a snort. “I don’t think anyone’s floated the bomber yet. I’ll run it up the chain.”

“Has anyone thought that maybe the best plan is to do what we’ve been doing all along. We chased that one from its home and burned it down. It took thirty years for it to make its way down the mountain.”

Chief tapped the envelope. “That’s exactly what we would do if it wasn’t for these. You know the area where the one killed was just a quarter mile from the new housing development. If it had gotten down there, come across some kids playing in their yard..” Carswell shuddered at the thought. The Chief shook it off, standing up. “But that’s for another day. For now, it’s very late, or very early. I’m going back to the hospital. You should go home, I’ll call you if anything changes.”

“Actually I thought I might head out to the hospital, just for a little while.”

Chief smiled. “You can ride with me, I could use the company.”

As they walked out of the office, Carswell tossed the envelope on the chief’s desk. A few of the pictures slid out onto a pile of paperwork. They were a series of drone shots, dated three months ago. They show the clearing, still covered in bones, two mostly bare patches of earth where the hutches once stood. Then the angle of the camera moved higher, revealing an even larger clearing behind the deadfall of trees dotted with a half dozen more dilapidated hutches. A few figures can be seen in the pictures, some running, others propped back on their elongated haunches, watching as the camera drifts over them. A large section of the last photo is obscured by a gray blur, most likely a rock hurled at the drone. In the far corner of the picture a tree can be seen, a slat of uneven wood nailed to it. A word is scrawled upon it, blurry but legible: Keybuok.