In anticipation of next Tuesday (Nov 10, 2015) release of YELLOWSTONE ORIGINS, today's teaser is the prologue to the book. Some parts of it should look familiar....
Prologue
Los Angeles, 2036
Cameron
cowered along the rough wall of the giant granite boulder and squeezed his eyes
shut for a split second. It was too high to climb. He was trapped! Gritting his
teeth, he gulped in a lungful of air, but it did little to take away the
feeling of drowning. The air here was so thin, he hadn’t been able to take in a
full breath since mysteriously ending up in this wilderness. How long had it
been? Days? A week?
The low
growl of the mountain lion that had stalked him into this dead end vibrated in
his ears. Cam’s eyes grew wide. He shot
hasty looks all around him. He picked up a rock and threw it at the predator.
The cat jumped back, but turned, and growled again. It's tail swished through
the air in an agitated flick.
The cat
crouched, and Cameron’s heart threatened to pound out of his chest. He glanced
toward the trees past the animal. Relief swept through him. The old man he’d
been following stepped from behind one of the pines.
“Help me,”
Cameron called, casting another nervous glance toward the cougar. The ancient
Indian stood stoically. There was no emotion on his face, or in his eyes. He
clutched a fur hide around his chest and watched. Surely, any second now, he’d
produce some kind of weapon and come to help.
The cat
crouched lower, its ears laid flat against the top of its head. All its muscles
were bunched as if getting ready to leap at him. Cam whipped his head around
when the sound of falling rock, reached his ear. Not a second later, a man
appeared, nearly leaping over one of the many boulders in this area. He yelled,
but the words were lost to Cam.
Cam’s eyes
widened when the stranger raised his arm and a tomahawk flew through the air,
hitting the cat squarely in the ribs. The tall man lunged forward with a loud
growl of his own and threw himself at the cat, a knife blade gleaming in his
hand. Cam blinked, his mouth open wide.
The man rushed up to him not a second later and dropped to his knees.
“Are you all
right, Cameron?”
Cam nodded,
his eyes still on the cougar. The cat lay dead several yards away. Cam glanced
up at the tall man. Dressed in jeans, a gray t-shirt, and hiking boots, the
blond stranger still knelt in front of him. How did he know his name?
“That Indian
was about to help me,” Cam said, pointing to where the old man had stood a
moment ago. His forehead wrinkled.
The stranger
glanced over his shoulder. “What Indian?” He didn’t sound at all surprised, but
rather annoyed.
“He was just
there,” Cam said, his voice shaky. “He’s gone.”
The man in
front of him tensed. He chuckled slightly. “There’s no one there, Cam. Time to
get you back to your scout troop, though.” The tall man grinned at him.
Cam narrowed
his eyes and tilted his head. “Who are you?”
The man’s grin
widened. “Chase Russell. I’m here to take you home.”
Cam pursed
his lips and studied the man. He eyed the hand that was still held out to him,
then reached for it. The stranger easily pulled him to his feet. Cam’s legs
were as wobbly as jello.
“How do you
know my name?”
“I’m with
the park service. Search and Rescue,” he said simply.
Cam scanned
the man’s clothes. He’d watched enough
television to know that official search and rescue guys didn't dress in jeans
and t-shirts and carry Indian knives and tomahawks.
“There was
an Indian. I’ve been following him since I woke up in that meadow.”
Chase
Russell shot him another grin. “I think your mind’s playing tricks on you,
kid.”
Cam frowned.
The guy was clearly blowing him off. His
grip tightened on Cam’s hand, and he reached for something in the leather pouch
hanging around his neck. Cam caught a glimpse of an object the man pulled from
the pouch, the same object he’d touched when he’d ended up in an unfamiliar
meadow, and separated from his scout troop. The red stones that looked like
eyes gleamed eerily in the setting sun as if they were staring at him.
The stones
glowed brighter and Cam squinted, looking further into those red eyes. A man
and woman appeared. They were dressed in furs and animal hides and labored
through deep snow. The man glanced over his shoulder and urged the woman
forward. A baby in her arms cried loudly. The woman fell to the ground. She
screamed, and then everything went black.
Cameron
bolted upright in his bed. He held his hands to his temples, trying to catch
his breath. He yanked the covers away and dragged his legs over the edge of the
mattress.
Damn! Why
couldn't he get those images out of his head? It all seemed so real. He'd been
plagued by this dream ever since returning from his trip to Yellowstone
National Park with the boy scouts a couple of months ago. He and a few friends
had goofed off like they always did. It had landed him in trouble, which was
nothing new. He hadn't wanted to go on the trip, but his parents thought it
would be good for him and teach him some responsibility.
Hell, he
didn't even want to be in scouting, but his parents had made him join. They
told him camping in the great outdoors would build character. Yellowstone had
been his first big outing with the scouts. He'd die before he admitted it to
anyone, but the landscape and all the geysers and stuff had held his interest
like nothing else ever had. He'd pretended not to care because his buddies
didn't seem too interested in walking the boardwalks and looking at yet another
hot spring.
Cameron had
stared off at the mountains in awe, wishing he could go and explore them on his
own, but that was out of the question. The scout leaders had kept them all
together, herded like a bunch of cows, from one point of interest to another.
The tourist
attractions had soon become boring, and he'd wished more and more that he could
just run away and get lost somewhere in the endless wilderness. He hadn't so
much as even left the city, and the vastness of the land fascinated him as if
it was trying to draw him in. An odd feeling of familiarity had swept over him
then like he should remember something about where he was, and that someone was
calling him home.
Then that
bizarre incident had happened. He and his friend, Julian, had been messing
around at one of the picnic areas where the troop had stopped for lunch,
tossing rocks into the river. They’d wandered a little too far away from the
rest of the group. Julian had grabbed a weird-looking rock, something that
reminded Cameron of a snake’s head, and he’d reached for his arm before Julian
could throw it.
The next
thing he knew, he was somewhere else. It was as if he’d fallen asleep, and then
woken up in a meadow with no one else around. Julian was passed out next to
him, and an old Native American man had stood a short distance away. He’d waved
to him, then turned and walked away.
Cameron had
followed him, leaving Julian asleep in the meadow, and kept yelling at the old
man to stop and tell him where his troop was. The further he’d walked, the more
disoriented and lost he’d become. He’d spent a cold and lonely night in the
woods, huddling under a tree for some warmth. The sounds of animals had kept
him awake, but strangely enough, he hadn’t been scared.
The
following morning, he’d spotted the Indian again, and continued to follow him
further into the woods. At the time, he hadn’t even thought about what he’d
been taught by his scout leaders - to always stay put when lost, that it would
be easier to be found if he didn’t wander away.
The mountain
lion and the man who'd saved his life had been the last two things he'd
remembered just before waking up with a bunch of park rangers and his scout leaders
huddled around him.
He’d had to
endure endless hours at the hospital being examined, even though he’d told
everyone that he was fine except for being hungry. He’d even had to talk to a
shrink, and everyone finally chalked up his experience to being lost in the
wilderness. They’d told him that what he’d seen and experienced had all been in
his head.
He’d called
Julian, the coward, and had asked him what he’d remembered. Julian had always
been chicken. Cameron could see it in his eyes that he knew more than he’d
said. He had experienced the same thing Cameron had, but he’d let the shrinks
tell him that he’d only imagined it. Or he’d been too scared to say anything.
Cameron
groped for his cell phone on his nightstand. He turned on the lamp and told his
phone to dial Julian's number. So what if it was three o'clock in the morning?
These dreams were driving him nuts. He hadn't told anyone about them. His
parents would only send him to the shrink again.
“Pick up,”
he mumbled impatiently.
On the fifth
ring, a raspy voice said a feeble “hello?”
“Jules, it’s
me, Cam. I need to talk to you.”
Silence on
the other end.
“Julian,
wake up,” Cameron growled into the phone.
“It’s the
middle of the night.”
Cameron
rolled his eyes at the whiny voice coming through the receiver. Julian had
better start growing a pair, or he’d be made fun of worse than he already was.
“Are you
having weird dreams about . . . you know, what happened to us in Yellowstone?”
More
silence. Cameron was about to yell into the phone, when Julian said, “No. Have
you?”
“All the
time,” he confessed. “Whatever happened to us just isn’t letting me go.”
“Nothing
happened, Cam. We got lost, and like the rangers and the doctor said, we got
disoriented.”
Cameron
scoffed. “They really did brainwash you, didn’t they? Something happened,
Jules. And it wasn’t disorientation. You and I both saw that Native American
guy, the one who –”
A movement
in the far corner of his room drew his attention away from the phone. Cameron
looked up, then stared. His mouth gaped open. Right there, in his room, stood
an old Native American, like the one from his dreams and experiences in
Yellowstone that everyone had been trying to convince him hadn't been real. He
moved his phone away from his ear and dropped it on his bed. Slowly, he stood
and took a tentative step toward the old man. Julian's faint voice calling his
name from the receiver faded away.
“Who are
you?” Cameron raised his chin in a challenge to try and disguise the nervous
beating of his heart. How had this guy gotten into his room?
A shriveled
hand reached out to him. The man was dressed in tanned leather pants and a
fringed shirt, and his white hair hung to his shoulders. He didn’t wear any
feathers or carry a spear or other kinds of weapons like what he’d seen Indians
do in the movies, or what he’d read in books. He looked rather plain and
boring, and he was short. The hand opened, palm upward. Cameron gaped at the
object the old man held out for him. It was the same snakehead-shaped thing
that Julian had found in Yellowstone, right before they’d suddenly gotten
“lost.”
The old
man’s voice sounded raspy when he spoke.
“Come,
Cameahwait. It is time.”
