A bright beam of sunlight cut through the window of the small, cramped trailer, illuminating the clutter packed into nearly every available space.
Random clutter, mostly useful.
It landed across Bard, sleeping heavily on his narrow cot.
One eye opened, then the other.
He groaned and slowly sat up.
Bard went straight outside into the crisp morning air. The trailer sat just off a forest road alongside Valle Grande. Low fog hung over the vast tract of grass and along the surrounding mountains, the air still heavy with humidity.
He breathed it in.
The cool moisture felt almost like steam, soothing his dry nose and lungs.
Bard unfolded his camp stove on top of the folding table and started on his morning coffee and eggs. When he needed supplies, he walked down the hill to the stream, where he kept a cooler tied off in the cold running water.
He made a simple breakfast and took his time with it, listening to the birds while he ate and flipping through a couple of news articles clipped to a clipboard beside his makeshift kitchen station.
According to the paper, there had been several UFO sightings near a trailer park outside Los Alamos.
Enough that the newspaper had felt it worth printing.
He looked over another clipping, this one concerning several missing persons.
Ernie Rodriguez.
Why did that name feel familiar?
Bard went back inside the camper and dug out his small flip phone, powering it on.
His bulletin board was covered in old newspaper clippings he had saved over the three years he’d lived there. Lots of question marks. Lots of unfinished questions.
Nonetheless, the wall represented several years of deliberate, concentrated personal investigation.
Bard waited for the phone to finish waking up, then clicked through the menus with the little arrow buttons.
One of his few regular contacts had messaged him.
Ronnie.
Hey Bard, if you have time later, like around 10, I could use a hand on a job in Rio Rancho. Been working on this house like crazy trying to fix all the stuff the builders fucked up before the owners get back this weekend, but I don’t know if I’m gonna make it without a second pair of hands. I’ll be sure to give you a good deal. Mainly hoping you can do a final coat of paint on these two rooms while I finish the other stuff I need to do.
Two hundred and fifty dollars for four hours.
Bard grinned.
That complicated the day.
He had planned on scouting the area around the Los Alamos sightings, but the job would probably push that until later, maybe tomorrow.
He didn’t have much choice.
His gas tank was around half full. There wasn’t much in the bank. Supplies were getting low.
He glanced toward the little kitchen outside.
It had been a hungry few days.
Two hundred and fifty dollars sounded magnificent.
He was also glad, for once, that he had managed to wake up early.
Bard preferred mornings like this. He just didn’t always achieve them. He spent too many nights standing in dark places, staring at the sky or walking through the forest looking for things most people were sensible enough not to look for.
It was one of the ways he investigated the unknown.
Not necessarily the best way.
But one of them.
Bard finished his breakfast, cleaned up, and packed away the kitchen. He locked the trailer and walked the short distance to where his red Civic was parked beyond a small wooden bridge, near the narrow grass road leading out of the hills toward Route 4.
He stopped beside the car for a moment.
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The Honda was old, but it was still hanging in there.
Out here, surrounded by miles of forest, mountains, and empty land, the thing was more than transportation.
It was a lifeline.
Bard fetched one of his last bottles of water from the trunk, lit a cigarette, and looked toward the stream.
Downriver, his little white cooler floated in the current, held in place by its rope.
Beyond it lay Valle Grande.
The sheer amount of open space still caught him sometimes.
Green grass stretched toward a dark border of forest. Mountains rose beyond that beneath an enormous blue sky. From where he stood, the view might as well have continued for a hundred miles.
As far as the eye could see.
Farther than the eye had ever seen.
There were very few places where Bard felt his own consciousness become that vast.
He stood there smoking until the feeling passed.
Several minutes later, he was on Route 4.
Dense forest and mountains rose along one side of the road while the great open expanse of the valley spread along the other.
As Bard drove toward Rio Rancho, he surveyed his surroundings with the casual hypervigilance of long habit.
The passing trees.
The spaces between them.
The deeper forest beyond.
The sky between the clouds.
Anything out of place.
He had been doing it for so long that most of the process barely felt conscious anymore.
Exhausting, certainly.
But useful.
Which was why he noticed the dead coyote.
It lay near the side of the road, cleanly enough that Bard couldn’t see any obvious injury as he passed.
A large black bird watched it from a tree above.
Crow.
Raven.
Bard wasn’t sure which.
He slowed.
Then reached behind him and pulled his laptop from between a couple of blankets in the back seat.
He set it on the passenger seat, opened it, and started the speech-to-text program he used for field notes.
“August fifteenth, twenty twenty-six,” Bard dictated. “Heading toward Albuquerque. Dead coyote alongside forest edge of Route 4. No obvious visible injury. Crow or raven watching from tree above.”
He glanced back at the road.
“Cannot remember how I know the name Ernie Rodriguez. Maybe from one of my bartending gigs near Taos.”
A pause.
“Multiple lights sighted near trailer park outside Los Alamos. Multiple colors. Possibly orbs changing colors. Abnormal livestock behavior noted.”
He drove for another few seconds.
“Meeting Ronnie for some fundage at this painting job near Rio Rancho.”
Bard glanced down.
FUNDS AGE.
“Fundage.”
FUNDS AGE.
Bard sighed.
“Fuck it.”
He kept going.
“If I drive past Domingo Street, I want to do a slow pass of that house that mysteriously burned down.”
Another stretch of highway slipped beneath the tires.
“Once I get some loot, I gotta get supplies. At least canned food and water. Need to refuel. And sometime soon I need a full day at the library to catch up.”
Movement appeared far behind him in the rearview mirror.
Bard watched it for a moment.
The unstable outline of a police car.
“No big deal,” he said.
The laptop dutifully typed it.
“Just mind my own business. Not breaking any laws. Just asking perfectly legal questions.”
He took a drag from his cigarette.
The vehicle behind him was gaining quickly.
Bard watched it resolve in the mirror.
Vintage.
Almost entirely black.
No siren.
His attention sharpened.
The car moved closer.
Through the dark windshield, Bard could just make out two figures in the front seats.
Both appeared to be wearing wide-brimmed cowboy hats.
“What the fuck?”
The police car accelerated.
Bard eased off the gas.
It came alongside him fast enough to shake the Civic as it passed, moving at what had to be close to a hundred miles an hour.
For an instant, Bard saw the passenger.
A dark uniform.
Wide-brimmed hat.
The officer’s head turned.
Not casually.
He seemed to look directly at Bard.
Then the police car was gone, tearing down Route 4 and disappearing around the next bend.
Bard had already slowed considerably.
Now he took his foot almost entirely off the gas and let the Civic coast.
He stared after them.
Then glanced toward the laptop.
On the screen were the words:
perfectly legal questions
“Yeah.”
Bard took another drag from his cigarette.
“Oh well.”
He dictated the encounter into his notes.
After that, he left the laptop running in case anything else worth recording appeared.
Nothing did.
The rest of the drive passed quietly.
Bard remained deep in thought, but nothing he was thinking had organized itself well enough to be said aloud.
A little more than an hour later, he arrived at the address Ronnie had given him.
Three work trucks sat outside the house.
Ronnie was standing near one of them with a phone pressed to his ear. He spotted Bard pulling in and pointed toward an open space beside his truck.
Bard parked, stepped out, and lit another cigarette.
Ronnie continued pacing.
“No, I know. We told him we’re looking for it. We kept all the doors closed the whole time.”
He listened.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but if we can’t find that dog, it’s probably gonna cost thousands to replace, and I would be ready to expect litigation.”
Bard leaned against the Civic.
Ronnie rubbed his forehead.
“All right. All right. All right. Call Jack. Call Jack when you get a chance. Jack. Please. Did you hear what I said?”
He listened again.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Another pause.
“Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Call Jack. Please tell him.”
Ronnie paced several steps away.
“No, I want you to tell him, because every time I talk to the guy he wants to fight with me about it.”
He went silent.
Bard smoked.
“I know, but do you know how hard it is to get another lawyer? First of all, it’s like five thousand dollars for a retainer. So if you want to get another one, then you go get the five thousand dollars. I don’t know. Sell your car.”
Ronnie stopped walking.
“Okay. So call Jack.”
He listened.
“Okay. Okay. Thank you.”
He hung up.
Bard looked at him.
“Your wife?”
“I don’t even wanna talk about it, man.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s just not even talk about it.”
“Works for me.”
Ronnie shoved the phone into his pocket and seemed to notice Bard properly for the first time.
“You have a good trip here?”
“Yeah.”
“See anything weird?”
Bard considered the question.
Ronnie pointed toward the sky.
“Man, I just saw like a hundred crows fly over. It was crazy.”
Bard looked up.
Nothing there now.
“All right,” Ronnie said. “Come with me.”
Bard put out his cigarette and followed him inside.
Ronnie showed him around the house and explained what still needed to be finished.
Bard’s part was simple.
A second coat of paint in two upstairs bedrooms currently covered in a putrid orange.
Four hours of work.
Looking at the rooms, Bard figured he could probably finish in three and a half.
Even better.
He set down his things and got to work.