Exploring the Madlands
(June 11, 2017)
10: Life And/or Death
For some reason, the valley in which Gravity Falls and the rest of Roadkill County lies—well, it has a name, it's called Gravity Falls Valley (for the same reason that the falls are called Gravity Falls Falls, that is, both were named by Quentin Trembly)—for some reason, the valley does not show up well, if at all, on satellite imagery. You can look where it's supposed to be, and there's usually only a foggy greenish blur. If on the clearer days you zoom in, the picture loses resolution and dissolves into pixels way before it should.
I mean, just outside the surrounding mountains and sheer bluffs, you can zoom in on the county road and see Admiral Skipper's home and count his collection of military memorabilia. Even see clearly the white star on the hatch cover of the Stuart Tank that Wendy had once driven. If an animal had been struck by a car, you could almost always identify the species. But inside the valley—just close-packed colorful polka dots everywhere you looked.
Years before, a frustrated Stanford, searching for nonexistent aerial photos of some interesting terrain he would have loved to explore, commented, "It's almost as if something doesn't want us to see details in the valley!"
Yes. Almost.
Perhaps for that reason, there are no good recent maps of the entire Valley. However, long ago Fiddleford had unearthed an old map, created by the Breaker Brothers, a publishing company out of Seattle that, true to the brothers' name, had lasted just long enough to go broke, that on a number of overlapping maps showed the valley in 1:26,000 scale, pretty darn good since a U.S. Geological Survey Map is around 1:24,000.
The U.S. Geological Survey, by the way, has never mapped Roadkill County. On two occasions, crews went there to perform the task, but in neither did any of the men return. Finally, the guy in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey at the time, said,
"#*(% it, nobody wants to go there anyway," and since then the area has been quietly removed from the USGS's "to-do" list.
By the way, the same Agency has no detailed maps of Area 51. It's rumored that if one asks a large library for the USGS map of Area 51, a group of men dressed in black appears from nowhere, roughs one up, denies that such an area exists, and then warns one never to look for it again. That doesn't happen with Gravity Falls—what happens if you ask for that map is the librarian smiles and says, "What, are you crazy?" and perhaps lightly smacks you upside the head.
Anyway, when he had abruptly resigned from Stanford's researches for reasons of his own, Fiddleford had left the map set behind in one of the many lockers in Stanford's underground lab. He had come over to the Shack and had remembered right away where the maps were stored, quite a feat since for a good many years in the middle of his life, Fiddleford couldn't remember the date, what things could and could not be eaten by a human, and often his own name. Funny how the little things stick with a person.
Anyway, they unrolled the right quadrant on the floor weighing down the edges with a pickled and presumably inert dragon's egg in a jar, a cast-iron implement that Stanford had picked up at a yard sale assuming it was some kind of pioneer kitchenware (it actually dated back to the Spanish Inquisition and was called by the Inquisitors the Old Reliable, since it could make anyone confess to anything)*, a .671 millimeter wrench (made specially for items on the crashed UFO, which didn't seem to use either metric or U.S. standard increments), and Tripper, who sat with ears perked at the southeastern corner.
*It may be nothing more than a legend, but it's said that upon first trying out the implement on a victim, Torquemada exclaimed, "¡Pancho! ¡Pídanos un bruto de estos bebés!" ("Hot diggity! Let's order a gross of these babies!"). That plan was forestalled because the craftsman who had designed and built the prototype had been arrested on heresy charges when he came to deliver it (a bookkeeping error) and Torquemada had used the instrument on him and then had ordered the remains burned. Keep in mind that history is written by the survivors.
Even at that scale, Stanford used a magnifying glass. "Here it is," he said. "The location of Mason's telephone the last time we were in touch."
Fiddleford, who reckoned he was too old and creaky to creep around on hands and knees, wore his special magnificationing spectacles. "But whereabouts in blue tarnation is that-there secret hidden valley?"
"It doesn't seem to show up on the map," Stanford said.
"Well, I reckon that's sensible. Wouldn't be no secret hidden valley if it was on a map."
"That's remarkably cogent," Stanley said.
"I'll try to do better. Betcha it's right there, though." Fiddleford had picked up a wooden pointer and tapped a spot on the bluffs. "Lookie what they wrote there when they made the map."
"Dangerous ground," Stanford read. "Well. Now we know approximately where we need to go. How do we get there? I'd say air is the best way."
"Yeah, but you know nobody in their rightful minds wouldn't pilot no flying machine that fur into the Valley," Fiddleford said. "I think that-there was a triple negative, but you get my drift. Airplane and helimacopter instruments just go as loco as a swamp rat in an eight-quarter Laundromat washin' machine when they get into Valley airspace."
"But we can use drones," Stanford said.
"Well, yeah, 'cause there you navigates by television. No fancy magnetical doodaddles to go crazy. No gyros to start a-spinnin' in directions they ain't even got spinners."
"Then we need a drone big enough to transport three people," Stanford said. "One that the person aboard could pilot by blind reckoning and by visual landmarks."
"Don't that kind of cancel out?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Let's say dead reckoning."
"Naw, let's not use that word," Fiddleford said. "But I guess I could take and modify that little old helimacopter that the County bought and never uses. Reckon Blubs would lend it to us?"
"I reckon he better," Stanford said, standing up. "How much time will it take?"
"How long until sunset?"
Stanford checked his watch. "Three hours, about."
"Then it'll probably take me about two hours and a half. You know how we always run plumb smack up agin the deadlnes."
"Then let's go!"
All of them, two men and a dog, hustled upstairs, but the dog remained with Mabel, who had changed clothes and who paced the floor of the gift shop. She watched her uncle and the old scientist jog across the lawn and out to their cars. "I wonder what they're doing?" she said. She took out her phone and tried Dipper's number again, and then Wendy's. No answer on either line.
"I'd go looking for them," she told Teek, "Except I don't know exactly where to look! Grunkle Ford wouldn't tell me."
"I'm sure he had a reason," Teek said.
"Yeah, I think the reason's probably me," Mabel replied.
Tripper didn't talk, but he looked worried.
If you want to get an idea of how the bobcat's charge felt to Dipper, first get someone to get a twenty-five-pound bag of flour. A brawny, strong someone. And then get them to swing it in a fast circle and hurl it against your chest. No, that's not quite it. Get them to imbed eight razors in the flour bag and then throw it. Yeah, that's better.
Dipper didn't have a clear idea of what was coming at him, just that it was an animal that seemed pissed-off. He raised the stick that he had use to inscribe the circle and symbols, which caught the bobcat just at the base of its throat and deflected its leap fractionally.
Still one slashing paw raked Dipper's arm, sending a flash of hot pain jolting through his nerves, and his mutated autonomic nervous system—which in humans sends "fight or flight" impulses—screamed, "Run, you idiot, it's going to eat us!" By definition, his transformation had flipped the fight-or-flight switch to full-on flight.
However, part of him was still quite human, and that part made him dive for Wendy's axe, lying on the grass. He seized it just as the bobcat rolled three times, got to its feet, and leaped again.
And just as Dipper drew back, wolf-lady Wendy, snarling like a real wolf, flashed over the circle in a powerful leap of her own and snapped at the bobcat.
It was a close thing—her jaws clicked an inch from the bobcat's throat, its forefeet came within a few fractions of an inch of eviscerating her—and then both landed.
The bobcat, startled, crouched. Wendy got her footing and, on all fours, charged. The bobcat reared on its hind legs—cats do that sometimes when confronted by angry dogs, and occasionally it works—
And Dipper swung the axe as hard as he could, blunt side leading.
He connected, the bobcat rolled over and over, and Wendy, at the end of her leap, whirled and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck.
She didn't shake it.
After a moment she dropped the body and came over to Dipper, still on all fours. "Are you OK?"
"Scratched," he said.
In fact, blood was dripping from his right forearm. Well, forelimb at the moment.
"Take off the shirt, let me see."
"The bobcat might come to—"
"Dip, it'll never come to again. Trust me on this."
Dipper stopped in the act of squirming out of his bloody shirt. "I . . . killed it?"
"Here," Wendy said, standing and tugging at his shirt. "Let me see how bad it hurt you."
He stood, still as a mannequin, while Wendy peeled away the shirt. "Dude, you may need stitches."
The pain started to throb. "I wanted to knock it out," he mumbled.
"It was the bobcat or you. You didn't have much choice. Good shot, by the way."
She ripped his shirt—awkwardly, and she still was complaining about her shortage in the thumbs department—and then said, "Let me bandage that. You put the first-aid kit in the pack?"
"Yeah, I think," he said. "Wendy, I never deliberately killed an ordinary animal before."
"Don't let it haunt your conscience." Wendy ransacked the pack and came up with the plastic first-aid kit. "Open this, find antibiotic and a four-inch gauze pad."
He did as she asked, tore the packet and pulled the pad out, unscrewed the lid of the antibiotic tube. Wendy bent over his arm—only two claws had hooked him, leaving two close-spaced gashes. She bent over them, her nose twitching. And she licked his arm.
"Wendy!" Dipper yelped.
"Can't help it," she moaned. "Anyway, it's supposed to help sterilize a wound. Smear some antibiotic on that pad and then put it over the wounds."
He did, and she wound the strips she'd torn from the shirt round and round his forearm and knotted them. "Wish I hadn't done that," she said, licking her lips. "You don't know how tempting blood smells to me right now. Where's the paint?"
She had dropped it downslope of the circle, and it lay on the grass. Dipper retrieved it.
"OK," she said. "You spray-paint the circle and symbols and all. I gotta drag this body off."
"You—are you going to eat it?" Dipper asked fearfully.
"No. Bury it. We don't want it attracting bears or anything more dangerous. Concentrate on the painting, Dip. This'll take me a few minutes."
She grasped the limp bobcat by the scruff of its neck and tugged it downhill. Then, like a dog, she sniffed around, found what was evidently a good spot, and dug with her forepaws—a pretty deep hole—and dumped the body in and covered it over. By the time she came back up the hill, Dipper had put the finishing touches on the magic circle.
"How long until sunset?" she asked.
"An hour or two," he said. "Hard to tell here, with the sun behind the cliffs."
"Guess we better get ready. Naked, huh?"
"That's what Grunkle Ford said. I wonder if I should take the bandage off."
"Leave it until dark," she said. "Make sure the bleeding's stopped. Here goes. I hope I don't look too horrible."
She stripped the bra and underwear off. She turned away from Dipper, her arms crossed over the top pair of breasts—furry, but they showed—and her tail curled around over her loins. "I'm a monster," she said.
"You're still beautiful to me," he told her.
He pulled everything off, too, and she giggled when she saw him. "Sorry, Dip," she said. "You're nearly as short as you were when I first met you, and seeing you all covered with that pelt—I won't say you're handsome, but you look tasty!"
"Pictures or no?" he asked, holding his phone.
"Did you promise Dr. P?"
"Kind of."
"I guess it's for science. But take it from the side and let me know if anything shows that shouldn't."
He took one photo of her, she one of him—though he held his trucker's hat over a strategic area—and then they sat down in the center of the circle, back to back. Because of the fur, they didn't have skin-to-skin contact and couldn't use their odd form of telepathy, so they talked in low voices.
Wendy asked, "What happens if this doesn't work?"
"I don't know," he said. "I guess we try somehow to get to Grunkle Ford. Maybe there's another way. He figured out a method to keep Gideon from being a permanent werewolf."
"And if there's no way? I think we'll have to break up, Dipper."
"Don't say that. I don't mind what shape we're in if we can be together."
"That's sweet, but every time I smell you or see you, I can't help thinking 'prey.' Sooner or later I'd hurt you."
"I don't think so," he said.
She sighed. After a long time, she said, "I'm getting real antsy. What else do we have to do?"
"There's an incantation, not a long one. One of us has to say it when we first see the moon. Then, supposedly, we'll get groggy and fall asleep."
"Wish the moon would rise," she said.
Dipper said, "Listen. Is that an animal somewhere?"
"Hope the bobcat didn't have a mate." She listened.
"Hear it?"
"Yeah, a good ways off. Sounds a little like the giant spider."
Dipper's bones seemed to have turned to ice. "Do you think something followed us out of the hidden valley?"
Wendy was sniffing the air. "Wind's wrong. God, Dipper, I hope not," she said.
Far up the slope, on the loose rock just below the fissure leading into the valley, though, something with many legs scrabbled, its weird head questing back and forth. Something—the spirit of the valley, whatever—had told it, "Go and find them and bring them back and if you can't, kill them and die with them."
The creature obeyed. Perhaps a hundred years earlier, it would have refused. It couldn't now, though.
Because what was left was very nearly a hundred per cent inhuman.