Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) by Justin Robinson Page B

There was a single shot from the Whale’s pistol and the light winked out, almost like the bastard knew I was looking. More shots fired and pretty soon, the chattering stopped.
    The shots from the pistol continued for a few more volleys and then they stopped, too. I swore. Would Vassily follow? Could he? How the hell many times had that guy been shot?
    I turned back into the darkness and plunged into the trees. The branches scratched at my face and hands, but I kept moving through them as fast as I could and tried not to take a header into one of the trunks. I couldn’t hear much over the sound of my blood or the persistent ringing in my ears from the gunshots. For all I knew, Vassily was following me like the boulder in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark .
     The trees were growing denser, multiplying as I got closer to flat ground. I pressed through them, not even trying to be quiet.
    I smelled it first. Like a skunk, although not quite as powerful. Less of a diesel stink and more rotten milk. It might have been a coyote, but that was a lot of stench for one canid.
    Then I heard other sounds. Heavy footfalls. Cracking branches from something very large moving through the same terrain I was. The deep huffing of something powerful sucking in great gusts of air. And that’s when I knew for certain that I was not alone in those trees.
    Bigfoot was there with me.

 
     
     
[7]
     
     
     
     
     
    SUPPOSED “EXPERTS” LIKE TO CALL HIM “SASQUATCH,” probably because it sounds more formal than “Bigfoot.” It’s a derivative of a word in some Native American language that roughly translates to “hoax that will cost the white man millions in tourist dollars.” Daniel Boone called the big ape-like mammal he shot a “Yahoo,” but there was no way that would stick, not even after Bigfoot founded that company. Every place he shows up, he gets another name: skunk ape, yeti, alma, Momo. He doesn’t really give a crap what you call him, so I’m sticking with Bigfoot. Anyway, that name showed up in the ’50s, when people started finding his footprints around. It’s not the most creative name, sure, but let’s be honest: the guy has some seriously big feet.
    On the West Coast, he keeps to the forested areas. He wouldn’t have come this far south had Los Angeles not been such a Mecca for people like us. He spends most of his time in Northern California, in the forested corridor between the 5 and 101 freeways that makes up the Trinity, Klamath, and Redwood National Parks. When he’s in LA, he usually sticks to the San Gabriels or Griffith Park. If he has a meeting in town, I mean.
    Bigfoot pops up in a surprising amount of conspiracies, and it’s a testament to the guy that even I’m not sure of all of his exact ties. He’s mostly featured in Little Green Men stories, though he has cameos in the weird Himalayan Buddhist groups, too. As near as I can figure, he collects cash from a couple different secret societies, though I have exactly zero idea how he spends any of it. Or on what.
    To the public at large, the conception of what he looks like is the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. It shows a pretty convincing sequence of a large primate striding along some rocky terrain. The movements are relatively inhuman and in line with the differences in physiology you’d see in an ape that size and with that posture. It’s been analyzed over and over again by experts around the world and not a single one has ever seen the zipper.
    Sad thing is, that is a costume. Sorry. I wasn’t part of the group that faked it. I wasn’t even alive in ’67, no matter what a couple of my more outlandish IDs might say. But I’ve met a few of the hoaxers and I’ve worn the suit, which really is a marvel of engineering. I mean, it was hot in there and smelled like a mile of wet dog ass, but I sort of felt like Bigfoot, even though I was looking through concealed eyeholes in his nipples. No, sorry, the Patterson-Gimlin film does