Given what evidence they can find, they suspect the people disappeared by the morning of the 31st. Vehicles were parked at home rather than at work with bedside alarms still going off. Local businesses hadn't updated dates for the new month, and there were no time card punch in or outs for the 31st or later. There's also no evidence of the people walking away. One official is quoted as saying they may as well have disappeared in their own beds.
As if that wasn't stunning enough, Sam finally brought something to the table as well. He said a buddy of his had mentioned that hunting this year wasn't going so well. So he started looking into wildlife reports. What he found was that agencies all around the four corners were reporting significantly lower game populations than expected. But there's also been a reduced number of wildlife encounters, and almost no reports of wildlife in settled areas. It's as if people aren't the only ones disappearing, and the wildlife seem to have been disappearing in greater numbers. Considering how the estimates are based, officials have been looking for corpses and at first suspected poachers. But the numbers are too high to be so explained, and there have been no corpses or any other evidence that would confirm those suspicions.
Which, considering the earliest disappearances were individuals or small parties out in the wilderness, that makes sense. But for an entire town to disappear? And granted, it's an out of the way town with a listed population of maybe 60 people. But compared to two people out hiking in the woods, that's huge. And it more than doubles the number of missing individuals altogether.
But the news media is also reporting a shocking number of people being found. Most have no legal identity, don't speak any recognizable language, and all wearing basic fiber clothing. As opposed to modern cotton weaves. And considering those traits, that is a hell of a coincidence. A lot of these found persons weren't listed in news media as much as they were listed in police and hospital reports. Which is how we missed them. It does make me wonder about Jane though, she's similar to the others in that there's no record of her existence and she had similar clothing on when found. But she does speak English, with an accent that I don't recognize. Are all the rest of these people amnesic? Would that have anything to do with crossing the ohvau? That'd make Hal all the more lucky that he didn't get amnesia. I just wish I could've brought these points to their attention. I wouldn't have, I did promise Sam and Candace, even if Sam wasn't there.
That said, some of these people who are being found are like the girl who was found in Dinosaur National Monument, Amy Shaun. Former missing persons, most who had been missing for years, are showing up all around the country. Now granted, I'm talking about maybe ten people, so they aren't showing up in anywhere near the same numbers as those who're disappearing. Even the numbers of unknown persons who are showing up doesn't compete. So on the whole we're losing population. As if a balance would make things better.
So while all this has been going on, Max brought to our attention an incident involving our deer headed vigilante. This time it was an altercation with a bike gang, and video was captured showing him lifting one of the bikes (a Harley) and throwing it across the street. A couple of the bikers were beaten pretty severely, but they managed to chase him off with gun fire. Reports can't seem to confirm whether he was hit, but again there's been no reports of anyone checking into a hospital with a gun wound. This happened just last night. There's also no clear cause for the incident.
Those were all talked about after Sam got there. Before he had arrived, Max and Hal were asking how I was doing and wanting to know more about what I'd seen. For some reason I still haven't admitted to them that the lady was there all the way up till when Sam found me back outside. I don't know why Sam hadn't mentioned that, and I haven't had the chance to ask him. But it's also made it easy to fail to mention that I'd talked with her.
Though Max did coax out of me that she was practically naked. Hal was good enough to keep his mouth shut.
Trying to divert attention away from me, I asked Max if she'd heard about Melia interviewing college students. She said she had, so they started making plans on trying to get Hal and her together so Hal could finally report success to Tim. It was while they were talking about that when Sam showed up with barbecue. I've tried barbecue chicken before, but I've never had the pleasure of actual barbecue from an actual barbecue joint. I couldn't believe how good it was, and here Sam and Hal were both saying it was "alright." If this was "alright" I'm curious what they would call good.
Though I was amused when both of them warned about the spicy sauce. They've never tried my Dad's jungle curry.
I'll leave off on the food so it seems like I had a good night. In all reality though, I'm scared. If a small town is going missing, what's next?
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