The first event happened upon the 12th of August, 1953, at 2pm in Colorado, 20 miles west of Walden, Jackson county. His name was Reese Piekson, from Wisconsin, Portage county. He had a wife and three daughters, he was a 43 year old, a geographer, and had been hiking throughout Colorado's Rocky Mountains. He had brought his chocolate lab with him to keep him company and for its nose.
The event in question happened during the second day of his hike. He was just getting into the more interesting territory, finding more and more to study, document, and illustrate. It was around 1:30 when he discovered the forked pathway, and about 1:40 when he chose the one to the left. At 1:55 he was just bringing out his compass to check up on his bearings when he saw that he had come upon a small town, just north of where he was heading. It was at that point that if he had decided not to investigate the town, none of this would have been reported, but for the want of a phone call home.
The town was neatly kept close together, but something was a little off.. the town seemed more like a cluster of buildings than a town, it didn't have a right feel to it. This was something he did not notice until he was twenty yards out of the town. He felt a certain lack of character, that the town lacked that "lived-in" feeling that one comes to expect of small towns, a nice lived-in look. Where the downtown would have been, Reese noticed that not one of the buildings had any sort of identification to them, except the post office and the grocery store. Even those buildings weren't named, they were just "Post Office" and "Groceries", and the town didn't appear to have any restaurant or convenience store of any kind.. That's when Reese noticed someone coming out of a house, one block east of the post office. Two people were leaving the house and.. it seemed they were dressed in some kind of one piece suit, like how a bee keeper would dress but instead of a mesh shield around the face, it was plastic.
The two people were carrying little black and silver boxes, about the size of a lunch box, and were headed for the post office. Reese thought of going up to them but was a little wary. That's when he noticed that he hadn't seen anyone else in the town. There was no other sign of life. He suddenly became very aware of his situation and worried that he may have come across a contaminated area. He sniffed the air, but it didn't smell any different. He looked around at the plant life, but it did not look to be affected. He listened for other signs of life and that's when he noticed that there wasn't any. No insects, no birds, no animals of any sort, only his ..! Cocoa! His lab was nowhere to be seen, Reese hadn't even noticed when Cocoa had gone missing. He thought of calling for the dog, but didn't want to alert the two men who had gone inside the post office, just in case he wound up in some kind of trouble. It would be best just to find Cocoa and leave.
Suddenly he heard growling behind him. Reese whirled around expecting to see a wolf or coyote, but instead he found Cocoa, who was growling at him! Cocoa looked rabid and Reese, believing he only had an instant, took off at full speed into town. He opened the first door he came to and shut the door quickly behind him. This noise and the sound of Cocoa's rough barking alerted the two men who had gone inside the mail box. They had stepped out of the building to see what the commotion was about, and one of them was carrying a shotgun. Cocoa spun around to face them, lunged and was quickly upon the first man, the one without the gun. He frantically tried to get away from the dog, tried to get Cocoa off himself, but it was too late. Cocoa had torn into the fabric and had started ripping at the man's arms and torso. With that man down Cocoa turned on the other man, lunging at his throat.
He had just gotten off a shot when Cocoa had bit him on the shoulder, the shot getting Cocoa in her left hind leg. It seemed the injury just seemed to aggravate Cocoa even more, and she was tearing into the man's neck, but he was able to get off one last shot before he died, killing the dog. It had all happened so fast that Reese hadn't time to think of what to do. It seemed to him that both men and his Cocoa had died before he had a chance to react. Afraid to go over to the scene, he looked around him, searching the house for a phone.
There didn't seem to be much of anything in the house, no furniture, no picture hanging on the walls, nothing in any of the drawers, and no sign of a phone. He found the house had a side door, and exited through there, hoping to avoid the two dead men and his dog, afraid of what might happen if.. He didn't want to think about it. How had Cocoa become like that? He hadn't heard that she had been attacked by a rabid coyote or anything of that sort, it was like she had suddenly transformed into a rabid beast. He took a round about way of getting to the house where the two men had originally come out of, thinking if anything, that's where a phone, or something useful, would be.
When Reese got to the front door, he noticed through the window that this house had furniture. He turned the doorknob and went in.
