“You’re sure anything lives in that?” Piggot asked Chee.
“Yes.”
“We better swing by first,” Piggot ordered over the radio.
The two copters made a circuit around the walls of the mile-wide mesa, watching their silhouettes swim over the walls. The sound of turboprop engines boomed off the rocks.
“Bats!” the first copter called.
On the south wall, about twenty feet from the mesa lip, perhaps a dozen bats straggled into the daylight and dived to the shadow line rising from the desert floor.
“We’re going around again,” Piggot ordered.
“That’s the main entrance,” Chee disagreed. “You don’t know how fast the sun drops. We have to do it now.”
The copters made a second circuit, closer this time, their rotors almost grazing the mesa walls. As they came around to the south, without spotting another entrance, Chee saw that the sun had dropped to its waist. A shadow line of misty blue was directly under the cave entrance and a thin but solid string of bats fluttered out.
“Okay, this is going to be harder than we hoped,” Piggot spoke into the mike. “We can’t just drop the bombs. We’re going to have to fly by and sling them in. The dynamite has a ten-second delayed contact fuse so you don’t have to worry as long as you don’t go into a stop hover. We’ll stand off and, in case you miss, we’ll go in with our load. Let’s do it right the first time, though. And don’t forget your helmets. There’s a chance some of these bats are infected and we don’t want to take any chances.”
Piggot was already taking chances, Chee thought.
“Tell them to go.”
“Hold on, Chief. I said we were going to do it right. Look, the bats aren’t even coming out now.”
The shadow line was halfway up the cavern mouth and rising even as Chee watched. The lead copter backed off a hundred yards while the one carrying Chee and Piggot drifted fifty yards alongside. There was a pause as the men in each aircraft fastened the helmets of their coveralls. They wouldn’t be in them long enough to require air tanks. Chee started sweating immediately as more bats emerged. The shadow line touched the top of the cavern entrance. Most of the desert was now a blue pool.
“Ready,” the radio announced.
“A $100 bonus for every man who bowls a strike,” Piggot told them.
Chee watched Begay get strapped to each side of the Huey’s open bay. A satchel charge was handed to Begay. The two copters seesawed in the air. More bats were coming out of the cavern, speckling the air.
“What are they waiting for?”
“Relax,” Piggot told Chee.
Begay gave a thumbs up. The lead copter dipped its nose and advanced towards the mesa.
“Keep it at five knots until he throws it and then scram. Good hunting!” Piggot called.
The copter aimed towards the cavern at a 20 degree angle. Begay and the charge were obscured from the second copter’s view. A small cloud of about a hundred bats slipped from the cave. Steadily, resolutely, the copter swung towards the mesa wall.
The next seconds were confused in Chee’s mind and always would be. The cavern erupted not with hundreds of bats or thousands but with tens of thousands of guano bats, cave bats, red bats, canyon bats, fringed bats, in all close to 500,000 bats as Mansion Mesa spilled out its colonies, the way the mesa always released its bats at sunset, until the helicopter, the mesa, and half the sky were erased by a moving, screaming cloud and Chee’s copter almost spun to the ground as it listened to a radio shouted, “Bats! The bats . . .” The sound of their wings overpowered even the howling of the copter’s jet engine. Chee never heard the crash of the lead copter into the mesa wall, only that pounding like heavy rain until the charge went off at the base of the mesa, scattering what was left of Begay and the copter over the sands.
C H A P T E R
S E V E N
The day began hot and windless. There was no movement or shade, or even dimension to be seen. Only the searing white light that evaporated life.
At 6 A.M., a general plague alert had come over the Rover’s AM radio, followed an hour later by evacuation orders for everyone between the Black Mesa to the north and Castle Butte to the south, and Dinnebito Wash to the west and Route 87 to the east. By 8 A.M., the orders from Window Rock were reversed and occupants of the previously mentioned area were instructed to stay where they were, to avoid public gatherings, fumigate their homes and themselves, not to approach any wild animals or any sick domestic animals, to report any unusual wounds or boils or fever. Also, to burn their dead and to stay in, doors and windows shut, at night. In effect, a quarantine of approximately 2500 square miles. And at night, a siege.
“Just the start.” Paine spread a map. Circles and dates marked every incident concerning the vampires or plague. “Winslow and Flagstaff are only thirty miles outside the area. Wait and see what happens when the plague reaches there.”
“What are these other marks?” Anne asked.
“The X’s are sound trackings of the vampires. The triangles are major bat colonies. Mansion Mesa south, Stephen Butte east, San Francisco Mountain caves west. There are millions of bats in the mountain caves. If the vampires move in there and the fleas spread?”
“What then?”
“You can drop Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico off the map of the United States for a start.”
“We’re dropping them now, we’re getting out.” Youngman returned from pouring the last jerry can of gasoline into the Land Rover. “Once we get past Route 89, there’s a dirt road I know that’ll get us up to the Grand Canyon paths. No one will know we came out of the quarantine.”
“I only promised to take you to the highway,” Paine said.
“You heard the radio. We’d be picked up in a minute on the highway now and stuffed into a ward full of people with plague. That’s no escape. We’re going to the Grand Canyon, all of us.”
“I’m not leaving the desert,” Paine said.
“That’s up to you. We are, and so’s the truck.”
“I need the Rover.”
“Not like we do.”
While the two men argued, Anne walked off by herself and sat beside a withered saguaro. The pulp of the cactus was eaten away, leaving the ribs as open as a cage. Farther on, the iterated S’s of a sidewinder’s track decorated the sand. Beyond was flatness extending to the horizon, which was clear and extraordinarily fine even through the vibration of heat waves. A line so long and unbroken and without any margin, the same line she had concentrated on when she was dying. Dying, she had decided this was the place to die. And the way to die, because she’d lied to Youngman, she’d given up hope of any rescue and being free of that hope, and knowing she’d survived as well and as long as she could alone and without help, she’d reached an unexpected clarity of thought. A clarity of life. Franklin had reached it before his death. It was a sudden gift of the desert, not so much a conscious understanding as an extension of the senses so that she could feel the dry breeze cool within her, see the distant mesas sitting like brown women, be a very part of the desert. It was an absolution from her executioner, this awareness. Perhaps it never was the Indians or the petty ego-satisfaction of volunteerism that had brought her into the desert and to this point. Perhaps it was a lifelong drift towards reality. Because Phoenix was a dream, a false oasis. Youngman wasn’t false, only his aspirations of leaving the desert were. Her visions had been real, seeing him run over the sand, because he was a desert animal and he’d never leave it without killing more than half of himself. If she wanted him, she would have to take him whole. Why had he and she been spared the bats and the plague? Why had the desert done that for them? She scooped up sand and let it run like water over her broken fingers.
Youngman lifted his rifle, levered a bullet into the breech, and aimed at Paine’s head.
“Give me the keys.”
“You’ll have to kill me.”
“To save us, I’d do it. Throw the keys.”
“There
are more lives at stake. Your people, the Navajos, everyone in the desert. And that’s just the start.”
“It’s not the end of the world,” Youngman said. He would have fired at that point, but he was suddenly looking at a memory of Abner. Then Anne interrupted.
“Beside you,” she asked Paine, “who else can stop the bats?”
“No one. There are experts in vampire control in Mexico City, but it would take them a week to organize a team. By then the bats will move to a new cave and the plague will be out of control. It may be out of control now.”
“How?”
“A bullet,” Paine looked at Youngman’s gun, “only kills the person it hits. Every victim, man or animal, bitten by the bats becomes a vector, a spreader of the plague. Ask your friend how fast the plague has spread in a couple days. From a few square miles to a few hundred square miles. Geometrically. The more area it covers, the more the rate of spread accelerates. You can probably imagine what will happen if one human vector reaches a major city or an airport. Or even a motel near the Grand Canyon.”
“Is it possible Youngman or I do have the plague?”
Paine took longer to answer.
“It’s possible.”
“And you know where the bats are.”
“Almost exactly. I’ve been tracking their flight paths for five nights. I know the area of their cave. Of course, they could move to a different cave any time, unless I stop them now.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Youngman said. “You don’t have plague now. We can get to California. We’ll never have to hear about the reservation again. Remember what you told me? We could go anyplace in the world together.”
Anne shook her head.
“I’m staying.”
“You’re going. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know what I’m talking about. For two years I’ve gone around this reservation doing nothing but handing out band-aids and eye salves. That’s next to doing nothing, Youngman, and that was two years of my life. Maybe I did something good for the people, I hope I did. Now you want me to be responsible for letting those people die? To throw away those years? To run away the first time I can really matter? If you want to run, go ahead. But I’m not going with you.”
“I can make you go.” Youngman swung the rifle towards her.
“No. That you can’t do.”
“Paine is crazy.”
“He can stop the bats.”
“Get in the truck.”
Anne said nothing but held his eyes on hers, not fighting his stare because she didn’t have the strength for that. Instead, yielding, letting his eyes go as deep as they dared, until the rifle dropped.
Youngman made a final attempt.
“I’ll trade you. I’ll stay here and wait while he drives you out past the quarantine. Then I’ll help him when he comes back. He may have maps. He doesn’t know the desert.”
“Then that settles it,” Anne said. “We’re all needed. We’ll do it together as a team. If,” she asked Paine, “that’s all right with you?”
“A team?” Paine took the rifle from Youngman. “A team is perfect.”
Maski Canyon was a maze of many canyons, some of eroded Kaibob sandstone with walls gouged and pitted by sand-bearing wind, others of sheer black Hermit shale, others of lava with slick obsidian seams. At one time, the canyon had grass as well and a people, ancestors of the Hopi, who raised corn and grazed goats in this impenetrable natural fasthold. Then, slowly, the wells died and the thin soil dried and blew away and the ancestors disappeared. Anyone lost in this forgotten home was accounted dead by the Hopi, who retreated across the desert to the Black Mesa; by the Navajo, who could find more grass among sand dunes; and by the pahans of Washington, who willingly ceded an outcrop of hell.
Until Landsat. The Landsat satellite was launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on January 2, 1975. Since then, fourteen times a day, the satellite circled the earth measuring the radiation intensity of the ground in 1.1.-acre units. Within its multispectral scanner an oscillating mirror reflected light to detectors which converted the light into electrical voltages. The voltages were in turn converted into number values ranging from 0 to 63. Landsat beamed its data to a Goldstone, California station where the data was recorded on tape and shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Center, where the number values were reconverted back into black and white film, which was then printed through filters into color photographs. The photographs were stored at the Department of the Interior’s Earth Resources Observation Systems Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Although the photographs were costly, they were much in demand by developing countries eager to find signs of mineral deposits, by meteorologists mapping weather patterns, by civil engineers responsible for highway planning, and especially by petroleum companies. A group of such companies based in Houston noticed that one photograph of generally oil-dry Arizona displayed an almost insignificant and inexplicable leap in radiation intensity. Night photographs of the area, a stretch of the Painted Desert held jointly by the Navajo and Hopi tribes, showed an even sharper “dot” of radiation. Contact was made with the more progressive Navajos and helicopters were loaned for purposes of closer aerial study with infrared film. The cause of the radiation leap, they found, was not radiation at all but fire, a fire in a stark series of canyons that looked from the air like interlocked teeth, canyons with no trees or anything else to burn. Except oil. From deep underneath the surface, from an unsuspected oil pool, there was a seep. At some time, lightning had struck the seep and set it on fire, a fire that could have been burning for hundreds of years without anyone knowing. The burning seep was unusable, but where there was one there were likely to be others and there was sure to be oil.
From a distance of a mile, in the desert’s midday, Maski Canyon looked like the remains of an enormous creature that had fallen, burning, to earth. Instead of the flat top of a mesa, angular crags jutted at the sky. Through a shroud of dark lava broke seams of rust-red Supai sandstone and streaks of dull mica. There was no vegetation and, except for a flock of carrion crows, no life.
“Stop,” Youngman said.
The Land Rover rolled to a halt.
No reflection and no shadow, Paine thought as he stepped out of the truck. As if the canyon absorbed all light or cancelled it out.
Youngman climbed down, staring at the cliffs ahead. In a way, he was very amused. But Paine was heading in this direction when Youngman ran him down the day before. Youngman should have guessed.
“You know these canyons?” Paine asked him.
“He does.” Anne joined them. “All the Hopis do.”
“Give me your glasses,” Youngman told Paine.
Paine gave Youngman the binoculars and the deputy focused on the face of the mesa, sweeping slowly from left to right.
“It has religious significance,” Anne said. “I didn’t know the place actually existed at all.”
“Superstitions,” Youngman cut her off. “Ignorant witch stories. Nothing to concern you. You say the bats are up there?”
Paine pointed to a ragged gap in the cliffs.
“They fly through there. If we can get the truck up that far, we can go the rest of the way on foot.”
Youngman studied the walls of the gap and let the field glasses fall slowly to the base of the mesa, to a stripe of brick-red sandstone where he found what he had been searching for, a black double spiral about ten feet across and twenty feet above the ground.
“There must be a thousand caves up there, Paine. How are we going to find the right one?”
“They’ll lead us to it once we get the truck up—” Paine became aware of Anne’s concentration on Youngman. “Is there something about the canyon I should know?”
“You worry about the bats.” Youngman handed back the glasses. “I’ll handle the rest. What about the truck?”
“Okay.” Paine opened a map on the Rover’s hood. “According to this aerial survey Chee gave me�
�”
“You got it from Chee? Interesting,” Youngman remarked.
“There is a path wide enough for a truck in this sector.”
Youngman glanced at the map and back at the canyon. “Not a path. That’s a stream of volcanic dust. You’ll sink up to your windshield.”
“Well, the only other map I have is a satellite photo.”
“Then bring it out. Let’s see it,” Youngman said when Paine hesitated.
Paine did as Youngman said, laying out the yardwide acetate satellite photo on the ground. Hues of computer-emphasized color seemed to melt into the sand.
“These are hard to interpret,” Paine began.
Youngman turned the photo around.
“Sun here,” he held a finger up. “Sandstone canyons are the pink blotches. Shale is orange, lava collected the most heat so it’s red. These darker spots are exposed obsidian.” Youngman went on for a minute translating the shades of color into ridges, canyons, cooler dry wells, the turquoise fields. “This dot is the burning oil. I spent a year looking at this kind of photo, except they were taken by reconnaissance planes. We always looked for burning oil.” He ran his finger along the eastern edge of the canyons. “There are two ways up to the ridge. Maybe both blocked, maybe one. You and Anne take the truck half a mile west along the base of the canyon, you’ll find a break. Go slow. The only danger is volcano dust on your way but you don’t want to get trapped. I’ll go east. There’s a faster way there, but it’s usually blocked by rocks.”
“She was right,” Paine said. “We do make a good team.”
Youngman said nothing but waited for Paine and Anne to get into the Rover.
“I wish you’d come with us,” Anne said.
“Later.”
He waited until the Rover grew small along the western base of the canyon and then he began running east, towards the double spiral on the sandstone.
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