Ancient Enemy Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Lukens, Mark

  “God, this is going to be like a needle in a haystack,” Palmer said, wiping a hand through his close-cropped hair.

  “Like I said, I’m going to have my people ask around. Maybe someone will talk eventually.” Begay glanced back through the cold darkness to make sure Klein wasn’t coming their way, and then he looked back at Palmer. “I’m more interested in why a woman and a fugitive would risk everything to come back down here to find a shaman.”

  Palmer didn’t say anything.

  “That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

  Of course it did, but Palmer didn’t admit it.

  “You still don’t think there are some … some unexplainable things going on here?” Begay asked.

  Palmer stared at Begay and then a revelation hit him suddenly. He began to wonder if Begay really knew where Joe Blackhorn lived. He began to wonder if Begay knew someone who knew that information. He began to wonder if Begay really believed in all of this supernatural mumbo-jumbo. He began to wonder if Begay was going to go after Stella and David by himself tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 51

  Navajo Reservation

  The headlights knifed into the cold darkness, barely lighting their way as Cole drove down the rough trail across the hard-packed dirt, following the two ruts in the frozen ground. At least their stolen pickup truck was suitable for this kind of travel with its large knobby tires, high clearance, and tough suspension. Even though the suspension was tough, it wasn’t comfortable—this definitely wasn’t a Lincoln Continental they were traveling in. Each bump and dip rocked the pickup, the frame of the truck creaking and squealing, the cab shaking, the beams of lights from the headlights bouncing around in the darkness in front of them.

  Cole gripped the steering wheel tightly, practically wrestling with it as it bucked in his hands. He drove agonizingly slow down the trail, afraid that one false move might bury a tire or, even worse, snap an axle.

  Stella looked out at the darkness all around them. It had gotten dark hours ago. The trip down the lonely roads had taken such a long time, but once they got to this trail it was even worse. It seemed like they were traveling forever into the darkness.

  Along the way, Stella had seen the shining eyes of the desert animals staring back at them from the darkness. She’d also heard the lonesome howls out there in the distance. It would only be a matter of time before those animals caught up to their truck and trotted alongside of it, the animals gathering, waiting to attack as one.

  “How much longer do you think?” Stella asked Cole. She turned around and glanced back at David to see if he was asleep. But he was wide awake. Who could sleep in this rocking truck anyway?

  David gave her a wan smile.

  “I don’t know,” Cole said. “Maybe you should check the map again.”

  Stella turned back around and stared out the windshield. She had checked the hand drawn map Billy had given her several times now. She was sure Cole was going to suggest that her “friend” Billy had given them a fake map to either play a joke on them or lure them out into the middle of nowhere and get them stuck out here.

  She didn’t believe that. She couldn’t explain why she trusted Billy, but she did. It felt like he realized the seriousness of this situation and he wouldn’t do all of what he’d done just to play a joke on them. If he’d meant them harm, he could’ve done that when they had blocked the road.

  “How’s the gas?” Stella asked.

  Cole looked down at the gauges in the instrument panel. He scrunched his face slightly like something was bothering him.

  “What is it?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  “These gauges … their kind of going crazy.”

  Just then the headlights went out, plunging them into complete darkness. A split second later the truck hit a deep rut that sent them up into the air and crashing back down to the ground, like a boat rocking on a wave. The force slung all of them forward against their seatbelts and then rocked them back down to their seats.

  “Shit!” Cole yelled as the headlights came back on brighter than ever, then dulled back down to their regular brightness.

  But the truck had slowed down almost to a crawl. Cole pressed the gas pedal down and the back tires spun in the dirt.

  Stella grabbed at the armrest on the passenger door with one hand and the center console with her other hand, bracing herself for a lurch forward if the truck suddenly jerked free from the rut they were stuck in. “What happened?”

  “Tire,” Cole said as he fought to control the steering wheel jumping in his hands.

  Stella looked into the back seat at David. He stared back at her with wide eyes. “It’s okay,” she told him.

  But it wasn’t okay. How many times had she said that to David? How many times had she told him that everything was okay? How many times had she lied to him now?

  Cole stopped the truck, but he kept the motor running.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him again, feeling the panic building up inside of her. “What’s wrong with the tire?” She watched him as he stared at the instrument panel on the dashboard.

  “I think one of the front tires came off the rim,” he said as he studied the instrument panel. It reminded Stella of when he had jumped into the driver’s seat of her Suburban, when he and his bank robbery buddies had carjacked her truck on the snowy road in Colorado.

  “The rim’s probably bent,” Cole said in a monotone voice, his hands still gripping the steering wheel.

  “So we’re stuck?” Stella asked, even though the answer seemed rather apparent.

  “Yeah,” Cole answered, his voice practically a whisper.

  “Can’t we drive on a flat tire?” she asked. She felt the panic really beginning to mount now. “We’ve got to be close to Blackhorn’s property now. Maybe only a few miles away. Can’t we push the truck a little farther … as much as we can?”

  Cole still hadn’t looked at Stella. His eyes were on the headlight beams shooting out into the darkness in front of them. “Normally we could try to drive as far as possible, but these ruts are too deep. This road is too bad.”

  We could try, Stella almost said, but she could tell Cole had more to say.

  “The tire and rim are the least of our problems right now,” Cole told her and finally looked at her. Then he looked back at the gauges on the dashboard. “The truck’s starting to run hot. The engine’s going to overheat soon.”

  “Well, let’s drive as far as we can before it seizes up. Let’s get as far as we can.”

  Cole still hadn’t put the truck back into drive. The motor was rumbling, but it was also sputtering like the engine was misfiring.

  Stella looked out the windshield at the headlight beams and saw that they were flickering badly now, about to go out.

  “Alternator light’s on, too,” Cole said, his voice still monotone like a doctor delivering a terrible diagnosis. “It’s like all the systems are shutting down at the same time.”

  Stella didn’t have to ask how or why that was happening. She knew the Ancient Enemy was doing it somehow, just like it had drained all the batteries of the vehicles and killed their phones, radios, and the generators at the dig site. The Ancient Enemy seemed to have some kind of power over electricity … maybe that’s how it operated dead people’s brains and nervous systems, through electrical power. It had drained the battery of her Suburban at the dig site, but then somehow David had brought it back to life enough for them to escape, even though he probably wasn’t aware of how he’d done it. When they got to the cabin, the Ancient Enemy probably destroyed the electrical systems of her Suburban and Tom Gordon’s pickup. But then it had also beaten the engines of both vehicles to pieces with an ax so David couldn’t fix them.

  That thing out there could’ve disabled their truck at any time before, but it chose this moment now to strand them out here. It seemed to have been hesitant for some time now, like it had been waiting for the right time to attack … and that time was now.

  A flash o
f movement streaked across the dimming splash of light from their headlights—a coyote darted in front of their truck, disappearing back into the darkness.

  Stella stifled a scream, her body tensing up, frozen for a moment.

  “I saw it,” Cole said in a low voice.

  Their pickup truck’s engine was really sputtering now … dying. The headlight beams were fading even more.

  “I’m scared,” David said in a low voice from the back seat.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Stella said, telling David that well-worn lie again. She needed to start telling David the truth, and it needed to start right now.

  She turned around in her seat and stared at David. “No, I’m sorry, David. We’re not okay. That thing out there has stopped our truck. And now it’s coming for us. And you’re the only one who can fight it. You’re the only one who can stop it.”

  David didn’t look so sure about that.

  “You have to find the power inside of you. You’ve done it before … you can do it again.”

  David just nodded, but he seemed close to tears.

  Stella hated yelling at David, but the situation was critical now. The Ancient Enemy had attacked them at the Mountainside Inn, but that was over twenty-four hours ago. It had laid low for a while, waiting for the right time to strike. It had been hesitant, Stella was sure of that, but now it was ready and it had finally struck, disabling their vehicle. And now there wasn’t a group of dead people coming towards their vehicle in the darkness … but there were plenty of animals out there.

  Stella turned back around in the passenger seat, looking out the windshield again. “What are we going to do now?” she asked Cole.

  He sighed. “We could wait until the morning and then walk.”

  “Those animals out there are going to attack soon.”

  “They can’t get in here,” Cole said. “And at least in the daytime we can see them to shoot at them. If we try to walk at night then they’ll be on us before we ever see them coming.”

  As if answering Cole, a howl from a coyote pierced the night.

  And then another howl.

  And another.

  We’ll freeze to death if we wait in here too long, Stella thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.

  The pickup truck was still in park, still rumbling and chugging. The heater was already blowing cold air. The radio was reduced to static. Their cell phone had lost any signal hours ago. The dials of the speedometer, alternator gauge, and gas gauge were spinning wildly back and forth.

  Stella looked back out the windshield and her breath stopped for a moment, her body frozen with fear, her skin crawling with dread.

  “I see it,” Cole whispered, his words barely heard over the sputtering motor.

  In the flickering light of the headlights a horde of snakes, spiders, and scorpions traveled across the two ruts in a wide line like a group of pedestrians crossing a busy city intersection.

  “Those spiders and scorpions,” Stella said, fighting for her breath. “They’ll be able to get inside the truck, won’t they?”

  CHAPTER 52

  Navajo Reservation

  “Those spiders and scorpions will be able to get in here!” Stella said again, her voice squealing in panic.

  Cole only nodded, swallowing hard, too shocked to speak for a moment.

  Stella had seen Cole afraid many times already in the past few days. She’d seen his shock as the reanimated dead attacked them at the cabin, but this seemed to be a new level of trauma for him, a new depth of fear, some subconscious phobia finally tapped.

  Stella looked back out through the windshield at the impossible sight. There were hundreds of those creepy-crawly creatures traveling across the ruts in the dirt right in front of their truck in an orderly fashion. And there were probably thousands and thousands more out there in the darkness, all of them summoned from the square miles of desert all around them by the Ancient Enemy. She had worked out here in these deserts for years now; she knew how many snakes and spiders there were.

  “They’re going to get inside the truck,” Stella said again, her voice lower this time. “They’re going to get in here and … and attack one of us … and the other one is going to have to watch that person die.” She could imagine her or Cole covered with tarantulas and scorpions until that person panicked enough to bolt outside where the coils of snakes would be waiting, their rattles shaking in unison like the buzzing of cicadas.

  No, this was too much.

  “David,” Stella said, turning around to look at him.

  He was crying. He looked miserable. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You have to fight it,” she told him. She was holding on to the back of her seat and staring at the child who watched her with hopelessness in his dark eyes. She felt the tears slipping out of her own eyes. “You have to try.”

  Just then the cab of their pickup truck was lit up with a bright light.

  “Headlights!” Cole said, pointing out the windshield.

  Stella turned back around and plopped back down in the passenger seat.

  A vehicle was speeding towards them down the rutted trail, its headlights washing their vehicle in light.

  The lines of snakes, spiders, and scorpions scattered, trying to crawl out of the way of the oncoming truck and rush back into the darkness, but the truck ran many of them over.

  The truck slowed down and pulled right up to the front of their truck so that the two trucks were pointed grill to grill, with only a few feet between them. The headlights dimmed down from the high beams to low beams. The truck looked a lot like the pickup truck they were in, only older and more beat up. The interior light flicked on and an old Navajo sat in the driver’s seat. He rolled down the window a little and stuck his arm out into the night, gesturing wildly at them to get into his truck.

  “That must be Blackhorn,” Cole said, already reaching for the doorhandle of the driver’s door. “We gotta go!”

  “We should all go together,” Stella said. “All of us from the same side.”

  “Wait,” David said from the back seat.

  Stella was stunned to hear David speak, and she was also surprised at the sound of his voice, it seemed a little stronger than it had ever been before.

  They both turned around to look at David. The other truck’s headlights bathed David in light.

  “What is it, David?” Stella asked.

  “Let me go first,” he said.

  Stella was already shaking her head no, ready to dismiss that idea.

  “I think he’s right,” Cole said.

  “I don’t want him going out there first,” Stella said.

  Cole glanced out the windshield at the truck that was so close to them. “Look,” he said, pointing at the truck.

  Stella saw that there were already several tarantulas and scorpions clinging to the grill of the truck, crawling up the metal quickly like ants on a mission. One particularly large tarantula clung to one of the headlights, blocking out the light a little.

  Stella looked out her passenger window down at the ground, which was lit up from the truck’s headlights, revealing a living carpet of snakes, spiders, scorpions, desert rats, and a vast assortment of insects.

  “Blackhorn’s not going to wait there forever!” Cole said. “If we don’t do something soon his truck is going to be covered in those spiders and scorpions. He’ll have to leave.”

  David jumped over the back of the front seat, crawling into the front.

  “Out the driver’s side,” Cole told David as he scooted over to the middle and let David crawl into the driver’s seat on the other side of him. “That’s the shortest way to the passenger side of Blackhorn’s truck.”

  Stella didn’t object this time; she knew David and Cole were right, even though she didn’t like the thought of David going out there first.

  “You can do this,” Cole told David as he opened up the driver’s door. Their truck had already stalled and the headlights were out. The keys hung
uselessly in the ignition.

  David didn’t answer Cole. He didn’t turn around to look at either one of them. He took a deep breath and stuck his foot out into the space, lowering it down towards the dirt.

  The critters scurried away from his foot, crawling back into the darkness like David’s foot was a magnet repelling smaller magnets.

  “They’re backing away,” Cole said. He glanced back at Stella with an insane smile of disbelief on his face. “He’s making them back away!”

  David stepped down onto the dirt beside the truck. The spiders and snakes crawled back into the darkness, keeping ten to twelve feet away, like there was an invisible barrier that they were unwilling to cross.

  “Come on,” David said to Cole and Stella without looking at them.

  Cole got out of the truck right behind David, and Stella got out behind him. She stood there huddled together with Cole and David.

  “We all walk slowly towards the truck,” Cole said. “We stay together.”

  They walked slowly and Stella watched the hordes of animals back away even farther into the darkness.

  The spiders and scorpions were already falling off of Joe Blackhorn’s truck and dropping to the dirt and then scurrying away.

  They were going to make it, Stella thought as they inched closer to the waiting pickup truck.

  A coyote howled from the darkness. Then another one. These howls seemed angry. Snakes hissed all around them and their rattles buzzed in the cold night air.

  “Almost there,” Cole said.

  Stella kept her hands on Cole’s back, just like she’d done when they’d been on the snowmobile. And David was in between them, just like on the snowmobile, but he was still enough protection to keep the animals driven back.

  They got to the passenger door. Cole opened it. “You first, Stella,” he said.

  She clamored inside the truck into the back seat; Blackhorn’s pickup had a king cab and a back seat like the pickup they’d just been in, only this one didn’t have all the clutter that the other one did.