DEAD SILVER
By Max Florschutz
Text copyright © 2014 Max Florschutz
All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.
Cover artwork by Josh Dahle
Edited by Josh Leavitt
Version 2.0 November 2016
This one really is for the fans. You guys are awesome!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Finale
Chapter 1
I’m not an adventurer, I reminded myself as another sun-faded mileage marker flew by my Land Rover. The air-conditioning was set at max, burning through extra fuel with every passing mile as my old car struggled to overcome the baking heat from both the overhead sun and the cracked pavement beneath it. But even at full power, I still felt a little less comfortable than I normally would have, not warm enough to sweat, but too warm to be completely at ease. I’m not an adventurer.
I had to remind myself of that fact because at the moment, my life was starting to feel like an adventure. I was further from home than I’d ever been, driving through the deserts of the American Southwest on my way to some small city in the middle of southern New Mexico, all so I could help a friend of mine solve an animal control problem. I was tired, hungry, and I knew I smelled after having been crammed in my vehicle for the last few days, but I could deal with it. It was no worse than camping in the New England woods after all. Except that the smell was a bit different.
But I wasn’t in my house in New England or even in my backyard tending to my garden, using my innate talents to coax the plants to make bigger and better produce. No, I was sitting in a Land Rover heading down the longest, straightest road I’d ever driven with the hot sun beating down around me. No wonder I felt like some sort of adventurer. For me, this was uncharted territory.
And the life. I could feel it all around me: A fainter presence than at home, but there nonetheless. Some of it was so different it was almost alien, nothing like the creatures and plants I was used to interacting with. It was sparse, more spread out, but at the same time vibrant and active, as if the plants and animals were trying to match their stone surroundings in color and durability. There was life out there unlike anything I’d ever touched before. In fact, if what Rocke had told me over the phone turned out to be correct, there was life out there that no one had ever touched.
Which was why I was heading down a nearly featureless highway in the August heat in my battered old Land Rover, staff at my side, and looking for a small city called Silver Dreams. According to the story Rocke had told me, the place was aptly named. A couple of families who’d thought for certain that they’d found a silver vein that was going to make them all rich had settled it back in the 1800s, and they’d originally called it the somewhat overdone “Silver Springs.” Instead, the vein had proven to be almost as empty as the settlers were hopeful, but they’d stuck with it and found just enough silver to bring around three-thousand people or so to the town. But the name “Silver Springs” had quickly faded into “Silver Dreams,” once most of the townspeople realized that their dreams of hitting it big were just that: Dreams. There was still just enough silver at the mine to keep the town from truly drying up, so the place had persisted, despite being in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe “middle of nowhere” is being generous, I thought as I passed another mile marker. I could see a faint line ahead of me on the horizon, a distant spot that was growing with each passing moment into what was probably the start of the valley I’d found earlier on the map. At least I hoped it was the start of the valley. I’d already been stuck in my car for the last two days, and I was past ready to get out and stretch my legs a little. Once again, I found myself wishing that I could have flown, but that hadn’t been an option for me since the last time I’d tried. The staff I’d owned at the time, I’d discovered, was considered a “possible weapon” by some overzealous TSA agents, and rather than let me depart the airport in peace, they’d decided to snap my staff in two to avoid “any possible dangers.” While the aftereffects hadn’t been any worse for me than a nasty stomach flu, I’d taken the warning to heart. As soon as I’d gotten my hands on another staff, I’d sworn to never take another airline flight as long as I lived.
I shifted in my seat as my Rover continued onward, dutifully pushing towards the horizon. A quick glance at my watch showed that I’d been on the road for almost seven hours since that morning. Unless I’d missed a turn somewhere along the way—which was highly unlikely, as there had only been a few real options since I’d started—I’d be reaching Silver Dreams in another hour. I let out a sigh as I turned to look out the window. It couldn’t come soon enough. A chance to stretch my legs, walk around for a bit, and see what nature had to offer while I was somewhere completely new.
It was all a little exciting, and I had to remind myself once more that I wasn’t on some sort of adventure. What I was walking into was serious, and I’d need to treat it as such. Well … sort of serious.
The trip hadn’t started out that way. A few days earlier, I’d been sitting on my porch, feet propped up on the railing and a new paperback clutched in my large hands, when my phone had started ringing. As usual, I let it ring once or twice before reaching for it, a trick I’d learned early on that made me seem busier than I usually was.
“Hawke’s Humane Pest Control Services,” I said as I picked up the phone. “An Unusual solution to the usual problems.”
“Ha!” a familiar voice on the other end of the line said. “Nice catchphrase. You come up with that yourself?” For a moment I was stunned by surprise, but then my mouth caught up with my amazement.
“Jacob Rocke?” I asked, dropping my feet from the porch and leaning forward. “Is that you?”
“You’d better believe it, Hawke,” Rocke said. There was no mistaking the no-nonsense tone to his voice, or the dry, sarcastic hint of insolence that seemed to exude from the phone. It was him all right.
I’d run into Jacob Rocke twice before: Once tracking down a missing child in the woods, and once when he’d come to me looking for information to help him track down a ghostly wolf. The first had been a simple enough excursion. Each of us had been hired by one of the missing girl’s separated parents and had run into each other in the woods. We’d pooled our talents, and between our varied skill sets, had managed to track the girl down as well as figure out why she’d disappeared in the first place.
The second time we’d met had been nearly two years later, and the situation then hadn’t been nearly as simple as our first meeting. Rocke was a “spook,” a slang title given to private investigators or officials who worked under license for the government agency that monitored Unusuals in the United States. He was one of the few people I’d met who’d actually lived up to the interpretation of that name: Gone the moment you looked away, already on to his next job. It wasn’t that he was anti-social, exactly. He’d been friendly enough during the brief time we’d worked together, but he was focused on his work before all else. I’d even given him some flack over it when he’d shown up looking for my help with the ghost wolf.
Then again, after getting caught up in his case and seeing exactly what sort of stuff he dealt with on a
regular basis, I’d come to understood his focus on his work. There was no telling what kind of damage the necromancer we’d tracked down might have done if Rocke hadn’t gotten involved, but she likely would have killed several more people at the very least. Rocke’s view of the world wasn’t one I wanted to have, but I could respect it.
“So,” I said as soon as I’d recovered somewhat. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call? Work? Or are you calling just to catch up?”
“What? Can’t it be both?” Rocke asked from the other end of the line.
“I don’t know,” I said, chuckling. “Can it?”
“Heh,” Rocke said. “Feel like eating your words? Because in this, it is both. How’s the weather up there? Nice?”
“I wouldn’t complain,” I said, eyeing the clear blue sky from under the edge of my porch’s overhang. “It’s a little humid, but that’s about it.”
“Feel like trying somewhere dry?”
“Maybe,” I said, a bit of hesitation coming into my voice. “This isn’t going to end with me taking on some sort of necrotic horror hand-to-hand again, is it?”
“Oh, come on,” Rocke said, stressing his voice so strongly I could almost hear his eyes roll. “You had an axe. I’d hardly call that ‘hand-to-hand.’ And no, this job wouldn’t.”
“So it is a job,” I said, putting a little satisfaction into my voice, although feeling a little disappointed—as well as a little irate—at the same time.
“And something you’ll find interesting,” Rocke said. “I promise you, it’s not like the last job.”
“All right, so what is it, then?” I asked, putting my feet back up on the railing and opening my paperback up. I wasn’t exactly feeling appreciated so far, but I wasn’t about to hang up on him, either. I figured I could read my book, hear him out, and then politely decline.
“Well, I’m in New Mexico—” he started.
“New Mexico?” I asked. “Desert, hot, New Mexico?”
“Yeah,” he said. “This little place called Silver Dreams—”
“Uh-huh,” I said, only half-listening as I flipped past a title page.
“—and they’ve got an interesting wildlife problem down here.” I nodded reflexively as I rifled through the paperback’s pages for my spot, the cheap paper making a faint rasp against the thick calluses on my hand.
“A lot of the people down here have farm animals, mostly as a hobby,” Rocke continued, oblivious to the fact that I was splitting my attention. “And they called me up because some of them have been turning up dead.”
“Dead. Sounds like your kind of case,” I said as I searched for my place.
“Not quite,” he said, and I could just hear a faint smugness in his voice. “In fact, this one’s more up your alley.”
“Oh? And why’s that?” I asked.
“Because I only know of one thing that hunts down farm animals and sucks their blood dry,” Rocke said.
I snapped my eyes away from my book, every bit of my attention focused on his words.
“And I’m betting,” he continued, “that you’d be very interested in helping me catch a legendary chupacabra.”
I tossed my book to one side, not even caring that it missed the small end table next to me and instead went skidding across the bare wood of the porch. Rocke was right. I was eating my words, along with my disinterest and any unkind thoughts I’d had about him in the last minute or so. And I was perfectly content to chew and swallow if he was telling me the truth.
“You’re sure?” I asked, leaning forward in my seat. “A chupacabra? A legitimate chupacabra?”
“No joke,” Rocke said, his voice as light as I’d ever heard it. “You know that there’s still that fifty-thousand dollar reward for anyone who can catch one, right?”
I knew it. I’d been the one who’d told him about it, back when we’d first met. It had been on the news at the time. A fifty thousand dollar reward to be the first one to catch a live chupacabra so it could be studied? A rash of people had rushed to the Southwest hoping to catch the world’s first live specimen. But no one ever caught anything, and public interest had moved on to the next big thing.
But the prize was still out there.
“Let me make sure I’m hearing this right, alright?” I said, clearing my head of momentary flights of fancy. “You’ve got the first chupacabra case in years, and you want me to come help you catch it?”
“Got it in one,” Rocke said. “I figure I owe you for that mess with Dorati, even if I was paying you for it. You’re always telling me to take a break from work, and I can’t get much more of a break than trying to catch a chupacabra the middle of a desert.”
“Except that you’re getting paid to do it,” I pointed out.
“So?” Rocke said. “It’s still a vacation compared to anything else. But when I realized what I was looking at, I figured I’d give you a ring, see if you felt like pitching in. You did make a pretty solid case for why you’d have a better shot at finding it than anyone else.” Apparently my enthusiasm for the case had left more of an impression than I’d thought.
“You’re sure it’s a chupacabra?” I asked, the memory of his last “simple job” coming to mind. “No vampires?”
Rocke let out a laugh. “Are you kidding, Hawke? In New Mexico? Give me some credit. It’s killed a dog and a goat so far, and I even got a picture of it.”
That clinched it for me. I took a quick look around the front porch. I could afford to take a week or so off, couldn’t I? It wasn’t like I had any big jobs lined up, and as long as I left a stern warning with the local wildlife before I left, they’d probably keep out of my garden.
Even if the chupacabra turned out to be a less substantial event than Rocke hoped—not that I didn’t trust his word, but we would hardly be the first to try and catch one—a vacation wouldn’t be a bad idea. My job was hardly stressful, but I hadn’t left New England since I’d returned from college. Why not spend some of the extra cash I had laying around and take a drive across the US?
“So, are you in?” Rocke’s voice pulled me away from my thoughts. I’d forgotten how to-the-point he was.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning back in my seat, already planning what I’d need to do before I left. “I can leave by tomorrow morning. It’ll take me two or three days to get there, but I can do it.”
“Excellent,” Rocke said. “I’ll see you then.”
Despite the relatively little amount of preparation that I actually had to perform, I had stayed true to my initial impressions and left early the next morning, coaxing my Land Rover out onto the freeway and heading west with the rising sun at my back. I’d left some memorable warnings with the local wildlife and gotten some amused responses in return. Something told me I’d probably be missing some corn, at the very least, when I returned.
And now, two days later, it appeared that I hadn’t gotten lost on my journey after all. The hazy break I’d seen on the horizon was opening up into a massive valley nestled between several mesas. I slowed my Land Rover as the road began to turn and dip, beginning its long, snakelike descent down into the center of the valley, where a brown, sprawling smudge of loosely connected buildings marked what I hoped was Silver Dreams.
* * *
It wasn’t hard to find the motel that Rocke was staying at. Although I’d called and gotten the name from him the day before, he’d warned me that I wouldn’t have to look hard to find it. As soon as I saw the place, I understood that he hadn’t been joking.
The Last Chance looked about as cliché as its name sounded. It was a long, low, squat building that looked like it had been built in the fifties, from the angled roof overhang shading the windows to the half-buried tires used as parking barriers. It was also—if its proud billboard was to be believed—the only motel for fifty miles. True or not, the attitude might have had something to do with the generally less-than-appealing state of the place. As I pulled into the parking lot, gravel crunching beneath the Rover’s tires, I ran m
y eyes over the building proper, taking in the faded, patchwork paint peeling away from the walls, the weeds growing in the parking lot, and the dusty, dirty build-up on the windows.
Still, Rocke’s battered Subaru sat in the lot. This was the place I’d been looking for, however questionable it appeared. I brought my Rover to a stop and climbed out, letting loose a sigh of relief as blood rushed into my legs. After so many hours sitting in the car, even standing was an act of bliss. And even though I felt like I’d stepped into an oven, I considered leaving my air-conditioned Rover more than a welcome trade-off for the ability to stretch my six-foot–seven-inch frame.
I spent a moment stretching my arms and legs while walking back and forth across the gravel lot, mostly just to relish the feeling of being free once again. But after a minute or two I could already feel myself starting to sweat under the scorching heat, and I decided to go ahead and check in. I debated locking my Rover, but a quick look at the hundreds of feet of open desert in all directions overruled my more habitual inclinations.
The motel lobby was almost its own structure, connected to the lower portion of the motel, but without any sign that it there was a means to travel from one portion to the other without heading outside. I climbed up the wooden steps to the front door, running my hand along the rough wooden railing and feeling the cracks in the sun-baked wood. The wood creaked under my weight, and I briefly wondered if I was going to be the lucky customer who ended up putting his foot through a step.
Despite the questionable noises it made, the porch held, and I smiled as I pulled the door open. A blast of cool air rushed over me, so chilled that I almost shivered. I stepped into the lobby, my eyes slowly adjusting to the relative dimness of the interior after the harsh, bright sunlight of the outside world. Maybe they were saving on lighting, to afford the air conditioning that kept the place so cool.
Once my eyes had adjusted to the low light I saw that the inside of the motel, in sharp contrast to the outside, was actually pretty nice, if a little small. A bored-looking young man in his twenties sat behind the counter, his attention fixated on a laptop that wasn’t entirely visible from my angle, a large pair of headphones covering his ears. The other half of the room was occupied by the usual motel decor: Two large chairs and a coffee table covered in old magazines. I’d always suspected that most places that had magazines sitting on a table in their waiting areas had collected their reading material by checking around at old libraries to see what was being thrown out, and The Last Chance’s meager collection didn’t do much to dispute that idea.
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