by Win Blevins
Clarita reminded them that the mine would be up toward the canyon rim, not out on the flat. The upshot of this was that they weren’t driving into the canyon. They were going to check out the mesas above, as directed by Ed, yes, by Ed, find the road to it, and make a guerilla attack.
Some Scots warriors, according to Grandpa’s stories, turned into berserkers. Red quietly decided that, when the time came, he would do exactly that.
Before noon they got within distant sight of what both the map and GPS said was Shaughnessy. Anonymous Source, let that be the one with the Kravins, the loot, and Damon.
They found a small piece of shade for lunch. No one cared as much about the food as the gallon bottles of water Jolo had provided, still half-frozen.
Zahnie went back to her maps and GPS. Gianni sat off to himself. Winsonfred asked for a hand up a boulder, saying he needed to commune with Ed. He didn’t say whether their two-way reception was good. Red paced, kept a wary eye on Gianni, watched the old man, and scanned the skies for buzzards. He saw dozens, but not one made wigwag signals, or whatever passed for language with Ed.
In a few minutes Winsonfred said, “Ed’s found them. He’s ready to go.” Zahnie took the wheel.
* * *
If he was really there, Ed did not flap along in front of the Bronco. Winsonfred kept his eyes mostly closed and paid hot attention to something no one else could see or hear. Red stopped watching the buzzards. No offense, Ed, but you all look alike to me.
From time to time Winsonfred would say to Zahnie, “Over there,” or, “Toward that knob,” or, “The other side of that wash and follow it.” Once he said, “Ed is really frustrated with us. The ground is such an awkward way to travel.”
And then, lo and behold, they came to a dirt track. It was not on any map, just one of the thousands scratched across this wild country, made by someone who simply went back and forth. It was pretty decent, looked well used. Later they would see that it had been worked on recently. “This is the way,” Winsonfred said.
“Then why the hell didn’t he put us on the road to start with?” snapped Zahnie.
Winsonfred shrugged. “Maybe it comes in from the north, in Canyonlands.”
Zahnie braked to a stop in the middle of it. Everyone got out for no reason Red could see and peered around. “It leads over the rim to the mine,” said Winsonfred.
Without a word, unanimously, they jumped back in and got the hell off that road. Zahnie slid them to a stop behind some giant boulders and everyone piled out again.
“Sheesh.” Winsonfred wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
They heaved breath in and out. They’d had a hairy escape.
Sure, there had to be a scratched-out road. When Kravin was developing the claim, he had to get men and equipment in there. Now he had to get the stake-bed truck in and out with the artifacts.
“Wouldn’t that be an ugly finale?” said Zahnie. “Meet them bumper to bumper on the road and shoot it out?”
“A blue-painted heliwheeler,” Gianni said, smiling. Red wondered what was behind that smile that could be trusted.
“What now?” asked Zahnie.
Gianni said, “See where the road goes.”
“Terminates,” Red put in.
Winsonfred shook his head and grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Red challenged him.
“All of you,” he enunciated, “want to live. I’m kind of hoping to die today.”
“Not a chance,” Red growled.
“I wish there was,” Winsonfred said. “But I probably can’t do the dangerous stuff.”
“You’re right, no chance,” said Zahnie.
After consultation they followed parallel to the road from as far away as they could and still keep an eye on it, creeping cross-country over some very rough ground and being careful not to get stuck in the sand. Finding a route was tricky. Sometimes they got out and glassed ahead, then glassed the road. Through the binoculars they got a sense of where they were going. With the GPS Zahnie pinpointed them on a large topo map. The rim of Shaughnessy was still over a mile away. And from there on?
“Ed have any more ideas?” Red asked Winsonfred.
“He gave us the road,” said the old man. “He probably figures we’re smart enough to follow it. He’s got buzzard things to do.”
“Wait!” exclaimed Zahnie. She was glassing the road. She thrust the binoculars at Red. “Tell me exactly what you see.”
He spotted it immediately. A stake-bed truck, crawling along the road, headed out. “Same thing as you see. I can’t tell…” He handed the binocs back to Zahnie. “How many people you see inside it?”
She studied the silhouettes. “Old man driver, passenger, and another passenger, looks like big Emery, riding on the back of the truck with a few crates.”
“Damon?”
Big, beefy guys, no skinny teenagers. “They’ll never let him leave. But maybe they’re not done using him yet. We gotta go!” She jumped into the Bronco and gunned the engine.
“After we make sure they’re gone,” Red said, walking away. He climbed a boulder and fixed on the vehicle. It drew even and eventually sputtered out of sight.
Red breathed to himself, The time is now.
He leapt down off the boulder, jumped into the car, and gave Zahnie a quick squeeze. “Let’s move!”
* * *
The road wound across slickrock and through red sand to the rim of a huge, gaping gouge in the earth. Zahnie checked her GPS and confirmed, “Shaughnessy.”
Red wanted to get in and out of the monster’s mouth very quickly—with Damon in the backseat.
Not that anyone said a word about Damon. Was he left to guard the site? Left trussed up? Or left like James Nielsen? Or stuck into a shallow grave?
Zahnie drove grim faced.
If Damon was still there, surely he would come back with them. Surely he wouldn’t hold them at gunpoint until his accomplices came back? Surely he wouldn’t help the Kravins kill his mother and friends? Surely there were no certainties. Red’s skin puckered.
He glanced back over his shoulder, uneasy about Giannni.
They bumped down a steep section, crawling over rocks at a speed slower than walking. Then the road swung onto a narrow shelf, maybe a couple of hundred feet below the rim and a couple of thousand stomach-clenching feet above the canyon floor. Down there, green-gray sagebrush and a dry streambed. Up here, a steep, boulder-strewn track. All around, an open door to air, and to death.
Red was not crazy about being in the shotgun seat. In a couple of places he thought one of the right-side wheels was spinning in space, but he damn well didn’t want to know for sure.
Suddenly the shelf widened, the road turned toward the wall, and there it crouched, dark and low. ROAD TO GLORY MINE, said the crudely painted sign. A jeep was parked in front, no ATV.
They got out and Zahnie yelled, “Damon! Damon!” over and over. Seven openings faced them in the rock wall like cannon barrels. Their eyes were drawn to each of the ugly little darknesses. Each person’s mind speculated on what was in those shadows. The Road to Glory looked small and mean.
Gianni grabbed the double-barrel. Red started to reach for it.
Winsonfred said, “Give the man a chance.”
Red looked into Gianni’s eyes. Scared, he thought he saw, like me.
He turned his attention back to the mine. They could see all of four holes from the outside, penetrating only twenty or thirty feet. Zahnie called these gopher holes, exploratory digs yielding little or nothing. Two other holes pushed into the mountain maybe twice that far, maybe still not yielding much. The seventh, on the far right, angled down into the rock a long way. This one Zahnie called an incline. It was clearly an avenue of transport, and fresh tire tracks were visible going in and out.
Red’s skin prickled with the anticipation of a sniper’s shot with his name on it.
Whose shot? Travis? Wayne? Emery? Damon? All the same. Death is indifferent.
Zahnie
and Gianni stood there, unsure. Winsonfred mounted the bumper and sat on the hood looking up. Far above their heads Red saw a buzzard riding a thermal. Everyone on their team was here, except Damon.
Red surveyed the area. In front of him the shelf ended against high crags. Above the holes stretched a broken wall too steep for even a mountain goat to climb. Back to the left stretched the road, the single path to salvation. Behind them, two thousand feet to fall, head over heels and over and over and over.
“Damon!” Red was surprised to hear his own voice. “Damon!”
Red saw Gianni looking all around, like they were on army exercises twenty years ago, eyeballing for enemies, in those days pretend ones. In his right hand he carried the side-by-side casually. Red had the willies.
A dozen steps from the entrance, at the foot of the incline, sat an old wooden box. It was full of tubes, like huge cigars, wrapped in red, waxy paper. Red knew what it was before Zahnie spoke.
“Dynamite. Don’t get near it. May have been here for years. Unstable as hell. Can go off with a nudge. Kids have gotten killed just picking a stick up.”
Suddenly Red got smart about standing there in the open. Even the dark shaft would be safer. He walked inside a dozen steps, and the narrow tunnel widened into a small, dank room with a low ceiling. Here, neatly stacked, stood crate on wooden crate. The lids weren’t nailed shut, and Red found pots inside. He walked back to the entrance. “There are boxes of artifacts in here,” he called.
No one cheered, their minds on Damon.
“I’m going to look further back.”
After less than fifty yards the light was dim and the ground changed. Red stood in front of a series of scooped-out areas, like small vestibules. He wondered if that was where Kravin removed ore.
Beyond this point Red would need his flashlight, and he got it out of his fanny pack.
Wait.
In the dark, two boxy shapes covered by tarps. He reached for the canvas on one.
Whirrr!
Red jumped way back. Damn! A rattler slithered through a slatted crate. The thing oozed away as fast as it could go.
Very gingerly, Red tapped the wooden crate with a foot. Then he shook it hard. No more rattles.
Gently, he lifted the lid. Jerry cans of water, cans of food, sacks of pinto beans, and so on. They were prepared to camp here for a long time, if need be. He flicked on the flashlight and saw that the incline extended a lot farther back.
Suddenly Red’s mind shrieked, Get out of here!
He hurried back up the shaft, his mind a-spin.
Twenty yards from the entrance he heard:
Wheels on gravel outside.
Shouts.
Zahnie and Gianni scuffling into the shaft!
Where was Winsonfred and what…?
From the shadows of the entrance Red peered out into the blinding brightness. Zahnie and Gianni huddled near him.
The stake-bed truck was parked right behind the Bronco and Jeep, and a silver-haired driver was getting out.
Under the front end of the Bronco lay Winsonfred, wriggling to get all the way under. Red hoped they hadn’t seen him.
The silver-haired man, apparently Travis, stood behind the SUV, shouting. “C’mon out, assholes! C’mon out!” In one hand he had some sort of lever-action rifle, maybe a .30-.30. “You think you seen us and we ain’t seen you? Come out! You didn’t fool nobody!”
Two other men clambered down from the truck. Wayne was holding a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, Emery an automatic rifle. They leveled the guns at the mine entrance where Zahnie, Red, and Gianni crouched in the shadows.
So it’s now.
37
APOCALYPSE
Don’t wear your blanket with the stripes sideways. You’ll go crazy.
—Navajo saying
The wide-bodied young one, Emery, lumbered behind a rock just big enough to hide a dog and threw himself down. He stuck out on both sides. Using the stone as a rest, he held his rifle on the mine opening.
Up in the crags there might have been something to duck behind. Down here, nothing.
“C’mon out, goddamn it!” Travis bellowed a couple more times. His voice grated like a chain saw.
Gianni started forward. Red grabbed his elbow.
“Damn it, they’ll shoot you.”
“I’m their partner! They might think I’m alone.”
Red seized him by both shoulders.
Gianni rasped, “They know someone’s in here. Let me play this out.”
Red put a hand on the double-barrel, but Gianni wrenched it away and stumbled into the sunlight.
Gianni was backlit by the sun. Red’s feelings dropped into a dry well and split open. Half of them said his friend was going to get killed. The other half said the traitor was going to sell them out.
“’Lo, Travis.”
“Lordy,” said the old man, “look who it ain’t.”
Old Kravin looked like a crazy redneck. Standing next to him, Wayne was black stone slate. No sentiment there, no decency, no humanity, a void.
“Why’s Emery behind that rock?” said Gianni.
“Didn’t know it was you, Gianni,” said Kravin. “Tell you what, though, been doing good work.” The old man’s smile was a leer. “We’re ready for those big bucks you promised.”
Gianni ignored that and kept walking toward them, steady and slow. He was close now, where the shotgun was a far better weapon than a rifle or pistol. “Thought I’d check out the goods before I signed any checks.”
“How’d you know where we was? Kid give you GPS readings? He had some money. He get it from you?”
“Just wanted to know I was paying for something real. We can go to town, exchange goodies for dollars right now, you want to.”
“Why not? You see that kid when you get here?”
“No sign.”
“Guess he got scared and run. He won’t get far.” Travis cackled. “Got no water.” Something shrewd came into his voice now. “Ask you again. You pay that kid to rat us out?”
“Travis,” said Wayne sharply, “quit the b.s.”
Red put the sights of the .45 on Emery. Too far. The sights of the lummox were trained on Gianni. Red shifted to Wayne, though the range was still a little long. He wished he knew if Emery had the rifle on full auto or on single shot.
Gianni stopped in front of the stake-bed truck. Travis and Wayne stood between it and the Jeep, no doubt ready to drop down.
Winsonfred lay very still under the front bumper of the Bronco.
Wayne eyed Gianni, appraising. “Everything’s cool here, Gianni. I don’t see no trouble.” He let his grin broaden slowly, then shouted, “Fire!”
Gianni hit the ground to roll under the jeep.
Emery fired a single shot. Gianni swung the shotgun toward the big man and blasted. Emery shot again. Gianni bellowed, and the second barrel of the shotgun tore up the front end of the jeep.
Red shot at Wayne but missed—he and his dark energy ducked behind the jeep.
Covered with red-rock dust and sweat and blood, Gianni scooted farther under the front bumper and fumbled in a shirt pocket for more shells. Looked like he was hit high in the chest, near the collarbone.
“Berserker,” Red hissed at himself. He roared, “John-ny!” and sprinted for the front of the Bronco. Emery got off three fast shots at Red, one close enough that he dived and slid to cover on his belly underneath the Bronco. Winsonfred lizarded sideways to make more room.
Emery jumped up, sprinted to the back of the jeep, and rummaged in the rear. Christ, Red thought, don’t let him get at more firepower!
Red looked under the Bronco over to the jeep and saw Emery’s overalls. He leveled his.45 and fired at the shinbone.
Emery howled and one leg disappeared.
Got no second clip, Red shouted in his head. Save your shots! He rolled out from underneath the Bronco, jumped up, and sighted right on the big son of a bitch’s head.
Pain blasted Red’s skull and bolted
down his spine.
Red dropped the .45, grabbed his head, staggered to his knees. No sound, he realized dimly. Pistol-whipped.
The next thing he felt was the muzzle of a pistol against his temple, cold and deadly. Wayne jumped down from the top of the Bronco and snatched back his .45.
“You’re lucky you’re too big to carry off.” Wayne switched hands on the pistols and held his .45 by the barrel. He yelled, “No more shooting! That’s an order!”
Travis padded out from behind the truck, looking like a man cheated out of a tavern brawl.
Emery stood behind the jeep and limped forward like an idiot. Red guessed his shot had missed the bone.
“Get up,” Wayne snapped.
Red heaved himself to his feet.
Wayne dragged Gianni out from under the Jeep, then looked under the Bronco and said, “Well, look what we have here.” Winsonfred scooched out sheepishly. “The old Navajo, what’s-his-name? Hey, you’re the kid’s grandfather, aren’t you, probably great-grandfather.”
Winsonfred looked deeply, deeply ashamed.
“Come to save your boy?” Wayne cackled.
Travis turned in Red’s direction and grated, “I don’t know who you are, but you won’t need no headstone.”
Wayne snapped out words in command: “Emery, shoot out the radio in the Bronco.”
Emery did.
“Now, you’re all going to the back of the incline, the far back, you and this asshole and that sweet old man, ain’t it a shame? After we blast, you’ll have a ton of stones to mark your bones for all eternity.”
“Don’t worry,” added Emery. “One bullet, and you won’t feel the rocks fall.”
“Shut up, both of you!” ordered Wayne. “No need to shoot. They deserve to suffer.” He pointed his pistol at Red’s head. “Let’s get going, boys. Fate is waiting for you down that dark hole.”
Gianni got slowly to his knees and then to his feet. Red put his arm around his old friend to steady him. Or maybe himself.
Travis picked up Gianni’s shotgun from the dust, but Red could see the other two shells in Gianni’s hand.