Will turned around. The tunnel opening was a salad plate of grey light. When it shrank to the size of a quarter, he promised himself, he would turn back. He followed the boot tracks another twenty feet or so and stopped again. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. The tracks curved into the wall and stopped. He hunkered down and examined a couple of tracks back. Maybe this guy had backed up in his own footprints? They were perfect. You could pull that kind of ruse in snow, but in thin rock dust it would leave a trail, a blurring of the original track. So what in hell? Barring the whole ghost theory—to which he did not subscribe—it would appear that his quarry had walked through the wall.
“Heh, quarry,” he smirked. “I’m the hillbilly Sherlock Homes.” Will dragged the light up the wall. The spot shone on a band of moist clay about five feet off the ground. There was a bootprint embossed in it pointing toward the roof of the tunnel. Will whipped the beam onto the floor and then back to the print on the wall—same boots. “My dear, Watson,” his accent was crap, “I do believe we’re pursuing Spiderman.”
William.
Will turned around as a silhouette stepped between him and the rough circle of daylight. So he had gone down that side tunnel, but how in hell had he gotten past? Will glanced at the bootprint on the wall. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. He put his hand on the butt of his gun.
“Hold it, buddy!”
The silhouette tipped its head to one side.
“Don’t you—” It zipped into the side tunnel. “Shit.”
Will’s heart was hammering in his ribs. He could go back now, call Sheriff Ward and his boys up in Roundtree and come back in force. He imagined the conversation and sighed. Why in hell had Two-Bears McFarlan bothered Tommy over some drifter or trail camper walking into an old shaft? He looked like who, now? Okay, this was stupid. He was freaking himself out over nothing. This guy probably was just some hiker or nature lover who’d fired up some high-test Northern California nature and was screwing around. Constable McFarlan would now apprehend said nature-loving jerkoff and put an end to this foolishness. George would just have to sleep it off at home tonight; his cell was going to be taken.
Will trotted over to the mouth of the side tunnel, flashed the penlight into the gloom and walked in. The cool dank closed around his neck and shoulders. The MagLite beam grew solid, plasmic in the total dark. The rabbit hole ran down and away. “I sure hope this is fun for you, asshole.” He walked for another few feet and stopped. Fuck this. He was going back. The ground gave way and Will dropped into nothing.
* * *
Will’s head hurt. He sat up and winced. His ass hurt, too. He groaned and probed his forehead for stickiness. No blood, but his noggin hadn’t pounded like this since the last time he’d tried to keep pace with George over a bottle. The light wasn’t bright but he squinted. How long had he been out? How long he had been… where was he again? Will looked around and gasped.
The walls bristled with amethyst. Great angular columns of wine-colored crystal bloomed from every inch of the huge chamber. He craned his neck but could not find the ceiling. What he could see was illuminated by the crystals themselves. Soft purple glowed and pulsed from their cores. Will flattened his palm against the floor. It flowed like flashed-cooled metal across the room to a great mound of layered crystal. It looked like a pile of quartz with what could only be emeralds heaped upon it. The irregular emerald bulk pulsed in time with the walls.
Will stood, hissing as pain flared from his ankle. Jesus, had he fallen as far as that ceiling was high? He was lucky to be alive. And this place, this place was… He turned in a slow circle, taking in the phantasmagoria. A gigantic spider web radiated out from one corner of the chamber, its cable-thick anchor webs attached to crystal pylons. Will sucked air. Loraine and Childe had been right.
Chapter 8
“What is it you think you understand about life?” the Wasp Man pinned the last survivor of what the local papers would call The Jamie’s Bar Massacre against the wall with an extended finger. His fingernail had already burned a tiny crescent through the cotton of Jamie’s t-shirt and was presently rewriting the chromosomes of the skin cells underneath. If the Wasp Man didn’t decide to kill him, the resulting blue-black spot on his chest would. Really, he couldn’t make up his mind about it. This one had put up a decent fight. The Wasp Man reached down with his other hand and squelched a loop of his own intestine back into the gaping wound in his gut.
The bartender winced, every atom of his big ol’ boy biker frame wanted to pull away from this skinny freak. The room was decorated with leather and denim clad pieces of people. What could only be the torso of Pete Margolis from the Easy O Ranch hung impaled on a dusty elk rack over by the juke—Jamie recognized the shirt. The freak had literally taken everyone in the room apart.
Jamie had watched it happen from behind the bar in slow motion—it had been like that in Fallujah too—as this, this person unmade everyone in the place. By the time he’d loaded up the Eagle and put one in the bastard, everyone of the dozen odd bikers and ranch hands in for a lunch break brew was well beyond dead. Guy was some kind of martial arts super-champeen or some shit and on speed to boot. You couldn’t take a hit in the belly from a Desert Eagle .50 and keep walking and talking. You just couldn’t… unless you were this guy.
He had just walked in like any other biker fresh off the road, grabbed himself a stool and waited for Jamie to amble over and take his order. Jamie was short a leg below the knee from an IED and he took his goddamn time taking anyone’s order. His fucking bar, his fucking pace. Besides, he moved well enough. He rolled up in front of the freak and said, “What’ll do you, son?”
“Son?” A pencil thin eyebrow rose. He looked at Jamie through those huge goggle sunglasses made him look like some faggot rock star and rasped, “I’ve never been anyone’s child.”
“Makes no never mind to me, buddy. You want something to drink or chew on?”
The freak had looked over at the man on the next stool, a Salvadoran migrant worker paying attention to his steak and eggs and little else. “I’d like to drink a cup of his blood and chew on a bowl of his brains.” He tipped his head to the side. “Please.”
The Salvadorian gentleman’s straw cowboy hat rose and swiveled. “You got a problem, guero?” A couple of the other ranch hands slid up behind him. One of the bikers pushed back from her table, legs tensed.
“Son,” Jaime advised, “stand up and just walk on. That’s what’s best.”
The freak looked up and Jamie saw himself doubled and darkened in those lenses. The thin lips beneath them said, “Walk on down the hall, perhaps?”
That’s when the pool cue had splintered against the back of his greasy head. Thing was, he had to have seen it coming in the mirror behind the bar. And as fast as he was, he could have stopped it.
Now, Staff Sargent James Litz, retired, stood with his back against the bricks in a room straight out of a horror movie. Everyone but him was dead and it had happened so fast. People he’d gotten drunk—and gotten drunk with—every Friday and Saturday night for years were splashed all over his bar. For one self-disgusted moment, he wondered if the lower half of Pete Margolis had his wallet in his back pocket—ol’ Pete owed Jamie two hunnert bucks.
Carnage was nothing new to him. He’d seen the kind of real terror humans can inflict upon one another. He’d put bullets in women and children, not because he’d wanted to, but because they were standing in front of men who would end him and his men in the next instant. He watched women birth fire from under their burqas and chadors while the evening call to prayer warbled over the city streets.
The Wasp inhaled his thoughts and repeated, “What is it you think you understand about life… son?”
Tears cleaned tracks through the blood spatter on his cheeks. “I… ” he started. The Wasp’s eyebrow lifted. “I… ” Jamie stared through those smoked lenses into something hollow and ancient, mine shafts into the freak’s head. “Nothing.”
“That,” the Wa
sp said, “is an honest answer.”
He pushed back from Jamie. His belly was fine; his yellowed wife-beater wasn’t even singed. The freak showed Jamie his back and walked toward the door. He stepped over a decapitated head with a straw cowboy hat still screwed down tight over the brow and paused. He turned, picked up the head and held it next to his ear. He addressed Jamie, “Manny was an avid soccer fan. He had plans to start a local team with the other migrant workers.” The Wasp dropped the head and caught it on his knee. He hefted it up to his other knee and then caught it on the toe of his boot. He stared at Jamie for a moment then lofted the head straight at him. It whoofed into his stomach and thudded to the floorboards. Jamie moaned and his bladder let go a warm gush down his thighs.
“Goooooaaaallllll!” The Wasp shouted over his shoulder as he slouched into the afternoon sun.
Out front, he threw a leg over a low-slung custom chopper with chrome highlights and midnight black paint. For a moment he slumped in the saddle, the cosmic whirl between his ears full of the call to prayer over tinny speakers. He felt the grit of yellow sand. He tasted gun oil and smelled cordite. He looked up as a gunshot rang out into the parking lot. The call to prayer cut out and only the faint whiff of tar and open Montana sky filled his nostrils. So much for Staff Sargent James Litze, retired. The road stretched out in front of him, a black ribbon holding down the golden grass on either side. He kicked the bike alive. That hadn’t been boring at all.
Chapter 9
For a long time, neither George nor Erica said anything as they walked. Content to stroll through the afternoon on the empty streets of Shard, the ease of silence between them was itself a wonder. George had promised her a walking tour of his town. He would make sure she didn’t wander somewhere dangerous. It wasn’t always easy to see the trouble spots. Some places the ground was solid and safe, other places would swallow you up with little more than a whoop and rush of flame. He’d offered to show her around over the really excellent breakfast he’d prepared earlier that morning.
* * *
Erica came downstairs after a quiet night. Bed-and-breakfasts had never been her first choice of temporary accommodations; she preferred the sterility and anonymity of a corporate four-star. Something about sleeping in a stranger’s actual residence was too intimate, as if she owed them something other than payment for a night’s lodging. But when she clocked down the kitchen stairs, drawn by the aroma of eggs and toast, she began to grant that B&B’s might have their advantages.
George (no worse for wear after a shot, a beer and a cup full of wintogreen breath freshness) busied himself at the stove. “Don’t have a newspaper to offer, I’m afraid. But there’s a copy of one of my favorite magazines on the table there,” he called over his shoulder. “Coffee’s in the silver decanter. I’ve got French toast warm in the oven and my dad’s famous scrambled eggs and cheese coming off the fire in another minute.”
Erica’s smile surprised her. “Well, good morning then.”
George glanced over his shoulder and in spite of the bathtub medication felt his heart give a lurch. Just a pair of jeans and a tight fitting black sweater. Just your basic fall outfit. No big deal. Basic low-key make-up, nothing jazzy. Medium hoop earrings. Hair down and catching the ambient light in gorgeous little brush strokes that set off the highlights in her almond-shaped eyes. He was staring.
George turned back to the eggs. “I usually eat in here, but if you’d like me to set you up by yourself in the parlor, that’s fine.”
Erica sat down and poured herself a cup of coffee. “No, no, please sit.”
George served them eggs and too much toast, poured some fresh-squeezed and sat down. He felt incredibly awkward eating his breakfast and sharing a newspaper with a strange woman—a strange woman who cleared his head more than a radioactive cup of coffee. (He’d been up and preparing their breakfast hours earlier, as keen to greet the day as a kid on Christmas morning.) After a minute or two he couldn’t stand it and blurted, “Is this weird for you?”
Erica put down the magazine—The Week, to which she subscribed herself. “You mean just eating with a stranger like this? Not at all. Saturday mornings I always eat breakfast at this little diner down the street from my office. They only have a counter and two tables, but the food’s so good strangers don’t mind sharing the space.”
“You told me Manhattan yesterday, right?”
“Ever been?”
“Every week.” George picked up his own magazine, The New Yorker. He opened to an article. “Goings on About Town says that, apparently, MoMA held a fundraising gala and Giuliani’s second wife showed up already soused.”
Erica smirked. “So, no, then.”
George smirked back. It was like his face just wanted to do whatever hers was doing. “Actually, I went when I was a kid. There was a chess championship and I’d won state finals so I got to stay in a youth hostel off the park with a bunch of other nerds.” He sat back. “I remember it being overwhelming and dirty and scary as hell and wonderful. At the risk of sounding utterly un-cool, I’m a little in awe of anyone who can live in a place like that. Must take a yard of guts.”
“It does.”
“You ever get tired?”
Erica sighed. “I can’t remember a time since grade school when I haven’t been tired, Mr. Rhodes.” That was more personal information than she’d revealed about herself to anyone in almost as long.
George winced. “You can’t never, ever call me Mr. Rhodes again, okay?”
“All right,” she said. “George, what can you tell me about your town?”
“What do you mean? Is this why you’re here? You a writer or something?”
“Not at all, I’m a lawyer.”
“Bom! Bom! Bom!”
“Cute.”
George warmed at her use of the word “cute” to describe any action of his. “You must be working for one of the big mineral concerns.”
Erica kept herself from showing surprise. George Rhodes was not what he appeared in the slightest. “That’s right. I’m here to assess the situation.”
George barked a laugh. “You mean to find out how much it’ll take to buy us all out.”
Shit, so much for stealth. Erica, note to self: don’t underestimate rubes just because they’re rubes. “At this point, I’m just trying to get the lay of the land.”
“Want a tour? I’ll answer any question you ask.”
“Honestly?”
“You mean about me offering a tour, or answering your questions truthfully?”
* * *
Erica and George meandered up Main Street, the empty shops and store fronts rolling by, afternoon sun in their busted glass eyes. A cocktail party of mannequins dressed in scanty gowns of cobweb tracked their progress. The old style marquis over The Gem Movie Theater was empty, its lettering stolen decades before. A pall of smoke spiced the sunbeams between buildings. The asphalt was fissured and buckled. Every so often a vent of sulfurous steam hissed through a crack.
“God,” Erica whispered. “It’s eerie.”
“Oh, I dunno,” George said. “I think wastelands are kind of beautiful in their way.”
Erica wondered what it must be like to think of the town you grew up in as a wasteland. “So, there’s a fire just below the street here, really?”
George pointed to a short pipe growing from the sidewalk. It was flaked with red paint and breathing a steady stream of yellow-white. “See that? Fire hydrant. Pressure blew the top right off.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I think that’s easily one of the best visual gags I’ve ever seen in my life… and I like Mel Brooks movies.”
“I don’t get it.”
“A burning fire-hydrant? Seriously? That’s not funny to you?”
Erica smiled and bowed her head. “Ah, I get it. Yeah, I guess.”
George reminded himself that he had half a lid full of booze and that things were a little funnier to him than most folks. Walking through the smoldering corpse of a town might not
be a laugh fest for Erica.
They walked in silence for a minute or so and the shop fronts stopped, bookended at the end of the main road. The road began an exchange; clumps of weeds and grass like islands in the frozen asphalt thickened into a meadow that stretched the size of a football field before slipping into the woods. The land dropped and rolled like glacial moraines or ancient Indian burial grounds.
“What happened here?” Erica asked. “It looks like the ground just swallowed everything.”
George stopped and stuck his hands in the back pockets of corduroys. (His butt hadn’t gotten any less bony, that much was for sure.) He blew out an easy sigh. “That’s pretty much what happened.”
“How do you mean?”
“Apparently, the seam—the coal seam? It was really thick here, so when it burned out it left a huge cavern of empty space. When you mine out coal or any other kind of ore it leaves a space, right? So, in mines—well, responsible ones anyway—they shore up the empty space with big girders to hold up the land above.”
“But they couldn’t do that with the fire?”
“They tried at first in a few places, but it was all too unstable and probably just too much work. There are a hundred burn-out caves and tunnels, a thousand.” He shrugged. “Town was royally fucked by then, so the company just cut its losses. It’s what finally scared off most of the people. An older couple, name of Findley, was burnt alive when half their house slid into a burning sinkhole opened in the backyard.” He was quiet a moment. “They found what was left of them kind of welded onto their bed. That was when the greater exodus really got underway. I was about fifteen, I think.”
Erica threw a sidelong glance at George. He was smiling, sardonic and sunny, but there was a sour smell under his words. He might just toss off comments like that and the one about Shard being a wasteland like it was no big deal, but he was angry. Erica knew that particular emotional odor better than any other. She turned toward him.
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