by James Hunt
Terry looked back at the direction where his wife had been taken. He knew that no matter how far he ran or how long, he wasn’t going to find her. He needed to go back to the reservation, find out exactly what Amy had agreed to.
“Dad?” Liz asked again.
Terry jogged back to his daughters, nearly passing them in the darkness. The pair were huddled together, Maisie latched onto Liz’s leg, who kept one hand pressed snugly against Maisie’s head.
“Where’s Mom?” Liz asked.
Terry glanced at the darkness, then at Liz and Maisie. “We need to leave.” He bent down and picked Maisie up off the ground, walking toward the elevator.
“No!” Maisie pounded her tiny fists against Terry’s shoulder in anger, wiggling and doing everything she could to break free. She stretched back toward where Amy had vanished, screaming. “Mommy! No! Mommy!”
Terry struggled to keep Maisie still and eventually got a strong enough grip on her to keep her secure in his arms. Liz jogged and caught up to Terry on his left side.
“Where’s Mom?” Liz asked, her tone more accusing than nervous.
“We need to get out of here,” Terry answered, reaching for the elevator door.
But Liz skidded in front of Terry, spreading her arms wide and blocking her father from entering. “Dad, what is going on?”
The strong tone cracked on the last word, and Liz transformed from the hardened teenager on the cusp of adulthood and back to a young girl looking to a parent for guidance.
“I don’t know.” Terry adjusted Maisie in his arms. She turned to him with the same pleading expression for answers. He was at his wit’s end, knowing that his daughters were still looking to him to be the voice of reason and to guide them safely out of this insane circumstance. “But we’re going to figure this out.”
Liz nodded and then stepped aside. Terry entered the elevator, Liz following close behind, and he slammed the door shut. He hit the up button and the motor lurched to life, all three sets of knees buckling from the sudden thrust upwards.
Terry kept Maisie close on their journey toward the surface, and Liz leaned up against his side. No one spoke, though their silence was palpable.
Despite his reassurances to the girls, Terry had no idea what he was going to do. And even if they went back to the medicine man, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to help them like he did before. Either by choice or by circumstance.
It was a crap shoot, and Terry had never been good at gambling. It was why he chose his profession in the first place. Engineering was all about numbers, planning, being two steps ahead of any problems that arose.
But he had to think more intuitively. He had to feel his way out of this one.
Liz grabbed hold of his hand, and Terry glanced down at his daughter, her eyes wide as she looked back at him. “Are we really going to get Mom back?”
Maisie turned toward him, wanting the answer to the same question.
Terry paused, trying to gather the courage for the response that he knew both of them wanted to hear, but stopped himself. If they were really going to make it out of this, then they’d all need to feel their way out. And that meant the girls needed to know the truth.
“I don’t know,” Terry said. “But I do know that we’re going to try everything we can to get her back.” He tapped the area of his chest near his heart. “And so long as we believe it in here, then that’s all the truth we need.”
Both Maisie and Liz exchanged a glance, and then Liz looked back at her father.
“Okay, Dad.”
“Yeah,” Maisie said. “Okay.”
The elevator jerked to a stop once again at the surface, and Terry heaved the metal door open, letting Liz out first. He had to set Maisie down when they ducked beneath the small door that led back out to the mine’s entrance and the resort town.
With Maisie walking on her own steam with Liz, Terry picked up the pace. “We’ll need to grab a few things out of our room. Can you two pack up quick?”
“I barely unpacked,” Liz answered. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Terry answered. “I’ll find us another motel. Something far away from this place so we can—”
Bright lights flashed, blinding Terry and the girls. He lifted his hands to block the light, and when he finally managed to turn around and get a glimpse of who was there, he squinted at the silhouettes approaching him. “Who are you—gah!”
Terry’s arms were twisted behind his back and he was thrust forward, his feet moving quickly, still blinded by the lights, which he was able to decipher were at the very least the headlights of cars.
“Dad!” Liz screamed.
“Lizzy, take your sister, run, go!” Terry shouted back, grimacing from the growing pain in his shoulder, which felt like it was going to separate from his arm on the spot.
The goons shoved him into the back of the car, and the door was quickly shut.
“Why’d you do it, Terry?”
Startled that he wasn’t alone, Terry stole a quick glance back to the man on his left. He frowned, blinking away the dark spots of his vision. “Mr. Mulaney?”
Mulaney had a gun in his hand, which rested precariously on his thigh. His trigger finger tapped the side of the weapon, away from the trigger itself. “We had a deal, Terry. I came through on my end of the deal, but you didn’t.”
Terry stared at the gun. “I-I don’t know what you mean.” He glanced out through the front windows, the headlights of the vehicle highlighting the crying faces of his daughters, who stood alone at the mouth of the cave.
Mulaney placed the tip of his gun against Terry’s temple, hard enough for Terry to know it was there, but gentle enough to not move his head. Terry parted his lips slightly and raised his hands in a defenseless gesture.
“Why the fuck did you go and talk to the EPA?” Mulaney sprayed some spittle against Terry’s cheek as he snarled. “What the fuck were you thinking? Did you think that I wouldn’t know it was you?”
“Please, just wait—” Terry kept his attention on his girls, knowing that whatever he said next would affect not only his life, but theirs as well. “I-I didn’t have a choice. It was to save my wife.”
“Yeah? And where is Amy? Hmm?” Mulaney gestured to the girls standing by themselves. “I don’t see her out there, Terry, so where’d she go?”
“Listen to me,” Terry said, his voice close to pleading. “There are things in that mine that you don’t understand. Things that want to hurt us. If you take gold out of there, you’ll only—”
Mulaney slammed Terry’s head hard against the glass and then shoved Terry’s head between his knees as he placed the pistol’s barrel against the back of Terry’s skull. “I don’t give a shit about some fucking local legend! Do you really want to place the fate of your family’s future on some bullshit hocus pocus? Because if that’s the case, then I’ll have my men bring your girls along for the ride.”
“No!” Terry shouted, his voice muffled from his cramped position in the back seat. “I-I can make it right. I’ll just tell the EPA it was a mistake. That I didn’t send it. I’ll blame my wife!”
Mulaney was quiet for a minute, but he didn’t relinquish the pressure from the pistol. “And how are you going to convince the EPA?”
“She hasn’t been well,” Terry answered, the words flooding out of him quickly, like water from a busted dam, begging to be released. “You know that. The past three months have taken a toll on her mental state. She doesn’t think things through. She’s emotional, reactionary. She heard about the lore of the place, and it just went too far in her head. That’s all. They may have received the email, but they can’t prove that I sent it. It’s just as easy for my wife to get on my computer. She knows my passcode to get on it. It’s believable. I have all of the medical documents to back it up.”
The blood rushed to Terry’s head, building up pressure. Every pulse sent a throbbing sensation through his skull. It was like his heart was in his brain.
Mulaney yanked the back of Terry’s collar and slammed him against the seat, aiming the pistol between his eyes. “You better pray that it works, because if it doesn’t, then I’m going to take your girls and hurt them. And I’m going to do it in front of you. I’ll staple your goddamn eyelids open so you have to watch!” He slammed the pistol’s barrel between his eyes. “You fucking got me?”
Pain radiating throughout his entire body, Terry nodded quickly, his eyes shut.
“Good.” Mulaney finally lowered the weapon and took a moment to compose himself. “You know I really don’t like doing this kind of stuff, Terry. It’s not professional.” He whipped his head to the side, staring at Terry. “But you forced my hand. All of this is because of you. All of it. Don’t forget that.”
Terry only nodded and then glanced back out to his daughters, who were still in the spotlight of the headlights. “What about my girls?”
Mulaney drew in a breath, then shook his head as he stared out the front window. “They can stay here with one of my guys. And so long as you can deliver what you said, then no harm will come to them.” He turned towards Terry. “So make sure you deliver.”
“I will.”
Mulaney rolled down his window, and one of his security detail came over. He gave the order for the girls to be under house arrest, and Terry watched as Liz and Maisie were ushered away from the brightness of the headlights.
“Dad? No.” Liz kept herself between the goon and her younger sister, her attention split between the man and the car where Terry was kept. “Don’t you touch me! Dad! Dad!”
Both Liz and Maisie screamed when the guard lifted them off the ground and carried them out of Terry’s sight, but he could still hear their voices.
He placed his hand on the glass, trying to catch any last glimpses of his girls out the window as they were pulled away. Their pleas for help faded into the darkness, and then more men piled into the cars before they backed up and headed out of the resort.
“I really thought we could have had something special,” Mulaney said. “You were a good engineer, Terry. I don’t know why it had to come to this.”
Terry said nothing as they drove. He kept his focus straight ahead, trying to think of a way out. He wasn’t sure Mulaney would actually kill him, but he wasn’t sure if he could convince the EPA of what happened. Now that the report was in their hands, they’d come out to the site to check regardless, and they’d send another person that wasn’t the EPA agent that Mulaney had bribed.
The truth would get out eventually, but Terry had to make Mulaney believe that it wouldn’t long enough for him to think of another way out. Stuck in the back of the car with a gun to his head, Terry didn’t have a clue where to start.
65
The embers from the fire had long since been extinguished, and with night fallen outside, the interior of the hut had grown extremely cold. And while the pile of ash provided no warmth, it did provide Running Water something to stare at.
With no fire in the pit, the ashes provided no real source of beauty, but Running Water couldn’t take his eyes away from the dead and blackened remains of the wood that had burned so brightly inside the hut. He hadn’t moved since Amy Holloway left, since he had separated her soul from her body, damning her to an eternity of suffering.
It wouldn’t be long until Amy transformed into that pile of ash. Burned and useless, the bright life inside of her extinguished. And it was all because of Running Water’s actions.
He wondered if this was how his predecessors felt when they conjured up the spirits that cursed the land where the mine had been constructed. They had known what it would do to the workers, to the families of the men who would die inside. And despite that knowledge, they held on to their convictions, avenging their people, righting a wrong.
Running Water sighed and slumped lower in the wheelchair. The wheels had sunk deep into the sand, preventing him from moving. Not that he had the desire to leave.
Despite accomplishing his goal, Running Water felt more lost and distant than he had when he first started all of this. He knew that the price for success was high, but he miscalculated the cost to the people involved.
It was guilt that kept Running Water glued to that chair, hiding inside the hut of his ancestors, awaiting judgement from the spirits that he had called upon for aid. He wanted punishment for his deeds, but none had come, no matter how much he prayed and no matter how much he wanted it.
Running Water shivered, the cold desert night biting through his clothes and into his bones. It wasn’t the punishment he deserved.
“Grandfather?” Kara poked her head inside and then rushed to his side. “What are you doing here? You’ll freeze to death.” She picked the blanket out of the sand and then draped it over his shoulders.
“What have I done?” Running Water continued to stare at the ashes as Kara tried to warm him. “What evil have I brought upon a family that does not deserve it?”
Kara knelt, sliding into his field of vision, and clasped his weather-worn hands. “You did what you needed to do to save our family, to save our tribe and thousands others. You know exactly what would have happened if Mulaney had been able to extract that gold.”
Running Water extended his hand, grazing Kara’s smooth cheek. He smiled sadly. “You look so much like your mother.”
Kara smiled and placed her hand over her grandfather’s. “You’ve told me that before.”
“She was so strong, both her and my son.” Running Water gazed into the rich dark eyes that his son had passed down to his daughter. “We should have never been in that car.”
“Grandfather, stop.”
“We should have never been on that road.” Running Water’s voice wavered as he recalled the night of the accident.
Torrential downpour had made for slick roads and poor visibility. And his son’s hastened pace to the hospital had made for a dangerous combination of events.
“You need to stop,” Kara said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Running Water couldn’t remember much. His mind had been plagued with fever. He was delirious, but he remembered the sounds. The horns, the screeching of tires, the shattering of glass, and the crunch of metal as their car flipped and rolled twice before coming to a stop.
His son had died on impact. His daughter-in-law died on the way to the hospital. But Running Water survived. It was a guilt that had plagued him for the past several years.
“A parent should never outlive their children,” Running Water said, his voice growing weaker, his eyes becoming red and glassy. “It’s a burden no one should be forced to bear.” He lowered his hand from Kara’s cheek and brought it back to his lap. He lifted his face to the ceiling, looking at the painted canvas of the spirits that were the essence of the balance of life. “We are gifted as the vessels to the spirits of creation.” He frowned. “And we have abused that gift.”
“Grandfather,” Kara said, her voice soft. “What is done is done. This was a war, and in war, there are casualties. Even innocent ones.”
“It should have been me,” Running Water said, his eyes still fixated on the Coyote above, the trickster, the deceiver of men. “I should have been the sacrifice.”
“I told you the accident wasn’t—”
“Not the accident,” Running Water said, looking at Kara. “When I called upon the spirits to find a way to stop Mulaney, it should have been my soul that was sacrificed. It should have been my burden to carry. Not Amy Holloway and her family.”
Kara shrugged, shaking her head, unsure of herself. “That’s not what the spirits wanted.”
Running Water nodded. “Perhaps.” He glanced back up at the Wolf, the coyote’s wiser older brother, the spirit that had sought to bring humanity to people. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t forge our own path. That doesn’t mean we can’t right other wrongs.” He reached for his granddaughter’s hand and held it firmly in his own, a renewed sense of purpose flooding through him. “Go to the Holloways. Bring the
m here.”
Kara frowned. “I don’t think they’ll come after what happened.”
Running Water nodded. “They will. Because they will have nowhere else to go.”
66
It was dark for a long time, longer than Amy could keep track of, and it didn’t help that she had no reference of time. The only constant for her during this stasis was the presence of pain, the sharp digs into her shoulder spreading like a cancer through her chest and arms.
While she couldn’t see the damage, Amy was certain that her body was pulsing with blood, spilling fresh new gallons with every beat of her heart.
She imagined that her skin had transformed into the sickly, pale grey that covered the miner’s skin. The thought instinctively made her scratch her skin, but every attempt to rake her nails over her body was met with a numbness. It was like her body didn’t even exist.
When the sensation of nothing finally evaporated, Amy blinked, the landscape surrounding her slowly coming into focus.
The shapes were jagged and varied in size. She felt like she was still floating, her stomach waving back and forth as her feet finally touched ground.
“Ouch!” Amy lifted her left foot, and then her right, hopping back and forth on each leg. She stared at the ground and found nothing but black. It was like she was standing on asphalt that had baked all day in one-thousand-degree heat.
When the burning sensation refused to subside, Amy eventually got used enough to the pain and was able to at least press her feet down long enough for her to walk. So long as she kept moving, the burns were bearable.
“My god.” Amy’s vision finally cleared enough for her to take in the breadth and scope of her surroundings. Crimson red skies were marked with black blotches, matching the darkness of the ground.
Jagged cliffs and rock formations thrust from the earth, reaching toward the blood-soaked skies. A haze filled the air. It wasn’t smoke, or fog, but more of a gas. She smelled and tasted it with every breath, and it choked her lungs and burned her throat and nose. She covered her mouth to prevent any more from seeping into her body, but she was unsuccessful.