“If she wants to come with you, Ken,” Hal said, his tone somber, “don’t let her. I don’t want to see her right now either.”
Ken was surprised by this news—Virginia Shipp was one of the sweetest women he’d ever known, the kind every kid wishes his grandmother could be, or believes she is. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure,” Hal replied. “I can’t trust her. I know it’s not her—it’s that place. It’s the Slab. But she’s, she’s under its influence, I guess. That’s the only way I can put it. That place has an evil influence, and she’s fallen under it.”
“What about taking her away from it?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Hal said. “But I don’t think that’ll help. I think once it’s in someone, it’s in there.”
“Okay, Hal,” Ken said. “I believe what you’re telling me.”
“Are you sure? Because if I didn’t know myself I’d think I was completely insane.”
“I’m sure, Hal. Because I have them too. The magic days. Like you. And like you, since we touched yesterday it’s all been different. I don’t hear things, but I can see—strange things. Like I’m looking through someone else’s eyes. That’s how I found you, out there. Seeing through your eyes.”
“Figured you just followed my footprints,” Hal said. “I wasn’t exactly hiding ‘em.”
“I did some of that too,” Ken confessed. “But it was a little tough in the dark.”
They had approached the Slab now, it was just on the other side of a battered dirt path and the next little rise, and Hal stopped, planting his feet in the sand. “No farther,” he said. “This is an old Jeep road you can take from the edge of the Slab, you know the one?”
“I know it,” Ken said.
“It’s pretty passable, even with a passenger car. Pick me up here. I’m not taking another step closer to that place.”
“All right, Hal,” Ken said. “It’ll be a little while. Twenty minutes, half hour maybe. You’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Hal said.
“And Hal? How’d you know I was driving a passenger car and not the Bronco?”
Hal Shipp smiled. “Like I said, I can hear things.”
Ken laughed and turned away from the old man, heading toward the Slab—a place he had always thought of as off-beat, a little strange, but never particularly evil. He trusted Hal’s judgment, though, especially now, in the wake of the magic that had enveloped them both. That, he accepted without hesitation, since he’d felt it himself. As he walked, peeling off his jacket as the day warmed, he still had a spring in his step that was unexpected considering how long he’d been on his feet. He didn’t necessarily feel younger, but he felt stronger, more composed, more optimistic somehow.
And immediately, Mindy Sesno flitted into his mind. She would go out with me, he thought. He couldn’t actually figure out why he had believed that she wouldn’t, or that there would be any harm done in asking her. So he decided that he would, as soon as he finished dealing with Hal Shipp.
Today, though. For sure. Before it was too late and she hooked up with some other guy.
But then, as he stepped up onto the first of the many cement slabs that made up the community called the Slab, he put her out of his mind. If there was any basis to what Hal had said, he’d have to keep a close watch while he was here.
***
“Do you trust me?”
Colonel Franklin Wardlaw looked at William Yato and Marcus Jenkins as if he could see all the way through their uniforms, through their bags of flesh, through their interwoven masses of muscles, through the skeletal structure that gave them shape, to the faint blue outline that he believed was the embodiment of the human soul. They were strapped into their seats in the otherwise-empty belly of a Bell UH-1 Iroquois, a Marine Corps utility helicopter that could transport twelve, currently buzzing across the range at a speed of around one hundred knots. The chatter of the rotor and the buzz of the interior made conversation hard, but not impossible, if you shouted. Wardlaw was used to shouting. You didn’t make Colonel in the USMC with a soft voice, he thought. A man needed to make himself heard.
Neither of them answered, so he asked the question again. “Do you trust me?”
Marcus smiled. “Yes, sir,” he replied eagerly. He was young, and not particularly bright, but he was eager and that was something.
Yato only watched, but didn’t answer. He’d take some observation, Captain Yato would, Wardlaw thought. Some testing. If a man needed to make himself heard, which he did, a man also needed to know where he stood.
“We’ll know, soon enough,” Wardlaw shouted, settling back into his seat. The chopper roared to the west, away from the rising sun. Ten minutes later, it had deposited its passengers, picked up nine new ones, and headed back to Yuma.
And on the ground, Franklin Wardlaw and his entourage had taken over custody of the prisoner. Larry Melton had been located during the night, near the southern end of the Impact Area, not far from the border with the gold mining operation that capped the bottom of the mountain range.
Melton himself was not much to see. He sat on a rock, hands cuffed behind his back. He was a furry thing, with long wavy hair that billowed out from his head, a thick beard, and a hairy neck, back, and shoulders, all growing together so thickly that one couldn’t really tell where the hair from one left off and became something else. He wore a plain red tank top, as if to expose more of his fur to the morning air, with faded blue jeans and hiking boots. His eyes were small, pig-like, Wardlaw thought, as if the man were only part human and still trying to overcome some animal past. A fugitive from Moreau’s island, maybe, with all that fur and those small bloodshot eyes.
“So your name is Larry Melton,” Wardlaw said to him. He paced in front of the prisoner, back and forth, back and forth, as they talked. Marcus and Yato stood off to one side, at ease but alert. Weird red and white mushrooms poked out of the ground near their feet. “What else can you tell us about you, Mr. Melton? Your driver’s license says you’re from Indiana. Is that a fact?”
“Yes.”
“A Hoosier And what would a Hoosier be doing out here in the extreme desert Southwest, I wonder?”
Melton didn’t answer, so Wardlaw tried a more direct question. “What are you doing on my gunnery range?”
“Working for peace,” Melton said simply.
“‘Working for peace.’ That’s precious, really it is. And to you, arranging rocks into clever little messages like ‘War No More,’ that’s a form of working for peace?”
“Yes.”
“In what way?” Wardlaw demanded.
“It works to raise public consciousness.”
“What about flying airplanes into skyscrapers? Did that raise public consciousness too?”
“I guess, in a way.”
“You guess. Don’t you think that raised the public’s consciousness to the idea that not all war is bad, that sometimes it’s a necessary response to global conditions? You do know that the American public stands firmly behind the idea of a war against terrorism, don’t you?”
“I don’t find it surprising, given what happened. But I don’t think the public really knows what it’s asking for.”
“Maybe not. Maybe not.” Wardlaw stopped pacing and faced the young man directly. “If the public ever really knew what war was like, maybe they wouldn’t support one under any circumstances. Do you think that’s true?”
“It probably is,” Melton agreed.
“Which is why the public has to be left in the dark about some things. Because some wars are just, some wars are necessary, and some wars have to be fought and won. We’re a nation forged in war, built by war, protected by war and enriched by war, Mr. Melton. But you come into my Impact Area, in the midst of one of the greatest national crises our country has ever faced, and you try to disrupt our mobilization efforts, try to turn public opinion against us. Do you think you speak for the people, Mr. Melton?”
“I think so, yes.”
>
“When I look at you, do you know what I see? A spoiled, middle-class white kid. Your friend Dieter—ex-friend, I should say, may he rest in peace—” He watched Melton’s face as he dropped this news tidbit; to his credit, the young half-man barely flinched. “—he wasn’t even an American, he was a German. Middle class white kid, just the same. Your rich and your poor, they don’t have time for such nonsense. The poor are too busy trying to scrape out a living, and the rich are too busy building a great nation. It’s the middle-class, with too much time on their hands and not enough to do but watch TV, that are always out causing trouble. Look at us!” He thumped his own chest. “A white man.” He gestured at Yato and Jenkins. “An Asian man and a black man. The few, the proud, the multicultural. We’re America, boy. We represent America, not you!”
“I notice which one’s in charge,” Melton said.
“Nobody asked you for your opinion, son. You vandalize United States property. You evade our troops, forcing us to spend thousands of dollars and dozens, maybe hundreds, of man-hours, to find you. That money and those man-hours would be better spent keeping America safe from terrorism, but here we are, throwing them away—” He made a sweeping motion with his arms and raised his voice, so that it boomed up the scrub-strewn slope and echoed back to him. “Throwing them away! On you!”
He stepped closer to the prisoner and lowered his voice again. “And do you know what that makes you, Mr. Melton? Do you?”
“A patriot?” Melton asked smugly. Wardlaw wanted to bash his face in with the nearest heavy rock, or maybe with his fists. But he didn’t, because he still had something to find out.
“A traitor,” he explained. “You are guilty of treason, Mr. Melton. That’s a crime punishable by death.”
“Isn’t that up to a jury to decide?”
“We’re at war, Mr. Melton. Rules change. You’re on my turf, you come under my law.”
Melton’s eyes ticked over to where Marcus Jenkins and William Yato were standing, listening impassively. He looked nervous.
“Don’t look at them for help, Mr. Melton,” Wardlaw said. “They’re with me.” He turned to face the other two Marines. “Right, men? You’re with me.”
“Yes, sir,” they both said.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes, sir,” Jenkins said again. Yato nodded.
“Then kill him.”
“Excuse me?” Yato asked.
“If you trust me, then kill this traitor. Both of you, firing at once. Like a firing squad. Then we’re all in this together.”
Neither man moved.
“Do you trust me?” Wardlaw asked again.
Still calm, unreadable, Yato drew his sidearm. Marcus Jenkins did the same. Wardlaw stepped aside, trying to keep his smile restrained, as they took aim and squeezed their triggers.
Melton’s body twitched twice in quick succession as the slugs hit it, then collapsed in a furry, treacherous heap on the dirt. Yato barked out a short laugh, an unfamiliar sound to Wardlaw, who couldn’t remember ever having heard the Captain laugh out loud, and stood over the body, pointing his weapon at the head. He fired again and again, emptying his clip. Melton’s head, pulverized by the onslaught, leaked red and gray all over the dun colored sand. Jenkins joined in then, using a series of carefully-placed shots to cut a strip down the middle of Melton’s chest.
When both guns were empty and the echoes had faded, the desert seemed more quiet than usual. “What should we do with him, sir?” Jenkins asked, in a tone one might use in church.
Wardlaw pointed to the area where they’d been standing. “Just drag him over there,” he said. “Leave him for the mushrooms.” Yato looked questioningly at him, and he didn’t even know for sure what it meant himself.
But it didn’t matter. It would work. That’s all that counted.
It would work.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Penny put her fingertips to the wall, as if she’d be able to feel the writing she could no longer see. I know what I was reading, she thought. It was as clear as anything. Where could it have gone?
She wasn’t willing to believe that it had been a hallucination. Her mind couldn’t make up something as twisted as what she’d seen—she wasn’t imaginative enough for that. Penny had always been the realist, pragmatic Penny, unwilling or unable to wander off the paths that had been established for her life.
Still on her knees before the cave wall, she turned and shined the light on Mick again. He still had the remnants of the freaky glowing mushroom in his hands, and had brought a tiny portion up to his lips to taste. She’d hurl if she did something like that, she knew, taking a taste of what could very well be a poisonous mushroom. Who knew what kind of thing would grow in a cave like this? But Mick knew the natural world a lot better than she did, she realized. She was still a relative novice compared to him. For all she knew, he’d encountered these mushrooms a dozen times before and considered them a delicacy.
But she didn’t like it, and she didn’t like the way he flicked his tongue across the mushroom’s stem and stared at her over the top of it, like some second-rate Don Juan from a low budget romance. She didn’t know what he could see in the dark, since she held the only visible flashlight, but she didn’t care for the way his eyes narrowed as he examined her.
“What?” she finally asked.
“Just watching you,” he said. His voice sounded different—less whiny, more self-assured, than usual. “It looks like you have a little problem.”
“What is it?” Penny demanded. “What’s my problem, Mick? I’m sure you’ve catalogued all of them.”
“Well, since you ask,” Mick replied. “Your immediate problem is that you’re seeing things on the wall that clearly aren’t there. That’s just a little scary, don’t you think?”
“Sure, a little, but—”
“But your bigger problem—the mother of all your problems, I believe, is that you’re just too uptight. You need to get laid once in a while.”
She clicked the flashlight off, but found that there was still enough light—from the mushrooms? she couldn’t tell—for her to see Mick clearly. His expression hadn’t changed, though he’d taken the mushroom away from his lips. “Don’t start, Mick, for God’s sake not now.”
“Yes, that’s definitely it, Penny,” he said, continuing as if he couldn’t even hear her. “A little nookie, a little horizontal bop, bit of the old in and out. Straighten you right out. Right out.”
Penny had been annoyed but now she started to feel genuine fear. This wasn’t Mick—wasn’t talking like Mick, didn’t look like Mick. The body was still Mick’s but he was holding himself differently, somehow more composed, less gangly and awkward, than she was accustomed to.
“So whaddya say?” he went on. “Give a little up to old Mick, why don’t you?” Saying this, he dropped the mushroom fragments and lunged at her. She tried to back away but the wall was right behind her and she was still down on her knees, so all she succeeded in doing was slamming her own head into the hard rock. Bright flashes of light blinded her momentarily—long enough for Mick to grope, seemingly everywhere, hands pawing at her breasts, her cheeks, her crotch. He clamped his lips over hers and she breathed in mushroom-fouled breath.
Trying to get her footing, she writhed, twisting her head away from his, and hit him on the back with both hands. She couldn’t get any leverage, though, any momentum for her punches, and he kept up his assault. His hand rubbed her groin through her jeans, rough and fast, in time with his own rapid breathing.
But Penny had survived basic training and hand-to-hand combat training and a fucking war, for Christ’s sake, and she wasn’t going to let some ‘shroom-addled adolescent asswipe have his way with her in his idea of a tunnel of love. She gained her balance, brought her arms together inside his grasp, and threw then up and out, breaking his grip. Then she shot to her feet and aimed a snap-kick at his groin, connecting with a satisfying impact. The breath blew out of him. He doubled over in pain. She pr
essed the advantage, locking her fists together and swinging, baseball-style, as his head drooped toward her. Her balled fists rammed into his nose, with more force than she had expected, and his head snapped backward.
When he bounced off the other wall, it was much harder than she had hit. Blood and spit flew from his suddenly slack mouth and he dropped to the cave floor.
Oh God, Penny thought, scrambling for the flashlight she’d dropped when Mick had first attacked her. Oh God, oh God. She found the light and clicked it on. A dark pool was already spreading from beneath Mick’s head. “Mick?” she asked hesitantly. But he was still and he wasn’t breathing and when she pressed her hands against his neck and his wrist and his chest, she could find no heartbeat. She felt his head and the tip of her finger slipped into a deep indentation, which gave beneath the pressure like an overripe cantaloupe. Her hands came away sticky with his blood.
She fought back panic. He’d been attacking her, ready to rape her. But she hadn’t meant to kill him. That was not part of her plan, at all. She just wanted him off her, away from her. Not dead.
She even asked herself if she was lying, if she had been trying to kill him. The answer remained no. He was dead, but it was an accident, not a purposeful act.
He was dead, though. No changing that.
She had to get out of there.
Before she went—and if she’d ever had to do anything more difficult in her life she couldn’t remember it—she patted down his pants pockets and found his keys. She’d need the van, she figured.
Penny took a last look at Mick—just in case, she thought, though if he got up now she’d be even more terrified than she was already—and turned to go, the powerful flashlight’s beam sweeping across the far wall as she did.
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