Mojave Green

by The Brothers Washburn

  It’s freakin’ alive! Dave realized.

  He turned, and was back at the car in two quick steps. He pulled frantically at the door handle, but it was locked.

  “Open the door! Open the door!” he gasped in full panic mode. Looking through the car window, he saw Jim and Sean petrified, looking past him at . . .

  Dave glanced over his shoulder and saw that the head had pulled back, waving side to side. The mouth gaped open, the black tongue flickering in and out, two long fangs thrusting down. The head tipped back ever so slightly in anticipation of a strike. Dave did not wait, but jumped onto the roof of the car and rolled over to the other side, landing on his belly in the sand.

  A split second after Dave leaped out of the way, the enormous head struck forward, striking the side of the car so forcefully it lifted up onto two wheels. Both windows on that side of the car shattered into thousands of pieces, but remained in place. As the car bounced back down on all four tires, Jim and Sean started screaming.

  Peering under the car, Dave watched an enormous figure slither out of sight. Pulling himself into a crouching position, he peeked over the hood. He saw nothing. Breathing heavily, he tried the front passenger door—locked. His fist smacked the door, causing Jim to jump and hit his head on the roof of the car. All color had drained from Jim’s face and his mouth was still stretched wide in a scream.

  Dave pleaded, “Open the door! Please open the door! Jim, please open the freakin’ door!” Dave’s voice reached a frenzy as he pounded the door with the palm of his hand. Jim continued screaming, shaking his head from side to side, while pointing at the shattered safety glass.

  Clearly, Jim and Sean were not about to risk opening the door to let Dave back into the car. Checking around, he could not see the snake. Still in a crouching position, he scurried away from the car toward some large mesquite bushes. After about twenty feet, it occurred to him there was no good cover anywhere, except under the car. He was moving away from the car when he should have slid underneath it.

  Starting back toward the car at a run, he saw the snake again. It had flanked him around the back of the car and was now headed directly toward him. With its head raised several feet above the desert floor, its body moved back and forth in classic snake fashion. It was gigantic and moving surprisingly fast.

  Bob had walked about a hundred yards away from the car—well, from where the car used to be. The day was getting hot, and he was already so thirsty.

  His footsteps slowed. Where was he going anyway? He knew he had been able to see the town from where they had parked the car the night before. He had easily seen the lights of the Trona chemical plant.

  It’s not like the whole town could have slipped out of sight. Could it?

  To his right was a small rise capped by large boulders. He could get a better view from there. He hustled up the rise, climbing onto the highest boulder. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he looked in every direction. No Trona. No Trona Road. He should be able to see Valley Wells, the old swimming pool, but it was gone, too. He looked back the way he had come—still no car.

  Turning toward Trona again, he squinted into the bright sunlight.

  Is there something there? It was too far away to tell for sure, but it looked like a single large structure stood where the center of town used to be. Is it just a rocky hill? Is it that creepy old mansion? Why would everything else be gone except for the old mansion?

  Bob couldn’t tell what it was for sure from where he was standing. It could be man-made, or it could be nothing at all. Whatever it was, there was nothing else there.

  What was the point of walking to where Trona was supposed to be, if it wasn’t still there? Bob sat down on the boulder and began to think in earnest. He would have to sort the whole thing out, but in the meantime, he needed to find a place to survive.

  First of all, that meant water. He was out in the middle of the desert in late spring. The days would get hot. He wouldn’t last much more than forty-eight hours without water. Going to where the town should be, but wasn’t, was not going to get him water.

  He could see the large outcropping of rocks where Great Falls should be. The name “Great Falls” was misleading because it referred to the great distance the water fell, not to the amount of water falling. Usually, only a trickle of water flowed over the massive rock formations that created the falls. Sometimes it was completely dry, but at least there was a chance of water there. And if there was no water at the falls, he could climb up to the water’s source, a spring several miles farther back in the mountains.

  Hopefully, he would find water there and shelter from the sun in the natural caves around the falls. Bob figured he should be able to get there before the day got too hot because it was only a few miles away.

  He scurried down the rise, across a dry wash, around another rise, and then came to a dead stop. He had almost bumped into two Indians.

  Indians? Where did Indians come from?

  They stood still, apparently just as surprised to see him as he was to see them. They wore nothing but skimpy breech cloths and some sort of hair decoration. They were shorter than Bob and much thinner. Their skin had been bronzed a deep brown, and their black hair hung in braids down to the middle of their backs.

  One of them pointed at Bob and said something to the other. The look on their faces switched from surprise to menace. One pulled a shiny obsidian blade, attached to a crude leather and wooden handle, from the waist of his breechcloth.

  This can’t be good, Bob thought.

  Dave had two choices. He could try running away from the giant snake, but there was no cover as far as he could see, and he didn’t know if he was faster than it was. Or, he could head for cover under the car, but that would take him closer to the snake.

  In a flash decision, Dave sprinted toward the car. It was a race to see who reached it first. They arrived at the same moment, not giving Dave time to slide under the front end of the car.

  Instead, Dave stepped onto the front bumper, and then the hood, vaulting himself to the other side of the car, opposite the snake head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the snake strike, barely missing him, but coming close enough for him to smell its foul breath, stinking of rotted meat. Absentmindedly, he wondered, Why is it chasing me if it is still digesting its last meal?

  He fell to the sand and rolled to the back of the car, bumping up against a moving wall. When Dave came to his knees, he realized he had rolled into the body of the snake, which was now wrapping itself around the car to come back at him. Moving through the sand, the snake’s body glistened in the light. Along its length, an intricate pattern of diamonds-on-diamonds in pale shades of green accented with black and white markings played in the desert sun.

  Dave crawled on his hands and knees as fast as he could toward the rear of the car, panting as he went, “Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.”

  Reaching the back bumper, he slid on his stomach, squirming underneath military style. The body of the gargantuan reptile bumped against the car on three sides, causing it to bounce and twist. Above him, Dave could hear Jim and Sean screaming in the car like little girls.

  He clenched his jaw, disgusted. The snake was coming after him because they had locked him out, and now they were screaming like little girls.

  Dave had almost wiggled completely under the car when he felt a large, cavernous mouth clamp down on his left foot. He dug his fingers as deep as he could into the soft desert sand, but it did no good. The snake pulled him thrashing and kicking from underneath the car, leaving long claw marks in the sand. As he came out from beneath the car, it hoisted him upside down into the air well above the car. The snake had him just barely by his left foot.

  Dave squirmed violently at the same instant the snake shook its head to the side, opening its mouth to get a better grip on its intended prey. Dave’s squirming combined with the snake’s head shaking caused him to lose his left sneaker in the snake’s mouth, and he was simultaneously thrown aside.

  Landi
ng on his side in a clump of sagebrush, Dave rolled painfully across a small cactus. Springing to his feet, he saw his only choice now was to run away from the car. He only got three steps away.

  Bob ran as fast as he could. He thought he was headed back in the direction where his car used to be, although he didn’t know what good that would do. He was being followed by two nearly naked natives armed with stone knives. While he sprinted with all his might, he sensed they were no more than loping along, just keeping up with him. He figured they were probably waiting for him to run out of breath. He’d be easy to overpower then.

  Bob didn’t know what else to do other than run. He couldn’t fight both of them. He probably couldn’t even fight one of them. They had knives. Bob had no weapons other than his fists, and he had never been a good fighter. He was quickly getting winded.

  To make things worse, he was starting to feel nauseated and dizzy again. His vision was going fuzzy. Not now! he thought. Please, not now!

  Watching through the car window with blanched, horror-stricken faces, Jim and Sean continued screaming as the snake began to swallow its latest squirming meal in one whole piece.

  They were not aware of it, but they were holding hands over the seat. Mesmerized, they stopped screaming and stared through the shattered glass windows at Dave’s legs kicking as they stuck out of the snake’s engorged mouth. The rest of Dave was a large lump lost down the snake’s throat.

  Too soon, the kicking stopped. Only Dave’s ankles and feet, one foot missing a shoe, were visible when the snake’s image, through the multifaceted glass, became blurry, then sinuous, then gone.

  Just as Jim had seen Bob disappear earlier, the snake, with an almost-swallowed Dave, vanished while he and Sean watched.

  In that exact same instant, Bob appeared suddenly from out of nowhere a few feet from the car, running hard while looking back over his shoulder. At top speed, he smacked into the side of the car and bounced back onto his rear end, landing on a beer bottle. Dazed and wheezing for breath, he blinked in astonishment at the car. Jumping off the crushed bottle, he lunged up to open the front car door, but it was locked.

  Jim and Sean, startled by Bob’s sudden appearance and collision with the car, went from silent amazement back to screaming like little girls.

  Bob frantically worked the door handle. Realizing that Jim and Sean were not going to unlock the door, he remembered he had the keys in his pocket. Casting an anxious glance behind him, he unlocked the door and jumped inside, firing up the engine while ordering his passengers to shut up. He spun the car around, sending a billow of dust and dirt into the air, and headed down the dirt road, which had reappeared with the car.

  Still catching his breath, Bob glanced around the car. “Hey,” he panted, “where’s Dave?” Jim and Sean eyed each other with expressions of incredulity and shook their heads.

  Jim spoke up. “Dave’s not here, man.”

  When they reached Trona Road, Bob took the turn too fast. The car fishtailed across the road before he got it back under control. They had barely gone a few hundred yards towards town when they saw a convoy of black SUVs coming up the road toward them.

  One of the SUVs pulled into their lane and continued toward them alongside of an SUV in the other lane. Blue and red lights began blinking from behind the grills of the black vehicles. Cop cars were familiar to the three boys, but they had never seen anything like these. With nowhere to go, Bob slowed his car to a stop.

  The two front SUVs stopped directly in front of him, blocking his travel in that direction. A third SUV circled around on the shoulder to come to a stop sideways across the road directly behind Bob’s car. The boys were completely blocked in by the black cars. Considering what he had just experienced, Bob was relieved to see law enforcement. Glancing around the car, he asked again, “Where’s Dave? What happened to Dave?”

  Sean stared at the floor, but Jim solemnly replied, “Dave’s not here, man.”

  Several men in dark suits and sunglasses got out of the SUVs, as well as two older men with white hair. The taller of the white-haired men began pointing and giving directions to the younger men in dark suits. The other man walked toward Bob’s car. He had a slight limp and a very angry expression on his face.

  Two very confused, nearly naked Indians crouched behind some large mesquite bushes watching flashing red and blue lights in the distance. They had been chasing a strange intruder, a tall white man, but he had escaped in the belly of a large beast that roared loudly and ran swiftly, kicking up towering clouds of dust. Though they were always cautious of the giant creatures roaming the land, they had never seen or heard of anything like this. Both feared the coming of a new kind of evil, and they didn’t know the half of it yet.

  VI

  Cal stood next to the open passenger door of his Camaro, waving a piece of cardboard like a fan in an attempt, per instructions from Camm, to air out his car. It was a half-hearted effort. He was more interested in the showdown that had begun between Camm and Lenny.

  “You are not getting into that car until you go shower!” Camm stood with one hand firmly planted on her hip and the other pointing toward the showers. They had spent the night at a KOA near Flagstaff, Arizona, and they all wanted to get back on the road as soon as possible.

  Lenny didn’t even bother looking toward the showers, but held his hands out in a helpless manner and, by way of argument, said, “Dude?”

  The furrow on Camm’s brow deepened, and she stabbed her finger in the direction of the camp showers. “I’ve told you before, I’m not a dude! We are not getting back in that car with you until you shower! End of discussion! Now, move it! You’re wasting time.”

  Lenny blinked at Camm, looking confused and helpless. He didn’t seem to register why anyone riding with him on a long, cross-country road trip would want him to shower.

  Cal sighed and glanced heavenward as if help might come from that direction. No such luck. He should have seen this coming. Camm had come out to see him in Houston after Yale let out for summer, and Cal was ecstatic to see her again. Though he had promised to stay in touch with K’tlynn over the summer, with Camm around, he could think of nothing but teaming up with Camm again. She was anxious to find out what was happening in Trona, so they told their parents they were going to Los Angeles to stay with friends for a while and wanted to drive through Trona on the way there.

  Camm had brought a friend, who had just finished her first year in law school at Yale. Her name was Martha. Cal thought she was nice, in a quiet kind of way. Martha said almost nothing to him, but he had heard her talking with Camm about a summer clerkship in L.A. Cal didn’t mind her coming along for the ride. If things had stayed like that, there wouldn’t have been any special problems, and everyone would have been happy.

  However, the day before they left Houston, Lenny, Cal’s college roommate, showed up out of the blue. It was as if Lenny had just stepped out of the void into their world. He was on a full-ride academic scholarship and therefore felt he didn’t need to work during the summer. Instead, he had decided to go on a “walk-about.” Cal wasn’t sure what a walk-about was, except maybe bumming around and living off friends for the whole summer.

  To Camm’s consternation, when Lenny heard that Cal, Camm, and Martha were headed to California, he could not be restrained from joining them. Lenny, the surfer, was counting on catching an awesome swell in So-Cal.

  “Look,” Cal had tried to explain, “we’re going through Trona, where I grew up, and trust me, there are no waves in Trona. We’re, like, two hundred miles from the ocean. It’s all desert, man, just desert as far as the eye can see.”

  “Dude. I heard your old man,” Lenny had retorted. “He said you’re on your way to L.A! That’s the bomb, dude. I’ll find a board, live on the beach, get to know the local babes. You know, just let me hitch along.”

  Truth was, Cal didn’t mind having Lenny along. However, Cal had a higher resistance to the odiferous emanations that wafted from Lenny’s unwashed corp
us than either Camm or Martha—especially Camm, who did all the complaining for both herself and Martha. Martha continued to say very little to anyone except Camm. Two days trapped with Lenny in Cal’s car was more than Camm was willing to tolerate.

  “Go. Wash. Do it now, or we are leaving you here! You can hitchhike from here for all I care.” Camm looked like she meant it, and she probably did. Cal recognized that look on her face—there was no changing her mind at this point.

  Lenny looked to Cal with pleading eyes. He had given them a long, rambling explanation as to why he didn’t shower more than once every ten days. It had something to do with hunter-gatherers, pheromones, and evolution. Cal was used to Lenny’s ramblings. Martha looked bemused, but Camm was having none of it. She had actually snorted in disgust.

  “Clean up or clear out! Now! Hit the showers or we’re leaving without you! We’re not going to wait much longer.” Camm folded her arms emphatically.

  Unfortunately, there was no way to reconcile Lenny’s desire to live as much as possible like a modern-day hunter-gatherer with Camm’s understanding of, let alone patience with, that concept. There was also no reconciling Lenny’s incomprehension as to why anyone would take offense at his body odor, and Camm’s intolerance for his rank smell. Both could be very stubborn, and Cal now saw that this clash had been inevitable from the start.

  Lenny held out his hands. “Dude, I don’t even have any soap or anything.”

  “Dude, yourself,” Camm fired back. “Hit the showers, and we’ll find soap.”