Desert Guardian

by Duvall, Karen

  She began to cry in low, despairing sobs that tore at his heart. He wanted so much to explain himself, to apologize for being a jerk. But now wasn't the time. Considering the state she was in, he doubted she'd comprehend much of anything he said anyway.

  "Don't give up on me," he told her, his tone sounding harsh even to himself. "Don't you dare give up. And don't you dare give in to their lunacy."

  "Lunacy. Yes. Yes-yes-yes-yes. That's what it is." Her voice low, she added, "They're in here. A whole bunch of them. They're trying to talk me into leaving with them, but I won't go."

  Them? Who the hell was she talking about? "Who's in there with you?"

  "Dwarves, with light green skin and big heads. The little men talk to me through a box that looks like a radio, but it's not a radio. They want to take me with them. Sam?" More sobbing. "I don't want to go, Sam. Please don't make me go."

  Oh, man. She was fried, but he knew it was only temporary. "They drugged you to make you see things. I don't know what good it will do now, but try sticking your finger down your throat to make yourself throw up. Understand?"

  "Throw up? Already did that. Felt funny, head all tingly, lights too bright. So I made myself get sick."

  He heaved a relieved breath. "Good. Very good. Maybe the effects of Valya's drug won't last long."

  "Jake's in here with me, but he can't see the little men. Only I can see them."

  At least he wouldn't have to go searching through camp for Jake. This rescue mission might actually be easier than he'd first thought, though he couldn't stop worrying about Kelly. The drugs Valya had used in the past were a mixture of peyote and a variety of herbs to stimulate the mind. There was no telling how much Kelly had ingested. Out of spite, Valya might have made her a toxic potion instead. He prayed that hadn't been the case.

  Quick, short footsteps approached from behind him. Sam spun around, his knife poised to strike. He immediately lowered it when he saw who it was. "Consuela?"

  The young woman nodded, beaming at him and standing on tiptoes to reach her arms around his neck in a desperate embrace.

  He pulled away. "What are you doing here?"

  Consuela pointed at the horizon, where the tail of Anston's comet sparkled against the black desert sky.

  "No-no-no-no!" Kelly said. "Don't trust her. Don't trust her. Sam, it's a trap! Consuela is the enemy!"

  Sam glanced at the closed trailer door then back at Consuela. She wasn't their enemy but a dear friend. He didn't know why she was here, but he didn't care as long as she helped them escape. "I'm glad you're all right, Consuela."

  Consuela nodded and grabbed his hand, pulling him away from the trailer.

  He resisted. "We have to get Kelly out first. Did you know she was in there? With her brother?"

  She gave him a blank look and tugged his hand, trying to make him follow.

  Something wasn't right. If Consuela had been kidnapped and brought to Star Mother's camp, no way would Valya allow her to roam free like this. Which meant she was here by choice. "What's going on, Consuela?"

  Her expression turned from hopeful to disappointed, and she dropped his hand.

  Sam sensed another presence behind him. He instinctively crouched low and rolled beneath the trailer. Emerging on the other side, he sprang to his feet to race across the courtyard, heading for the generators. He figured he still had a chance to disable Star Mother's death machines before he got caught.

  A flurry of running footsteps pattered across the sunbaked earth, all headed in his direction. Though the night was dark as pitch, Sam's eyes had adjusted enough to discern the outlines of tents, vehicles, and the sentries running toward him.

  He yanked his Glock from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket and aimed it at the onslaught of sentries.

  The robed men slowed to a cautious walk but didn't stop their advance. Sam backed his way to the generators, all the while his gun trained on the small army coming his way.

  The gun steady in his hands, he thumbed the safety free. "Not another step."

  The troop came to a halt.

  He tugged the penlight from an inside pocket and switched it on, feeling behind him for the generator. "I'm disabling your suicide contraption, then you're going to let Kelly and her brother out of that sewage box. Got it?"

  If anyone nodded, he couldn't tell in the dark, and no one said a word. But he could see each of them well enough to know where their body parts were.

  "If none of you want your leg shot to hell, I advise you not to interfere. My aim could be off in the dark so it's hard saying what part of you I'll hit."

  With the penlight clenched in his teeth, Sam turned his head to train the light on the generator closest to him. He found a tangled mass of wires and cables but nothing he recognized. He needed more light to locate the spark plugs. Whatever damage he could improvise would have to do for now. He grabbed a loop of wires and pulled.

  The sound of movement to his left made him turn in that direction. The penlight showed him a pale visage with lips pulled back in a snarl, eyes wild, arms outstretched as if for a hug. Sam swung the gun around to aim at his attacker, but he wasn't fast enough. A pair of spindly arms grabbed him around the waist and tackled him to the ground.

  The impact of several bodies landing on top of him had him gasping for air, his chest crushed beneath the combined weight of the men. He pushed and struggled, his throat spasming as he tried to take in air.

  Someone shouted, "Enough!"

  The pressure on his chest eased as the sentries slid off him, one by one. Sam choked in gulps of dust-filled air, coughing and gagging. He lay on his back, his gun hand now empty.

  A stoic white figure towered above him. "Nice to see you again, Sam."

  Sam pushed himself to his elbows and spit out a mouthful of dirt. "Wish I could say the same, Von. Ready for your trip?"

  The giant man, who exceeded seven feet without shoes, wagged his great white head, as if chastising a naughty child. "You never learn, do you? Which is why you and I never got along."

  Masking the hate he felt for the man, Sam grinned up at him. "We never got along because you and your wife are psychopaths."

  Von folded his arms. "So you've said before. But it doesn't matter what you think because it won't be long before you can no longer think at all."

  His survival depended on staying calm, and he was glad Von couldn't hear his heart hammering against his ribs. One thing he'd learned long ago was that Von and Valya were excited by panic, much like predators that smelled fear on their prey.

  Sam rolled to his knees then stood. Dwarfed by Von's unusual height, he faced the giant man, the top of his head level with Von's chin. "I want my gun back."

  Von smiled, his lips stretching into a reptilian grin. "I bet you do. Come. Let's talk it over in my tent." He dismissed his little army and turned to swagger toward a line of tents on the opposite side of the courtyard. The remaining generator hummed as lights from half the camp blinked on.

  Two sentries closed in on Sam from either side.

  "Hey, don't I know you two?" he asked, as the men grasped his arms above the elbows and propelled him forward. "Yeah, I remember now. You guys fell for my snake gag when I was fifteen, remember? You thought there was money in the box." He laughed. "But instead there was a rattlesnake inside. What a couple of morons. Good thing you only got bitten one time—"

  The shorter one hooked a foot around Sam's ankle and yanked his leg out from under him. Sam sprawled forward, his chin banging with a painful thud against the ground.

  The sentry chuckled. "Oops."

  Neither made a move to help him up, not that Sam expected them to. He lay still, playing dead.

  "Now you've done it," one said to the other. "He's out cold. What did you do that for? You want us both hauled into the judgment tent?"

  "He's the kid who got us snake bit. Did you hear what he called us?"

  "Yeah. So what? Sticks and stones. Come on, help me get him to his feet."

  Sam re
mained limp as the two sentries latched on to either arm and lifted him up. They struggled with his dead weight, both slightly off balance with the effort. When he abruptly stood on his own, the men staggered back in surprise.

  Sam whirled a roundhouse kick to the tallest one's head. "Sticks!" He heaved a booted foot between the legs of the other. "And stones!"

  Leaving both sentries writhing on the ground, he leapt onto the platform that held the second generator. "Let's find out how well you all see in the dark."

  ****

  Kelly lay on her side, her knees drawn to her chest. Her skin quivered with the sensation of a thousand ants crawling over every inch of her body. Darkness engulfed her, reminding her of the days her father had punished her by locking her in the basement.

  Panic coated her skin like sweat but singed her nerves like fire. She jumped, trying to escape the rats she imagined crawling toward her, their bright red eyes like laser beams that flickered in the dark. What she'd thought were ants suddenly turned into spiders, the enormous hairy kind like the ones in her father's basement. They climbed up her arms, her back, her neck, slithered beneath her hair, and she couldn't move her hands to smack them away.

  She kicked out at shadows, twisting furiously to free herself of the cuffs. Crying out for help didn't seem to matter because no one came to her rescue. Not Sam. Not anyone.

  It didn't take long to exhaust herself. By then, the hallucinations had passed. She licked her dry lips, tasting blood from the cut on her mouth where a sentry had punched her for not drinking the water he'd offered. It hadn't been water. But after the numbing blow to her face, she reluctantly took a sip of the bitter liquid, holding it in her mouth instead of swallowing. Once the sentry left, she spat it out and forced herself to throw up.

  Then Sam spoke to her. At least it had sounded like Sam. She could have been hallucinating again, which wouldn't have surprised her. The sound of Sam's voice had brought tears of longing to her eyes and a strong sense of hope to her heart. Had he come to save her? Did he really care after all? Probably not, or she wouldn't still be in this hellhole. She must have made it all up in her mind because thinking about him was all that was keeping her sane.

  She drifted in and out of a hazy dream filled with paranoia and terror. There were moments when she felt lucid, but those were few and far between. She had no concept of how much time had passed since her beating. An hour? A day? A week? Her stomach rumbled with hunger, and she was terribly tired, wanting only to lie down, close her eyes, and dream about the world outside this stinking trailer. But try as she might, sleep wouldn't come.

  Her mind raced with frantic thoughts of escape, and strange visions plagued her dry, burning eyes. She saw dwarf-like creatures that spoke to her of a new and better life on another planet, telling her that Earth would soon be destroyed by war and her only hope of survival was to accept Star Mother's plan for a utopian future.

  "No," she murmured, her raw throat dry from thirst. "You lie. All of you lie!"

  "They're telling the truth, Kelly." Jake's voice sounded rough with fatigue, yet there was an edge to it, as if he held his temper. "Listen to them. They know."

  "You can see them?" She peered through the thick blackness that permeated the trailer. Amorphous shapes floated within the inky darkness, shadows on shadows, each one trailing streaks of luminous green that flickered like a strobe. When she blinked, the images vanished. "Do you see the lights?"

  Jake's high-pitched barks of laughter cut through the static pouring from the radio. "No lights. No little green men. Not for me."

  Kelly needed confirmation she wasn't crazy, though she'd rather be crazy than realize what she saw and heard were real. Still, she had to know. "Jake, please tell me if they're real."

  Instead of answering, he kicked the trailer wall, the booming echo shuddering through the floor beneath her. Through gritted teeth, he said, "I never should have sent you that letter!"

  Yes, the letter. His letter telling her that Star Mother would kill him and all the other cultists on the first day Anston's comet flew overhead. Now she was on the death list as well. But it wasn't over. Everything she had been through these past few days, including her brief but wonderful interlude with Sam, would all be for nothing if she didn't save them both.

  "I'm being punished for not convincing you to join us," Jake said, the rage gone from his voice. He sounded subdued now, as if he'd given up. "I've been in this sewer box since yesterday, Kelly. Valya refused to give me the elixir that would help me through it. But she gave it to you so that you could see the starship's pilots. Do you know what an honor that is?"

  Honor? More like a curse. Valya's "elixir" was responsible for making Kelly see things that weren't there. No more than ten minutes ago, Sam had said just that. Too bad he had only been a figment of her imagination. And there were no ET pilots in the trailer because she'd imagined them, too, her visions fueled by the hallucinogenic drugs and by the voice coming through the radio.

  "Jake, remember the message from Dad?" she asked him, determined to turn him around.

  "A fake," he said bitterly. "Valya told me The Arrow had someone else say those things to trick me. And you let him."

  "That's not true. You know me. I'd never try to trick you. I swear that was Dad's voice in that recording."

  "Impossible." Weariness made his voice so weak that Kelly could hardly hear him. "Dad would never say he loved me. Never has, never will."

  "I had a hard time believing it myself at first, but Dad really is sorry for what he did. He's trying to change. He wants us to be a family again and—"

  "Shut up," Jake shouted. "No more lies."

  Afraid of pushing him too far, she didn't say any more.

  The invisible ants suddenly assaulted her again, thousands of insectile feet scurrying across her flesh. She shivered, her ears ringing, her head light as a helium-filled balloon. She braced herself for the drug-induced terror, struggling to keep hold of her sanity. As her mind began to slip, she banged the heels of her shoes against the trailer floor, hoping the pain would shock her back to awareness. Something stung along the bottom of her foot. Were the ants biting her now? No. Not ants. It was the nail file she'd hidden inside her shoe.

  Her temples pounding as she fought to grasp fraying threads of reality, she tugged against the shackles surrounding her wrists.

  Then she froze as the night outside the trailer suddenly erupted in a cacophony of shouting.

  ****

  The second Sam yanked a handful of wires free of the generator, the entire camp went black. Then the shouting began.

  He jumped off the dead generator and rolled beneath the platform. A troop of sentries ran across the courtyard, their battery-powered lanterns bobbing in the darkness. The two sentries he'd taken down were back on their feet and eagerly telling their comrades what had happened. They spread out to peer inside tents and beneath trailers, searching for him. He had to find a different hiding place.

  He leapt free of the platform then clambered on hands and knees between two tents, emerging outside the camp's circle. An old van sat parked beneath a mesquite tree, its tires slashed thanks to Sam's earlier visit. He yanked open the door and climbed inside.

  While catching his breath, he considered his next move. He needed his gun. In fact, there was no way to rescue Kelly and Jake without it.

  Think, damn it, think. The arsenal. That's where the sentries would have taken his Glock, storing it among the rest of their stolen armament. Once he located the arsenal, he could disarm every weapon they had. He thought back to when he was a kid, rebellious as hell, and the time he'd accidentally stumbled upon the cult's storehouse of guns. His mischief had resulted in his first acquaintance with the prison trailer, but not until he'd seen the weapons they possessed. Most were shotguns, a couple of rifles, a half-dozen handguns. Hardly enough to outfit an army. Get rid of the ammunition, and Star Mother's camp would be as impotent as a convent.

  Sam glanced out the van's dirty window at a li
ne of tents. He recognized the infirmary between the nursery tent for Valya's offspring and the enormous black tent that housed the royal couple. He remembered the arsenal as an enclosed pup tent that was never guarded. However, he didn't think the little tent would be left unguarded tonight of all nights.

  A line of hand-held lanterns swayed beyond the camp's circle, heading toward the vehicles parked in a line like a fortress wall. The sentries would come this way next.

  He slipped out of the van. Crouched low to the ground, he made his way behind the nursery tent. From the narrow alley between infirmary and nursery, he spotted the squat little pup tent. Sure enough, two sentries stood guard.

  Sam lowered to his belly and snake-crawled between the tents to the back of the arsenal. He'd always wondered why Valya didn't keep the weapons inside her own tent, where they would be safe from the children. If one of the kids ever got hold of a gun and thought it was a toy... He shuddered at the possibility.

  "Why are you crawling on the ground?" whispered a small voice from behind him.

  Heart beating in his throat, he twisted his head around and looked up. A little girl of about four or five, her long, dark hair hanging in two tangled pigtails, looked down at him with a puzzled frown. He thrust his forefinger to his lips and shushed her then crawled back the way he'd come. The child followed him behind the nursery tent.

  He glanced at the arsenal and the two sentries guarding it, expecting them both to come after him at any second. Neither of them moved.

  "Where did you come from?" he asked her in the quietest whisper possible.

  She pointed at the nursery tent.

  "You better get back in there before someone comes looking for you."

  "I have to go potty."

  That was more information than he needed to know. Sam mumbled, "Then you better go."

  She shook her head. "I'm scared of the dark. Will you take me?"

  Damn. What else could go wrong? He didn't have time to escort her to the portable toilet, let alone look for the darn thing. He motioned toward the vague outline of a mesquite tree. "Go behind that tree over there."