by Mike Baron
"Are you all right?" Summer called from below.
Beadles went to the vertical window, barely large enough for him to lean out. "I'm fine. Just looking for snakes."
"Be careful."
Beadles turned his attention to the far side of the room, too dark to see. He shined his flashlight in the corner and there was the damn snake, slowly uncoiling as if wakened by his light.
Beadles drew the pistol, ratcheted a round into the chamber and aimed with both hands. The report caused dust to fall from the ceiling and momentarily deafened him. The snake flew into two pieces splattering gore and ichor on the walls.
"WHAT'S WRONG?" Summer wailed.
Beadles stuck his head out the window. "It's okay. I got the snake."
Still holding the cocked pistol he approached the corner with his flashlight. The snake had been sleeping on a pile of rubble that had filled in the corner. Something dull and silver gleamed. Beadles used his foot to scrape away the rubble revealing an ancient blade embossed in Latin.
***
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
"Gold!"
Beadles played his light all around the corner. No more snakes. He knelt in the soft dirt and brushed away the rubble. It was a Spanish saber with a two foot blade. Beadles believed it was from Toledo, the source of most Conquistador armor and weapons. The swords were tested by bending them into a full half-circle and attempting to shatter them against a steel helmet. No sword was released that did not meet these tests.
Holding the light in his teeth he played it across the tarnished steel until he read the letters.
Consilio et animis.
By wisdom and courage.
A fat crucifix engraved near the hilt.
Beneath where the sword lay a rotting canvas sack. Beadles gripped it and tugged gently. The bag partially emerged before disintegrating in his hand spilling a pile of yellow ingots at his knees. They were the size of quarters, each with a turquoise in the center surrounded by radiating lines. Childish glee rose in his gullet. Every treasure hunter's dream--the end of the rainbow. Beadles picked one up and examined it beneath the flashlight. Was it possible the Azuma had developed a form of currency? It flew in the face of all accepted knowledge. It was so un-Indian! If it were true it would only add luster to his discovery. Beadles counted the coins. There were thirty-two of them and they were heavy.
Beadles had lied about the gold to entice Ninja. His lie had become the truth.
"Hey Beadles!" Summer called anxiously from outside. "What's going on?"
Grinning, Beadles went to the window and tossed a coin at Summer's feet. She picked it up.
"Oh my God," she said. "OH MY GOD!"
"There's a lot more where that came from!"
"I'm coming up!"
Summer entered the west-facing door.
"Over here," Beadles called through the skylight.
Summer stood beneath him. "How did you get up there?"
"I jumped."
"Well look out. Here I come."
Summer easily leaped up and caught the rim of the circular hole. Beadles leaned down and helped her up with a grip on her arm. He pointed to the corner with the saber. Summer knelt in the dirt and ran doubloons through her fingers laughing, a sound like hummingbirds hiccuping.
"We're rich!" she declared.
"Not so fast. The law says these belong to the state. It's possible they'll let us keep one or two as finders' fees, but the real money will come when we tell our story."
My story, he thought. Summer was just along for the ride. Sure he liked her. Given enough time it might grow into something more. But right now he was on a mission and it didn't include Summer.
"They won't miss a couple. They don't know what we found. I'll go get that backpack."
"Please leave it where it is, Summer. The entire site has to be preserved exactly as we found it."
"Says who?"
"That's the way we do things. And it's the law."
Summer frowned. "How are we going to make money again?"
"Books. Television appearances. Lectures."
She stared uncomprehending.
"Reality show."
Her entire face brightened.
"Look. Take one. Put it in your pocket. Don't tell anybody about it, okay?"
Summer rubbed the gold coin on her jeans and slipped it into her pocket.
"Come on," Beadles said. "We need to eat."
Summer hung from the lip of the hole and dropped two feet to the floor. Beadles followed. They walked back to their makeshift camp and found two Canadian geese paddling in the brackish water.
"Where in hell did they come from?" Beadles said. The geese were far off the beaten path.
Summer drew her little pistol. "Dinner."
Beadles said nothing as Summer knelt and aimed with both hands. She squeezed the trigger and drilled one goose through the neck. The other exploded in a paroxysm of wild honking, flapping its wings, only taking to the air when Summer waded into the pond after its mate.
Beadles felt bad. Geese mated for life. Another stone on his karma. He thought of the albatross from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
Summer expertly cleaned the goose tossing the feathers and entrails over the edge. She rigged a fire from dead cottonwood limbs and spiked the goose on a sharpened stick. The goose sizzled on the stick, fat dropping into the fire with a crackle. Summer turned the stick from time to time to cook it all the way through. It took over an hour. She cut it up with a hunting knife and served it to Beadles on a flat rock.
Beadles had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. They wiped themselves off with cottonwood leaves. Summer picked up the binoculars.
"I'm gonna take a look."
Beadles sat cross-legged by the fire and wrote in his notepad, detailing the morning's events. Later, he would go back and photograph what he'd found with the western sun shining straight in through the windows. He looked at his watch. It was almost noon.
Beadles stretched out in the shade of the cottonwoods noting that the sun was near its zenith and the only shade came straight down. He drifted. He dreamed he was on the desert, flat and hot as a chopper's traight pipes. Unable to see because of the glare of the sun when a stark shadow fell across his path. Mind-numbing fear seized his lizard brain, a mouse before an owl. He dared not lift his gaze to see what cast that terrible shadow. Acid ate his guts.
"BEADLES!" Summer cried.
He woke up with a start. She ran to him wild-eyed and grabbed his arm so hard it hurt.
"Please you've got to come. You've got to see this."
"What?"
"You've got to see it."
She leaped up and ran toward the western rim.
***
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
"Ghost Who Walks in the Sun"
When he got to the rim Summer was already hunkered down behind one of the tooth-shaped rocks, balancing the binocs via her elbows. Beadles stared west into the blazing heat trying to discern what it was she saw. He thought he saw a flicker of motion but he couldn't be sure. It could be distortion rising from the desert floor.
"What?" he demanded.
She handed him the binoculars and pointed. "There."
It took him a minute to adjust the lenses and another to sweep them left to right across the barren landscape. He swept by a quavering parentheses. He swept back. He zeroed in. He couldn't believe his eyes.
There was a man out there walking toward the butte. He had to be at least five miles away. As Beadles zeroed in he saw that the man was tall with long hair, bone-thin, wearing only a loin cloth. No equipment. No water bottles. Just walking.
An iron burr enmeshed itself in his guts.
Maybe it just wants its skull back! He giggled.
"What is it?" Summer demanded.
"I don't know," Beadles said, afraid to speak his mind. He really didn't know. He was an anthropologist, a scientist trained in rational inquiry. There was no room in his portfolio for ghosts, demons
, bugaboos and things that went bump in the night. The unreality of the landscape, so different from his regular habitat, gave rise to craziness. Beadles understood why many early pioneers went insane traveling through the vast, desolate landscape, terrified of unseen eyes and Indian attacks.
"It's him!" Summer said with a note of desperation and hopelessness.
"Don't be absurd. It's just some lunatic tripping in the desert. We'll probably have to go out there and rescue him when he collapses."
"Why isn't he carrying anything?" Summer said. "No hat, no water, no guns! What is he doing there?"
"Chill!" Beadles barked, irritated. She mirrored his misgivings and it made him mad. At himself, her, Liggett, Betty, Ninja, the press, the whole damned world.
It wasn't in the script!
Seriously. It had to be some lunatic. In fucking broad daylight. Maybe it was an hallucination. He turned on Summer.
"What did you do with those acid tabs?" he hissed.
Summer backed up, shocked. "Nothing! I still have them. Why?"
"You didn't put them in the drinking water? In the pond?"
Summer half guffawed in disbelief. "Come on! I would never do that!"
"How do I know you're not lying?"
"Because I love you!" she said, shocked.
Beadles tried to stop the words from coming out. "Love me?! We've only known each other for two days!"
Summer crossed her arms and cried. He never could tolerate a woman crying.
"I'm sorry!" He tried to take her in his arms but she twisted away and ran off.
"Go fuck yourself!"
Beadles panted, took a drink from the bottle clipped to his belt. Give her a little time to calm down. Give them both time. Surely she could see the absurdity in her declaration. What really troubled him was the weight. He wasn't ready for another serious relationship. Was it wrong to deny unconditional love?
Or was it? She could be an awfully good liar. Vince had said so. Summer didn't come straight from the convent. She'd been a stripper and a hooker. Everybody lied. Especially hookers.
But what did she have to gain from such a declaration? His trust? For what?
The gold, dummy.
The big score.
If they lived.
He was afraid to look. A ferret clawed at his heart. And yet he must. He looked up. The figure was still miles away, a tiny wavering line in the sand. The ground at its feet had darkened and seemed to ripple forward like time lapse creeping fungus. The figure strode at the head of a wavering darkish blob that spread in a delta behind him. With each step the blob seemed to grow.
Beadles brought the binocs to his eyes. For a minute he didn't understand. This writhing, rippling thing on the ground. He adjusted the focus.
"God, Jesus God," he said as the sun drilled into his skull.
Scorpions. Rattlesnakes. They followed the grim man like children after the Pied Piper.
Beadles stared grinding his teeth. They would be at the butte in an hour. Beadles recalled seeing two gas cannisters in the back of the Hummer. They had to prepare. He needed Summer.
He ran after her.
Summer sat cross-legged by the pond weeping. Beadles knelt next to her and put his arm around her.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know what to say. I need your help. They're coming here. We have to get down to Vince's car and back up again before they arrive."
"Who?" Summer said. "Who is coming here?"
"That thing and thousands of scorpions and rattlesnakes."
Summer stiffened into a leaf spring. "What?"
"Whatever it is, it commands the scorpions and rattlesnakes. That's how it got Vince in the middle of the night. It sent scorpions. We've got to get the two cans of gas in Vince's car to stop them from crawling up here."
***
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
"The First Assault"
They shot the chute accompanied by rockslides and clouds of dust. Beadles' hands were raw from applying the brakes. From the ground they couldn't see the creature, hidden behind waves of diffraction.
They approached the Hummer, shadows clinging to their feet like ink blots.
"Don't look in the front seat," Beadles said.
Summer ignored him. She gazed over the sill and stared at the grotesquerie behind the wheel, a buffet for insects and snakes. A straw-colored centipede crawled out of Vince's open mouth. Summer turned away.
Beadles opened the tailgate and threw everything within reach on the ground. There were two five gallon gas cannisters. Beadles also found a box of .45 cartridges and emptied the contents into his pockets. He cut up a rope for straps for the gas tanks. They slung the tanks across their backs and returned to the chimney.
It was almost noon.
The climb was much harder this time. The gas cans caught on rocks and banged against Beadles' ribs. The smell gave him a headache. Summer was above him climbing like a rhesus monkey. By the time she reached the top he was only halfway up, breathing in wheezing gasps. He stopped to catch his breath, balanced precariously on two jutting rocks. He twisted the can around so it hung on his chest.
"Hurry!" Summer called down the chimney.
Groaning Beadles resumed the climb. His arms screamed with pain. Sweat streamed into his eyes. Tiny insects hovered around his eyes and mouth. Each step was a titanic effort. One after the other. At last he heaved himself up into the bubble, Summer holding his arm. He unstrapped the gas tank and sat gasping. Summer handed him a bottled water. He twisted off the cap and drained it in nine gulps.
They stood, climbed out of the bubble. Beadles put his gas can next to the other on the flat next to the bubble. "If they come, they'll come this way. We'll pour gas down the tube and light it."
He headed back to the lookout perch, Summer right behind.
"What if there's another way up? What if they just climb right up the sides?"
"I don't know. I don't think they will. We went all the way around. There's no other way up." He put his hand on the gun butt. What if he shot that thing through the head?
Maybe it just wanted its skull. He retrained the binocs.
The glare coming off the desert floor was almost too much. The thing had a head surrounded by long, stringy flaxen-colored hair. Its face remained in shadow beneath the zenith sun. The weird pulsating wave followed, scorpions leaping like spawning salmon. The ground writhed and pulsed like an acid flashback.
They watched in dread silence. Five hundred yards. Three hundred. One hundred. The dark wave rippled and gleamed, a roiling sea of poison. The Giacometti-like creature advanced, thin, dark, tensile, its head tilted slightly forward so that its face remained in shadow. Fifty yards from the base of the butte it stopped, put its hand over its eyes and looked up. Beadles watched through the binoculars.
They stared at one another for ten seconds. Ten seconds in which neither Beadles nor Summer drew breath. The longest ten seconds of their lives.
The creature extended an insect-like arm and its venomous army surged forward. But not in a blind rush. They did not surround the butte and mindlessly attempt to scale it. They headed for the chimney.
"Let's go!" Beadles yelled racing back to where they'd left the gasoline. Timing was everything. At this height the gas would mostly evaporate by the time it reached the bottom. They only had ten gallons. They needed to wait until the snapping, clacking, clicking wave of vermin surged to within twenty feet of the top. He felt in his pocket. He still had matches from The Last Chance.
He grabbed a can, loosened the lid and got on his knees. Sound rose from the chimney-- a filthy white noise like a hornet's nest. Chittering and slithering. It was something he could never unhear. It seared itself into his brain, an aural petroglyph on the inside of his skull.
Summer crouched opposite him on the bubble's rim, six feet away gripping a gas can, her lovely gray eyes in a warrior's squint.
"Come over here and take the can when I'm ready," Beadles said.
Summer came around and crouched next
to him. Beadles removed the cap and handed it to her.
The hissing skittering sound grew louder, amplified by the tube. The soundtrack of hell. It filled the sky, that awful sound.
Beadles sloshed a gallon into the tube a split second before the first wave of vermin bubbled up. Beadles shoved the can at Summer, picked up the matches, lit the book and tossed.
The tube erupted with a satisfying whump, shoving Beadles and Summer back. Beadles' eyebrows crackled. He scrambled on his ass up and out of the bubble. He watched in astonishment as burning insect parts rose like soot from a chimney and wafted across the plateau. The wind shifted and the noxious black grit blew on them leaving a greasy, acidic deposit.
He half ran, half-stumbled back to his previous perch and grabbed the binocs. He looked down. The figure watched stoically arms at its sides. It raised an arm and made a circling motion. The tide of vermin receded, pouring around the gaunt man.
Beadles waited. Would the thing go after its skull? Was it even its skull? And if that was its skull in the back seat, what was that on its shoulders? Summer peered down next to him, tugging her hat down low.
"Is he leaving?" she whispered.
The creature turned and walked into the sun.
***
CHAPTER SEVENTY
"Raiding the Dead"
They watched until it disappeared in the quavering heat.
"Oh God!" Summer cried. "What if it comes back?"
"Not today. Maybe we can drive out of here."
If we can dislodge that thing behind the wheel.
"What makes you so sure it won't come back?" Summer whined. It was an unattractive sound.
"It only appears in the sun! Its strength peaks at mid-day. It was killed in the sun and can only walk in the sun."
Summer slumped in despair. Beadles put his arm around her.
"Come on. If we move right now we can be back in Gap by sundown."
"How?" she wailed.
"Vince got down here. We can find our way back. I'll use the GPS."
"What if we go by it?"
"I don't know! How's it going to stop a two ton vehicle going sixty mph?"