Skorpio

by Mike Baron

  Hurriedly they gathered their things, the guns, the canteens, the binoculars, packed them up and descended the chimney. A ten foot section near the top was covered with a greasy black soot which clung to their hands, feet and clothes. It had an acrid, acidic smell. They reached the desert floor shortly before one and headed for the Humvee.

  Beadles opened the driver's door. The sack of putrescent flesh wedged behind the wheel looked immovable. Beadles got in the front passenger seat, closed the door, braced his back against it and tried to shove Vince out with his feet. The thing bulged with his efforts releasing a stench from hell's sewer. Drawing his feet back he lashed out, shoving with all his might. A yellow eye popped loose and dribbled down Vince's shirt. The thing budged. It had the consistency of a beanbag chair.

  Struggling and sweating, Beadles strained with all his might, both feet up against the corpse's thigh, sweat streaming down into his eyes. Grunting, he ejected the horrendous corpse. It fell with a dull whump releasing a blast of ordure. Beadles used a cloth from the back seat to wipe a disturbing brackish fluid from the driver's seat. He tossed it, grabbed a towel and rubbed some more. Finally, when the seat was bone dry, he slid across. The key was in the ignition. He turned it.

  No response. No lights came on, no dials budged. The electricals were dead. He reached down and found the hood release. It let go with a thunk. He got out the passenger door and opened the hood. The wiring was disconnected and stripped. Insects and snakes had chewed through everything. An electrocuted rattler hung from the battery, a streak of burnt black flesh running down its belly. The stench was unbearable. Beadles slammed the hood in disgust.

  "We're fucked!" Summer said.

  Beadles fell into a sinkhole of despair. But he was the man. He was the scientist. It was up to him to take charge and find a way out of this mess. There was no way they were walking out. Not today. They had to retreat and survive another day.

  "We're going back up," he said.

  "What's the point? We're going to die sooner or later."

  "No we're not! I've got an idea. I'll come back down here tonight and torch the vehicle. With any luck someone will see the fire and investigate. Now let's go through the vehicle and salvage anything usable."

  He went around to the back, both of them avoiding the mound of swollen flesh on the ground. It had burst its seams, spilling out of shirt and pants like some morbid fungus.

  They took Vince's sleeping bag, knife, matches, an NDuR water purification system, a tiny camp stove with a propane cylinder, dehydrated food, trail mix, beef jerky, a box of Snickers bars. Beadles found an old copy of Western and Eastern Treasures dated July of the previous year and a metal detector. With a start he realized the date.

  It was June 20.

  Tomorrow was the summer solstice--the longest day of the year.

  When the creature's power would peak.

  He kept this fact to himself.

  Muscles screaming in protest, burdened with straps that cut into his seared flesh he followed Summer up the chute. Acid sweat stung his eyes. His mouth was as dry as the Sahara. The pain of reaching for the next handhold left him gasping. He had pushed himself too far but there was no place to stop, no time to rest. He came to the blackened throat. A slick patina of arachnid and snake parts clung to the rock, little flecks of snakeskin and bristle-like mandibles. His foot slipped and for a blind instant he was caught in a terrifying nanosecond of freefall. He struggled to find footing and slipped several times, each time saving himself at the last minute, finding purchase in one of the hand-hewn slots. An inert stinger penetrated his thumb, striking out in death. He strained every muscle wedging himself in place, unable to stop the sweat from streaming into his eyes. He clawed upward like a scorpion.

  Summer reached down to help him with the final step.

  Beadles staggered to the pond and put the water purification filter to work. It sucked wtaer with a hand pump and passed it through a series of filters. Of course to be certain there were no harmful bacteria they would still have to boil it. He collapsed by the pond and fugued. When he sat up he had a splitting headache. Summer watched him with a crease of concern.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I think so," he croaked. "Can you get a fire going and boil this water?"

  "Sure. What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to photograph what we found."

  "How can you even think of that right now?"

  "What else am I supposed to do?" he snapped. In a softer tone, "Don't worry. It's not coming back today. We're safe until tomorrow."

  He set off toward the ruins. Summer watched him dully.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  "A Visitor"

  Beadles trudged around the pond like a zombie. He knew he would be unable to sleep. It was better to keep moving. He came to the ruins. He boosted himself up to the second floor.

  The sun slanted through the slots allowing enough light to photograph the petroglyphs and the pile of gold in the corner. Beadles sat on the hard-packed earth his back to the wall. He was ennervated. He didn't look forward to the evening's climb but it had to be done if they had any chance of getting out of there.

  It might make more sense to build a fire on top of the butte. It could be seen further. But there wasn't much left in the way of fuel. They'd used most of the dead wood to cook and the gasoline was for warding off the snakes and scorpions.

  The Hummer, on the other hand, still contained fuel in the tank. Even if it was only fumes it would cause the car to explode. Now that they had a water source they could last for days. And with each passing day the creature's power waned.

  Or so Beadles hoped.

  He dozed off. When he woke the sun was slanting into the cliff dwelling almost horizontally. He felt old as if the walls' age had rubbed off on him. Or maybe it had sucked the youth out of him. He sloshed a little water on his face, dropped from the manhole in the floor and left the cliff-dwelling. The sun hung over the purple western mountains. It was past six.

  The smell of marijuana drifted through the air. Summer lounged on the sleeping bag by the pond smoking a joint and wearing nothing but panties and an abbreviated T. Beadles was so exhausted and scared he couldn't summon a grain of lust. His mind took in her lithe body, the mane of black hair, the parted lips and duly registered her desirability. The flesh was inert.

  Compulsion pulled him to the western brink where he once more put binoculars to eyes and scanned the horizon. All clear. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

  He looked down. He wished he hadn't. The mound of putrescent flesh that had once been Vince roiled and throbbed with predators. A coyote growled as it worried off a hand. Six turkey buzzards hopped around the corpse, taking turns darting forward tearing off gibbets. The gray/blue skin pulsated with insects. An ant column so thick Beadles could see it without binoculars marched back and forth between butte and body.

  Party time in the desert.

  Beadles wanted to drop five gallons of gas on the obscenity and light it. The predators worked so fast the body would be gone in a day or two. Not fast enough. He caught a whiff of putrescence. Or was it his imagination?

  He pulled the pistol, dropped the clip, checked the action. Ten in the clip. Twenty-two in his pockets, their weight like ballast in a high sea. Two to the head ought to stop that thing.

  Unless it didn't.

  Well there it was. The once proud scientist ceding ground to the heebie jeebies beneath the mambo sun. How low he had fallen.

  All right. What if it were a ghost? And if it was a ghost, what if that was its skull sitting in the back seat? Obviously two to the head would accomplish nothing. Did the creature possess sinew and muscle, the ability to move things? Or was it insubstantial, evanescent, a mere image? Whatever it was, the things it controlled were all too real as the damanged Humvee and blackened chimney proved.

  Scorpions and snakes were nocturnal. The only reason they didn't attack at night was because the t
hing did not exist at night. It gave him a throbbing headache.

  He had to get out of the sun.

  Beadles returned to the pond and sat in the shade, his bare feet in the brackish water, back against a cottonwood. He drifted. Summer's shriek cracked the air. Blinking and disoriented he watched uncomprehending as she rushed to his side and physically dragged his feet out of the pond.

  "Shoot it!" she spat pointing. "Shoot it!"

  Beadles scrambled to his feet and drew the pistol. He followed her finger to the undulating shape gliding through the water. Air coming in high hot gasps he jacked a shell into the chamber and fired four shots as fast as he could pull the trigger, blowing the sidewinder out of the water.

  How did it get there? Were there more? A jackhammer went crazy in his head. He used his knuckles to dig into his temples.

  "Do you have any ubuprofen?" he croaked.

  "Yes!" Summer leaped toward her backpack. Beadles watched swirls of red describe arabesques in the brackish water. He compulsively checked all the canteens and water bottles. At least they'd laid in a supply. Enough to get them through the night. If they were unable to attract salvation within twenty-four hours at least he had the pistol.

  Beadles swallowed three ibuprofen and tried to forget the images seared into his skull. He looked up. Turkey buzzards circled overhead. His headache pulsed like a quasar. He lay down in the shade drifting in and out of a shallow sleep, the kind where he knew he was asleep and struggled to wake like a surfacing whale trying to break the surface.

  Several times, through sheer force of will, he woke himself, looked around, realized his circumstances and drifted off again. He thought about writing something for Lars in case he didn't make it. The more he thought about it the more certain he was it was the right thing to do. He hauled out his little spiral notepad.

  What could he say? I'm sorry, Son? Sorry that your mother and I split and left you without a father? That your father was a great man who failed? That your father was a thief who gambled everything on a dream?

  What if they died and no one ever learned what became of them, or what they'd discovered? Would the shifting sands hide the Humvee and their bodies turn to mummies beneath the baking sun, only to be discovered decades hence like the survivors of the Lady be Good?

  With a yelp of despair he tossed the notebook aside. He'd need a rag to lower into the Hummer's gas tank. He would tear up one of the shirts Vince had left in the back. Matches, check. Pistol, check. Water, check. Time passed slower than a midtown train. The sun settled in the west like a geriatric lowering himself into a hot bath. It was past nine when dusk spread across the skies.

  The temperature dropped. Beadles put on a Dethrone hoodie he'd salvaged from the Hummer. Summer walked with him to the top of the tube.

  "Be careful," she said, hugging him. "I love you."

  "I love you too," Beadles said and lowered himself into the pipe.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  "Bonfire"

  As Beadles cautiously extended his foot he found a protrusion and shifted his weight. Suddenly he was in freefall, heart jammed in his throat like a potato in an exhaust pipe. It was the tumble into the canyon all over again. He yelped. In blind panic his hands flew out and found a juniper root extending from a crack in the stone and he grabbed hold as the root laid a bloody groove through his palm. He hung there for long seconds panting, fighting vertigo, savoring the pain in his hand for its focus.

  "Are you all right?" Summer whispered.

  "I'm good," he said, willing himself to calm down. Rivets of sweat popped on his forehead despite the chill. Down he went muscles shrieking. He used to get weekly massages at the University Club. Their memory was almost too painful to contemplate.

  He hit the desert floor, crawled out between the slabs and headed for the Hummer. It was chilly. He put the hood up. Nocturnals mobbed Vince's corpse like freelancers at an open bar. Coyote, buzzard, snakes and lizards darted and flowed in an endless game of musical chairs. A coyote snarled. A squall of growling before sound returned to the snap of gristle.

  Beadles walked around the back of the vehicle and beheld Vince's remains in the moonlight. A purple pile of meat. Something half-glimpsed in a slaughter yard. The eyes, lips, and ears were gone, lupine teeth exposed. Three coyotes and five buzzards took turns hopping in like some macabre game of Maypole. The coyotes looked at Beadles, bared their teeth and went back to ripping. The gas cap was on the driver's side of the vehicle. Beadles had no choice but to stand within six feet of the swarming corpse. The tailgate was still open. Beadles found a dirty T-shirt, used his knife to rip it into strips which he tied together braided into a three foot lanyard as he'd been taught in the Boy Scouts.

  He glanced in the rear seat. There sat the skull. Should he remove the skull as a courtesy? If the skull burned up did the thing go away? Dr. Samuel George Morton published a book in 1839 called Crania Americana in which he argued that the shape of Indian skulls proved their were intellectually inferior. He amassed a huge collection in Washington which were eventually redistributed to the tribes along with letters of apology.

  Beadles returned to the tailgate and found a discarded T-shirt. With the shirt wrapped around his hand he reached in through the open rear window, grabbed the skull by its eyeholds and removed it. He walked toward the butte, looked around, found a shallow depression hidden by a rock against the base and left the skull there wrapped in the shirt. He returned to the vehicle.

  Holding the lanyard in one hand and the pistol in the other, Beadles approached the driver's door where lay the gas release lever. The coyotes snarled and grudgingly gave ground, eyes watching with yellow malice. He leaned over and popped the panel. He unscrewed the cap and tossed it to the ground. He lowered the lanyard all the way into the tank, waited for it to soak up fuel, pulled it all the way out and lowered it in again from the opposite direction. The fuse was now soaked with gasoline. His headache came screaming back.

  Stooping, Beadles lit the end of the fuse with a match, turned and ran into the desert expecting to be slammed in the back any second. He was still running when he heard a dull whump and concussion from the explosion knocked him flat on his face. He barely got his hands out in front of him. A wave of heat rolled over him. Beadles rolled over, got up on his elbows and looked. A fireball sent a column of flame twenty feet in the air. A series of repurcussions followed like the last kernels of popcorn in the microwave--ammo left in the car.

  Beadles laughed like a kid on Christmas morning. The fire surpassed his expectations. On a clear night such as this surely somebody would see it. Surely a passing plane or persons elevated above the desert floor would report this conflagration to the authorities. It was only a matter of time! Maybe even tomorrow.

  They could easily send a plane out from Flagstaff or National Park HQ. He and Summer could so something to attract attention atop the butte--use rocks to spell out an SOS. Use the gold to catch the sun!

  Beadles felt the heat as he circled the burning wreck twenty yards out. The flickering flames cast his shadow on the sand. He returned to the chimney and climbed, arms spasming. He paused to wedge himself against protruberances and let the pain subside. At least he was free from the burden of the gas cans. It took him twenty minutes to reach the bowl. Summer waited to pull him up.

  She handed him a thermos. "Here," she said. "I made some hot cocoa for you.."

  Beadles took the thermos gratefully, unscrewed the cap and drank from the bottle. He had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. He stumbled back to their camp. Summer had moved it farther from the pond because of the snake. They hadn't seen any snakes in the pond since then but you never knew.

  Exhausted from tension and the climb Beadles collapsed on the sleeping bag. Summer knelt and covered him with the hooded sweatshirt. "You try to sleep, honey. I'm going to watch the fire for awhile."

  Beadles crashed like the Twin Towers. Dreaming. The New York Times reviewed his book, The Azuma. "An
astonishing journey of discovery that adds immeasurably to our understanding of Native Americans," said in the reverent tones of NPR. All his friends were there. Betty, Liggett, and Tommy Lee Jones. Ninja said that he had written the review, hacked the NYT website and inserted it. Everyone was in the desert. The glare made vision difficult. Gradually they slipped away one by one until only Beadles remainded.

  He looked up. The sky swirled in purple and green paisleys. Acid flashback. Beadles trudged toward a distant tower. The paisleys swirled like a peacock flashing its feathers and disappeared leaving the glaring sun. Hot and bright. Sweat streamed down his face. His mouth was full of rubber. He scooped it out with two fingers. But like the Sorceror's Apprentice, the rubber filled his mouth faster than he could scoop. It had a chemical taste.

  Beadles woke.Sunlight slanted in through the trees. He was hot and damp with sweat. Groaning, he rolled over and looked at his watch. Almost noon.

  His heart hammered like a bent piston. He sat up breathing rapidly and shallowly. He had to pee. He was desperately thirsty. He looked around. There was the thermos from last night. He hesitated.

  He didn't feel right. It wasn't just a panic attack, although he had that too.

  The paisleys were back. The ground swirled.

  She'd put something in the drink.

  Beadles stumbled to his feet and reached for his gun.

  The gun was gone.

  He looked around.

  "Summer!" he yelled, cursing himself in the same instant. Don't be a fool!

  I'm just warning you, one man to another, don't turn your back on her.

  Dread poured into his gut like a load of shot. He found a canteen by the fire and drank deeply. He slung it over his shoulder and headed for the western perimeter.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  "The Mother Of All Diamondbacks"

  The binoculars lay on red rock almost too hot to handle. Beadles picked them up and looked toward the distant mountains. Heat rose from the ground in wavering curtains--an optic mist, a diaphonous curtain. Beadles could conjure anything he wanted--the U.S. Cavalry. A thousand dinosaurs. The devil himself.