The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
“Thanks for sharing your room with me,” Marcia said to Susan, trying to spot the best place on the floor for her mat and sleeping bag. The room was small, like most country bedrooms, small because most of the living was done outside the room and the space was truly meant just for sleeping. Susan had a large old-fashioned bed with a handsome oak headboard. Metal scrollwork curved along the top, flowers in iron. Very appropriate. She may have had an adolescent bedroom at one time, and a little girl’s before that, but there was nothing left of that now. She had a big handsome quilt and two framed prints hanging over an oak dresser, a bedside table piled high with magazines, and a small carved chair. That was it. There wasn’t much room on the floor.
“Not a problem. Don’t look for a spot on the floor, there isn’t one. You’re about as big as a wet cat, so if you don’t mind sharing a mattress, I don’t,” Susan said. She scratched her neck and yawned hugely and set her shotgun by the small nightstand. “I changed the sheets this past Monday and if you’ve noticed—”
“I noticed,” Marcia said with a smile. Susan was in love with Frank, clear as a bell. So Susan wasn’t offering to share her body as well as her bed. That was sweet, actually. Susan was a beautiful young woman and Marcia was older, so it should have been Marcia making the pass, not Susan, if she were a lesbian. Which meant—
“I have an eye for Alan Baxter, but don’t you dare tell anyone,” Marcia said firmly, and was powerless to control the blush. It was supposed to be a reassuring lie, but there was far too much truth in it. Susan grinned, and Marcia smiled back. The forms had been satisfied. They could now share a bed tranquilly. If their feet touched or someone shifted a warm buttock against the other one, there wouldn’t be a sudden stillness from the other, and a quiet shifting away.
“You’ll be getting an early start tomorrow,” Susan said, and frowned. “I wish I were going. I’m a good shot.”
“I wish you were going, too,” Marcia said. “The more the better, I think. But the sheriff is just trying to protect you. And your parents are too.”
“They just found out tonight about me and Frank,” Susan confessed, stripping off her shirt. Marcia sat down on the bed and started stripping off her socks. She listened with real interest, but there was a part of her that was far away, in the wind and sand, waiting for the lights and the hum. Searching for whatever walked the dunes now, human or otherwise, carrying humming death.
Joe sat in his sleeping bag, stripped down to his boxer shorts, and clicked on another girlie picture. Yolanda. He found the earthquake, a 4.5 in Kobe, Japan, and sighed as the squiggles of the earthquake rose and died on his computer screen. There had to be something he was missing. Something that they all had missed.
“Would you put that thing away?” Rosen said. He was a few feet away, his big feet in Joe’s old sleeping bag crowding Joe’s feet. Daniel Grantham muttered support under his breath, rolled up in a bag that had to be Sam Williams’s own. They were jammed in the living room like boys at a slumber party. Joe could tell the other men didn’t like it any more than he did. They were all strangers to one another. There was something else, too: the flavor of impending battle. It made them nervous with one another.
“I usually don’t sleep much at night,” Joe said. “I’m a computer geek, remember?”
“We all need to sleep tonight,” Rosen said. “That Paris guy is going to be here at six o’clock.”
“For breakfast,” Daniel said. “If Beth weren’t fixing him breakfast, he wouldn’t be here before noon.”
“Great,” Joe said, his eyes on his screen, finding earthquake “Doreen” in Costa Rica. “We’re depending on some weirdo millionaire to get us into the dunes before Mitchell turns Kansas City into soup.”
“He’s reliable, I’ll say that much,” Daniel said. He rose up on an elbow and looked over at Joe. “What do you mean, soup?”
“Kansas City is built on what used to be mud flats from the Mississippi,” Joe said, watching Doreen’s earthquake again. “When an earthquake of magnitude six hits—and remember, the New Madrid is supposed to be an eight—the vibration turns the ground into a thick soup. Essentially, it liquefies. Down go houses, people, cars, skyscrapers. Then when the shaking stops, the ground hardens. A really awful way to die, I think. Like being buried in Portland cement. That’s just Kansas City.”
“Oh,” Daniel said. Joe glanced over at him and he was blinking, eyes gazing into the distance, his mouth working soundlessly. He didn’t look like a happy man. That was okay with Joe. He wasn’t all that happy, either.
“So I’m learning all about earthquakes,” Joe continued. “You know about how all the continents are really just big plates floating on the liquid core of the earth. I kind of knew that before, but I really understand it now. There are lots of fractures in these plates and when they shift against each other, we humans get all shook up. Hey, do you know why Mount Everest is so tall?”
“Why?” Rosen asked, in a voice that meant he knew Joe would tell them anyway.
“Because India is an island that crashed into Asia. India is still crashing, by the way, shoving its nose under the big Asia plate and lifting up parts of Asia. That’s the Himalayas. So Mount Everest is the result of a big continental car crash that’s still happening—we just can’t see it. Pretty cool, huh?”
“This is not something I think humans should mess with,” Daniel said, his brow furrowed even more. “Who knows what they could set off by accident or ignorance? Did they cause the one we just had?”
“Yeah, they sure did,” Joe said. “And that was just a 3.5, a baby one. I can’t imagine what an eight pointer would feel like.”
“Maybe the Tesla machine can’t produce an eight pointer,” Daniel suggested.
“I think it can,” Joe said. “I’ve been reading about Nikola Tesla. Alan thought that maybe the government had the plans to the real Tesla earthquake machine. Turns out when Tesla died, his hotel room in New York was sealed by the FBI. Everything within it was confiscated by the government.”
“No one protested?” Daniel asked.
“Tesla never married. He didn’t have any family to protest for him. He had a family of doves, one white dove in particular that he loved dearly and kept in his room when he was older. But no family. There’s something else about him, too,” Joe said. He shut down his program and closed his laptop. He looked over at Rosen, who was propped up in his sleeping bag watching him. Daniel, too, was looking at him.
“He was asked to join the Manhattan Project. He refused. Every other prominent scientist said yes, but Tesla said no. He didn’t think wholesale slaughter was a good weapon design. He designed something he called a death ray, that would shoot down missiles. It, too, disappeared into the FBI’s hands.”
“He wouldn’t approve of what they’re doing,” Rosen said unexpectedly.
“That’s right,” Joe said. “Exactly right. He didn’t approve of murder, and that’s what they’re doing if they set off earthquakes without warning people. Secrecy is necessary for some things, but not for that. And killing Krista and Jim Leetsdale only proves that they don’t care who they hurt.”
“We have to stop them,” Daniel said.
“We’ll stop them,” Rosen said. “So shut the hell up, Joe. I need sleep.”
“Aye aye, Captain Bligh,” Joe said sarcastically. But he set his laptop aside. Whatever mystery remained would be solved on the dunes, not in his computer. He patted his Frankenputer affectionately. It wasn’t her fault. He lay down in his sleeping bag. He tried very hard not to think of Eileen, somewhere out there in the sand and the snow and the darkness. She was with Alan Baxter, who Joe was sure would die to defend her. He was not a murderer, could not be. Joe was sure of it. He had to be sure of it, or he would not sleep an instant tonight. Holding that thought tightly, Joe closed his eyes and was asleep.
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
“Good morning,” E
ileen said. Alan opened his eyes with a start. He saw that Eileen had unfastened the flap. She was staring out the small hole she had made, her face lit by strong morning sunshine. The fiercest light, the most unkind light. Her skin was fresh and clear and beautiful, as pretty as a child’s. Her eyes were sparkling and she was smiling. “You should look outside. We’re completely hidden. Nobody could see us from a foot away, I swear. They’d have to step on us. Take a look.”
Alan rolled over cautiously, trying not to appear too stiff and elderly. He edged on his elbows to the entrance and looked out. The dunes were brilliantly tan in the dawn light. Their tracks were gone. The sand lay around them perfect and smooth. Alan remembered how their efforts to bury the tent had stirred the sand up and down the slope. He couldn’t see far to either side, but what he could see was reassuring. Their idea for a hiding place was a good one. The cold morning air tasted wonderful, even with the smell of the dunes in his nose.
“We need to get to our spot as soon as possible today,” Eileen said. She had already turned away from the entrance and was getting into her clothes. Her movements were as small and tidy as a cat’s, with the same economical grace. She was already dressed before Alan started. As he dressed, she braided her shoulder-length hair, taking pieces from the top of her head and braiding down the back in a complicated sort of weave. She finished it off with a small elastic band and snapped it on with a mouth of distaste.
“I hate dirty hair,” she said. “If I braid it, I can keep from getting too grossed out.”
“I hate dirty teeth,” Alan said. “You will let me brush before we leave, won’t you?” He grinned at her, and she smiled back. For a second her smile was natural, then it turned inward and became something forced. She turned away and rummaged in her bag.
“Let’s eat on the dunes,” she said. “I want to stretch my legs.”
When Alan scrambled from the tent entrance, he immediately turned and looked at the slope. He couldn’t have hoped for better camouflage. The tent was completely invisible. The sand had smoothed over the marks they had made digging into the slope, and now the only thing visible was the slit of the tent opening. Eileen followed him and looked carefully in all directions before she, too, examined their hiding place.
“Very nice,” she said. Her breath misted in the cold morning air. It was already degrees warmer than yesterday morning. By noon, the dunes were going to be as hot and dry as though the snow had never happened. Alan stretched and rotated his head on his neck, then leaned forward and did a few runners’ stretches to limber up his muscles.
“I have a surprise for you,” Eileen said. Alan turned to her and saw a Thermos in her hand. She’d taken it from her pack. It wasn’t the same Thermos as the one they’d shared the night before.
“Is that?” Alan asked.
“Coffee,” Eileen said with a grin. “Beth packed us two bottles.”
“Oh, my,” Alan sighed happily. He smoothed a place for his rump in front of their tent entrance. “Let’s pack up the tent later.”
Their coffee and breakfast done, Alan scrambled over the nearest dune and Eileen headed in the other direction. He dug a deep hole and did everything he needed in the hole, toothbrush foam and all, then covered it well and headed back with a light step. Eileen was already at the tent, carefully pulling sand away from the sides. He shook the tent out and stored it in the little tent bag, and they were done. He looked around and nodded. There were few tracks. Eileen brushed the last of the sand from her arms and took a little bottle from her pocket.
“Sunscreen?” she offered. “It’s going to be a hot day.” She’d changed into shorts while she was over her dune, Alan noticed. The clothes must have been loaned from Susan Williams. He took the little bottle and spread some goo on his nose and cheekbones and arms, more to make her happy than anything else. The sun, lighting the sky for some time now, suddenly crested a dune. The light was blinding. They both turned their backs and stood together as they consulted their GPS receivers.
“This way,” Alan said, and Eileen nodded. They walked together. Eileen did not speak, but Alan felt her silence was different from the night before. He might have a chance with her, after all.
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Paris Linsley was everything Joe had been led to expect. Maybe even a bit more. He was tall and young and had a full head of curly, dark blond hair. He had a big smile full of white teeth. He wore an elegant white shirt and pleated khaki pants as though he were going to ride a camel into the dunes and open a mummy’s tomb. Joe could understand immediately why Susan Williams disliked him, why Daniel Grantham rolled his eyes at the thought of spending time with him. He was just altogether too much.
His Humvee, named Babe, was painted an incredibly vivid shade of purple. Joe had never been close to a Humvee and was faintly astonished at the size and height of the thing. Not to mention the paint job. There were faint gold flakes in the purple paint, which were going to make it sparkle in the sun when the sun climbed over the mountains to the east.
Paris, having jumped from Babe and posed nonchalantly against the wheel to give everyone a chance to admire his car and his attire, stood to a kind of attention as Beth came out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron. Everyone else in the strange group had left the breakfast table when Paris rang the bell at the gate. Joe thought of them as earthquake hunters and had heard Rosen mutter something about a motley crew as he shaved in the small guest bathroom. Joe and Daniel and Rosen had shuffled in and out of the bathroom and tried to keep their elbows out of each other’s ribs, with limited success.
“Mrs. Williams!” Paris exclaimed. “Tell me you have sweet rolls!”
“I have sweet rolls,” she smiled. “Come on in, Paris.”
Joe expected Paris to have perfect highbrow pronunciation, given the color of the car and the elegant clothing. Paris, instead, had a voice that belonged with a mud-spattered pickup and a varmint rifle, a voice that was as deep and country as a twanging guitar.
“He’s a nut,” Daniel said softly to Joe, startling him badly, as they followed Beth back into the kitchen. “Out there. He does his own thing. I think his IQ is off the chart.”
“You read minds, or what?” Joe said, and noticed Marcia’s grin as she held the door for them.
“Not usually,” Daniel replied. “I could just tell what you were thinking. Once you get past Paris being Paris you’ll find he’s a good guy. He’s a lot deeper than he looks.”
Paris, his mouth stuffed full of sweet roll and a cup of coffee in his free hand, looked undignified and unbrilliant.
“Okay, fill me in,” he said between swallows, waving at everyone and no one.
“We’ll get to the details on the way,” Rosen said. The star that Gonzalez had given him the night before was pinned undramatically to his shirt front. “In brief, we have two people in the dunes and, potentially, a serial murderer out there as well.”
“At dawn tomorrow, where X marks the spot,” Marcia murmured, in a voice that Joe thought was too low for anyone but him to hear. Paris, however, gave Marcia a still look over a mouth ringed with icing flakes. His eyes brightened.
“Sounds like a job for Paris,” he said, wiping his mouth and flashing his teeth in a movie-star grin. Rosen looked at him steadily and said nothing. Paris grinned even wider and pointed at Rosen’s star. “But of course you’re in charge, am I correct?”
“Only if I need to be,” Rosen said. As Paris looked at Rosen, Joe saw something interesting. Paris had dark hazel eyes, and for a moment they went queerly light, as though blinds were being pulled up. For a moment, something wise and powerful looked out through Paris’s eyes, something that was very much “out there” and “off the chart.” Then the blinds lowered and the eyes darkened and Paris took a big swig of Beth’s good coffee and grinned.
“You’re the boss, Boss,” he said. “Babe and I are at your service.” Daniel blinked and Beth looked visibly startled.
“Can anyb
ody else drive your hummer but you?” Joe asked.
“Sure, she’s easy to drive,” Paris said. “I’d better handle it when we get to the dunes, though. Why?”
“Because I want to show you my computer simulation,” Joe said. “While we tell you all the rest of this story.”
Joe was half-afraid Paris would use his X-ray vision, or whatever it was, when Paris turned his gaze to him. But his eyes remained muddy and friendly. Joe wanted to show Paris the New Madrid. Maybe Paris would pull up the blinds and figure out why Jacob Mitchell and his friendly gang were going to kill millions of people. Or whatever it was they were going to do.
“I’ll drive Babe,” Daniel offered.
“Okay,” Paris said mildly.
“Let’s go, then, people,” Rosen said. “We have less than twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours?” Paris asked.
“Twenty-four hours before the New Madrid goes off, set off from here, and we’ll explain it all to you on the way,” Marcia said briskly. “Anyone have to pee? No? I’ll ride with Paris and Joe in the back, if you and Rosen want to ride in the front, Daniel.”
As Babe rumbled off down the ranch road, Joe forgot to look back. He was too busy showing Paris his Frankenputer, showing off, really, too busy trying to fill Paris in on the details of their wild story and make it believable. When he thought to look back, to wave at Beth Williams who had taken him in and fed him and given him shelter and blessed his journey, she was out of sight. He felt a chill, looking out the back window, as Paris delightedly punched buttons on his simulation and watched the earthquakes wiggle. He hadn’t waved goodbye. Somehow it seemed vitally important that he had forgotten that, as though he hadn’t waved goodbye at the last bit of light and love and warmth he was going to have for a long time.
Earthquake Games Page 30