Left In The Dust

by Christian Fletcher

  A loud mechanical rumbling sound broke the silence. Smith and I turned back to the motel and saw two beaten up looking RV wagons rolling across the parking lot towards us.

  “What in the name of hell…?” I mumbled.

  The two vehicles looked as though they’d come straight from a scrap yard. The leading RV was the larger of the two vehicles and looked more like a tour bus a 1970’s rock band would have used. The bodywork was a big boxy shape, colored in a combination of faded blue and silver, with grime and sand covering most of the side windows. The second wagon looked a little more modern but neglect and lack of use had obviously taken its toll. Rust patches crept over the off white colored bodywork and black smoke belched out in a cloud from the rear.

  “I’m surprised they got those damn things running,” Smith said above the noise.

  The lead RV roared by us and somebody shouted something inaudible from the interior. The vehicle headed out onto the road and back along the route towards the plane. The second RV creaked to a halt a few feet in front of us. I saw McElroy was driving and the side door flew open.

  “Are you guys getting in or what?” Anderson shouted.

  Smith and I hurried towards the side door and climbed inside the rattling vehicle. Anderson slammed the door closed as we boarded the RV and the interior stank of diesel fumes and mold. Smith and I rocked sideways as McElroy hit the gas and moved the vehicle forward. Wood paneled closets lined the walls in the living compartment and a matted green carpet spread across the floor space. A table with bench seats either side stood to the rear where Wingate, Dovey, Anderson and two other guys sat. More of the crew crammed into seats at the rear of the interior. Wingate stared out of the side window, ignoring us completely while the others either eyed us up or talked amongst themselves.

  “Take a pew in the cab alongside me,” McElroy called, looking over his shoulder at us from the driver’s seat. “I need you to be my navigator with your map, Smith.”

  We struggled to move against McElroy’s turning motion as he steered onto the road and the whole RV tilted on its creaky suspension. Smith clambered over the back of the seat and sat next to McElroy. I followed, hopping over the backrest and took up a position by the passenger window in the three seater cab. The seat felt hard and squeaked beneath my backside, as though a sharp spring was going to pop through the cream colored vinyl cover and stick me in the ass at any moment. Smith pulled out the map from his jacket pocket and unfolded it on his lap.

  “Think this crate will get us any further than the next small town, Mac?” Smith asked.

  McElroy grinned. “We’ll have to wait and see, Smudger. Where the hell is your pioneering spirit?”

  “I’m just worried about being stuck out in the desert with my ass hanging out, is all,” Smith snorted.

  “Don’t fret yourself, Big Man,” McElroy said. “The others have taken that big old bus back to the plane. They’ll start ferrying people over to the motel back there. Let them stretch their legs a wee bit as well as sucking in some good old desert air.”

  “Anything has got to be better than being stuck on that damn airplane,” I said.

  “Yeah, I feel like we need to raise the whole morale of the people a wee bit,” McElroy said, flashing me a sideways glance.

  “You don’t think that shooter guy will come back?” I pressed, thinking about all those passengers milling around outside the motel. They’d provide the guy with plenty of target practice if he wanted.

  “We’ve got enough firepower to take out one wee, hairy assed, desert dude in a sand buggy, Wilde Man,” McElroy said, flashing me a grin.

  Smith remained silent, staring at the map. I wished I shared his and McElroy’s nonchalance in regard to the shooter. I sincerely hoped my worries were unnecessary. I couldn’t figure out why the guy had taken a pot shot at us if he was not going to cause us any aggravation. Maybe Smith was right and he’d only thought the two of us were out there at the motel.

  “Take a left turn at the next junction. Mac,” Smith said, indicating the way with his hand.

  “Right you are,” McElroy responded.

  We hung a left within a couple of minutes. The route brought us out onto another long, straight road that looked as though it never ended.

  “Keep going on this route and it should bring us into the Terlingua Ghost Town,” Smith explained.

  “Wow! Like a real Western Ghost Town?” McElroy cried. “This, I must see.”

  I had never seen an old ghost town before and I didn’t think I really wanted to. Nearly everywhere we’d set foot into lately had been a ghost town of some description or another. I’d had enough of ghouls and the ghosts of the past to last me a damn lifetime.

  The intense heat caused a shimmer effect along the road in front of us, making anything in the distance blurry and difficult to spot. McElroy kept the speed to a sensible slow level. I didn’t know how much gas and water the RV had in it but guessed the supply wasn’t extensive.

  The cab interior became increasingly stuffy and airless and the pungent stench of oily diesel fumes didn’t help. I wound down the window and felt the rush of air against the side of my face but it seemed to make little difference.

  “Doesn’t the air con work in this thing, Mac?” I asked.

  “I haven’t tried it to be honest with you, Wilde Man,” McElroy replied. “I don’t think many of the gadgets work in here. The speedometer says we’re doing zero miles an hour, the gas tank and the temperature gauge haven’t risen off the bottom of the scale either.”

  “There’s nothing like traveling in comfort, huh?” I spat, sarcasm punctuating every word.

  Smith flashed me a sideways glare that said ‘Quit fucking whining, kid.’

  “Don’t worry about it, Mac,” I sighed. “It is what it is.”

  The shimmering heat haze faded slightly across the landscape and a cluster of dilapidated structures, the color of sand honed into view up ahead along the route. Some of the buildings were set back from the side of the road and looked nothing more than partial ruins. A few more modern looking structures lined the side of the road.

  “Is this the Ghost Town, right up here?” McElroy asked.

  Smith briefly glanced at the map. “I believe so.” He pointed towards the windshield. “Pull up next to that signpost, Mac and we’ll brush the sand of the sign so we can read it.”

  “Okay,” McElroy said. He slowed the RV with the brakes squealing as though metal was pressing on metal.

  We came to a halt right beside the sand covered sign, held in place by a thick wooden pole on each side. Smith folded up his map and tossed it on top of the dash.

  “Hop out, Wilde Man,” Smith said, waving his hand at me and ushering me out of the cab. “Let’s go take a look. Go, go.”

  “Okay, okay,” I sighed, wrestling with the sticking door handle.

  I finally bundled the door open, barging the interior panel with my shoulder. The wind whistled across the desert, blowing a spattering of grit into my face. Smith followed me out of the RV and McElroy remained inside the cab keeping the rattling engine kind of ticking over.

  Smith and I trudged over to the sign. I glanced around at the buildings up ahead along the road and the rundown ones further back on a slightly raised hillside. The place seemed eerie and I could imagine ghosts walking around the small town in the dead of night. A shiver ran down my spine despite the heat. Smith dusted the sand from the face of signpost with the palm of his hand.

  “There you go,” he said. “We’re in the right place. Terlingua Ghost Town, Texas. This used to be an old mercury mining town you know, Wilde.”

  “Give it my congratulations on times past,” I muttered, still glancing over the buildings. I couldn’t quash the uneasy feeling within me. Something wasn’t right. It seemed too damn quiet, like a calm sea before a storm.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Smith turned back to the RV. “We’re at the Ghost Town, Mac,” he shouted. “What do you want to do?”

&
nbsp; “We’ll park this big beastie up and have a wee look around the place,” McElroy replied.

  “Ah, God,” I sighed. What was the point of poking around some ruined old town?

  “You sure that damn thing is going to start up again if we cut the engine, Mac?” Smith asked.

  “Have a little faith, Smudger,” McElroy said, grinning. “It’s a beautiful machine, made for these big assed American roads.”

  Smith shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “I’ll pull up right by those buildings,” McElroy said, pointing to the newer structures around a hundred yards further down the road.

  Smith nodded. “We’ll walk it.” He sauntered back to the RV and shut the passenger door.

  McElroy revved the engine and drove the vehicle forward towards the dusty layby ahead of us.

  “What the hell are we doing?” I groaned, as we trudged towards the buildings.

  “Mac is just getting the lay of the land, kid,” Smith said. “Don’t keep breaking his balls.” He offered me a cigarette and I took it, even though my mouth and throat felt dry.

  I glanced up at the buildings ahead. One of them had a flaking white painted frontage with a domed brick roof that looked like an old style saloon. The thought sent my pallet into overdrive.

  “Could do with a cold beer right now,” I mused.

  “Now you’re talking,” Smith said.

  McElroy parked the RV in the layby outside the buildings. A rusting motorbike sat outside the long porch roof of the dwelling to the left of what looked like the saloon. The larger building looked like a general store or several businesses incorporated under the same roof. Two signs spaced above the porch were too faded to read.

  “Does Mac seriously want to look over this damn Ghost Town?” I huffed as we approached the back of the RV. “Haven’t we seen enough deserted towns already?” I tossed away my half finished cigarette into the spiky scrubland at the side of the road.

  “Hey, Wilde Man, I don’t know what’s crawled up your ass today but just chill out for a while, man,” Smith said. His tone was a little brusque. “He probably wants to check out the nearby places and make sure we’re not going to have to undergo any nasty surprises. The world is fucked in case you’ve forgotten, kid.”

  I realized I was becoming a bit pessimistic and decided to reel in my objective comments. What the hell did I know anyhow?

  The RV doors slammed shut after the whole crew jumped out of the vehicle in the shade of the larger building. They all wore their sunshades and the black baseball caps on their heads. Weapons rattled as they shouldered rifles or drew handguns from their holsters. I noticed Wingate and Smith avoided any eye contact. I wished they’d just sort out their damn differences and carry on as normal. Whatever normal was these days.

  “Fancy a wee snifter, Big Man,” McElroy said to Smith. “That place over there looks like a bar of some kind.” He nodded to the saloon type building. “Hopefully they’ve still got some good old Irish on the shelves in there.”

  Smith smiled. “We were just thinking the exact same thing, Mac.”

  “You know what they say, Smudger. You can’t go anywhere in the world without finding an Irish bar,” McElroy said, pointing his handgun at the front doors of the saloon. “If you can’t fight it, fuck it or drink it, it ‘aint worth the hassle.”

  Smith shrugged and ducked his head. “Amen to that.”

  “Let’s go take a look,” McElroy said. “Then we’ll have a gander through the Ghost Town for a wee while.” He turned back to the crew behind him. “No great rush on today fellers. We got all the time in the world.”

  I didn’t agree with McElroy. We still had to find aviation fuel and our supplies back at the plane weren’t going to last forever. We wouldn’t survive any great length of time stuck out in the desert. But I decided to keep my protests under control and not air them yet. We were in a new place so a slow approach to searching our surroundings might be for the best.

  I followed the crew as they clambered up the steps leading to the bar’s entrance. A set of sturdy wooden double doors, like those at the front of a barn blocked our passage to the interior. Red paint flaked away from the door’s thick timbers and I couldn’t see any handles or bolts keeping them closed. Dovey tried to prize them open with his fingers but the doors stood firm. He banged on the timbers with his fist in frustration. The building didn’t even have any windows at the front and the place looked impenetrable.

  “Guess we’ll have to scrub the wee drink,” McElroy sighed. “No bother, they’ll be another time so there will.”

  “I’ll go check out around the back,” a stocky, Scottish guy with short, sandy colored hair volunteered. “There might be a back way inside the place.” He was short in height but powerfully built and looked as though he could handle himself.

  I thought the guy’s name was Brookes but I couldn’t be totally sure. I recognized him from the warship where I frequently saw him stumbling around the upper deck with a bottle of vodka in his hand.

  “Okay,” McElroy agreed. “But don’t go around there alone, Brooksey. Take Maloney with you.” He nodded to a tall, skinny Irishman with a receding hairline and a hooked nose, who I guessed was Maloney.

  Maloney nodded. “Right you are,” he said.

  “Come and find us if and when you can find a way inside this place,” McElroy said. “We’re going to have a wee look over the Ghost Town on the hillside up there.” He nodded to the sloping landscape beyond the saloon.

  I toyed with the idea of going with Brookes and Maloney but they headed off around the side of the building before I’d made up my mind. Besides, I didn’t really know those guys and I wasn’t sure they’d want me hanging out with them anyhow.

  Instead, I tagged along with the rest of McElroy’s crew. Smith and I walked beside each other at the rear of the line of the ragtag brigade. We followed a narrow dirt trail rising up the hillside and leading to the huddle of dilapidated buildings further up the gradient. The air felt hot and dusty. Sweat ran down my back and I felt uncomfortable in the day’s increasing heat. What the hell were we doing?

  The Ghost Town seemed to be a number of old, wrecked stone buildings, simply left to crumble by neglect and the ravages of time. Roofs and windows had caved in and some dwellings were only recognizable by a single standing wall. Smith had already said the place was an abandoned mining town so there was no great mystery to solve. I would probably have found the town more interesting in the days before all places looked like this one.

  We milled around the ruins for a while, poking our noses inside the small, wrecked dwellings and some people commented on what life must have been like in the harsh, hot desert environment compared to the damp, wet conditions back in Britain.

  “Hey, guys,” somebody called out from the corner of a crumbling stone house. “What the hell is that over there?”

  I turned and saw Anderson, pointing towards two evenly spaced stone pillars with an iron crucifix atop each one.

  “Looks like an entrance to an old cemetery,” I said. I could make out what looked like stone tombstones a little way beyond the pillars.

  “Yeah, take a look to the right of the cemetery entrance,” Anderson snapped.

  I turned my gaze slightly and squinted in the bright sun. I blinked and looked away, flicking the sunshades down over my eyes. I looked back to where Anderson was pointing to. I couldn’t be sure as the sun still blurred my vision, even with the sunshades on but I thought I was staring at two vertical telegraph poles with a cross piece joining them across the top. Ropes were coiled and tied around the cross piece and below them hung what looked like a line of human bodies.

  I blinked a few times to ensure I was actually seeing what was further in front of me and it wasn’t just a hallucination. I realized I was staring at a set of multiple hanging gallows with real corpses swinging from the ropes below.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I felt goose bumps on my flesh despite the desert heat. What the hell
were we faced with now? I’d seen dead people hanging before but not like this, not out in the open and in the middle of a cemetery. This scenario just seemed damn weird.

  I turned back to the ruined buildings and saw Smith leaning against a wall and swigging from a bottle of water.

  “Hey, Smith,” I called out. “Have you seen this over here?” I pointed to the gallows across the cemetery.

  Smith pulled a quizzical expression and sauntered over to where I stood. McElroy approached from the other side of the wall and stood beside Anderson. We were soon joined by the rest of the crew and all stood silent and still, staring at the bizarre scene.

  “What in the name of sweet Mary is going on here?” McElroy muttered. “We better go take a closer look, guys. Those of you who don’t want to go over there, stay right here.” He turned to the crew and pointed to the ground.

  I glanced around the cemetery. Everything seemed still but I sensed a certain eeriness about the place. I’d felt uneasy even before we’d encountered that jerk with the sniper rifle on the sand buggy.

  Four of the guys in the crew stayed put beside the wrecked buildings but the majority of us moved uneasily and cautiously towards the cemetery. I kept my hand on the butt of my firearm but left it inside the holster. Smith walked beside me and Wingate was in front of us alongside McElroy. Anderson and Dovey led the pack with their weapons drawn and grim, determined expressions on their faces.

  We walked between the stone pillars, marking the entranceway to the bone yard and I felt a shiver run down my spine. It was almost as though the ghosts of the past had run a cold finger straight down my back. I wanted to leave this place and all my inner senses told me to flee.

  Piles of stones and crude wooden crosses marked the graves spread across the dusty landscape. A few old and faded framed photographs had been placed beside some of the tombstones but the images were too sun bleached to distinguish. We silently threaded our way through the plots that marked the final resting place of the town’s dead and approached the gallows on the far side of the cemetery. It seemed as though we’d walked through a time portal and entered an era from the past.