Whirlwind

by Charles L. Grant

  Lanaya figured, have the power, have the respect. That would make him fully Konochine again.

  Scully slowed a little, and he saw how her hair had begun to mat to her neck and scalp. He took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder, his shirt nearly transparent where the sweat held it against his skin. When he brushed his fingers over his hair, the hair felt hot. He would give a lot right now to look stupid in a hat.

  Then he blinked, wiped his face, and blinked again.

  The gap in the Wall was only a hundred yards away.

  He looked back at the pueblo, and saw nothing move. Dust blew through it, and all he could think was ghost town.

  The dust devil grew and spun in place.

  It was little more than two feet high, wobbling around its axis as if ready to collapse should the wind blow again.

  Butterflies and sand.

  No sound at all.

  Mulder stumbled, and Scully grabbed his arm to steady him. He smiled at her wanly. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

  “Since when did you ever think I was helpless, Mulder?”

  Never, he thought; never.

  They walked into the gap, and into its shadow which was no shade at all. Ahead, the road rose and fell as if it were a narrow wave, making him rub his eyes until it steadied. In his shoes his feet burned, and his ankles promised spectacular blisters once he took the shoes off.

  Something small and dark scuttled across the road.

  It was tempting, very tempting, to take his shirt off. The cloth was a weight his shoulders could barely handle. The jacket on his arm already weighed a ton, and he didn’t think he’d be able to carry it much longer.

  “How did they do it?” Scully asked as they came out of the gap and stopped. She stared across the desert floor. They could see no interstate, no trucks, no cars, no planes overhead. There was nothing but the sky and the mountains. “How did they cross this place without killing themselves?”

  “They had water, for one thing,” Mulder said sourly.

  “It must have been incredible,” she said. She laughed. “It must have been a bitch.”

  He let his knees fold him into a crouch, his jacket slipping to the road. There was too much space here, too much sky; gauging distance accurately was nearly impossible, but he seemed to remember that the ranch house wasn’t much more than a mile to his right. If they climbed the fence and angled overland instead of sticking to the road, they might make it faster.

  He didn’t realize he’d been speaking aloud until Scully said, “What if you twist an ankle?”

  “Me? Why me?”

  She grinned. “I’m a doctor, I know better.”

  It was heartening to see the smile; it wasn’t good to see how her face had reddened. They were dangerously close to sunstroke; they had to be. And dehydration wasn’t all that far behind. If they were going to do it, they’d better do it now.

  He rose with a groan, and with a groan leaned over to pick up his jacket.

  “Ciola is evil, you know,” she said.

  He draped the jacket over the barbed wire and held it down while she climbed awkwardly over.

  “Lanaya is worse.”

  He didn’t get it. “Why?”

  “I can understand Ciola. But it’ll take me a long time to understand Nick.”

  As tall as a man.

  And now it began to whisper.

  He stumbled over nothing, and commanded his limbs to knock it off. It wasn’t as if they were in the middle of the desert, a hundred miles from the nearest civilization. He could already see the fences, could already make out the dim outline of the ranch house. A mile, maybe, he couldn’t be sure. But he was acting as though it was ten miles, or more.

  Scully sidestepped a prickly pear and nearly walked straight into another. She swiped at it with her suit coat, the move turning her in a circle.

  “Do you think Sparrow is in on it?”

  “What? Sparrow? No, why?”

  “He didn’t follow us into the reservation, and he wasn’t waiting when we came out.”

  It was too hot to think straight, but he doubted that Sparrow was anything more than understandably skeptical about the whole thing. He was, no doubt, sitting in his office, drinking from his flask, and trying to figure out how he would charm them, or bully them, into getting some credit for the crime’s solution. Even if it meant having to accept some magic.

  It began to hiss.

  It began to move.

  “There!” Scully announced. “There it is.”

  They stood on the lip of a shallow arroyo, beside a hand-crafted bridge.

  “Thank God, you see it too,” Mulder said. “I thought it was a mirage.”

  They crossed the bridge single file. The vivid green of the lawn was visible now, and through the rising ghostly heat he could make out the house, if not its details.

  On the other side, Scully leaned over the rail. “I think those holes in the bank down there are rattlesnake dens.”

  Mulder wasn’t listening.

  He had stopped to take a breath, a brief rest on his feet. Without much hope, he checked the gap just in case Ciola, or someone, had taken pity on them, and had followed them in a truck. He also checked the top of the hill, just in case the old man was there.

  Then he said, “Scully, how fast can you run?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  It rose out of the arroyo a hundred yards away.

  Mulder had expected it to be shaped like a miniature tornado, but it was conical from top to bottom, and cloudy with the debris that whipped around its surface, the source of the hissing it made as it left the dead river and made its way toward them.

  Eight feet high; at least four wide in the middle.

  Whether it was the force behind it, or the weight of the sand and grit that formed it, it wobbled as it moved, with thin dark bands rippling along its surface, snapping apart and re-forming. Every so often a gap would appear and he could see right through it; then the gap would close, swallowed whole.

  Had it arrived an hour or two earlier, he didn’t doubt they would have had a chance to make it to the house. Its ground speed was not much greater than that of a leisurely trot. Not now, though; not after so much time in the sun.

  They ran over the uneven ground as if palsied, as if drunk, veering wildly away from each other, then having to veer again in order not to collide when they tried to rejoin. Serrated grasses slashed at their ankles; shrub and brush stabbed at their arms and legs.

  The sun hadn’t gone; it was still there, pressing down.

  Something exploded in the dirt to Mulder’s left, leaving a geyser of dust to hang in the air.

  Scully cried out wordlessly in alarm when the top of a cactus shattered as she passed it.

  When a third puff rose from the ground a dozen yards away, he realized it was the heavier material caught in the force of it—pebbles, perhaps large twigs; their own weight would eventually fling them out like grapeshot.

  They skidded and slid down a short depression.

  Mulder glanced back over his shoulder and saw the whirlwind sweep past a small bush, shredding the branches it touched.

  Scully grunted and went to one knee, her left hand crossed over to grip her right shoulder. She’d been hit. Mulder raced over and hauled her to her feet, pushed her on when he was struck behind his right knee. He dropped as she had, then launched himself forward as if from a starting block. His right hand went around her shoulders when he reached her, and they supported each other into another depression, and up again.

  The ranch house bobbed not that far ahead.

  He could see the white split-rail fence, the grass, and no one on the porch.

  They didn’t know; they couldn’t hear.

  “How does it know?” Scully demanded.

  It hissed along the ground, moving faster, growing taller.

  Growing darker.

  Mulder couldn’t tell her. He was distracted by the sudden, guttural roar of an engine, searching wi
ldly until he spotted a battered pickup lurch out of a boiling dust cloud to their right.

  He was so startled he didn’t see the rock until it was too late. His right foot slid over its smooth, flat surface, and he would have gone down had not Scully gripped him tightly and yanked him, still running, back to his feet.

  The porch was still empty; what the hell were they doing in there?

  Sweat ran into his eyes, blinding him, stinging.

  Scully yelled, and he thought for a moment she’d been hit again, and his shoulders automatically hunched in anticipation. When she yelled a second time, he understood; she was trying to get the attention of the house.

  It wouldn’t do any good.

  The hissing was too loud.

  Something large snapped not far behind them, like the crack of a huge bullwhip.

  The pickup drew closer, jouncing recklessly over the ground, slipping sideways left and right as the driver tried to keep it in line.

  Scully finally noticed and waved at it frantically once, but when Mulder tried to steer them toward it, she suddenly shouldered him away. “Him,” was all she was able to say.

  Nick Lanaya was behind the wheel, and it didn’t take long for Mulder to realize that the man wanted to herd them away from the house, to keep them in the open. It was also the answer to Scully’s question: since the man hadn’t known exactly where they would be, he would have had to keep them in sight once he’d set the Wind in motion.

  Someone stepped out onto the porch.

  “Almost there,” he gasped. “Hang on, we’re almost there.”

  The pickup aimed right for them.

  Mulder stubbornly refused to give ground, forcing his concentration on the maddeningly slow approach of the fence and the lawn. It was Scully who threw them aside when the truck roared by, smothering them in a dust cloud that made it impossible for them to breathe.

  The Blood Wind swerved.

  The hiss deepened to a growling.

  He couldn’t see anything, but Mulder heard the Wind and urged Scully back to her feet, shoved her ahead of him and pulled out his gun. Not for the Wind, but for the truck, which had swung into a turn so Lanaya could come at them again.

  Stalling them.

  Dividing their attention between one death and another.

  Twenty yards to the fence when Mulder swung his arm around and fired blindly, not expecting to hit anything, just hoping Lanaya would think twice before trying to close again.

  The truck didn’t stop.

  The Wind didn’t stop.

  Suddenly the ground hardened, and Mulder looked down and realized they had reached the drive.

  Scully had already climbed halfway over the fence.

  On the porch Nando’s wife screamed, and kept on screaming, her hands clutched against her chest.

  The pickup charged, and Mulder fired a second time, hitting the windshield on the passenger side, causing Lanaya to swerve, and swerve again to avoid hitting the fence in front.

  But the Wind didn’t stop.

  It hissed across the driveway, forcing him into a move he knew immediately was foolish but was too late to stop—he bolted to his left, away from the house and lawn. But the sight of it so close and the sound of its voice had panicked him, and by the time he was able to think again, Lanaya had turned the truck around.

  Scully yelled at him on her knees from the porch, where Nando was now, a rifle in his hands.

  The Wind had paused; a stone, a piece of wood, smashed through one of the ranch house windows.

  Mulder felt dizzy. The exertion, the heat and the dust, the sound of that thing spinning slowly in place…he took a step back and almost fell, staggered sideways and saw Lanaya in the cab, grinning.

  Sangre Viento; it moved.

  Nando fired at the truck, and a headlight exploded.

  It won’t make any difference, Mulder thought, sidling to his left; kill Lanaya, and the Wind will still be there. It has its target now.

  He froze.

  No; no, it won’t.

  The Wind brushed against the corner fence post, and sawdust filled the air, some of it showering into the yard, the rest sucked into the spinning.

  Lanaya gunned the engine.

  Mulder had no choice left but to run straight toward him. If the Wind picked up speed, he would use the truck to stop it; if it didn’t, he would stop it anyway.

  If he was right.

  The Wind moved, and Scully shouted a warning, her own gun out and aiming.

  A Wind-whipped stone glanced off Mulder’s knee, and he dropped before he knew he’d lost control. He felt the blood before he felt the pain, and the pain stood him up again.

  At that moment, both Scully and Nando fired; at that moment, Mulder aimed and fired.

  At that moment, Sangre Viento moved, and moved fast.

  If I’m right, Mulder thought as he raced as best he could to the truck.

  The windshield was pocked with holes and weblike cracks, the engine still ran, and as he grabbed for the door, he saw Nick behind the wheel, his head back, his face covered with running blood.

  He saw the whirlwind speeding toward him.

  If I’m right, he thought, and yanked the door open, scrambled onto the seat, and reached for Lanaya’s throat.

  It wasn’t hissing now, it was roaring.

  He grabbed the rawhide thong around the man’s neck and pulled, pulled again as the truck began to rock violently.

  Pieces of the windshield began to fall in.

  Giving up on the thong, Mulder nearly crawled into the dead man’s lap and ripped his shirt open, grabbed the medicine bag and tried to rip it apart. He couldn’t, and something slammed into his side, into his shoulder, throwing him against Lanaya’s chest and rocking him back.

  Metal shrieked.

  Glass cracked and shattered.

  He held the bag up, as far away as he could, and put a bullet through it, blowing it apart as he threw himself into the well and waited for one of them to die.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “They were all acting,” Mulder said.

  He and Scully sat at the porch table with Annie Hatch, he with a slick glass of iced tea, Scully with a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. They had invited themselves out on their last day, because Mulder felt the woman should know.

  “Sparrow wanted us to believe he was either dumb as a post or a hick who was only around for comic relief. Ciola was the macho, I-dare-you-to-touch-me man, but he was terrified because he knew what Nick could do.” He took a long drink and sighed. “And Nick didn’t think we’d believe for a second in the Sangre Viento. We’re trained agents, we deal with solid evidence and behavioral science and the magic we can do ourselves in the lab.”

  “It wasn’t magic, Mulder,” Scully said.

  He smiled at the lawn. “Suit yourself.”

  Too many parts of him still stung where he had been struck by missiles hurled by the Wind, and his face was still an alarming red from his sunburn. He had also been right about the blisters.

  Scully, too, was walking wounded, but over the past two days, neither of them had had much time to think about it while they filled out reports, filled out more reports, and listened as Sheriff Sparrow figured for the papers and local television news that the pickup had slammed into the fence while trying to run Scully and Mulder down.

  The Sangre Viento had died when the contents of Nick’s bag were scattered by the bullet.

  None of the news people heard that story at all.

  Annie poured herself another glass. “You know, I don’t think any of my movies ever had so much excitement. I’m rather sorry I missed it.”

  Mulder looked at her until she had the grace to blush.

  “All right, all right, I was scared out of my mind and hiding in the kitchen. And I’m not sorry at all, are you happy?”

  He toasted her with his glass, emptied it and pushed away from the table. They had a late-afternoon flight back to Washington, and driving wasn’t going to be all that ea
sy.

  Scully finished as well, and as she picked up her bag and stood, he saw genuine reluctance to leave the ranch and Annie.

  “Fox?” Annie said.

  He didn’t correct her.

  “What happened to Red?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Scully answered for them. “We think he was trying to conduct his own investigation. From what the office tells us, he was hardly ever there once we arrived. Sparrow admitted to keeping him informed on the phone, but even he hasn’t heard from Agent Garson since the night before we went to the Mesa.”

  “I think he went there on his own,” Mulder said, slipping his sunglasses from his pocket and sliding them on. “I think he’ll be found before long, but he won’t be alive.”

  Another actor, he thought; the easterners he couldn’t stand had come out to conduct what should have been his investigation, and he had to pretend to like it all the way.

  They said their goodbyes, and Mulder, if he hadn’t already had the sunburn, would have blushed with pleasure when Annie kissed his cheek and made him promise to come back for a visit before she was too old to enjoy it.

  They started for the car, but as Scully slid in behind the wheel, Mulder asked her to wait and hurried back to the porch. Annie leaned over the rail when he crooked a finger.

  “What is it now?”

  He pulled down his sunglasses. “There’s a guy over there,” he said, pointing toward the Wall. “He sits on that hill and fries himself practically every day. Maybe you ought to go over there sometime and have a talk with him.”

  Annie stared. “A talk?”

  “It’s a thought,” he said.

  “I’m not going back, Fox, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m not,” he said innocently. “But there was this guy they thought was a saint, and he turned out to be a thief and a killer. The kids liked him, I understand.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Besides,” he added as he pushed the glasses back up, “who says a saint has to be a man?”