The Nightmare Frontier

by Stephen Mark Rainey

  As the smoke and dust slowly dissipated on the hot breeze, he saw that rubble now completely choked the building’s entrance. The upper third of the twenty-foot portal was all that remained exposed, dribbling a pale, thin streamer of smoke and dust.

  “Imagine that—with just a coupla pineapples,” came Barrow’s voice, and Martin turned to glare at the smug-looking sergeant. A coating of grime rendered his simian features barely recognizable.

  “Seems to me,” Martin said, almost surprised by his own vehemence, “I made mention a while back that what we found in that place was to stay there.”

  Barrow scowled incredulously at him and waved a hand at the destruction. “Don’t tell me, sir, that with all this, you’re gonna get riled over a friggin’ trinket?”

  "It's not the trinket," Martin said, his anger stoked by the sight of the sergeant's repugnant face. "It's when I tell you something, you better listen and listen good. We've got men dying out here. If your selfishness costs somebody else his life, I'll throw your ass back in that hole myself. Is that clear?"

  Slack-jawed, Barrow slowly nodded. But if he intended to respond, he never got the chance. Like black lightning, something coiled around his legs, ripped them quickly out from under him, and began dragging him toward the smoking ruin. With a cold thrill of dread, Martin saw that a long, spiny tendril the color of gunmetal had snared Barrow and was now retracting into the partially blocked opening. He bolted after the writhing figure, raising his M-16 in one hand and popping off several shots into the black mouth, from which several more spiked cables whipped forth like living barbed wire.

  Now one of the appendages slithered down the rubble toward him, its tip rhythmically tapping the ground like the questing tongue of a snake. He drew to a halt and quickly backed out of harm’s way, his eyes lifting to meet Barrow’s last regretful gaze. One of the sergeant’s hands slid into his shirt, dug for a second, and then emerged holding a small green bundle, which he wound up and hurled into the air. As the package landed with a thud right at Martin’s feet, Barrow disappeared without so much as a whimper into the leering black gullet.

  Martin scooped up the canvas ammo pouch, knowing what he would find inside, and stuffed it into a deep thigh pocket. He unhooked a grenade, yanked the pin, and heaved it with all his strength into the opening. Then he spun and hauled at top speed away from the advancing arms of the enemy, calling out for the platoon to fall back to the tree line. Around him, soldiers scurried for cover, and then the world exploded again, the shock wave washing over his back like a fiery sirocco.

  By the time he reached the cover of a huge teak tree, the world had fallen eerily silent. One of his hands dipped into his thigh pocket and withdrew the ammo pouch that Barrow had tossed to him. He held it up discreetly, lifted the flap, and inspected the glittering shape that hid within.

  The egg-shaped jewel seemed to radiate its own light—a brilliant electric blue generated deep within its cold, crystalline heart. Captivatingly beautiful, he thought; it had certainly captivated Sergeant Barrow. Martin knew that, back home, Barrow had two little boys, one of which had been born just before he had left for his first tour of duty.

  As of today, they had no father.

  PFC Cortland ambled up to him, sweat pouring down his youthful face. Martin stashed the stone back in his pocket and made himself forget it existed. Cortland shook his head wearily.

  “Charlie’s gotten damned clever, ain’t he, sir?”

  Martin nodded ruefully, his eyes locked on the towering house of deadly secrets. In fifteen minutes, on his order, a flight of Thuds would be knocking it down like a house of cards. “Yeah, private, I would. Mighty damned clever indeed.”

  Day One

  Chapter 1

  Driving on the interstate, the casual traveler rarely engages two synapses reflecting on what lies beyond the forests of billboards, traffic signs, food and fuel plazas, viaducts, floodlights, and orange barrels, the prevalence of which would suggest that civilization’s mantle extends well into those remote, sparsely populated corners of the United States that many have forgotten still exist. Even when dusty prairies, broad rivers, rolling hills, or forested mountains dominate the vistas surrounding our asphalt and concrete conduits, there is always the sense that little truly changes from one place to another. When one exits onto an unfamiliar side road, seldom will his confidence of locating an Exxon, a McDonald’s, and perhaps a Wal-Mart be shaken for very long. And when one’s adult perceptions have been shaped almost exclusively by the urban sprawl along the western shores of Lake Michigan, the expectation of a vast human footprint on any given locale comes all the more honestly.

  It was the odd, almost overwhelming sense of isolation, rather than the gravity of his current undertaking, that dominated Russell Copeland’s musings as his city-bred Lexus bounded roller coaster–like up, down, and around the narrow, winding thread of West Virginia 201—a highway in name only, its surface so pitted and potholed that his car’s recent alignment had been shot quite thoroughly to hell. He met traffic infrequently, which was fortunate, since avoiding a disastrous sideswipe meant veering so far to the right that he risked plummeting down steep, rocky embankments or plowing into close-pressing trees whose roots had actually burrowed up through the asphalt. The shadows beneath the dense canopies of oak, walnut, sycamore, and pine seemed less the product of obstructed sunlight than sovereign, burgeoning masses of darkness that teemed with unseen life, the sounds of which occasionally gusted in through his open windows. At least the early spring air smelled earthy and sweet, and certainly cleaner than the cloying, almost sickly odor that permeated the forest preserves around Chicago.

  So far, the West Virginia experience felt nothing like a homecoming, which rather surprised him, for as a boy, he had lived very near here, at the edge of a now-defunct dolomite quarry. His dad, a stone-processing company executive, had earned a respectable salary for his day, so his family fared much better than the majority of the local population, whose existence could be described politely as modest (or more bluntly as squalid). Still, Byston County’s sole private school had provided young Russell with a more than solid education, and when it came time to choose his own calling, he fled as far from rural West Virginia as possible, into a field that ensured a permanent escape from these desolate, gloomy backwoods. His specialty was electronics and, for the last half-dozen years, electronic security. Having qualified for high security clearance, he now contracted primarily with the government, recovering sensitive data from confiscated computer systems. The field excited him, and the money wasn’t bad.

  Until recently, he had actually been happy.

  Until his final blowout with the lunatic Megan…

  Judging from the unsightly hovels, decrepit-looking gas stations (some of which still bore the trademarks of oil companies that no longer existed), and slovenly commercial establishments, little had changed overtly since his final escape from Silver Ridge. Still, the years had effected certain alterations on the socio-economic landscape; most of the quarries were closed, the coalmines cleaned up, the forests largely protected from ravaging by timber companies. Over time, the locals had slowly shifted from one brand of poverty to another—though they nowadays suffered in relatively good health, since Medicaid offered the nonworking poor marginally better benefits than the working poor had ever known.

  A stark reminder of how far he was from home, in the thirty miles since Elkins, he had not passed a single familiar fast-food restaurant; only a couple of nondescript burger joints and a diminutive shack called The Chicken House, whose sputtering neon sign boasted that their birds were fed on nothing but the finest yellow corn. Somehow, he didn’t think he was sold.

  Even when he drove into the town proper, he found few recent commercial developments and not a single residential subdivision jammed with expensive, clapboard shoeboxes like the ones that mushroomed on virtually every spare acre from Illinois to Ohio. As seemed fitting, the tiny downtown sprang from a 1940s-vintage postcard, ev
ery business locally owned and bearing the name of its proprietor. The bank and the department store belonged to the Bullards, the hardware store to the Kolodnys, the garage to the Hobarts, and the pharmacy to the Wamplers. There was also a church (Baptist, naturally), a post office, a courthouse, and a fire station, none of which exhibited the first sign of life on this late Sunday afternoon. Having long ago closed the book on this part of his past, he had only the vaguest recollections of any of these places, and in his memory, they needed considerably less paint and fewer replacement windows.

  At the next intersection, Greenhill Road, he turned left and drove another mile or so, now passing small but well-kept houses with very green, immaculately trimmed yards, flagstone walkways, and expensive cars out front—obviously the seat of whatever money remained in the community. Knowing he must be nearing his destination, he checked the house numbers against his scribbled directions. Around a curve, past a neat, stone-walled arboretum, and there it was, tucked into a grove of lush white pines, barely visible through the boughs: his sister Lynette’s house. His mind finally snapped back to his reason for being here, and he involuntarily slowed the Lexus to a crawl, a token gesture of respect for the dead, before turning into the driveway.

  In his Evanston neighborhood, garages were often larger, but Lynette’s house blended pleasantly into its surroundings; a bit cramped, but well kept and reasonably comfortable-looking. Like many of the nearby homes, it resembled a miniature Tudor, with a pair of gables, half-timberings, and an ornate chimney, though an incongruous screened-in porch jutted awkwardly from the left side of the house. To the right, just beyond the cluster of evergreens, a similar house pressed so close to the property line that a breezeway could have easily connected the two. He parked behind Lynette’s silver Grand Am, slid out of the driver’s seat to the sound of joints creaking, and paused for a moment to summon his nerve before venturing toward the door.

  It opened just as he reached for the doorbell, and a slouching figure materialized out of the shadows, dimly seen eyes regarding him curiously. After a moment, Lynette Lawson heaved a sigh, drew herself up, and patted her disheveled blonde hair almost back into place.

  “I’m so glad it’s you. I wasn’t sure you were ever going to get here.”

  Except for the obvious signs of grief, his sister had hardly changed in the seven years since he had last seen her—at their own mother’s funeral. Copeland opened his arms and she fell into his embrace, her body so slight that he hesitated to hug her firmly. However, her slim arms were well-toned, and she gave him a surprisingly strong squeeze before releasing him.

  “Long drive,” he said. “How you holding up?”

  “Just barely.” She started to usher him inside, then paused and said, “Wanna bring in your bags?”

  “Later.” He followed her into a cool, deeply shadowed foyer that smelled of cigarette smoke and lilies. “Visitors all gone, I take it?”

  “Yeah. They’ve been coming and going all day. I have enough food to last a month.”

  She led him into the living room, the windows of which faced the wall of pines. Flowers of all varieties occupied every corner of the room, their vibrant colors brightening the naturally dim chamber. But their sweet, heady aroma seemed to remind Lynette of her pain, for her shoulders slumped again, and her eyes melted into a shining pool of tears. From an ornate cherry table that had belonged to their parents, she lifted a framed portrait, gazed longingly at it for several moments, and finally handed it to him.

  It was a fairly recent photo, for Rodney Lawson had been only eleven years old at the time of his death. The smiling, blue-eyed, sandy-haired lad closely resembled his mother—and even his Uncle Russ to a slight degree. In his Little League uniform, with a bat propped on his shoulder, he was the picture of carefree innocence but for a faraway, almost haunted look in his eyes. At the time the portrait was made, he was still grieving for his father, who had been killed in Iraq the previous year.

  With her husband and now her only son gone, Lynette was entirely alone.

  Copeland had met Rodney only once, when he was four; of course, he felt terrible about the boy’s untimely death, but the grief that came pouring out now was entirely for his sister. He took her in his arms again and held her, as he could shelter her from any further blows life saw fit to deal. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I know how much you loved him.”

  Lynette’s gray eyes slowly rose to meet his. “The funeral is at eleven tomorrow morning. Closed casket. He was...oh God.” She broke down then, and he felt her legs give way. He held her tenderly and let her weep for several minutes; when she finally regained her composure, he led her to the couch and gently lowered her to a sitting position. She took several deep breaths and offered him a faint smile. “Thank you.”

  He sat down and slid an arm around her shoulders. Hesitantly, he asked, “Have the police...?”

  She shook her head. “No. They took his body to Charleston to...autopsy. They have no idea who—or what—could have killed him.”

  “You’re the one who found him?”

  She nodded. “Out on Yew Line Road, a couple of miles from here. He was so late, I went looking for him, and I saw his bike, and he was lying there, just off the road. He was...oh God, oh God.” Tears started to flow again, but she wiped them away in frustration. “All I’ve done is cry. I’m spent, Russ, I’m just wiped out.”

  “I know,” he said, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly and then falling silent. Though hardly lacking compassion, finding consoling words had never been his strong suit. “I’m sure you’ve had a long, miserable day,” he finally said. “You should probably get some sleep. Don’t worry about me, I can manage just fine. We’ll have plenty of time later.”

  “How long can you stay?”

  “A week, at least. Maybe ten days. I want you to count on me for anything you need.”

  “I will,” she said gratefully. Some of her energy seemed to snap back, and she stood up with an abashed frown. “What am I thinking? You’ve been driving all day; you’re exhausted too. What is it, ten hours?”

  “More like twelve. But I’m fine, really.”

  “You need a drink, something to eat. Don’t worry, I don’t have to fix anything. The fridge is bursting at the seams.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t mind a drink.”

  “Still scotch on the rocks?”

  “Yeah.”

  She went to a small sideboard, stocked for the benefit of her apparently plentiful callers, dropped a few cubes into a tumbler, and poured him a generous measure from a crystal decanter. She swirled the ice in the glass before handing it to him. “It’s the good stuff. Enjoy.”

  “You’re still not drinking?”

  “Not for ten years. Not when Roger died. And not now.”

  “That’s good.”

  She gestured at the sideboard. “Feel free to have at it whenever you want. It doesn’t bother me for people to drink around me.”

  “You’re still smoking, though.”

  She nodded. “Guess you can’t miss the smell, can you?”

  “Not to mention an ash tray in every corner.”

  With a weak smile, she motioned for him to follow and led him into a small kitchen, as abundant with flowers as it was with food. Sure enough, the refrigerator practically overflowed with meats, casseroles, vegetable trays, cakes, and other assorted dishes—all very simple, very southern, he thought. He selected a couple of pieces of fried chicken (briefly wondering if this bird had been fed on the finest yellow corn) and some coleslaw, figuring that this and the scotch would hold him for the night. Lynette sat with him at the table and sipped bottled water, eating nothing and saying little while he worked on his supper. Her eyes were far away, and he knew that, for the moment, his presence barely registered.

  Only when he had finished and carried his plate to the sink did she look him in the eye again. When she did, her expression nearly chilled him. Behind her sadness, he saw a disturbing mélange of anger and terro
r.

  “When I found Rodney,” she said slowly, “I thought he must have been hit by a car and dragged. His body was so terribly mangled, his arms and legs almost...gone. But then I saw it wasn’t like a car accident. He had been burned. And it looked like some animal had...gnawed on him.”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “Maybe dogs or something...after he was dead.”

  She shook her head. “That’s what the coroner thought at first, but then he concluded the wounds had been made while Rodney was still alive.” Her voice trailed away and she stared vacantly into space for a time, her tears exhausted. Finally, she said, “The bite marks did not come from a dog. Or a wildcat. Or a bear. Or anything else that lives around here. No one knows what it could have been.”

  “So it wasn’t a person who killed him.”

  “We don’t know for sure. The burns. What could have caused the burns? Everyone’s baffled.”

  “Are the state police involved?”

  She shook her head. “The sheriff has no interest in calling them in unless…”

  “Unless something else happens?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Copeland downed the last of his scotch, and Lynette started to take his glass to get him another, but he waved her away. “You’re shot, my dear. Get some rest. I’ll fetch my bag, unpack, and hold the fort. Tomorrow’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know. The wake last night was bad enough.” She shot him a questioning look. “Oh, by the way. I didn’t ask you to be a pallbearer since you and Rodney never really knew each other. I’ve got some adults he knew well from school and from church. I hope you don’t feel slighted or anything.”