Badlands

by Peter Bowen

  The stretcher was slid to the end of the truck bed and the attendants grabbed it and ran toward the helicopter.

  Ripper was right behind. He dropped his vest and machine pistol at Du Pré’s feet. The stretcher was slid into the helicopter and Ripper got in and slammed the sliding door. The helicopter’s engines screamed and the rotors began to whirl. It rose up five hundred feet and then the pilot kicked in the jets and he headed toward Billings. The aircraft was over the horizon in no time.

  Du Pré turned and saw McPhie and Harvey and a tall heavy man talking.

  County sheriff.

  Du Pré knew him. An odd name. Grotbo. One of the Hunkies who had come here to homestead.

  Du Pré walked over to them.

  “’Lo, Gabe,” said Sheriff Grotbo. “You vouch for this feller?” He nodded at Harvey.

  Du Pré shook his head.

  “Federal prick,” he said.

  McPhie and Grotbo and Harvey all laughed.

  “You OK?” said Du Pré to McPhie.

  McPhie nodded.

  “Scared shitless,” he said, “but I been that some in my life. Jesus, these people. One shootin’ herself is enough, but eleven of ’em?”

  “Twelve,” said Harvey. “One’s still alive, though.”

  “I can’t figure,” said McPhie, “what they think they’re doin’.”

  Sheriff Grotbo looked at Du Pré.

  “Ain’t you supposed to be a-playin’ tonight,” he said. “Wife said, so we thought we might come give a listen.”

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “You need a rig,” said Grotbo, “take mine. Hell, I can ride with Dick.”

  He held out the keys to his cruiser.

  Du Pré looked at Harvey.

  “I have a team on the way,” said Harvey, “medical examiner, criminal investigation specialists. This is gonna take a long time.”

  Du Pré nodded. He took the keys.

  “Maybe next time,” said Grotbo. “Tell you what, tomorrow you get somebody to follow you, drop that in Cooper. I got to come talk to Benny anyway.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  He walked to the cruiser and drove slowly past the mess and the bodies.

  He opened it up and headed north and found the road deserted. It was still light.

  He looked at his watch.

  The helicopter had set down just twenty minutes ago.

  Thirty miles down the road he stopped at a roadhouse and got a fifth of bourbon and a plastic glass and ice.

  He drove on, the cruiser was new, and it handled very well. The road was utterly empty and for stretches of twenty miles he could see it all.

  The cruiser topped at one hundred thirty-two.

  Du Pré settled back to one-ten and kept on.

  The sun was setting in red glory.

  Du Pré got to the crossroads and turned east. He shot along and soon came to Toussaint. He parked across the road from the saloon because every place near the building was taken.

  Du Pré got out and stretched. He yawned.

  There was music coming from inside.

  Bassman and his son. Bassman was playing well. Jean-Baptiste was playing his accordion and singing. He had a good voice, a rich baritone. Du Pré stood out on the front boardwalk smoking and drinking until they were done with their set. Then he went in.

  The place was jammed. There were smiling, glistening faces all crowded together. It was very hot. The swamp cooler couldn’t pump the heat out from all of the bodies.

  People were still whistling and yee-hahing after Bassman and Jean-Baptiste had left the stage.

  Jean-Baptiste was so shy he shot out the back door, never looking up from the floor, though people congratulated him as he passed.

  Du Pré made his way to the bar. Madelaine and Susan Klein were shoving drinks over and making change at a fast pace.

  It would be five minutes or so before Madelaine could stop to even look at Du Pré.

  Du Pré went out the back door and glanced over at the Siberian elms. Bassman and Jean-Baptiste were there, smoking weed.

  He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “What is it, an old man does, get a little wine maybe. A smoke.”

  Du Pré turned around.

  Benetsee was standing there, grinning.

  “You got wine, tobacco, your car,” said Benetsee, “we go now.”

  Du Pré looked at him.

  Du Pré started to speak.

  Benetsee grabbed his arm in his old talons.

  “Now,” he said.

  CHAPTER 23

  BENETSEE SANG.

  The air inside Du Pré’s cruiser thickened and Du Pré glanced once at the backseat, sure there was someone there. But it was empty. When he looked in the rearview mirror, pale light shimmered like the moon on black water.

  Benetsee sang.

  Du Pré strained his ears. He could hear singing and drumming, but it was so faint and far he could not be sure.

  “Old man!” Du Pré yelled. “What is this? What is this?”

  Benetsee sang. When he wanted Du Pré to turn, he snapped his hand out.

  “Hah!” said Benetsee. “Stop. Over there. Put this thing over there.”

  Du Pré followed Benetsee’s pointing finger and slid the cruiser into a tiny box canyon between two stumpy buttes.

  The old man got out of the cruiser and began to dance in a circle of whitish dust. Plumes of powdery pale smoke rose from beneath his feet. Benetsee pointed to Du Pré and then to the spot behind his feet, clad in old running shoes and moving faster than an old man could.

  Du Pré joined him and Benetsee sang and Du Pré followed, coming in on the chorus.

  The chanting and the drums swelled.

  There was movement outside the circle just past the light that the eye can see.

  Du Pré felt lightheaded.

  Benetsee changed to the Blue Jay Dance, and Du Pré followed him.

  The chorus of old voices was a soft but solid wall of sound.

  Benetsee danced like a blue jay on a tree limb. He cocked his head and ruffled his wings and his feet skittered.

  Then he froze.

  So did Du Pré.

  He smelled rock and dust and caves.

  A light beam punched through the dark. It moved toward them and across them. Du Pré could see plastic crates and tubs stacked against rock walls.

  “There’s nothing here,” said a voice.

  “That damned sensor’s on the fritz again,” said another voice. “Said there were two large creatures moving across the beam. Piece of crap.”

  The light went off.

  It was pitch black.

  Du Pré cursed silently.

  Don’t know where I am, old man, what is this?

  No. It is that Spanish mine, either the one the badlands or the one the Eide place.

  I got no gun, I got no light, I got no fucking idea …

  Du Pré felt a sharp stab on his cheek and a cold line on the skin.

  Blood running.

  He breathed deeply.

  He stood up.

  Little scratchings on the rocky floor of the cave.

  Du Pré looked toward the sound.

  He saw a pale soft point of light.

  It rose and bloomed.

  He saw a little blue jay.

  Dancing.

  The light grew.

  The jay danced to a pair of plastic tubs. One of them had its bands cut and the lid was loose. Du Pré lifted it.

  Blocks of plastic explosive.

  Du Pré pulled out four of them.

  The jay jumped up to a shelf.

  Du Pré took blasting cord and detonators.

  The jay perched on his hand.

  Du Pré looked at the cord.

  It burned at half a meter per second.

  He measured off three and a half meters.

  He took a roll of duct tape and he set the blocks of plastic explosive together.

  He stuck a detonator in a block and put the end of the blasti
ng cord in the grab socket.

  He set the block of explosive on the lip of the bottom plastic crate a foot from the rock wall.

  Good baffle and direction, Du Pré thought.

  He curled the blasting cord in a spiral on the dry rock floor.

  The guards were gone. There was no light and no noise.

  Thirty feet to the opening.

  Me, I better run faster than that fuse burns.

  Du Pré pulled out his shepherd’s lighter and picked up the end of the blasting cord.

  The flashlight beam came on again and it stabbed into the cave.

  “There’s no other way in there,” said a voice, “and we’ve been right here.”

  “I checked the sensors,” said the other voice, “switched it off and on and it tells me there’s a man in here, god damn it.”

  “Blasphemy is a sin, brother,” said the other voice.

  “I am going to take a look,” said the voice.

  Du Pré sank down behind the crates. He kept the fuse and the lighter in his hand.

  The beam from the flashlight played around the cave and stopped.

  Three steps on the rocky floor.

  The beam went over Du Pré’s head.

  “There isn’t anyone there,” said the voice outside the cave.

  “Thoroughness is grace in the Eyes of Yahweh,” said the voice near Du Pré.

  Du Pré rasped the lighter and it caught and he touched the glowing end of the rope to the fuse. There was a spark and a faint hiss.

  Du Pré looked up at the ceiling.

  He set the fuse down and it burned rapidly around the spiral.

  He stood up.

  A man was standing fifteen feet from him, looking off to the side where the flashlight beam played.

  Du Pré yelled and he ran for the entrance. His voice filled the chamber.

  He went through the entrance, a racket of whaps hitting the stone walls behind him.

  There was a stand of small trees to the left.

  Du Pré dived behind them and he scrambled forward on his hands and knees. He went behind a slab of rock.

  “It’s just a fucking coyote,” said the voice outside the cave. “A damned—”

  The explosion came in two parts, a crump and then a blast as the gasses blew out the door of the cave.

  Du Pré kept flat, his hands over his head. His ears filled and he was deaf. The stink of explosives choked him.

  Rocks began to fall.

  Du Pré stood up.

  He looked at the cave.

  It wasn’t there. A cloud of dust hung where the entrance had been.

  A body lay broken fifty feet away. Du Pré went over to it. He looked under it. There was the stock of a rifle.

  Kalashnikov. Du Pré pulled back the slide, and brass gleamed.

  These fuckers they work, they got dirt, ice, epoxy in them, Du Pré thought.

  He trotted off toward the badlands. They hung in the air. Ground fog lay in a thin cloud over the prairie.

  On the Eide ranch then, my car is …

  Du Pré turned. His ears were thick and ringing.

  Lights danced.

  Headlamps, ORVs, trucks, all racing toward the old mine.

  Du Pré spat. His mouth was full of pulverized rock and his nostrils burned.

  He trotted on.

  A fence. Du Pré moved toward it.

  There were huge dark boulders on the earth.

  They moved.

  Buffalo. Hundreds of them. They began to move together.

  A huge bull snorted and pawed the earth.

  Du Pré nodded to the bull as he passed.

  Good evening, my brother.

  He stepped through the fence.

  A noisemaker on top of a fencepost began to shriek.

  CHAPTER 30

  DU PRÉ STOPPED AS soon as he got into the badlands. He looked down at his feet.

  Moccasins.

  He shook his head.

  Me, I do not remember putting these on.

  He was terribly thirsty. He found a pebble the size of a cherry and put it in his mouth.

  There were several trails braiding through the badlands.

  My car … I am not sure where it is.

  “You old shit!” yelled Du Pré. “We fly there I got to walk back.”

  A small engine screamed back toward the fence he had stepped through.

  Du Pré picked a track that led into a narrow defile cut into the soft stone. He trotted along.

  Old son of a bitch, he thought, this time maybe you get me killed, arrested maybe.

  Engines screamed.

  Du Pré came out of the narrow slit in the rock and he saw another across the pan, perhaps a hundred yards away. He ran for it, leaping over a small gully in the middle, cut by the rain that so seldom fell. The wind rose up. He dived into the slit in the wall of rock.

  He stopped and turned. It was so narrow he had to swing the assault rifle down toward the ground to point it back toward the pan.

  Lights bounced a half mile up the wide track.

  Seven sets.

  The wind suddenly kicked up ferociously. Screams and moans rose from the malpais. Clouds of dust raced thick toward the lights coming on.

  Du Pré smelled water.

  Rain.

  He looked up.

  The day had been cloudless. Now it was black, and lightning flashed inside the heavy clouds, edging them with purple and gold and white.

  Du Pré backed into the slit. It twisted and turned and the walls rose higher and higher.

  Me, I do not like this, I am getting deeper in the earth.

  Du Pré went on. The slit narrowed.

  “In here!” someone yelled. “Fresh tracks!”

  A burst of automatic fire. Du Pré dropped down. Richochets whined and whirred and screamed.

  Shoot me like a skunk in a culvert.

  Du Pré rose and he moved on.

  There was a chimney in the rock, a square narrow cut up to the rim. Du Pré ripped the sleeves from his shirt. He tied them together and he looped the cloth around the pistol grip of the Kalashnikov. He tied off the loop and the ends, then put it around his neck so that the rifle hung down straight. He slid into the chimney and put his back against the rock and his hands and knees against the other side.

  He began to inch his way up.

  Another burst of automatic weapon fire. The slugs screamed down the slit where he had been.

  It was easier going than he had feared. The width of the chimney was perfect. He felt with his toes and found a foothold. He stuck his foot in it. Secure, he ran his fingers over the rock face.

  Holes.

  Somebody cut me a staircase.

  He stepped up, a couple feet at a time now.

  More gunfire. A slug hit the rock near his right hand and splinters of stone sprayed him.

  Du Pré moved up.

  Rain.

  Huge drops. Just a few, but when they hit they went splack.

  The rim was six feet above him. Du Pré inched up to it. He slowly lifted his head and looked carefully around the misshapen cap of stone.

  No one.

  Du Pré crawled up and out. He made for a deep shadow under a ledge of stone.

  The skies opened. Du Pré shoved his body as far under the ledge as it could go. Hailstones crashed on the rocks, and bits of ice splattered Du Pré’s face. The rain came down in a torrent. Rills of water ran under the ledge, icy and swift.

  Du Pré blinked.

  Old fucker, I think I maybe just shoot you I find you.

  Save my ass so I drown.

  Ver’ funny.

  The water was standing two inches deep on every surface but the steepest, and there were pools of water, dark and frothy, pounded to foam by the relentless rain.

  The rain stopped.

  Lightning flashed.

  Du Pré crawled out from under the ledge and looked around. The water was running rapidly off the cap. Stone appeared, and then the pools in the hollows sank
as the water sought the lowest place.

  Du Pré stood up. He stepped away from the ledge and he looked very carefully around.

  Nothing moved.

  Shadows.

  Stones.

  Water.

  Du Pré moved quickly toward the edge of the cap, where he thought the slit he had gone into began. His moccasins held to the rock. They almost felt sticky.

  Du Pré went down on his belly and edged toward the lip and at an inch a minute he poked his head out. Then he turned his eyes side to side.

  Waters roiled, thick with mud.

  Du Pré looked at the rocks below.

  A man sat there, shivering. He held a light assault rifle. The man was looking around, slowly.

  “Above you, Mike!” someone screamed.

  Du Pré jerked his head back and rolled to a dip in the stone. An automatic rifle ripped and slugs whacked into the lip of the cap of rock. Some went right overhead, going crack!

  Du Pré wriggled backward, and then he stood and ran for the far, north end of the capstone. He jumped over a few shallow small pools. Looking down, he saw the stars reflected in one. He got to the edge and fell on his belly and wriggled to the lip and looked down.

  The waters were sinking into the earth.

  “Over here!” someone shouted, back toward the other side of the rock.

  Du Pré swung his legs over the lip and slid down, holding the rifle high overhead. The scarp wasn’t steep and it was very wet. Du Pré left only a little skin on it. His feet hit the pavement stones at the bottom and he crouched and turned.

  No one was there.

  Du Pré ran across the watercourse. There was another narrow slit in the rock. He went into the deep shadow. The cleft went through and out the other side. Across another wide flat pan there was another cleft. Du Pré dashed for it.

  A helicopter whacked overhead, a searchlight stabbed down from it. Du Pré trotted through the cleft, a good four feet wide. The helicopter moved off to the south. Du Pré splashed through a pool of water. He went out the other side of the stone.

  Du Pré stopped.

  His cruiser was sitting there. A cigarette glowed in the front. Du Pré walked to the car and got in.

  “You don’t dance so good,” said Benetsee. “Here, have something to drink.”

  CHAPTER 31

  DU PRÉ PARKED IN the tall grass near Benetsee’s cabin. The old man had sung on the drive home, his head hanging, his cracked voice gathering strength and then fading away. The words were in a language Du Pré didn’t know.