Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  Reportedly, no one was injured in the collapse, but the scientists soon had another problem on their hands: the natural gas escaping from the crater. Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, which the scientists determined must be eradicated, or at least controlled, at all costs. So they decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks’ time.

  Problem was, the scientists in Turkmenistan weren’t dealing with a measured amount of natural gas, so a burn that was supposed to last days or weeks at most was still burning a half century later.

  Caitlin had heard that Texas was dotted with wells beset by a comparable calamity, although she couldn’t say exactly when this burn had started or how much it had actually contributed to the abandonment of Spinnaker Falls. Nor did she have any idea of where the town had gotten its name, given that there were no falls anywhere to be seen when she pulled into the lot fronting the convenience store. The gas pumps out front looked as old as any she had seen in years, the place likely owing its survival to the fact that this was the only gas for fifty miles in every direction. That was the thing about Texas. Only about five percent of its land was actually settled; the rest remained pretty much as it had always been, dating all the way back to when her great-great-grandfather, Steeldust Jack Strong, had been a Ranger.

  Between the burning oil trench and the convenience store and gas station stood a ramshackle Spanish mission that looked a lot like the Alamo in its original form. The walls were still whole, and Caitlin thought she glimpsed cannon mounts from which the most potent weapons of the time had likely fired on marauding Mexican bandits or soldiers, way back before Texas gained statehood.

  There was something about seeing structures like this in their original form, as opposed to rebuilt, that made her appreciate her heritage even more, as well as the part the Rangers had played in the formation of modern Texas. The number of their deadly exploits was nothing compared to how many encounters were likely preempted merely by their reputation, keeping plenty of the bad guys of the time at bay.

  The convenience store and gas station shared a parking lot with an old-fashioned diner. Its windows were covered in plywood now and probably had been since the opening of the interstate, which could be glimpsed in the distance. Caitlin had her choice of empty parking spaces, picturing a time in the past when the lot would have been teeming with eighteen-wheelers and sedans owned by salesmen on their way from one call to the next.

  She entered to the sound of jangling bells, a few seconds passing before a door set behind the still well-stocked counter opened and an overweight man wearing denim overalls emerged, mustard staining the top of his lip and both sides of his mouth.

  He seemed to notice Caitlin’s exposed badge before he noticed anything else. “A real Texas Ranger in my store? If that don’t beat all. Whatever you want, ma’am, it’s on the house.”

  “How about some information?”

  “Glad to help any way I can, Ranger,” the man said, laying a pair of beefy hands on the counter. “Name’s Wyatt Bass, by the way.”

  Caitlin shook one of his big hands and felt it swallow hers. “Any relation to the outlaw Sam Bass?”

  “Distant cousin maybe, on my father’s side, but I’ve never seen any firm proof on the subject. So if your visit somehow involves Sam Bass, I’m afraid I can’t help you none.”

  Caitlin took off her hat and rustled a hand through her hair. “Sign outside says you’re open six to six, seven days a week.”

  Wyatt Bass nodded. “Except for the days I oversleep or the help is too drunk to show up on time or make it through the day.”

  “Six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening?”

  “That’s right.”

  Caitlin eased a printout of the credit card receipt fragment Young Roger had managed to decipher. “Then would you mind telling me, sir, how it was that, this past Tuesday night, this receipt says seven thirteen p.m.?”

  76

  SPINNAKER FALLS, TEXAS

  Bass chuckled, sounding like a department store Santa Claus. “You called me sir. A Texas Ranger called me sir.”

  “You have an answer for me, to earn the salutation?”

  “Could be a calibration problem, I suppose. We do maybe three to five credit card transactions on average per day, that’s all. For some stretch of time, the machine wasn’t even working right and we never got the funds properly credited. Not that it would’ve made too much of a difference, of course, ’least not these days.”

  “How is it you can make ends meet after that diner failed?”

  Bass took off a baseball cap that was greasy and sweat-stained along the brim and scratched at his hair, showering white flecks of dandruff into the air. “My grandpa founded this place, and for a long stretch of years my grandma ran that diner. When business went bust with the opening of the interstate, the diner was the first to go. And we’d be gone, too, if not for the stipend we get from the state highway department because of some unofficial law about making sure there’s at least one gas station every hundred miles. I could get by with three fuel deliveries a year, four or five at most. But, hey, I’m still standing here, and if you need to fuel up ’fore you go on your way, that’s free too.”

  Caitlin spotted the credit card machine, connected by a twisted collection of wires to both the wall and the cash register, perched just to the side of the bigger machine. “I appreciate that, Mr. Bass, but right now I’d settle for you checking to see if the machine’s calibrated or not.”

  Wyatt Bass pressed a few keys with fingers too big to work them agilely. Nothing happened, so he tried again, and this time the machine printed out a receipt, still with those telltale pinkish-red marks running up the side.

  “It seems to be working just fine, Ranger.”

  “Were you here on Tuesday night, sir?”

  “I think so. If I wasn’t, my wife was. It’s just the two of us these days, splitting the shifts. We don’t see a lot of each other, which some might say is why we’re still together. And we both tend to stay as long as there’s customers. Tuesday was a pretty busy day for us, and, now that I think of it, I looked at my watch and realized I’d kept the place open almost two hours past closing.”

  “Did you pay yourself some overtime?”

  “Truth be told,” Bass said, lowering his voice dramatically, “I’ll likely put in for it with the highway department. As long as you’re okay with that, Ranger.”

  “We never even discussed the issue. So, do you remember somebody paying with a credit card for something on Tuesday evening, just past seven o’clock?”

  “Not off the top of my head, but let me check something.”

  The cash register jangled open and Bass removed a thin pile of receipts comparable in size and shape to the fragment she’d plucked from that wood ash earlier in the week.

  “Here we go,” he said, after sorting through about half of them. “Seven thirteen p.m. in the amount of twenty-two dollars and seventy-five cents.”

  “Remember what the person bought?”

  “I remember it was a man.”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve sounded so sure about, Mr. Bass.”

  “Process of elimination, Ranger. We didn’t have a single female customer all day. That’s another reason why I was so glad to see you.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember who this particular credit card receipt belonged to?”

  Bass shook his head, jowls seeming to vibrate. “Probably somebody I’d never seen before and would have no reason to remember.”

  “I suppose. Do you have any security camera footage that might refresh your memory?”

  “I’ve got cameras but no footage, on account of the cameras being broke since before nine-eleven. Replacing them didn’t seem worth the expense, given that we could perform a comparable task with a Polaroid and a single box of that instant film that develops in front of your eyes. I understand they’re popular again.”

 
“I hadn’t heard.”

  “Except they’re not made by Polaroid anymore. That company, big as it once was, is good and gone. Plenty of unhappy lessons to learn from that, and we would’ve gone the same way if not for that stipend. Long as we sell gas, and the money don’t get cut from the state budget, we’ll be in business.”

  Caitlin nodded, leaning just enough over the counter to get Bass’s attention. “When you opened that register, I noticed plenty more cash than could be explained by eight customers.”

  “The nearest bank’s a hundred miles away, and no robber in his right mind would come this far out of the way to pretend he’s Baby Face Nelson.”

  “I’d say that money came courtesy of sales from today alone, sir. Otherwise, you would’ve put it in the safe you’ve got under the counter.”

  Caitlin caught him looking down, confirming her suspicions.

  “That cash has nothing to do with what you came here about, Ranger,” Bass told her.

  “I don’t suppose it does, but if you can’t tell me anything about the man from Tuesday night, maybe one of your regular customers knows something that can help me.”

  Bass remained silent.

  “You’re talking to a Texas Ranger here, sir, not an ICE agent,” Caitlin assured him. “You live nearby, sir?”

  Bass nodded. “Close enough to smell the gas bled off by that fire when the wind’s right.”

  “Because the Dumpster outside is full of the kind of stuff you’d be dumping inside it, if you lived closer, in addition to broken up storage boxes and the like. So who’s using it, if not you?”

  Bass looked down, then back up at Caitlin. “You notice that old abandoned mission out back?”

  “I did. Why?”

  “Because it’s not really abandoned.”

  77

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  “That bad arm bothering you, cowboy?” Jones asked, as the Homeland Security private jet settled into its descent.

  Cort Wesley flexed life back into his fingers, the steady improvement he’d been experiencing having slowed considerably. “Must’ve fallen asleep on the flight. And I’m going to hazard a guess here,” he continued, changing the subject. “What you told Caitlin about your involvement with that private intelligence firm, how it was nothing more than zero-footprint operations, that was a lie, a great big frigging lie.”

  Jones didn’t bristle. He didn’t grimace, flinch, or scowl. His squarish head, topped by a quasi-military, high and tight hairstyle, didn’t even move.

  “You know your way around a zero-footprint operation, don’t you, cowboy, dating all the way back to Desert Storm?”

  “Is that your way of answering my question or avoiding it?”

  “I’m just making a point here about how business gets done. You do what you have to.”

  “Can I take that as a yes?” Cort Wesley asked him, trying not to sound as caustic as he felt.

  Jones looked away, out the jet’s window, toward the growing shape of downtown Atlanta. “I’m about to lose my parking privileges.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Figure of speech.” He turned back to Cort Wesley, his gaze uncertain and his jawline missing the sharp ridges that looked like they could cut flesh. “I’ve enjoyed free rein for as long as I have because things happened and I responded. That’s all Washington cares about, cowboy. What they don’t care about is the middle, what happens in between. Because if they know the middle, it’s because you fucked up along the way. That’s what I meant about losing my parking privileges. It’s like showing up for work to find somebody else’s name on your space. It’s how you know you’re either down, out, or both.”

  “You’re telling me you fucked up. That’s what the killings at Communications Technology Providers ended up revealing,” Cort Wesley said.

  “What they were doing, what they ended up finding, was at my direction. I gave them a job I thought was impossible, because nobody had ever succeeded before, and people have been trying for twenty-five years, believe me.”

  “You’re talking about that site in the desert around Sonora, the place where Caitlin figures the same crates—ossuaries, we know now—went missing for a second time after they were buried by Caitlin’s father.”

  “To say the contents of one of them has the power to change the world would be an understatement.”

  Cort Wesley nodded, trying not to appear too smug. “Like I already told you, I’ve learned that much for myself, thanks to my son being a whiz with ancient languages.”

  “This crap about the bones of Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s not crap. You want the very definition of world changing, there it is.”

  Jones’s expression remained dismissive. “Let’s put that aside for a minute, okay? I don’t give a shit about Jesus Christ, or Pontius Pilate, King Herod, Moses, or even Charlton Heston. Those bones might change the world, but they can’t end it.” Jones had the look of a man confessing his sins to a priest. “I was looking for something that could end it.”

  “You’re talking about a weapon.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re talking about whatever killed those men in the offices of Bane Sturgess a few days back, and the men in that train car twenty-five years ago.”

  “Right as rain,” Jones said flatly, his voice bled of any emotion.

  “And since we’re headed for the Centers for Disease Control…”

  “The things that excite me the most, cowboy, are the same things that scare the living shit out of me. Because if we can’t control it, if we can’t own it, that means somebody else will. Possession may not really be nine-tenths of the law, but it’s a hell of a lot more than that when it comes to survival. If something like this ended up in the hands of the Russians, the North Koreans, the Chinese, ISIS, al-Qaeda, the worldwide nationalist movements, or Wile E. Coyote, you think for a minute they wouldn’t use it to push the world off a cliff?”

  Cort Wesley didn’t bother responding.

  “Exactly,” Jones picked up, taking his lack of an answer for a yes. “So when a report of this mysterious case worked by none other than Caitlin Strong’s father reached my desk, you can bet I took notice.”

  “You had reason to believe it was Jim Strong who buried this shit, even before Caitlin pretty much confirmed it,” Cort Wesley concluded.

  “But I didn’t know where, and I won’t bore you with how much area is covered by all the possibilities.”

  “I have an idea how big Texas is, Jones.”

  “I think we should break the state up and sell off parcels to the other forty-nine. Or better yet, how about slicing it off from the continental United States and making it an island all unto itself? Or, hell, just deed Texas back to Mexico, given that half the crazy shit in the world seems to happen there.”

  “Texas also leads the nation in gun ownership, Jones. I don’t think the residents would take too kindly to becoming part of Mexico again.”

  “You get the idea, cowboy.”

  “Not really.”

  Jones eased himself into the aisle from the window seat, so he’d be closer to Cort Wesley. “Then let me put it this way. Communications Technology Providers was looking for those bone boxes on my direction. Whoever was behind those gunmen in Dallas bought my intelligence and then murdered the people who’d provided it to them to hide their tracks.”

  “Which you must have suspected was going on. Hence having Caitlin serve the warrant on behalf of the Criminal Investigations Division.”

  “I figured that warrant would be enough to get CTP to give up whoever was after the same thing I was, cowboy.” Jones suddenly looked impatient. “How long we going to keep rehashing this?”

  “You want to change the subject, tell me it was CTP who came up with that site in the desert.”

  “Consider yourself told, cowboy.”

  “And since Bane Sturgess ended up with the ossuaries in their possession, it’s a safe bet they were contracted to dig them up.”


  “Amateur hour, cowboy, because they must’ve done the same dumb thing the dead men from twenty-five years ago did.”

  “They opened one of the bone boxes,” Cort Wesley picked up, “the one thought to contain the last remains of Jesus Christ.”

  “And whatever climbed out has the capacity to kill within seconds, no ifs, ands, or buts. You get exposed to whatever it is and you die.”

  “Respiratory and heart failure,” Cort Wesley recalled from Doc Whatley’s preliminary reports, both in 1994 and today.

  “The original three bodies from back in ninety-four were transferred to the CDC, where they’ve remained in stasis ever since.”

  Cort Wesley felt like the student in the room yet again, only with Jones as the teacher instead of Dylan. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

  “That the bodies were preserved as much as possible, because the CDC hasn’t been able to identify the exact biological culprit behind their deaths.”

  “After twenty-five years?”

  “You heard me, cowboy. Whatever killed them is there, until it isn’t. It kills without leaving a trace, it kills everyone the same way, and it kills everyone it comes into contact with, period. We’re talking about the thermonuclear bomb of the biochemical world.”

  “I guess we can throw the proverbial curse out the window,” Cort Wesley noted.

  “Oh, it’s a curse, all right, just one that’s got nothing to do with the supernatural or divine inspiration. And it’s not man-made, either.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because man could never come up with something this perfect.”

  “Hold on while I clean out my ears, because I think you just called whatever’s inside that ossuary ‘perfect.’”

  “From a weapons standpoint, that’s what it is. We’re talking a hundred percent mortality rate in, what, maybe thirty seconds, tops. And then it goes away, like it was never there.”

  “So why are we going to Atlanta, if the CDC hasn’t been able to figure out much more than that?”