I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of these horndogs seeing my girlfriend and my sister in the buff, but arms were made for crisscrossing over titties, I suppose. I’d deal.
Inside the cave there were materials to make a fire, so the plan was, when the ceremony was finished, we’d build one and all gather around it, warming our clothes and drying our bodies in preparation to leave.
I hoped it was still possible to get through the ceremony and have the change kick in. Qaletaqa was supposedly on his way; if he got there before we were done, we might not be going anywhere.
I was concerned and disappointed that Garland wasn’t with us. Once I figured out what Tala had planned, I felt Garland should experience it. After the turn he’d made, becoming one of my most trusted team members – or maybe tribe mates – he deserved to have the protection and the benefits that were about to be bestowed upon us all.
I said something about it to Tala. I also mentioned the rest of our people outside. I know she wanted to take it slow in case there were unforeseen consequences, but we didn’t have the luxury of time.
Qaletaqa’s daughter sat fully clothed outside the dark pool, high on a rock above us. The book was open in front of her.
“You have many others with you,” she said, looking at me.
“Yeah, we do. All good people. And from what Georgie’s daughter here told her before we came in, there may not be many of us left in Lebanon.”
“Do you want them to have the opportunity to be changed?”
“I think they would want it,” said Lilly, speaking up. “They know how to fight, but it’s not necessarily their nature. They’d rather not have to. This will help make their lives easier.”
“That it will,” she said. Turning her head, she dug through a pile of clothes and lifted a radio. She pressed the button. “Those of you from Lebanon, come in.”
They answered quickly. CB recognized Stu’s voice.
“Garland just pulled up!” he said, and I felt better immediately. A big smile spread across my face.
“You’re happy,” said Georgie, her arms crossed over her breasts. I pointed down to the water and lowered in until just my neck and head were out. She did the same, freeing up her arms.
“I am glad. If this thing works, they all deserve it.”
“I’m going to ask her again to translate the passages. I’m still not convinced this will work, but if it does and there is something about this place, I want to return with Roxy.”
“Could be possible to have power within this place,” I said. “Look at the dead walking, right?”
Georgina Lake shrugged. “It’s worth the risk. I don’t want to watch my daughter grow old and die. No parent wants that.”
Tala directed the group on the radio through the front entrance and guided them with her words to the hole that led down to the cavern where we were.
The pool in which we were standing was large enough for dozens more, so I wasn’t worried about space. We’d need a bigger fire, though.
When they filed in, I noted that everyone in his truck was accounted for, including the scooter girl, whose name I still didn’t know. What bothered me was didn’t see Garland among them. I spoke up. “Thought you said Garland got back,” I called up.
“Yeah,” said a Stu, who was the stoner of our little tribe. “He’s settin’ up his watchdog.”
“He found a dog?”
“Sort of. He told me to keep my yap shut. Whatever a yap is.”
“I think you’ve figured it out. Whatever.”
“Whatever, indeed!” called Garland’s voice. “That dang hole back there was like live chutes and ladders, but without the goddamned ladder!”
“Yeah, yeah, take off your clothes and move to the opposite side of the pool from me.”
What I meant was he should stay clear of Georgie. For some reason, Garland Hunter eyeballing my lady’s lady parts was a bridge too far for me, even if I did want him in on this ceremony.
Our guns were all leaned in a nice straight row against the rock wall behind Tala. Boxes of extra ammunition were there too, because inside this cavern we would be sitting ducks without them.
I still had two knives strapped to my legs, just above my calves.
After the rest of them were convinced that naked was the only way to do this, their moans of relief could be heard as they each stepped into the warm water and found their positions. The two scooter girls, who I now recognized were identical twins, had drawn together and stood in the water with their backs to everyone else, holding hands.
Young and shy. The way it should be.
“I will need absolute silence,” said Tala. “All of you must close your eyes and open your minds. Let whatever happens around you happen. All of you, listen only to my voice and your own breathing.”
She opened the ancient text before her and began to read the words. I took Georgie’s hand in mine, chancing a brief look behind me. Danny was there, his arm wrapped around Lilly. He winked at me and nodded.
It’s gonna be okay, buddy. We’ll all be fine.
I could always count on Danny.
As the words floated on the air, her voice seemed to change; it grew higher somehow, and a strange vibrato affected it. It was like a poem being read in Latin or something, and I found it totally alien and somehow familiar all at once.
I smelled it in my nostrils before I cracked my eyes to see it; it was the coolness of a mist that was so permeating I could have been standing on the rocks by Niagara Falls. When I opened my eyes fully to see it, I involuntarily opened my mouth to taste it.
It was benign, the mist swirling around all of us, settling down on us and the water.
It got cold. Enormous clouds had formed over us, shifting and moving like a super cell that was gathering strength, preparing to unleash its fury on us. I swore I heard a low rumbling.
As Tala’s strange chant-song continued, the temperature dropped twenty degrees or more; both the water and the air. Everyone involuntarily sank down deeper into the water, but it didn’t matter.
Just then, what had to be a bolt of lightning exploded above us. With the tremendous crack came a bright light, as though it were noon on a cloudless day in Arizona, but the cold did not dissipate.
Suddenly, there was a torrential downpour. It did not start slow and increase in intensity; it fell as if poured from giant, unseen watering cans with drilled-out holes, not gentle but big drops falling from miles above. Somehow, I could still see beyond the pool where we all stood.
Tala read, chanted, sang, barely audible now with the pounding rain overpowering her vocal cords.
I believe the rain was black, but I couldn’t tell. It might’ve been my imagination. Once it began, I could barely see beyond it, and when I turned to see Georgie, I couldn’t even see her face. I still gripped her hand, though; and she gripped me back.
Then, it stopped. Like a spigot had been turned off.
Just … gone. The water that encased us settled and again became a still pool.
“Come out, all of you.”
I stood there tingling, my head feeling like I’d taken too many Xanax, or some Molly or something.
A sound came from above.
I knew that sound.
It grew louder and louder.
It was the dead. A shit-ton of them.
Ω
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Old Man, His Daughter, and the Dead
Qaletaqa knew that no matter how many trucks and other vehicles there were, it would not represent a large enough army to defeat the dead force he had brought with him.
They now numbered in the thousands. It was beyond estimation. They were hungry, and ready to feed.
He had ordered the rest of his people to kneel. Promising them they would be safe, he stood one of them up to draw his army.
The horde set upon the last of the Hintoka people. A few bites whet their appetites and turned them all into the dead warriors he required now.
He could find more followers later. For now he had his dead, and together, they would conquer the world. He would possibly live another hundred, maybe two hundred years; it was enough to become a god many times over.
In the eyes of the weak and mindless.
The voice sounded like his daughter. She was here. She may have tried to duplicate his feat of over sixty years earlier, but she was a child then; it would be a stroke of pure luck.
She would die in that cave. He would fill it with the searching, hungry dead who did not need light to see; who did not satiate their hunger … ever. Those who never slept, always kept moving forward for the blood-infused flesh they so desired.
He walked. They followed.
When he reached the mouth of the cave, he stood aside and pushed one of the dead into the opening.
It stumbled and fell, then slowly got back to its rotting feet. Qaletaqa pushed another and another.
Soon, they went on their own, one following another. It went from a single-file line to three thick, then ten thick. Qaletaqa moved in between them, riding the thick crowd of undead walkers like a wave, careful to avoid the ridges and cliffs with which he was familiar.
None of the drops were very high; a broken foot would not be enough to stop any of them. He had backups for his backups, and now that all his own people had joined the ranks of the undead, he had complete power.
No more concern one of them might turn on him; change their minds. Now they were mindless – singularly focused.
Qaletaqa stopped and let them flow around him like water. The cacophony of their low grunts, groans, shuffling feet and rustling, blood-dried clothing disgusted and delighted him.
They knew. They had to. This horde was not quiet.
Nor was it meant to be.
He wanted them to be paralyzed by fear.
Ω
“I am sorry, but my father is here,” said Tala. “You will not be able to dry yourselves by the fire, and we will not have time to determine if the ceremony was successful. Put your clothes on. Your shoes. Retrieve your weapons and prepare. We will search for another outlet, but we knew this battle was coming. I believe all went well. We will learn the answer very soon.”
I’d begun to come down a bit from the euphoric high I felt right after the rain stopped. Georgie didn’t spell it out for me, and neither did Danny or Lilly, but I knew they’d felt it too. Garland looked practically giddy for a few minutes there.
“Okay, let’s roll,” I said, once I tied my bootlace. “Least I was able to squeegee myself off a bit.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Danny. “We’re pretty dry. You?”
“I’ll survive,” said Georgie, lifting her gun and slinging it over her shoulder.
A thump came from the direction of the chute.
“They are here. He has led them to this cavern. We will learn whether the ceremony worked very soon. Prepare yourselves for battle.”
Ω
Qaletaqa began sidestepping through the horde of skinwalkers as they continued forward, toward the lower secret cabin. It was a hole, so if one dropped down inside, so would a hundred – then a thousand more.
Clearing the horde, he moved to a recess in the rock and reached inside. He withdrew a tarnished silver box with a turquoise eagle shape on the top. Setting it aside, he withdrew a larger box from the same hidden niche. This one was rectangular, a full three feet long by nearly a foot wide.
He smiled. The mere thought of it gave him a sense of power and of calm, both at the same time.
Sitting cross-legged, he removed the lid of the small, silver box and lifted two small bottles out. Twisting the lids, he removed them and set them aside.
Each contained blood, preserved in airtight containers for many, many years.
The first was his own blood; it had been drawn on the day he had been changed by the power of this place. Before he had been changed. Drinking it would ensure his original purpose dictated all of his actions.
Qaletaqa picked up the cylindrical bottle. Careful to keep it upright, he pressed it between his palms and allowed his body heat to warm it. He was patient. Everything must fall in place perfectly to stop this insurgence led by Tala.
As were so many young people today, his daughter was driven by a duty instilled by a youth population that purported to decry what the European settlers had done to the natives of the land. Qaletaqa knew that if pressed, none of these so-called millennials would be willing to give up what they owned as repentance.
After five minutes, he carefully opened his hands and took the small vial between his fingers. He touched it to his parted lips and tilted his head back to swallow the now warm plasma.
In the second vial was the blood of his daughter, taken before the ceremony that made her like him, and before her change to womanhood. By drinking it, his connection to her would become enhanced; he would know where she was and would be drawn in her direction.
He warmed and drank that as well, tilting the bottle over his mouth and tapping the bottom as the blood slowed to tiny droplets.
It was sweet on his tongue.
He began to chant the words he had memorized many years ago; it was not that this was planned specifically; he had never believed his child would betray him. His daughter’s blood was only there in the event they became separated during his conquest of the white man, so he could find her and they could rule together, father and daughter.
Now, glad that he had thought to be prepared all those years ago, he chanted and used his daughter’s blood to further his own means.
His conquest of all men. If he were being honest, it was always that. Never just the descendants of the Europeans who had taken their native homeland.
All other peoples; all other tribes.
Qaletaqa swallowed the last bit of blood and the images formed in his mind’s eye immediately. The moans and keens of the horde fell away, and all he could see and hear was Tala, now moving to a point in the lower northeast section of the cave.
He had never been there, but he knew well of the lower tunnels. The ancient chief knew where it emerged.
He would learn of her group’s location the moment she stepped out into the moonlight. He was now seeing through her eyes. His purpose was clear.
He could not control her, nor could he stop her or force her to do anything other than what she already intended to do. That was the problem.
His only option was to kill her if she could not be convinced during a brief conversation.
Qaletaqa picked up the wooden box. It was not very heavy, and he felt stronger than he had in years, despite the journey here.
He never saw the armored tail that curved from the dark alcove just twenty feet away, hidden in the flickering shadows of a burning torch.
Ω
Garland was at the back of the line to escape, and the trail Tala led them on was narrow, only made for one.
The first splash behind him caused him to jerk around.
A dry, scaly hand emerged from the dark water and slapped against the rocks, followed by an arm, then the deteriorated face, teeth gnashing, low choking growls announcing their desire.
A skinwalker, as the Indian guys and the girl named Tala called them.
Another splash came.
And another.
At that point, it sounded like a massive hailstorm delivering boulders from the sky, dropping straight into a swimming pool.
“Garland, let’s go, man!” a voice called from deeper in the cave.
Garland turned to see Albert, who had been such a great help to him when he got the gator.
“No, Bertie, you get after them. I’ll be fine. I got my guard dog up there you know.”
“Those things got in, so it doesn’t look like he’s doin’ much. C’mon!”
“That’s only ‘cause Lester’s got his blinders on. I said go!” shouted Garland, and that got the rotters’ attention. “Now!” he added in a loud whisper.
Albert hesitated once more, shook his head and ran o
ff after the group, which had only made it another fifteen feet or so, but who were now dipping into a deep gully of sorts and moving out of sight.
Garland hurried to the rock wall beside the chute where the rotters were falling into the pool several feet away, and pressed himself against the rocky surface.
From the truck, he had chosen to bring an M1 Garand rifle with a bayonet he had machined himself; it was longer than a typical blade, as he wanted to be sure it penetrated his intended target.
Flattening himself against the wall as best he could, he held the rifle in position. The moment he saw the first skinwalker, he jabbed.
The blade, heavy-duty and razor sharp as well, punched right through the thing’s skull, and the female collapsed at the knees and crumpled to the floor, her wet clothes sounding like an enormous dishrag hitting the kitchen floor.
Behind her came another. And another. They wandered more than pursued, as though nothing in particular drove them forward; just open space allowing them room to walk.
Nervous, but determined to overcome his fear, Garland waited for the next one, swiping his wet, stringy blond hair from his eyes.
“Hey,” he said, as it came into view.
The thing turned to stare straight at him. It stopped, then turned toward him and took a step.
Garland reacted; he swung the blade up in an arc, jabbing it into the soft gray folds of the dead man’s neck and into his brain.
The blade emerged through the top of its head as black goo erupted from the wound and ran down over his head like caramel topping on an ice cream cone.
It, too, dropped to the cave floor.
Garland backed up and moved out of view again.
You have to wait, man! he chastised himself. Just give it a chance so you know whether they go after you!
He was the Guinea pig for the group, he decided. Live or die, he’d learn the likelihood of his friends doing the latter. Again, he steeled his nerves and stepped out.
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