Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

“I ain’t saying nothing. Your brakes were drained clean.” Elmo’s rubbery lips twisted into what might have been a smile, and he licked at them with a red tongue. “Got any enemies?”

Skip scoffed. “That’s crazy. No, I . . .” He paused a moment thinking. “You mean, somebody could’ve drained them? Deliberately?”

Elmo nodded again, and inserted a finger into one ear, giving it a few hard twists. “Only problem is the brake fluid cap was rusted shut, so’s how it got drained is kind of problematical.”

But Skip was still thinking. “No,” he repeated at last in a softer voice. “The brakes were working fine one minute, gone the next.” He glanced at his watch, irritation once again welling up within him. “I’m late for work. I’ve got this boss who rips the balls off people who are late. And on top of everything else, you give me this—” He gestured at Elmo’s loaner car, an ancient Volkswagen Beetle with a crumpled rear fender and doors of mismatched colors. “I’d rather drive my own, even without brakes.”

Elmo worked his shoulders through their perpetual shrug. “It’ll be ready by five P.M. Friday.”

“And rework that bill while you’re reworking the car,” Skip replied. “There’s no way I’m paying six hundred for somebody else’s negligence.” With effort, he stuffed Teddy Bear into the Beetle, then lowered himself gingerly into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.

He eased into first and chugged noisily out into traffic, pointing the car’s snout down the strip that eventually would bring him back to town, the Institute, and the waiting Sonya Rowling. He could feel a headache coming on, faint for the moment but getting stronger. It seemed to encircle his temples, like a headband. Despite his bluster, he felt profoundly disturbed, and his heart raced as he worked his way up through the gears. For a minute, he thought of heading back out to Teresa’s, checking the ground where he’d parked the car for a puddle of fluid. But even as the thought came to him, he knew he never wanted to see the place again.

Then, on impulse, he pulled the car onto the shoulder and slipped the gearshift into neutral. Something about this didn’t seem right, at all. And it wasn’t just the bizarre circumstances, either; the moment Elmo had mentioned enemies, a sudden chill had enveloped Skip.

He sat on the shoulder, thinking. Vaguely, very vaguely, he remembered his father, sitting at the dinner table, drinking coffee and telling him a story. For some reason, Skip couldn’t remember the story. But he remembered his mother frowning, telling Skip’s dad to talk about something else.

Something else . . . there was something else that had happened recently, something that dovetailed with all this in a strange and awful way.

Suddenly, Skip put the Volkswagen into gear and, with a quick glance over his shoulder, urged the car back into traffic. But instead of heading toward the Institute, he peeled off at the next corner and began threading his way through a maze of seedy side streets, urging the old car forward, cursing it, his fingers drumming impatiently on the wheel.

Pulling up at last in front of his apartment, he half ran, half leaped up the flight of stairs, dragging Teddy Bear behind him, fumbling with his keychain and unlocking both locks as quickly as he could.

Inside, the apartment smelled of unwashed socks and ancient half-eaten meals. Jerking the chain of an overhead light, Skip made a beeline to the cinderblock-and-plywood bookshelf that leaned precariously against a far wall. Kneeling in front of the lowest row, his finger traced across the old spines of the books that had been his father’s, the faded titles etched faintly in lines of dust.

Then his finger stopped on a thin, battered gray book. “ Skinwalkers, Witches, and Curanderas: Witchcraft and Sorcery Practices of the Southwest, ” Skip softly breathed the title aloud.

The urgent rush that had propelled him back to the apartment was now replaced by hesitation and uncertainty. There was terrible and hideous knowledge in this book, he recalled. More than anything, Skip did not want to have that knowledge confirm the fear that was now growing inside him.

He knelt there, by the old books, for what seemed a long time. Then at last he gripped the volume in both hands, carried it to the orange couch, opened it carefully, and began to read.

34

AS THEY EMERGED FROM THE GLOOM OF the slot canyon into the cottonwood valley, Nora could tell at a glance something was wrong. Rather than being scattered indolently across the sparse grass, the horses were bunched together by the stream, snorting and tossing their heads. She quickly scanned the valley floor, the stone ramparts, the ragged form of the Devil’s Backbone. There was nobody.

Swire snugged the revolver into his belt and led the way to the horses. “You take Compañero,” he said to Smithback, reaching for a saddle. “He’s too dumb to be scared.”

Nora found her own saddle from among the pile, located Arbuckles, and threw it over his back. Then she held the horses still while Swire knelt to remove the shoes. He worked in silence, using a chisel to get underneath the clinched end of each nail and bending it straight, taking great pains not to clip or crack the nailhole. Once all the nails were straight, he pried the shoe from the hoof with a clinch cutter. Nora found herself impressed by his skill: shoeing and unshoeing a horse in the field without an anvil was neither a common nor desirable practice.

At last he stood up, wordlessly handing Nora fresh nails along with the shoes, hammer, and clincher. “Sure you can do this?” he asked. Nora nodded, and the wrangler gestured for Smithback to mount.

“There was a lot of wind in the valley last night,” Swire said, cinching the saddle tight and handing the reins to Smithback. “Maybe that’s why there ain’t no tracks down here in all this loose sand. Might have better luck on top, or down the far side.”

Nora secured the saddlebags, tested the saddle’s fit, then swung up. “Smithback’s going to need a gun,” she said.

After a moment, the wrangler silently handed over his pistol, along with a handful of bullets.

“I’d rather have the rifle,” the writer said.

Swire shook his head. “If anybody comes over that ridge, I want to have a good bead on him,” he replied.

“Just make sure it isn’t us,” Smithback said as he mounted Compañero.

Nora looked around for a final time, then turned to Swire. “Thanks for the horses.” She nosed Arbuckles away from the group.

“Just a minute.” Nora turned back to see Swire looking at her evenly.

“Good luck,” he said at last.

They rode away from the stream, angling across the uneven land toward the heavy bulk of the ridge ahead, in shadow despite the bright morning sun. Over the thin murmur of the stream and the call of the canyon wrens, Nora could now hear a different sound: a low, steady drone, like the hum of a magneto. Then they topped a small rise and two low forms came into view: the remains of Hoosegow and Crow Bait. A black cloud of flies hung over them.

“Jesus,” Smithback muttered.

Arbuckles began to prance and whinny beneath her, and Nora veered left, giving the carcasses a wide berth on the upwind side. Even so, as they passed she caught a brief glimpse of coiled ropes of entrails, bluish-gray and steaming in the sun, webbed in black traceries of flies. Beyond the scene of the massacre, she stopped.

“What are you doing?” Smithback asked.

“I’m going to take a minute to look more closely.”

“Mind if I stay here?” Smithback asked in a strained voice.

Dismounting and giving her reins to Smithback, Nora walked back over the rise. The flies, disturbed by her approach, rose in a roaring, angry mass. The high winds had scoured the ground, but here and there she could make out old horse tracks and some fresher coyote prints. Except for the marks of Swire’s boots, there were no human footprints. As Swire had said, the entrails had been arranged in a spiral pattern. Brightly colored macaw feathers, shockingly out of place in the arid landscape, protruded from the eye sockets. The carcasses had been stabbed with some painted and feathered twigs.