Matt Hilton - Dead_s men dust

"That'll teach you to pay attention," Cain said. He wasn't happy that John had lost the case of money, but neither was he unnecessarily concerned. Either Joe Hunter would fetch the money for him, or he could backtrack and collect it when all this was over. Concern was unnecessary, but a little necessary cruelty would remind John Telfer what it meant to cross Tubal Cain. Taking one last glance behind him, Cain followed John into the darkness.

Fifteen feet down, the steps leveled out on a?oor made of bedrock. Last time Cain had been here he had swept the desert sand away, but already he could feel windblown dust beneath his feet; it was the main downside to his hideaway that he had to continually maintain it by brushing and sweeping to keep the desert at bay.

He prodded John with a foot, moving him aside as he reached out in the dark and clutched for the padlock that held the metal door shut. Holding the lock in one hand, he traced the?ngers of the other up the near wall, found a narrow niche he'd dug into the sandstone, and pulled out the concealed key. The key opened the lock with little resistance. Cain pushed and the door swung inward on well-maintained hinges.

The smell buffeted him.

He smiled.

Even in his semiunconscious state, John gagged at the stench.

"What the fu…?" John groaned.

Cain didn't comment; he bent down and grabbed John's shirt, hauling him to his feet and pushing him into the room before him, urging him into the charnel stink. John gave some resistance, refusing to breathe, steeling his shoulders as he attempted to ward off the sickening stench of rotted meat.

"Get inside," Cain said, almost a whisper.

"No," John gasped.

"Yes." Cain pushed him into the cloying darkness.

Cain entered the room with a breezy exuberance. He fairly skipped over to the nearest lamp, scratched around until he found the butane lighter beside it, then set?ame to wick, casting writhing shadows around the room. That done, he emptied his pockets of the bones he'd garnered during his latest trip. They made quite a mound. Then, hands on hips, he surveyed the space before him. "Now what do you think, John? Do you think Jubal would be pleased?"

On the?oor, John was curled into a fetal ball. One arm covered his face, but Cain could see the whites of his eyes re?ected in the lamp-light, searching the room with a mix of fascination and revulsion. His pupils were like pinpricks in yellowed snow. Yes, Cain decided, John was very impressed.

"Remind me not to invest in a holiday home out here,"

Rink said. "Could be a bitch lettin' it out during the winter season."

"It'd be a bitch in any season," I told him.

The Mojave Desert occupies more than 22,000 square miles, bordering California and portions of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. Where we were at that given moment I couldn't even begin to guess. I was only pleased that we had a vehicle. If we'd had to walk out of there in the daytime, I didn't think much of our chances for survival.

Not that it was a desert in the true sense of the word. It wasn't made up of mile after mile of dunes like I'd experienced in the Sahara. But one look at the blasted landscape told me it was every bit as arid.

We were climbing higher into the foothills. All around us the night sky was torn along the horizon by weird shapes that I knew were Joshua trees. In my imagination, they appeared to be misshapen giants waving us on to our doom. The road was now all but gone, and what Rink followed was the faint trail Cain's Dodge had left upon the earth.

During the day, this area was hot, and through the middle hours of the night the temperature could drop uncomfortably low, but we were driving during those hours when the heat stored during the daylight hours still radiated from the rocks and gravel. Still, even with the heat on in the SUV, I felt the?rst hint of the cold. I shivered, found myself tightening in re?ex.

"You okay, Hunter?" Rink asked.

I mumbled assent.

"Everything's gonna go?ne, you just mark my words."

"I'm okay, Rink," I reassured him. "Just felt like someone walked over my grave."

Rink fell silent. Maybe my words were too prophetic for his liking. He concentrated on guiding the SUV up an incline toward a pass into the foothills marked by two gargantuan crags. Nearing the summit, he turned to me. "It's Cain who's gonna die."

I exhaled. "I hope it's all over tonight."

I looked at him. He coughed deep in his throat, a low grumble. "Cain's number's up. That part'll be?nished. But what about the rest?"

"What rest?" I asked, but already the question was rhetorical. He was referring to John, to Louise Blake, Petoskey and Hendrickson, Walter, the Secret Service. All the victims and the families of the Harvestman. Maybe Cain would die tonight, but how long would the repercussions last? There were other deaths-Cain's victims aside-involved along the way. In particular, the hit man killed at Louise's house, the other I'd killed back at the beach house. How were those going to be resolved?

"We're gonna have us a three-ring circus out here," Rink said.

I stared straight ahead. The two gigantic pillars of rock dominated the skyline. Against the purple sky, they looked like monoliths, stones to mark the tombs of twin giants. And we had to pass between them.

Driving between the huge crags, I knew we'd just gone beyond the point of no return. Cliched, yes, but true. Once more, I checked my weapons. They were still prepared, just as they'd been minutes earlier. Momentarily I wondered if they would be enough.

Beyond the rock gates was a?at expanse of sandstone. It sloped gently toward the horizon, shelf built upon shelf of petri?ed sand. Millions of years ago, this area had been the bed of a prehistoric ocean, teeming with weird and astonishing life forms. But now, hundreds of feet above present sea level, the huge rock was devoid of life. Only dust devils moved here, tiny zephyrs plucking and whirling particles of grit across the unresponsive land.

"Looks like we just touched down on Mars," Rink breathed.

It was apparent by the way the table of rock disappeared into the night that we were on a massive shelf of land, and I cautioned Rink, urged him to slow down. Just something about the color of the night beyond the scope of our vision gave me pause, as though we were standing at the edge of the world and an unwary step would pitch us over the edge.

Rink pulled the SUV to a halt. We leaned forward, craning our necks to look down on the mist-shrouded valley below us. We shared a look. If Rink hadn't stopped when he did, we would've dropped two hundred feet to our deaths.

"Which way now, Daniel Boone?" Rink asked.

"Any way but forward," I said and we both laughed.

Careful not to slip us over the rim of the cliff, Rink edged the SUV to the left, then drove with the caution of someone suddenly struck blind. Here the rock became rutted with deep crevasses, and Rink drove back inland, did a complete U-turn, then swung back the way we'd come. Out of the night loomed queer shapes. Only as we drew alongside them did I realize that we were traveling amid the husks of burned-out vehicles. Predominantly they were camper vans and Winnebagos, the occasional minivan. Cain, it seemed, had a major gripe with the drivers of those vehicles. Then we found the Dodge abandoned. Both front doors stood open and the interior light was a yellow glow against the night sky.

Nothing stirred inside the car. Cain could've been stretched out across the backseat, waiting for us to blunder over and poke our heads inside so that he could shoot us. Or he could've been hunkered down behind the car. I dismissed both ideas.

What fun would that be?

He hadn't brought us all the way out here just so he could hit us with potshots while we were out in the open. Cain had planned a more interesting game than that.