David Morrell - The Shimmer

“That’s what the milometer says.”

“Then let’s stop and enjoy the view.”

McKinney eased back on the accelerator and pulled the handbrake. Even at an idle, the vibrations of the engine made the car rattle.

“Miss Brown, you said the lights came from the south?”

“That’s correct.”

“If you turn off the engine, Mr. McKinney, will you be able to restart it, or will we be stuck out here?”

“I maintain the car in excellent condition,” the mayor said. “It will start.”

“Then let’s enjoy some peace and quiet.”

The mayor shut off the engine. The car wheezed and fell silent.

“If I keep the headlights on, the battery’ll go dead,” McKinney told Raleigh.

“Of course. Please turn them off.”

At once darkness surrounded the vehicle. Silence gave the night power.

“Beautiful,” Raleigh said as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. “In El Paso, the streetlights keep me from seeing the sky. I seldom see the heavens so bright.”

McKinney pointed with a child’s enthusiasm. “Look, a shooting star.”

It streaked across the sky like silent fireworks.

“Miss Brown, could that be what you saw?” Raleigh asked. “Per- haps a cluster of shooting stars?”

“I’ve never heard of shooting stars coming across a field and spinning around someone,” she replied. “Nor have I ever experienced any that hummed.”

“I haven’t, either.” Raleigh fixed his gaze on the murky area to the south. Somewhere over there, coyotes yipped and howled.

They’re on the hunt, he thought.

Or perhaps they’re running from something.

“I need to tell you,” Dani said, “that I don’t think the lights were torches held by German riders.”

“Perhaps not Germans. Perhaps it was Carranza’s men.”

“No. I mean I don’t think there were any riders.”

“But if there weren’t any riders, what caused the lights?”

“I don’t know. People around here often see lights,” she said. “I my- self have never seen them, so I can’t tell you what they look like, and before the other night I hadn’t thought they even existed. Now I’m not certain what I think.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Dani’s talking about the Rostov lights,” McKinney interrupted. “Indians and early settlers used to talk about them. I’ve never seen them, either, but my wife claims she has. That was after we lost a son to cholera. She believed the lights were the soul of our boy. If you ask me, my Emily was so depressed that she convinced herself she saw the lights.”

“Well, whatever’s going on, we’ll soon find out,” Raleigh replied confidently.

“You really believe that?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m seeing the lights right now.”

“What?” McKinney glanced all around.

Raleigh focused all his attention toward the southern horizon, where glowing colors slowly began to appear. They rose and fell. They drifted and floated in a languorous, captivating rhythm. Red merged into blue. Yellow blended with green.

“Mr. McKinney, do you see them?” Raleigh rested his right hand on his pistol.

The mayor didn’t answer for a moment.

“God help me, yes.”

“Miss Brown, are they what you saw?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Before they attacked me.”

“Well, they’re not riders carrying torches, that’s for certain. Does anyone smell flowers?”

“Flowers?”

“Orchids.”

“I wouldn’t know what orchids smell like,” McKinney said.

“In the Philippines, there were hundreds of types of orchids,” Raleigh explained. “Amazing colors. Just like what I’m seeing now. In the night in the jungle, as I tried to sleep in my tent, the scent was thick. Orchids pollinated by bees had a perfume of cinnamon. That’s what I’m smelling now.”

“I smell rotting meat,” Dani said.

McKinney raised a hand to his mouth. “So do I.”

Raleigh remembered that the orchids in the Philippines didn’t al- ways smell like cinnamon. If they were pollinated by flies, sometimes they had the odor of a dead animal that the flies had sat on.

Abruptly the stench hit him, almost making him gag.

Like corpses after a battle, he thought.

Dani coughed. The reflexive reaction to the odor filled her chest with pain, causing her to wince.

“Something out there is dead,” she said.

A new German weapon? Raleigh wondered.

“How far do you suppose they are?” McKinney’s voice was unsteady.

“Without a method to triangulate the distance, it’s impossible to know,” Raleigh answered. “In the dark, our eyes play tricks on us. The lights could be miles away, or less than a hundred yards. The latter would explain how they reached you so quickly, Miss Brown.”

The odor of death became stronger.

We’re not prepared, Raleigh thought. Mindful of his responsibility for Dani’s safety, he kept his voice level. “Let’s go back to town.” Two days later, a detachment of cavalry arrived, their dust cloud visible from a distance. At sunset, Raleigh rode with them to the part of the road from which he’d seen the lights.

Their plan was to use surveyor’s instruments to get two separate bearings on the lights, plotting map coordinates that would allow them to determine how far away and where the lights were.

But the moment the lights appeared, the horses went crazy. Whinnying loudly, they kicked and bit one another. A trooper on foot, clinging to the reins of his mount, was dragged along the ground. A hoof fractured his skull. The other panicked horses galloped into the gloom, leaving the soldiers to make their cautious way back to town on foot, all the while ready with their rifles. A week later, eight Army biplanes flew to Rostov from Fort Bliss. The intervening time had given Raleigh the chance to choose a location for an airstrip and start supervising its construction. The rationale for the airstrip was that it provided an out-of-the-way place at which to secretly train pilots for America’s entry into the war.

The actual purpose, however, was to establish a location from which the biplanes could conduct aerial surveillance beyond the Mexican border, looking for a weapon that the Germans might be testing. When he wasn’t on duty, Raleigh found himself spending more and more time with Dani Marie Brown.

Part of the training for student pilots involved flying at night. He used the night instruction as an opportunity to send his students to try to determine the origin of the lights, but he was forced to discontinue those missions. As the trainees flew toward the lights, they diverted and attacked one another-with apparent deliberation, two planes actually collided, killing the instructor and student in each.

Thereafter training occurred only during daylight.

Fears about an invasion from Mexico were validated on March 9, 1916, when gunmen led by Pancho Villa staged a night attack on the New Mexican town of Columbus. Within two days, Congress voted to pursue Villa. “Black Jack” Pershing led five thousand soldiers into Mexico, where they remained for most of the year. Although they engaged in numerous battles with Mexican troops, they never located Villa, but that didn’t matter. The mission was largely a training exercise, allowing American soldiers to absorb battle experience.

In April 1917, America entered the war.

Raleigh participated in the Mexican campaign, using his biplane to scout for enemy positions. Afterward he returned to Rostov and married Dani Marie, but within weeks of his marriage, he was on a ship bound for France.

The lights and the possibility of a new German weapon being tested along the Mexican border were forgotten by the Army. There were too many tangible weapons to worry about, particularly mustard gas. But on many nights, as Captain Raleigh tried not to think about the next day’s combat, he longed for his wife and the son she’d given birth to.