Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Vol 15

I spun the Expedition around, throwing up a cloud of dust as I accelerated north along the dirt road. My heart was racing like it knew what I was going to find but the truth was I had no real idea what to expect up there.

When I saw the truck turned on its side ten yards off the road, the feeling of anticipation disappeared, leaving me vaguely disappointed. Five kids were seated in a semicircle a few yards away from the vehicle. One of them, a fair-haired kid about eighteen, got up and came over to me. “I think Shelley broke a leg,” he said, nodding towards the others. “And Karl’s maybe busted an arm.”

“You the driver?”

He hesitated before nodding.

“You been drinking? Smoking some weed?”

“No way, man, nothing like that. Just took the bend too fast, I guess.”

All of them were cut and bruised but only the two he’d named were badly injured. Shelley looked like she was in a lot of pain. I was splinting her leg when Hannafin arrived and went to work on the others. When we had them patched up, we put Karl and Shelley in Hannafin’s vehicle and two others in mine. The driver made to get in front beside me but I shook my head. “Take this,” I said, handing him a two-litre bottle of water.

“What for?” He looked bewildered “Oh man, you saying I have to wait here?”

“There’s a wrecker on its way from Furnace Creek. Should be here in three hours.”

The journey to Grapevine took the best part of an hour. The two in the back remained silent for most of that time, either too dazed to talk or wary of saying something that would incriminate their buddy. Or maybe they sensed my own unease, a feeling of disquiet that had been bothering me all day. I’d been expecting some kind of revelation but all I had was the feeling that I’d been asking myself the wrong questions.

There was an ambulance waiting at Grapevine Station to take the two injured kids to the Emergency Room in Amargosa Valley. The other two said they’d wait at Grapevine for the tow truck to show up with their vehicle and driver. In the station office, Hannafin made fresh coffee while I stared out the window towards the mountains bordering Ubehebe Crater. She said something I didn’t catch and I didn’t ask her what it was.

“Is it any different today,” she said, “from how it was last week?”

“They’re the same,” I said, though I knew she wasn’t talking about the mountains.

She handed me a mug of steaming coffee. “You been keeping to yourself lately.”

I felt weary and disinclined to have the conversation she wanted.

“What’s bothering you, Henry?”

I sipped the coffee, trying put my thoughts in some kind of order.

“It’s good to see you’ve lost none of your charm and conversational skills.”

I forced a smile. “I’m sorry, Rae,” I said. “Got things on my mind, is all.”

“Anything I can help with?”

I liked Rae, liked her a lot, but that’s all it was. I wasn’t looking for any kind of relationship. I was never much good at explaining such things — feelings, or their absence. “Just some stuff I have to deal with,” I said. “Nothing that matters too much.”

“A problem shared is a problem halved.”

“There is no problem.”

“I forgot,” she said. “You don’t have problems, ever.” She bit her lower lip, I guess to stop from saying anything else. I didn’t know what she might have wanted to say and I didn’t care. I felt empty inside, empty and lifeless as the salt flats.

I drained my coffee and set the mug down. “None I lose sleep over.”

“I think you should talk to someone.”

“I talk to people all the time.”

“No, you don’t, Henry. If you did you wouldn’t be losing touch.”

“I’ll be seeing you, Rae,” I said, leaving the office. Hannafin was my friend but that didn’t mean she knew all there was to know about me. It was never that simple.

At first I saw nothing on the road. I drove past the Grandstand on my left and headed south another mile before pulling over, somewhat confused. I picked up the radio, intending to give HQ a piece of my mind. But before anyone could respond, I’d got out of the vehicle and was watching the small dust cloud that had appeared away to the south. I grabbed the binoculars from the dash. Between my position and the cloud a vehicle had stopped in the middle of the dirt road. The dust cloud seemed to be moving further south, as if marking the trail of some other vehicle, one I hadn’t seen. Dry heat rippled across the exposed skin of my arms, sucked all the moisture from my mouth. As I stared at the dust cloud it was pulled apart by a wind I didn’t feel.

Nothing moved around the SUV. I scrambled up the slope to my right, moving south-west towards a patch of creosote bush. From there I looked down at the road, first at my own vehicle, then at the other, half a mile, maybe less, from where I stood. I squatted down in the scrub, removed the Sig Sauer 9mm from my holster and laid it on the ground. The sun was falling slowly towards the mountain behind me, but its heat seemed to have intensified. A sudden movement caught my eye. I watched through the binoculars as a man got out of the SUV and walked to the edge of the dirt road. He just stood there gazing out at the playa like it was a picture of beauty rather than heat and desolation. Two other people joined him, standing either side. I tried to see what they were looking at but nothing moved out there, not even the goddam rocks. The mountain’s shadow bruised the edge of the Racetrack.

A fourth person had arrived. I watched his lips moving as he pointed across the dry lake. Sound travels a fair distance in this stillness, but I didn’t hear a word. There was something unsettling about the way he held himself, thumb looped into the belt at his waist, that made me feel numb and disconnected. After a few moments the first three set out walking, heading east across the playa. The last guy stood there a while, till they were two or three hundred yards out, then he followed them, taking his time, keeping his distance. A redtail circled above him and when he stopped to glance at it the bird flew off to the north. A line of thin ragged clouds chased each other away across the valley, as if anxious not to intrude. Beads of sweat dribbled from beneath the straw hat and down my face as I worked to fill the silence with the imagined sound of their footsteps crunching across the Racetrack.

Nothing made sense.

Long, thin shadows followed them, clawing the dry mud like the fingers of a man dying of thirst. The figures grew smaller as they receded into the distance. I clambered down the slope to the Expedition and drove south until I reached their vehicle. I thought about calling Rydell but wasn’t sure what to tell him. All I’d seen was some folks setting out across the Racetrack on foot, same as countless visitors had done before them. But if there was no mystery, then why was my heart racing so fast? Why couldn’t I shake off the feeling that this was all wrong?

I stood by the side of the road, no longer able to see any of them, accepting that I had no choice but to follow. Strange, disorienting sensations flowed through my body, setting flares off behind my eyes and thrumming in my ears. I began to walk. The ground was hard and bone dry but, even so, I found a trail of footprints. They were quite distinct but what disturbed me was that there was only one pair, not four. I tried to ignore this and figured how long it would take me to catch up with the group. After thirty minutes, I should have been able to see them but nothing moved out there. I quickened my pace. The mountains to the north and west punctured the sky, opening wounds that bled over the horizon and down onto the playa. Ten minutes later I stopped and listened. Nothing: no birds, no wind, no voices. I unholstered the 9mm again, held it up and fired two shots. And was appalled when I heard nothing. My hand shook as I stared at the pistol. I’d felt the recoil and the smell of cordite on the breezeless air contradicted the silence. I checked the magazine and saw that two rounds had been discharged. It was just the sound that had been lost, a realization that made my isolation more complete. If sound couldn’t exist here, then what could? When I stared at the mountains enclosing both sides of the valley, I knew that even memories were not real in this place. I felt more alone than anyone had ever been, without even the company of the dead. With the light fading, I took a bearing on a western peak and set off towards Racetrack Road.