Mark Lukens: Ancient Enemy

David didn’t move.

Stella hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want to leave David alone out here in the truck, not even for a few minutes. But she didn’t want to drag a child out of her truck with people watching. “You don’t want anything to drink?” she asked him.

David looked at her with his big dark eyes, but he still wouldn’t answer her.

“Okay,” Stella said, giving up. “I’ll get something for you. I’ll just be a minute. Keep all of the doors locked.”

Stella got out and shut her driver’s door. She’d only made it a few steps to the gas station store before she heard the sound of her truck’s passenger door opening and then slamming shut. She turned and watched David as he ran across the parking lot to her. He grabbed her hand and shoved his hand into hers.

Stella could feel the sting of tears threatening, but she fought them back. “Change your mind?”

David nodded.

They entered the small store. A bell over the door dinged as they opened it. A cashier sat at the counter – she looked bored. Stella and David walked down the small aisle of groceries. David’s hand was still in hers. Stella spotted a doorway that led to the restrooms. “Come on,” she whispered to David. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

They entered the women’s bathroom, then closed and locked the door. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and froze for a second. That wasn’t her, was it? Her hair was wild and stringy. She needed a shower. But it was her face that worried her; it was gaunt, like she’d lost twenty pounds. And the look in her eyes scared her the most. It was a haunted look, like the look in a soldier’s eyes that had just come back from battle and seen horrors that he couldn’t have imagined.

She washed her hands and face in the sink; she really wanted a hot shower, but this was better than nothing. She brushed her hair back with her hands and tried a smile at the mirror. Her smile seemed fake. She helped David wash up, and then they took turns going to the bathroom in the stall.

After they left the bathroom, Stella headed towards the coffee machine. She told David to go and pick out anything he wanted to eat and drink – whatever he wanted. He walked down one of the aisles of food as Stella fixed herself a cup of coffee. Just looking at the caramel colored liquid made her realize just how thirsty she was. And she realized that she was hungry. Ravenous. She spotted a warmer near the cashier’s counter that held typical gas station food: pizza, chicken wings, potato wedges, fried chicken. But all they had at this time of the morning were breakfast sandwiches. Normally this kind of food would’ve turned her stomach, but she grabbed a few sandwiches.

Stella set the sandwiches and coffee on the counter, and then she searched the store for other supplies: bottled water, a roll of toilet paper, two toothbrushes and a travel size tube of toothpaste, a stick of deodorant, a flashlight, two bags of chips, some chewing gum. She brought the items to the counter.

“You taking a trip?” the cashier asked as she rang up the items with a methodical slowness.

“Yeah,” Stella answered. “Heading up north.”

The cashier met Stella’s blue eyes with her own dark eyes. “I wouldn’t be going anywhere right now if I was you.”

Stella froze for an instant. “Why not?”

“There’s a bad snowstorm coming.”

The bell over the door dinged and Stella turned and saw an old man enter the store. He was dressed in overalls with a brown jacket over everything. He looked like he could be a farmer. He rubbed his hands together and stomped snow off of his boots onto the rug in front of the glass doors of the store.

Stella looked back at the cashier and slid the money to her. “We’re going to make it as far as we can. I also need fifty dollars on the white Suburban out there at the pumps.”

The cashier nodded.

Stella looked around for David. A sudden panic rose inside of her when she couldn’t see him anywhere. She hurried down the aisles and saw him right next to the old man. David held the old man’s hand, and the old man stared straight ahead with ice-blue eyes, like he was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“David!” Stella yelled and rushed at the old man. She pulled the man’s hand out of David’s hand and stared at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked the old farmer.

The old man shook his head like he was just waking up from a dream and didn’t realize where he was. “I … I don’t know.”

“You okay?” Stella asked David.

He nodded his head. She ushered David away from the old man.

The old man walked back towards the glass doors of the store.

The cashier watched him. “You don’t need anything, Jed?” she asked.

“No,” he said, his voice croaking a bit. “I need to get over to the bank.”

Stella grabbed her bag of groceries and she and David left the store. They walked towards her Suburban, but she kept an eye on the old man as he got in his pickup truck and started it. He drove across the snow-covered streets to a bank nestled among a few other buildings along the main street. Beyond the buildings Stella could see a field of snow that stretched out for miles, there was a line of dark trees beyond the fields of snow.

She put the fifty dollars’ worth of gas into her Suburban, and then got inside the truck.

Stella drove out of the gas station and parked in front of a store that looked closed. She left the engine running, left the heat blasting, and left the radio on. The radio DJ warned about the impending snowstorm.

“Yeah, we heard,” Stella said to the radio.

Stella devoured her breakfast sandwich. She gave one of them to David, but he only picked at it. He ate two donuts and drank a pint of milk instead. Stella finished his sandwich for him and drank down the rest of her coffee. She bagged up the trash and threw it away in a nearby dumpster. She got back in her truck and left the door open as she brushed her teeth with some of the bottled water. She made David brush his teeth.

She felt a little better. She was full, cleaner, and calmer.

She backed out onto the snowy road as more snow began to fall from the sky. She put the truck in drive and plowed forward down the road. The town looked kind of busy for this early in the morning, like the townspeople were doing last-minute things before the snowstorm hit: gassing up vehicles, picking up food and supplies, getting money from the bank.

Stella drove towards the edge of town, but there was one more stop she needed to make first. She needed to find a payphone and make an anonymous call to the police and tell them what happened at the dig site, as much as she could tell them, as much as they would believe. Maybe a few of them at the dig site would still be alive, but she doubted that. Now that David was gone, there wouldn’t be any reason for them to be kept alive. But she had to at least make the call.

When she got to her aunt’s house, she would turn herself over to the police. But she wasn’t going to worry about that right now. For now she needed to worry about getting David to a safe place.

She looked at David and smiled at him. “You okay?” she asked.

David stared at her and there was just the trace of a smile on his face. “Yes,” he whispered to her.

CHAPTER THREE

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Not even ten minutes after Stella left the gas station, three snowmobiles raced across the field of snow towards the main street of Cody’s Pass. The snowmobiles held two men each on two of them and one man on the other one with two large metal cases strapped to the back.

Inside Cody’s Pass Farmers’ Trust Bank, two tellers waited on customers. Four other people waited patiently in line, snow dripping from their boots and pants. One of the customers was Jed, the old man from the gas station store.