As big as silver dollars, ashes like enormous gray snowflakes spiraled to the ground around me. A storm of burning embers rained down, too, carried by thermal currents from the ferocious blaze, dropping out as the currents weakened with distance. Each ember was a potential new fire if by chance it fell upon fuel. I winced as one of them glanced off my face, shook another off my jacket sleeve, and brushed yet another out of my hair, blistering my left thumb in the process.
Behind the last two buildings, at the east end of the complex, the gravel gave way to bare earth. Here, the night lay in deeper darkness than the territory that I’d just left, although still somewhat revealed by firelight. I could see just well enough to discern a series of large troughs, maybe twelve feet long, six feet wide, four deep, elevated on concrete pads, each with a swan-neck spout and a spigot at one end. I couldn’t imagine a purpose for them, but they looked as if they were public baths for a race of giants.
Beyond the troughs and the board-and-wire fence lay twenty feet of bare ground and then, to the east, a shadowy vista of chaparral. On a warm evening like this, it was the kind of land that teemed with nightlife, though not the kind that required a dance band and adult beverages. Tarantulas as big as my fist. Lizards and rabbits that wouldn’t hurt you, rattlesnakes that would. Coyotes. A bobcat or three.
I needed to get back to the fairgrounds. I still believed that the cultists had some intention there, other than to use the Sombra Brothers carnival as their cover and headquarters for this operation.
As something inside the burning building exploded and shrapnel banged and thudded off all manner of surfaces in the conflagration, I headed south, using the line of troughs for cover until there were no more of them. Low and bent-backed. Hurrying but not running. I hastened into a secondary orchard much smaller than the first.
The heat of the fire and the flurries of ashes and smoke were far behind me. In the distance I heard sirens once more, sirens combined with stentorian horn blasts that identified the vehicles as fire engines.
As before, I stayed close to one row of trees, pausing at the sixth, the twelfth, the eighteenth, to scope the orchard ahead and to keep my breathing as slow and quiet as possible. I was too far from the burning building for the racket of its piecemeal collapse to provide much cover now.
I resisted the temptation to glance back at the blaze. My eyes were not yet fully dark-adapted again, and I needed them to adjust to the gloom as quickly as possible.
Although lacking headstones and monuments, the orchard at night reminded me of a graveyard, perhaps because of the regimented rows, perhaps because I believed that black-clad figures, as faceless as Death, would at any moment step out of cover and loom before me.
At the twenty-fourth tree, six from the end of the orchard, I stood with my back to the trunk, held my breath, listened. I thought I heard a voice. Two voices. I drew a breath or two, listened again, but heard nothing except a tree rat or a raccoon scratching its way along a branch overhead. Then the voices again. They were speaking low, but they weren’t as quiet as they should have been if they were cultists on the lookout for me.
I needed to locate them. In as low a crouch as I could get without proceeding in a duck-walk, I moved from the twenty-fourth tree to the twenty-fifth, leaning to the left, to the right, trying to tune in to their conversation.
They fell silent. Back pressed to the almond tree, I waited, hoping that they hadn’t gone quiet because they’d seen or heard me.
My eyes were well adjusted to the dark again, which meant only that now I was merely half blind. If money could buy anything, I would have called Mrs. Fischer and asked her to buy off the cloud cover and bring back the moon.
Judging by the tone of their voices, when they spoke again, the unseen men were irritated.
I eased forward to the twenty-sixth tree, to the twenty-seventh.
Halfway to the twenty-eighth, I saw them. On the right. Two figures dressed in black. Ahead of me, at the end of the alley between this row and the next. So close.
They evidently were supposed to be scanning the ten feet of open ground that separated the almond trees from the fence that marked the southern perimeter of Maravilla Valley Orchards. They didn’t seem to be deeply committed to the task.
I kept moving, afraid one of them would look toward me at any moment. I put my back to the twenty-eighth tree, two from the end, and found that I was now close enough to hear what they said.
“Damn it, Emory, that freak never come this way.”
“Yeah,” Emory said, “but this is where they want us.”
“You’d break your own neck tryin’ to kiss your own ass if one of the inner circle said so.”
“I’m not afraid of the inner circle.”
“Hell you ain’t. Come on. I wanna be where the action is.”
“Me, too, Carl. Who doesn’t?”
“Well,” Carl said, “it ain’t here.”
Emory didn’t respond.
“Five or six minutes till maybe they blow that church.”
“They’ll blow whatever they find.”
“If it’s the church, I gotta see it.”
“You don’t care about the church.”
“Don’t tell me what I don’t care about.”
Emory said, “It’s the farmhouse that has you hot.”
“You, too. You seen the pictures—them two girls, their mother.”
“They aren’t for us, anyway.”
“But we can watch it bein’ done.”
“I’ve already seen it done. Lots of times.”
“This is bullshit, man.”
“We don’t want to get in trouble.”
“All we do want is trouble.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, you’re a chickenshit.”
Emory didn’t reply.
Frustrated, Carl said, “Ain’t we anarchyists?”
“It’s pronounced an-are-kists. And no, we aren’t.”
“I thought we was.”
“We rule through chaos. That’s different.”
Carl sounded like a pouting child. “We need to be doin’ some anarchyism.”
Intellectual arguments between satanists were less witty than I had expected.
“You hear them sirens?” Carl asked.
“Of course I hear them. Fire trucks.”
“And cops close behind.”
“Shouldn’t be here for the cops,” Emory said.
“Finally you said a smart thing.”
“It’s maybe ten minutes before the farmhouse.”
“So let’s go, let’s get in the action.”
“All right. You’re right.”
“Bet your ass I’m right.”
I heard footsteps, the rustle of clothing. Looking past the tree behind which I sheltered, I saw them moving away, toward the fence.
Prudence suggested that I should let them go. There were two of them, and they were heavily armed. The element of surprise might not be sufficient to get me into a confrontation and out the other side alive.
This was the night of nights, however, and too much prudence might result in the forfeiture of the game.
Forty
I stepped away from the line of trees that I had been following, into the alley between this row and the next, directly behind Emory and Carl as they approached the fence.
One of them had some kind of combat rifle strap-slung over his shoulder. The other, carrying a rifle of his own, shouldered it, too, as they drew near the fence.
My stomach seemed as if it were full of cocoons from which a flock of butterflies were emerging with still-wet wings: the fluttery feeling of nervous anticipation combined with nausea.
I moved with them, wanting a point-blank situation. They didn’t hear anything. I was so close, they should have smelled me.
With the Glock in a two-hand grip, arms thrust forward, taking an isosceles stance, I waited until the first man started to climb before I said, “Freeze.”
The
y froze, for a moment, anyway, and then the guy with two feet on the ground started to pivot, sliding the rifle off his shoulder as he turned, and I saw that he was indeed wearing goggles as I shot him twice.
At the crack of the pistol, the guy on the fence looked in my direction, and after the second shot, as his companion dropped, I said, “I only want information.”
In his black clothes and ski mask and goggles, he looked like an extraterrestrial geared up for Earth’s hostile atmosphere.
“Information,” I repeated. “Don’t want to have to kill you.”
“Shit you don’t.” He turned away from me, clinging to the fence.
“What farmhouse?” I asked. “What’s happening there?”
The fool went for it, tried for the top of the fence, because he could not unsling the rifle in his position and would rather die than tell me about their intentions with the dam or anything else.
I couldn’t let him get away. I shot him in the back. It didn’t feel like the worst thing I’d ever had to do, but it felt like one of the worst and equal to many others.
He fell off the fence, onto his back, not dead yet, gazing up at me through his goggles as I stepped forward and stood over him. Between clenched teeth, a thick guttural expression of pain escaped him, as if he didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of hearing him suffer.
There was no satisfaction in it for me.
“Just tell me what’s going to happen tonight. What’s all this about?” My solid-state digital watch didn’t tick. And yet I heard it ticking.
Instead, he told me to perform a sexual act with myself that no one with a basic understanding of human anatomy would have believed possible.
He was no longer able to bite off his pain. A squeal of agony escaped him.
I shot him in the head and put an end to it.
Closing my eyes, shuddering, I asked for a sign that what I had done was necessary. Just one small sign. Nothing big. One small but incontestable sign. I opened my eyes. There was no sign. It doesn’t work that way and never did.
I knelt beside the first dead man and removed his goggles. A rubber-sheathed wire connected them to a power pack clipped to his utility belt. I hooked the pack to my belt and put on the goggles.
The night glowed green. There was darkness in the green night, plenty of it, but not as much as before this vision assist. Getting used to the eerie color and distorted perceptions arising from it would take a few minutes.
The sirens weren’t distant anymore. The fire trucks sounded as if they were near the orchard, perhaps already turning off the county road. Police might be following close in the wake of the trucks. The firemen and cops would know within two minutes that the explosions hadn’t been related to gas-line problems or to any other accidental causes. The blast evidence could be easily read. Chief Porter would ask the state highway patrol to lend some manpower. Soon this usually quiet rural area of Pico Mundo would be swarming with police, perhaps some of them manning roadblocks. Not all of them would be officers who knew me and would vouch for me.
From the man who failed to climb the fence, I took a centerfire combat rifle. I had never used any weapon like it.
I had been raised by a mother who was mentally ill but never institutionalized. She pretended to have suicidal tendencies, though she used her pistol only to intimidate her child. As a consequence, I disliked guns, but I learned to use them. I had come to understand guns, that they were tools and that they were no more evil, in their essence, than pliers and wrenches. At times, they were a necessity. In a world of evil, they were often also a blessing. Now and then, as I’ve said, I was able to fight off a thug with my encyclopedia of unconventional weapons, such as a clarinet, an oboe, and a trombone (a confrontation in a musical-instrument shop), three buckets full of pig slops (not in a musical-instrument shop), a wet mop, coconuts, wasp spray, and once in fact with a twelve-volume encyclopedia. But often firearms saved my life and the lives of others who depended on me.
From personal experience in the orchard, I knew that these fully automatic rifles, as illegal as briefcase nukes, were capable of firing a single round or a deadly burst of bullets. I didn’t know how this one was set or how to change the way it was set. I assumed it was still on fully automatic fire. These lunatics were unlikely to practice gun safety.
From the dead man’s utility belt hung four spare magazines. They appeared to hold perhaps thirty rounds each. On the rifle, I found the release button and ejected the current magazine, slapped a full one in its place. I found the bolt catch. Made sure the bolt was not locked. I recognized the trigger. That was the extent of my knowledge of this kind of weapon. It was going to be a learn-as-you-go event.
I took a spare magazine from the dead man. Put it in an inside sport-coat pocket, tearing the lining in the process. Mr. Bullock would never lend me another garment. I put a second spare magazine in an exterior pocket.
With the rifle slung over my shoulder, I went up and over the fence. How ironic it would have been if someone had shot me in the back as I climbed.
In my mind’s ear, I heard Emory and Carl.
Five or six minutes till maybe they blow that church.…
They’ll blow whatever they find.
The next explosion would be only two or three minutes away now, not five. I didn’t know which church and had no time to go looking for one.
Although math had never been my strongest subject, I could put two and two together. The crew that pursued me through the orchard might or might not be the only one at work this night. They weren’t using all the C-4 to break the dam. They didn’t need all of it for that. They were blowing up anything they encountered.
Ain’t we anarchyists?
It’s pronounced an-are-kists. And no, we aren’t.
I thought we was.
We rule through chaos. That’s different.
The behavior of these cultists wasn’t as insane as I had first thought. They had a strategy and tactics to support it. The almond-processing plant and the church were distractions. Whatever else they blew up in the next hour would also be meant to distract the police, overwhelm them, and leave them with insufficient resources to deal with the true threat when it came.
I needed to call Chief Porter, but I didn’t have time just then. I thought I knew where the farmhouse was, the identity of the woman and her two daughters who were in imminent peril. With all the chaos erupting, the police would never get there in time.
It’s the farmhouse that has you hot.
You, too. You seen the pictures—them two girls, their mother.
They aren’t for us, anyway.
But we can watch it bein’ done.
I’ve already seen it done. Lots of times.
In the midst of sowing chaos, and before the main event of the night, the cultists were intending to take time for a quick religious ceremony. They were going to make an offering to ensure that the prince of this world, his satanic majesty, would look with approval upon the catastrophe that they hoped to bring down upon my beloved Pico Mundo.
Three human sacrifices.
Beyond the orchard fence lay a much-patched single-lane blacktop driveway, dating back decades, cracked and crumbling at the edges, tufts of grass and withered weeds growing through it in places, overhung by California live oaks as old as any trees in Maravilla County. This picturesque lane connected the nearby county road to Blue Sky Ranch, a place with a great deal of history both triumphant and tragic.
I turned at once eastward, into the green night, away from the county road, and I ran for my life, as well as for the lives of the mother and her two daughters who lived on the ranch. If Emory and Carl had their facts straight, I no longer had ten minutes. Maybe seven.
Or six.
Not even half a minute after coming off the fence and setting out for Blue Sky Ranch, I halted when it sounded as though God, in disgust, had slammed his big door on the world. I felt the explosion tremble the ground underfoot, and scores of dead leaves rattled down t
hrough the live oaks, falling upon me and around me, as if Death himself, in a mood to mock, were sprinkling me with his equivalent of the holy water that a priest shook upon the faithful from an aspergillum.
I pivoted, searching the night. Stepped between two of the live oaks on the south side of the lane. The brightness overwhelmed my goggles, and I slipped them up onto my forehead. Perhaps a mile away, to the southwest, a hundred- or even two-hundred-foot tower of fire cast off gouts of flaming debris that showered down the night like fireworks out of season.
No church would burn that fiercely, that fast. They had blown up something else. Later I would learn that it was the county highway department’s fuel depot, to which bulk gasoline was periodically delivered for the fueling of all county- and municipal-owned vehicles. A packet of C-4 with a timer had been lowered on a wire into the underground storage tank. With the blast, hundreds of gallons of burning gasoline had been at once spewed high into the night, and thousands of gallons remaining in the ruptured tank had been set ablaze.
Even as I stood awestruck by the cultists’ boldness and by the terrible scope of the destruction they had committed—and must intend yet to commit—another explosion slammed the night. Nearer than the first blast. Perhaps a quarter mile this side of the raging gasoline fire. A fierce flash of white light was at once followed by an oak-shaking bang and an echoing roar, as if Thor, Scandinavian god of thunder and rain, wielding his hammer, Mjölnir, had smote the vault of heaven.
I imagined that some church had just been reduced to rubble.
Nearly two years earlier, before the mass murder at the Green Moon Mall, the lesser coven, that quartet of maniacs led by Officers Bern Eckles and Simon Varner, had distracted me and had fogged my understanding of what was soon to happen. Had they not planted a corpse in my apartment and shot Chief Porter the night before that massacre, I might have put the pieces together more quickly, might have gotten to the mall five minutes sooner. Now I had the sense, yet again, that although these more ambitious cultists had failed to kill me in the cottonwood grove and in the orchard, they had nonetheless put me on the run and distracted me, so that when they pulled the trigger on their main event, I would be crucial minutes late, as before.