"Okay," Ralph said. The only alternative he could see was crouching here and waiting for the outsider's accomplice to start pumping high-velocity slugs directly through the gift shop, trying to take out one or more of them that way. "Yune? Give us as much cover as you can."
Yune edged to the corner of the building, hissing with pain at each sliding movement. He held his Glock against his chest with his right hand. Holly and Ralph moved to the other end. Ralph could see the service road leading up the hill and to the tourist cabins. It was flanked by a pair of large boulders. An American flag was painted on one, the Texas Lone Star flag on the other.
Once we get behind the one with the American flag on it, we should be safe.
Almost certainly true, but fifty yards had never looked so much like five hundred. He thought of Jeannie at home doing her yoga, or downtown running errands. He thought of Derek at camp, maybe in the craft room with his new buds, talking about TV shows, video games, or girls. He even had time to wonder who Holly was thinking about.
Him, apparently. "Are you ready?"
Before he could reply, the shooter fired again and the SUV's gas tank exploded in a ball of orange fire. Yune leaned out from his corner and began shooting at the top of the knoll.
Holly sprinted. Ralph followed.
15
Jack saw the SUV burst into flame and screamed in triumph, although it made no sense to do so; it wasn't as though there was anyone in it. Then movement caught his eye and he saw two of the meddlers running for the service road. The woman was in the lead, Anderson right behind her. Jack swung his rifle toward them and sighted through the scope. Before he could pull the trigger, there was the zzzz of an incoming round. Rock chips struck his shoulder. The one they'd left behind was shooting, and although the range was far too long for accuracy with whatever handgun the guy was using, that last one had been too close for comfort. Jack ducked, and as his chin pressed down on his neck, he felt the glands there bulge and throb, as if they were loaded with pus. His head was aching, his skin was sizzling, and his eyes seemed too big for their sockets.
He peered through the scope just in time to glimpse Anderson disappearing behind one of those big boulders. He had lost them. Nor was that all. Black smoke was rising from the burning SUV, and now that it was full day, there was no wind to disperse it. What if someone saw that and called whatever excuse for a volunteer fire department they had in this poor-ass town?
Go down.
No need to question whose voice it was this time.
You need to get to them before they can get to the Ahiga path.
Jack had no idea what an Ahiga was, but he had no doubt what the visitor inside his head was talking about: the path marked by the sign showing Chief Wahoo. He cringed as another bullet from the asshole down there spanked rock chips from a nearby outcropping, took the first step back the way he had come, and fell down. For a moment pain obliterated all thought. Then he grabbed at a bush sticking out between two rocks and pulled himself up. He looked down at himself, at first unable to believe what had become of him. The leg the snake had bitten now looked two times as big as the other one. The cloth of his pants was pulled tight. Worse, his crotch was bulging. It was as if he had stuffed a small pillow in there.
Go down, Jack. Get them and I'll take the cancer away.
Oh, but right now he had more immediate concerns, didn't he? He was swelling up like a waterlogged sponge.
The snakebite poison, too. I can make you well.
Jack wasn't sure he could believe Tat-Man, but he understood he had no choice. Also, there was Anderson. Mr. No Opinion didn't get to walk away from this. It was all his fault, and he didn't get to walk away.
He started down the path at a shambling trot, clutching the barrel of the Winchester and using the stock as a cane. His second fall came when the rocky scree slid away under his left foot and his swollen, throbbing right leg wasn't able to compensate. The leg of his pants split open the next time he went down, disclosing flesh that was turning purplish-black and necrotic. He clawed at the rocks and got to his feet again, his face puffing and running with sweat. He was pretty sure he was going to die on this godforsaken chunk of rock and weeds, but he was goddamned if he was going to do it alone.
16
Ralph and Holly ran up the spur road bent double, heads tucked. At the top of the first hill, they stopped to catch their breath. Below and to the left, they could see the circle of decaying tourist cabins. To the right was a long building, probably storage for equipment and supplies back when the Marysville Hole had been a going concern. A truck was parked beside it. Ralph looked at it, looked away, then snapped back.
"Oh my Christ."
"What? What?"
"No wonder he knew me. That's Jack Hoskins's truck."
"Hoskins? The other detective from Flint City?"
"Yes, him."
"Why would he--" Then she shook her head hard enough to make her bangs fly. "It doesn't matter. He's stopped shooting and that means he's probably coming. We need to go."
"Maybe Yune hit him," Ralph said, and when she gave him a disbelieving look: "Yeah, okay."
They hurried past the equipment building. There was another path on the far side, leading up the back side of the knoll. "I go first," Ralph said. "I'm the one with the gun."
Holly didn't argue.
They trotted up the incline, the narrow path twisting and turning. Loose scree slid and grated under their shoes, threatening to spill them. Two or three minutes into the climb, Ralph began to hear the clatter and bounce of rocks somewhere higher up. Hoskins was indeed coming to meet them.
They rounded an outcropping, Ralph with his Glock leveled, Holly behind him and on his right. The next stretch of the path ran straight for fifty feet or so. The sound of Hoskins's descent was louder now, but the maze of rocks made it impossible to tell just how close he was.
"Where's the goddam spur path that goes to the back entrance?" Ralph asked. "He's getting closer. This is too much like playing chicken in that James Dean movie."
"Yes, Rebel Without a Cause. I don't know, but it can't be far."
"If we run into him before we get off Main Street here, there's going to be shooting. And ricochets. The minute you see him, I want you to drop--"
She thumped him on the back. "If we beat him to the path, there won't be any shooting and I won't have to. Go!"
Ralph ran up the straight stretch, telling himself he'd caught his second wind. It wasn't true, but it was good to stay positive. Holly was behind him and whapping him on the shoulder, either to hurry him along or to assure him that she was still there. They reached the next turning in the path. Ralph peered around it, expecting to look into the muzzle of Hoskins's rifle. He didn't see that, but he did see a wooden sign with Chief Ahiga's fading portrait on it.
"Come on," he said. "Fast."
They ran for the sign, and now Ralph could hear the oncoming shooter gasping for breath. Almost sobbing for it. There was a rattle of stones and a cry of pain. It sounded like Hoskins had fallen down.
Good! Stay down!
But then the clattery, slip-sliding footsteps resumed. Very near. Closing in. Ralph grabbed Holly and pushed her onto the Ahiga path. Her small pale face was running with sweat. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her hands were buried in the pockets of her suit coat, which was now powdered with rock dust and splattered with blood.
Ralph raised a finger to his lips. She nodded. He stepped behind the sign. The dry Texas heat had caused the boards to shrink a bit, and he was able to peer through one of the cracks. He saw Hoskins as he staggered into view. His first thought was that Yune had gotten lucky and put a bullet in him after all, but that didn't explain Hoskins's split pants and grotesquely swollen right leg. No wonder he fell, Ralph thought. It was amazing that he'd gotten this far down the steep path on that leg. He still had the rifle he'd used to kill Gold and Pelley, but was using it as a cane, and his fingers were nowhere near the trigger. Ralph didn't know if he wo
uld be able to hit anything anyway, even at close range. Not the way his hands were trembling. His bloodshot eyes were deep in their sockets. Rock dust had turned his face into a kabuki mask, but where perspiration had cut trails through it, the skin was red, as if with a terrible rash.
Ralph stepped out from behind the sign, Glock held in both hands. "Stop right there, Jack, and let go of the rifle."
Jack skidded and stumbled to a halt thirty feet away, but he continued to hold the rifle by the barrel. That wasn't okay, but Ralph could live with it. If Hoskins started to raise it, however, his life was going to end.
"You shouldn't be here," Jack said. "Like my old granddad used to say, was you born dumb or did you just grow that way?"
"I have no appetite for your bullshit. You killed two men and wounded another one. Shot them from ambush."
"They never should have come here," Jack said, "but since they did, they got what they deserved for messing in with what didn't concern them."
"And what would that be, Mr. Hoskins?" Holly asked.
Hoskins's lips cracked and oozed tiny beads of blood when he smiled. "Tat-Man. As I think you know. Meddling bitch."
"Okay, now that you've got that out of your system," Ralph said, "put the rifle down. You've done enough damage with it. Just drop it. If you bend over, you'll fall on your face. Was it a snake that got you?"
"The snake was just a little extra. You need to leave, Ralph. Both of you need to leave. Or else he'll poison you like he poisoned me. A word to the wise."
Holly took a step closer to Jack. "How did he poison you?" Ralph put a warning hand on her arm.
"Just touched me. Back of the neck. That was all it took." He shook his head in tired wonder. "Out at that barn in Canning Township." His voice rose, trembling with outrage. "Where you sent me!"
Ralph shook his head. "It must have been the chief, Jack. I didn't know anything about it. I'm not going to tell you again to put the gun down. You're done with this."
Jack considered . . . or seemed to. Then he lifted the rifle very slowly, going hand over hand down the barrel toward the trigger housing. "I'm not going the way my mother did. Nosir, I am not. I'll shoot your friend there first, Ralph, then you. Unless you stop me."
"Jack, don't. Last warning."
"Stick your warning up your--"
He was trying to point the gun at Holly. She didn't move. Ralph stepped in front of her and fired three times, the reports deafening in the tight space. One for Howie, one for Alec, one for Yune. The distance was a trifle long for a pistol, but the Glock was a good gun and he'd never had any trouble qualifying on the range. Jack Hoskins went down, and to Ralph, the expression on his dying face looked like relief.
17
Ralph sat down on a jutting lip of rock across from the sign, breathing hard. Holly went to Hoskins, knelt, and rolled him over. She had a look, then came back. "He was bitten more than once."
"Must have been a rattler, and a big one."
"Something else poisoned him first. Something worse than any snake. He called it Tat-Man, we call it the outsider. El Cuco. We need to finish this."
Ralph thought of Howie and Alec, lying dead on the other side of this godforsaken chunk of rock. They had families. And Yune--still alive but wounded, suffering, probably in shock by now--also had a family.
"I suppose you're right. Want this pistol? I can take his rifle, if you do."
Holly shook her head.
"All right. Let's do this."
18
Past the first turning, the Ahiga path widened and began to descend. There were pictographs on both sides. Some of the ancient images had been embellished or entirely covered with spraypaint tags.
"He'll know we're coming," Holly said.
"I know. We should have brought one of those flashes."
She reached into one of her voluminous side pockets--the one that had been sagging--and pulled out one of the stubby Home Depot UV flashlights.
"You're sort of amazing," Ralph said. "I don't suppose you've got a couple of hardhats in there, do you?"
"No offense, but your sense of humor is a little weak, Ralph. You should work on that."
Around the next turning of the path, they came to a natural hollow in the rock about four feet off the ground. Above it, fading letters in black paint read WE WILL NEVER FORGET. Inside the niche was a dusty vase with thin branches jutting from it like skeletal fingers. The petals that had once adorned those branches were long gone, but something else remained. Scattered around the bottom of the vase were half a dozen toy versions of Chief Ahiga, like the one that had been left behind when the Jamieson twins had crawled into the bowels of the earth, never to be found. The toys were yellow with age, and the sun had cracked the plastic.
"People have been here," Holly said. "Kids I'd say, based on the spraypaint tags. But they never vandalized this."
"Never even touched it, from the look," Ralph said. "Come on. Yune's on the other side with a bullet wound and a busted elbow."
"Yes, and I'm sure he's in great pain. But we need to be careful. That means moving slowly."
Ralph took her by the elbow. "If this guy gets both of us, that leaves Yune on his own. Maybe you should go back."
She pointed to the sky, where black smoke from the burning SUV was rising. "Someone will see that, and they'll come. And if something happens to us, Yune's the only one who will know why."
She shook his hand loose and began walking up the path. Ralph spared one more look for the little shrine, undisturbed all these years, and then followed her.
19
Just when Ralph thought the Ahiga path was going to lead them to nowhere but the back of the gift shop, it took an acute lefthand turn, almost doubling back on itself, and ended at what looked for all the world like the entrance to some suburbanite's toolshed. Only the green paint was flaked and fading, and the windowless door in the center of it stood ajar. The door was flanked by warning signs. The plastic that encased them had bleared over time, but they were still readable: ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING on the left, and THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED BY ORDER OF MARYSVILLE TOWN COUNCIL on the right.
Ralph went to the door, Glock ready. He motioned Holly to stand against the path's rocky side, then swung the door open, bending at the knees and bringing his gun to bear as he did so. Inside was a small entryway, empty except for the litter of boards that had been torn away from a six-foot fissure leading into darkness. The splintered ends were still attached to the rock by more of those huge, time-rusted bolts.
"Ralph, look at this. It's interesting."
She was holding the door and bending to examine the lock, which had been pretty well destroyed. It didn't look like the work of a crowbar or tire iron to Ralph; he thought someone had hammered it with a rock until it finally gave.
"What, Holly?"
"It's a one-way, do you see? Only locked if you're on the outside. Somebody was hoping the Jamieson twins, or some of the first rescue party, were still alive. If they found their way here, they wanted to make sure they weren't locked in."
"But no one ever did."
"No." She crossed the entryway to the fissure in the rock. "Can you smell that?"
Ralph could, and knew they were standing at the entrance to a different world. He could smell stale dampness, and something else--the high, sweet aroma of rotting flesh. It was faint, but it was there. He thought of that long-ago cantaloupe, and the insects that had been squirming around inside it.
They stepped into the dark. Ralph was tall, but the fissure was taller, and he didn't have to duck his head. Holly turned on the flashlight, at first shining it straight ahead into a rocky corridor leading downward, then at their feet. They both saw a series of glowing droplets leading into the dark. Holly did him the courtesy of not pointing out that it was the same stuff her makeshift black light had picked up in his living room.
They were only able to walk side by side for the first sixty feet or so. After that the passage narrowed and Holly handed him the flash
light. He held it in his left hand, the pistol in his right. The walls sparkled with eerie streaks of mineral, some red, some lavender, some a greenish-yellow. He occasionally shone the light upward, just to make sure El Cuco wasn't up there, crawling along the ragged ceiling among the stubs of stalactites. The air wasn't cold--he had read somewhere that caves maintained a temperature roughly equal to the average temperature of the region in which they were located--but it felt cold after being outside, and of course both of them were still coated in fear-sweat. A draft was coming from deeper in, blowing in their faces and bringing that faint rotten smell.
He stopped, and Holly ran into him, making him jump. "What?" she whispered.
Instead of answering, he shone the light on a rift in the rock to their left. Spraypainted beside it were two words: CHECKED and NOTHING.
They moved on, slowly, slowly. Ralph didn't know about Holly, but he felt an increasing sense of dread, a growing certainty that he was never going to see his wife and son again. Or daylight. It was amazing how fast a person could miss the daylight. He felt that if they did get out of here, he could drink daylight like water.
Holly whispered, "This is a horrible place, isn't it?"
"Yes. You should go back."
Her only answer was a slight push in the center of his back.
They passed several more breaks in the downward passage, each one marked with those same two words. How long ago had they been sprayed there? If Claude Bolton had been a teenager, it had to be at least fifteen years, maybe twenty. And who had been in here since then--other than their outsider, that was? Anyone? Why would they come? Holly was right, it was horrible. With each step he felt more like a man being buried alive. He forced himself to remember the clearing in Figgis Park. And Frank Peterson. And a jutting branch marked with bloody fingerprints where the bark had been stripped from it by repeated plunging blows. And Terry Maitland, asking how Ralph was going to clear his own conscience. Asking that as he lay dying.
He kept going.
The passage abruptly narrowed even further, not because the walls were closer but because there was rubble on both sides. Ralph shone the flashlight upward and saw a deep cavity in the rock roof. It made him think of an empty socket after a tooth has been pulled.