The second was, Oh please, world, give Libby a chance. No time for thoughts of Edwina and Maggie and Larry and Mitch and all the others.
Charlie’s hands were still locked around Bradone’s ankles as they followed her over. She tried to open them at the last minute, but they’d frozen.
The hair on the back of Charlie’s neck did not rise when it too went over. But the entire skin under it did when something grabbed her own ankles.
Sort of a patriotic tingle. The government. Charlie’s government. Some ground trooper or foot soldier or some armed response person from a white Cherokee must have seen their plight. Right?
Amazing that her front wasn’t scraped off down to the ulcer as she, still locked onto Bradone, was hauled back to level ground. Poor Bradone bumped up over the edge to safety in hideous notches. When only the stargazer’s hands and wrists remained hidden in the orange fog, Charlie dared to steal a glance over her shoulder at their rescuer. She even gave half a thought to what she’d do if it were a little bald alien with huge black almond-shaped eyes that slanted up at the outer corners.
She’d hoped for a big strong John Wayne marine type in a camouflage outfit who’d be sternly disapproving—“Listen, little lady”—but would listen to her before shooting.
The caboose on the end of their short train to disaster was not her government. Instead, Toby, Evan Black’s second-unit gofer, with the lopsided grin, lay sprawled on his stomach, the toes of his sensible hiking boots dug into the hard dirt. Beside him a pair of upright, long, lean Dockers.
Head and shoulders enshrouded by clouds of orange, Mel Goodall clasped a camera to his chest.
* * *
“So, nobody but me saw orange.” Charlie accosted Toby as they tried to revive the prostrate astrologer.
“I never saw that before.”
There appeared to be something solid in the orange mist that obliterated the air base, the giant globe with the black aircraft bobbing or zipping around it, the next mountain range, and that side of the sky from horizon to horizon. And still it continued to rise up out of the valley next to them.
“Shouldn’t you be shooting that?” Toby asked the main-man cinematographer. Whatever was inside the roiling mist was more unidentifiable than invisible.
“Can you believe that mother?” Mel said. “I’ll never eat another orange as long as I live.”
The odor did still suggest the fruit but smelled too concentrated now, too … chemical-like—like something you’d use to cover an even worse odor. Charlie had finally met up with what she’d feared.
“Do you think it’s giving off deadly fumes? Chemical warfare? Why does it have to be that big? Talk about overkill. Like the hydrogen bomb. No wonder our taxes are so high,” Charlie babbled and tried rubbing the back of Bradone’s hand. It felt warm still. She didn’t have the heart to feel for a pulse. Bradone had been the closest to the thing.
“What’s that supposed to do?” Toby started on the other hand.
“I don’t know—I saw it in a movie. Is Evan here?”
“Too risky. Lose him, we’re all out of a job. Which reminds me,” Mel said, sliding the camera into a cloth bag, “I gotta get this contraband out of here. Tobias, ol’ boy—”
“I know. Come visit us in prison.”
But Mel was off across the Mars-like terrain with strides so long, shadows swallowed him in seconds.
“What do you mean, visit us in prison?”
“We’re parked right behind you. Minute ol’ Mel takes off out of there, those security boys’ll be all over that mine tunnel. Looks like I’ll have to carry her. You grab the blankets and packs. I’m for taking my chances with security types—might get shot, but this thing is unhealthy in a way I don’t know.”
“If we’re going to die from orange gas, we’ve already been infected. How did you know where to find us?”
“We didn’t even know you were here. Vegas news is reporting you and Hilsten have eloped or something. He come with you?”
“He doesn’t know anything about this little side trip. How did you find the mine tunnel?”
“Guy named Merlin—”
“Now stop that—”
But the megalithic orange thing with all its gases finally cleared the ridge and the pulsating air grew horrendous—palpitating Charlie’s eardrums, forcing air into her nose and mouth one second, trying to suck it out the next. Loose dirt spurted in all directions and Charlie closed her eyes to protect her lenses. Imprinted on the back of her eyelids was a silhouette of Toby’s shadow standing up against the orange light with the lump of Bradone McKinley hanging over one shoulder.
When Charlie opened her eyes, she was alone.
CHAPTER 32
LIGHTNING AND THUNDER filled the world. Charlie could see the giant air force base now and the self-suspended yellow-orange globe with even more satellite aircraft around it.
Above and behind her, stars once again littered the heavens.
The orange thing might be gone, but everything had an orange hue now—even the darkness. “Toby?”
The bastard had gone off and left her.
* * *
Charlie sat on a pillow and chewed soggy mayo and mustard–flavored bread. She sipped bottled water just as cautiously. And jumped every time lightning streaked from the cloudless sky.
If Libby heard Charlie had eloped with Mitch, she’d probably run right out and get pregnant. Libby hated Mitch.
Charlie put all the food and water in one pack, tucked one rolled blanket through the straps meant for a sleeping bag, and waited for dawn.
She didn’t like being alone with wilderness and discomfort. What if the orange thing came back? What if it wasn’t really gone?
Oh hell. She opened a thermos of Little A’Le’Inn coffee and poured a cup in its lid. Just the smell made her feel better. Well, two years ago it had been “Stay away from caffeine, booze, and soda” with that doctor. This year, it was fresh vegetables and stress. The coffee made her happy—thus alleviating stress, right?
Charlie would simply walk down into the valley in front of her and up over the next mountain range and turn herself in to her outrageously extravagant government. If they shot her, they shot her. No good trying to find that mine tunnel. Toby and Bradone and the Cherokee would probably be long gone already arrested by armed response personnel.
We aren’t feeling a tad sorry for ourself, are we?
If you aren’t going to be any help, leave me alone.
Do you really think even your extravagant government can make lightning in a cloudless sky?
“Oh.” Charlie drained the thermos cup and poured another.
That would take Mother Nature or God or—
Little orange aliens?
Both Charlie and her inner voice knew that simply because something appeared to have no rational explanation did not mean it didn’t. But she decided she was too out in the open for all this lightning, no matter who or what was responsible for it.
Maybe it would be safer down there with the government. Charlie didn’t have a better idea, so she crawled over to take a peek at the drop. The grade wasn’t real steep as far down as she could see, which wasn’t very. But, with all the lightning around, her position on this promontory didn’t seem like a good plan either.
Well, don’t stay here and be a lightning rod.
Maybe go back the way I came and look for the mine tunnel. Maybe find a ground sensor and set it off and the government will come for me.
“Charlie?” Bradone McKinley stood swaying not six feet away, unaware she’d nearly startled a nervous literary agent over the edge of a cliff.
“Where’s Toby?”
“Who’s Toby?”
“One of Evan Black’s entourage. I told you about him.”
“After what happened to me, I can’t be expected to remember much.” The astrologer looked like a tousled, battered doll in the half-light. The impression of command had mutated to defeat.
“Nothing happened to y
ou.” Charlie didn’t have to be psychic to know where this was heading. “Last I saw Toby, he was walking out of here, leaving me to my fate and carrying your unconscious body over one shoulder.”
“Oh, the man laid out half-dead at the entrance to the mine tunnel.… I think he may have tripped over a rock. But how did he get here, and why was he carrying me over his shoulder? Charlie, I can’t find the words to tell you how disturbing this whole thing has been. Did this Toby rescue me from them?”
“Them who?”
“The aliens. On the huge orange ship. The voices in my head.” Bradone grabbed her temples.
“Nobody did anything to you, Bradone. Nothing happened. Got that?”
“Charlie, I was raped.”
“I had a solid hold on your ankles and a great view of your crotch the whole time you were hanging over the edge, damn it. You didn’t go anywhere. You were not abducted.”
The orange globe out over the air base had disappeared while they talked, and all its satellites too. Except for the elongated triangular aircraft. It swooped up the valley toward them now with no warning and very little noise.
They were too buzzed already to hide.
“Must be a smaller craft from the spaceship,” Bradone said.
“It’s a new test plane you’ll be glad to have when Saddam and Muslim fanatics unite to spread nerve gas across the country or poison our water supply.”
“Charlie, no aircraft could intercept nerve gas. Some suicidal stooge could bring it in on a United Airlines flight. And our water’s already poisoned.”
“Yeah, well, there’s no spaceship here either and nobody could rape you while I was holding on to your ankles.”
Planes lined up behind one another to land on the humongous runways, their lights emerging from the sky full of fading stars and brightening as they approached.
“More spaceships,” Bradone said through shallow breathing.
“737s from the Janet Terminal delivering a shift of workers.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I think we should see if Toby has left us the Jeep. Could you find your way back to the mine tunnel before it gets any lighter?”
“The stars are disappearing fast.” But Bradone staggered off with considerable confidence for a woman who had just been raped by orange aliens.
Was it possible they could actually get out of here without being arrested or shot by security forces who worked for an installation that didn’t exist? Armed response personnel whose nonexistence put them above the law because deadly force was authorized?
Charlie and her common sense didn’t even have to discuss that one. Not a chance. But they followed Bradone in better light than they’d had the night before.
“Maybe you were raped too while holding on to my ankles.”
“Bradone, let it rest. Toby was holding on to my ankles, or we’d have both gone over the side. Nobody was raped. Not even Toby, because Mel Goodall was standing behind him.”
“I know what I saw and what I felt.”
“Please don’t write a book about it.”
* * *
“How did you and Mel know about our ridge?” Bradone demanded of a dazed Toby they’d found sitting up in the tunnel.
“Guy named Merlin advertised it on the Internet.”
“Damn him. He sold out,” the stargazer-turned-detective said, and made a gurgling sound, as if she were choking on the thought.
“You get this Cherokee at Merlin’s on I-Fifteen?” Toby was in worse shape than Bradone—a purpling knot on his forehead, dried blood on his cheek and down his neck, one eye swollen nearly shut. And he kept trying to chew on a loosened tooth. He’d wrapped his muscle shirt around his head and his jacket opened on a scraped chest.
“The car rental was named Merlin’s, and you are surprised he sold out?” Charlie asked Bradone. Charlie was driving, since she was the least injured.
“I thought it a coincidence.”
“How many Merlins do you know?”
“The sign didn’t say Merlin Johnson.”
Charlie didn’t care what the advertising claimed, these Cherokees were not off-road vehicles. Bad-road vehicles, maybe. The damn thing managed to hold its doors on as they bucked over assorted rocks and gullies and rocks in gullies. Tanks might be off-road vehicles.
“No kidding? Merlin’s last name is Johnson? Cool. So is mine. But there’s a lot of us around.” Toby leaned forward from the backseat between the two bucket seats in front, trying to help Bradone with directions. He was about all Charlie could see in the rearview mirror. “There, those tracks? We’re on course—those are Mel’s.”
“What was he driving?” Charlie bit her tongue as the front tire on the driver’s side ka-chunked down off a boulder.
“One of these from Merlin’s. Weren’t about to fuck up our own stuff or Evan’s. Besides, these babies got special reversible license plates. Little lever there under the dash by your right knee does the front. First helicopter we see, I jump over the seat and switch the one on the rear too.”
Bradone turned to Toby. “I’ve been raped. Have you?”
The second-unit gofer was pretty perky, considering blood matted his black curls to his forehead. But that question stopped him for a while. “Nnnn-ot in this lifetime, I don’t believe, no.”
There would be gas in Rachel if they ever got out of this rock and cactus warren without killing Merlin’s Jeep. Without being shot dead from a dark helicopter above or the government’s white Jeep Cherokees down here. But Charlie would try to make it to Alamo for gas and bandages. She didn’t want to backtrack. Was it possible she was escaping the orange thing?
“Hey, turn left here. There’re the tracks to a real road.” Toby gave a lesser second-unit Evan Black victory whoop. “Oh baby.” He patted Charlie’s shoulder. “You are the best agent in the biz.”
“So Merlin Johnson gave you a map with the rental.” The alien rapee did not sound so pleased at their possibly imminent survival.
“Yeah, to Merlin’s Cave and Merlin’s Ridge. We paid extra because he had a scout out here cutting the wires on the ground sensors.” Toby laughed for no reason. “Said it’d be a breeze.”
“Why did you contact him last night? I mean, that is a suspicious coincidence,” Charlie said.
“Merlin’s Cave and Merlin’s Ridge?” Bradone was coming alive again. “That imposter, that motherfucking bastard, that—”
“Man, that generation knows how to swear, huh?” Toby managed to choke off the unwarranted hilarity. “Evan had a deal with Merlin to contact him when the time was right to go out to Mer—uh, the ridge and get footage. How’d you get out here?”
“We followed the stars,” Charlie answered dryly, “and cut the wires on the ground sensors for you. And solved five murders in the clear air.”
“You solved five murders?” Toby feigned astonishment for the rearview mirror.
Charlie explained their deduction, which didn’t seem as logical as it had last night in the orange glow.
“You think Evan killed those guys in his house? He wouldn’t kill anybody.”
He might ask you or Mel to. Which would be the same thing. Then she remembered where she’d heard of Merlin’s Ridge, at McCarran, where she’d first seen the first-to-be body. Patrick the hunk had mentioned it to someone over his cellular. Probably someone at the Janet Terminal.
Charlie barely missed a sickly Joshua tree and did kill the engine as they rounded a hill and saw two dark helicopters above an advancing contingent of white Cherokees sending up dust for the choppers to chop into clouds.
Libby Abigail Greene was about to become an orphan, or worse—the daughter of a jailbird.
CHAPTER 33
“MAN, MOST OF that stuff coming at us is Merlin’s Cherokees,” Toby Johnson said. “Start your engine, damn it.”
“How can you tell?” Through holes in the mushrooming dust, Charlie noticed a pickup camper about third in line and then more of them interspersed among the whit
e Jeeps farther back.
“We have a chance,” Bradone said low and more vengeful than melodious, her tone reminding Charlie of Caryl Thompson. “Don’t flood the goddamned motor.”
“Chance for what? There’re two helicopters this time.”
“Yeah, but they got all Merlin’s friends to baby-sit here.” The second-unit gofer grinned around his loosened tooth. It was not a pretty sight. “Go for it big time, agent lady.”
Charlie saw one of those motion sensors Bradone had cut, unwittingly abetting Merlin Johnson, before she ran over it to avoid the barrage of pickup campers and Cherokees coming at them. It resembled a big rusty can connected to an oblong box by wires, something like an amateur bomb might look. The helicopters appeared to have help in their attempt to round up the herd of curiosity seekers and nuts from two official white Cherokees with light bars on top.
Charlie almost overshot the gravel road when they came to it because of the dust still in the air. One of the helicopters peeled off to head their way. She gunned her unofficial Jeep onto the road, throwing up a plume of white-gray rock dust herself. That plume couldn’t be missed from the sky, probably couldn’t be missed from outer space. She’d get them as far as she could.
“Just pray there aren’t any cattle on the road this morning.” Charlie floored it. “Just get us to Alamo, baby.”
Car chases were one of Charlie’s least favorite kinds of scene in action movies, ranked right up there with vivisection. Now she knew why.
“Wait, stop a minute,” Toby ordered after a few miles. The windows were so covered with dust, he had to step out of the car to use the binoculars commandeered from Bradone’s endless supply of expedition provisions.
“Hurry up,” Charlie warned, “or I’ll leave without you.” She’d thought he needed to relieve his bladder. They were off again before he could get the door closed.
“That chopper isn’t following us. He’s parked behind Merlin’s caravan and the other one’s in front. God, I wish we could have got some footage of that.” His eye was swollen in a permanent wink now. “Maybe somebody back there’s getting it on video and can smuggle it out in camper bedding or something.”