by Lukens, Mark
Someone would come forward soon, Palmer thought as he walked back to the motel. Someone had to know something. Someone had to have seen something.
CHAPTER 36
Southern Colorado
Cole parked Bruce Goldman’s Chevy Tahoe at the edge of the parking lot of the bar, closer to the trees. He had the truck turned off, all of the lights off, and they were waiting as Cole watched the bar.
The bar was a rinky-dink, honkytonk place, a large wood building with an antique neon sign that read: Ollie’s Bar. The O in Ollie’s name was burnt out. The lights were dim at the entrance, but it was enough to reveal how seedy and rundown the place was. The parking lot was plowed, creating piles of snow around the perimeter of it, yet there were still fourteen vehicles parked there—hardcore drinkers, people who weren’t going to let a little thing like the snowstorm of the century keep them from their nightly ritual, people who would prove to nature, and to each other, that they would venture out on a night like this to drink.
It was a little after eleven o’clock. Late enough so new customers probably wouldn’t be coming, and still a little too early for many of them to be leaving. It was now or never, and Cole had already spotted a large pickup truck with a king cab as his target. The pickup looked like it was from the mid-nineties. It was rusted around the wheel wells, it had big meaty tires, a bent side view mirror, dents all over it that showed how many times this driver had driven home drunk. A few faded bumper stickers were pasted on the tailgate.
Even though Cole would rather drive an SUV or mini-van, this truck was their best option. It would be the easiest one for him to break into and to hotwire, and it would fit in with the ubiquitous pickups in the area. He just hoped everything worked in the truck: the radio, the heater, the lights.
“You ready?” Cole asked Stella. He had already explained to her that she was going to have to drive Bruce’s truck and follow him after he stole this pickup truck. They couldn’t keep driving Bruce’s vehicle; every cop in this state was going to be looking for it now. A pickup truck in this area was the best camouflage for them, and by the time this guy wandered out and reported his truck stolen they should have a good head start down to New Mexico. It wasn’t too much farther to the Ute Indian Reservation from here, and from there the border into the Navajo Reservation. Once they were on Navajo land, Cole felt that they would be a little safer from the police.
But not safe from the Ancient Enemy, he thought.
One thing at a time, he told himself. They needed this pickup truck and they needed to ditch Bruce’s vehicle.
“I’m ready,” Stella told him.
Cole slipped out of the SUV and walked towards the truck in the distance as Stella slid over to the driver’s seat. The SUV was already pointed towards the road, so once Cole got the truck started she could fall in right behind him.
*
As Cole walked towards the pickup truck, he realized that Stella could just start the Chevy and take off, leaving him behind. She had a vehicle now, she had some money, and she still had the gun he’d given her. She had tried to run away from him only a few hours ago, so what would stop her now?
And what would happen if she ran? he asked himself.
He would be stuck here on foot. He would probably go inside, have a drink, and then wander away. Maybe hitchhike to California.
But Stella and David would be in danger, Cole thought. The Ancient Enemy would still pursue them, not him anymore.
It would be her choice if she was going to run away from him again—there was nothing he could do about it now.
His boots crunched on the light film of snow and ice that coated the parking lot as he walked towards the line of vehicles near the bar. The pickup truck was parked right next to a beat-up van, and he already had the multi-tool in his hand that he’d found in Bruce’s SUV so he could switch the license plates.
Nobody had come out of the bar yet, and he ducked down behind the van, working quickly to unscrew the Colorado license plate.
*
Stella watched Cole as he unscrewed the license plate from a big Dodge van. Her eyes kept darting from Cole to the entrance of the dark building with its neon bar signs in the windows. She could hear the faint thump of music from inside the bar and the occasional bray of laughter or a stray hoot or holler.
Cole had just finished switching the license plates on the two vehicles and he seemed like he was about to get inside the pickup truck, but then he stayed crouched down at the rear of the truck as the door of the bar slammed open. Two overweight men dressed in jeans, boots, bulky coats, and cowboy hats stumbled out of the bar and walked down the snowy walkway that had been cleared and salted.
Stella had no way to warn Cole that the men were approaching, but she was sure he’d heard them by now. She leaned back a little in the driver’s seat, keeping in the shadows. The keys to the Chevy Tahoe hung from the ignition … all she had to do was turn the keys and drive across the parking lot to Cole if they spotted him.
Cole kept still as the men stumbled down the sidewalk in front of the bar that had a pathetic line of snow-covered hedges underneath the windows. They laughed and clapped each other on the shoulders as they walked past the pickup truck and van towards a car that looked like it had been rescued from the junkyard; it had different colored quarter panels, a cracked windshield, and no hubcaps on two of the tires.
“What’s he doing?” David asked from the back seat.
Stella turned around in her seat and looked at David. “You’re awake.”
He knuckled sleep from his eyes and looked back out the window. “What’s he doing?” he asked again.
How was she supposed to explain this? “He’s borrowing a friend’s pickup truck so we can drive it back down to New Mexico. Back to your home.”
David didn’t say anything.
“We’re going to try to find someone to help you,” she told him. “We’re going to find a shaman. He can help you with your … your gift. Help you get stronger.”
David still stared out the window, watching Cole as he slipped in between the pickup truck and the van, and out of view of the two drunk men who were getting into the wreck of a car.
“You need to get stronger so you can fight back against the Ancient Enemy.”
“I don’t want to fight it,” David said in a voice so low she could barely make out his words.
“I know you don’t. I know it’s scary, but you’re the only one who can fight it. You’re the only one who can beat it. You understand that, don’t you?”
David didn’t answer.
“David?”
“Yes?” he finally answered.
“It won’t stop following you,” she told him. She didn’t want to scare him, but he needed to know the truth. “It will never leave you alone until you kill it.”
David looked scared as he stared out the window.
“I’ll be here for you as long as I can stay alive,” she said. “But you heard that thing when it was inside the motel clerk. It’s going to keep bringing people to us, people who will want to kill you. It’s scared of you, David. That’s why it does these things. You need to remember that … it’s scared of you. It’s scared of your power.”
The old car with the two drunks inside backed out of its parking space with a throttling rumble. The back end slid a little in the snow on the parking lot, and then fishtailed a little more when the driver hit the gas too hard. She couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not.
After the car left the parking lot, Cole went right to work on the pickup truck. Stella couldn’t see what Cole was doing because he was hidden in the darker shadows between the vehicles, but he was inside the truck within minutes. The dome light inside the truck hadn’t come on … either it didn’t work or Cole had smashed it right away.
“Is Cole going to stay with us?” David asked. “He’s not going to leave, is he?”
The thought of running away had crossed her mind again, but she shook her head no as she looked at D
avid. “No. I told you, he’s getting his friend’s truck so we can drive down to New Mexico.”
David seemed satisfied with her answer, or he didn’t feel the need to question it any further. She was sure he felt safer with both her and Cole around him.
“David … you told me before that your parents are gone.”
David just nodded as he watched Cole out the window. “They’re dead,” he said. “That thing killed them. It was inside my mom … and …”
David let his words trail off and Stella didn’t push him.
“There’s no one else in your family to take care of you?” she asked after a moment.
David didn’t answer.
Was he all alone? Stella wondered. Was he all alone in this world with a monster straight out of a nightmare pursuing him? And now the only protection he had was an archaeologist and a criminal. Stella felt like crying at the hopelessness of it all, but she needed to be strong for David.
She heard the pickup truck start up, and she looked across the parking lot.
Cole backed the pickup truck out of the parking space with the lights still off. He drove the truck slowly across the snowy parking lot, the engine idling. The brake lights flashed as he slowed down when he got to the road.
Stella started the Chevy Tahoe and followed him out onto the road.
CHAPTER 37
Southern Colorado
An hour later Stella still followed the pickup truck Cole had stolen. They had kept to the back roads for a while, and now they were driving down a road through the woods that seemed like a dirt trail covered with snow. She was afraid of getting stuck out here … they couldn’t be trapped out here in the woods, in the dark. The Ancient Enemy would find them again.
She pushed the thought away and concentrated on following Cole. The snow was a little lighter down here than it had been a hundred and twenty miles north, up in the higher mountains. Maybe the snowstorm hadn’t been as bad down here, but the driving was still slippery enough for her.
Finally, Cole pulled the pickup truck over on the side of the road in an area where the road widened out a little and the woods weren’t as close. She parked behind him and watched as he got out of the truck with its lights on, the motor still running. He hurried over to the Tahoe as she rolled the window down.
“Go ahead and get out,” he told her. “I’ll drive the Tahoe into that bare area over there.”
Stella didn’t respond. She turned around to the back seat and looked at David. “We have to get out now. We need to switch vehicles.”
David didn’t complain. He opened his door and stepped out into the night. As they walked away from the Chevy Tahoe, Cole got inside the vehicle and drove it across the road to a bare area, and then he drove it up as far as he could into the brush and the trees. Stella heard the branches and twigs snapping and scratching at the Tahoe, and then crunching underneath the heavy vehicle.
David took Stella’s hand as they hurried to the waiting pickup truck, smoke from the exhaust drifting up into the dark night, glowing red in the taillights. She felt the night closing in around them, and she thought she heard the sound of twigs and branches snapping somewhere else in the woods, on the other side of the road … something big moving around out there in the darkness.
It’s just your imagination, she told herself. She needed to get inside the pickup truck.
You’re not any safer in there than you are out here, her mind whispered.
Stella opened the driver’s door and hopped inside. She crawled across the bench seat, over the center console. She didn’t want to get in on the passenger side—she didn’t want to be that close to the woods. David crawled into the truck after her, and snuggled up beside her. She pushed the door lock down for the doors, but she kept the driver’s door wide open for Cole, who was already hurrying back through the darkness towards the pickup truck.
If there was a time that the Ancient Enemy could strike, it would be now, she thought. She could imagine a dark and constantly changing lifeform racing out of the trees or floating down through the air and enveloping Cole, trapping him before he could get to the truck.
But Cole made it inside the truck and he slammed the door closed on the cold air and the darkness. He put the truck in gear, turning it around in the middle of the road, and then he drove back the way they had come.
“Shouldn’t we set fire to the Tahoe or something?” she asked as they drove away.
He looked at her strangely.
“Get rid of any evidence,” she added.
“That’s just in the movies,” he told her. “Setting fire to that truck would be like setting a signal fire for the cops. As far as evidence goes, they already know I stole that guy’s truck. Besides, I wore gloves the whole time.”
Stella nodded.
“Stick to archaeology,” he told her with a smile.
David snickered right beside her, looking up at her with a grin.
Stella looked at David. “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” he giggled.
“Aren’t you sleepy?” she asked him. It was about two o’clock in the morning now. “You can hop in the back if want to lay down.” The truck had a full-size king cab in the back, but there were a lot of tools and other junk back there that David would have to move out of the way first.
“No,” he answered.
He had slept for a few hours earlier and she suspected that it would be difficult for any of them to relax until they were out of these woods. The claustrophobic walls of trees on both sides of the road reminded her too much of the road to Tom Gordon’s cabin, and the driveway, and everything that had happened there. She didn’t know why Cole had to drive so far into the woods to ditch Bruce’s SUV, but at least it was done and over with.
“There’s a … a smell in here,” Stella said, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah,” Cole answered. “Like old socks and a wet dog.”
Again, David laughed. He was probably overly tired and happy now that they were safely inside a vehicle and leaving these woods.
Safe? She thought. That was a laugh. They wouldn’t be safe until … until what? Until they found a shaman and he taught David how to defeat that thing out there once and for all? Who was she kidding? What were the chances of all of that happening? What were the chances of finding this shaman that she had only heard whispered rumors about before, the man called Joe Blackhorn? What were the chances Joe Blackhorn was even still alive? What were the chances he would be willing, or even able, to help them? What were the chances that any of them would survive until then?
But she couldn’t think about that. She would drive herself crazy if she kept torturing herself with these thoughts. All she could do was push on and keep moving. If it didn’t work out, then they would figure something else out … but she wouldn’t ever give up.
As Cole drove the rumbling pickup down the rutted, narrow trail through the woods, Stella stared out at the black forest. The trees whipped by in a dark blur. The only light came from a mostly full moon and their headlights. She could imagine the Ancient Enemy, whatever it was, hurrying through the brush and trees, following them as quickly as their truck moved, some kind of constantly shifting creature that could be insectoid at one moment, and then reptilian, and then part sea creature, and then something else that human eyes had never seen before, something that couldn’t be understood, something that could fry human wiring and drive them insane if they stared at it too long.
David snuggled up against Stella. She looked down at him to see if he was nodding off, but he just stared straight ahead out the windshield with wide eyes. He was quiet again. Of course with the trauma he’d been through, she could understand his silence. She was surprised that he hadn’t suffered more serious mental shock so far. But sometimes children were more resilient in these areas than adults were, especially when it came to something unexplainable. It was easier for David’s mind to accept that a monster was out there in the darkness, popping in and out of dimensions, f
rom its own world into ours whenever it wanted to.
Time seemed to stretch out, but eventually they were out of the dark woods and back onto a paved road. They drove south down a road they had mapped out on one of Bruce’s maps earlier.
“We’ll find somewhere to crash for a few hours,” Cole said as he drove. “It’s too risky driving around out here at night with the cops looking for us. We’ll start driving again around five o’clock in the morning, that way we’ll look like any other pickup truck on its way to work.”
Stella didn’t say anything. Cole seemed to know what he was doing when it came to criminal matters. She just stared out the passenger window, comfortable with David snuggled up against her.
CHAPTER 38
Southern Colorado
David crawled into the back seat of the pickup truck and went to sleep by the time they got to the next town.
Cole drove slowly down the streets until he spotted an all-night diner/truck stop. He parked in a far corner where some semi-trucks were parked. Their pickup truck was hidden from view of the street, partially blocked from the other trucks, but it still felt somewhat safe for the moment.
He left the pickup running for a while, but turned off all of the lights. It felt warm and safe to Stella for the first time in a while.
“I guess you don’t have any kids,” Cole said after a long moment as he sipped some coffee that they’d bought at a gas station thirty minutes ago.
Stella shook her head. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. If you had a family, I would think you would be trying to get back to them right now.”
It made sense to her. Maybe Cole was more perceptive than she gave him credit for.
“Let me guess,” Cole said. “You’ve been too focused on your education and career to have a family.”
“You should be a psychologist,” she told him sarcastically as she munched on a cold French fry. “What about you? Too busy stealing stuff for a family?”
