* * *
The ghost town materialized.
Gabe didn’t see it coming. One moment he and Luke were walking through the endless dark like swimmers in a sea without horizons. The next moment Mentiras appeared, its silent houses blacker even than the night.
Leaning toward Luke, Gabe whispered, “I’m betting the guy is long gone, but we need to be quiet just in case. Cool?”
Luke pantomimed the act of zipping his lips shut and elaborately stowing the key in his pocket.
Gabe would have to be satisfied with that. He hadn’t intended to bring anyone else into what might be a dangerous situation, least of all a kid; still, he wasn’t too proud to admit that he relished the company. Though he’d never feared the dark, this was darkness on a different level. But he didn’t expect to find anyone here this time. Whoever that man had been at the well, he’d likely gone elsewhere now that he’d been discovered, as these empty homes and wooden shells offered no real place to hide. Gabe believed this was true, but on the off chance that someone was still here, he didn’t want to be alone when he encountered them.
With a nudge he pointed Luke straight ahead. Though he’d initially planned to circle the town, he switched gears at the last moment and opted for the smart-bomb mentality of going right for the source. They passed through the narrow space between two walls, the angled rooftops occluding the stars. The wood still possessed a strong scent despite the years. Without rain to leech their essence, the boards hadn’t rotted with time. Captured in the amber of the Atacama, the town remained much as it had when nitrate miners had caroused here half a century before.
Gabe stopped at the end of the narrow alley, Luke so close behind him that he felt the boy’s heat. He checked the street in front of him, what was once the main thoroughfare. The well stood at its center point, the fulcrum that had once balanced the town.
Nothing moved.
Turn around. Drive away.
Gabe fought against the impulse to return to the truck. His desire to make sense of recent events battled with his heartbeat, now throbbing so forcefully that he felt it along the entire length of his body. What had Luke’s book said about Mars? Something about how its story was worth telling and its travelers determined to defend it. Whatever. Gabe damn sure wasn’t doing this out of loyalty for the Chilean desert, but rather absurdly for a dead man and a pinwheel.
Turn around. Drive—
“Shhh.” He bent at the waist and advanced on the well.
He made little sound as he moved, though Luke’s footfalls were somewhat heavier. There was something odd about the kid, which in fact served to draw Gabe to him, as Gabe himself had been a boy likely to have a sci-fi novel shoved in a pocket, ready to be whipped out like a blaster as needed. He’d spent his time not at high school football games or clandestine keg parties but instead at home with Doctor Who.
He reached the well and breathed through his mouth, listening, listening …
Convinced that he and Luke were alone, he dared to touch the well’s mortared bricks. Had he really seen a man climb out of this thing? Or had the man simply been crouched nearby and, upon standing up, given the impression of rising up from below? Either way, the well was certainly dry. Finding water here meant digging to absurd depths, and even then the reservoirs never lasted for long. Any divining rod used in this desert was merely wishful thinking.
“Gabe?”
Even though Luke whispered that single syllable, the word as light as a moth’s wing, Gabe touched him on the knee and transmitted a message of silence. Though Gabe might have merely imagined the man’s hiding place, he knew that the rifle was real. Even that moth’s wing would make them a target.
Gabe glanced over his shoulder. The light from the stars reached him after traveling for thousands of years and revealed nothing but the hollow husks of buildings.
He looked back at the well. It had no awning, no bucket, no capstan that might be cranked to deliver water from below. There was a time when it had been the town’s nucleus, but now it was nothing more than a ring of stone and probably bottle-dry at the bottom.
Gabe leaned toward it and peered over the edge.
Event horizon.
That phrase came to him as he stared down the well’s black throat. According to theory, the gravity of a black hole was so intense that nothing could escape its grasp, not even light, not even time itself. Though no one had ever observed a black hole directly, scientists assumed that its reach was defined by a special boundary, a galactic point of no return. They called it the event horizon. Run that particular stop sign and you were lost. Even God couldn’t get you out.
“Gabe?”
The shaft’s depth was anybody’s guess. Maybe it really was a black hole, a conduit to some other, more interesting part of the universe. Bolted to the bricks on the inside of the well was a ladder made of pipes and chain.
“Gabe.”
Gabe put his mouth next to the boy’s ear. “You’re going to have to be very quiet. I see something down there, a ladder, but I’m not sure what to do yet, okay?”
Luke nodded emphatically.
Gabe returned to his inspection of the well. The ladder wasn’t corroded with rust; in the total absence of moisture, nothing rusted. The individual rungs were made of steel pipes, through which passed lengths of chain. The apparatus looked homemade and descended into the unknown.
Nothing good is down there.
Gabe agreed. He would not discover a lost cache of bandits’ gold nor hidden Incan artifacts. The wise thing to do would be to get in the truck, drive like hell to Calama, and wake Fontecilla from his well-deserved rest. Let the Ninja Turtles play Journey to the Center of the Earth. They were the ones with the machine guns.
Luke grasped the well’s edge and peered down.
Still Gabe heard nothing from below, and he suspected that sounds would carry easily up the stone-lined shaft. He supposed he was right about the man with the rifle. The bastard was too smart to hole up in his lair now that he’d been seen. He was far away by now.
Luke whispered, “What do we do?”
Gabe had a flashlight shoved into the pocket of his jean jacket, but he had no desire to use it, as its light would only reveal his position. Still, if he decided to brave the ladder, at least he wouldn’t be completely blind at the bottom.
Trusting that he was right and the Midnight Messenger’s killer had fled the scene, he gripped the rough lip of the well with both hands. “Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay right here. I’m going in.”
Before Luke could respond, Gabe swung his leg over the well, found the top rung with his foot, and crossed the event horizon.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mira’s hair trailed behind her in the rover’s wind.
Jonah Cable sat behind the controls of a vehicle that was little more than chassis, batteries, and tires. After locking his chair into position and running a hasty diagnostic, he’d gotten them moving across the desert floor. The craft hummed as its electric motors turned the wheels. For quite some time, they’d ridden in silence, each of them armed with three water bottles that Eduardo had supplied. With the nitrate gone, the most valuable thing in this desert was what you kept in your canteen. Every time you ventured out, a chance existed that some random element of the wilderness would cause you to lose your way. And once lost, you rarely came back.
Having been warned of this, Mira hoped that Luke was wearing his Danger Cap.
Her brother hurt himself from time to time. He forgot things. He got too caught up in his imagination. The Danger Cap helped him pay attention. It kept him safe. As long as he concentrated on wearing it—figuratively, anyway—he wouldn’t miss the warning signs.
“Looks like we’ve got about ten more miles,” Ben observed, indicating the GPS unit that glowed from the rover’s control panel. Before departing, they’d programmed the coordinates of something called Mentiras, the place Traylin had mentioned. Jonah had located it in ACEF’s exten
sive map archive, though he admitted he wasn’t aware of any towns or settlements in the area. “Shouldn’t be much longer,” Ben continued, “even if this here Martian dragster isn’t really breaking any land speed records. You hanging in there?”
“I’m an overprotective sister,” she said. “Hanging in there is what I do.”
Ben seemed to understand. Mira realized that at some point she’d stopped thinking of him by his last name. Friends happened suddenly sometimes. Mira was thankful for it, especially now when she was having to deal with what her mother would’ve called a Lipstick Smear. Lifelong waitress and junkie to the manner born, Cathy Westbrook scaled every problem to the same size, so that a spilled cup of coffee and an eviction notice were of equal consequence. Just another Lipstick Smear, baby, so dig the compact out of your purse and deal with it.
“… but it’s primarily used out here to test its utility in the field,” Jonah said, waving a hand at the rover’s skeleton of roll bars and supports.
Caught up in the tangles of her own worry, Mira heard little of this tour-guide spiel, her thoughts only on her brother and where he’d gone. But even as she anticipated their arrival at Mentiras, she remembered what the cabbie had said in Santiago. Sometimes waiting for something is better than seeing it arrive.
“Just be okay,” Mira said to the wind.
The wind, promising nothing, did not respond.
* * *
Gabe stepped from the ladder and touched down on the unknown. What had passed for darkness in the world above was only an amateur. Here was where the grown-up darkness dwelled, the stuff without stars.
He heard nothing. If the rifleman was hiding nearby, he was holding his breath.
Gabe switched on his flashlight.
A tunnel appeared, boring through the wall of the shaft and leading to what appeared to be a subterranean chamber. Whatever aquifer had once provided water to the people of this long-ago town had given up its final drop; the bottom of the well was covered in sand. When Gabe turned toward the passage, his feet made no sound.
He trained the light on the ground. Someone had walked a path in the sediment, going back and forth between the shaft and whatever waited in the cavern beyond. Had the Messenger been here, making some of those tracks? Had he visited this place and plumbed its secrets?
The ladder chains jingled.
Gabe looked up, the flashlight beam revealing the soles of Luke’s shoes as he descended.
So much for telling him to stay behind.
Luke’s movements were somewhat awkward as he cleared the last few rungs and reached the bottom. Before Gabe could warn him not to say anything, he whispered, “You can’t explore Mars without a partner.”
Gabe put a finger on the boy’s lips.
Luke nodded twice.
Gabe waited, listening for a hint that they’d been heard, but it seemed his prediction was correct. Realizing he’d been discovered, the rifleman had fled. He was likely on a motorcycle and halfway to Argentina by now.
Gabe proceeded along the tunnel. The low ceiling forced his head down. The walls were carefully shored up with boards that had probably been pilfered from the surrounding shacks. It was not the work of an afternoon or even a week. Someone had been down here for a while.
The crude hall opened onto what must have been the basement of a building that no longer existed in the stripped-down town above. Gabe surmised that the tunnel had been carved out to provide an escape route via the well shaft. Though Mentiras was mostly gone, its cellars and crawlspaces were intact and currently in use.
The narrow cone of light partially revealed the chamber’s contents. On Gabe’s immediate right was a control box of some kind, full of wires and fuses, and on the left was a bookshelf layered with the strata of stacked newspapers. Tables, benches, obscure tools—it was too much to take in at once. The strangest thing was the smell. Gabe swore it was freshly baked bread.
Luke poked him in the back. Gabe moved aside to let the boy step out of the tunnel. Together their eyes followed the light.
A headless mannequin stood sentry near an opening in the far wall. A piñata in the shape of a guitar hung from a coat hanger. None of it made sense. The room defied explanation. Was it a workshop? A hideout? A mad scientist’s lab?
Gabe went to the bookshelf and slid one of the papers free.
With Luke looking over his shoulder, Gabe focused the light on the headline but had no luck reading it. “Spanish,” he said into Luke’s ear. The paper was dated 13 May 1978.
He returned it to the shelf and walked deeper into the room.
On a trestle table lay an array of blades.
Gabe stopped so suddenly that Luke bumped into him. Like a spotlight highlighting props on a stage, the beam revealed the instruments one at a time: a crosscut wood saw, scalpels scattered like jackstraws, an army survival knife, half a dozen hacksaws, and a machete with a blade shaped like a boomerang.
They cut off his arm and legs.
Gabe closed his eyes, trying to fight off the image of the torn-up boy. But the more he pushed against it, just like the Buddhists said, the more the thought refused to leave his mind.
They chopped off his limbs like he was something for the goddamn stew pot.
Before his stomach could capsize, Gabe hurried away from the table, not bothering to keep Luke in tow, wanting only to distract himself from what he feared was the truth. His knee encountered a low bench that turned out to bear no horrors other than a tangle of frayed rope. Gabe brushed his fingers against it, noting its texture, its thickness, and most of all its solidity. He waited for that to anchor him.
The bread would not leave him alone. Nothing else could lay claim to that particular olfactory experience. As he was wondering about the scent, guessing at its source, a sudden light filled the room, startling him, blinding him.
He stumbled against the bench and turned around, a whistle of air hissing between his teeth. He brought the flashlight to bear, a meager club, a child’s toy, ready to strike at whatever target presented itself.
Luke stood near the tunnel, hand on the switch. “I don’t really like the dark.”
Gabe dropped the flashlight, bent over, and put his hands on his knees. He felt like crying out in relief, but his lungs were too intent on their work. He hung there with his mouth open. A single pellet of sweat dripped from his cheek.
“You sick?”
He looked up through his hair. His pulse beat in his jawbone.
“Gabe?”
With effort, Gabe wet his lips. “Pardon me while I change my underwear.”
“Huh?”
“You scared the shit out of me.”
“Shit is holy.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to believe it.” He straightened his back and looked around. “I guess that means we’re alone.”
“Yep. All the Martians flew the coop.”
Gabe examined the wires that ran across the ceiling and connected the mismatched bulbs. “These must be powered by batteries, because I don’t hear a generator running, do you?”
“Nope.” Luke shook his head. “What’s a generator?”
As his eyes continued to adjust to the sudden brightness, Gabe took a better inventory of the cavern. The ceiling was smooth, rounded where it met the walls, and supported by a pair of wooden beams encircled by a crawling ivy of Christmas lights. Tables occupied every inch of real estate save the aisle that ran from the tunnel to the exit hole in the opposite wall. Most of the clutter looked scavenged from Mentiras itself, the jetsam of a town that had been abandoned for fifty years.
Gabe inspected a stack of documents. Typewritten and numerically coded, they looked official, but official what Gabe couldn’t say. Only a few of the Spanish words made sense to him. Printed across the upper margin in all caps was DIRECCIÓN DE INTELIGENCIA NACIONAL.
“Are these real?”
Gabe looked over to find Luke holding one of the knives.
“You better put that down.”
“But are they real?”
“Looks like. Don’t cut yourself, okay? I’m going to have a hard enough time explaining why I brought you along. Let’s not make it any worse by bleeding.”
“Gotcha. Roger that.”
Gabe debated taking the papers or leaving them, then decided that he’d need some evidence to show Fontecilla. The documents weren’t proof enough to validate Gabe’s story, but it was either these or the scalpel. He rolled half a dozen of them into a tube shape and shoved it in his back pocket.
As he headed for the circular opening that appeared to lead to a second chamber, he briefly considered how strange it all was, to be exploring a bunker hidden beneath a dead town in the middle of the most barren place on the globe. The word they liked to use in horror novels was surreal, though Gabe didn’t think that was exactly right. Surreal meant fantastical and dreamlike. This was too grim for that. And too full of knives.
He peered into the room beyond.
At first he saw nothing to give him pause. A bare cot. A white plastic tub. Hoses running across the floor. A desk was made from sawhorses and an old door. The source of the smell was clearly the cast-iron stove in the corner. A potholder with a floral design hung from the oven’s L-shaped handle.
Then his eyes settled on the wagon.
The Radio Flyer was straight from the 1950s, purloined from the upper world and smuggled here to the nether region. Positioned near an exit across the room, the red wagon looked ready to be rolled away by a child who might soon return to claim it. A towel covered the bulge of the wagon’s cargo.
At the sight of the wagon and its hidden payload, the fear in Gabe’s gut was replaced by something more comprehensive. He’d never really experienced dread, not the real kind, and so it went without a name as it crawled through him.
Having no desire to go near the Flyer, he turned toward the tub instead. As he passed by the desk, he saw the gun.
Though its grip was that of any semiautomatic he’d seen in the movies, its barrel was thicker and rectangular in shape, marked with a strange series of grooves. It seemed unlikely that the rifleman would have left such a weapon behind, yet here it was.
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