Moments later, they ducked through a short passageway and emerged into an inner chamber. In a corner lay Gartrell Mayo. His clothes were dirty from his mad scramble through the woods and dried blood from his gunshot wound stained the lower half of his chambray shirt. The nude albino woman with the cowboy hat and spurred boots knelt beside him, bathing his ashen face with cool water.
Miss Mable was across the chamber in a flash. “Step aside, sister,” she said, crouching beside the injured sheriff. “Gart? Can you hear me, old man? It’s me…Mable.”
Gart cracked his eyelids a fraction. “You albinos sure have a lot of nerve, changing into a shriveled old busybody like Mable Compton. Don’t you have any more imagination than that? Make a dying man happy. Bring on the naked ladies.”
Miss Mable glared from behind her bifocals, drawing a low chuckle from the elderly lawman. “I swear, Gartrell Mayo, I should’ve left you up here to rot!”
“Well, I’m mighty glad you didn’t,” he said with a wry wink. “So, how about a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to bring this old man back to life again?”
The landlady frowned at Gart a moment longer, then bent down and planted a big kiss on his gray lips. After she was finished, Gart looked up at her in stunned surprise. “Lordy, woman, you pert near sucked out my dentures with that one!”
“How do you feel, Gart?” asked Glen as he and Jenny knelt beside the wounded man.
“Well, I won’t be joining in any high-stepping square dances anytime soon, that’s for sure. The albinos stopped my bleeding, but I still have a bullet buried in my gut and some of my feeble old bones are in more than one piece.”
“Don’t worry. We’re going to get you to a hospital soon.” Glen called LaBlanc over. “Do you think you could gather up some stuff to fix up a stretcher with? Maybe a couple of long poles and something to make a sling in between?”
“I will send some of my brethren into the forest to get you what you will need,” promised LaBlanc. He drew some of the albinos aside and spoke to them briefly. They left the chamber to retrieve the materials that Glen had requested.
Gart regarded his visitors, looking from one concerned face to another. “Where’s Rowdy?” he finally asked. “Is Rowdy with you?”
An awkward silence drifted between them. Finally, Jenny decided to let him in on what had happened since his late-night ambush. She told him of the bloody massacre at Rebel’s Roost and the puzzling disappearance of his grandson.
After she finished, Gart laid his head back on the stone floor and stared at the ceiling of the cave. “If anything bad has happened to him, I’ll never forgive myself,” he muttered, looking downright scared.
“Don’t worry,” said Miss Mable, taking his hand. “That boy is just as ornery and leather tough as his grandpa is. He may have gotten the same idea as we did and came up here looking for you. Hopefully he’ll turn up before long.”
Gart Mayo didn’t answer her. He clutched Miss Mable’s hand tighter, fighting the mixture of pain and nagging fear that gathered in the pit of his belly, making for an unpleasant combination. He remembered the invitation he had sent Rowdy a few weeks ago, suggesting that he come to the mountains for a vacation. He couldn’t help but wonder if his well-meaning offer hadn’t turned sour in the wake of the violence that had hit Peremont County and if his grandson hadn’t become an unwilling victim.
Chapter Thirty
Alice and Dale were hiking up the southern face of Pale Dove Mountain when they heard a noise drift from a stand of oaks up ahead. They paused, straining their ears, trying to detect the familiar sound of crackling that signified the changelings’ bizarre metamorphosis. But this noise was different, more rhythmic and coarse, almost nasal in nature. In fact, the closer they came to a particular oak among the others, the more the harsh racket resembled that of deep and unconscious snoring.
Puzzled, Alice and Dale looked at one another. The woman silently motioned the boy forward, signaling the intention of confronting the sleeper from both sides of the tree. Dale understood and nodded his agreement. They quietly encircled the oak and then jumped into the open at the same time, faces full of menace and baseball bats raised threateningly overhead.
“All right…don’t move a muscle!” warned Alice. Then, abruptly, on seeing the identity of the snoozing man, her apprehension was replaced by heartfelt relief and she let the bat drop to her side. “Well, look who it is.”
Rowdy Hawkens staggered sleepily to his feet. His red hair was sticking up in a dozen tousled cowlicks and his Western clothes were wrinkled, and filthy from his frantic nocturnal trek through the forests of Pale Dove Mountain. He stood with his back to the tree, a flashlight in one hand and his .44 Magnum in the other. “Howdy,” he managed with a yawn and a smile.
Alice hesitated for a moment, then launched herself at the lanky singer, planting a passionate kiss on the man’s lips. Rowdy was both surprised and delighted. “Now that’s the way to wake a man up in the morning!” He was about to take the brunette in his arms and return the show of affection when he noticed Dale standing there, frowning and rolling his eyes. Rowdy smiled softly at Alice, sharing her sudden embarrassment. “Later,” he promised.
“We came up here looking for you and here you are sacked out under a tree,” said Dale, leaning his bat over one shoulder. “So what’s the story?”
Rowdy told them about overhearing Homer Peck and his gang in Rebel’s Roost and going out to the jeep to get his gun, with the intention of making Peck take him to the location of Gart’s ambush. He mentioned being knocked cold, obviously by the Dark’Un, but he didn’t go into great detail about the bloody massacre he had discovered in the tavern afterward. He was trying to forget that horrifying scene himself. “I drove up here and hid my jeep in a blackberry thicket on down the mountain. I figured there might be some more Eco-Plenty goons lurking around up here. Anyway, I took to the woods and roamed around in the dark, looking for Grandpa most of the night. I sat down under this tree around dawn to take a little rest and I reckon I must’ve fallen asleep out of pure exhaustion.” He checked his watch. “And it must’ve been a good rest, too, ’cause it’s nearly noontime.”
“You should have told somebody before you went running off on your own,” Alice told him. “You had us worried half to death, turning up missing like that. Jenny, Glen, and Miss Mable are already up here somewhere, searching for you and Sheriff Mayo.”
“Well, I’ve been found,” said Rowdy. “Now all we have to do is find Grandpa and the others.” His stomach growled and he eyed the two hopefully. “Ya’ll wouldn’t happen to have some vittles on you, would you?”
Alice and Dale checked their backpacks. They eventually came up with a Snickers bar and half a bag of trail mix. “Well, it ain’t ham and eggs, but I reckon it’ll have to do.” He munched on the food as they began to walk toward the western face of the mountain, hoping to find some sign of the others at the abandoned cabin.
Suddenly, a stuttering roar sounded from the sky overhead. They stopped in their tracks and peered through the tree tops, trying to identify the source of the approaching noise.
It was a squadron of helicopters, circling the swell of the mountain. Rowdy noticed that there were two kinds of choppers. One was large and bulky; its doors open, revealing a number of armed men inside. The other kind was smaller, more sleek and compact, clearly outfitted with destruction in mind. Machine guns jutted from the nose turrets and missile pods were secured to the landing skids.
They watched as the transport choppers winged their way toward the foot of the mountain, as if searching for places to land. The attack choppers patrolled overhead, keeping an eye on both the ground below and the sky above. “Looks like we’ve got a full-scale invasion on our hands,” Rowdy said grimly. “And if I ain’t mistaken, we’re gonna be right in the middle of it in a matter of minutes.”
Changing their direction, they plunged deeper into the forest. They began to ascend the mountainside, keeping their eyes peeled for movemen
t in the woods behind them and their ears alert for the sound of approaching men. Minutes later they spotted a number of camouflaged soldiers armed with automatic weapons stalking the forest, laughing and joking, firing concentrated bursts of gunfire at any wildlife unfortunate enough to stray into view. From their lack of hesitation, it appeared as though they had been given the order to shoot any living thing on sight…and that probably included human beings.
“What are we going to do?” whispered Alice. The baseball bat in her hand suddenly seemed silly and ineffective.
“I don’t know,” admitted Rowdy at a total loss for ideas. He looked down at the Magnum revolver he held and knew that it was absolutely no match for machine guns and assault rifles.
Dale motioned from where he stood near a clump of blackberry bramble. “Quick, over here,” he called quietly. They joined him and found that he had discovered a small cave set within the side of the mountain. The heavy brush obscured the opening so completely that it was a stroke of luck that the boy had even noticed the entranceway hidden there.
“I don’t know if I cotton to the idea of being holed up in that rabbit burrow,” Rowdy told them. “If those fellas find us hiding in there, we’ll really be in dire straits.”
“It’s either that or stay out here and get shot full of holes,” Alice said. “As for me, I’d rather take my chance in the cave.”
“I reckon you’re right,” agreed Rowdy. He accompanied them into the cramped opening, squeezing past the wicked briers of the thicket. They crawled into the dank passageway, regaining their feet as the tunnel grew larger. They could hear the soldiers almost directly outside the cave now, ascending the mountainside. They waited for a shout of discovery and the sound of approaching footsteps, but neither came. The cave was passed undetected.
“Looks like we’re stuck in here for awhile,” said Rowdy. “Got any suggestions?”
“Yes, I suggest we do a little spelunking,” said Alice. She took the flashlight that Rowdy was carrying and snapped it on. She shone the light down the corridor of raw coal, which seemed to shoot straight into the center of Pale Dove Mountain. “Any objections?”
“I sure as hell ain’t got nothing better to do,” Rowdy replied. “Lead the way, Dinosaur Lady.” Soon he was following her and Dale into the dark depths of the Tennessee mountain.
Jackson Dellhart and Vincent Russ stood next to the Bell transport that had brought the operation’s Blue Team to the southern face of Pale Dove Mountain. They lingered at the chopper and watched as Desmond Jamal and his mercenaries made a slow and experienced ascent up the wooded mountainside.
“What now?” asked Russ. He hoped that his boss had changed his mind about exploring the mountain on their own and decided to stay put until the military strike was completed. But he knew that Dellhart’s mind was still on its single track when the man produced the infrared map and spread it out on the ground next to the helicopter.
“According to this chart there is a natural cave located somewhere on this side of the mountain. The thermal readings show that it links up with a cavern of incredible size somewhere within the heart of Pale Dove Mountain. I suggest that we leave the operation in the capable hands of Colonel Hendrix and his grunts and start searching for this entrance. No telling what we might find hidden inside.”
“Yeah,” said Russ. “Like maybe that joker who’s been giving us such a hard time.”
Dellhart patted the .380 pistol on his hip. “We can take care of the bastard ourselves if we have to.”
“I’m not so sure. Remember what that surveyor Graham said about the guy? About how he shot him point blank with a .45 automatic and it didn’t even faze him?”
Dellhart considered that, recalling the sheer ferocity of the photographs he had received chronicling the violent behavior of this meddler that his local spies called the Dark’Un. “Then maybe we ought to take some extra precautions,” he said. He caught the attention of the Bell pilot, a brawny black man named Hollinger. “Mind if we help ourselves to a few goodies back there?”
“Help yourself, man,” shrugged Hollinger. His eyes never left the issue of Rolling Stone he was reading. “Hell, you’re the one paying for it.”
Dellhart reached into an open crate and brought out a few fragmentation grenades. He handed them to Russ, who put them in the pockets of his windbreaker. Dellhart also found a spare walkie-talkie and clipped it to his belt. “Okay, let’s go.”
Vincent Russ hung back a few paces, letting his boss lead the way. He was still suspicious of Dellhart’s true motive for bringing him along. He slipped a hand beneath his jacket and felt the comforting hardness of the Browning pistol. If it came down to it, Russ promised himself that there would be no petty game of cat-and-mouse between him and Dellhart. Instead it would be an equal confrontation…cat versus cat. And he intended to prove the victor between the two.
“Take a look at this.”
Rowdy and Dale joined Alice in examining the inner walls of the subterranean passageway. The walls were an odd combination of translucent quartz and glossy black coal. In the artificial light of the flash they could see a varied collection of prehistoric creatures permanently encased in vast slabs of clear quartz. They all seemed to belong to the insect family—a wondrous catalog of huge dragonflies, wasps, and beetles that had inhabited the humid swamps of earth during the age of the dinosaur. They were perfect biological specimens suspended within the deposits of quartz, each whole and without sign of physical deterioration.
“Wow! Monster bugs!” Dale ran his hand over a fossilized mosquito twice the size of his hand. “I’d sure hate to get bitten by this bloodsucker.”
“I’ve never seen such well-preserved specimens from the Cretaceous period,” Alice said. “Most of the examples I’ve ever come across have become part of the stone formations they were trapped in, until only the skeletal structure remained. Sometimes in the case of plants and insects, there is only a faint impression left on the surface rock. But this is something entirely different. The quartz has preserved these creatures flawlessly. They’re in the same physical state as they were during their lifetime, some 135 million years ago.”
They walked farther down the dark corridor and stopped before a sharp bend in the tunnel. There, in a particularly vast slab of quartz, was a large depression of substantial size. It was a long, tubular recess, three feet in length and a foot in depth. Alice studied it closely and her eyes brightened with sudden excitement. “I can’t believe this,” she breathed. The professor took the flashlight and illuminated the slab. A jagged crack ran the height of the tunnel wall, from top to bottom. Large, jagged chunks of quartz littered the floor beneath the depression, where they had fallen from the ruptured wall.
“What’s so unbelievable?” asked Dale, watching as Alice stuck her head inside the recess and studied the strange indentations that scored the quartz deposit.
“If my theory is right, some sort of organism was encased in this wall, just as these other insects are. But some form of seismic activity—an earthquake perhaps—split open its quartz tomb during the last three thousand years. Or maybe I should say its quartz cocoon.”
Rowdy looked at her incredulously. “Are you trying to tell me the critter that was stuck in this wall wasn’t really dead? That it was snoozing away for millions of years and an earth tremor woke it up?”
“I know it’s pretty farfetched, but there is a remote possibility that the organism was subject to some sort of suspended animation. After the crack in the wall appeared, oxygen and moisture might have revived it. Maybe its metabolism was such that it could survive for such a long period of time in a state of advanced hibernation.”
“Do you think this thing in the wall might have been one of those albinos?” questioned Dale, in awe of their startling discovery. “Or maybe even the Dark’Un?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Alice. “But it doesn’t seem quite as fantastic as the incredible transformation these creatures can put themselves through. Maybe the
albino beings of Pale Dove Mountain are direct descendants of the thing that was trapped in this quartz deposit. Maybe they are descendants of a creature that science never even knew existed—a vastly intelligent and highly evolved organism that can alter the individual makeup of its cell structure at will, with remarkable speed and accuracy. It would require the perfect melding of mind and matter, a control over the physical structure that is almost too mindboggling to even consider. That’s the only rational theory I can come up with to explain the mysterious things we’ve witnessed in the past few days.”
“Exactly what did this darned thing look like?” asked Rowdy, peering at the long recess in the wall. “Can you tell from the hole it left?”
“From the size of the opening and the pattern of the impression that has been permanently etched inside, it appears to be some gigantic creature akin to the Chilopoda class of the Arthropoda family. In layman’s terms, a cross between a primitive trilobite and the present-day centipede. There are some peculiar characteristics, however, that distinguish this organism from any specimen previously known. The cranial capacity was much greater, which probably explains the immense intelligence of the creature.”
They were so wrapped up in Alice’s description of the missing fossil that they neglected to hear the sound of careful footsteps coming up the passageway behind them. By the time Rowdy detected the noise, it was too late to act. Before he had a chance to draw his Magnum, he felt the cold muzzle of a gun press against the back of his neck.
“Interesting lecture, Professor.” Jackson Dellhart grinned in the sparse glow of the flashlight. “But these incredible organisms you seem to hold in such high esteem mean absolutely nothing to me. Especially the one you call the Dark’Un. That’s why I have a crack force of seasoned killers out there right now, hunting for the damned pest.”
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