And still he kept tumbling. Less than halfway down the rugged hillside. When his eyes flicked open, the moonlight seemed brighter down here, away from the headlights and the gunshots. It was a silver disc in the sky one minute, then a powder blue dusting of light on the landscape another, depending on which way was up at any given moment. Rolling and bouncing. Up was down, then down was up. His world kept turning and pain was added to pain. The slope leveled out towards the bottom, but it was a false hope. It was a dusty ski jump at the bottom of the hill, and it shot Grant out for one final drop into empty space. He flew through the air like a rag doll. The impact of hitting bottom knocked the rest of wind from his lungs and left him dead and broken.
Almost dead.
Torches cut through the night, searching the hillside for the body. The gunfire stopped. The torch beams were off target by twenty feet. To Grant’s left. Or was it his right? He was barely conscious. The pain had become all-encompassing, leaving no room for any other feeling. Not heat nor cold nor the warm breath of life.
Raised voices sounded on the road above. Nobody tried to come down and find him. They were running out of time. There was a schedule to keep. A rendezvous at the border. Nobody could survive a fall like that. They were almost right. Grant lay in the shelter of the rocky outcrop that he’d sailed over and listened. The engines started up again. Doors slammed. Then the trucks set off towards their rendezvous, leaving the meddlesome cop for dead.
Grant slept. Or was unconscious. Whichever it was, he was out for so long that the night sky had turned to predawn blue before he woke into a world of pain. He knew he should have stayed awake. Letting himself slip into the half-life in this condition was dangerous. That’s how people died—when their bodies gave up and told them to rest. Just take a nap. Let your senses shut down for a while. Then, when they tried to wake up again, their systems wouldn’t come back online. That’s when the doctor would pronounce life extinct and you’d get your toe tagged in the county morgue.
Grant jerked awake. The mortuary out back of the Absolution Motel. That was his destination. Not as a corpse but as the first stop towards recovery. Recovery was a long way off. Surviving at all wasn’t a foregone conclusion. First thing Grant had to do was take stock. Judging by the pain pulsing through his body, that stock was going to be low.
He went to sleep again. He couldn’t help it. Sleep eased the pain, or at least when he was unconscious he didn’t notice it. Even before assessing his injuries Grant’s body began the miracle of self-healing. He’d seen it in combat. He’d seen it at road accidents. Mangled bodies that had no right to be alive, clinging onto that most precious of gifts until help arrived. Help wasn’t going to arrive at the bottom of the rocky escarpment. Grant was going to have to go to the help. But first he needed rest.
The second time Grant woke up, the pain had eased. Until he tried to move. Then it came back full force. That was good. Pain was an indication of where the damage was. According to the pain, the damage was everywhere. He started at the top down.
His head was throbbing but his eyes worked fine. A bit blurred at first until he blinked the dust out of them. That was essential. He’d need his eyes to help assess the damage. Sight and touch. To examine his head, he raised one hand to check for cuts and fractures.
Pain knifed up his arm.
Wrong hand. The one that was broken just above the wrist. He blinked tears of pain out of his eyes and examined the wrist. He was wrong. The arm wasn’t broken above the wrist; the pain just felt like it was coming from there. The wrist jutted at an unnatural angle: dislocated. That was better than a break because it was something he could reset himself. It was worse than a break because it meant there was more pain to come. Imminent pain. Right now.
Grant shuffled into a sitting position. A band of pain set his chest on fire. A couple of ribs were broken, but his spine felt okay. The numbness in his legs receded to pins and needles. He ticked those things off his list, then concentrated on the wrist. Using his good hand he laid the forearm across his lap. The wrist bulged out of its socket on the top of the arm and the hand lay flat, forming a fleshy S-bend. He gritted his teeth and carefully took hold of the hand. The dull ache became hot, sharp fire. The path of the dislocation was clear. The route back into the socket was equally clear. He’d seen it done before, just never done the procedure on himself.
He took the hand in a firm grip. Sweat broke out on his face. He slowly pulled forward. The pain intensified. The joint resisted. He pulled harder. His stomach threatened to lurch up his throat. He roared a primal scream to distract himself. Then a loud pop and a stab of pain signaled success. The wrist ached but the pain eased. He wiggled his fingers. They ached too.
He let out a sigh and focused his mind.
The predawn mist had burned off and the sky was already a dazzling blue. He checked his watch, but that had been on the injured wrist. The band had gouged flesh when it was torn off during the fall. He checked the length of the shadows. They were still long across the canyon floor. It was early morning. The rocky outcrop he was lying behind was still in shade. He had no idea how long the midnight operation had taken, but he guessed it must have been completed before dawn. That meant they’d already driven back along the winding road above him. Either they didn’t have time to look for his body or they’d searched and not found him.
That didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back in daylight.
He quickly finished his injury report.
There was dried blood and pain down one side of his head, but it didn’t feel like he’d cracked his skull. His lip was cut and swollen. The wrist he’d already attended to, and his ribs were cracked. That was the upper body sorted. The rest was easier to examine visually and physically. His jeans were torn and both knees skinned but there were no broken bones and no cuts so deep they’d need stitches. His trainers had stayed on his feet. Good. He’d be doing a lot of walking.
A loud squawk made him jump. He squinted into the sky and saw a huge black silhouette circling overhead. He’d seen buzzards in the movies but usually as a matte effect or a composite shot. Back in Yorkshire they had hawks and crows. Whatever this thing was, it was bigger than a Yorkshire bird. Typical America. Even the carrion was super sized.
He checked the sun again. It was beyond the hillside he’d tumbled down. East. His eyes followed an arc across the sky towards the west. He wasn’t sure how far they’d come from Absolution but he reckoned not as far south as Terlingua. That would be a long haul west across rough country.
Using the path of the sun as a guide, he turned right. North. The direction that any search party would be coming from. An injured man struggling over harsh terrain would be easy pickings. Even if he reached Adobe Flats, there was no way of getting a message to Hunter Athey. Grant would have to do some creative orienteering, and he’d better get started now.
He pushed himself up onto his feet. The world swayed around him. His vision swam, and he thought he was going to pass out. He took another deep breath. The horizon settled down. Everything ached, but the pain became more manageable. Holding the bad wrist across his chest to help protect the cracked ribs, he headed west. Just like Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum and their wagon train in The Way West, only slower.
twenty-four
“Holy shit on a stick.”
Hunter Athey jerked back in the doorway when the mortuary lights flickered on. Twilight was descending into night after another long, hot day in Absolution. A long, hot day that felt like an eternity for the bedraggled figure peering over the side of the wooden coffin. Grant lowered himself back into the cushioned interior.
“That bad, huh?”
Athey glanced over his shoulder, then stepped into the mortuary and closed the door. The dirt-encrusted blood down the side of Grant’s face was cracked and weeping. His knees were tattered shambles of torn skin and bone.
Athey sized up Grant’s needs in a few shor
t glances. “They told me you’d gone missing when they dropped the hearse off.”
Grant’s lips were sore when he spoke. “Sorry about the damage.”
Athey waved the apology aside. “What I heard was they’ve been looking for your body all day.”
He went to the stainless-steel washbasin and rolled up his sleeves. “When they didn’t find you, they searched here and the diner.”
He soaked a towel and brought it over to the coffin. “How on earth did you…”
Athey was lost for words.
Grant tried to move his lips as little as possible. “Evade and destroy. Without the destroy bit.”
His eyelids began to flutter, and the room tilted. He coughed up blood as he stared at the ceiling lights. Slipping into unconsciousness, the light grew brighter and hotter and infinitely more deadly.
Evade and destroy. Part of Grant’s military training. Fine when you’re fit and healthy. Harder when you’re battered and bleeding and lacking proper equipment or supplies. Slow going over harsh terrain when your legs don’t want to work and your head is spinning.
By the time the sun had reached its zenith, the rock and scrabble plain was baking hot. Grant had no food or water. There was no shade. He was a slow-moving target on open ground wearing an orange windcheater that stood out like a sore thumb. He took it off and turned it inside out. The beige lining blended with the desert landscape. There still wasn’t any shade. Sean Connery’s voice played in his head. “Where there is no shade from the sun, there is only desert. The desert I know very well.” The Raisuli with a Scottish accent. Connery’s Berber pirate might have known the desert well. Grant simply followed his nose.
He gave little consideration to evading his hunters because he wasn’t convinced they’d come hunting for him. Not in daylight, when they’d have to explain what Grant was doing out here in the first place. It was a plausible argument, but in the end Grant didn’t have much choice. Keep moving. Keep breathing. Anything else was icing on the cake.
Heading west into the wilderness instead of north towards Absolution would help a little bit. This wasn’t one of those Saturday afternoon Westerns he’d grown up watching. Macready employed mercenaries and local heavies, not Navajo trackers. Even so, Grant was careful not to leave any obvious signs. He tore strips off his T-shirt to bind his knees. The blood down the side of his face had already congealed into a scabby carapace. The desert floor was threaded with layers of rock. He avoided the sandy bottom and made sure he didn’t leave scuff marks on the rock. There was no blood trail to follow.
That was the extent of his evade and destroy technique. After that it was simply a case of keeping going. The heat was brain melting. The sun was so bright it forced his eyes into slits just to avoid going blind. It reflected off the rocks and the sand, turning the desert floor into a giant yellow fire. Even the hard blue sky was bleached to nothing, barely blue at all.
The heat was bad, but the dryness was a killer. Grant used his tongue to help salivate but it wasn’t long before moisture was a thing of the past. He tore another section off his T-shirt and tied it around his head. He barked a laugh at the thought of himself on a Scarborough beach with a knotted handkerchief on his head. The seaside postcard image of the Yorkshireman on holiday.
He looked back over his shoulder. Time had become meaningless, but he must have been going for hours because the hillside road had faded into the distance. The world had become bright and dusty and colorless. What little greenery had clung to life on the rocky hillside had long since gone. Out here on the hardpan, there was nothing alive apart from Grant and a few scuttling creatures he didn’t recognize. Then he saw a glint of light on the horizon to the east. He dropped to the ground and lay flat on his stomach to disguise his profile. So they were looking for him after all. He focused as best he could. Another glint of light. Then another. Further north of the first position. Towards Absolution. The obvious place for an injured man to be heading.
Grant rested for a few minutes until he was sure the hunters weren’t coming his way, then he slid backwards into a gully and began trekking west again. Less concerned about the sandy bottom now. More concerned about the pain and the dizziness and the complete lack of moisture.
The day dragged on. His progress slowed down. The heat muddled his brain and dulled his senses. The sun arced across the desert and pointed the way. At one point he came across a stretch of two-lane blacktop running north to south. The 170 to Terlingua. Too far for him to reach in a single day. Too much heat for him to survive out here for two.
He crossed the road and turned right after a hundred yards. Using the 170 as a guide, he headed north towards Absolution. If he kept moving, he reckoned he’d be there before sunset. He was wrong. Twilight was already biting by the time he crossed the railroad tracks west of town. The office light was on at the motel. What surprised him was the damaged hearse parked out front.
That stopped him short.
If Macready’s men had brought the hearse back, they might be waiting to see if Grant turned up as well. He watched from across the road. There was no obvious sign of a welcoming committee. There were no extra vehicles in the turnaround. There was no movement inside the office.
In the end, none of that mattered. Grant was out of options and out of water. He needed urgent medical attention. Careful not to be seen from the motel, he crossed the road at a crouch. He skirted the reception building and headed for the best place for a corpse to hide. The mortuary.
Jarring movement woke him up. The glaring overhead lights had gone. The world had collapsed into a small, dark space that Grant couldn’t identify. He wasn’t in the mortuary anymore. He was in something that bounced and swayed and had a wooden lid.
Panic flared his eyes. He had a brief Edgar Allen Poe moment, a vision of being buried alive. He pushed at the coffin lid. It lifted easily. It wasn’t nailed shut. Using his good hand, he opened a two-inch gap and peered out. Broken glass framed the window, and cool night air drifted across his face. The hearse was moving at more than a funereal pace but wasn’t speeding. That would look suspicious in the middle of the night. The hearse driving anywhere after dark would be unusual. Which begged the question, where the hell were they going?
“I’d keep my head down if I was you.”
Hunter Athey pulled out of the motel turnaround and headed west, away from town. The moon was up again, silvering the stretch of tarmac Grant could see all the way back to Absolution. There was no telltale glint of red from the taillights. Athey was driving dark.
“Too many prying eyes back that way.”
Grant nodded even though Athey couldn’t see him. What he was thinking was eyes like a shithouse rat. Cracked lips hurt when he smiled. Fifty yards along the road, Athey swung the hearse south onto a dirt track. Grant pictured the street map in his head. The traditional grid pattern with a few outlying streets forming the outskirts of town. South Lee Street looked impressive on the map but was barely even a track in reality. There were no houses and no railroad crossing, just the silver rails with packed earth built up along the sides. The hearse rolled and bounced again. Grant banged his head on the coffin lid.
“Where we going?”
Athey raised his voice over the creaking suspension.
“Told you. I hung up my shingle. Don’t keep much in the way of medical supplies anymore. Only one man around here can patch you up and keep quiet about it.”
Grant’s voice was a croak. “Terlingua?”
“Too obvious. We’re going to the Alamo.”
twenty-five
Dawn broke to a world of pain. Grant clenched his teeth as Doc Cruz cleaned the dried blood from the side of his face before seeing how many stitches would be needed. Not as many as he’d feared. More than he’d like. Hunter Athey handed Cruz towels soaked in warm water. Cruz used them to dab away the ugly mass of dirt and blood.
“You must have one
helluva thick skull, my friend.”
Grant tried not to smile. “Safest place to hit me.”
He swivelled his eyes instead of his head to indicate the room they were in.
“The Alamo?”
Doc Cruz continued cleaning the wound. “Safest place to hide.”
“Didn’t work out for John Wayne.”
“Didn’t work out for me and Hunter either.”
“I can see why you didn’t go into real estate.”
The Alamo was Cruz and Athey’s nickname for Fort Pena Colorado Park, a tourist campsite with cabins, trees, and a manmade lake. The creek was dammed just after it rounded the bend. The camp was an oasis of trees and lawns in the lee of a huge bluff that shouldered the eastern sky. There was no fort, it wasn’t in Colorado, and it was barely a park. Strike three for the medical entrepreneurs who had sunk their money into the white elephant twenty years ago, only to see it dry up with the creek that was supposed to feed the lake. The cabins had long since fallen into disrepair, but the tourist center was built of sterner stuff. Just like the Alamo.
Athey poured more water from the faucet into the kettle.
“I still use it sometimes.”
He waved towards the back room.
“Staff quarters. Buys me some peace away from Macready town.”
Cruz finished cleaning the side of Grant’s face and leaned close to examine the wound. He rinsed it with water from a jug.
“I get all the peace I want in Terlingua.”
Grant winced. “Apart from battered wives and angry husbands.”
“Apart from that.”
Cruz stood back from his assessment.
“Half a dozen stitches should keep your brains in place. Strap up your ribs. Then work on your knees.”
He opened a suture kit and selected a needle.
Adobe Flats Page 13
