Darkly The Thunder

by William W. Johnstone

“Good,” Watts said. “The son of a bitch won’t be able to sire any like him.”

  “We got more troubles,” a trooper said, entering the room. “Carl Lee was spotted about one hour ago, getting gas. He had two German Lugers stuck in his belt. Then he was seen following two college boys pretty close. They looked scared. Carl looked grim.”

  “Names of the boys?” Watts asked, quickly putting it all together.

  “We think they’re Alexander and Center.”

  “Get some people on it,” Watts ordered.

  “Captain?” another trooper stuck his head into the room. “The hospital just called. Judge Wentworth and the D.A. were just admitted to the emergency room. Both men have been stomped and it was Carl Lee who did the stomping. I guess he’s getting back at them for all the times they refused to indict and prosecute those Monte Rio shits. And for the times they hassled Sand. The judge is in bad shape.”

  “Goddamnit!” Watts hollered. “Where the hell is the sheriff?”

  “The sheriff took off for Denver about two hours ago. His deputies have cleared out. They’re running scared, now that Sand has flipped out.”

  “With good reason,” Watts said. “All the times they applied a double standard of law enforcement. All right, roll every man.” He walked to his office and got his rifle. “Are the roadblocks in place?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, boys. Let’s stop Sand and Morg.”

  “Shoot to kill, Captain?”

  Watts gripped his .30-06. “Yes. I somehow always knew it would come to this; felt it would. Sand was a genius; Morg was a genuine national hero. Something ... somebody, has to take part of the blame for what has happened, and will happen. But, I suppose as badge-toters it isn’t our position to analyze or criticize the present mores of society, is it, Sergeant?”

  The sergeant wasn’t really sure what Watts was talking about. “Ah ... I guess not, sir. Sir, you used the past tense talking about Sand and Morg.”

  Watts sighed heavily. He looked as though he had aged ten years in one hour. “Yes, I did. Sand told me just a few hours ago that I would soon Know, Kill, and Create. Very well. I know that much of what has occurred and will occur is not altogether the fault of Sand, I suppose that I will be the one to kill Sand. But what am I creating?”

  The sergeant didn’t know it at the time, but he was being very profound when he replied, “A legend, sir.”

  Sand took Morg back to his customized hearse, and they both headed for Thunder Mountain. Both now knew why that had to be. They took high risks when they discovered the roads were blocked off to traffic and that they were in no danger of killing some innocent. They laughed grimly at the gods of fate and chance. They took mountain curves at speeds no other hot-rodder had ever done – and lived to tell about it.

  Morg pulled up alongside Sand and yelled over the rush of wind and roar of engines, “I’m goin‘ out first, Sand. See you, pal!”

  Sand laughed with the now constant Force and lifted one gloved hand in a final salute.

  Watts and his troopers intercepted the hot-rodders at a roadblock just inside Blue Smoke Valley. The hot-rodders went through the blockade at eighty miles per hour, sending troopers scattering for cover as the wooden sawhorses were splintered and tossed high into the air.

  “Fire!” Watts yelled. The rifle slammed his shoulder and bucked in his hands.

  The night rocked with muzzle blasts.

  “I’m hit!” Morg yelled, losing control of his hearse. He went over the high side, shouting as he went down. Not a cry of fear, but a shout of defiance, directed at a world that does not care nor attempt to understand the nonconformist; to a society that decorates genuine heroes and then refuses to associate with them; to a society that would prefer a nation of clones, patterned after a very narrow concept of right and wrong, dress codes, social behavior, and arrogance.

  The polished hearse sailed through the air, headlights blazing, spinning in crazy space as Morg held on, laughing as he experienced his last ride. The tank exploded on contact with the rocky canyon floor, and Morg got his wish: he met Jane.

  Sand had slowed, spun around, and stopped, watching as his friend met what he had been born to meet. He got out of his car and watched the flames far below him. He could not see Watts raise his rifle.

  “Are you ready?” The Force asked.

  A line from Kipling came to Sand. “God help us,” he spoke to the night. “For we knew the worst too young.”

  “Yes,” the Force agreed. “But you also knew the best, and were able to see the middle ground and the flaws in what your world calls justice. And that is an accomplishment that few are able to achieve.”

  “Didn’t help me much, did it?”

  “Your contribution is still years away. Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  Watts shot him twice, in the stomach and in the shoulder, knocking him down on the road. Sand staggered to his boots and reached his Mercury. He dropped it into gear and roared out, tires smoking. He floored the gas pedal, tearing through the night, heading for Thunder Mountain, climbing upward. The pain from his wounds sent brilliantly flashing lights through his head.

  So this is how it feels to die.

  He didn’t care. Up the lower slopes of the mountain, faster and faster and higher and higher. He weaved from side to side in the gravel road.

  “Do it!” the Force commanded.

  Sand spun the wheel to the left and went over the side. The Mercury impacted with earth and sent him flying through the windshield. He landed on his chest and belly, one leg bent under him. He heard ribs crack and a leg pop as he hit the rocky ground. Sand lost consciousness for a few moments.

  When the blackness lifted, he lay still for a moment, disoriented in his pain. His nose and mouth were smashed and bloody. He ran his tongue over broken stubs of teeth. He was so confused that for a moment he thought that he was on his honeymoon with Robin, in Key West. He called for her. Something began shimmering far above him; but only silence answered his summons. He could hear sirens below him.

  Reality stuck him hard with hot agony. Fighting the pain, Sand began climbing and crawling toward the shimmering lights far up the mountain. He used the powerful muscles in his arms to pull himself upward.

  After several minutes of painful climbing, he stopped and looked down the mountain. Men and lights moved below him. Death circled below him, death circled above him. The shimmering shapes were closer. Sand shivered, as if the icy finger of the reaper had lightly touched him.

  “How prosaic,” the Force whispered. “Come along, young man,” it urged. “You still have some distance to go.”

  He dragged himself upward, higher and higher, mangling and bloodying his hands on sharp rocks. The pain in his chest became almost unbearable. He crawled on. He was almost to the shimmering, misty lights.

  Then his strength failed him. He could go no further. For the first time in his life, the young man gave up.

  “Oh, the hell with it,” Sand muttered, blood from his lips staining the ground. He pressed his face against the coolness of mother earth. “What’s the use?” he questioned the night. He laughed, a grotesque, blood-spraying vocalizing of dark humor. “You can tell everybody you were right, Dad. You said I’d never amount to a hill of beans.”

  “Your father was wrong,” the Force told him. “Your father judged everything from a materalistic point of view. He was, and always will be, afraid to challenge the system. He is a narrow-minded, bigoted, cowardly little man. He is everything you were not. You know the value of beings, including God’s lesser creatures. Someone had to do you harm before you would think ill. You did not expect more from an animal than you did from humankind. Every good and bad point is recorded.”

  Sand raised his head as all pain suddenly left his broken body. His world was very clear and bright. The lights of towns widely separated shone below him. “You couldn’t break me,” he spoke to society. “You never made me beg. And you couldn’t make me con
form.”

  “Was it worth it?” the Force asked.

  “You bet your ass, it was.”

  The Force laughed.

  A few hundred yards below Sand, Watts and Mack stopped as the sounds of the laughter reached them.

  “What the hell is that?” Mack asked.

  “I’m not even sure I want to know,” Watts replied. “Come on. He might be still alive.”

  “What if he is, Al? What are you going to say to him?”

  “I’m going to apologize.”

  The laughter of the Force faded into a chuckle. “Rebel to the end, right, Sand?”

  “You got it.”

  “Very well. Lift your eyes upward.”

  Sand turned his head and looked. Robin was standing a few yards away. He smiled at her. “I love you, Robin,” he spoke to the shimmering image before him.

  She was so beautiful, so fresh-looking and lovely. She was peaceful, dressed in a garment of sparkling, misty colors. She seemed to be... he struggled for the word. Fluorescent. She returned his smile.

  And she held their son. But the boy had grown, as if time had somehow hung suspended for Sand, and flown for them. The child laughed and waved at his father.

  Joey was there, holding hands with Tuddie. Morg and Jane stood beside them. None of them appeared to be touching the ground; but instead seemed to drift slowly about, smoothly and effortlessly. Their movements fascinated Sand. He reached out to touch Robin.

  She laughed and moved away. “Oh, no, Sand. Not yet. It is not yet permitted.” The child laughed with its mother. Robin’s voice was deeper than Sand remembered. Hollow, almost spiritual in tone. She seemed to be speaking from a great distance. “You have to make up your mind to join us, Sand. We’ve waited for such a long time. Finally, we got permission to come down to join you.” She held out a small hand. “Come on, now, honey. It’s time. You’ve run out of time, as you know it.”

  “Wait for me, Robin,” he gasped. “Wait for me.”

  Morg said, “It ain’t half-bad once you get used to it, man. It ain’t that real good place; but it ain’t that bad place either. You gonna have some talkin’ to do, but you can do it. Come on, Sand. We got a lot of catchin’ up to do.”

  “You’ve waited so long?” Sand whispered. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, my old friend,” Joey said. “Come on over, Sand. You made your point. We all did. It’s done.”

  “Not yet,” Sand muttered.

  Tuddie smiled at him, her blonde hair all sparkles and multicolored hues. “You never were one to give up, Sand. But it’s over where that small part of you still lives.” She pointed. “There is the door, and there is the path. Take the door, and follow the path.”

  Sand looked at Jane. The beatnik girl said, “There is no need to fear death, Sand. For the word is a contradiction. You’ll soon see that.”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” Sand managed to say. He could hear the footsteps coming up the mountain. And he knew it would be Al Watts. “Just give me a minute.”

  “He’s talking to someone, Al,” Mack said. “Jesus God, who is he talking to?”

  But Watts chose not to reply to that.

  “Just one more minute,” Sand pleaded.

  “Your time stopped hours ago,” the Force whispered.

  Sand looked into the distance and could see the lights of Willowdale and of Monte Rio. Painfully, he turned his face toward the twin cups of light shining through the night. Just before infinity took him winging into the unknown that humans fear and animals accept as a part of living, just before Sand joined his wife and son and friends, slipping through that misty curtain to stand on the shores of the dark river, the young man tried very hard to speak just two more words to the lights below him. The profanity would not form on his bloody lips.

  He was at peace with all things.

  He smiled, curving bloody lips. He thought: if You are doing this, would You just cool it for a minute, please?

  “He is not,” the Force told him. “But I will give you the necessary seconds for your final salute to the world that birthed you and killed you.”

  “Thanks,” Sand said to the voice that only he could hear.

  “I think,” the Force added, “that you are going to turn into the proverbial pain in the butt.”

  “Probably,” Sand agreed. Just as his mouth filled with blood, his lungs, punctured and torn, collapsed, just seconds before his heart stopped, Sand clenched his right hand into a bloody fist and extended his middle finger to the lights below.

  “Fuck you,” he said. His final hail and farewell to a world that had birthed him one too many times.

  He looked up and saw Watts and Mack standing over him. He spoke to them, and hoped they understood.

  The sighing winds on Thunder Mountain became a shrieking cry; the mist became a shroud for Sand. The clouds moved in, covering him. His legs trembled and jerked, the coldness now moving swiftly, touching each part of him, finally stilling the heart.

  His last conscious thought as the electricity left him was: I just wanted to be me. I just . . .

  Sand’s physical body died on the mountain, his field of force that would never die moved from him to join his friends. The clouds swept away, presenting a velvet sky pocked with diamond stars – luminaries that seemed to play a silent symphony over the mountains and valleys. A dirge for the fearful, timid beings who are content with the ordinary and do not care what might lie beyond the next mountain. But it was a cantata of rebirth for those few, who are ever fewer in number.

  The hall clock in the empty house began ticking, its mainspring repairing as time directed.

  Julie von Mehren had awakened when a strange force began humming, circling her bed. She rose, to stand by her window, watching the sky over the mountains.

  “So he’s dead,” the old lady muttered. “I’m sorry, Sand. I’m sorry.”

  Captain Watts and Mack stood over the broken, bloody body. Both of them heard the words he whispered; neither of them, then, knew what he meant.

  Watts shook his head and smiled through his tears. Sand’s right arm was raised, propped against a rock, the middle finger still erect.

  To Know, To Kill, To Create.

  “What a waste,” Watts spoke to the night. He knelt down, opening the fist, erasing the obscene gesture. “You made your point, Sand. And, by God, I agree with you.”

  Watts stood up just as something almost tangible moved in front of him. He would swear for years that whatever it was, was laughing. A victorious laugh, as if even in death, Sand had won.

  The thunder began to roll.

  “Captain?” the voice came from behind him.

  Watts turned. “Yes, Gleeson?”

  “Carl Lee killed two college boys about an hour ago. He just turned himself in.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You have the tapes all packed up, Bos?” Gordie asked the burly college student. He had returned to the office for one more check.

  “Yes, sir. They’re secure.”

  He looked at his watch. It would be dark in about an hour.

  “Is there anybody left alive out there, Sheriff?” Howie asked.

  “No one, son. With the exception of us, it’s a ghost town.”

  In more ways than one, Sand’s thoughts popped into his head.

  I bet you weren’t a Boy Scout, Sand.

  Oh, yes, I was, until I got kicked out.

  Gordie chuckled. Why?

  Stole a rubber raft and tried to make it down river to the Girl Scouts. Now listen, Sheriff: you and the others be in the alley between the pool hall and the grocery store at seven fifty-nine this evening – your time. I’ll be there to guide you. Don’t be afraid. You have two prisoners left in your custody. I would advise you not to bring them; but that, of course, is up to you.

  I can’t leave them to die, Sand.

  I understand that. But if they try to bust out of the path, they will suffer a much more severe fate.

  Can yo
u tell me what?

  No. That is forbidden.

  I’ll warn them.

  Good. Go back to work. I’ll see you all in about an hour.

  Gordie explained what Sand had just told him, then looked at Dean. The reporter met his gaze. “Have Sunny and the kids in the alley several minutes before the deadline. Angel knows where it is.”

  The reporter nodded his head. “I’ll have them there, Sheriff. And that’s a promise.”

  “I know you will. Howie, where is Fury?”

  “Still on the mountain, Sheriff.”

  Gordie walked over to Watts and Mack and stuck out his hand. “I wish you boys would change your minds about this.”

  Watts smiled and shook his head. “We talked it over, Gordie. We’re staying and buying you people some extra time. Mack and me will be leaving now. No elaborate goodbyes for any of us, please. Just . . . good luck to you all.”

  Without another word, the two men picked up knapsacks and walked out the front door.

  Several in the room were silently weeping, both men and women.

  “I liked those men,” Howie said, his voice husky. “I liked them both a lot.”

  The boy shut the door to his computer room.

  President Marshall rose refreshed from his nap. He showered and carefully shaved with an electric razor, then dabbed on aftershave and dressed casually He had sent his wife to their summer home for the duration of this . . . he smiled. What the hell to call it?

  It would probably be referred to as an Incident.

  He walked into his living quarters and rang for coffee. Along with his coffee, there was a sealed folder. When the porter had left, Marshall sugared and creamed his coffee, sipped, and then broke the seal, opening the folder.

  He read it through and through, then read it again, becoming furious with each read. He hurled the folder across the room and swore, loud and long. He stopped swearing when a knock came on his door.

  “Come!”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of State, DCI from CIA, the heads of Treasury, FBI, NSA, and a dozen more top level men and women.

  The DCI spied the folder and retrieved it. “I gather you disapprove of the plan, sir?”