The engine cuts out, and I listen for sounds from Long Beard and his rescuer. Nothing. I debate whether to rush up on them while I still can, but I have no idea if they’re still able to shoot. In the darkness, it’s too risky. Besides, with our only way out of The Pit now off the table, they’re just as screwed as Biyu and I. The Pit will take care of them soon enough. Keeping them away from camp will be the trick until one of them turns into a Wendigo, so to speak.
Keeping my footsteps light, I head back to camp. It’s easier navigating the lunar terrain knowing there’s no one above me with a rifle.
That’s about the extent of the evening’s easy mode. Back at the camp, Biyu is gone, along with the .45 and the bag of pills.
29.
“Biyu?” I say, calling out into the night. “It’s me, Chase. You don’t have to hide.”
I expect her to shuffle her way back to camp having thought I was one of the psychos, but she doesn’t show. It’s only me and a couple corpses next to a dying campfire.
However, Biyu didn’t cover her tracks well. Literally. I can see where she dragged her bad leg in the dirt. It draws a line leading away from camp. All I need to do to find her is follow the yellow brick road.
I wish. I’d click my heels three times and teleport to New York City, back to Ava.
I keep the .30-06 rifle at the ready and let Biyu’s trail guide my way. The light from the campfire soon fades, but I’m able to stay on course courtesy of that all-natural flashlight, the moon.
The trail leads me deeper into The Pit than I’ve ventured before. The terrain isn’t any different, but something feels off. My sense of direction is all screwed up. I’m not sure I could remember my way back to camp if it weren’t for the line in the dirt.
Maybe Biyu can. I spot her in a clearing illuminated by the moon. She stretches her arms out and offers the stars a series of peculiar shapes she forms with her fingers. It’s almost like a sign language.
Is she communicating to a spy satellite? Or did whatever is in that bag of pills make her go a little nutty?
Biyu stands without the help of a gig. I vote for the pills.
“Hey,” I say, trying to keep my voice slightly above a whisper. “Are you OK?”
“Shhh. I’m making a phone call,” she says up to the stars before mumbling something that sounds like Mandarin.
Definitely the pills.
“A phone call to the stars, huh? Did China just get E.T. in theaters?” I say.
“Shhh.”
“Please come back to camp. Let me help you with your leg,” I say.
Biyu stops her “phone call” and snaps her head to attention. “What? Who’s there?” she says.
“I already told you. It’s me, Chase,” I say.
“I didn’t call you,” she says and raises the .45 in my direction.
Yeah, I don’t think those were painkillers in that bag.
“I know. I followed your trail out here,” I say. “Just relax. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“You followed me? I knew someone was following me,” Biyu says and pulls the trigger.
I feel something metal pop inches from my side. Running my hand over the rifle, I can feel the scope is split in two. I’ll be shooting with open sights from now on. That’s less than ideal.
I don’t think this night could get any worse.
“Put the gun down,” I say before adding a soft, “Please.”
“I found it, you know,” Biyu says.
It?
“Did you?” I say and keep my eyes on the .45. It’s still pointing right at me, as if Biyu forgot it’s there.
“I could dig it up and show you if you want,” she says.
“With your leg, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“I’m fine. You’re always so worried. You say you want to help, but you really want to control, just like your country. You forget I am in charge now. I give you the money. You do what I say,” Biyu says.
She might have a point, but I think she’s confusing “control” with “making sure we get out of here alive.” I’m not about to make an argument, though. No matter who is in charge, she’s the one with the gun pointed at me. That’s all that counts.
“Right, you’re in charge,” I say. “What’s the next move, boss?”
“Go get fetch me that runestone,” Biyu says.
“OK, where is it?”
Biyu doesn’t respond. Instead she collapses in a heap where she stands. The .45 tumbles out of her hand, and I pick it up as fast as I can. Crouching down, I can tell she’s breathing, but she’s out cold. An empty plastic bag sticks out of her jeans pocket.
The pills. She took all of them.
I need to get her back to camp. We can worry about the runestone in the morning. But something stops me from hoisting Biyu into a fireman’s carry.
At first I think it’s the product of my emaciated imagination, but now it’s coming in clear. There’s a voice coming from the direction of the camp.
The psychos. Not only are they still alive, they found our camp.
I’m too far away for my eyes to see them, but my nose confirms their presence in a fresh plume of smoke. They tossed more wood on the fire, likely illuminating the bandana, canteen and other gear we just donated to them. Gone is my only way to source water.
We are truly, dearly, fucked.
I drag Biyu behind a boulder and lay prone beside her, rifle pointed toward the camp. I’ll wait until morning to take it back. The only trick will be staying awake. My body checked out hours ago.
Despite my best attempts, sleep comes in minutes. When I wake, the sun is hot and there’s someone shouting at me.
30.
“Get up, you lazy shit,” Long Beard says and kicks me in the side. Judging from the cutting pain in my ribs, he’s been working me over for a while. That’s nothing compared to the headache. I need water. Bad.
I open my eyes and find Long Beard hovering above me, his arm in a sling rigged up with a pair of cut off sleeves. His quiet companion watches the beating from a few yards away. Biyu is nowhere to be seen. Our weapons are in a pile behind Silent Man. My only protection is my clothing, and that’s not saying much.
“Where’d your chink friend go, huh?” Long Beard says and delivers another kick. “You better start talking or I’m going to do a lot worse than kick you.”
I hear what he’s saying, but my mind can only focus on one thing.
“Water,” I say with a croak. “Please. So thirsty.”
“You can have all the water you want if you tell us where that chink went,” Long Beard says. “We stored plenty of gear on that ATV that fell down. We’ll outlive you by weeks if we have to until our friends come looking for us. Your only way out now is to start cooperating.”
I close my eyes and try to lick my lips. Might as well rub them against a rock. I know dehydration can hit in a hurry, but I didn’t expect it to feel this bad this quick. After all the running around last night, I’m coming down with a mean case of “the thirst.” And the sun is only getting hotter in the sky.
“Wah…tur,” I say, weaker now.
“He needs a drink,” Long Beard says and turns to Silent Man. “Give him a canteen.”
Just hearing the words reinvigorates my body. I manage to get to my knees in anticipation of a cool drink. With a thunk a canteen appears at my feet. I unscrew the top and tip the water into my mouth. Only there isn’t any water. It’s Biyu’s canteen, and it’s empty.
“You want water? You got to earn it,” Long Beard says. He produces a plastic water bottle from his pocket. He’s sloppy as he drinks, water dumping from his mouth onto the ground. He swishes the last gulp between his teeth before spitting it onto my face. “I gave you a chance before to work with us. That’s all the water you’ll get for now.”
In the state I’m in, even the spit provides a measure of relief. It shakes my senses back to life, but I know it’ll only be temporary.
“On your feet,” Long Beard
says after crumpling the water bottle and bouncing it off my head.
I rise and brace myself against a rock. My sense of balance is all off, and it’s hard to keep from staring.
“I don’t know where she went,” I say between deep breaths.
“So she’s alive, huh? That’s good I guess,” Long Beard says. “She took off on you. Left you with the check. That’s why you can’t never trust no chink.”
“Stop calling her that,” I say. “Her name is Biyu.”
“Like bayou? Like a swamp? That’s not a name. That’s a good place to dump dead chinks,” Long Beard says.
I look to Silent Man while Long Beard gets in a good laugh. Unlike his father, there’s no expression on his face. He’s as granite as he is quiet. Makes me wonder if he’s as into this as the rest of his family. Then I see the tattoos beneath his wrists, and I know the stoicism isn’t an act. He’s part of the NSM, and I doubt he’d risk betraying the group like Fiddler did. Wouldn’t have made it this far if his intentions weren’t pure.
“She’s probably digging that runestone out right now, and her commie friends are watching her do it from space,” Long Beard says and points at me. “Maybe you should give them something else to watch.”
“I don’t know where the runestone is,” I say.
“Don’t matter, ‘cause we do. It’s buried in a cave on the western wall of The Pit, which is as far from this spot as it gets. They left a mark on the outside of the cave. It’s a number. Care to guess what it is?” Long Beard says.
By Long Beard’s expression, I’m guessing it’s an 88 or 14, but that wouldn’t make sense. The Nazis weren’t around at the turn of the century when the stone would’ve been buried, so the 88 is out. The 14 represents some sort of 14-word neo-Nazi manifesto, also placing it out of date.
I decide to jerk his chain a little instead of guessing.
“I don’t know. Is it a Star of David?” I say.
Long Beard scowls.
“Of course it isn’t, idiot. It’s the number 14,” he says and reveals a small tattoo under his wrist. “The keepers of the second, private, stone in the early 1900s drew a 14 to reference the 14th word in the translated text of the first, public, stone: west. I guess they did this in case they needed to find it again. Decades later, the white rights movement in this country codified its beliefs into 14 words: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. It’s a little more than a coincidence. It’s a sign from heaven that our struggle is righteous. God is with us. There’s a reason the white race has been so successful.”
I want to come up with a smart-ass reply involving 14 words, but my head hurts. I stare at the ground instead. My eyes lock onto the dirt for no reason other than it’s easy.
“It’s quite a hike to the western wall. Better drink up,” Long Beard says. Silent Man tosses him a fresh bottle of water.
I can smell the sweetness of the water as Long Beard cracks the cap open on the bottle. It floats up my nose and tickles the fight-or-flight part of my brain.
I’m not running away.
Sprints of energy suddenly possess my body, and I lunge forward.
I’m getting that water. I am the Wendigo.
31.
My fingers glide through Long Beard’s facial fuzz and slip beneath his chin, where my hands shrink the diameter of his neck by a couple inches. I move faster, feel stronger and see clearer than I have since I arrived in The Pit.
This is what it feels like to be a Wendigo, to be overcome by “the thirst.” It’s the body’s way of surviving, and it’s not pretty.
Long Beard tries backing away, but I wrap my foot around his ankle and slam him to the ground. I spot my ESEE knife on his belt, so I reach down and unsheathe it. Silent Man comes up from beside me and tries to kick the knife from my hand. It’s no use. I’m locked into the knife like my life depends on it, because it does.
When the next kick comes, I plant the blade into the tread of the Silent Man’s boot. It stays suspended in the air for a moment before I give the knife a twist and pull back.
Silent Man falls to the ground, giving me a chance to swing the blade back around and into Long Beard’s sternum. The hard bone holds the blade in place, and I have to pull back with the full force of my weight to wrestle it loose. In the corner of my eye, I see Silent Man on his back pulling the .45 on his hip from its holster.
Can’t have that.
I roll Long Beard between Silent Man’s gun and myself. Shots from a .45 at this close of a distance would pass right through Long Beard’s bleeding body and into me, but I’m not counting on using him as a shield. I’m betting Silent Man won’t pull the trigger on his own dying, but not dead, father for the sake of popping me.
The distraction buys me a few seconds before Silent Man hobbles to his knees. That’s all the time I need to jump up and clock him across the face with the hard pommel, or bottom of the handle, of the knife.
Unlike in the movies, Silent Man doesn’t pass out for a convenient amount of time. Instead, he curls into a ball and rubs the gooey gash growing next to his eye. He won’t get up for a while.
I grab a rifle with an intact scope, a .45 and all the spare ammo my tattered clothes will hold. But the real precious cargo I don’t stuff away into pockets. I find four big bottles of water and turn them into two in about 60 seconds. I feel born again. My body’s reaction to all that hydration is an almost religious experience. A stick of jerky makes for a salty dessert.
I save two more bottles for Biyu, but stop before heading west. Silent Man is still on the ground. I could finish him off with the .45 and stop worrying about these Nazi psychos. Drawing the pistol, I hold my aim and think.
No. I’m only a Wendigo when I need to be. If I pull the trigger now, I’m no better than a murderer.
If we meet again, I might not be in such a generous mood. But I don’t need to kill him now when The Pit could launder my guilt away later.
I make my way west through the rocks. The terrain smoothens out as I reach the center of The Pit. Makes me wonder if it a meteor crashed to Earth right where I stand centuries ago. What a strange place.
The lunar-like surface returns once I close in on the western wall. It’s even steeper up to the rim of The Pit than the area near the gravel chute. That’s bad for climbing, but good for looking at symbols in the rock walls, although I’m not sure exactly what this 14 looks like.
It turns out there’s a shortcut to finding the 14, but it’s at the expense of Biyu. Her body rests face down on the ground near a smooth section of rock wall.
I rush to her, hoping she’s not dead. A check of her pulse puts that to rest. She’s gone, although it’s hard to say what did her in. Pills. Dehydration. Infection. Some combination of all three.
Even if it is to another country, I can respect Biyu’s patriotism. She took an oath and put her life on the line like I did. People like us, we’re the outliers. Were the geography different, we might’ve worked side by side from the beginning.
Rest in peace, Biyu. If I make it out of here, I’ll see to it you’re returned home.
After moving her body out of the sun, I spot a series of crude Roman numerals chiseled into the smooth rock wall. I mouth the tiny letters. “X. I. V.”
14.
Biyu died mere feet from the runestone’s hiding place. But there’s a problem, and it’s a big one.
32.
“Isn’t the runestone supposed to be in a cave?” I say to the seamlessly flat rock wall in front of me.
There’s nothing to indicate a hiding spot anywhere along the wall, but the 14 can’t be a coincidence, either. I picture the area in my mind at the turn of the century, and that’s when it hits me. I’m standing at the bottom of a pit. In the last 100 years or so, erosion sent dirt, rocks and plants into The Pit. They piled up over time and covered the entrance to the cave. That means all I need to do is dig straight down beneath the 14.
Kicking at the dirt, I’m not so sure how d
oable a dig will be. The soil is packed tight as canned ham. On top of that, any amount of hard labor in this heat will have me sweating buckets. I don’t want to risk getting dehydrated all over again.
Back when I sandhogged with my father, may he rest in peace, we’d come on tough patches of ground all the time. Frozen dirt we heated up with rods until we could bust it up. Or if the weather was warm but the soil compacted, we’d simply beat the hell out of it. No trick there. Just piss and vinegar. I can almost hear my father shouting from his rig now.
Maybe I could make a mattock out of the wreckage of the ATV and start at it in the cool of the night. If I soak the soil with water the dig might go faster, and in the evening the moisture wouldn’t evaporate. Of course, that means using up water I could be drinking.
I look to the sky and shrug. If there really are Chinese spy satellites up there, they might drop an idea down from the clouds.
To my surprise, I get a response, except it’s not from above. It’s from inside The Pit. Holding the riflescope to my eye, I glass the cloud approaching me at rapid speed.
It’s Silent Man, and he somehow got the ATV working again. Up and over the rocks he goes, pulling off feats worthy of a TV commercial. He doesn’t bother to make a silent approach, but I don’t think he’d make it far on that foot, either.
I place the crosshairs of the scope’s reticle over Silent Man, waiting for him to come to a clearing for a decent shot. His wretched face is about 100 bumpy yards away when he stops and rolls off the ATV, rifle in hand.
Damn. Missed my chance.
Standing next to a flat wall in a clearing, I know Silent Man won’t have trouble finding me with his scope. Since he’s on his belly next to the ATV, I debate shooting the vehicle and hoping it explodes.
Waste of time. That stuff is for movies.
Chase Baker and the Vikings' Secret (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 5) Page 8
