Community

by Graham Masterton

  He kept his foot down as they roared up the slope. None of the residents made any attempt to get out of his way, and he hit at least seven of them with a barrage of thumps. He thought that he had collided with Lloyd Hammers and possibly with George Kelly, too, but he couldn’t be sure. All he could see when he looked in his rear-view mirror were bodies that were rolling over and over down the slope like bundles of rags.

  ‘What have you done?’ cried Natasha, in a shrill, breathless scream that was almost inaudible.

  ‘What did you expect me to do? That mob were going to tear us apart! And that security guy pulled a gun on me!’

  ‘Oh God, I don’t believe this is happening! I don’t believe this is happening!’

  Michael checked his mirror again. It looked as if at least two of the residents that he had hit were being helped to their feet.

  ‘Take a look,’ he told Natasha. ‘I don’t think anybody got badly hurt.’

  Natasha turned around but by now the crowd had disappeared from sight around a curve in the road.

  Michael steered with his left hand and laid his right hand on top of hers. ‘It’s going to be OK – I mean it! They were standing right in the middle of the goddamned road and wouldn’t get out of the way! What the hell did they expect?’

  Natasha was about to say something more but then obviously couldn’t find the words. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue and blew her nose and then sat silent, with her head bowed, staring at the floor.

  ‘Come on, Tasha. We’ll be miles away from here soon.’

  ‘Oh – even though you don’t know how to get to the interstate?’

  ‘I know it’s not back that way, so it’s a pretty reasonable guess that it’s this way.’

  They were passing the last few houses in Trinity, and Michael noticed that people were peering out of their windows at them as they drove by. One man in a fluorescent yellow jacket was shoveling snow from the sidewalk outside his house and he turned around to stare at them and kept on staring until they were out of sight.

  Natasha said, ‘It’s like everybody in Trinity has heard what we’re doing.’

  The road became narrower, until it was nothing much more than a ribbon of gray tarmac between the rocky verges and the pine trees.

  ‘Do you think they’ll send the police after us?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘I don’t know, Tasha. In a way I almost hope they do. At least the cops will take us back to civilization. And you have to admit that was a really threatening situation back there. Even if I did hurt anybody, I think it was justifiable, don’t you?’

  Again, Natasha didn’t answer. Michael glanced at her a few times as they drove. She was biting at her knuckle and her eyes were filled with worry. He had tried to make light of hitting all those people but he knew how serious it was, especially if he had killed one or more of them. But of course that wasn’t all she was worried about. She was worried what was going to happen as they drove further and further away from Mount Shasta.

  They drove for about ten minutes without talking. Natasha tried the Jeep’s radio, but all she got was crackling and white noise, with only an occasional blurt of country music.

  ‘Same as the last time,’ said Michael. ‘Maybe it’s all of this so-called spiritual energy.’

  ‘Are we headed in the right direction?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Sun’s behind us, and off to the left, so we should be going north-west. I’d be happier if it were going due west, but we’ll just have to see.’

  As the narrow road continued for mile after mile, however, the shadows of the pines that lay across it started to tell Michael that it was gradually turning north-eastward, and then almost due east. After they had been driving for about an hour, the pines began to thin out, and flickering through their branches they could see the white snowy peaks of Mount Shasta, much closer than they had appeared from Trinity.

  ‘Shit,’ said Michael. ‘We’re heading totally the wrong way.’

  ‘What happens if we just keep going?’

  ‘I guess we’ll wind up someplace eventually. But we’re really low on gas, and I don’t exactly relish the idea of getting stranded way out here in the Cascade mountains in the middle of the night.’ He checked the thermometer on his side mirror. ‘It’s already five degrees below.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do? We can’t turn back, we’ll just wind up in Trinity again.’

  ‘We’ll drive on a few miles further, OK? There’s all kinds of climbing and winter sports centers around Mount Shasta. We’re bound to run into one of them, sooner or later.’

  They kept driving. The needle on the gas gauge was almost touching red. Even if they U-turned now, they wouldn’t have enough fuel to get back to Trinity, and the sun was sinking lower and lower behind them. In less than two hours, it would be dark.

  ‘What’s that up ahead?’ said Natasha, suddenly.

  The road began to climb steeply, with a rocky overhang on the left-hand side. About a hundred yards ahead of them, though, the road rose high enough to reach the same height as the overhang, and there, set back among a small clearing in the trees, stood a large pine cabin. The windows were lit, there was smoke coming out of the chimney, and there was a battered white Dodge Ram parked outside.

  ‘Think we just made that by the skin of our teeth,’ said Michael. He turned into the driveway and parked at a tilt behind the Ram, making sure that the Jeep’s parking brake was fully applied. They climbed the wooden steps in front of the cabin and crossed the veranda. There was all kinds of junk out here: two broken kitchen chairs, several small barrels, a heap of snow chains, and a rusty diesel generator.

  Michael went up to the front door, but he didn’t have the chance to knock. As he raised his fist, the door was abruptly opened up by a lean middle-aged man with long gray hair.

  ‘Lost, or something?’ he demanded. His voice was very sharp and hard, so that every word was like a whip crack.

  ‘Yes, to be honest,’ said Michael. ‘Nearly out of gas, too.’

  ‘Where you aiming for?’

  ‘I-Five, hopefully.’

  ‘Hopefully is the understatement of the year, mister. You couldn’t be going more wronger if you tried.’

  ‘Do you think you could give us some directions? And maybe point us toward the nearest gas station?’

  The man looked at Michael with pinprick eyes. ‘Come from Trinity, then? Was you staying there, or just passing through?’

  ‘Just passing through. Took a wrong turn past Weed.’

  The man shook his head. ‘Nobody passes through Trinity, mister. Not even by accident.’

  ‘All right. We were staying there, for a while, but we decided it was time to leave. But really – all we need is gas and directions.’

  ‘You’d better come along in.’

  Michael turned to Natasha and pulled a face to show her that they really had no choice. In any case, Natasha was looking very tired and she was shivering, out there on the veranda. A cold katabatic wind was blowing down the slopes of Mount Shasta and making the trees sound as if they were whispering amongst themselves. Escaped from Trinity, those two. What are their chances?

  Michael put his arm around Natasha and guided her in through the cabin door. Inside it was very warm and smelled strongly of dry wood and smoke. The man closed the door behind them and turned a key in it, although he left the key where it was, in the lock.

  ‘Come and park your asses by the fire,’ he said.

  The stone fireplace stood at the end of the room, with a couch on one side and two armchairs on the other, all of them draped with Modoc throws in colorful geometric patterns. Apart from these, the room was very sparsely furnished, with only two side tables with old-style brass lamps on them, and a chest of drawers with a clock on top of it. A framed tapestry on the wall said Memories Are Best Forgotten.

  ‘Want a drink?’ the man asked them. He was wearing a red checkered shirt and jeans with red suspenders; and with his long wispy hair and pointy nose he re
minded Michael of the late David Carradine. In fact, he could almost have been David Carradine, returned from the dead and living in isolation on Mount Shasta. ‘Beer? Whiskey? Soda? Or if you’re feeling cold, miss, Nann won’t mind stirring up a hot chocolate for you.’

  As if on cue, a woman came out a side door beside the chest of drawers, wiping her hands on her apron. She was short and plump, with a round face, and she looked as if she were partly Native American. Her hair was tied back in a glossy black ponytail, and she was wearing a necklace of elaborately painted beads.

  ‘This is Nann,’ said the man. ‘Actually “Nann” is short for “Nannookdoowah” which is Modoc for “strange child”. Her hair was red when she was born, for some reason. Some of the elders in her tribe thought that she had been baptized in blood by Kumush, the creator god.’

  He held out a dry leathery hand and said, ‘Samuel Horn, that’s me. Local handyman. No job too pissant. Snowshoe repairs and maintenance a specialty. Broken your frame, feller? Need your rawhide webbing re-waterproofed? I’m your man.’

  ‘Michael Spencer, and this is Tasha Kerwin.’

  ‘Trying to get away, then?’ asked Samuel Horn. He sat down on one of the armchairs and took a pale blue pack of Bugler tobacco out of his shirt pocket.

  ‘Just looking for a change of scenery, that’s all,’ said Michael.

  ‘Yeah, same as I did,’ said Samuel Horn, without looking up from the thin cigarette that he was rolling one-handed.

  ‘You lived in Trinity, too?’

  Samuel Horn nodded, at the same time as licking his cigarette paper.

  ‘Were you a patient at the clinic?’

  ‘That’s right. Gunshot wound. Like, serious gunshot wound. When I was pretty much recovered, though, they billeted me with this woman to convalesce. Sheila, her name was. Ex-librarian or something like that. She was OK, I guess, but I was never an indoors kind of guy. She wanted to sit and play Scrabble and Monopoly while all I was pining to do was come out and breathe some fresh air and maybe shoot something.’

  Nann came out of the kitchen with two bottles of Budweiser and a mug of hot chocolate for Natasha. ‘You want maybe something to eat? Sandwich, cookie?’

  ‘No – no, thanks,’ said Michael. ‘It’s very kind of you to offer.’

  ‘We all share the journey,’ said Nann. ‘We should all help each other on the way.’

  Samuel Horn lit his cigarette with an old Zippo lighter and leaned back in his chair. ‘Nann – she’s got a saying for everything, don’t you, Nann? Even going to the crapper.’

  ‘So you left Trinity and came here?’ asked Michael.

  ‘That’s right. I had lived here and worked here for twenty-odd years, and I knew plenty of people who would give me shelter for a while, Nann included. Mainly, though, I didn’t want to risk going too far away from Mount Shasta.’

  ‘Why was that?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Well … I don’t know if them doctors at the clinic told you the same story as they told me. It all sounded so crazy that I could never decide if they was shooting me a line or not. But … like I say, I didn’t want to risk it.’

  ‘They told you that you were dead, is that it?’

  Samuel Horn sucked in smoke, and then nodded.

  ‘You were dead,’ said Michael. ‘Your gunshot wound killed you, but somehow you were brought back to life by the spiritual energy that surrounds Mount Shasta. You have an afterlife. But be warned – if you ever stray too far from that spiritual energy, that’s the end of your afterlife and you go back to being dead.’

  ‘Pretty much, yes.’

  ‘So you believed them? You believed the doctors when they told you that story?’

  Samuel Horn smoked for a while, letting the smoke drift out from between his lips and disappear up his nostrils. After a very long pause, he said, ‘I don’t know, Michael. Not for sure. You did say your name was Michael? I’d give anything to know if it’s true or not. “You died, Samuel, but now we’ve given you Life: The Sequel.” But let’s put it this way: I don’t intend to be the lab rat who finds out whether it’s true or not. If it is true, I’ll never know it, will I, because I’ll have bought my second farm, so to speak.’

  He paused a while longer, and then he squinted at Michael sideways and said, ‘You don’t believe it, though, do you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to head for I-Five. All I can say is, you’re a much braver man than me.’

  Nann came back in from the kitchen with a tray of snacks: corn chips and chili salsa, pretzels, cubes of cheese, slices of salami and pickles. She sat down next to Samuel and said, ‘I would never let Samuel leave the mountain.’

  ‘So you believe in its spiritual energy?’ asked Natasha.

  Nann nodded her head vigorously. ‘I was brought up always to believe in the power of Shasta, although my father always called it Uytaahkoo, the White Mountain. It is where Skell the sky god came down to greet Kumush the creator when Kumush returned from spending six days in the underworld.

  ‘Kumush brought with him a bag of loose bones. Some of the bones he had dropped on his way up to the surface, and these stayed in the darkness underground to become demons and spirits. But with the few bones that he had left, he fashioned the first Modoc people.’

  ‘Kind of like God did, with Eve,’ put in Samuel Horn.

  Nann said, ‘Kumush went back up to live in the sky, but Skell remained on Shasta to protect us. That is the power of Shasta. That is its spiritual energy. Each man and woman must walk every step of the journey for which Kumush created them, and if they fall before they can complete it, then Skell will pick them up, and breathe life back into them.’

  Michael said, ‘That’s a very colorful story, Nann.’

  ‘I used to be a teacher of very young children, on the reservation. I know all of the Modoc legends.’

  ‘Believe me, you make just as much sense as any of those doctors at the clinic. But what I’m thinking is that … Me, I’m not Modoc, am I? It wasn’t Kumush who created me, and therefore I doubt if Skell would have bothered about me when I died. So the only conclusion that I come to is that I’m not dead, after all. I’ll bet that you’re not dead, either, Samuel! I mean, let’s get real! Two dead guys sitting around drinking beer and eating Doritos?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Samuel. ‘You go for it, if you think that you’ll make it. I’ll give you some gas and I’ll show you how to get to the interstate without having to go back through Trinity.’

  ‘I can’t pay you for the gas, Samuel. I only have credit cards, and I’m not even sure they’re good for anything.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. If you make it, then come back and pay me in cash. If you don’t make it, then take it as a parting gift.’

  ‘And what if I do come back – which I’m pretty damn sure that I will. What about you?’

  Samuel sucked the last quarter-inch of his cigarette and then crushed it out in a Modoc pottery ashtray. ‘Can’t answer that, Michael. I’ve been here a long time now, breathing in the fresh air and mending snowshoes and shooting things. Sometimes what you’ve got is as good as it’s ever going to get.’

  ‘I thought Nann was the one with a saying for everything.’

  Samuel gave a philosophical shrug. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get you that gas.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Samuel came out of his ramshackle shed carrying two five-gallon jerrycans, and topped up the Jeep’s tank. It was beginning to grow dark now, although the summit of Mount Shasta was still reflecting the orange light of a sun that had dropped below the horizon. The temperature was falling fast.

  When he had emptied the two jerrycans, Samuel came back from his shed with a two-gallon red plastic gas container. ‘You’d best take this, too, just in case you run out again and you can’t find a gas station to take your credit card.’

  ‘Thanks, Samuel. I won’t forget this.’

  Michael went back into the cabin to collect Natasha. ‘You are sure that I cannot fix you something
to eat before you go?’ asked Nann.

  ‘We’re fine, I think,’ said Michael. ‘How about you, Tasha? I’m just looking forward to stopping at some crappy roadside diner on the interstate and ordering a cheeseburger.’

  Samuel took Michael out on to the veranda, laid his hand on his shoulder and pointed east. ‘Keep on driving about three miles, until you reach a fork. Take the right-hand fork and then about six or seven miles further along you’ll come to a T-junction. If you take a left there, you’ll be heading almost due south. After about twenty miles or so you’ll hit a little place called Lookout, and just past Lookout you’ll be joining I-Five. The good old Cascade Wonderland Highway, which I haven’t seen in more years than I care to remember.’

  Michael gripped Samuel’s hand between both of his. ‘I really do appreciate this, Samuel. You’ve been a godsend.’

  ‘Well – you know what I’m hoping, don’t you?’ said Samuel. ‘I’m hoping you’re going to come back and pay me for that gas.’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  Michael helped Natasha up into her seat, and then climbed behind the wheel. As he backed down their driveway, he gave Samuel and Nann a blast on the horn, and a wave. He had met them less than two hours ago: he didn’t know why he felt so emotional at saying goodbye.

  Natasha said, ‘Here goes nothing.’

  ‘We’re going to make it,’ Michael assured her. ‘I just have this feeling that everything’s going to work out. Think of it. We could be in San Francisco by midnight.’

  They drove in silence until they reached the fork, and Michael turned right. The road sloped quite sharply downhill, between pines that crowded so close that their branches brushed and scraped and rattled against the sides of the Jeep, as if even the trees were trying to stop them.

  After about fifteen minutes, however, they reached the T-junction.

  ‘Left here,’ said Michael. ‘Then straight on till we get to Lookout, and the Wonderland Highway.’