The Blood Mesa dm-5

by Lee Goldberg

  The Blood Mesa

  ( dead man - 5 )

  Lee Goldberg

  BOOK #5 in thrilling DEAD MAN saga, the action/horror series that readers and book critics alike are hailing as "an epic tale" that compares to the best of Stephen King and Dean Koontz...

  Matt Cahill finds himself trapped atop a blood-red mesa in the desolate American Southwest when an archeological dig goes terribly, dangerously wrong, awakening an ancient evil with an insatiable hunger. Now Matt, armed only with his trusty ax, must somehow escape...rescue a handful of terrified innocents... and prevent a slaughter of epic proportions.

  THE DEAD MAN

  THE BLOOD MESA

  James Reasoner

  Copyright © 2011 by Adventures In Television, Inc.

  Previous Books in the DEAD MAN series…

  Face of Evil by Lee Goldberg & William Rabklin

  Ring of Knives by James Daniels

  Hell in Heaven by Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin

  The Dead Woman by David McAfee

  CHAPTER ONE

  With fear shooting through his veins and his pulse hammering in his head, Matt Cahill twisted the key and tromped the gas, hoping he wouldn't flood the engine of the two-and-a-half-ton truck. It cranked a couple of times with a maddening lack of results, then caught with a rumbling growl.

  Horrific, decaying figures that had been normal people only a short time earlier swarmed around the vehicle, howling with rage and blood lust. Several of them lunged in front of it, trying to cut off Matt's escape route.

  Matt didn't hesitate. He slammed the truck into gear and sent it lurching forward. The woman on the seat beside him screamed as the rotting creatures caught in front of the truck scrambled to get out of its way.

  Some of them made it, but one man wasn't fast enough. He threw up his arms and shrieked as the truck ran him down. Matt felt the bump as the heavy wheels passed over the body. Nothing could survive that.

  And just like that, Matt was a killer again, through no fault of his own, and he had to ask himself if it would ever stop.

  But it wouldn't, he knew, as long as he was a player in this game with no rules, this endless bloody chess match against the nightmarish figure that haunted him.

  Mr. Dark.

  # # # # # #

  One day earlier

  Matt remembered a time, not so long ago, really, when it seemed like he would never be warm again.

  Spending three months buried under an avalanche, tons and tons of snow and ice, probably accounted for that. Once you'd survived something like that—somehow—you had to expect to be pretty chilled.

  But now all it had taken to convince him that, yes indeed, he could be warm again, was a summer day in New Mexico, in the high, dry desert country of the Four Corners region.

  More than warm. As hot as blazes, actually.

  The heat came up from the asphalt of the highway's narrow shoulder through the soles of his boots and seemed to bake his toes. Pigs in a blanket, he thought.

  The trucker had dropped him off a couple of miles south of here, where the two-lane state blacktop crossed the interstate. Matt had intended to ride all the way to Gallup with the man, but when he had seen the red sandstone mesa rising from the desert to the north, something had told him that was the direction he needed to head. He had grown accustomed to following his hunches, even though they often led him into trouble.

  "Not much up that way," the trucker had warned him, "and not much traffic on that road."

  "I can walk," Matt had said, feeling confident that he could. Ever since he had returned to life after being frozen for three months under the avalanche, he had felt stronger and more vital than ever. "I want to take a closer look at that mesa."

  The trucker had given him a sideways look but hadn't asked for an explanation, which was good because Matt couldn't have given him one.

  What Matt hadn't reckoned on was how fast the blazing sun would leech all the juices and all the energy from a man. A dozen times while he was trudging along the blacktop, he had asked himself if he was crazy to be doing this.

  And the answer, of course, was yes. He was crazy. But not just because he was walking up a New Mexico highway in the hot sun with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder that seemed to increase in weight with every step he took.

  He was crazy because he saw things that couldn't be there, like the laughing, maniacal face of his personal nemesis, the creature he had dubbed Mr. Dark. He saw the rotting horror of evil on the faces of those touched by Mr. Dark.

  Crazy or not, he knew in his heart those visions were real. They had led him to leave his native Pacific Northwest and wander the country. He didn't know why or how he had been brought back from death, but his instincts told him it had to have something to do with fighting Mr. Dark, doing his best to ruin the hideous creature's plans.

  So that's what he had been doing for months now, following his instincts, and when they told him to check out that majestic mesa in the distance, he didn't try to talk himself out of it. He just started walking.

  And scorching in the pitiless sun. He was used to nearly unending rain and cool, piney woods, not this . . . this oven that called itself a state.

  He slowed as he spotted something on the side of the highway up ahead and realized it was a truck of some kind. The heat-distorted scene seemed to swim in front of Matt's eyes for a second. Distances expanded crazily, stretching out so that it was a mile to the truck, a mile he could never cover, the shape he was in.

  He had been out in the sun too long. That was all there was to it.

  The truck offered some shade, anyway, and maybe the driver had some water he'd be willing to share. Matt forced his feet to keep going, telling himself that it wasn't as far as it looked.

  When he came closer, he saw that the truck's hood was open. Somebody else was having some bad luck today.

  As Matt approached, somebody stepped away from the front of the truck. The sun's glare made it hard to distinguish details, but the figure's shape told Matt it was a woman. When he finally stepped into the blessed shade cast by the tall canvas cover over the truck's bed, Matt paused to let his half-blinded eyes adjust.

  The woman was in her thirties, good-looking, with honey blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore jeans and a T-shirt with a university logo on it.

  And she was watching Matt with the wary look that any woman would display if a stranger came walking up to her in the middle of nowhere, miles from any help.

  Matt stopped beside the rear of the truck, not wanting to crowd her and make her any more suspicious than she already was. He lowered his duffel bag to the ground and asked, "Having trouble?"

  "Something's wrong with the truck," she replied, "although I suppose that goes without saying. Do you know anything about engines?"

  "A little," Matt said. "I'd be glad to take a look at it for you."

  She hesitated, clearly still unsure whether to trust him completely, but the idea of being stuck out here must have overcome her nervousness. She turned her head and said, "Andrew, why don't you let this man take a look at it?"

  So she wasn't alone after all. The man she called Andrew muttered something and stepped around the front of the truck, where Matt could see him.

  The man was about forty, broad shouldered and sandy haired, wearing a khaki shirt and blue jeans. Rotting skin peeled away from his broad forehead, and where his nose should have been there was only a festering, oozing hole in his face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Not here, Matt thought. Please, not here, too.

  And yet he wasn't the least bit surprised. Nearly everywhere he had gone since leaving Washington, he had encountered these manifestations of evil. Most of the time he believed that was why he had been br
ought back from death. Some unknown force was guiding his steps to them.

  Matt didn't show any reaction to the grotesque sight that met his eyes. He had gotten used to hiding his feelings. And the woman didn't react to the terrible sores on her companion's face, of course, because she couldn't see them.

  Matt was the only one who could.

  "It didn't overheat," the man said, drawing Matt's attention back to the truck. "It just stopped."

  That seemed like a pretty mundane concern for a guy who was slowly being consumed by evil. Matt's pulse hammered faster as he moved forward and said, "I'll take a look at it."

  He watched the man from the corner of his eye as he circled around to the front of the truck. If either of them noticed his caution, they gave no sign of it.

  The truck was built high off the ground, on big tires. Matt stepped up onto the front bumper so he could get a better look into the engine. He came from a family where the men were expected to be able to work on just about anything mechanical and often did. He checked the wiring first and saw the problem right away.

  "You've got a loose wire on your alternator," he said. "You've been running on your battery. Didn't you notice that on the gauge?"

  The man scoffed. "I'm not a mechanic. The man who should be taking care of such things quit on us; otherwise, I wouldn't be driving this behemoth back out to the mesa."

  They were on their way to the mesa? The same mesa that had drawn him to hike up this desolate road?

  Considering the rot that he saw on the man's face, Matt wasn't surprised there was a connection.

  "Your battery finally went dead," he said. "I can hook up the alternator again, but without any juice to start the engine, you're still stuck."

  The woman said, "I think there's another battery in the back. Our driver . . . our former driver . . . said it was a good idea to bring along a spare, since we'd be so far from anywhere at the mesa. Come on, let's take a look."

  She seemed to have decided that he wasn't a psycho killer. He followed her to the back of the truck, where she pulled the canvas cover aside and held it for him while he climbed in. The truck bed held a number of bags and boxes that appeared to be full of supplies, and sure enough, in the front corner, a spare battery.

  "You're in luck," Matt told her. "I'll need some wrenches."

  "There's a tool kit behind the seat."

  In a matter of minutes, he had taken off the dead battery and replaced it with the spare, as well as hooking up the wire that had come loose on the alternator. The work was hard enough in this heat that it caused beads of sweat to break out on his face.

  Better than what was breaking out on Andrew's face, Matt thought as he sleeved away some of the sweat.

  "All right, try it now," he said.

  Andrew climbed into the truck and turned the key. The engine turned over for a moment, then caught. Matt jumped down from the bumper and went to the open door. In other circumstances he might have stepped up onto the running board and leaned in past Andrew to check the gauges, but he didn't want to get that close to the rotting man.

  Instead he said, "Leave it running and let me take a look."

  He stepped back to give Andrew plenty of room as the man climbed out.

  "Looks good," Matt said after he'd peered in at the gauges. "You ought to get where you're going now."

  The woman said, "Obviously you have experience with trucks like this."

  Matt shrugged. "I used to work at a sawmill. I drove a few trucks back there."

  "Would you be interested in a job?"

  Andrew said, "Wait a minute. We don't know anything about this man, even his name."

  "It's Matt Cahill," Matt said.

  "I'm Dr. Veronica Dupre," the woman said. "This is Dr. Andrew Hammond."

  So they weren't married. Matt had figured as much from the lack of wedding rings.

  "As I mentioned, the man we hired to be our driver and mechanic decided to quit without any warning. We dropped him off in Gallup when we were picking up supplies. We could use a replacement."

  Matt was hoping she would say that. They were going to the mesa, and ever since he'd seen it from the interstate, something about it had reached out to him with an undenable compulsion.

  Not only that, but the festering sores on Dr. Andrew Hammond's face told him that something bad was probably going to happen on top of that mesa.

  Unless he could stop it somehow.

  Matt cleared his throat and said, "And I could use a job. I accept."

  Hammond frowned, which made more pus ooze from the sores on his face, and said, "Ronnie, I'm still not sure about this."

  "Do you want to drive the truck and keep all the equipment working?" she asked him.

  For a moment, Hammond didn't say anything. Then he snapped, "Fine. Consider yourself hired, Cahill. The job doesn't pay that much, though."

  "I'm not worried about that," Matt said, which was true.

  His real reward would be the opportunity to cross swords with the evil that he stalked.

  And that stalked him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Matt put his duffel bag in the back of the truck and climbed behind the wheel. Dr. Dupre slid in beside him, and Hammond sat beside the window. In the close confines of the truck's cab, the stench coming from Hammond made Matt want to gag. If he'd been sitting as close to the man as Dr. Dupre was, he probably would have thrown up.

  She couldn't smell the stink, though, and for that she ought to count herself lucky.

  Matt put the truck in gear and started it rolling along the blacktop. "Are you folks medical doctors?" he asked.

  "PhDs," Hammond said. "Doctors of archeology, in fact."

  "We're working on a dig on top of Blood Mesa," Veronica Dupre said. "There's an Anasazi settlement up there, or rather there used to be until it was abandoned about twelve hundred years ago."

  "Blood Mesa?"

  "That's what it's called. Because of the red sandstone, you know. When the sun hits it just right early in the morning or late in the afternoon, it's the color of blood."

  That was a nice, cheery thought. He couldn't very well explain to her that he was here because he had felt the mesa calling to him in some way. She would think he had lost his mind.

  "Are you familiar with the Anasazi?"

  "I've heard of them," Matt said. "Disappeared mysteriously, didn't they?"

  "For a long time that's what people thought. The name means ancient ones or people who came before, which certainly has a mysterious connotation to it." Like any teacher, she was warming to her subject. "Recent theories lean more toward the possibility that the Anasazi were simply absorbed into other tribes like the Navajo and the Hopi, but some of their cities do seem to have been abandoned rather abruptly, including the one on top of Blood Mesa. That's why we're here, to see if we can uncover any evidence of why they deserted this particular settlement."

  "Sounds fascinating," Matt said.

  Dr. Dupre laughed. "No, it doesn't. It sounds dry as dust to most people, and I know it. And I'm sorry I started lecturing."

  "Don't worry. I like to learn new things."

  He had learned more about certain things in the past few months than he ever wanted to. Things like evil and tragedy and degradation. The thought made him glance over at Dr. Andrew Hammond, who had his head turned away to look out the window on that side of the truck cab. Because of that, Matt couldn't get a good look at the rot on the man's face, but he knew it was there.

  He drove along the two-lane blacktop for about a mile before he came to a dirt road that turned right off the highway and led toward the mesa. Dr. Dupre pointed to it and said, "That's where we turn."

  Dust billowed up behind the truck as Matt slowed and wheeled it onto the dirt road. As he turned, he glanced at the big side mirror just outside his window.

  Matt caught his breath as he saw the tall, skinny figure standing at the edge of the blacktop. The figure lifted an almost skeletal hand holding something—a lollipop, Matt knew fr
om previous encounters—and waved it slowly in a mocking farewell.

  Then the cloud of dust rolled over the asphalt, and Mr. Dark was gone.

  # # # # # #

  The mesa was about a mile from the state highway. The dirt road leading to it was rough, forcing Matt to grip the steering wheel tighter as the truck bounced through the ruts toward the base of the mesa. The red sandstone cliffs rose a couple of hundred feet and loomed over the truck. From the top, it probably looked like a toy.

  The dirt road circled part of the way around the mesa and then angled straight toward it. "That's where you want to go," Dr. Dupre said, pointing to a trail that was little more than a broad ledge rising and curving out of sight around the mesa. Matt figured the ledge must spiral all the way to the top.

  "Still think you can handle it?" Hammond asked. "There's no place to turn around. Once you start up, you have to go all the way to the top or else back all the way down." He shook his head, causing the strips of rotten skin hanging from his face to sway. "I wouldn't advise that."

  "We'll make it," Matt said.

  The road up the side of the mesa, if you could call it that, was even rougher, making Matt grateful for the big tires, and steep enough in places that the truck's engine growled and labored as it climbed. Matt kept a close eye on the temperature and oil-pressure gauges. The truck seemed to be handling the effort all right.

  The ledge was narrow enough that when Matt looked out, he couldn't see anything except empty air on that side of the truck. And on the other side loomed the red cliffs, bulging out in places so they overhung the ledge. It was a little nerve-wracking, all right. As a rule, though, his nerves were pretty steady.

  "What's up there on top?" he asked. It was a natural question for someone in his position, even somebody who couldn't see the festering sores on Hammond's face.

  "There's not much left of the pueblo itself," Dr. Dupre explained, "just a few walls still standing, and the kivas, of course, although some of them have collapsed in on themselves. But there are enough ruins so that when the wind blows through them, it makes a sort of wailing noise, like there's someone up there crying . . . I know, that probably sounds crazy."