Evil to Burn

by Lisa Klink

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 Lisa Klink

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47 North

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  eISBN: 9781611092080

  CONTENTS

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Editor’s Note

  If you haven’t read The Blood Mesa, the fifth book in the Dead Man series, please note that this tale contains some spoilers.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Matt woke with a start. He was in trouble. He instinctively reached for his ax but didn’t find it on the leatherette seat beside him. He quickly assessed the situation. Where was he? On a bus. What was happening? From what he could tell, not much.

  He took a breath as the panicky feeling from his nightmare faded. The dream had featured a group of rotting corpses surrounding him, grabbing his arms and legs and attempting to tear him apart. He had a lot of bad dreams like that. He never got used to them.

  Matt counted six other passengers on the bus. All were sweaty and uncomfortable, including him. He looked out the window to see barren desert stretching to the horizon. He remembered now: he was in Nevada. He was currently cruising along State Route 305 on his way to a small town called Battle Mountain to combat the forces of evil. As usual.

  The landscape had changed while he was napping. Before, they’d been on a flat plain, broken up by the occasional red rock formation, bounded by the Shoshone Mountains to the west. In the middle of August, there was nothing green in sight. The bus was now climbing into the foothills of the Shoshones. Windows on the left looked into a solid rock wall. On the right, Matt saw a steep drop-off into the canyon below. The road was barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. There were no painted lines or highway markers. Clearly, they had left Route 305.

  He looked across the aisle at Karen, the pretty single mom he’d been talking with for the first hour or so of the long, hot bus ride. She was a bank manager who happened to be out of work at the moment. She and her eight-year-old son, Daniel, were going to visit her sister in Battle Mountain for some “family love and support.” Karen was clearly uncomfortable as she said this. Matt guessed that she needed to ask sis for money. He had claimed to sell carpet for a living, which had proved reliably boring enough to discourage detailed questions.

  Now Karen was reading a magazine while Daniel played a game on her smartphone. Matt leaned over to them. “Where are we?”

  Karen looked up and smiled. “Detour. There was construction on the highway.”

  Matt didn’t like this. Sure, it could be as simple as Karen said, but the past couple of years had taught him to be suspicious of any unexpected change. He was tempted to ask if she’d actually seen construction equipment or just a guy with a flag. Maybe an especially creepy-looking guy.

  He looked up at the driver. When Matt had boarded the bus in Austin, the man seemed friendly enough, and free of visible decomposition. He was deeply tanned, with a shaved head to disguise a receding hairline. A patch on his shirt read “Frank.” From his seat, Matt could see the side of the driver’s head and face. Still no signs of rot.

  Then he noticed something small wriggling in Frank’s ear. A single maggot dropped onto his shoulder.

  Matt stood quickly and walked up the aisle. As he approached Frank, he caught the unmistakable stench of decomposition. Evil was festering within the driver, and could trigger an explosion of violence at any time.

  Trouble was, Matt wasn’t sure what to do about it. He wasn’t about to try seizing control of the bus on a narrow mountain road.

  Matt got close enough to hear Frank muttering angrily to himself. The driver glanced back at him. Fetid sores had bloomed on his face, dribbling foul liquid. He was also crying.

  Frank turned forward and resumed his quiet rant. “Fucking bitch,” he hissed.

  Matt decided to try sympathy. “You having woman trouble, too?”

  “Couldn’t even tell me to my face. I find out from a fucking lawyer.” Hot tears leaked down his cheeks, mixing with the pus.

  That’s how Mr. Dark got in, thought Matt. The creature had a particular talent for finding someone’s pain and stoking it into rage. “That’s cold,” he told Frank.

  “That’s Ashley,” the driver said sourly.

  “You should hear what my ex did,” Matt griped, trying to keep the guy talking. No answer. He kept his voice casual. “But good riddance, right?”

  “She thinks she can just throw me away. Like I’m nothing.” Frank gripped the wheel tighter, as if he were choking it. He still wore his wedding ring.

  “I hear you,” said Matt. “Hey, can we pull over for a sec? I hate talking to the back of your head like this.”

  “I don’t want to talk.” The driver’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “I want her to have blood on her hands for the rest of her life.”

  The bus weaved, alarmingly close to the drop-off. Matt leaned closer, ignoring the stench. “Leave these people out of it. They’re innocent.”

  “Nobody’s innocent,” stated Frank. He jerked the wheel to the right. Matt lunged forward and grabbed it, but he was too late.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The bus was traveling at twenty-eight miles per hour when its front tires went off the cliff. The vehicle dropped sharply and the undercarriage struck the ground. It slid forward, grating against rock.

  They reached the tipping point and the nose of the bus dipped into the canyon. For a fleeting moment, Matt felt weightless as the floor dropped away. Everyone was screaming. The front wheels touched down on the cliff wall. Frank pitched forward into the dashboard, knocking himself out.

  The bus toppled over onto its side and the world went crazily askew. Everyone was thrown to the right. Matt slammed against the entry door. The back of his head hit metal and he grayed out briefly. Windows broke, raining chunks of glass on the passengers. Bags flew off the overhead shelves. Somebody’s soda can hit the wall, splitting open and spraying liquid. Matt felt like he was back in the avalanche that had buried him under tons of snow, tumbling helplessly out of control. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  The bus jolted over rocks as it slid inexorably into the canyon. Among the terrified faces of the passengers, Matt caught a glimpse of the Dark Man in one of the seats. He was laughing, like a delighted kid on a roller coaster. Frank tumbled out of the driver’s seat, unconscious, and landed on Matt, blocking his view. Matt shoved the inert body aside. He looked for Mr. Dark again, but the creature had vanished.

  The bus crashed into a stand of juniper pines at the base of the cliff. The windshield shattered. Thick branches thrust into the bus like enemy spears. One pierced Frank’s abdomen. Another scraped painfully across Matt’s back. He thought later that the trees had probably saved him. They cushioned the bus’s fall just enough, so that when it slammed headfirst into the rocky ground, the impact was less than lethal.

  Then everything was still. Matt took a moment to confirm that, yes, he had survived. His back and head hurt like hell where they had hit the door. He touched his skull and felt blood, but it wasn’t too bad. Disoriented, he looked up. The body of the bus seemed to be verti
cal, with the rear exit door overhead. Rows of seatbacks jutted out like shelves. He realized that the bus had come to rest on its nose, with its right side leaning against the cliff wall. He was in the stairwell by the entry door, which was pinned shut against the rock.

  Frank lay on the crumpled dashboard nearby, among a pile of bags and purses that had flown forward during the crash. Part of a branch still protruded from his gut and his shirt was soaked with blood. He was alive, Matt saw from the still-oozing sores on his skin. Which meant he could still be dangerous. Now Matt really did need his ax.

  He saw his duffel bag over by the steering column. Matt tried to pull himself out of the stairwell. He couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t move. He remembered his spine hitting the metal doorframe. Cold fear crept in as he willed his legs to bend. They wouldn’t. From the waist down, Matt was paralyzed. He tried to process the thought. Paralyzed.

  Above him, he could hear the other passengers groaning and crying. They had been thrown against the seatbacks in front of them, and now clung to them to keep from falling. A muscular young man jumped down to the front of the bus, barely missing Frank. The guy looked like he spent every waking moment at the gym, showing off the results with a too-tight T-shirt. His nose was smashed and blood streamed down his face. He turned toward Matt and, for a moment, it seemed like he was going to offer a hand. Instead, he reached down to grab a camo-print backpack.

  Mr. Muscles looked up at his girlfriend, a pale young woman with a dozen earrings along the edge of one ear. “Come on, babe!”

  She was gingerly trying to climb down the seats with a sprained ankle. She reached out to him for help. He took her hand, then simply yanked her down beside him. She landed on the hurt ankle and cried out in pain. Her boyfriend paid no mind. He spotted the broken window and shoved her toward it. She scrambled to the window and wriggled out. Muscles followed.

  Matt saw Karen standing on a seatback about halfway up the aisle. She was trying to slide Daniel out to her across the seat. With a broken right arm, this was no easy task. It was a bad break. A jagged edge of bone poked through the skin of her forearm. She either ignored the pain or didn’t feel it yet.

  Now Matt noticed the wisps of smoke drifting up through the cracked dashboard. The bus was starting to burn. He tried to control his panic as he looked for a way out. On the opposite side of the bus, the window by the driver’s seat was broken. It was less than ten feet away, but he’d have to climb over Frank and around the steering column to get to it. And he couldn’t move his legs. He was trapped.

  A fiftyish Hispanic man in an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap climbed to the front of the bus beside Matt. Blood leaked down his neck from an unseen head wound. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Matt knew he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t tell the guy, “There’s a woman up there who needs help with her son.”

  The Diamondbacks fan saw Karen. He climbed back up a few seats, introduced himself as Javier, and offered his help. Together, he and Karen got the boy into the aisle and down. Daniel was sobbing in pain. His right leg and wrist were broken.

  Karen climbed out the window. Javier passed Daniel through to her. Then he noticed the smoke. “Oh shit.”

  He held out a hand to Matt. “Come on.”

  “I can’t move my legs,” said Matt, as calmly as he could.

  Javier grabbed his arms and pulled. But Matt was a big guy and it wasn’t easy to maneuver him out of the stairwell. Javier looked up at a young blond guy making his way down from the back—now top—of the bus. “Give me a hand.”

  The young guy did. The two of them managed to haul Matt across the bus, over the steering column, and up to the broken window. Matt pulled himself through.

  He slid down the side of the bus and landed awkwardly on the rocky ground. His legs bent beneath him, and he wondered if he’d broken anything. If so, he couldn’t feel it.

  He immediately felt the intense heat of the day. The bus’s air-conditioning hadn’t been great, but it was at least twenty degrees warmer outside. Matt had seen a weather report in the bus terminal in Austin that called for a high of 117 degrees. That felt about right.

  There was no movement at the window for a long moment, and Matt was afraid his saviors had succumbed to smoke inhalation. Then Frank appeared, his inert body being shoved out inch by inch. He slid to the ground. The other two men finally emerged, gasping in the clean air. They pulled the driver safely away from the bus, into the dry riverbed running through the narrow canyon. Javier was overwhelmed by a fierce coughing fit. He hunched over, fighting to catch his breath.

  The other passengers were clustered together, still in shock from the crash. Karen sat with Daniel, stroking his hair. Muscles and his girlfriend stood entwined in each other’s arms.

  The girlfriend leaned forward and peered at Frank. His shirt was covered in blood, and more oozed from his puncture wound. “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the blond guy. “He’s breathing.”

  “We need to stop the bleeding,” said Karen.

  Mr. Muscles, Alex to his friends, pulled off his T-shirt, revealing a perfectly toned torso. He handed it to her. Karen knelt beside Frank and pressed the shirt over the wound. Blood quickly soaked the cloth.

  “You should pull out the stick,” offered the pierced young woman. “So the wound can close.”

  Javier struggled to speak as he coughed. “No…leave it in.”

  Matt saw Frank’s eyes beginning to open. “That’s a myth,” he told Karen. “Pull it out.”

  Javier continued to shake his head as he tried to catch his breath. Matt knew he was giving bad advice. Removing the branch would probably make the man bleed out more quickly. Which was exactly what Matt wanted. Frank had already tried to kill everyone on the bus. The rot on his face told Matt he’d try again if he got the chance. Matt had to make sure he never did. His own half-paralyzed condition would make it tough for him to kill the bastard himself. He needed Karen to do his dirty work.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “I’m sure,” said Matt with complete confidence.

  She apparently decided to trust him. With her good arm, she grasped the branch and pulled. It came free and a new freshet of blood poured out. She tried to staunch the flow with the already soaked T-shirt, but it was no use.

  Frank woke up. “What…?” He looked around wildly and stopped when he saw Matt. Their eyes met for a moment, Frank’s gaze full of hate.

  Then, as Matt had witnessed so many times, the driver’s face relaxed and his eyes went dull. The hideous sores faded away. He was dead.

  This became clear to Karen as well, even as she kept pressing on the bloody cloth. Matt felt horrible for doing this to her, but he hadn’t had much choice. Finally, she sat back, tears running silently down her cheeks.

  Mr. Muscles, whom they would come to know as Alex, turned on Matt. “So what the hell happened?”

  “There was nothing we could have…” Matt began.

  But the other man cut him off angrily. “On the bus. I saw you grab the wheel.”

  Now everyone looked at Matt. He tried not to sound defensive. “I didn’t steer us off the cliff, if that’s what you mean. The driver did. I tried to stop him.”

  “Why would he do that?” Alex demanded.

  Matt couldn’t tell them about the Dark Man and his evil influence. They wouldn’t believe him if he did. “He was upset,” said Matt. “Suicidal, I guess. His wife had just left him.”

  The pale young woman with Alex asked, “Why take all of us with him?”

  “I don’t know. He was obviously unbalanced.” This sounded weak, even to him. “I didn’t cause the crash,” he insisted. But in a way, Matt knew, he did.

  He’d been looking through the tabloids, a habit he’d developed in his pursuit of the Dark Man. Where the specter went, violence and death were sure to follow. And not the everyday violence—shootings, robberies, drug deals gone bad—which hardly made the news anymore. Dark s
eemed to take special pleasure in the gruesome and the bizarre. Exactly the kind of stories typically splashed across the front page of the National Enquirer.

  The story that had caught his attention featured the headline “New Hotel Cursed by Ancient Spirits?” It featured a picture of the hotel in question: the Washakie Lodge, a luxurious spa/hotel under construction on the Shoshone Indian Reservation in Battle Mountain, Nevada. The project had been plagued by accidents and, most dramatically, a murder spree. While working on a concrete foundation, contractor Ernest Tarkanian “suddenly went apes*#t,” in the words of one witness, and planted a metal trowel in his coworker’s neck. He attacked three other workers, two fatally, before the site manager shot him.

  Matt was reading the overheated speculation about whether disturbing sacred land had unleashed supernatural vengeance, when a close-up of the hotel lobby stopped him cold. The parquet wood floor was inlaid with elaborate designs, including a snake consuming its own tail. The Ouroboros.

  He had seen this symbol before, as a tattoo worn by soldiers of the Dark Man. He’d also seen it carved into an ancient stone altar uncovered by an archeological dig on Blood Mesa in Arizona. Once uncovered, the altar had radiated an evil energy that turned the grad students into vicious, cannibalistic killers. Matt and the few unaffected students had barely escaped.

  The altar was gone now, blown to pieces. But there might be other objects out there with the same power to spread evil. The Ouroboros symbol at the hotel could be a sign that something dark resided there. Or maybe someone just thought a snake eating its own tail would be a cool pattern to put in the floor. He’d headed to Battle Mountain to find out.

  It was no coincidence that Matt’s bus crashed on the way. It seemed that the Dark Man didn’t want him to reach the Washakie Lodge, at least not before the grand opening tomorrow night. The rest of the passengers were just innocent bystanders who had the bad luck to get on the same bus as Matt Cahill.