by David Tully
“Check out…”
He looked back up at the rock—the old guy was gone.
Zoey glanced at him.
“…this foliage,” he finished lamely, turning back to her.
He was used to getting visitations from a rather effeminate, all-psychotic mime named Dark—but unless Dark was experimenting with a new look, it seemed Matt might be adding a new imaginary friend to his roster.
Glancing back at the rock as it vanished in the rearview mirror, Matt sighed, leaning his head back against the headrest. Something was going on here in Sundown, but damned if he could figure it out.
Zoey seemed to assume that his comment meant he was done talking about fracking, and they drove the rest of the way to the drilling site in awkward silence.
CHAPTER NINE
Although the rain hadn’t started again, the wind was picking up as they reached the top of the mountain and slowed before an open gate, a metal barrier connected on both sides to chain-link fences wandering off into the trees.
A tin sign dangling over the gate was being tossed around by the rising hurricane winds, but not so fast that Matt couldn’t read it: “Northstar Hydrofracking.”
Cars were parked all up and down the road along the fence, and Zoey eased in behind an ancient VW bus sporting Day-Glo colors and several decades’ worth of political slogans.
“That’s Murray’s car,” Zoey said, indicating the antique in front of them. “Thank God he’s here.”
“Murray’s got predictable taste in cars, for a peacenik.” Matt looked longingly at the duffel bag in the backseat as he got out—he was fairly certain the ax would raise eyebrows at the peaceful protest, and didn’t want to attract attention with a big (potentially gun-shaped) bag. He wavered a moment, then left it behind.
Zoey smirked at Matt as she waited for him to join her. “Yeah, that’s a bit of a cliché, but he says if something works, he sticks with it.”
“So who is he?” Matt asked as they approached the gate. He looked up and down the road—no sign of anyone. Whoever drove these cars up here, they weren’t around now.
“He’s sort of our guru. He lives in Albany these days—that’s how he knew about what these Northstar bastards were up to up here. But he was at Stanford in the sixties, Nicaragua in the eighties, he was at the Berlin Wall when it came down…”
“And now Albany. What else could top all that?”
Zoey shrugged, about to reply, when the roar of a crowd came from inside the gated compound. They entered the gate, passing a white trailer with an “Office” sign hanging out front. The door was closed and the lights off, so they assumed all Northstar employees must be over where the crowd noises were coming from.
The site wasn’t much to look at—truck activity had turned the ground to mud, and a conglomeration of objects had been set up in semicircular fashion, creating a sense of entering a labyrinth as they moved deeper into the hydrofracking operation. Matt and Zoey had to navigate a maze consisting of white plastic cubes containing the fracking chemicals, as well as truck-sized steel bins filled with sand—all vital, Zoey explained, to the fracking process. But although shouts and cheers could be heard over the wind, there was no sound of machinery operating. The protest had succeeded for the moment, and the fracking was apparently on hold.
They finally rounded a corner of one of the steel sand containers and stopped short. Two ugly mobs were facing off at the edge of a water-filled quarry—and from the artful garb of the ones clutching placards and posters, versus those facing them in hard hats and work denims, it wasn’t terribly tough to pick out who was who in this showdown.
The quarry was ringed on three sides by high edges leading clifflike into the water, but at the end they had arrived at, the land sloped down into the water, creating a beach of sorts. And on this beach, the war was being staged.
Between the two opposing sides, a huge black pipe had been lowered to the beach by a pulley attached to an enormous crane, which was parked at the edge of the large black lake—but the pipe had been halted in its progress, halfway into the earth.
“Why do they need to do it here?” Matt asked Zoey.
She pointed to the ebony water beyond the pipe and crane. “That quarry over there used to be a dry shale pit, before they struck a spring about fifty years ago. The whole thing filled with water over a weekend, Murray said. But the pipe”—and here she indicated the pipe halted in its progress down into the earth’s crust—“needs the water, along with the sand, to drill into the shale underneath us, to get to the natural gas, so they figure they have an easy source to get water and a convenient place to dump it. Nice and convenient, isn’t it?”
Matt nodded, looking at the still, dark water of the quarry. Its surface was covered with a repulsive brine.
He pointed to the quarry: “What’s wrong with it?”
Zoey grimaced. “They’ve already started fracking here. That, my friend, is the byproduct of our friends’ hunt for natural gas.”
“Horseshit,” a voice boomed from behind them.
Both Matt and Zoey jumped, turning to see a beefy gent in a black suit and hard hat standing behind them, glaring and fuming. Matt was no longer shocked to notice the telltale signs of rot all over his face. As he lectured them, flesh slid off the end of his nose, dripping into the muddy ground below their feet. And again, Zoey seemed oblivious.
“That water’s stagnant. It was covered with that shit when we started this operation. We have to clean it up as we use it.” He pointed to a large pump by the water’s edge, its hose leading to the pipe awaiting placement in the ground.
“When we pump it back into the quarry, it’s going to be cleaner than it’s ever been.”
Zoey and Matt stared at the imposing figure, who now stretched out one pustule-covered mitt to Matt.
“Name’s Stan Rutger. And you are?”
After staring at the oozing sores a moment, Matt reluctantly put his hand in the larger one to shake, where it was engulfed by the huge, wet paw.
“Matt Cahill.”
Stan nodded a greeting. “Northstar’s my company, which explains why I’m here. What’s your story?”
His eyes narrowed as his gaze swiveled back and forth between Matt and Zoey. Zoey bristled, offended by his refusal to even directly address her. “He’s with me.”
“And you are, little lady?”
“Just a concerned citizen.”
Stan nodded, his suspicions confirmed. “Didn’t think you two were here to help get us back on schedule. You’re with those assholes, aren’t you?” He nodded in the direction of the angry mob down at the heart of the drilling operation, and they all turned to take it in.
The protesters, led by one ancient Jerry Garcia look-alike (Matt was going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess this was Guru Murray), had thrown themselves in the path of the fracking equipment, bringing the drilling operation to a halt. Murray was holding a length of chain, and Matt idly wondered if he was going to chain himself to the pipe like some early-twentieth-century suffragette. That might be worth seeing.
The workers from the hydrofracking operation were not taking this gracefully, pointing out that the protesters were on private property and that the police had been notified. These observations were accompanied by such terms of endearment as “you hippie dipshit” and “fuckface,” which the protesters (who, to be fair, mostly looked like Patagonia or L.L. Bean clothing models, rather than Haight-Ashbury refugees) received with aplomb, countering with their own witty rejoinders, such as “fascist fuckwad” and “planet-raping Nazi dickhead.”
It was all in the name of good clean summertime fun, Matt was sure. But the shouting was starting to escalate, as the protesters with signs clearly had no intention of going anywhere yet. Nobody had come to blows so far, but faces were getting closer, accusations getting uglier and more personal.
Stan turned back to Zoey and Matt.
“As I’m about to remind them,” he went on, “you’re on private pr
operty. I suggest you get lost before the cops get here, which they will any second.”
Moving past them, Stan advanced on the crowd.
Zoey shrugged. “Well, this is what I came for.” Without looking at Matt, she followed Stan, into the heat of battle.
Matt paused for a moment, watching her go, lost in thought and momentarily distracted by the way her shorts clung to her adorable ass, then shook himself out of his brief trance. That’s not why I’m here, he told himself, his gaze moving to Stan and his less adorable ass as it plunged into the center of the angry mob, advising the protesters that they were less than welcome on his site.
That’s not why I’m here either. Matt had no interest in an environmental debate right now: fracking might be the answer to all the country’s fuel problems, and it might also poison the country so badly that fuel would be the least of the nation’s worries. Matt didn’t know which side was right, and he couldn’t let that be his concern right now.
He’d come up to this particular corner of paradise for a reason that had nothing to do with social issues, and he’d already found way more than he’d bargained for. Whatever fracking might do to water, Matt had a hunch it wasn’t pollution that was turning every single person in this town into a rotting, sore-infested avatar of evil.
No, that sort of thing was the special skill set of a certain cat named Dark. Dark was involved here—Matt was sure of it. He saw the creepy bastard’s calling card wherever he looked in Sundown, so why did Dark want him away from here? He usually thrived on Matt’s confrontations with his handiwork—it always upped the chaos quota, and that seemed to be Dark’s bottom line.
Even more important: how was he accomplishing all this?
Whoever had sent that instant message back in Manhattan, whoever had lured him all the way to this deep, dark corner of the Adirondack Mountains, wasn’t asking Matt to heal the planet.
Just to stop Mr. Dark once and for all.
So it was time to get to work. If only he could figure out how.
CHAPTER TEN
The voices were escalating over by the water’s edge. Stan and Zoey hadn’t exactly brought a Zen calm to the proceedings when they joined, though Matt could single out their dulcet tones from the assorted babble—new timbres in a chorus of hate.
Matt was concerned about Zoey, of course. She was still the only one in that whole throng not displaying any trace of Dark’s touch, and he wanted to stay close, to keep her safe. And yet, still, people seemed to be going about their normal business, as if unaware of the cancer spreading within them. It seemed that although Zoey wasn’t infected yet, he also couldn’t necessarily help her by simply sticking to her side.
The angry locals weren’t showing up yet as planned, thank God—but this lack of a clear problem left Matt feeling helpless, indecisive.
He couldn’t spend all day playing bodyguard for Zoey. He needed to find Croatoan.
No, his best bet now was to find Dark, the source of this corruption spreading over the town. Stop him and maybe save them all, not just Zoey, before it all got out of control.
Police sirens were sounding in the distance, approaching. So maybe things were about to get under control, or finally go completely off the rails once and for all.
Matt took in the rumble on his right, then looked to his left—and saw a young girl, about nine years old, staring at him.
She stood about a hundred yards away, at the corner of a large steel sand container, one hand resting on the steel wall next to her, the other tucked behind her back. Her long blond hair was blowing in the warm, rising wind, and her expression was unreadable…but Matt thought he detected a look of fear in her large, dark eyes.
But he detected more than that: unlike the kids he’d seen in town—unlike everyone he’d seen in Sundown, except for Zoey—this kid didn’t show a trace of rot on her. She was absolutely fine.
She was a cute kid, beautiful even, but closer inspection revealed the dark lines under her eyes, the painful thinness of the arms and legs sticking out of her plain, dirty-gray dress.
Rotting she wasn’t, but this kid still wasn’t being looked after properly.
“Hey there,” Matt called out, trying to sound friendly instead of surprised.
The girl stared back, saying nothing.
Matt indicated the opposing forces down by the water. “You here with your parents?”
The girl stared at him a moment longer—and then briefly, swiftly, shook her head.
Matt frowned at that. If this kid wasn’t here with her parents, then what the hell was she doing here? This ugly tangle of drilling equipment, hazardous chemicals, and sludgy noxious water wasn’t exactly an ideal playground.
And there was the even bigger question: why hadn’t the rot set in with her either?
“You should be careful, kid.” Matt glanced back at the crowd and over toward the main gate. From the sound of the sirens, the cops were just about to pull into the site. “Things could be…”
As he spoke, he turned back to the girl—and his blood froze. The girl had taken her other hand out from behind her back and was raising it to her side.
In it she clutched a lollipop—the same maggoty flavor he’d taken from Zoey.
For a moment, one part of Matt’s brain idly noted that his life had gotten to a pretty fucked-up point when a horde of rot-faced zombies elicited a casual shrug but a little girl with a lollipop made him want to shriek and dive under the bed.
Then he shut that part of his brain off and focused on what he was seeing. “What’s your name, kid?” Matt asked, now really straining to sound more casual than he felt, his eyes on the lollipop, studying it. Yep—it was the same. And only one other person he knew preferred that certain brand.
Person. Thing. Demon from hell. Whatever.
The girl looked away, seemingly too shy to speak. But after a moment’s hesitation, she did. “Virginia,” she answered. She held the lollipop and gazed at it rather than Matt but didn’t lick it. As her hand wavered, a maggot dropped to the mud below, twitching on the ground.
Matt started to casually (or so it looked, he hoped) stroll toward her, even as three police cars rolled into the open space behind him, heading for the showdown at the pipe.
“That’s a pretty name, Virginia.” Matt glanced back at the cars, one of which read “Sheriff” on its side. Unsurprisingly, the cops leaping out of the cars and heading for the showdown by the quarry all exhibited pronounced shades of rot. Looked like the contamination was all but universal—except for Zoey and this kid…
Matt turned back to continue speaking with her.
The girl was gone.
Matt walked quickly around the side of the steel container. This kid, like Zoey, was still untouched and had also been offered some free treats by Dark.
He had serious doubts that Dark was spreading his corruption through tainted candy, but if he could somehow prevent this little girl from being corrupted as well, he wasn’t about to let that chance slip away.
He came around the corner of the container and skidded to a stop. Looming over him was a rickety, ancient wooden structure that reminded him of nothing so much as the old sawmill where he’d worked for most of his life. Before the arrival of the fracking equipment and materials, this structure would have looked directly into the quarry, overseeing the operation. Now, it was lost in the tangle of equipment, shut away and forgotten like the business it had run.
A large, faded, nearly indecipherable sign on the side of the building announced that this had been the main office and center of operations for “Pfefferling and Sons Quarry.” The paint was nearly completely peeled off, though—Pfefferling and Sons had taken off a long time ago, beaten and done the moment someone digging for shale had randomly struck a spring of cold black water.
Another sign across the front door read “Keep Out—Condemned.” But the door behind the sign was open—and swinging in the breeze, either from the wind or from someone just passing through. Matt bet on the latte
r and approached the door.
He placed a hand on the ancient wood and tried to peer into the gloom beyond. No luck.
“Virginia?” he called. No answer.
He turned back toward the direction of the protest, where voices were getting louder, as was the sound of wind rushing through the trees that surrounded the quarry. He should go back and make sure Zoey was all right, but she seemed capable of taking care of herself, and Matt was pretty sure this wasn’t Zoey’s first protest, nor her first run-in with authority types. Right now, Virginia might need him more than Zoey did.
As he turned back to the door, his attention was caught by something lying in the grass, nearly at his feet. This old structure stood at a point scarcely twenty feet from an inlet of black quarry water, and at the edge tall willows shot out of the brackish liquid in straggly profusion.
Lying in the willows was a dead deer, a large buck. From the state of decomposition, it had been there a little while, at least a week, but there was still enough to see the tumors and growths that had been erupting under and out of its matted fur, as well as the severe deformation of its snout, turning its face into a downturned, hideous parody of a bulldog.
On top of all that, its head was twisted completely backward, its throat ripped open.
So maybe there was something to this whole “fracking pollutes water” thing. Matt guessed the buck had been drinking from the quarry, and that seemed to not agree with its overall health. But something else had stepped in to seal the deal and put that buck down once and for all.
This whole place, from the ugly fighting of the people to the deep black oily waters that brooded in the quarry beyond, felt wrong. More than bad. Evil.
With a shiver, Matt pushed open the door and entered the building.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Matt entered the ancient, barnlike structure…and memories of B. Barer and his sons flooded back. There were times when it seemed to Matt like he’d always been on the road, one step behind Mr. Dark, fighting the plague that skeevy bastard was spreading across Matt’s world, trying to figure out why he’d been brought back and what was expected of him.
