Witch's Canyon

by Jeff Mariotte

  Unbelievable.

  EIGHTEEN

  “We’re completely cut off,” Sheriff Beckett had said.

  He’d taken Trace Johannsen outside, where they wouldn’t be overheard. The night—early morning, Trace supposed, was more accurate—was frigid, and they zipped up their heavy coats and wore hats and moved about in close circles as they talked.

  “The long distance, you mean?”

  “Long distance, e-mail, shortwave radio. I even tried sending a fax, but of course that requires long distance service, too. I don’t understand it.” The sheriff’s face looked pale and pinched. “There’s a lot I don’t understand right about now,” he admitted.

  Trace had felt more shaken by this admission than he would have expected. He looked up to Jim Beckett, who knew more about law enforcement than Trace believed he ever could, and who combined that knowledge with an understanding of people that let him apply his experience wisely and well. Maybe Jim was a country sheriff, but he was the best lawman Trace had ever known. All he had ever wanted was to be a cop, and much of that was because of the example that Jim had set. The idea that anything could trouble Jim was scary.

  “What can we do?” Trace asked.

  “What I want you to do is take one of the department Yukons and drive like hell,” Beckett said. “Go all the way to Flagstaff if you have to. Use your cell phone, your radio, smoke signals if need be, but get hold of DPS and get some troopers here as fast as you can.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “And you be careful out there, Trace. I don’t want to put too much pressure on you, but there’s a lot riding on this. We’re completely overwhelmed here, and I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better. The number of attacks keeps climbing, we’ve all been on duty too long, we’re tired and we’re going to be losing our edge, making mistakes. We need reinforcements, and we need ’em bad. We’ll keep trying to get through from here, but I have this bad feeling. Like we’re not just dealing with the kinds of things we can understand, you know? Like somehow the rules have changed.”

  “I’m right there with you.”

  “Good. You’re a good man, Trace, and you’re destined for big things in this department. Now get on the road and find us some cops.”

  Trace took a minute to pour himself some of the sludge that passed for coffee and to grab a couple of bottles of water. He made sure he had his cell phone, that the gas tank was full, and the shotgun was in the Yukon he checked out. Once he’d done that, he climbed up behind the wheel and pulled away from the station house, in the northeast corner of town. Highway 180 was nineteen miles from the station, and it would take him right into Flagstaff.

  The first twelve miles passed quickly. The clouds had passed on and the night sky was clear, with stars and a half-moon shining down on the road. It wasn’t fitting for a law officer to think it, but when he pulled this off, he knew, he would be some kind of hero. The day would be saved because of his desperate ride. He smiled at the thought, and wondered if he’d get a medal, maybe get his picture in the papers.

  At mile thirteen the engine started to knock. Trace knew the department maintained their vehicles well, and so he figured it wouldn’t be a problem. Anyway, given the urgency of his mission, he didn’t want to turn around and check out another car. He pushed on.

  In another mile or so the knocking got worse. The SUV started to actually shudder on the road during the worst of it. Trace swore silently. At this rate he wouldn’t even make the highway, much less Flagstaff.

  He pulled over to the side. He hadn’t seen any other vehicles out, and the road was a remote forested two-lane, but he still wanted to be safely out of the traffic lanes just in case. Once he had stopped on the shoulder, he tried his mobile phone and his radio. Neither one worked. No choice but to press onward, then.

  He turned the wheel toward the road and pushed lightly on the accelerator. As the SUV started to inch forward, he saw clouds of insects in the double streams of the headlights. Bugs, in this weather? It didn’t make any sense. Normally they wouldn’t be out in quantity until spring, and especially on such a cold, snowy day—the temperature now couldn’t be higher than twenty-five or so—he would not have expected to see as much as a single housefly.

  They were out in force, though. Flies, bees, wasps, moths, mosquitoes, dragonflies, beetles…as many as he might see in a full summer’s day outside. But these were swarming together, which never happened, and all gathered right around his vehicle. More seemed to be appearing every second, as if they were materializing in his headlight beams. That couldn’t be—they had to be flying in from the surrounding woods, attracted by the light. Trace didn’t like it, though, and he gunned the engine, pushing through the bugs and onto the road.

  He thought he would leave them behind quickly, but he didn’t. The insects stayed in the headlights, except for those that splatted against the windshield. He pressed on the gas, and the SUV knocked but lurched forward. Fifty, fifty-five, sixty. No way those bugs should be flitting around in his way at these speeds.

  But they were.

  More and more hit the windshield. Bug guts littered the glass. He flicked on the wipers and sprayed the windshield, but that just smeared them, turning them into an opaque film. And still more smacked into it every second. He’d have to stop soon, or risk driving off the road or into an oncoming vehicle.

  Then he heard the buzzing of a bug inside the Yukon. It sounded like a bee, but could as easily have been a horse fly, or a wasp or something else. He couldn’t see it in the dark and didn’t dare take his eyes off what little he could make out of the road to look for it. It buzzed toward his head, then away, darted for him and swooped back again.

  Within seconds the buzzing was joined by a high-pitched whine that could only have been a mosquito. As soon as Trace heard it, it bit him on the cheek. He slapped at it, smacked himself. This time he cursed out loud.

  Another buzz chimed in. He had to stop, had to close the vents or whatever these pests were using to get inside, and had to kill them before they stung. A bee stinging him while he was driving, more than half blind anyway, could turn out to be fatal. Besides, he reasoned, if he had left the others behind—through the windshield he couldn’t see them anymore—he could scrape the glass off and continue.

  He braked suddenly and yanked the wheel to the right. The shoulder came faster than he’d expected, and he took a bounce that almost slammed his head into the roof. As it was, the seat belt bit painfully into his shoulder. As he brought the vehicle to a shuddering stop, one of the bees sank its stinger into the side of his neck, just below his right ear.

  “Damn it!” he shouted, swiping his right hand across his neck. He thought it collided with the insect’s body, but the damage was already done.

  He clicked on the dome light. Time to find that other one and finish it off, too.

  The vents were thick with insects, writhing through the slots. They dropped to the floor when they came through, pushed aside by the ones behind, or they took flight—most almost soundless, the fluttering of tiny wings drowned out by the roar of the big engine, but some adding their own buzzes and whines to the mix.

  Trace reached to close the vents, but the action brought a dozen or more to his right hand, stinging and biting as if choreographed. He yanked his hand away, suddenly on fire. The bugs seemed encouraged by their small victory, and wriggled through the vents in greater numbers.

  He took off his hat and swatted at them, but within a second several dozen lit on his scalp and started attacking. They were on his face, in his eyes. He opened his mouth to scream a wordless curse and felt them dive inside, stinging the insides of his cheeks, his gums, his tongue.

  They would kill him if he stayed in the SUV’s cab a second longer, he knew. Jim and the people of Cedar Wells were counting on him. He couldn’t let a few insects stop him from getting help. And outside, he would be able to run.

  He steeled himself and threw open his door. As he did, he
lost his balance, tumbling out to land in the snow and grass on the road’s shoulder.

  And they swarmed him. From the ground, the ants came, the cockroaches, the spiders, tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, their bites and stings like liquid fire injected directly into Trace’s veins. From the sky, the bees and yellowjackets and mosquitoes attacked. Moths flew up his nose, plugging his nasal passages. Clouds of gnats flew into his mouth, gagging him, choking him.

  He tried to rise, but they weighted him down, and the poisons rushing through him weakened his muscles. He couldn’t see anymore, his eyes long since swollen shut. He pawed uselessly, pointlessly, at the Beretta in his holster, as if he could shoot a million impossible insects with the bullets it carried.

  His mind flitted to the people he had left behind, his parents, his big sister, Jim and everyone he worked with in the sheriff’s department.

  Being entrusted with a badge and a gun and a uniform had been the greatest thing that ever happened to Trace Johannsen. Living up to that, being the hero of the hour…that would have been so perfect.

  Would have been…

  NINETEEN

  They were a couple of blocks from the motel, heading up Main, when a car darted out of a side road directly in front of them. Its driver slammed on the brakes and the car swerved, coming to a stop across both lanes.

  Dean reacted, stomping on his own brakes. The Impala fishtailed, then caught a patch of black ice on the roadway and launched into an uncontrolled slide. He wrestled with the wheel, but it did no good. His precious car would end up where it ended up.

  Which, at the moment, looked to Sam like it would be right on top of the car that had startled them both.

  It was a station wagon, roughly a thousand years old, with fake wood paneling on the sides, rust growing around the wheel wells like lichen on rocks, and a ladder in the back along with some paint buckets and drop cloths. Sam could see all this in the headlights with perfect clarity as the Impala skated toward it.

  He could also see its driver, a skinny young man wearing a baggy fatigue coat, with long greasy hair that flopped into his face as he rushed from the car. He didn’t bother closing his door, possibly more worried about trying to keep his balance on the ice and not shoot himself in the leg with the cannon he carried.

  Okay, not a cannon exactly, but when he raced around behind the wagon and propped his arm on its top and leveled the .358 at them, its muzzle looked like one.

  “Dean—”

  “I know!”

  That was all they had time for. The Impala slid to a graceful stop about three feet away from the station wagon, side by side with it.

  Which meant that when they got out, Sam’s head would be about level with that big gun.

  “We’re not looking for a kid with a gun, right?” he asked. “Old man, right?”

  “Old man, Indian, bear…we’re looking for a lot of things,” Dean replied. “But this is the first I’ve heard about a kid.”

  “Looks like maybe he’s looking for us.”

  Dean opened his door and got out, using careful, measured motions. He showed the kid his empty hands. “Easy, pal,” he said as he did so. “I think there’s some kind of confusion here, but we can straighten it out.”

  With the kid’s attention focused on Dean, Sam risked getting out on his own side. He raised empty hands toward the kid, too. The kid’s gaze snapped between the two of them, the gun’s muzzle shifting along with it. “Let’s talk about this,” Sam said.

  “I just want to know which one of you it is,” the kid said. His voice quaked. He was scared, which worried Sam all the more. Scared people weren’t exactly known for steady trigger fingers, or for careful consideration of their actions.

  “Which one what is?” Dean snapped. “Dude, you got the gun, least you could do is be clear about what you’re doing with it.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” the kid warned. “I saw you all.”

  “Saw what?” Sam asked.

  “I saw Heather go to your hotel room, in the middle of the night.” He twitched the gun at Sam. “I saw you open the door in your underwear and let her in. Don’t tell me you’re both doing her.”

  “You were following Heather?” Sam asked, bewildered. The station wagon, he realized, must have been the car Dean saw behind them earlier. When the kid knew for sure that Heather was going home, he turned off so he could be in place to lay this trap.

  “She’s my girlfriend,” the kid said. “I was talking to her on the phone earlier, and she sounded weird. Plus we were supposed to go out tonight, but she canceled on me.”

  “She probably canceled because it’s not safe to be out tonight,” Sam said.

  “I already thought she was cheating on me, but I couldn’t figure out with who. Now I know. You guys are all tall and buff and such.”

  “You only think you know, kid,” Dean said. “But you’re wrong, except for the tall and buff part. Put that peashooter down and let’s talk. Preferably inside.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “You saw Heather come to our room for something totally unrelated to sex,” Sam said.

  “Why don’t you tell me why, then?”

  “It’s a little hard to explain,” Dean said.

  “Right.”

  “Look, it’s freezing out here,” Dean said, “so if you’re going to shoot us, just go ahead and freaking do it! A hot bullet and a hospital bed would feel good right about now.”

  The kid’s hands started trembling harder, the gun in them wagging dangerously now. Sam knew Dean didn’t really want to get shot, and neither did he. But if they didn’t get the kid disarmed soon, something disastrous would happen.

  Just keep yakking at him, Dean, he thought as he began slowly working his way toward the rear of the wagon. It was a long way around the big car, and getting to the kid unnoticed would be almost impossible. But going over or under would surely result in a panicked shot fired. Unless he could be persuaded to put it down, slow and steady was the only way to reach the gun.

  “You!” the kid shouted, swinging the gun around to keep it lined up on Sam’s head. “Keep still!”

  “Hit the dirt, Sammy!” Dean called.

  When Dean said something like that, he usually had good reason, and Sam had learned to go along with him. He did so now, hurling himself to the ground, trying to keep the wagon’s rear wheel between himself and the kid.

  As he had suspected, the kid took the sudden move as an assault. He crouched and fired, but without aiming, and his first shot went into the ground. Before he could squeeze off a second, Dean was in motion, clomping onto the Impala’s hood and launching himself from there onto the station wagon’s. From there he dropped onto the kid like vengeance from above. By the time Sam scrambled to his feet and around the car, Dean was tucking the Magnum into his waistband and the kid was up against his station wagon, disheveled but apparently unharmed.

  “I told you, bud, you’ve got it wrong,” Dean said. “We have nothing to do with Heather. Not that way. You want to know anything more about it, though, you’ll have to ask her.”

  “Yeah,” the kid muttered. “And tell her I was following her.”

  “That’s something you’ll have to work out,” Dean said. “Sooner the better, if you ask me. Trust is a pretty important part of a relationship.”

  “I know. That’s why I don’t want her to know that I didn’t trust her.”

  “Do you?”

  “You’ve seen her,” the kid said. “Do you think she’d be satisfied with a loser like me for long? She’s probably met all kinds of guys at college.”

  “She probably has,” Sam agreed. “And if she’s still with you, it’s because she wants to be with you. You might want to think about appreciating that instead of questioning it.”

  “I guess.” He frowned at the road, looking sullen and petulant. But maybe, Sam hoped, having learned at least one lesson—don’t pull a gun on two guys unless you intend to use it immediately.

  “Can
I have my gun back? It’s my dad’s.”

  “You tried to shoot my brother,” Dean said.

  “It is kind of dangerous around here, Dean,” Sam pointed out. “Maybe you should let him keep it.”

  Dean studied the kid for a few seconds, then drew the gun from his waistband and emptied the bullets out. “Here you go,” he said, handing over the empty weapon. “There’s one in the chamber, in case you run into trouble on the way home. Like Sammy said, there are real dangers out tonight, so if you’re attacked by an old soldier or a bear or an Indian, something like that, you might want to use it. Otherwise, you’re best off giving it back to your dad and forgetting you ever took it.”

  The kid took the gun, weighed it in his hand for a couple of seconds. “Okay, thanks.” He stood there like he thought there should be something else said, then shrugged again and opened the passenger-side door. He slid across the bench seat, leaving the gun beside him on the right, and started the car.

  “Let’s get back to the room,” Dean said. “This sucks. Why’d I even let you talk me into going in the first place?”

  Sam climbed back into the Impala. “I’m glad you came,” he said. He barely got the sentence out when he started laughing.

  “What? Something funny I’m not seeing?”

  “Just thinking about you giving advice on relationships and trust,” Sam said.

  “Hey, I’ve had relationships!”

  “Yeah. The longest lasted, what, a month? And how many of them started with you lying about who you are and what you do?”

  “Case you haven’t noticed, Sammy, women don’t exactly flock around hunters. And you can’t really blame ’em. We’re not the most stable individuals around.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re bad bets for long-term things, but good investments on life insurance.”