Thunder Road

by Thorne, Tamara

  He’d been going to the church because the Voice in the sky had told him he should. He balked at first, but it kept returning, invading his brain, telling him it was a means to an end; a part of the greater plan. Justin was never one to trust people, but the Voice was something else and it had always been right before. He did as it asked, and in the last few weeks, he’d managed to impress Sinclair with his own hardworking honesty and concern. Of course, if he could fool a scam artist like Sinclair, that meant two things: He was a better scammer than Sinclair, and the evangelist wasn’t as smart as he seemed. That was a bit of a disappointment, but dealing with the man still held some excitement: Sinclair couldn’t have gotten to where he was if he weren’t very, very good, so the excitement lay in the possibility that Sinclair was scamming him. Perhaps more interesting than Sinclair himself were his “Elder Apostles”—a churchy name for “lieutenants.” Round, angelic-faced Hannibal Caine, who spoke in a soft, sweet voice, had more going on than met the eye. A hell of a lot more. Caine was still suspicious of Justin, though perhaps it was only jealousy. The other, Eldo Blandings, rarely said a word, had a ridiculous gray toupee, long, sour face, and seemed to see everything with his equally long, pale blue eyes. Justin found him fascinating and wondered what he and Caine wanted besides the obvious: power. Anyone but the sheep wanted power: That was a fact of life.

  A mile up the road, he passed the gates for El Dorado, Tom Abernathy’s ranch. His was the only place that looked really good, but that old Roy Rogers reject had money dripping from his dick, and other than Sinclair, was the only one who could afford to build a halfway decent house.

  “Fucking desert.” As he approached Madland he slowed for a dark green minivan as it pulled out of the parking lot. It was full of kids. One of them waved at him and he smiled and waved back as the van passed. Fucking tourists.

  Justin punched the radio on and hit scan. “This is Charlie Ray, with ten easy hits in a row.” “Yeah, right,” Justin grumbled, and changed the station. Twangy country shit came on, which gave way to a radio shrink, then some beaner rattling off Spanish a mile a minute. The next station it landed on was Sinclair’s Jesus station. After that, a Whitney Houston song was ending, then Charlie Ray, Victorville’s answer to Howard Stem, announced three in a row by Michael Bolton. “Shit!” He scanned across the dial again. They didn’t play shit out here, and when Sinclair’s thundering voice blared again, Justin locked on the station.

  “The time of reckoning is upon us, my friends!” Sinclair intoned. “And it is up to the Prophet’s Apostles, those who have been blessed and enlightened, to deliver the Word to the ignorant masses, that they, too, may be saved in these final dark days!”

  “Jackasses,” Justin Martin said, and chuckled. Sinclair’s compound was loaded with followers, and on Sundays people came from all over to go to his church. Sunday mornings the dirt roads were packed with human sheep headed for the church in the compound.

  Originally he hadn’t bought Sinclair’s religious crap, and he still didn’t, not a speck of it, but he certainly admired the man’s game and wondered how he was tied to the Voice. Jim-Bob’s voice had power and charisma, and the fact that the afternoon show wasn’t live, but merely a tape, didn’t lessen the effect.

  “Listen to me now!” Sinclair roared, as if he’d caught Justin’s thoughts. “There is no redemption for sinners! Only the righteous, only the faithful, shall be saved! Join us right here, on this station, tonight and every night at nine, to learn about how you, too, can be saved before the Four Horsemen ride again! Until tomorrow, I am your faithful servant, James Robert Sinclair, humbly saying farewell.”

  “You’re a shameless son of a bitch!” Justin muttered appreciatively. As he approached the end of Old Madelyn and slowed in preparation to turn right onto Thunder Road, he felt around for a cassette, any cassette. His fingers closed around one on the floor next to his seat and he slid it into the player, instantly silencing old Jim-Bob.

  “And I’ll buy you a stairway to heaven—”

  “Shit.” Not in the mood for moldy oldies, he ejected the tape, slapped off the radio, and concentrated on his surroundings. He glanced at tacky Fort Madelyn as he made his turn, then stomped the brakes, staring at the white mound that lay in the fort’s shadows. “What the fuck?”

  He checked the mirrors and the crossroads, east and west, saw no one, then pulled the Mustang onto the narrow shoulder and parked. He trotted over to the mound.

  “All right!” he breathed as he stood over the dead goat. He glanced at the sky, half expecting to see the lights hovering overhead, hoping to hear the Voice. But the sky was clear. Only mildly disappointed, he turned his attention back to the goat. He sure as hell couldn’t have caught anything this big in his snare. Quickly he returned to the car, opened the trunk, and spread out a blue plastic tarp on the ground. Then he returned to the goat and dragged the heavy corpse across the ground to the car. He rolled the body onto the tarp and tediously wrapped it up so that he wouldn’t get blood, dirt, or the animal stink on his clothing.

  The corpse was surprisingly heavy and Justin was sweating as he dumped the carcass in his trunk, but it was worth it. After taking one last joyous look at the animal, he placed the casserole in the trunk, making sure it wouldn’t spill by nestling it between the goat’s belly and rear quarters. Then he slammed the trunk, climbed in the Mustang, made a U-turn, and headed back down Old Madelyn. Pushing the Led Zep tape into the player, he grinned, glad he didn’t need to check his rabbit snare. If he’d caught something, it could wait: This was a thousand times better.

  3

  James Robert Sinclair

  JAMES ROBERT SINCLAIR TOOK ONE LAST LOOK AT HIS MANILA folders filled with securities and investment papers, at the pile of bank books, and last, but best, the banded stacks of bills—twenties, fifties, and hundreds—that added into the hundreds of thousands. Pushing the heavy door to the safe closed, he twisted the dial. This was merely petty cash; much more substantial amounts were kept in church accounts—and even more impressive ones in accounts in Zurich and the Caymans. Those were his private accounts. Sinclair smiled. In just under a decade, the Church of the Prophet’s Apostles had, indeed, turned some miraculous profits for church and for the Prophet.

  He pressed a button on a hidden console in his desk and the oak wall paneling slid smoothly over the safe, hiding it from all but his most trusted faithful. Only his two elders, Hannibal Caine, who was his designated successor if anything happened to him prior to the “Apocalypse,” and Eldo Blandings, were aware of the safe. In another safe, this one rather obviously “hidden” beneath a portrait on the wall, he kept less important property, but this safe was insurance, the one any would-be thieves were supposed to find. In this one, he kept enough to satisfy—and catch—any thief: fifty thousand in invisibly marked bills, plus gemstones and jewelry donated by his converts. There were even two of the gold ingots turned over to him by a wealthy widow, a convert who, like many, had hoped to receive his physical favors.

  James Robert Sinclair knew exactly what he was: a handsome boy grown into a handsomer man, one who’d charmed his way through school on charisma and mediocre grades.

  Absently he stroked his neatly manicured beard. He hadn’t started out with the intention of founding his own church—entering the ministry was his parents’ dream, not his. His first love had been magic, and by junior high he was an adequate magician. In high school he captured the interest of a professional magician and came under his tutelage, and in college he became a regular at the Magic Castle.

  Using the money he earned with his act, he moved out of his parents’ home, though he had remained in divinity school for another year because it didn’t occur to him to quit. It was a thing drummed into him since early childhood —his father and grandfather were both ministers—so he didn’t question them when they told him that pulling a rabbit out of a hat was a fine hobby, but he couldn’t make a living at it. But one day he realized he was making a very good living with
his magic, and so began his revolt.

  He had tried for the two years of college to be what his family wished, but he didn’t believe—he never had. He couldn’t fathom the term “faith”—he needed proof, always, which was his big failing where religion was concerned. Faith seemed silly, religion and its miracles no more than a magic, not so different from his own brand. And so he had dropped out in his junior year. Disdain for those who believed had turned to pure contempt, and very nearly, hatred. He had even begun to hate himself for his own hypocrisy.

  He’d turned to magic full-time until that, too, turned empty. Despite that, it had given him the understanding that had eventually brought him back to religious magic. In religion there was true power; that was, if you were a real leader, not chief follower, but someone truly in command. He had always had a gift with women, but when he established himself as a “prophet” and began the church, his attractiveness progressed geometrically. Perhaps because of the power he held, perhaps, too, because they now perceived him as forbidden fruit.

  In the first years of the ministry, when he was in his twenties, he had partaken freely of the gifts his feminine followers bestowed, but sometime during the fourth year, he developed an odd aversion to sexual relations with members of his flock. He knew himself well—knew his own selfishness, his own ego—and almost convinced himself that the aversion was akin to his earlier aversion to believers: He told himself he saw these women as mindless sheep, unworthy of him because of their very willingness to believe, to have faith in a man who was a charlatan.

  He believed it for a while and he prided himself on his superiority, on his selfishness and pragmatism. But finally he had to admit to himself that even though this may have been true in the beginning, he had slowly come to accept the true reason—and at first it appalled him: He felt sorry for these grasping, needy people. They needed someone to tell them what to do, and in effect, they had created him just as people created every god. He had played the role of the wise father until he had become the role.

  These days he saw the conviction as an asset rather than a weakness to be fought. If absolute power corrupted absolutely, then this one thing kept his ego from going over the edge or allowing him to make the mistakes so many other evangelists had made by letting their lusts get in the way.

  Fortunately, he felt no similar qualms over taking their money; he knew he earned it. He gave the Apostles so much, he gave them what they needed: acceptance and structure, something to believe in. Their moneys were his due, for sometimes the people and their needs drained him beyond feeling. He weathered those times by telling himself that soon he would be free of his flock.

  Sinclair tilted back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. He twined his fingers behind his head, absentmindedly twiddling the rubber band that held his wavy chestnut hair in a discreet ponytail that he always kept hidden beneath his shirt collar. Again he smiled to himself: He didn’t know why he kept his hair long or why he hid it—another of his quirks, he supposed. Perhaps, at thirty-four, he already felt very old, and he kept it long as a reminder of his youth. In his days as a magician he’d worn it loose to complement his white spandex bodysuits: The hair drew women to him as much as his hypnotic brown eyes or his sculpted body.

  The long hair, the eyes, the muscles rippling beneath the spandex, and his rich baritone had given him power over women and over audiences—but no true power. Back then, he’d tasted success, but when he decided to combine his religious background with his own physicality and his knowledge of magic, when he’d changed his name to James Robert Sinclair and become Prophet and founder of the Apostles, he had gained almost as much power as God Himself. He chuckled. That was, if there were a God.

  4

  Alexandra Manderley

  “THIS MAY BE OUR LAST CHANCE FOR A GOOD MEAL FOR WEEKS.” Eric Watson pressed the brakes and the red Ford Bronco halted at the bottom of the deserted Madelyn off-ramp. A green highway sign announced that Old Madelyn Road was to their right, but Eric’s attention was directed to the left, where a huge neon sign slowly twirled above Ray’s Truck Stop Cafe. The café itself stood amid a complex of buildings in the center of a huge parking lot. Eric glanced at Alexandra Manderley, hope and hunger in his grass-green eyes.

  “Good meal?” Alex asked, then smiled at her youthful assistant. A graduate student, Eric had a long, gawky body, unruly auburn hair, freckled cheeks, and a shy boyishness in his manner that effectively hid the sharp, skeptical intellect that had made her choose him as her assistant. “Sure,” Alex said. “Let’s eat.”

  “Great.” His grin creased deep dimples into his cheeks, making him look about ten years old instead of twenty-three with master’s degrees in physics and aeronautics. On this trip he hoped to gather the last of his material for his doctorate. It wouldn’t be long before Eric would be needing his own assistant at APRA—the Aerial Phenomena Research Agency—and she didn’t look forward to losing him. In fact, the thought made her cringe. At least you’re losing him to something good.

  Her last assistant, Jack Matthews, had just received his master’s degree when she lost him on a trip to the White Sands area of New Mexico four years ago. It was an excursion much like this one, to check out reports of UFOs in the area. The fifth night they saw them, followed by a clutch of military helicopters. During the melee, Jack disappeared, along with his video camera. Totally, completely disappeared. She didn’t believe he’d been abducted, at least not by aliens, and she’d never quite given up looking for him, even though her initial suspect—the U.S. government —did its best first to placate her, then when that didn’t work, to discredit her research. It was a long time ago now. Poor Jack. She looked at Eric Watson out of the corner of her eye and swore that she wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

  They pulled into the parking lot, joining two dozen big rigs and a handful of cars and pickup trucks. “I could eat a horse,” Eric declared as he slipped the Bronco into a tight slot in front of the café. It had a seedy art deco look; the low-slung structure sported rounded edges, walls of faded yellow stucco, and dark-tinted windows that were lined up like those on an old-fashioned passenger train. Above the chrome and glass doors, the eternally winking neon waitress held a tray emblazoned with the words RAY’S over her head and leaned against a vertical post that flashed TRUCK STOP CAFÉ in dancing yellow and red bulbs. None of the bulbs were burned out, and that, Alex thought, was a good omen.

  “This’ll be great,” Eric declared. “Truckers always know the best places to eat.”

  Alex glanced at the windowless building next door—its sign, complete with a tilted martini glass, read Ray’s Tavern —and wondered if Eric was right or if the truckers preferred the bar.

  “I can smell the onions from here,” he added as he pushed open one of the heavy glass doors and held it for her.

  “Thanks.” Alex stepped across the threshold onto the worn but spotless black and white checkerboard floor, her stomach growling as she caught the pleasant odors of burgers and fries unsullied by rancid grease. Western music twanged softly on the jukebox. A few families occupied the booths with old-fashioned speckled gray Formica tables and overstuffed orange vinyl seats that lined the outer walls of the L-shaped cafe. The age-beaten maple tables and chairs scattered through the center of the room were empty. Men, mostly burly, several wearing cowboy hats, sat at the counter hunched over their food, talking, smoking, occasionally laughing. One overweight man, the back of his neck beet red, his shirt sweat-stained, glanced around at the newcomers, then glanced again, his little piggy eyes roaming the length of Alex’s body. She drew herself to full height and put on her sternest I’m-a-scientist face, but that only made him look harder and elbow the man next to him in the ribs. This one stared approvingly from under a dirty baseball cap, then whistled. Other heads began to turn. “Ain’t Red there a little young for you?” he called.

  Just as Alex started to tell Eric they were leaving, now, a deep voice commanded, “Behave yourself, Roscoe!” A man who co
uld have been James Earl Jones’s younger brother was giving the trucker a schoolteacher’s glare from behind the cook’s window. His arms were crossed over his white apron and his spatula stuck up like a ruler.

  “Sorry, Ray,” mumbled the whistler. He stole one more glance at Alex, and his neighbor started to laugh but was cut short by the cook’s stern “All of you, mind your manners.” They shut up.

  Ray nodded apologetically at Alex and Eric. “Waitress will be right with you folks.” He disappeared and a moment later, a pert little blonde, no older than seventeen, bounced up to them. “I’m sorry,” she chirped. “I broke a nail and I was Super-Gluing it.” She smoothed her pink and white uniform.

  “That’s okay,” Eric Watson said quickly. “Christie,” he added, reading the name embroidered on her breast pocket. Alex smiled to herself: It was good to see that Eric thought about something besides science.

  The girl, unaware, directed a brilliant smile at them both. “Anyway, welcome to Ray’s. Table, counter, or booth?”

  “A booth, please,” Alex said quickly. “Nonsmoking.”

  Brow furrowing, she glanced around, then the dimpled smile reappeared and she pointed at the booths lining the short far wall. “How about over there?”

  “Thanks. That will be fine,” Alex said. Three of the booths were empty, but a stiff-shouldered man in an air force officer’s uniform sat in the fourth, glowering intently at a cup of coffee. A black leather notebook lay ignored at his elbow. She wasn’t surprised to see him: Where UFOs made appearances, so did the military.

  “Right this way.” Grabbing menus, Christie led them across the room to the booth right next to the military type’s.