The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5)

by Michael Richan

  “No,” he said, turning to look up at her. “The message. It said, ‘Don’t let him go’.”

  “Don’t let who go?” she repeated, but it came to her. “David!”

  Winn stood up and reached into his pocket, removing his phone. He called David’s cell.

  “What are you going to tell him?” Carma asked.

  “I’m going to tell him not to get on that plane!” Winn replied, feeling the need to pace. He left the bathroom, walking back and forth in the hallway as he waited for David to pick up.

  “Come on!” he muttered.

  “He’s not answering?” Carma asked.

  Winn waited a moment, then spoke into the phone. “David, this is Winn. Don’t get on that plane. I’ve received another message from Deem. It said to not let you go. Don’t get on the plane, David. Call me when you get this.” He hung up.

  Winn looked at Carma. “Maybe he shut off his phone while he went through security.”

  “Maybe,” she replied.

  “He’ll turn it back on before he boards, right?”

  “I don’t know. Is that what people do?”

  Winn kept pacing. He tried calling again, but still David didn’t pick up. He hung up without leaving a message.

  “What time was his flight?” Winn asked Carma.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she answered.

  “I’m going to catch him,” Winn said, running for the stairs to grab his keys.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Winn could see David through the glass that separated the non-secure waiting area of the airport from the boarding gates. David was sitting in a chair, looking at papers in his hand.

  “David!” Winn yelled. People in the waiting area turned to look at him. People in the boarding area didn’t respond, however. The glass was too thick.

  Winn tapped on it lightly, hoping to get David’s attention. A couple of people looked up, but not David.

  A woman sitting next to David caught Winn’s eye. He waved at her, and she smiled back. Winn pointed at David, hoping she’d take the hint. Winn watched as she turned and spoke to David.

  David looked up.

  Winn had his phone up, showing it to David through the glass.

  David smiled and searched through his backpack for his phone. Within a few seconds Winn felt his phone vibrating.

  “I need to talk to you,” Winn said, aware of the people around him in the waiting area. “Can you come out, please?”

  “I’ve already gone through security,” David said.

  “Come out anyway, it’s important,” Winn said.

  David looked at him with concern. “OK,” he replied, standing and slipping his phone into his backpack. Winn watched as David walked through to the waiting area, passing the guards who kept people from returning to the gates.

  “What is it?” David asked as he approached.

  “Let’s talk outside,” Winn said, leading David through the small airport and out its front doors, where the late morning sun was beating down on the asphalt parking lot.

  “Did you check a bag?” Winn asked.

  “No,” David replied.

  “Good, let’s go to my car,” Winn replied. They walked through the parking lot to Winn’s Jeep and got inside.

  “What’s this all about?” David asked.

  “I got another message from Deem,” Winn said. “I translated it with the mechanism, just like the last one. It said, ‘Don’t let him go’.”

  “Don’t let him go?” David repeated. “What, me?”

  “That seemed the obvious meaning, since you were going somewhere.”

  “Why me?”

  “Don’t know. But you can’t get on that plane.”

  “I’m supposed to be in Seattle later today. My uncle’s expecting me.”

  “Take a different flight. No, better — don’t go at all. The message said to not let you go. You need to stay here. Call your uncle and cancel. Make up something.”

  “He’s gonna be pissed!” David replied.

  “The last message I got warned me to get out of my trailer,” Winn said. “You saw how that ended.”

  “You think something will happen to the flight?” David asked. “How could Deem know that?”

  “Look, the messages are coming through time differentials. Maybe where she’s at gives her some ability to detect these things, I don’t know. I only know you shouldn’t leave.”

  Winn saw David trying to come to terms with the change of plans. He’d always felt sympathy for David in light of his parents’ awful deaths, but he never had much of a genuine connection to the kid, even when he helped David to Montana, trying to figure out what had happened to him at Blackham Mansion. David was in his early twenties and he acted it sometimes. Winn, on the other hand, was approaching thirty, and their age difference had always seemed a huge gulf. He knew David would eventually realize the wisdom of what he was suggesting, but he also felt a sudden rush of emotion, a desire to express to David that he couldn’t lose him. He felt as though he’d lost Deem — he couldn’t lose David, too.

  Winn reached his hand over to David’s and grabbed it, startling him. “Don’t go,” Winn said gently. “You need to stay.”

  David turned to look at him. He felt David squeezing his hand. “OK,” David said. “Since you put it that way.” The kid gave him a disarming smile, and Winn pulled his hand back.

  David looked down at his boarding pass. “Do I just — ignore this?”

  “If something happens to that flight,” Winn said, “we don’t want to get wrapped up in it. Go back inside, and make sure you miss the boarding. Maybe you get sick in the bathroom, and when you come out, the plane has already gone. Go to a ticketing agent and explain what happened, so they rebook you for another flight.”

  “And my uncle?”

  “Call him to tell him you missed the flight, too, and you’ll let him know when you rebook.”

  “Alright,” David said, opening the door to the Jeep. “I better get back in there. Boarding’s in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be back at Carma’s,” Winn said.

  “Thanks,” David said, closing the door and running back into the airport.

  Winn started up his Jeep and drove back to Leeds, hoping to hell that David didn’t change his mind.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Winn and Carma watched the television as the local channels covered the disaster with helicopter fly-overs showing jerky footage of the wreckage. Speculation as to the nature of the airplane’s descent and crash mid-way through its flight from St. George to Salt Lake City ranged from mechanical failures to terrorism. The state was in the grip of an air disaster not seen in several decades.

  David walked in from the other room, joining them as they watched.

  “Finally reached my uncle,” David said. “I forgot to call him while I was at the airport; I was too focused on dealing with the airline people and the rebooking.”

  “When do you go now?” Carma asked.

  “The ticket is for tonight at 6:30,” David replied. “But I’m not going. He knows I’m going to cancel.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Carma said.

  “Thank you, Winn,” David said. “You saved my life. Again.”

  Winn gave him a smile, and as their eyes connected Winn could sense the genuine gratitude and affection that David had for him. For the first time, he felt a small sliver of similar affection surface. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he tamped it down in his mind.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied.

  “How do you think Deem is detecting these things?” David asked Carma.

  “I don’t know,” Carma replied. “Lyman doesn’t either. Deem is a resourceful person. If she’s somehow privy to information where she’s at, she’ll make the most of it, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m indebted to her,” Winn said, his eyes glued to the television. “She’s saved two of us now.”

  The TV suddenly clicked off. Winn turned to see the remot
e in Carma’s hands.

  “No sense in dwelling on it,” she said. “I hate how they fixate on things, showing the same scene over and over.”

  “What now?” David asked. “Is Lyman’s plan still moving forward?”

  “It is,” Carma said, sitting down.

  Winn looked to the shelf; the device was gone. “Carma,” he said, “where’s the mechanism?”

  “Oh,” she replied, “Lyman has it, downstairs. I hope you don’t mind. He wanted to double-check some estimates. Last I heard, the resurrection merge should happen around sunrise tomorrow morning.”

  “And then?” David asked.

  “They start walking,” she replied. “Dayton’s conference in Caliente starts at 7PM tonight, and there’s a second session tomorrow morning at 10AM. They’ll all stay the night at that motel, the one Warren Jeffs used for marriages. That’s where they always stay.”

  “Mountain Meadows to Caliente is a long way to walk,” David replied.

  “Not to those pioneers it isn’t,” Carma replied. “Lyman was using your device, Winn, to calculate when they’d arrive, and it should be around midnight or 1 AM.”

  “And what will happen then?” Winn asked. “How does this attack actually happen? Dayton and his people are gifted and experienced. They’re not going to be very impressed by a group of angry ghosts.”

  “That’s where Lyman’s planning changes things,” she replied. “They’re far from just angry ghosts. The merge brings a certain physicality to them, turns their desire for vengeance into a weapon. I don’t understand how exactly, but I know that’s why Lyman had them in the soul cage for so long. That, and he had to build up their numbers. Each of the people he trapped there had to be a certain type of soul — monstrously evil, but capable of exhibiting the physicality to destroy the living.”

  “I can’t imagine Deem trapped in there with them,” Winn muttered. “What a hell she must be going through.”

  “And in spite of it, she found a way to communicate with us,” David added. “Do you think she knows what is about to happen? The resurrection merge?”

  “No one can know,” Carma replied. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens, how she comes out of it. In the meantime, Lyman and I are worried about our visitor from Hildale.”

  “The Fist of God?” Winn asked.

  “We think Dayton’s group might have commissioned another execution,” Carma replied, “and that they want it done before the conference in Caliente starts up. I need someone to stake out The Fist and keep an eye on him today. I was going to ask you to do it, Winn, since David was going to Seattle. Maybe now the two of you could take shifts, trade off the work.”

  Winn turned to David. “Don’t see why not.” David nodded his ascent, and Winn turned back to Carma to collect the details.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lorenzo? Deem called, but she knew she wasn’t in a place where Lorenzo could hear her; she had the sense of moving rapidly over ground, though she couldn’t see it clearly. She was encircled by souls that felt sick and diseased, surrounding her on all sides. They were moving en masse toward some destination, finally free of the soul cage but not really free, not able to control their movement. Something was pulling her and the others, something that could not be resisted. Her fear of what might be coming was balanced by her relief to be out of the cage, to have a change in surroundings, even if it was just this sense of movement, of flying — of temporary freedom, even if she really wasn’t yet free.

  It was nearing sunrise and the ground below was beginning to show the first signs of ambient light, the first sun her eyes had seen in months. It hurt to look, but she forced herself, watching the ground rush by under her. I know this place! she thought, seeing a large outdoor amphitheater pass by. We’re in the canyon. Snow Canyon.

  But it wasn’t just her. She could feel the others with her, above, below, to her left and right. She was just one of a hundred flying through the air, propelled toward something they couldn’t control.

  He’s released the cage, she thought. Lyman has released us all. But for what?

  She felt herself dropping as the ground rose quickly to meet her. Nothing she could do would stop the descent, even as her mind raced for a way to brake, to slow things down before she hit the earth. She saw the field ahead, where her trajectory would take her and the others.

  That’s what I’ve been feeling, she thought. That ground. That dirt. I’m connected to it somehow.

  It was filled with ghostly blue heads, primed and awakened, their eyes turned upward, awaiting the arrival. As she approached, she felt herself directed toward one of the bodies; the upper half of a woman, wearing a dirty pioneer dress. She caught a glimpse of the woman’s face; it was a mixture of shock and sadness, a frozen moment from a hundred and seventy years ago. She’s just seen something horrible happen, Deem thought. She’s in the depths of despair.

  And as Deem neared the body, she saw the bloodstain on the dress, the hole made in her side, the wound that had brought the woman down. Deem tried to resist, but the pull was inescapable.

  She’s a ghost, Deem thought, and I’m about to enter her.

  A second later Deem felt the pain in her side, a physical agony exceeded only by the fresh horror in her mind that her sister and father were dead. She could still picture the shot that hit her father’s face, sending part of his cheek flying into the air behind him, blood spraying the ground.

  And her sister, her dear younger sister, Marion, lying on the grass, her life draining from her body as it seeped from the gash in her throat. She replayed the moment again, unable to stop it…the Indian approached her from behind, pulled her hair back, exposing her delicate white neck. The blade was pulled roughly across her flesh, and Deem recoiled as the crimson line of blood quickly turned to a river of red, splashing down the front of Marion’s dress, her eyes registering her last moments as she fell to the ground.

  And Deem remembered looking up at her sister’s killer, wanting to memorize the features of the Indian who had taken Marion’s life.

  It was no Indian, she thought, just as the searing heat of the bullet passed through her side, striking internal organs, making her fall backward. Deem reached for the wound to touch the hole the bullet had made, feeling her body shutting down from the shock of it all. When she lifted her hand to her face, it was dripping with blood — her blood.

  My father’s blood. Marion’s blood. My blood.

  The faux Indian’s face appeared above her, staring down. He seemed satisfied with the result, and moved on.

  Not an Indian, she thought. A white man dressed as an Indian.

  And for the first time, Deem understood what was meant by the phrase their blood cries out from the ground. She could feel her own blood crying now, wanting to survive, not just to keep living, but to right the wrong that had just occurred out here in the wilderness, where there was a good chance no one would ever know what had happened.

  They carried white flags, she thought. They guaranteed our safety. It was all a lie, an ambush.

  Just as she felt herself about to lose consciousness, Deem lifted herself from the ground and looked around.

  Kate? came a small voice, weak but loud enough to catch her attention. Is that you, Kate?

  She turned. Five feet from her, where just moments before she had watched her sister cut down, Marion was now standing, looking down at her. Dark, wet stains matted the front of her dress, and the wound in her neck was still there — but no longer bleeding.

  All the blood has gone, Deem thought. Into the ground.

  She felt an arm at her side, and suddenly she was lifted to a standing position. She turned, and a thick, sturdy man a good foot taller than herself stood behind her. The flesh was still gone from his cheek, but he, too, had finished bleeding, the only remnant the dark, dried blood that had run down his neck and onto his shirt.

  Katherine! he said, instantly pulling her to him, his arms wrapping around her. Father! Deem thought, and for a
moment it reminded her of the last time her own father had been able to hug her, a strong embrace that she’d never forgotten, even though she knew her father was sick and close to death when he did it.

  But this isn’t my father, Deem thought. It is, but it isn’t.

  And Marion! the man said, releasing her and turning to her sister, who ran into his arms. As they hugged, Deem felt like crying. It was a reunion that had taken a long time to occur, an opportunity to communicate and feel the other person that had been denied to them in the midst of the massacre.

  The massacre, Deem thought. The Mountain Meadows Massacre.

  She looked down at her clothing, examining the bullet hole in her side that no longer burned. The blood had dried; she moved her fingers over the wound, fascinated with the realization that it didn’t hurt.

  Suddenly Marion was in her arms, and she felt herself responding, hugging her sister back, feeling emotions overwhelm her. Marion released her grip and held her at arm’s length. They looked at each other.

  She knows I’m not her sister, Deem thought. She knows.

  Come on, their father said, beginning to walk. We’ve got work to do.

  Deem held Marion’s gaze. She knows, and yet she isn’t saying anything. Maybe it’s the disorientation of rising from the grave after so long.

  The edge of Marion’s mouth curved up a little, and Deem recognized it as one of her sister’s ways to communicate, a secret signal they’d used for years.

  It isn’t her either, Deem thought. I’m not her sister, and she knows that. She isn’t Marion either, not completely.

  Another resurrected man met with her father for a moment and they talked. Deem heard the other man refer to her father as Paul.

  Both men turned. Come on, you two. We need to head west. The two men turned and began walking, the light from the new day beginning to illuminate the ground ahead of them.

  What is it? Deem heard Marion ask. She hadn’t said it in a way that others would hear; it was somehow a communication between just the two of them.

  I’m not…Deem started, unsure how to finish. I’m not this person. I’m someone else.