Mojave Green

by The Brothers Washburn

  Glancing back at Trona Road, Camm decided that wind or no wind, she could not afford to stay in town with so many searchers on the roads. To avoid detection, she would need to head west to the foothills on the edge of town. Of course, from where she was, that would take her directly through the Trona graveyard.

  Agent Allen glanced to her left. The Swift Creek agent driving the SUV clearly was not happy to have her along. He had been guarding the mansion with Agent Roberts a few days earlier when she had served court papers on them. All she knew about him was that he went by J.R. From his attitude toward her, she was sure he held her responsible for Roberts’s death.

  They crept through the streets of Trona in the black vehicle, squinting through the blowing dust and sand for any sign of the renegade young woman who had escaped the mansion. Occasionally, J.R. would shine a bright spotlight into unlit corners, searching for her. So far, they’d had no luck. Instead of conferring with Agent Allen, pooling their knowledge about the young woman, J.R. constantly cursed under his breath.

  Agent Allen volunteered, “I don’t think we are going to have much luck in this windstorm. Have you ever seen anything like it? Besides, she must have dozens of friends all over town where she can seek refuge.”

  The Swift Creek man continued to stare straight ahead, not even glancing her way. His aspect was overly formal and severe. “Our instructions are to find her and bring her back to the mansion. You can follow instructions, can’t you?” He placed heavy emphasis on “can.”

  Agent Allen scowled. “I know what our instructions are. You don’t have to be a putz.”

  “I don’t have to be, but . . .” He smiled slightly, and didn’t finish the sentence. The implication was obvious.

  Agent Allen gritted her teeth and decided against the two-word reply that first came to mind. She had no idea how long she would have to work with these Swift Creek guys, but she didn’t want to make that time any more miserable than it already was.

  She had learned a few things about this secretive agency during the last few days. For one, it wasn’t exactly the model of affirmative action. Every employee and agent, as far as she had been able to see, was male.

  To be fair, they weren’t all white. There was one African American agent who stood about six foot eight and had biceps like oak tree trunks and a chest like a locomotive engine. But they were all men, and seemed to be especially adept at producing testosterone.

  Agent Allen decided to try for peace. “Look J.R., I’m sorry about Roberts, but it wasn’t my fault. After all, he was killed by that giant rattlesnake.”

  He gave her a look that bordered between incredulous and mocking. “A giant snake?”

  Agent Allen wondered if she had said something she shouldn’t have. “You don’t know about the giant snake?”

  He snorted in derision and rolled his eyes.

  “Do you know about the giant spiders?”

  He rolled his eyes again.

  She continued, “Do you know about the giant green rat?”

  He barked out a scornful laugh, but continued to stare straight ahead as they drove along a road bordering the back of the high school.

  Agent Allen wasn’t intimidated, but she was annoyed. She turned her head to look out the front, too. “Well, J.R., someone doesn’t think enough of you to keep you in the loop.”

  He slammed on the brakes, stopping the SUV in the middle of the road. He turned to look at her, a scowl etched across his face. “What does that mean?”

  “How do you think Roberts died?” In a situation of high animosity, Agent Allen always answered a question with a question, pressing the onus back on the other person.

  “We all know how he died. You were chasing those brats across the desert in your car when you rolled it, killing Rick.”

  Agent Allen gritted her teeth. So that’s the story they’re putting out there.

  She forcibly relaxed her posture and face. She would not let him know he had agitated her. “Obviously, you do not have the clearance necessary to be brought into what is really going on here. It’s not my job to bring you up to date. Please, drive on.”

  J.R. made no effort to hide his agitation. “Like we need the FBI here getting in the way. You can’t even drive your car without causing an accident and killing another agent. Why don’t you go back to L.A. and let competent agents handle this matter?”

  Now, it was Agent Allen’s turn to snort in derision. “You have no idea what is actually going on here. You don’t even know what this ‘matter’ is all about.”

  Truthfully, Agent Allen would have been glad to leave this all behind and go back to Los Angeles to do normal FBI work. But after making her last report about the snake and the death of Roberts, she had been instructed to stay in Trona, assigned as part of the Swift Creek task force. She suspected the assignment had been made not because she was needed, but because she knew too much, and Swift Creek wanted to keep an eye on her.

  She added, “Just keep driving.”

  J.R. sneered at her. “I don’t take orders from the FBI.” Nevertheless, he drove to the north edge of town and turned the SUV west, toward the foothills.

  Agent Allen muttered under her breath, but loud enough to be heard, “Putz.”

  As Camm jogged by the small Trona graveyard, she thought about the time she had driven her VW out on this road to pick up Cal. It had only been a year or so ago, but it seemed like ages. Cal had been made up to look like some kind of zombie and had scared a number of the football players’ girlfriends.

  Camm had thought the joke so juvenile at the time. Now, she recalled seeing glowing red eyes in the bushes near where she found Cal and also smelling an overwhelming sulfur odor at the same time. The same thing had happened the night Hughie disappeared. She shuddered to think she might have had close encounters with the green rat without even realizing it.

  The thought of Cal and his zombie face and goofy smile made her sad. She missed him.

  The graveyard, per se, did not bother her. She had seen a lot of scary things in the last year—a monstrous green rat, an enormous man-eating snake, and a hoard of giant swarming spiders. But those things were all real. She didn’t believe in ghosts, vampires, or zombies. Ghosts and zombies were just silly, and vampires were, well, for silly girls who wanted to be scared.

  Camm still found the going difficult in the desert gale, but now that she was heading west to the foothills, she could turn her head to the left when the sand blew and keep jogging. The wind was now pushing her along at a faster pace.

  As she neared the hills, she suddenly noticed her shadow jogging directly in front of her. She turned to look behind her and caught a face full of sand from a particularly mean gust of wind. Spitting out the sand, she shielded her face with her hand and saw two bright headlights several hundred yards behind her. At that very moment, a spotlight on the driver’s side of the vehicle lit up and fixed a cold, white beam of light on her.

  Camm sprinted up the dirt road at her top speed, gaining altitude on the hill before leaving the road and running across some open desert to the foothills below the Trona “T.” Then she started up the hillside, going north through the bushes and rocks. The brilliant spotlight beam tried to follow her, but she was running erratically from side to side, trying to lose it. She reached a large group of boulders and scrambled among them, hiding from the light.

  Once she had lost the spotlight, she continued to scramble uphill, staying behind rocks and bushes that would block the line of sight from the vehicle to her. In spite of the wind, she now traveled directly north, putting distance between herself and the road she had been running on. She was climbing through rough country, very steep and rocky. There was no way they could follow her in a car.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Camm saw the vehicle was one of the big black SUVs. The spotlight crisscrossed the face of the hill below her, searching. The light slowly moved up the hillside. They would eventually spot her again. She had to find a place to hide.

  A
gent Allen jumped out of the SUV before it came to a complete stop. They had lost Camm among the rocks in the foothills to the north. In spite of herself, Agent Allen felt a little proud of Camm. By moving off the road and upwind, Camm had forced them to stare directly into the blowing sand and dust, which made finding her in the dark very difficult.

  J.R. shined the spotlight across the area where they had last seen their fugitive in a fruitless effort to catch sight of her again. He shouted at Agent Allen, trying to be heard above the howling wind. “I’m calling for backup. I’m going to have them bring dogs to track her.”

  Agent Allen walked over to where J.R. stood so they could hear each other. She glared at him in exasperation. “Dogs won’t accomplish a thing in this sandstorm. Don’t waste your time. Call in the other vehicles and have them park at the bottom of the hill, shining their headlights and spotlights up in the area where we last saw her. I’ll bet she is hiding somewhere up there in the rocks or behind a bush.”

  Agent Allen shielded her face from the blowing sand and pointed up to where Camm had last been seen. Squinting at the terrain, she noted countless places where Camm could be hiding.

  J.R.’s expression hardened as if he were going to refuse, but then his shoulders jerked, and he stalked back to the SUV. He radioed for the other SUVs and sheriffs’ cars to join them, parking according to Agent Allen’s plan.

  She smiled. Her instructions made too much sense for him to ignore.

  A part of Agent Allen was rooting for Camm to get away. She admired Camm’s courage, her intelligence, and her sheer hutzpah. She had little respect for the Swift Creek agents. The agents at the mansion had been in total disarray when Camm was discovered missing. It should have been impossible for her to sneak out. Nobody could explain it.

  But Agent Allen also understood how dangerous the situation had become. Her affection for Camm, and her best judgment, told her the safest place for the teenager was with them, not running around in a desert where evidently anything could and did happen.

  The other vehicles started to show up and J.R. tried to give them instructions about where to park and where to shine their lights. There seemed to be quite a bit of confusion at the bottom of the hill as if no one knew what to do.

  Agent Allen strode over to J.R. Gently, but firmly, she took the radio mike out of his hand and began giving instructions. The confusion quickly changed to action as the vehicles lined up, saturating the hillside with electric light. J.R.’s mouth worked silently for a moment, but instead of saying anything, he simply turned his back on her and walked away.

  Agent Allen had no sympathy for him. He shouldn’t have been such a putz.

  It was obvious what they were doing. They were painting the entire hillside with light from their headlights and spotlights. A chill ran down Camm’s back in spite of the ferocious, hot desert wind attacking her. Soon there would be agents crawling all over the hillside, tracking her down. She couldn’t move to another location without crossing one of those beams of light. Once they caught sight of her again, it would all be over. They would easily run her down.

  The chill hit her back again, and Camm shivered. She was crouching amongst a number of very large boulders that were part of a bigger jumble of car-size rocks. Though safely hidden in the deepest shadows for now, someone need only walk by her position and shine a flashlight down into her hiding place to discover her. She wanted to sprint farther up the hill, but knew she would be seen. She didn’t think she could out run them all.

  The cold hit her in the back again and, with irritation, she looked behind her. What is that back there? Where is that cold air coming from?

  She reached back into the inky darkness and felt a cool breeze lightly streaming up from behind the largest boulder in her hiding place. She had missed the gentle breeze earlier because it could hardly compete with the fierce, hot desert wind that had been buffeting her. But now it was unmistakable. Camm was feeling the draft from a hidden mine shaft, apparently a deep one.

  In this part of the Mojave Desert, there were hundreds of old gold mines that had been dug and abandoned more than a century earlier. Camm knew that the temperature never changed in the deeper mines. It was always an average of the hottest days of summer and coldest days of winter. It could be a hundred and ten degrees outside, but an old gold mine would maintain a temperature of around sixty-five degrees year around.

  This one had a slight breeze blowing out of it, which meant it must be quite deep or long, or both. Hundreds of these mines had been discovered and sealed over the years, but there were hundreds more that had not yet been officially rediscovered.

  During their high school years, she and Cal had discovered and explored many of these old mines. She couldn’t help thinking how excited Cal would be to know she had discovered another one so close to town. For Camm’s sake, it was just in the nick of time.

  Climbing deeper into the pile of huge rocks, she found a small vertical opening that was just big enough for her to squeeze down through. Probably partially collapsed with time, the opening had been invisible until she was right on top of it. Once inside, she slid down a small pile of rubble to where the tunnel opened up enough for her to stand, though the top of her head brushed the ceiling. The air inside was stale, smelling dusty with a tinge of musky.

  Camm had found the perfect hiding place. Even if someone directed a light into the rock pile, it might cut across the mouth of the mine, but would not shine directly down into the mine where she was standing. They would never find her. She could now wait out her pursuers.

  She stood below the opening, with her back against a slab of rock, facing into the mine. She knew enough not to go exploring without a flashlight. Who knew how far the tunnel went or if there were vertical shafts? For now, she was safe where she was and had no need to move.

  Looking up diagonally through the opening above her, she saw lights darting across the dark night sky from both directions. Her pursuers were still hunting her. Directly in front of her, she could see nothing. The mine was pitch black.

  Wondering which direction the mine went, she stretched her hand out in front of her as far as she could reach. She felt nothing. Swinging her hand to the side, trying to feel the mine wall, her hand touched something that wasn’t rock or dirt. It felt like a heavy cloth, maybe wool.

  As Camm patted it with her fingers, she thought she could feel buttons. Underneath the material was something dry and dusty. As she raised her fingers, sliding along the object, she felt a leather-like substance, and then an opening with hard pointed objects much like teeth.

  At that moment, a light from outside cut across the opening of the mine. While it did not shine directly into the opening, it did, ever so slightly, illuminate the object Camm was touching.

  A zombie! was her first thought.

  She snatched away her fingers, which had been inside the gaping mouth. The desiccated corpse was standing only inches away from her. Its vacant eye holes stared straight through her. More to reassure herself than anything else, she whispered, “You’re not a zombie!”

  It wasn’t a zombie. It was a body, long dead, but preserved in the dry desert air. The corpse stood near the mouth of the mine, as if keeping guard. The desert air over the years had completely mummified it. By the way it looked, it had been there for many decades.

  Only inches away, Camm saw it clearly in the searchers’ light. A few pathetic strands of red hair hung off the top of its head. The skin was stretched tight across the skull. It had an open mouth, no nose, and black, empty eye sockets. Wearing an old flannel shirt, its leathery hands with long yellow nails extended beyond the sleeves. A rusty iron spike through the middle of its chest appeared to be holding the body up straight against the wall.

  How did this man come to be here? Why has no one ever found him?

  As quickly as the light appeared, it disappeared, moving farther up the hillside. Camm was again in total darkness, except now she knew she was standing inches away from a mummified corpse.
She had been touching it. As much as she wanted to, she dared not move, for fear of being discovered by the searchers clambering by her rock pile.

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to squirm out of the mine and run away. Her skin now itched as if little bugs were crawling all over her. She had an almost overpowering urge to take an extremely hot shower, to wash the corruption from this corpse off her body, but she could do nothing, except stand perfectly still and try not to hyperventilate.

  With the wind still howling outside, it was difficult for her to hear what was happening out there. Occasionally, she caught a snippet of a voice, someone shouting instructions or calling a name. Looking diagonally, she saw blades of light, from large flashlights, slicing through the sky. They were still searching for her. She dared not move forward for fear of bumping into the dead body or move back up into the mouth of the mine for fear of being seen.

  At least, she comforted herself, it wasn’t a zombie, or it would have sucked her brains out by now. Her sick sense of humor almost made her smile. Almost. It took ages for the searchers to move away. Her legs ached and her knees grew weak. It made her sick to think the air she was breathing came out of the bowels of the mine and slithered across the shriveled corpse in front of her before arriving at her nostrils.

  Standing there was pure torture, and she did not know how much longer she could bear it. Eventually, if nothing else, she knew she would need to go to the bathroom.

  When she thought she could hold out no longer, a light suddenly flashed across the mouth of the mine again. From what she could hear, Camm decided two people were out there, standing by her rock pile while they caught their breaths after hiking back down from the top of the hill. She caught a few incredulous comments about the girl who had somehow escaped from the mansion and gotten over the hill so quickly. She had outrun even the fastest agents.