The heat came up from the asphalt of the highway's narrow shoulder through the soles of his boots and seemed to bake his toes. Pigs in a blanket, he thought.
The trucker had dropped him off a couple miles south of here, where the two-lane state blacktop crossed the interstate. Matt had intended to ride all the way to Gallup with the man, but when he had seen the red sandstone mesa rising from the desert to the north, something had told him that was the direction he needed to head. He had grown accustomed to following his hunches, even though they often led him into trouble.
"Not much up that way," the trucker had warned him, "and not much traffic on that road."
"I can walk," Matt had said, feeling confident that he could. Ever since he had returned to life after being frozen for three months under the avalanche, he had felt stronger and more vital than ever. "I want to take a closer look at that mesa."
The trucker had given him a sideways look but hadn't asked for an explanation, which was good because Matt couldn't have given him one.
What Matt hadn't reckoned on was how fast the blazing sun would leech all the juices and all the energy from a man. A dozen times while he was trudging along the blacktop, he had asked himself if he was crazy to be doing this.
And the answer, of course, was yes. He was crazy. But not just because he was walking up a New Mexico highway in the hot sun with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder that seemed to increase in weight with every step he took.
He was crazy because he saw things that couldn't be there, like the laughing, maniacal face of his personal nemesis, the creature he had dubbed Mr. Dark. He saw the rotting horror of evil on the faces of those touched by Mr. Dark.
Crazy or not, he knew in his heart those visions were real. They had led him to leave his native Pacific Northwest and wander the country. He didn't know why or how he had been brought back from death, but his instincts told him it had to have something to do with fighting Mr. Dark, doing his best to ruin the hideous creature's plans.
So that's what he had been doing for months now, following his instincts, and when they told him to check out that majestic mesa in the distance, he didn't try to talk himself out of it. He just started walking.
And scorching in the pitiless sun. He was used to nearly unending rain and cool, piney woods, not this . . . this oven that called itself a state.
He slowed as he spotted something on the side of the highway up ahead and realized it was a truck of some kind. The heat-distorted scene seemed to swim in front of Matt's eyes for a second. Distances expanded crazily, stretching out so that it was a mile to the truck, a mile he could never cover, the shape he was in.
He had been out in the sun too long. That was all there was to it.
The truck offered some shade, anyway, and maybe the driver had some water he'd be willing to share. Matt forced his feet to keep going, telling himself that it wasn't as far as it looked.
When he came closer, he saw that the truck's hood was open. Somebody else was having some bad luck today.
As Matt approached, somebody stepped away from the front of the truck. The sun's glare made it hard to distinguish details, but the figure's shape told Matt it was a woman. When he finally stepped into the blessed shade cast by the tall, canvas cover over the truck's bed, Matt paused to let his half-blinded eyes adjust.
The woman was in her thirties, good-looking, with honey-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore jeans and a t-shirt with a university logo on it.
And she was watching Matt with the wary look that any woman would display if a stranger came walking up to her in the middle of nowhere, miles from any help.
Matt stopped beside the rear of the truck, not wanting to crowd her and make any more suspicious than she already was. He lowered his duffel bag to the ground and asked, "Having trouble?"
"Something's wrong with the truck," she replied, "although I suppose that goes without saying. Do you know anything about engines?"
"A little," Matt said. "I'd be glad to take a look at it for you."
She hesitated, clearly still unsure whether to trust him completely, but the idea of being stuck out here must have overcome her nervousness. She turned her head and said, "Andrew, why don't you let this man take a look at it?"
So she wasn't alone after all. The man she called Andrew muttered something and stepped around the front of the truck where Matt could see him.
The man was about forty, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, wearing a khaki shirt and blue jeans. Rotting skin peeled away from his broad forehead, and where his nose should have been was only a festering, oozing hole in his face.
CHAPTER TWO
Not here, Matt thought. Please, not here, too.
And yet he wasn't the least bit surprised. Nearly everywhere he had gone since leaving Washington, he had encountered these manifestations of evil. Most of the time he believed that was why he had been brought back from death. Some unknown force was guiding his steps to them.
Matt didn't show any reaction to the grotesque sight that met his eyes. He had gotten used to hiding his feelings. And the woman didn't react to the terrible sores on her companion's face, of course, because she couldn't see them.
Matt was the only one who could.
"It didn't overheat," the man said, drawing Matt's attention back to the truck. "It just stopped."
That seemed like a pretty mundane concern for a guy who was slowly being consumed by evil. Matt's pulse hammered faster as he moved forward and said, "I'll take a look at it."
He watched the man from the corner of his eye as he circled around to the front of the truck. If either of them noticed his caution, they gave no sign of it.
The truck was built high off the ground, on big tires. Matt stepped up onto the front bumper so he could get a better look into the engine. He came from a family where the men were expected to be able to work on just about anything mechanical and often did. He checked the wiring first and saw the problem right away.
"You've got a loose wire on your alternator," he said. "You've been running on your battery. Didn't you notice that on the gauge?"
The man scoffed. "I'm not a mechanic. The man who should be taking care of such things quit on us, otherwise I wouldn't be driving this behemoth back out to the mesa."
They were on their way to the mesa? The same mesa that had drawn him to hike up this desolate road?
Considering the rot that he saw on the man's face, Matt wasn't surprised there was a connection.
"Your battery finally went dead," he said. "I can hook up the alternator again, but without any juice to start the engine, you're still stuck."
The woman said, "I think there's another battery in the back. Our driver . . . our former driver . . . said it was a good idea to bring along a spare, since we'd be so far from anywhere at the mesa. Come on, let's take a look."
She seemed to have decided that he wasn't a psycho killer. He followed her to the back of the truck, where she pulled the canvas cover aside and held it for him while he climbed in. The truck bed held a number of bags and boxes that appeared to be full of supplies, and sure enough, in the front corner, a spare battery.
"You're in luck," Matt told her. "I'll need some wrenches."
"There's a tool kit behind the seat."
In a matter of minutes, he had taken off the dead battery and replaced it with the spare, as well as hooking up the wire that had come loose on the alternator. The work was hard enough in this heat that it caused beads of sweat to break out on his face.
Better than what was breaking out on Andrew's face, Matt thought as he sleeved away some of the sweat.
"All right, try it now," he said.
Andrew climbed into the truck and turned the key. The engine turned over for a moment, then caught. Matt jumped down from the bumper and went to the open door. In other circumstances he might have stepped up onto the running board and leaned in past Andrew to check the gauges, but he didn't want to get that close to the rotting man.
Instead he said, "Leave i
t running and let me take a look."
He stepped back to give Andrew plenty of room as the man climbed out.
"Looks good," Matt said after he'd peered in at the gauges. "You ought to get where you're going now."
The woman said, "Obviously you have experience with trucks like this."
Matt shrugged. "I used to work at a sawmill. I drove a few trucks back there."
"Would you be interested in a job?"
Andrew said, "Wait a minute. We don't know anything about this man, even his name."
"It's Matt Cahill," Matt said.
"I'm Dr. Veronica Dupre," the woman said. "This is Dr. Andrew Hammond."
So they weren't married. Matt had figured as much from the lack of wedding rings.
"As I mentioned, the man we hired to be our driver and mechanic decided to quit without any warning. We dropped him off in Gallup when we were picking up supplies. We could use a replacement."
Matt was hoping she would say that. They were going to the mesa, and ever since he'd seen it from the interstate, something about it had reached out to him with an undenable compulsion.
Not only that, but the festering sores on Dr. Andrew Hammond's face told him that something bad was probably going to happen on top of that mesa.
Unless he could stop it somehow.
Matt cleared his throat and said, "And I could use a job. I accept."
Hammond frowned, which made more pus ooze from the sores on his forehead, and said, "Ronnie, I'm still not sure about this."
"Do you want to drive the truck and keep all the equipment working?" she asked him.
For a moment, Hammond didn't say anything. Then he snapped, "Fine. Consider yourself hired, Cahill. The job doesn't pay that much, though."
"I'm not worried about that," Matt said, which was true.
His real reward would be the opportunity to cross swords with the evil that he stalked.
And that stalked him.
If you liked David McAfee's THE DEAD WOMAN, you'll want to read his acclaimed and wildly inventive horror epic 33 A.D., now available as an ebook and as a trade paperback. Here's the first chapter…
CHAPTER ONE
Jerusalem, 33A.D.
Ephraim darted around his modest wood-and-mortar home in the Upper City, grabbing as many of his possessions as he could carry – mostly clothing and a few personal items – and shoving them into a large burlap pack. Every now and then his brown eyes shifted to the door, waiting for a knock. Or worse, no sound whatsoever. The latter worried him the most because it would mean the servants of the Council had found him. A Psalm of Silence only carried for about twenty paces, so if the world around him went suddenly quiet, he would know those who hunted him were very, very close.
As an Enforcer, or at least a former Enforcer, Ephraim knew the inevitable result of breaking the laws of his people, a race not known for mercy. Now, as he packed, he couldn't help but wonder why he'd felt the need to tell the Council about his indiscretions. Bad enough he'd defied them, but he also gave them all the information they needed to punish him. And for what? A strange feeling in his heart? A pang of conscience? Was he mad? In retrospect, it seemed possible, but he couldn't do anything about it now. His elders wanted him dead, and unless he hurried they would get their way.
A worn, woolen tunic hung halfway off his bed. I'll need that, he thought as he reached for it. He couldn't afford to leave a single piece of clothing behind. He stuffed the tunic into his bag and turned to regard a large chest on the wall opposite the bed. He reached down and flung the lid open, breaking one of the hinges in the process, and started grabbing more clothes. I'll need that. And that.
Then his fingers closed on something small and hard. He didn't have to look at it to know it was his ceramic wolf's head figurine, a symbol of his former rank. I won't need that. Ephraim tossed it over his shoulder, where it shattered on the hard floor. He didn't pay it any attention as he picked up a short, fat bladed knife. I'll need that, too. It joined the many tunics in his bag. Just as he picked up a pair of worn breeches, a noise outside his door caught his attention.
What was that? Ephraim froze, craning his ears and trying desperately to catch the elusive sound. He stood silent and still for sixty long seconds, muscles tense and booted feet nailed to the floor. The breeches hung from his fingers like a mouse in a raptor's claw. He eyed the sickle-shaped sword on the opposite wall, ready to spring over and grab it if necessary. Although the sword was very old, he kept it sharp and in perfect balance, not easy to do with a khopesh.
When the noise didn't return, he shook his head. The wind, he told himself, and returned to the task at hand. He had to hurry. They were coming.
He couldn't allow himself to be captured by the Council's minions. They would make him talk, and that would be bad. Not just for himself, but for his newfound friends, as well. The elders of the Bachiyr race had many methods by which to extract information, even from one of their own. All of them brutally effective. If they caught him, they would find a way to make him talk. Sooner or later Ephraim would tell them anything they wanted to know, the only real question was how long would it take to break him.
As he packed, his hand brushed against a small figurine of a lamb from the shelf above his bed, knocking it off and sending it toppling through the air. "Damn!" He reached out to catch it and missed, but his fingertips brushed the delicate figurine just enough to alter its course so that, instead of following the wolf's head to the hard floor, the lamb plopped down amidst the soft linens on the bed. Ephraim breathed a sigh of relief when the delicate figure didn't break, and reached down gently to pick it up. He didn't miss the irony that he, the predator, had thrown away the wolf figurine and kept the lamb.
Former predator, he amended, shaking his head. I am not like that anymore. He stared at the lamb for several precious seconds, remembering what it symbolized and making sure, in his heart, he'd made the right decision. Satisfied, he placed the tiny item into a small velvet bag and tied it shut, then placed the bag into his pack, stuffing it between the folds of a coarse brown tunic. He tied the pack closed and set it on the floor in front of him.
Ephraim then stepped over to the far wall and eyed his ancient khopesh, which he had wielded for over a thousand years, though the style of blade had largely gone out of use eight centuries ago. He reached a tentative hand up to the sword, but his fingers froze before they touched the handle. Ashamed, he pictured the faces of his many victims, heard again their anguished screams, and saw their mouths stretched wide in agony. The smell of their blood returned to him, sending an unwelcome rumble through his belly. Far from the pleasure these memories once brought, Ephraim now felt only shame. How many? He wondered. How many have I killed with this very blade? He had no idea, but the number must surely be huge.
"So great is my sin," he whispered. He could not shed tears, none of his race could, but his face felt hot and flushed, nonetheless. He drew his hand back, unwilling to touch the ancient sword, his most trusted companion for centuries, now too poignant a reminder of who he used to be. With a sigh, he turned from the wall and walked over to the bed, determined to leave his past at his back.
Now ready to go, he just had to wait for his friend to come and help sneak him out of the city. Ephraim sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for Malachi's knock. He hoped it would not take long.
Please hurry, Malachi, he thought. Time is running out. They are coming.
# # #
Above Ephraim, crouched amidst the pressed oak beams that supported the structure's ceiling, a single pair of eyes looked down at the one-time Enforcer. The Council's agents were not coming, as Ephraim feared. They – or rather, he – had already arrived. If he had looked up, he might have seen the dark shadow hiding among the lighter ones in his ceiling, but he never so much as glanced upward. His visitor thought lack of sustenance to be the cause of Ephraim's inattentiveness, and he shook his head in disbelief. From his dark vantage point, he watched the scene unfold, memorizing the layout o
f the room for future reference.
Earlier that evening, before he had left the Halls, the Council told him what to expect. Even so, he hadn't wanted to believe that one of their own, particularly one with as glorious and faithful a history as Ephraim, could be capable of such treachery. Until he witnessed Ephraim's hurried packing and the incident with the wolf's head – an article of rank sacred to the Bachiyr – he'd hoped to discover his superiors mistaken. The longer he waited on high, however, the more he came to realize they were right.
They are always right, he thought to himself. I should have known better than to doubt. Just because he's a friend— he stopped himself there, not wanting to diminish his readiness. He couldn't waste time thinking of past friendships and obligations. He had a job to do, and reminiscing would only make it harder and might even cloud his judgment, which could not be allowed. He had to be clearheaded and alert for the next few minutes.
Long enough to kill Ephraim.
First, however, he had to wait and observe a short while longer. The treacherous dog would die, certainly, but not before his visitor discovered who he'd betrayed them to. Ephraim's message to the Council had been vague in that regard; most likely a deliberate omission. To that end the watcher held himself in check through his growing anger while his thick, sharp nails dug furrows into the wooden beams. He held still, relishing the tantalizing scent of fear that emanated from his former friend, and waited for the knock that would signal Ephraim's allies had come to save him. On that, the Council's orders were very clear. We must know who the traitor is in league with. That is of utmost importance, Theron.
Theron had never failed the Council before, not once in over nine hundred years, and he didn't intend to start now. As much as he wanted to drop from the shadows like an evil beast from a child's tale, he waited. Patience, he counseled himself. Not yet. Waiting was the essence of his craft. He was a professional. If you wanted to put a fine point on it, he was the professional. The Lead Enforcer for the Council of Thirteen, albeit newly appointed. These days, that mostly meant he acted as their primary assassin, although every now and then the Council sent him for capture rather than elimination. But those occasions were few.
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