Penelope wondered what Anthony had been telling her mother and figured that whatever it was wasn’t going to be good. Jessica gave her daughter a hand and lifted her to a sitting position while Penelope willed away the throbbing pain.
“Is she going to puke?” Jeffrey asked with great interest. His shaking suddenly stopped.
“No, Jeffrey,” Jessica said. She patted Penelope on the head like she had done with Jenny. “Penelope isn’t up to herself yet.”
“I was hoping to have you out of here before this, Mama,” she said. “Maybe I could have if you hadn’t bopped me on my noodle like Little Bunny Foo Foo.”
Danica perked up. “I know who that is. And down came the good fairy and this is what she said…” she finished in a singsong voice while Penelope noticeably winced.
“I need that bag, Jenny,” Penelope said after a moment, ignoring the other girl.
“We’ve been singing a lot of rhymes in the last few days,” Jessica said quietly. “I think I’ve gone through my entire repertoire. And don’t forget I didn’t know that someone else was in here with us then. He locked the door.”
“Mama,” Penelope said, thinking of how her mother had been locked in this sorry place with the four hapless children and a shadow person. “I’m sorry I got you into this. But I don’t have a lot of time to explain. They locked the door again?”
“Yes,” Jessica said in response, her fine features wrinkled in concern. “It sounded like they propped something against it.”
Jenny handed Penelope the bag, and she got a flashlight out. It was as she had figured. She had left the liquid nitrogen and the first flashlight outside. It wasn’t the worst blow that could have happened, but she might have been able to freeze the hinges from the inside.
“Okay,” Penelope said. “Is there another door or window out of this place?” John Rife had said that there wasn’t, but it didn’t hurt to check again.
“No windows. No doors. No ventilation shaft.” Jessica looked around as if she could still see. “This seems like the most horrible place. We had to climb down dozens of stairs, and all of this mud underfoot is— ”
“We’re at the bottom of a missile silo, Ma. They didn’t design it for comfort,” Penelope said. She got to her feet and waited for her knees to cease their trembling. She methodically checked all of the walls for some way of getting out, but her mother had been thorough.
Jessica waited by the children, and when Penelope returned she said, “Told you, dear.”
Penelope ignored that. “We don’t have a lot of time. Moonrise is about sunset, and the eclipse starts about 10. Have they fed you today?”
“They left some food when Anthony came to see you.” Jessica hesitated. “He seemed particularly interested in the leather pouch you’re wearing around your neck.”
“Crap,” Penelope muttered. She touched her neck and was relieved that the medicine bag was still there and intact. By the way it felt she knew that the stone hadn’t been removed. It wasn’t too late. Anthony must have figured that since she was in here with Jessica there wasn’t any point in taking the Tears of the Spirit yet. That was because he couldn’t read her mind. Anthony didn’t know that she had another ace up her sleeve.
Then she discovered that Anthony had removed the Taser gun as well as the Glock, and she frowned fiercely. She had wanted to see how the Taser affected the red-eyed shadow people.
And try as Penelope might, she couldn’t find a way out of the bunker.
*
From the look on Anthony’s face as the shadow people took Penelope and the children out, he was inordinately pleased with her presence. However, she wasn’t very happy about it herself. She became less so when she saw that Will Littlesoldier was waiting for them outside.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Friday, July 18th
Shill (slang, origin unknown, probably 1920s American) - decoy for a con game
John Rife didn’t hear from Penelope Quick before twenty-four hours was up. To be precise, he didn’t hear from her at all. Friday evening after dinner he had sat at the dining room table drinking the sludge his wife laughingly called coffee and contemplated what he could do about it. If he called the sheriff again, the man was likely to laugh in his face. Fred Gomez, the county sheriff, had been out to the Gumbrell spread once already at John’s behest and hadn’t seen a damned thing wrong. If George Gumbrell chose not to get in touch with his family, then there wasn’t a single thing that Fred could do about it. In fact, Fred had laughed it off, saying that he thought that George had probably run off to Mexico with his attractive lawyer.
“Ha-ha,” John said dryly to himself. George’s lawyer had a good-looking husband and two children under the age of five. More likely she would have run like hell upon the first suggestion of impropriety with the crusty old goat. George couldn’t get another woman to put up with him on account of his wretched and cantankerous nature. It was surprising that even some of the cattle got along with him. That was simply because George had fed them.
John thought about the last thing the girl had said. He could just imagine saying that to Fred Gomez. Penelope Quick said for you to “remember not to go into the silo after dark.” “Ha-ha-ha,” he said to himself. The tone was drier than the first time.
His wife, Andrea, topped off his coffee and placed a slice of pecan pie on a white plate beside the steaming mug. She said amicably, “You’re talking to yourself again, you old fool.”
Grimacing, John said, “You know why.”
“You should eat something before you go over there,” Andrea advised gravely. “Take the big shotgun with the heavy buckshot, and make sure you aim for the midsection.”
John paused in the act of raising the pecan pie to his mouth. It didn’t matter how many years he had been married to his wife; she never ceased to surprise him. “Midsection?”
“The spread will take them down, and they won’t be of a mind to get back up,” she said.
“Take who down?” he asked around a big mouthful of pie.
Andrea gave him a level look. “Jesus Christ on a bandwagon, John. You know who. Them things with the red eyes. If you can’t get the midsection, then aim for the spot between their big bug eyes. Can’t miss them glowing and such.” She paused. “I’ll call the sheriff after a bit and say there’s trouble over to the Gumbrell place. I hear gunshots and a whole helluva lot of screaming. You know he’ll have to drag out his deputies to the ranch, thinking it’s some kind of newfangled Waco. He’ll probably call the news reporters while he’s at it.”
John swallowed the pie without actually tasting it. “Well, why in the name of God aren’t we doing that now?”
“Because you want to go see if you can get that girl and her mother out before Fred ‘Shoot-em-up’ Gomez arrives with his automatic weapons and the tear gas,” Andrea said calmly. Then she methodically ticked off items for him to remember on the fingers of her right hand. “Take Charlie and Jake with you. I heard them pull up to the ranch hand’s place not twenty minutes ago. Both of them know how to fire a gun and hit the broad side of a barn at the same time, too. Remember to duck, don’t take one of them red-eyed fuckers head on, and for God’s sakes, make sure you have underwear on that don’t have no holes in ‘em.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently. He didn’t know exactly what Andrea would say to Fred Gomez when she contacted him, but whatever it was would convince the sheriff to scuttle his butt out to the Gumbrull ranch toot-sweet and save the collective bacon of all involved. Maybe then Fred wouldn’t chuckle derogatorily under his breath when someone brought up those old stories about red-eyed things.
John retrieved his best shotgun from its position of honor over the fireplace and got all the buckshot shells he had in possession. Like a good rancher, he had plenty. Enough, he thought with satisfaction, to kill a bunch of goons that liked their meat raw and didn’t think twice about scaring the ever living piss out of curious teenagers.
“Woman,” he said to Andrea.
“My will is in the third drawer of my desk. I want white roses on my casket. I will say hey to your father in heaven but not your mother because I suspect she’s roasting weenies in hell. Tell my children that I love them, except for Rufus, who I suspect is the mailman’s son and because I think he’s a whiny little pain in the ass.”
Andrea rolled her eyes.
*
Jessica heard the door shut behind the children, and Penelope and thought she might be in a very dilly of a pickle. Penelope made a strangled noise and tried to fight back. However, the silent people that aided the man she called Anthony didn’t take much to subdue her. Her mother frowned with consternation on the inside of the bunker.
A missile silo, Jessica thought. What in all that’s holy are we all doing here? Penelope had mentioned something about something that she had “creeped” from a house in Dallas that she shouldn’t have, and that had been the beginning of the situation. The man called Anthony had made a deal with Penelope. In exchange for the item he would allow Jessica to live. What had caused him to laugh with amusement was that he fully intended on leaving Jessica in the bunker while he did something that she couldn’t fathom.
It was pretty much what Jessica considered a classic pact with Beelzebub. After all, he was letting Jessica live. He had gotten what he wanted. He was going to do something warped with Penelope and the four children. “He’s a whack job,” she determined.
Jessica stopped to listen. There had been someone in the room with her and the children before. The children’s endless chattering and activities and nervousness had masked its presence. Now she wanted to ensure that she was alone.
After several minutes of intent listening she decided that she was indeed alone. Anthony had promised her that she could live and she would live. As long as she might survive in this muddy pit of a room with no more food and no more water, she would live.
Just because I’m blind, everyone thinks I’m a fool, Jessica thought. There won’t be a guard anymore because it’s just an older blind woman. Penelope said she took care of the big smelly man.
“It’s like my dearly departed husband used to say, ‘A woman’s mind is like the wind on a winter’s night.’” Jessica knew exactly what the saying meant, but never had she encountered a circumstance more apt for the adage.
First she would find Penelope’s backpack and see what kind of goodies her daughter had. Penelope had the Boy Scout motto down pat when it came to groundwork. Jessica knew exactly who she had gotten that from.
But then Jessica reconsidered. The door had been slammed and shut. But Penelope had cracked the padlock Anthony had been using. It was possible that he didn’t have another readily handy. It was more possible that he would have just used whatever was handy to block the door. For example, if she had been Anthony she would have simply propped an appropriately sized 2X4 under the doorknob.
Jessica carefully felt her way to the door and touched the interior side with her hand. It was a cold door coated with something slimy. Flakes of rust or paint peeled off the metal in great chunks. She put her ear to the door and listened.
Nothing. She leaned back and tried the doorknob. It turned easily enough but the door didn’t give. Jessica shrugged and put her shoulder to it. She nudged it once and felt it jiggle. The jiggle was refreshingly inspiring. She thumped the door once more with her slight frame. Then she did it again. There was an abrupt thump on the other side as something hit the floor.
Jessica tried the door again. It opened outward with a slight pull as the door pushed the object aside that had been blocking it, and she smiled. Perhaps she could find her own way out of this place. All she had to do was to listen and make sure none of those appallingly silent people were about. It was even possible that she could help her daughter out.
After all, Penelope wasn’t used to being in the role of heroine.
Jessica paused to find the backpack and slid it over her slender shoulders. Penelope didn’t know that her mother knew how to use the tools of her late husband’s trade almost as well as he had. That was what a good thief’s wife did.
But Jessica didn’t want to shock Penelope. It seemed like the child had a hard enough few weeks as it was.
Jessica slipped into the darkness of the silo and was pleased, for once, that she was blind, and the disability was to her advantage.
*
Penelope had struggled in earnest when Anthony had the shadow people drag her out of the bunker. She knew that he wouldn’t abide by any agreement he’d made, and when he specifically directed her removal as well as the four children’s, she knew that Jessica would be left behind to rot. Her mother would probably die of thirst before anyone found her.
All she managed to do was to stir up mud and roll around with a few of the night-covered creatures. Penelope ended up with a few more bruises and an arm that felt as though it had been wrenched halfway out of its socket. She had also come to the realization that the shadow people were exactly that. They were concrete when they needed to be, but when she took a swing at them, they dissipated like shadows in the blackness.
Only their piercing crimson eyes that drilled holes into the dark seemed to stay constant. Penelope made a mental note to go for the eyes next with her fingernails if that was all she had left to fight with. They dragged her up the stairs while the crying children were carried.
Outside of the main entrance that looked like the door to a storm cellar was a large fire fed from huge chunks of what once was a creek-fed cottonwood. Next to the fire was a man who was tied to stakes pounded into the ground. It was Will Littlesoldier, and they had left the cast on his arm in place even while they had restricted the arm. Groggily he raised his head and stared helplessly at Penelope. His muscles flexed desperately as he tested the strength of his ropes. Crimson trickled from his nose and mouth, and he was wearing a bloodied hospital gown.
A gasp seeped from Penelope’s lips. Anthony needed six sacrifices. She thought he intended on using her mother, but it turned out that Jessica was superfluous. It was Will that Anthony wanted, and it was Will whom he had gotten. Somehow, he had tracked his older brother to the hospital and forcibly snatched him.
Knowing what Anthony had done, Penelope abruptly stopped struggling and turned her head toward him. He appeared more otherworldly than ever. His handsome face was distorted with some unsaid longing, and his cheeks were hollow with lack of food and sleep. His eyes had sunken into his face as if he were changing into another creature altogether. It was something that reeked of the demonic and hinted of the atrocities he was capable of performing. He stood close to her, not looking in her direction but instead gauging the rising moon.
Penelope knew that he was anything but human then. He was just as much a thing as those things he had brought to this level of existence. Nothing of him was left.
There was nothing she could say to him. The moon was well over the horizon and was ascending steadily into the night sky. It was as bloated and pale as a bullfrog’s belly. All around her, she sensed the discomfort of the shadow people as they sidled into the darker portions of the area, using gloom as cover when they could.
Several pairs of red eyes danced through the night. They utilized a smoothly shaped ridge of rocks curled around the edge of the missile silo’s entrance. The rocks looked as windswept and normal as if they had been here for thousands of years.
Comprehension came to Penelope like a load of bricks being dropped on her head. It was the edge of the crater. The Air Force had left one side and dug into the middle. It was even possible they had planned to use the rock ridge as a natural berm for protection purposes. If she looked off to one side she could see the other man-made berms stretching away to the black distance. Each of those had been systematically investigated for bits of the meteorite.
It had taken Anthony years to find the site. It had probably taken him months to locate more fragments of the sky god, if he had found any at all. He might have wasted a month digging in the bottom of the silo before graspi
ng his mistake. Then just as an imperative marker was approaching, and he had located what he needed in order to succeed, a thief had broken into his house and stolen the most significant item that he had.
But she had left herself wide open, and now Anthony had regained the upper hand. Failure tasted like crumbling ashes dissolving in her mouth.
Anthony finally looked at Penelope. “Thief,” he said. “You look like you’ve been in a fight. Or three.” He gestured at Will’s inert figure. Will had struggled for about thirty seconds and fallen back onto the ground. “What do you think of my older brother now?”
“I think he could still kick your ass if you let him go,” she said. Penelope yanked at one arm, and the shadow thing hissed at her, spewing forth a breath of pure blackness that lingered as briefly as an exhaled puff of cigarette smoke. The other one clutched onto her other arm like a grotesque leech. Their grip was like icy tendrils clasping her overheated flesh.
“Maybe,” Anthony agreed with a nonchalant tone.
The four children were behind them, held by shadow people who were waiting for Anthony’s instructions. He turned and had them tied to four stakes that had been positioned in each of the four directions. The children only required a single rope to which their wrists were tied. Each was carried like a lamb to the slaughter and didn’t have a clue as to what to do.
Penelope wanted to tell the four children not to fear, that it would be over quickly, but the words clogged in her throat like bad medicine. Jenny, with her pale platinum hair and bright blue eyes, screamed at Anthony. “My father is a ‘torney. He’ll sue you back to the Stone Age!”
Good for you, kid, Penelope thought. Legal threats will probably work better than anything I come up with. The other three were sobbing quietly, unsure of their circumstances, petrified of the shadow people who coiled and melted around them.
She checked out the moon again and wished she could see her watch. Right now she couldn’t even remember the exact time of the eclipse. The shadow of the Earth would pass over the face of the moon, and it would be as if the moon was snuffed out. It would be like the legend that Will told her about. The timing would be right for Anthony’s warped purposes.
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