We rode to the end of the driveway and again looked back toward our homestead. My traps were clearly evident, even from this distance. For all of my subtlety, I was fortunate my enemy was nearly blind.
The trailer looked abandoned. I couldn’t help but think of the houses in the picture my grandfather had displayed in the cave.
We trotted north, through the willows and across the stream, to the field where our herd of sheep had once grazed. It was eerie, riding out into the grass without hearing the baaing and bleating to which I was accustomed. No big, fluffy balls of wool toddled toward me to see if I’d brought anything good to eat. I once shared a bologna sandwich with a ram with curlicue horns that bit my thumb so hard I ended up losing the nail. I called him Mutton from that day forward to remind him which one of us was higher on the food chain. He ended up siring more than a dozen lambs and even once let me ride him, although I don’t think either of us enjoyed the experience.
I found his body at the far end of the field with those of the others. His curlicue horns—the entire crown of his skull, for that matter—were nowhere to be found. His sickly gray brain matter had swelled through the hole.
These were the animals I’d sacrificed in exchange for my family’s safety. Although in reality, I’d traded their lives for a mere twenty-four hours of time to think, time I needed to make count because of how badly they had died. The ground was torn up where they’d been run down, but not nearly as badly as the flesh of their throats. Worse still were their abdomens, which had been slit from vent to sternum and all of the viscera dragged out onto the ground between their black legs.
Yanaba whinnied and pranced nervously. Stomped her hooves. I clapped her on the side of the neck and hopped down to the ground. She trotted a dozen paces away and shook her head as though to clear the memory of what she’d seen.
I stood over the body of the ram I’d called Mutton. His horns had barely been nubs when he bit my thumb. Now there was just a ragged hole where the creature that killed him had taken him by the horns and broken his skull along the sutures. That very creature was somewhere down inside the mountain right now, waiting in the darkness for its opportunity to resume its hunt. Listening for even the slightest sound to betray the approach of the hunters it knew would be coming for it. Except there was only one hunter, and even if it heard me, there was no way it would be able to smell me. Not because I would smell like the urine of some animal that wandered into its lair, but because I would smell exactly like it did.
I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt and put on my gloves. Knelt on the ground in front of the carcass and the mess of entrails. Tried not to breathe through my nose as I rolled in the dead animal’s innards. I reached inside of its body in search of the blood that hadn’t clotted yet and wiped it on my face and arms. Covered my head and my legs and any other spot where my clothing or skin showed through.
The blood knotted in the hairs on my arms and constricted on my skin as it dried. It felt like someone was pulling on the corners of my mouth and eyes when I finally stood and turned to the northwest, where Yanaba eyed the jagged row of mountains against the horizon. The sun was descending toward the peaks at an alarming rate. At a guess, I had maybe two hours of daylight left before the sun changed from gold to red and night advanced from the east.
Yanaba whinnied and stomped and swung around to face me. Her eyes were cold, black coals. She huffed and shook her head.
I cupped her left cheek in my hand and leaned my forehead against her muzzle.
“Ahéhee,” I whispered.
Thank you.
I nuzzled her nose with mine and managed to get her to hold still long enough for me to climb astride her again. I untied the rifle from her saddle and slung it over my shoulder. Tightened the strap across my chest so it wouldn’t beat the bones in my back to powder as we rode. Curled my fists into her mane.
“Hyah!”
We took off at a gallop across the field, toward where the sun would soon set.
TWENTY-TWO
The shadows had significantly lengthened and the temperature had plummeted by the time I wended through the maze of canyons to the point where Fewkes and Cliff Canyons converged. I climbed down from the saddle and clapped Yanaba on the haunches. The muscles in her flank shivered, but I doubted it was from the cold. Her breath plumed from her nostrils when she turned to face me with her wide chocolate eyes.
“I don’t like it any more than you do. Believe me.”
I unloaded the rattle and flashlight from her saddlebag and tucked them into the pockets of my jacket. Shrugged the rifle higher up on my shoulder. Tried to imagine how many of them it would take to run down a half-dozen sheep and how in the name of God I was supposed to find all of them in the darkness. It sure would have been nice if any of the previous generations had left a map for me, but in all fairness, I didn’t intend to be down there long enough to take the guided tour, either.
The unfinished fortifications of the Sun Temple towered over me from the pines lining the precipice of the cliff, nearly a quarter-mile straight up. I could barely see my destination about two-thirds of the way up into the zone where the shadows fell heavily from the granite steppe above it. Even from this far away, I could positively feel the coldness radiating from within the mountain. Tiny crystals of ice battered my face on a gust of arctic wind.
“If anything other than me comes out of that hole up there, you get out of here as fast as you can. You hear me?”
Yanaba stamped her hooves and shook her mane. I didn’t blame her; I was scared out of my mind, too.
I scratched her cheek one final time and struck off through the trees. At least this time I knew which route to take. I didn’t have the time for any trial and error with as rapidly as the sun was descending. The dark storm clouds advancing from the east certainly weren’t helping matters either.
The bullets in my pockets jammed into my thighs as I climbed higher—ever higher—using my hands to crawl over the talus, made even slicker by the icy accumulation. I fell so frequently that I was forced to crawl, sacrificing speed for traction. I couldn’t afford to tear my jeans and skin my knees or I would alter my scent with my own fresh blood. As it was, I worried the snow melting on my skin would ruin the application of dried blood, which I still smelled, but not nearly to the same degree. Either I was acclimating to it or it was fading. I chose to believe the former. Not like I wouldn’t find out soon enough anyway.
The wind howled through the canyon and assailed me with snowflakes. I tucked my chin to my chest and rode it out. All of the rocks were rimed with ice and so slick it was all I could do to keep from plummeting to my death as I ascended from the scree to the stratified steppes. I didn’t look down for fear of losing my resolve, which, as it was, felt as though it seeped from me like helium from a balloon. My hands and legs trembled. I blamed it on the cold and the exertion, but I couldn’t even fool myself. I was terrified and each vertical foot brought me closer to the shadowed crevice at the top of the next crest. I didn’t have to look at the sky high above it to know that I was running out of time.
The sky had taken on an almost orangish cast that reflected from the ice. By the time I hauled myself up to the rock ledge near the opening, it was an even richer color and I could no longer see the sun from my vantage point. The wind stole my frozen breath from my mouth before I could even exhale it. Not that I would have been able to see it in the deep shadows cast by the ledge above me, anyway.
It was now or never.
I clicked on my flashlight and shined it into the cold, black hole from which the cool breath of the mountain blew until I summoned the courage to shove the rifle through and contort my body into the right position to follow it.
The wind shrieked from the mouth of the cave as I scurried deeper into the darkness, following the flashlight down the steep slope toward the tunnel lined with broken chunks of stalactites. The beam threw shadows like prison bars from the stone columns, each of which had to be nearly wide enough to h
ide behind if someone wanted to do so badly enough. My peripheral vision was alive with the motion of shadows falling behind me as I followed the hollow sound of dripping water into the larger cavern where the bound bodies were entombed in flowstone, the children whose heads had been artificially reshaped in order to accommodate the antlers or horns they would one day have fused to their skulls, the retribution of my ancestors for the massacre of their children in the House of Many Windows.
I walked between them without looking at their dark forms. The last thing I needed to see were their skeletal faces with the sharp teeth or their hands with the kind of claws that could be used to carve through the solid stone that imprisoned them inside the mountain. Instead, I thought about the petroglyphs, about the sarcophagus-men with the horns who had emerged from the heart of the earth with the Anasazi, only to return to it again, where they had dwelled in the utter absence of light like the reflections of those living above ground, returning to the surface only long enough to bleed the forest animals until the only prey that remained were their ancient enemies.
My beam found the counterclockwise spirals on the rear wall. I lowered it to the stone sealed beneath years of accreted minerals and patchwork concrete and to the hole that had been carved right through the limestone beside it. My heart beat so hard and loud that it was all I could hear. My only thought was that I needed to turn back now before it was too late.
My legs carried me onward with a will of their own, and one for which I was grateful. I stopped and seated the rifle against my shoulder, sighted through the hole, and tried to manipulate the shadows with my flashlight, which barely seemed to penetrate the orifice, let alone the darkness. At least from this angle.
I crouched and tried again. This time I could see the chisel marks in the stone and the bend in the tunnel where it rounded the stone plug. Worse, I smelled what I could only describe as death. It was the smell of blood and rot, only worse. I recognized the ammonia-scent of urine and the sulfurous reek of feces. It was hard to imagine they could have smelled me dripping in cologne over that godawful stench, which made me retch as I crawled closer. I had to tug one of the shirts underneath my sweatshirt up over my mouth and nose, and even then I had to focus on anything other than the churning of my stomach and the tears in my eyes.
I flattened myself to the ground and inched forward on my belly until the barrel of the rifle penetrated the tunnel. I braced it on the back of my left hand, from which I shined the light backhanded, for all the good it did me.
This was it. The point of no return. Once I crawled through that hole, my fate would be inextricably joined with those of the creatures hiding inside. Maybe it always had been. Either I killed them or they killed me. And then my family, and Lord only knew how many others.
There was no other way this could play out.
I was on the verge of hyperventilating when I finally found the strength to slither into the hole.
TWENTY-THREE
The tunnel was maybe a dozen feet long and so narrow I had to focus more on manipulating my body to squeeze through than on where the light terminated. The muffled sounds of my heavy breathing echoed in the confines. I thought about the fourteen bullets in the magazine of my rifle and just how perfect each shot would need to be in order to kill a living being with a slug about the size of a pea. I wished I’d brought a shotgun instead, but I wasn’t even sure we had one anymore, and the prospect of having to take the time to reload after every fourth shot was mortifying. As it was, I knew I was only going to get one before every creature down here knew exactly where I was.
My beam diffused into the darkness beyond the end of the tunnel as I crawled out into a natural formation maybe the size of our bathroom. I could see the back side of the great stone to my left. It was covered with a layer of flowstone that had been chiseled to the bare granite in sections. To my right was what appeared to be a sheer pitfall into blackness as thick as tar. I shined my light down there and saw the narrow ledges and the toeholds that I would have to use for my descent. If there was another route into the mountain, I couldn’t see it.
I ducked underneath the overhanging stalactites and sat on the edge. Shined the beam straight down and studied the farthest reaches of the light through the scope. There was no sign of movement, not that I expected there to be any. If they knew I was here, they would wait to attack until I was halfway down and in no position to defend myself. And that was only if they actually feared me. They could simply be waiting for me at the bottom, which meant that all of the stealth in the world wouldn’t do me a bit of good. If I made it all the way down, then I was going to have to rely on speed.
It physically pained me to sling the rifle back over my shoulder, but I had no other choice. The climb was steep and required the use of both hands. I stuck the flashlight into the pouch of my sweatshirt, facing outward, and crept down the same primitive stone handholds the Anasazi of legend had used to reach the surface, and back down which the sarcophagus-men had descended, to dwell in this vile-smelling darkness. The shallow notches were covered with a crust that crumbled beneath my fingers and yet remained sticky underneath, as though it hadn’t fully dried. I knew damn well what it was and tried not to think about it.
I paused on each ledge and shined my light down toward the ground. Still no sign of movement. I was maybe thirty feet down when I finally saw the bottom through a narrow crescent where the low roof nearly met with the final ledge. I’d be completely exposed when I passed though there.
The clock was still working against me, though. By now the sun had to be beginning to settle behind the peaks and it was only a matter of minutes before whatever circadian rhythm drove these creatures awakened them for the hunt.
My hands trembled so badly I could hardly maintain my grip on the wall. A pebble fell from beneath my foot, struck the ledge below with a resounding clat, and bounded off into the darkness. I held my breath and listened to it clatter into what sounded like a much larger cavern. I expected to hear a startled cry and the sound of footsteps or claws racing up the stone below me, but was rewarded with a silence that closed around me like a fist.
There was no time for caution.
I hurried down the toeholds. One hand after another. Each footfall made a hollow tapping sound. When I reached the last ledge, I knelt and shined my light through the gap. It revealed little more than the smooth, flat limestone below me, its surface marred by the same brownish-red crust that clung to the handholds.
My heart leapt into my throat as I swung my legs over the edge, rolled over onto my belly, and slid down through the narrow passage. The moment my toes found traction, I scrambled down, unslung my rifle, and turned to face the darkness down the barrel of a weapon that shook in my grasp.
The column of light was maddeningly thin and did little more than stain the darkness outside of its direct reach. The stalactites overhead were long and sharp and there were funnels made from what looked like hair strung between them. Bats twisted and squirmed inside of them, where they’d been caught in the traps. The walls were dripping with flowstone and furry in places with some kind of moss or filamentous fungi. There were petroglyphs, too, so old and worn away that they were impossible to decipher through the minerals that had accumulated over them since the last of the creatures that could clearly see them gave way to the first generation that could not.
Until this very moment, I’d been able to think of these things as creatures, but that wasn’t at all what they were. These were beings that at one point had lived in relative harmony with my light-dwelling forebears, beings capable of higher thought, of communication, no matter how primitive. They were more like me than any of the other life forms around here. Definitely more than I was prepared to admit, even to myself. I thought of the pictures I had seen of them, of the severed heads displayed in the cavern behind the kiva, and wondered if I would be able to align a face that looked startlingly similar to mine through the scope of the rifle and pull the trigger.
I crept away fro
m the exit and deeper into the chamber. I tried to commit its location to memory, for I was going to need to recall it in a hurry and already, with it no longer in sight, I could feel myself losing my bearings. I took a single bullet from my pocket and stood it upright on the ground. The loss of a single bullet was almost unbearable, but a reflection of light from a brass casing could prove to be the greatest sight in the world.
There were at least a half-dozen different openings in the wall on the far side of the cavern. Several of them were set near the roof at the end of more toe trails and seemingly impervious to my flashlight. For all I knew, they could be small storage or sleeping cubbies. Or they could be the beginning of tunnels that led through the entire mountain and down to the center of the earth. I didn’t have the luxury of time to explore each and every one of these branches. Already I could feel the sun setting as a physical weight upon my shoulders.
Coming down here had been a terrible mistake. How had I thought—even for a second—that I could just waltz in here and do what it had taken entire parties of men far more experienced and braver than I was to do? And not all of them had survived, had they? That was the point of my grandfather’s contribution to the trophy wall. This wasn’t a joke. This was serious business. People died down here, for Christ’s sake. There was no way of knowing how many of them were even down here. I had to figure there couldn’t be that many of them if my father and grandfather—just the two of them—had made it back out alive. They obviously hadn’t finished the job, though. They’d taken care of the most immediate threat and sealed the mountain again, and yet some number of them had survived their daytime assault, some small faction that had taken years to tunnel through the stone. Or maybe it had merely taken them that long to mature. I shuddered at the thought that I was hunting children my age who’d survived the loss of their parents.
Ancient Enemy Page 11
