by P. J. Tracy
Sharon and Grace collapsed to their knees on either side of her until she sat up and looked at them both.
Her lungs tugged at the sodden air while she wiped her face with the heel of her hand, leaving a ragged white streak in the grime. "They buried them with that," she said, pointing at the tractor that seemed to crouch like some great beast waiting to spring on unsuspecting prey.
Grace was sucking in deep breaths. She felt strangely light, like a helium-filled balloon in the slippery grasp of a child's hand. She looked over her shoulder at the pockmarks behind them and shuddered at the tactile memory of softness that wasn't soil.
Annie was sitting there, staring back in the direction of the barn, at the holes and furrows that opened up into the land of the dead. Her eyes drifted a yard to the right, where the last ghostly shape lay exposed. She felt empty now, numb, staring at a little jeans-clad leg, trying to make her mind connect it to a body she knew had to be a child. Very close to it, a long, silky, brown-and-black ear lay on top of a soil clod like a disconnected thing she couldn't make sense of.
After what might have been a few seconds or ten or twenty, she took a deep breath and moved on her hands and knees. Two paces. Two little, soft, round knee holes in the dirt, and she was there. She sat back on her heels and looked down, and with a trembling hand, she reached out like a child trying to make herself touch a snake for the first time.It's not slimy, it's dry, really, and the moment her fingertips brushed against the little leg, she started to cry.
In all the years she had known her, Grace had never seen Annie cry, and this, more than anything that had happened this day, scared her to death.
The leg was cold.This was a person, Annie kept telling herself.Thiswas a person. This isn't a horror movie, and this isn't a monster or a ghost, just the empty body of the little person it used to be. And it isn't scary at all. It's just very, very sad.
Sharon was kneeling right next to her, hands away from her mouthand covering her eyes now.See no evil, see no evil; hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women. . . . Where are you, Mary? Where were you when all these people died? Did you watch from some heavenly perch with your plump little hands folded in front of your flowing blue gown, and did that Mona Lisa smile falter just a little when they shoveled dirt on top of the bodies, and how about when my own mother stuck a gun in her mouth? WHERE WERE YOU THEN?
She was vaguely aware of Grace murmuring to Annie in the background, a whispery, soothing drone of comfort that rang horribly false, seemed almost as evil as what had happened here.Quiet, Annie, hush. It's going to be all right. ., a nd that was such a dreadful lie. She took her hands away from her eyes and gazed dully past the corner of the barn toward the farmhouse, couldn't see very well anymore because her vision was blurred. When she blinked, water fell from her eyes onto the front of her little filthy FBI suit, and now it looked like one of the farmhouse windows was winking at her. She blinked again, her head tipped curiously. The window winked again, and then the window next to it winked, flashing a circle of light like the pupil of a large eye reflecting the sun.
Suddenly, her fuzzy thoughts sharpened and splintered away from one another. She jerked her eyes left, looked past the corner of the barn down the long drive, and breathed, "Oh my God."
Grace and Annie grunted when Sharon crashed into them, her hands clutching and pulling, her feet digging trenches into the soil around them. "Quick, quick," she hissed frantically. "Headlights, cars coming down the driveway, hurry, hurry. . . ."
. . , and then they were all scrambling in the loose soil, hitting the solid ground outside the paddock fence and into the tall grass on the other side.
Sharon was flying, number-one hunchback in a party of three, racing away from the barn and the paddock, past the dirty, green tractor at the end, over the lip of a hill, and onto a downward slope. She could hear Grace and Annie close behind her, their breath like thunder. Ahead of them, the moonlit tops of tall grass marched down a hill to mingle at the bottom with the oblong heads of cattails.
"Down!" someone hissed, just as headlights pierced the gloom above their heads like fingers of light jabbing into the dark sky. They all crashed to their bellies in the grass, facing the crest of the shallow hill, their nostrils flaring at the ripe smell of a midwestern lake in midsummer.
The still night air carried the sound of jeep doors creaking open up near the barn, then slamming shut.
"Jesus Christ," a man said aloud after a moment, his voice even closer than the sound of the jeep's doors. "Look at this shit. Looks like someone tried to dig them all up."
The women flattened themselves even farther into the long grass, pressing their faces close to the fragrant earth beneath.
"Get on the radio," the voice said to someone else. "Get the Colonel out here, fast."
With her left cheek smashed into the bent stalks of grass, Grace stared at Sharon and Annie on her right, staring back at her.They'll come now. They'll all come.
Her arms were stretched out in front of her, her left hand cradling the right. She continued to stare into Sharon's eyes as her right thumb moved up the Sig's grip to the safety and flicked it off.
WITHIN TEN MINUTES of the harried radio call announcing the mess in the paddock, the disturbed mass grave was striped with the yellow beams of headlights. Haifa dozen jeeps nosed up to the paddock's fence, engines murmuring as their drivers stared solemnly at the things their headlights illuminated in the disturbed soil.
Like hunting dogs coursing for a scent, a dozen men spread out over the farmyard and surrounding land. They used flashlights indiscriminately, and the small noises of their movements carried clearly in the still night air.
From just inside the paddock fence, Colonel Hemmer glanced up at the five-man squad approaching the fence, ammo pouches and canteens clattering softly against their pistol belts. He squinted against the glare of the headlights, his grizzled face reflecting an unearthly glow beneath the black shadow of his field cap. "Anything, soldier?"
"No, sir. Nothing in the house or barn."
"What about the loft?"
"The loft, sir? The loft is empty."
"That loft is full of hay. You ever play in a barn loft when you were a kid?"
"Uh .., yes, sir."
"Get your men up there. Check it again. Move every bale."
Hemmer looked back at where Acker was sweeping the ground with the beam of a flashlight. Parts of the paddock were still smooth, the punched holes of running feet dark and jarring on the surface, like black blemishes on an otherwise flawless face. In a few places, there were compacted depressions where someone had fallen, surrounded by the gouges and scattered soil of panic. In each of those places, something better left buried protruded from the dirt, as if the residents of Four Corners had been trying to dig themselves out.
"No doubt someone was here, sir," Acker said soberly.
The Colonel's eyes narrowed.Jesus Christ. Goddamn women, stupid enough to leave their silly purses behind and right out in the open, walking all over this goddamned stupid town as if they owned the place. . . .
"Looks like they ran down to the end near the tractor, sir, but they could have come back this way. The dirt's a hell of a mess, makes them hard to track."
And if they weren't running scared before, they sure as hell were now.Hemmer's mouth moved in disgust as he watched Acker's light arc across the paddock. "How long could these tracks have been here?" he asked.
"The men have been making rounds since we found the Rover, but the last time would have been before moonrise. We weren't showing light then. We could have missed it."
The Colonel's jaw tightened. That meant this could have happened more than an hour ago. Goddamned women. Where the hell were they?Where the hell were they?
"Sir?"
He started, then blinked rapidly. Had he said that out loud? Suddenly, he was aware of the still-idling jeeps, the drivers with nothing to do but look at the horror in their headlights. "Get those men ou
t in the field with the others, Acker."
"Yes, sir."
Acker hustled away while Hemmer strode back down the length of the paddock toward the tractor. Pausing next to the hulking machine, he laid a hand on the cold ridge of a tire tread and closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for revelation. The tractor knew where the women went; the tractor saw them. But the goddamned fucking tractor wasn't talking.
He sucked air in through his teeth and moved to the edge of the slope. The flashlight picked up the parallel tracks of flattened grass off to the right, where the ill-fated truck had been rolled into the lake. Directly in front of him, the grass was smashed and slick in places where the cows had gone over.They'll pop up to the surface soon, he thought.
His eyes lifted and traveled around the uneven circle of the moonlit lake, saw several dots of light bobbing around the circumference as the men continued to search.
Three years,he thought.Three years of meticulous planning, training, preparation, all at risk now because some stupid woman's car had broken down. "For want of a nail," he murmured under his breath.
"Sir?"
Hemmer's heart leaped at the sound of Acker's voice at his left shoulder.Jesus. The kid had crept back up on him like a shadow. He was losing it-that second sight that saved you in the field. If this had been the Gulf, he would have been dead by now.
He pretended to be deep in thought, staring out into the black distance while his heart slowed down. After a moment, he started down the slope, Acker right at his heels. He stopped when his boots sank into the soft mud next to the shoreline and scoured the ground with the beam of his flashlight.
Pointless,he thought, looking up again. Between the cattle and men who had tried to manage that rolling stampede into the lake, the ground was ravaged.
The cattails towered over him here. He glared at them, wishing he had a machete to slice them down to size. "Place is a goddamned jungle," he muttered.
"Yes, sir," Acker said, startling him again.
He snapped the light on Acker's face, making him squint. He kept it there for a moment, watched his baby face twitching in discomfort. When he spoke again, his voice was disturbingly quiet. "We should have found them by now."
Acker tipped his head, trying to avoid the light. "They can't get out, sir. And we've got their purses and their cells, so they can't call out, even if they could get a signal. I'm sure we'll find them soon."
"Are you?"
"Yes, sir, of course, sir."
"Then you're a fool." The Colonel scowled and looked away, clenching his jaw so hard his teeth hurt.Take it easy, he commandedhimself,hosing your temper is the first sign of losing control. Relax. Take a deep breath. Take command of yourself first, then your men. "We mustfind them," he said evenly. "They've seen too much."
"Yes, sir."
The Colonel turned to regard Acker's soft features, the sometimes startling innocence of his young face. "These women are not the enemy. Not any more than those people in the paddock up there were the enemy. Just unfortunate souls who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." He paused, met Acker's eyes. "They were all dead by the time we got here. There was absolutely nothing we could do. But this will be very different. Intentional. Could you do it,
Acker?If you were the one who found them, could you shoot innocent women to save the mission?"
Acker was facing the Colonel, his back to the lake. "Of course, sir," he replied instantly, offended that the Colonel had to ask.
Directly behind him, less than ten feet into the forest of cattails and down near the surface of the stagnant water, a pair of terrified blue eyes stared up through the stalks.
GRACE WAS KNEELING in the sucking mud that anchored the roots of the cattails, her gaze riveted on the shadowy figures straight ahead. Their bodies were dissected crazily by the thick stalks that she peered through, as if they weren't real men at all-just scattered pieces of men whose conversation was as surreal as their visages.
Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't make a sound, because there's a very young man out there who's ready, willing, and able to shoot you dead. And this is what happens when you let little boys play with G.I. Joe dolls.
Only her head protruded from the stinking water; that, and her right hand. It was pressed next to her ear, gripping the Sig. The barrel was tangled in her hair, pointed skyward, still dry.
Directly next to Grace, Sharon couldn't feel her feet anymore, couldn't feel the cold muck seeping through her shoes and clothes, pasting them to her body like glue. Terror had numbed her senses long ago, focused the sum of her awareness on the simple life-and-death struggle to remain perfectly still.
It was pleasantly dark in this black nest of rigid stalks, and if it was dark, no one could see her, and she would be safe. Whatever evil was out there wouldn't be able to find her if she stayed perfectly still. She kept staring straight ahead, pretending she didn't see or hear or exist. . ..
". ..Come on, honey, you have to come out. Come to Daddy. It's all right, I'm here. Daddy's right here. ..."But Daddy was out there,where everything bad lived. Nothing bad was in here. Just her mother's faint scent lingering, silky dresses brushing the top of her head, her mother's shoes upside down on the metal rack, waiting patiently for her mother's feet. The dresses didn't know; the shoes didn't know; the hats and boxes, the terry robe on the hook-none of these things knew what had happened out there. In this tiny fragrant closet, her mother still lived, and Sharon wanted to stay here forever. . . .
Next to Sharon, Annie's mouth was open an inch above the water, an orifice only slightly larger than her eyes. She could feel the blurred racing of her panicked heart, beating so fast it was a buzz in her chest, and she wondered absently if it would hurt to get shot.
The cow was still behind her, braced against her, its bloating, rigid body stuck in the mud of the shallows. She'd bumped into it, nearly fallen on it when they'd first slid into the concealment of the cattails together, but she hadn't screamed. She was very proud of that. She'd bumped right into this terrible, disgusting, deadthing and she hadn't screamed.
Her eyes were bright with tension, her face stiff with fear as she watched and listened to the two men. All the muscles in her bodyseemed locked into immobility.That's why the deer freeze in the headlights. You always wondered why they didn't leap out of harm's way, off the side of the road, into the safety of the woods, and this is it. This is the reason. The survival instinct breaks down when danger gets too close. You can act only up to a point, and then you can't act at all.
She concentrated, sent the paralysis draining down her body into the water and out through the soles of her shoes, and then, at last, she was free to blink.
COLONEL HEMMER'S smile was faint, barely there. Acker was a good soldier. All of his men were good soldiers. His smile
faded. If they were all such goddamned good soldiers, how the hell had these women gotten this far? He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace back and forth along a ten-foot stretch of shoreline, his combat boots slurping in the mud. "Any chance they could have slipped away from here, across the lake, for instance?"
"Absolutely not, sir. The cordon around the lake has been tight. We treated it as a funnel point."
Hemmer had known the answer before he'd asked the question, and the question hadn't really been necessary anyway. He knew the women were here. He could feel them the way you feel a cold starting deep in your throat. Soft, silly women who could never understand the concept of dying for your country or killing for it, so short-sighted that the term "acceptable losses" would horrify them. These were the kind of people who had let the world become such a dangerous place. "At ten hundred hours, those two trucks will blow, a thousand people will die, and the world will start changing. Unless those women get away."
"That will not happen, sir."
Colonel Hemmer stopped pacing and looked up at the silhouettes on top of the slope. A dozen soldiers stared down at him. Christ. They looked like goddamned Indians lining the canyon
wall in an old Western, watching with that endless, alien patience, waiting for the proper moment to charge down. "What is it, soldier?"
"They're gone, Colonel," a man called down. "We've searched the buildings, every inch of the farm, and around the lake. Shall we start the search pattern again, sir?"
"No." The Colonel flashed blue eyes up the slope. "Trying to track them in the dark is pointless. But they're still here, and we goddamned better keep them here. I want every man back out on the perimeter. Every. Single. Man. And we'll stay on that perimeter until dawn, and then we'll move in fast and start to tighten the circle."
The soldiers on the slope saluted as a unit, then turned and double-timed away.
Acker waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps, then spoke hesitantly. "You don't think it's risky, sir? Keeping this town closed off until dawn?"
Hemmer turned slowly to face him, and spoke with amazing control. "Yes, Acker, I think it's risky. But riskier still to leave holes in the perimeter while our men fumble around in the dark, trying to find them. If they get out, others will come, and once they see this place, they'll figure it out in a hurry. They'd have a nationwide alert out on the other two trucks in a matter of hours. We'd lose them before they blow. We'd lose the gas. We'd lose the element of surprise.We'd lose the war, Acker. "
Acker closed his eyes and lowered his head in embarrassment. "Yes, sir. Sorry to question you, sir."
The apology made the Colonel feel magnanimous, almost paternal. "It's all right, Acker. None of us expected this kind of duty. We're all on the edge here."
"And what about the hourly patrols, sir?" Acker put in timidly.
"Cancel the patrols. All of them. Let the women have the whole goddamned town if they want it. For a few more hours, anyway."
DEPUTY DOUGLAS LEE arched his spine away from the seat, grimacing at a sharp twinge in his lower back. And it was no wonder, he thought. He'd pulled the empty northern sector for his patrol tonight, and taking a leak was about the only reason you ever had to get out from behind the wheel on this run.
