‘Your mother’s here,’ Ethan said.
‘What?’ Ben’s features were taut with alarm.
‘She brought me here to find you, Ben. She’s worried about you.’
Ben nodded. ‘Shilo doesn’t allow contact with the outside world except for his most trusted members.’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ Ethan replied. ‘They’re brain–washing you.’
‘I know,’ Ben assured him, ‘but I want to know what they know. Just wait and you’ll see.’
Ethan decided to give it a couple more minutes, but he had no intention of staying. Shilo could raise his arms, break wind and part the damned Mississippi for all he cared; the cult was dangerous, and now he’d located it his best option was to run like hell and…
Ethan saw the light appear.
Out of the black sky a single point of brilliant white light that flickered around the edges with iridescent color appeared as if by magic and hovered there far above them. Ethan peered at it. The object seemed to have no edges, a light that flickered like a candle flame, solid and yet somehow diaphanous.
The humming intensified, and Ethan glanced at the cult members around him. None had their eyes open or seemed at all aware of the light, and yet they had responded to it immediately.
‘It’s happening,’ Ben whispered.
‘What’s happening?’ Ethan replied. ‘It’s just a light.’
Ben chuckled softly in the darkness.
‘No, it’s not.’
***
XXIII
‘They’re right behind us!’
Lopez glanced in her mirror and saw a swathe of brightly flickering blue and red lights in the distance that illuminated the surrounding buildings in a kaleidoscopic halo.
‘We’ve got to make it to the fort,’ she said. ‘You sure that launch is there?’
‘Was this morning,’ Henley replied. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this.’
‘Nor me,’ Lopez replied. ‘Hang on.’
She took a corner onto Cairo’s main street, the Corvette’s tires squealing on the asphalt as she let the tail swing out and then gunned the power. The car straightened out with a wiggle and accelerated through Cairo’s deserted streets, the fleet of Sheriff’s cruisers closing in from behind.
Lopez drove as fast as she dared down to Cairo Point and the entrance to Fort Defiance, Henley guiding her along until she saw reflective warning signs for the fort’s small mooring. Big barges were anchored just off the shore, their slab–sided metal hulks flashing in the Corvette’s headlights as Lopez skidded to a halt in a small lot and jumped out.
‘Down there,’ Henley pointed to a natural sandbar wash, where a small motor launch bobbed on the black water.
Lopez hurried toward it with Henley beside her when she spotted something in the sky.
‘What’s that?’
She saw a brilliant orb of light flicker into existence in the night sky above the towbar. Henley glanced up at it.
‘The lights,’ he said. ‘They’re back.’
Henley unlocked a heavy–duty chain that secured the motor launch to a wooden mooring, then stepped into the boat. Lopez followed, grabbing the mooring line ready to release it as soon as the engine was started.
Henley yanked the starter cord and the engine coughed into life, just as Lopez heard the sound of engines thundering toward them.
‘They’re close enough!’ she said. ‘Go, now!’
Henley gunned the engine as Lopez unhooped the moorling line and the launch surged out into the blackness. Behind them, Lopez saw at least ten Sheriff’s cruisers screech into the old fort’s tiny parking lot, hazard lights flaring and flickering off the trees as officers spilled from within the vehicles with their sidearms drawn.
‘Armed officer, stop where you are!’
Lopez heard the cry but they were already beyond the glow of the headlights as Henley turned to starboard and began following the coastline back up and around toward Angelo Towbar.
‘They’re going to be sore at us,’ Henley announced in typically understated fashion.
Lopez almost chuckled.
‘I think they’re gonna be more than that. They know my car, so right now I figure they think you’re Ethan.’
Henley said nothing but she could make out his expression in the faint starlight, and he was probably a bit sore himself. Lopez turned back and saw the Sheriff cruisers all turning about and making their way out of the lot.
‘They’ll follow us,’ Henley said. ‘They must know that this is something to do with the towbar by now, especially if they managed to find Lindsay.’
Lopez knew that there were myriad dirt tracks up around the western edge of Cairo Point. The Sheriffs would not have to backtrack on the main roads to follow them, but the trees along the Mississippi coastline were dense enough that they would lose track of the launch for at least a few minutes. She saw their headlamps flow out of the parking lot and then vanish behind the dense woods. Once alongside the towbar they would then have to get through the woods to the shore, and then figure out a way to get across the river to the island.
‘We’ve got maybe ten minutes. They got a boat they can use?’
‘This was the only launch,’ Henley replied, ‘but they could use one of the tugs or the ferry. Either way, they won’t be far behind us.’
The lauch turned toward the towbar and Lopez turned her attention forward. Immediately, she saw the flickering orb of light in the night sky again, but now it was bigger and lower than before. She could see what she thought was fluids flowing back and forth, as though the object was a ball of bright energy seething with currents. There was a faint glow from the light reflecting off the treetops in the center of the island, and occasionally puffs of cloud drifted to obscure the source of the light from view.
‘Seriously, is that what I think it is?’ she asked Henley.
The officer nodded, not looking at the light.
‘Every couple of weeks or so, regular as clockwork. I don’t know what it is but I’ve seen it many times.’
Lopez wished she had a camera on her, although the launch’s motion through the water would not have helped her to focus on the object or keep it steady in the viewfinder. She kept her eyes on it, and then she noticed the change in the air around them.
‘You feel that?’ she asked.
Henley nodded. ‘Static electricity, you can smell it on the air.’
Lopez realized that she could smell the charge from whatever was causing the energy to seethe through the air around them, and then suddenly the launch’s motor coughed and spluttered, then died entirely.
‘Damn it!’
Henley yanked the starter cord twice, three times, but the motor refused to start.
‘Electromagnetic charge,’ he uttered. ‘It’s cutting out the engine.’
He reached for two small paddles and handed one to Lopez.
‘We’d better hurry or the current will pull us away from the channel and out into the main river.’
Lopez grabbed the paddle and began rowing hard, fighting against the current as they aimed the launch for the bright light. After a couple of minutes hard work, she heard the bow of the launch rasp against a sandy surface and rise up out of the water.
Henley jumped out with her, and they hauled the launch up onto the pebbles and rocks of the sandbar. Ahead, the entire island was ringed by dense trees, a veritable forest of pitch–black darkness with only the bright light in the sky to guide them.
‘Looks like this is where we figure out what the strange lights are,’ Lopez said, and without a moment’s hesitation she struck out for the treeline with Henley in pursuit.
*
Ethan squinted up into the sky as the object began to descend toward the island, and shielded his eyes with his hands as he tried to identify the source of the light.
He could tell that it was fairly large, maybe forty feet in diameter, and although enveloped in a halo of intense, retina–burning light, he manage
d to get glimpses of something metallic within the halo, something solid that he could understand.
‘What is it?’
He was shocked to realize that although he had spoken normally, he could hear nothing. He glanced at Ben, who was likewise staring up at the object with his hands shielding his eyes as she spoke. Ethan realized that he could hear Ben’s response, but the sound was not traveling through the air toward him but seemed to materialize within his own head, as though Ben were communicating with the power of thought rather than speech.
‘They’re not from here,’ Ben said.
‘Where are they from?’
‘I don’t know, nobody does.’
Ethan linked the fingers of both hands together in a cross–hatch pattern to break up the brilliant flare of light, and looked again at the object. Now the light faded slightly and he could see more clearly the form of a disc, as classic as anything he had ever read about, concealed within the orb of light. There were other smaller lights flickering around its edged, and what looked almost like sparks leaping back and forth across its surface as though it were bearing some immense electrical charge. Ethan realized that he could feel the hairs on the back of his arms and on his scalp standing up, a tingling sensation pulsing through his body and a vibration that matched the intensity of the cult’s humming all around him.
‘What do they want?’ he asked Ben.
This time there was no reply. Ethan turned and saw that Ben had sat down and was now chanting with the rest of the group, his eyes closed and his features bathed in light from the object. He looked as though he were concentrating on something, reaching out for it. Ethan looked at Shilo and saw that although still standing, the cult leader’s eyes were closed and he too seemed to be absorbing something from whatever the hell it was hovering over the island.
Ethan began to back away from the group, heading back toward the treeline but keeping his eyes on the object. Changing his position would be enough to confuse Shilo and his lackeys for long enough for Ethan to make his escape, but even now he did not run, his eyes fixed on the disc of light now it seemed just a couple hundred feet above them.
Ethan glanced to his right, and there, far off in the distance through the trees, he could see distant flickering hazard lights. At once, he knew that he police were closing in on the island. By now they would have found Lindsay Trent, and she would have led them directly here to the island, to where she had last seen Ethan.
Ethan turned, ignoring the light and the disc now. It was over. All he had to do was let the police know about the cult and turn himself in. They would do the rest.
Ethan took a single pace toward the treeline to the east of the clearing, and in an instant everything stopped. The light vanished, the humming vanished, the distant hazard lights blinked out as though they had never been there and Ethan was standing on his own in absolute darkness.
***
XXIV
Sheriff Jonas McBride scrambled out of his patrol vehicle with his pistol drawn in time to see the launch vanish into the darkness of the night, black water churning with foam in its wake as it disappeared. But he had been close enough to recognize at least one of the occupants of the boat, a woman with long dark hair.
‘Lopez.’
Other cruisers screeched to a halt around him as he strode to the water’s edge and stared out to the channel. Although he could not be certain of their identity, he was sure that he had seen a male with Lopez aboard the boat. An officer hurried to his side, his own pistol held double–handed before him.
‘No other boats here,’ he reported. ‘I’ve radioed in to the river authority and they’re sending two vessels. They’ll be here in five minutes.’
McBride scowled as he shoved his service pistol back into its holster.
‘Damned gumshoes,’ he uttered as he whirled away from the shoreline. ‘Get every man we can aboard those boats and tell them to be prepared. I think that Lopez is with Warner and that means trouble. I want them both in custody within the hour, is that clear?’
The officer alongside him nodded.
‘Roger that, sir, but we might need more men.’
‘What for?’
‘Someone’s called the Sheriff’s Office in Future City.’
‘They’ve done what?’
‘And the FBI field office in Chicago,’ the officer went on. ‘They’ve made police complaints about the situation down here and claimed that there’s an illegal cult of some kind out on the towbar. We got calls comin’ in from all over about it.’
McBride scowled once again into the darkness where the launch had disappeared. He knew what Lopez was up to, and probably her partner too, Warner. They were seeking to expose the cult on the island, presumably as a means to draw doubt upon Ethan’s arrest and charges.
‘They’re pissing into the wind if they think he’s going to dodge a homicide charge by blaming it all on some cult down here in…’
‘That’s the thing, sir,’ came the officer’s response. ‘They’re not referencing the homicide.’ Now, McBride stared in genuine confusion at his subordinate officer. ‘Well, what the hell are they referencing then?’
‘Somethin’ to do with corruption at the mayor’s office and in the local P.D,’ the officer said, almost apologetically. ‘I don’t think they’re here to get Warner off the hook. I think they’re here for something bigger than that.’
McBride thought furiously. There was no way Warner would be focusing on anything other than clearing his own name, unless exposing a supposed cult would achieve the same aim. Either way, there was no way that McBride could be seen to go along with whatever hair–brained scheme Lopez and Warner had come up with out there. Right now, they’d isolated themselves on a single island in the middle of the damned Mississippi and there was nowhere else for them to go.
‘The only sure way to get to the bottom of this whole god–awful mess is to secure the island, arrest every last damned person out there and question them until they fold. I want Warner neutralized and everything contained before anybody else gets down here, especially the FBI, is that understood?’
‘Yes sir!’
*
‘You sure about this?’
Henley stood on the shoreline and peered up into the darkened forests as Lopez pulled the launch out of the water and heaved it onto the beach.
‘Sure,’ she said as Henley turned to help her. ‘I walk about in dark forests at night all the time.’
Henley didn’t reply as they secured the launch and then took stock. The night sky was sprinkled with a dazzling blanket of stars like colored jewels embedded in black velvet. Lopez could see the Milky Way stretching across the heavens, billions of stars so numerous they looked like glowing clouds filling the galaxy around them.
‘Seems crazy to think we’re the only ones here,’ Henley said as he saw the direction of her gaze.
‘We’re not,’ she replied as she checked her flash light and radio.
‘You that sure?’
Lopez shrugged. ‘Hundred billion plus stars in our galaxy alone, a few trillion other galaxies out there. What do you make the odds of us being the only things alive as bein’?’
Henley nodded and pulled out his flash light. The river waters were still a touch warmer than the surrounding land, and as a result mist was drifting off the surface in glowing veils that draped themselves in diaphanous veils around the trees.
‘Couldn’t look creepier if it tried,’ Lopez remarked.
Henley punched a button on his flash light and a white beam of light pierced the gloom.
‘Ladies first?’ he asked.
‘Asshole.’
Henley grinned as he headed into the forest with Lopez following.
The island was so untouched that the forest growth was deep and thick. Lopez hadn’t seen terrain this tough since she’d been with Ethan out in Nez Pearce forest, Idaho, years before. What they’d found out there had chilled her to the bone, and now she found her gaze chasing shadows in the
deep darkness, checking over her shoulder every few paces for some sign of wildlife she knew must be lurking in the darkness.
‘Nothing large living out here,’ Henley reassured her as he noted her concern. ‘The island’s too small to support apex predators.’
‘Good to know,’ Lopez replied as she followed the sheriff through the darkness, ducking under huge fallen trees and skirting undergrowth too dense to penetrate. ‘I sure as hell don’t want to have to fight off some…’
Two red eyes peered at them from the darkness, glowing with an unnatural light that made her heart seem to skip a beat in her chest. Horror rippled down her spine as she opened her mouth to shout a warning, but the eyes flashed forward before she could get the cry out. A huge shape shot from the undergrowth and plowed into Henley to send him hurtling down to the ground with a cry of pain as his flash light spun from his grasp.
Lopez rushed to his side as she heard the intruder crash away through the undergrowth, the flash light in its hands. Suddenly the beam vanished and they were plunged into absolute blackness.
‘You okay?’ she asked the police officer.
‘Yeah,’ he winced back, ‘fell hard on an old root, my ankle hurts like all hell but I’m okay otherwise.’
Lopez looked up into the darkness around them. The starlight above cast little light through the trees. She had a second flash light clipped to her belt but she was concerned now about betraying their location to whoever, or whatever, was out there.
‘You see its eyes?’ she asked him.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘it came at me from one side, I never saw anything.’
‘Bright red,’ Lopez murmured. ‘They almost glowed in the dark.’
‘You tryin’ to spook me?’
‘Tryin’ to warn you, it could see us without the flash light. The thing’s turned it off.’
‘If the thing turned the flash light off, it’s a thing with hands that knows how to work a flash light, which makes it a human being. Stop being all Fox Mulder and help me up, will you?’
Vanishing Point: A Warner & Lopez prequel novel Page 12
