Night Freight Page 9

  Nothing.

  Roper let out a breath, backed away to where he could look down the hall again. The house was still graveyard-quiet; he couldn't even hear the faint grumblings its old wooden joints usually made in the night. It was as if the whole place was wrapped in a breathless waiting hush. As if there was some kind of unnatural presence at work here—

  Screw that, he told himself angrily. No such things as ghosts and demons. There seemed to be presence here, all right—he could feel it just as strongly as before—but it was a human presence. Maybe a burglar, maybe a tramp, maybe even a goddamn lunatic. But human.

  He snapped on the hall lights and went along there to the archway that led into the downstairs sitting room. First the flash and then the electric wall lamps told him it was deserted. The dining room off the parlor next. And the kitchen. And the rear porch.

  Still nothing.

  Where was he, damn it? Where was he hiding?

  The cellar? Roper thought.

  It didn't make sense that whoever it was would have gone down there. The cellar was a huge room, walled and floored in stone, that ran under most of the house; there wasn't anything in it except spider webs and stains on the floor that he didn't like to think about, not after the real estate agent's story about Lavolle and his dark rites. But it was the only place left that he hadn't searched.

  In the kitchen again, Roper crossed to the cellar door. The knob turned soundlessly under his hand. With the door open a crack, he peered into the thick darkness below and listened. Still the same heavy silence.

  He started to reach inside for the light switch. But then he remembered that there wasn't any bulb in the socket above the stairs; he'd explored the cellar by flashlight before, and he hadn't bothered to buy a bulb. He widened the opening and aimed the flash downward, fanning it slowly from left to right and up and down over the stone walls and floor. Shadowy shapes appeared and disappeared in the bobbing light: furnace, storage shelves, a wooden wine rack, the blackish gleaming stains at the far end, spider webs like tattered curtains hanging from the ceiling beams.

  Roper hesitated. Nobody down there either, he thought. Nobody in the house after all? The feeling that he wasn't alone kept nagging at him—but it could be nothing more than imagination. All that business about devil-worshiping and ghosts and demons and Garber being murdered and psychotic killers on the loose might have affected him more than he'd figured. Might have jumbled together in his subconscious all week and finally come out tonight, making him imagine menace where there wasn't any. Sure, maybe that was it.

  But he had to make certain. He couldn't see all of the cellar from up here; he had to go down and give it a full search before he'd be satisfied that he really was alone. Otherwise he'd never be able to get back to sleep tonight.

  Playing the light again, he descended the stairs in the same wary movements as before. The beam showed him nothing. Except for the faint whisper of his breathing, the creak of the risers when he put his weight on them, the stillness remained unbroken. The odors of dust and decaying wood and subterranean dampness dilated his nostrils; he began to breathe through his mouth.

  When he came off the last of the steps he took a half dozen strides into the middle of the cellar. The stones were cold and clammy against the soles of his bare feet. He turned to his right, then let the beam and his body transcribe a slow circle until he was facing the stairs.

  Nothing to see, nothing to hear.

  But with the light on the staircase, he realized that part of the wide, dusty area beneath them was invisible from where he stood—a mass of clotted shadow. The vertical boards between the risers kept the beam from reaching all the way under there.

  The phrase from when he was a kid repeated itself in his mind: Peekaboo, I see you. Hiding under the stair.

  With the gun and the flash extended at arm's length, he went diagonally to his right. The light cut away some of the thick gloom under the staircase, letting him see naked stone draped with more gray webs. He moved closer to the stairs, ducked under them, and put the beam full on the far joining of the walls.

  Empty.

  For the first time Roper began to relax. Imagination, no doubt about it now. No ghosts or demons, no burglars or lunatics hiding under the stair. A thin smile curved the corners of his mouth. Hell, the only one hiding under the stair was himself—

  "Peekaboo," a voice behind him said.

  "Thirst" is a variation on one of the classic themes of fantasy/horror fiction. I like to flatter myself that it has a gritty Twilight Zone feel—two men wandering on foot in a trackless, unnamed desert waste, faced with the most basic of all human instincts: survival. As Flake and March plod on beneath the merciless sun, I can imagine Rod Serling stepping out from behind a reddish outcrop and delivering one of his lyrical post-teaser introductions. Any reader who has that same imaginative flash will be paying me the highest of compliments.

  Thirst

  March said, "We're going to die out here, Flake."

  "Don't talk like that."

  "I don't want to die this way."

  "You're not going to die."

  "I don't want to die of thirst, Flake!"

  "There are worse ways."

  "No, no, there's no worse way."

  "Quit thinking about it."

  "How much water is left?"

  "A couple of swallows apiece, that's all."

  "Let me have my share. My throat's on fire!"

  Flake stopped slogging forward and squinted at March for a few seconds. He took the last of the canteens from his shoulder, unscrewed the cap, and drank two mouthfuls to make sure he got them. Then he handed the canteen to March.

  March took it with nerveless fingers. He sank to his knees in the reddish desert sand, his throat working spasmodically as he drank. When he had licked away the last drop, he cradled the canteen to his chest and knelt there rocking with it.

  Flake watched him dispassionately. "Come on, get up."

  "What's the use? There's no more water. We're going to die of thirst."

  "I told you to shut up about that."

  March looked up at him with eyes like a wounded animal's. "You think he made it, Flake?"

  "Who, Brennan?"

  "Yes, Brennan."

  "What do you want to think about him for?"

  "He didn't take all the gasoline for the Jeep."

  "He had enough."

  March whimpered, "Why, Flake? Why'd he do it?"

  "Why the hell you think he did it?"

  "Those deposits we found are rich, the ore samples proved that—sure. But there's more than enough for all of us."

  "Brennan's got the fever. He wants it all."

  "But he was our friend, our partner!"

  "Forget about him," Flake said. "We'll worry about Brennan when we get out of this desert."

  March began to laugh. "That's a good one, by God. That's rich."

  "What's the matter with you?"

  "When we get out of this desert, you said. When. Oh, that's a funny one—"

  Flake slapped him. March grew silent, his dusty fingers moving like reddish spiders on the surface of the canteen. "You're around my neck like a goddamn albatross," Flake said. "You haven't let up for three days now. I don't know why I don't leave you and go on alone."

  "No, Flake, please . . ."

  "Get up, then."

  "I can't. I can't move."

  Flake caught March by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet. March stood there swaying. Flake began shuffling forward again, pulling March along by one arm. The reddish sand burned beneath their booted feet. Stillness, heat, nothing moving, hidden eyes watching them, waiting. Time passed, but they were in a state of timelessness.

  "Flake."

  "What is it now?"

  "Can't we rest?"

  Flake shaded his eyes to look skyward. The sun was falling now, shot through with blood-colored streaks; it had the look of a maniac's eye.

  "It'll be dark in a few hours," he said. "We'll re
st then."

  To ease the pressure of its weight against his spine, Flake adjusted the canvas knapsack of dry foodstuffs. March seemed to want to cry, watching him, but there was no moisture left in him for tears. He stumbled after Flake.

  They had covered another quarter of a mile when Flake came to a sudden standstill. "There's something out there," he said.

  "I don't see anything."

  "There," Flake said, pointing.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know. We're too far away."

  They moved closer, eyes straining against swollen, peeling lids. "Flake!" March cried. "Oh Jesus, Flake, it's the Jeep!"

  Flake began to run, stumbling, falling once in his haste. The Jeep lay on its side near a shallow dry wash choked with mesquite and smoke trees. Three of its tires had blown out, the windshield was shattered, and its body dented and scored in a dozen places.

  Flake staggered up to it and looked inside, looked around it and down into the dry wash. There was no sign of Brennan, no sign of the four canteens Brennan had taken from their camp in the Red Hills.

  March came lurching up. "Brennan?"

  "Gone."

  "On foot, like us?"

  "Yeah."

  "What happened? How'd he wreck the Jeep?"

  "Blowout, probably. He lost control and rolled it over."

  "Can we fix it? Make it run?"

  "Why not? Christ, Flake!"

  "Radiator's busted, three tires blown, engine and steering probably bunged up too. How far you think we'd get if we could get it started?"

  "Radiator," March said. "Flake, the radiator . . ."

  "I already checked. If there was any water left after the smashup, Brennan got it."

  March made another whimpering sound. He sank to his knees, hugging himself, and began the rocking motion again.

  "Get up," Flake said.

  "It's no good, we're going to die of thirst—"

  "You son of a bitch, get up! Brennan's out there somewhere with the canteens. Maybe we can find him."

  "How? He could be anywhere . . ."

  "Maybe he was banged up in the crash, too. If he's hurt he couldn't have got far. We might still catch him."

  "He's had three days on us, Flake. This must have happened the first day out."

  Flake said nothing. He turned away from the Jeep and followed the rim of the dry wash to the west. March remained kneeling on the ground, watching him, until Flake was almost out of sight; then he got to his feet and began to lurch spindle-legged after him.

  It was almost dusk when Flake found the first canteen.

  He had been following a trail that had become visible not far from the wrecked Jeep. At that point there had been broken clumps of mesquite, other signs to indicate Brennan was hurt and crawling more than he was walking. The trail led through the arroyo, where it hooked sharply to the south, then continued into the sun-baked wastes due west—toward the town of Sandoval, the starting point of their mining expedition two months earlier.

  The canteen lay in the shadow of a clump of rabbit-brush. Flake picked it up, shook it. Empty. He glanced over his shoulder, saw March a hundred yards away shambling like a drunk, and then struck out again at a quickened pace.

  Five minutes later he found the second canteen, empty, and his urgency grew and soared. He summoned reserves of strength and plunged onward in a loose trot.

  He had gone less than a hundred and fifty yards when he saw the third canteen—and then, some distance beyond it, the vulture. The bird had glided down through the graying sky, was about to settle near something in the shade of a natural stone bridge. Flake ran faster, waving his arms, shouting hoarsely in his burning throat. The vulture slapped the air with its heavy wings and lifted off again. But it stayed nearby, circling slowly, as Flake reached the motionless figure beneath the bridge and dropped down beside it.

  Brennan was still alive, but by the look of him and by the faint irregularity of his pulse, he wouldn't be alive for long. His right leg was twisted at a grotesque angle. As badly hurt as he was, he had managed to crawl the better part of a mile in three days.

  The fourth canteen was gripped in Brennan's fingers. Flake pried it loose, upended it over his mouth. Empty. He cast it away and shook Brennan savagely by the shoulders, but the bastard had already gone into a coma. Flake released him, worked the straps on the knapsack on Brennan's back. Inside were the ore samples and nothing else.

  Flake struggled to his feet when he heard March approaching, but he didn't turn. He kept staring down at Brennan from between the blistered slits of his eyes.

  "Flake! You found Brennan!"

  "Yeah, I found him."

  "Is he dead?"

  "Almost."

  "What about water? Is there—?"

  "No. Not a drop."

  "Oh, God, Flake!"

  "Shut up and let me think."

  "That's it, we're finished, there's no hope now . . ."

  "Goddamn you, quit your whining."

  "We're going to end up like him March said.

  "We're going to die, Flake, die of thirst—"

  Flake backhanded him viciously, knocked him to his knees. "No, we're not," he said. "Do you hear me? We're not."

  "We are, we are, we are . . ."

  "We're not going to die," Flake said.

  They came out of the desert four days later—burnt, shriveled, caked head to foot with red dust like human figures molded from soft stone.

  Their appearance and the subsequent story of their ordeal caused considerable excitement in Sandoval, much more so than the rich ore samples in Flake's knapsack. They received the best of care. They were celebrities as well as rich men; they had survived the plains of hell, and that set them apart, in the eyes of the people of Sandoval, from ordinary mortals.

  It took more than a week before their burns and infirmities had healed enough so that they could resume normal activity. In all that time March was strangely uncommunicative. At first the doctors had been afraid that he might have to be committed to an asylum; his eyes glittered in an unnatural way and he made sounds deep in his throat that were not human sounds. But then he began to get better, even if he still didn't have much to say. Flake thought that March would be his old self again in time. When you were a rich man, all your problems were solved in time.

  Flake spent his first full day out of bed in renting them a fancy hacienda and organizing mining operations on their claim in the Red Hills. That night, when he returned to their temporary quarters, he found March sitting in the darkened kitchen. He told him all about the arrangements, but March didn't seem to be interested. Shrugging, Flake got down a bottle of tequila and poured himself a drink.

  Behind him March said, "I've been thinking, Flake."

  "Good for you. What about?"

  "About Brennan."

  Flake licked the back of his hand, salted it, licked off the salt, and drank the shot of tequila. "You'd better forget about Brennan," he said.

  "I can't forget about him," March said. His eyes were bright. "What do you suppose people would say if we told them the whole story? Everything that happened out there in the desert."

  "Don't be a damned fool."

  March smiled. "We were thirsty, weren't we? So thirsty."

  "That's right. And we did what we had to do to survive."

  "Yes," March said. "We did what we had to do."

  He stood up slowly and lifted a folded square of linen from the table. Under it was a long, thin carving knife. March picked up the knife and held it in his hand. Sweat shone on his skin; his eyes glittered now like bits of phosphorous. He took a step toward Flake.

  Flake felt sudden fear. He opened his mouth to tell March to put the knife down, to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. But the words caught in his throat.

  "You know what we are, Flake? You know what we—what I—became out there the night we cut Brennan open and drained his blood into those four big canteens?"

  Flake knew, then, and he tried despe
rately to run—too late. March tripped him and knocked him down and straddled him, the knife held high.

  "I'm still thirsty," March said.

  Ah, marriage. Some people consider it a perfectly natural state, one of contentment if not actual bliss. It's also called an institution, others note, and who wants to be locked up in an institution? More than a few find it so unbearable, after a while, that they yearn desperately to be free of their spouses. But if divorce isn't a viable option, then what? One of the darker forms of "Wishful Thinking," perhaps . . .

  Wishful Thinking

  When I got home from work, a little after six as usual, Jerry Macklin was sitting slumped on his front porch. Head down, long arms hanging loose between his knees. Uh-oh, I thought. I put the car in the garage and walked back down the driveway and across the lawn strip onto the Macklins' property.

  "Hi there, Jerry."

  He looked up. "Oh, hello, Frank."

  "Hot enough for you?"

  "Hot," he said. "Yes, it's hot."

  "Only June and already in the nineties every day. Looks like we're in for another blistering summer."

  "I guess we are."

  "How about coming over for a beer before supper?"

  He waggled his head. He's long and loose, Jerry, with about twice as much neck as anybody else. When he shakes his big head, it's like watching a bulbous flower bob at the end of a stalk. As always these days, his expression was morose. He used to smile a lot, but not much since his accident. About a year ago he fell off a roof while on his job as a building inspector, damaged some nerves and vertebrae in his back, and was now on permanent disability.

  "I killed Verna a little while ago," he said.

  "Is that right?"

  "She's in the kitchen. Dead on the kitchen floor."

  "Uh-huh," I said.

  "We had another big fight and I went and got my old service pistol out of the attic. She didn't even notice when I came back down with it, just started in ragging on me again. I shot her right after she called me a useless bum for about the thousandth time."