Bitter Waters (28 page)

“Who knows?” Max said. “But Hutchinson said they scrapped everything there and moved to Buffalo.”

Ukiah recalled the Buffalo power grid they found on the cult's Web site. “Actually, that makes sense. The Ae need
power. Usually you hook one of the portable generators up, like the ones we used in Oregon.”

“If they have the Ae and they have the power, why are they in Pittsburgh kidnapping kids?”

“Maybe they thought they needed to key the Ae to a breeder.”

“But Rennie said the one that makes Invisible Red is keyed already,” Max pointed out. “Besides, how would they know Kittanning is a breeder? If they knew that, wouldn't they also know about you? Hell, how do they know about any of this stuff? I've seen Ontongard technology—how did Zlotnikov, a security guard with a high school diploma, figure out that they're alien doomsday devices? We're not talking honor roll student here.”

“I don't think he did realize that the Ae are doomsday devices,” Ukiah said. “Otherwise he wouldn't have been killed by it.”

“Oh, shit, that's right. The Invisible Red wouldn't hurt him until it cleaned out of his system. When the police jailed him, it set him up to be knocked off.” Max was silent for a moment, and then said, half to himself, “Zlotnikov knew enough to get one Ae to work, but how?”

Ukiah hoped that it was only one. “I don't know.”

“Unless there're instruction manuals you haven't mentioned, this goes back to the Ontongard. We've used their machines only by wit of Pack memory.”

“But if Zlotnikov is dead, he wasn't Ontongard.”

“So we keep saying,” Max said. “I hate to say this, but we might need to make sure that Zlotnikov was actually buried and not running around perfectly alive at the moment.”

“Good point,” Ukiah said. “Goodman is definitely dead, though.”

“And how,” Max agreed and sighed. “That's all we've managed so far. We're going to see if we can track down who all went to New England and if any of their families have heard from them, or know anything enlightening.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful,” Max said sternly and hung up.

Ukiah sat massaging his temples, trying to make sense out
of the mess. He reviewed what he knew about the cult, from Hutchinson's first mention to the Web site tied with what Max just reported.

Was Zlotnikov human or a Get? The dead security guard at Iron Mountain had said that someone accessed the machines, counter to what Alicia/Hex remembered. Also the thieves made an elaborate production out of moving the Ae, using Omega Pharmaceuticals “uniforms.” The Ontongard wouldn't have bothered with such props. So it seemed likely Zlotnikov was solely human and at least partially responsible for the Ae's theft.

Why the bombs though? Zlotnikov would have known that the Ae sat unchecked for fifty years. Why endanger so many human lives on a trap that might not be triggered for another fifty years?

Ukiah gazed at the muted television, still showing the smoke billowing out of the entrance of Iron Mountain. He picked up the remote and flipped through the local stations again: slices of the same disaster, seen from different angles.

The bombs weren't a trap. They were a warning signal to the cult: their theft had been discovered.

Whatever the cult had planned surely now would change. With this, they knew they were being closed in on. They would move. They would dig in deeper, someplace new.

One thing he learned from running with the wolves, one had to kill a snake before it went underground.

 

Cally had been sitting on the front porch steps when he walked out of the house. He patted her on the head as he passed, deep in his own thinking. Mom Jo's extended family might actually prove to be a good resource in finding William Harris, alias Billy Bob, alias Core, and his cult, the Temple of New Reason. Whereas he, Max, Indigo, and the Pack would all be outsiders stumbling over unfamiliar ground, Mom Jo's family had a vast, old, and trusted network throughout the entire Butler County region. There might even be members of the cult related to Mom Jo that he didn't know about, although he doubted it; otherwise Goodman's attack probably would have come at the farm.

But he knew Mom Jo's family well enough that they would respond best if Mom Jo organized the search rather than he or Mom Lara.

It was another twenty minutes before Mom Jo got home from the zoo, and his bike was nearly out of gas, so the best use of his time would to be to hit a local gas station.

As he backed his bike out of the wagon shed that served as the farm's garage, he noticed that Cally had followed him, and watched him with big sad eyes.

“What's wrong, Cally?”

“Kittanning
is
coming back. Right?”

“I hope so, honey.”

She burst into tears. “This is all my fault.”

“Pumpkin.” He leaned down to hug her. “How could it possibly be your fault?”

“I asked God to take Kittanning away, and he did!”

“What?”

“I'm the baby!” Cally wailed. “I thought we could go back to the way it used to be, but everyone just cries when they think I'm not listening. And I didn't want him hurt, I just wanted him to go away, but those mean men have him, the ones that are killing all the babies, and it's all my fault!”

“Hey, hey, God wouldn't make Kittanning go away because you asked him to.”

“He wouldn't?”

“Would Mom Lara or Mom Jo ever hurt someone just because you asked them to hurt them?”

“No.”

“If God is wise and powerful, why would he do something Mama or Mommy wouldn't do because it was silly.”

She frowned, trying to fit the two worldviews together.

“God wouldn't do it,” Ukiah said firmly. “This isn't your fault.”

 

He rode to town with Cally on his mind. Guilt had taken root in her beyond what simple logic could pluck out. He supposed it was the nature of being raised within a faith. All Cally's life she had been told that God would answer an earnest prayer, and now, beyond all reason, she thought he'd
granted her selfish wish. She had heard Ukiah, understood, and yet, even as she acknowledged the wisdom of his words, she still believed in her too-generous God. Ukiah supposed it was the problem of all religions, that God was defined and thus limited by the worshiper; Cally had not foreseen the harm Kittanning's disappearance would cause, and thus neither, she believed, could “her” God.

There were two gas stations in Evans City. The first sat across from the bank on Main Street. To get to the gas station with slightly lower prices, he would need to take Main Street across the railroad tracks, past the elementary school, and out of town proper. He decided on the cheaper gas, but as he sat waiting for the red light on Main Street to change, his thoughts went then to his own beliefs. Not long ago, his view had been as simplistic as Cally's. The addition of Rennie and Magic Boy had done much to grow his view of God. From the Ontongard, he understood now the size of the universe, or at least the local galaxy, and from Magic Boy came a crowd of ancestral and animal spirits. Creation was huge, but they were not alone.

And so, when the light changed to green, it somehow felt right to detour away from Main Street, and swing up to the graveyard that overlooked Evans City.

The Evans City Cemetery was old and crowded with familiar names, testament that many of the town's families had been there for generations. Mom Jo's parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts and -uncles, distant and some not so distant cousins, and so on all lay under worn headstones, lilacs, and yew trees. Parking his motorcycle, Ukiah walked the windswept hilltop, visiting the graves of the people he had actually known. Uncle Ollie. Great-aunt Minnie. Scotty. Grandma Pfiefer.

Ukiah crouched at Grandma Pfiefer's grave, hand on the warm stone, the cold wind cutting through him. “Grandma, have you been watching? Have you seen what's happened? Evil people have taken my little boy, and I can't find him. Can you help me? God, in heaven, please, please help me. He's so small and helpless, and I love him with all of my heart.”

The wind had been blowing straight east, as it was wont to do in Pennsylvania. The wind shifted suddenly hard to the southwest, blasting through the cemetery with a roar of fury. It scoured over the graves, snatching up dead leaves like fragments of prayers, and flung them heavenward.

Ukiah stood, his hackles rising as a shiver of cold went up his spine. As he watched the leaves rise up, he noticed a great grizzly bear-shaped cumulus cloud lumbering across the sky, heading south.

It did not occur to him to question it.

He ran to his bike and went.

It was a quick whip down to 68 and up the twisting 528. Trees screened the sky from sight on the right as he climbed the reservoir hill, but the bear raced across the reflection on the water, leaving him behind. When he reached the on-ramp to I-79, it was nearly to Cranberry already, and on the exposed hilltop, the wind roared around him.

He opened the big bike up and flew down the highway, chasing the bear. Late evening, and both the northbound and southbound lanes contained only scattered traffic. On either side of the road, the wind rushed through the trees wrapped in fall colors and blasted the dead leaves off in a bright colored blizzard.

He caught up to the great shadow racing under the cloud just as the highway divided and wove around a hill, below an exit ramp and above other roads.

“. . .Daddy?. . .”

Ukiah felt Kittanning's presence speed past him, as if brushing across his back with outstretched fingers, and disappear. He braked hard, fighting to keep from flipping nose first, leaving a trail of smoking rubber behind him. “Kitt!”

The touch had come, east to west, in front, under and behind as he crossed over the Pennsylvania turnpike. The kidnappers had Kittanning in a car, going west on the turnpike, heading out of state. While the highways crossed here, both roads were heavily fenced to keep deer off them. He had already passed the on-ramp for the turnpike connector road, but he'd have to go back to it.

Ukiah dodged a tractor-trailer, its horn blaring, to U-turn
and head back against traffic. With his phone dead and left behind, Ukiah would have to find a phone and stop moving to make the call. And what would he say, his son was in
some
vehicle, type and color unknown?

He had to catch up with Kittanning before the kidnappers could leave the turnpike.

The connector cut from I-79, over State Route 19 and to the turnpike with a tangle of ramps connecting all three together in the name of lessening congestion. He flashed up the I-79 on-ramp, ignoring the blare of protesting horns, and darted across the oncoming traffic to the lanes entering the turnpike. There was a line of cars taking turnpike tickets. The center lane was blocked off with a red light and an orange cone. He ducked through the closed aisle, cut off a blue minivan pulling away from the far ticket machine, and barely made the turn onto the westbound lane. Once onto the level pavement of the turnpike, he nailed the throttle to open.

The speed limit was sixty-five, but most people traveled at seventy or seventy-five. The speeders cruised around eighty. Ukiah raced past them all, already at a hundred and climbing, darting through them as if they were standing still. Luckily the road curved constantly, so he rushed up and past vehicles before drivers could react.

Ideally he would follow the kidnappers at a discreet distance until he found a chance to call for help. He had to close the distance between them first; otherwise he'd be running blind. He risked a glance skyward, but the wind had shredded away any sign of the bear, if it hadn't been all his imagination. He quested with his mind instead, reaching for Kittanning.

“Kitt? Kittanning?”

A faint mental wail of hope and fear, growing quickly stronger.
“Daddy?”

As the contact became stronger, Ukiah slowed, trying to judge which of the cars ahead Kittanning was in. A knot of vehicles traveled westbound. The first was a U-Haul rental truck pulling a trailer. The second was a red, extended cab pickup truck with a large dog carrier in the back. A gold minivan fidgeted in the back, and as Ukiah approached, pulled out into the passing lane.

The minivan? Ukiah reached mentally for Kittanning.

In the back of the pickup, a small dog leapt to its feet in the dog carrier to stare intently at him. It bounced excitedly as their eyes made contact.
“Daddy! Daddy!”

And Ukiah realized the scent from the dog was that of wolf cub. “Oh, Kittanning, what have you done to yourself?”

Kittanning cringed at the rebuke. Memories of pain and confusion flashed through their mental link. When Hex created Kittanning, he had locked Ukiah's mouse in a sealed box, from which there was no escape from the pain except compliance to Hex's will. As Ukiah was telepathic with the Ontongard, Hex's mentally conveyed demands had been clear: take human shape. Somehow the cult had Hex's torture box. Inexplicably they had locked Kittanning into it and turned it on. They failed, however, to give Kittanning any clue to what shape they wanted him. In pain, Kittanning had chosen a form that was more mobile. Unfortunately he'd chosen one less intelligent too; the simple lock on the carrier confounded the puppy.