Blood Harvest (21 page)

Steve watched as the H2 raised a dirt cloud behind it as Chris drove away, then he slung the duffle over his shoulder and started walking along a path he had committed memory decades ago.

Steve had only walked for about ten minutes when he saw the sign he knew would be there, accompanied by a picture of a male restroom style stick figure falling above a skull and crossbones below him:

DANGER!!!

Do Not Enter Abandoned Mine!

Area unstable and trespassers risk severe injury!

DANGER!!!

As Steve had told Chris, southern Nevada was once a major source of silver. It has an enormous network of silver mines surrounding its outskirts. Most of these mines were supposed to be empty of any worthwhile amounts of silver and had been abandoned decades ago. Adventurous hikers or treasure hunters who were prone to try their luck in the mines ended up falling into the open mine shafts where they suffered severe, if not fatal, injuries. As a result signs like this one weren’t uncommon to happen upon in the wilds of the southern Nevada desert. For Steve however, this was like seeing the mailbox in front of the family home where he grew up. He carefully walked to the mineshaft opening and peered down through its mouth and saw only darkness in the abyss.

Steve stepped back a few paces and pulled the duffle bag off of his shoulder. He quickly removed his flask and put it in his back pocket then removed a series of rock climbing necessities including a rope, harness, clamps and leather gloves. Moving to the warning sign Steve found the concrete reinforcement securing the sign into the earth. He tied the rope through the torso harness checking to make sure it was secure and attached the other end of the rope to the base of the sign. He proceeded to remove and check the special flashlight he had stored in his duffle bag. The lantern had been created for those in the pest control industry with a high intensity halogen flashlight on one end that could burn through the darkness like a laser beam. The other feature of the lantern was a pair of long ultraviolet light bulbs housed in the body of the device. The purpose of the UV light was to reveal the Desert Scorpion indigenous to the southwestern United States. Although he might be immune to bacteria and viruses, Steve was not immune to the venom of these small arachnids, potent enough to potentially kill human beings.

Shining the flashlight down into the mineshaft Steve could see the base, which appeared to be scattered with plastic grocery and trash bags. Decaying food and the silver metallic wrappers of protein bars were evident all around. Apparently the nature lovers who hiked the area considered these mineshafts good places to dump their garbage. Then again, he was in the middle of nowhere. Who would be hiking out here?

Carefully, Steve moved to the edge of the mineshaft opening. The ground groaned and began to slip away from under foot as he reached the edge. Quite suddenly, all the earth near the edge collapsed and fell into the shaft taking Steve down with it. Desperately he pulled on the rope trying to stop his free fall into the abyss. The rope went taut with a snap and Steve was thrown into the side of the shaft from the momentum.

He dangled like a spent yo-yo for a few moments as he fought to control his breathing. It was very clear why so many people were hurt or killed when wandering too close to the old silver mines. Dirt and debris fell on top of him as he remained suspended on the line. Then a faint case of claustrophobia had him scrambling to switch on the lantern. The dark, close quarters were playing tricks with his mind. Steve imagined dozens of scorpions crawling all over his body and a wave of panic began to wash over him. In the seconds before he ignited the UV lantern Steve had the ghastly fear of the lamp revealing a living, swarming mass of the poison barbed arachnids maneuvering their way around his body and crawling underneath the base of his jeans then up his bare legs underneath. Certain that, at the very least, the bugs would be covering the inside of the mineshaft like a ghostly ant hill of fluorescent white, a nauseating chill passed through him. He laid his finger on the switch.

The fear became so intense and palpable Steve had to shake himself of the mental images filling his mind. Waking from his arachnophobic daydream, he looked up the thirty feet he had fallen to the mineshaft opening and the blue sky shined above. The sight of the sky calmed him and in this more relaxed state, gave him the strength to switch on the lantern. The UV bulbs gave off a low-level purple-blue illumination which filled the shaft with enough ambient light to see details within the ancient excavation.

Surprisingly, no fluorescence shone back at him. No scurrying, or crawling, or even stationary critters were anywhere to be seen. The white plastic grocery bags glowed with a spectacular brilliant white-blue, far brighter than any glow given off by the little creepy crawlers he dreaded to see.

Crawl factor, negative. One critter down and one to go.

Strangely, Steve didn’t dread the presence of the far more dangerous rattlesnakes he expected to find nearly as much as he did the scorpions. This was strange, because the venom of the desert rattlesnake was far more potent than the sting of scorpion’s tail. Life in the caves had taught him to bring along another tool for the vipers; Steve removed the telescopic snake stick he had clipped to the harness. Given the ample pre-strike warning nature had provided for the snake and his experience at having handled an abundance of snakes in the past, he would rather deal with the snake than the scorpion any day.

Steve grasped the clip on the front of his harness which halted his fall and slowly began to let rope slip through, thereby controlling his descent. He only had another twenty feet or so to go before hitting bottom and he was anxious to get his feet on the ground. With a deft swing of his arm, Steve removed the snake stick from his pack and dropped it down to the floor of the mineshaft. He aimed for the spot where he believed he would most likely place his feet first when he reached bottom. The stick landed with a soft crinkle on the plastic bags and immediately the sound of a snake’s rattle began to reverberate about the chamber. The first rattle was followed by another less intense rattle of a second snake seemingly coming from further in the chamber.

The eerie sound didn’t startle or alarm Steve; he calmly looked in the direction of each of the two sounds. He switched from UV light to flashlight and was able to quickly locate the two snakes, which to his pleasant surprise were not directly beneath him. The snakes were actually about ten feet further inside the mine away from the vertical drop of the opening. Eyeing the snakes which were about three feet long and on opposite sides of the chamber from his landing spot, he realized they posed no initial threat to him as he continued his descent to the floor.

Reaching the base, Steve’s feet gently sank into the soft refuse that yielded under his bodyweight as he finished his descent. Picking up the snake stick he noticed the opening dropped him into a circular clearing with an opening of a new, and this time horizontal, tunnel leading into the mine at a very gradual downward slope. Moving cautiously into the tunnel he approached the location of the first snake, which had coiled in a classical defensive position.

Steve took a careful step forward toward the reptile when something crunched under his foot. The unexpected sound startled the viper and resulted in the animal’s rattle reverberating with greater speed and intensity. Without taking his eyes off the snake, Steve slowly lifted his guilty foot and retraced his steps in reverse to see what he had crunched. Using the high beam Steve glanced down to see his foot emerge from a partially exposed human ribcage. His shoelaces snagged on the now broken rib bones as he shook the remains from his foot.

Moving the flashlight to a midway point between the snake and his current position he used the ambient light of the beam to illuminate additional partially clothed bones. The bones were clad in khaki shorts and what looked to be a cotton tank top. The skeleton was small, with no visible anatomical features indicating gender; however, a small backpack near the remains could provide one possible explanation.

Conspiracy theories have been a popular fad within the general population ever since the release of the X-files. These days, people are more apt to believe a cover up is in place to hide the motivations of the ulterior motivated. In the case of silver mines, backpackers and other adventure seekers were renown for believing the warning signs were mere distractions to the fact that there were indeed large caches of silver still within the mines. The warnings and “rumors” of the mines being empty were therefore false, all a ploy on the part of those who owned the deeds to the mines to keep their silver safe. Truth be told, there was some silver left within the mines; the problem was the cost of excavating the metal was more than the metal was worth.

Many tried their luck with the integrity of the mineshafts and most were fatal mistakes. The fall was always traumatic and usually fatal with death occurring from exposure, if not from the initial impact. The bones were not part of the usual modus operandi of his people, nor were the piles of trash at the bottom of the mineshaft opening. Was there any connection between the bones and whatever was happening at the nightclubs?

The victim’s backpack was green canvas as opposed to the brightly colored nylon most packs had been over at least the last decade. There was no scent of decay in the dusty air and the bones did snap dryly when Steve stepped on them. Obviously the body had been down in the shaft for a long time. Reassuring himself the skeleton could not suddenly animate itself, while realistically a live rattlesnake could, Steve turned his attention to the nearest snake positioned directly in the path he needed to take to enter the tunnel in front of him.

Steve moved forward and the snake’s rattle intensified and became more audible. He slowly closed the distance between them. Having recovered the snake stick, he now reached out to the middle rear of the animal. The snake recoiled into tighter spirals as the stick made contact with its scaly body. The snake didn’t try to strike out as Steve ever so gently looped the blunt hook around the viper’s body and lifted it up and off of the pathway. With slow and deliberate movements, Steve lifted the entire snake off of the ground and moved the animal behind him, setting the snake back on the ground. Evidently the snake realized the large mammal was not a predator and the rattle subsided to a mere hum. The animal slithered away from Steve and disappeared under the garbage bags where Steve had initially landed, about fifteen feet behind Steve’s current location.

Suddenly, from deep within the chamber the sound of the second snake grew louder and more urgent than it had before. Steve moved deeper into the tunnel using his flashlight to illuminate the way, until he stopped short and held his position. It occurred to Steve he might not have been the cause of the second snake’s agitation since he was still a good forty feet away from the sound. Steve guessed that whatever agitated the animal might have a similar agitating effect on him so he drew his sidearm, aimed the beam further down the expanse and cautiously continued his advance.

Breaking through the rhythmical rattle was another sound of something heavy landing on soiled earth. The impact was so forceful Steve could feel the vibration of the impact. A faint crunching sound was followed by the rattle falling quiet. The chamber went deathly silent. Fear slipped up the back of Steve’s spine, except this time it wasn’t claustrophobia or arachnophobia. This time the fear was of something much larger watching him just beyond the reach of the flashlight beam.

Who was it that said you can’t ever go home?

Steve stared into the shadows while shifting the beam of the flashlight from right to left, up and down with no success of viewing whatever was in there with him. He felt very much like a blind person swinging a cane back and forth to find his way. Deciding it was too late to turn back, Steve moved forward, continuing to swing the flashlight back and forth, searching for any indication of life. Then he heard footsteps approaching from far down the shaft. Someone was coming and coming fast!

“Alpha! It’s me! It’s Steven!” When no reply came Steve lifted his Glock and dropped to a shooter’s stance. He aimed with both the flashlight and the sidearm ready for whoever or whatever was about to make an appearance. Desperately, Steve swung the flashlight beam across the darkness in front of him trying to get a glimpse of movement. Everything went silent. No footsteps. No sound of the breeze. No rattles. No crickets, nothing. All sound just went dead.

The sudden silence unnerved, but did not break Steve’s concentration on the tunnel ahead. He could feel the presence of eyes upon him. It wasn’t Alpha in the tunnel with him; Steve had a feeling of a multitude of presences in the darkness before him. The feeling was as real and as tangible as was the salty taste of sweat now copiously falling from his brow to his lips.

Steve became aware of a faint shallow raspy sound, like quick short breaths and realized it was his own breathing. Fighting to control each breath his need for answers diminished as his instinct toward self-preservation kicked in. This was getting to be too much, and a deliberate and expedited retreat was now in order. Carefully, gingerly Steve took a slow step back. Barely a sound could be heard as he placed his left foot behind him.

Deep, crunching footsteps began to move closer toward him. Damn! Steve thought. He should be able to see whoever was out there by now. To make matters worse, a distinct second set of footsteps now combined with the first. The footsteps picked up their pace as Steve took another step backward, frantically swinging the flashlight beam left and right. More footsteps, all sounding like they were running straight for him.