CREEPERS (15 page)

Chapter 56

The biplane sat at the edge of town, engine running, nosed out towards the empty desert—and an uncertain fate.

Sam was in the cockpit dressed in an old leather flight helmet, goofy-looking goggles, earphones, and a headset. A silk scarf around his neck would’ve completed the World War II flying ace look.

Lining the road for moral support were Carla, Tommy, Curley, and Kristin.

Sam glanced over and felt a sudden pang of disappointment that Laura wasn’t there. She hadn’t come to see him off.

Karl stood at the front of the plane, where Sam could see him, and gave a signal. Together, they began the pre-flight check.

Sam worked the joystick and foot pedals, causing flaps, elevators, stabilizers, and the rudder to flip-flop back and forth. All was in working order.

“Clear for take off.” Karl yelled, flashing a thumbs-up, then moved clear of the plane.

Nodding, Sam returned a thumbs-up. Then he ran the engine, gripped the controls—and, just as he was about to release the brakes—

Laura ran up, hopped onto the wing, and climbed into the passenger’s seat, pulling the ball cap she was wearing tight on her head.

Sam backed off the throttle, letting the engine coast to an idle. He released the controls, then cranked his head around and looked at her.

“What are you doing?! Get out!”

“I’m going with you,” she said, yelling over the engine noise, a defiant flush rising in her cheeks.

“No, you’re not!”

“
Yes, I am
. I want to get a look at this thing from the air.”

“Forget it. Absolutely not. It’s not safe. The plane’s a flying coffin.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Jesus,” Sam said, completely frustrated.
It was like trying to reason with a charging grizzly
.

“C’mon… Please, just get out.”

“I’m going,” she said, buckling her safety harness, signaling that the discussion was over.

“
Fine
Then we’re both probably going to die.”

“Here…” Karl yelled, stepping onto the wing and handing Laura a headset and mic. “So you can talk to each other.”

Laura nodded, placed earphones over her cap. Karl leaned in, showed her where to plug them into the com system, checked her safety belt, then dropped off the plane and moved back with the others.

“Sam. Sam. Can you hear me?” Laura said, talking into her mic.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Copy that.” Then she added, “Is that right? Is that what you’re supposed to say?”

Behind the goggles, Sam rolled his eyes and said, “Hang on…” Then he jammed the throttle forward. The plane started to roll and quickly gained speed.

“Tallyho!” Laura yelled, thrusting an arm in the air.

Karl, Tommy, Carla, Kristin, and Curley all watched as the tail wheel rose. Seconds later, after a couple of tentative bounces, the plane lifted off the road, dipped its wings—causing everyone to momentarily catch their breath—leveled, and then climbed steadily into the desert sky.

“Woo hoo!” Kristin yelled, jumping up and down.

Carla clapped. “Way to go, Sam!”

Curley thrust his cap in the air. “Yeah!”

Karl smiled, quietly pleased with
Daisy’s
performance.

Chapter 57

High above the desert, endless lines of hills and dunes, all intricately carved by knife-sharp winds, disappeared beneath the biplane’s wings.

Sam edged the joystick over, sending them in a slow, banking turn towards Furnace Mountain and the pass beyond.

Laura reached forward and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “This is fantastic. It’s beautiful up here.”

Sam looked down, nodded. “Incredible.”

“When did you learn to fly?”

There was a long pause, then—

“I didn’t. What I mean is, my dad taught me. We had a little Cessna when I was a boy.”

“Oh…” Laura said, a horrified look on her face.

“Aren’t you glad you came along?” Sam asked, enjoying the moment, wishing he could see the look on her face.

After a quick grimace, Laura replied, “I trust you,” then crossed her fingers.

“Big mistake,” Sam laughed. Then he said, “Hey, it just struck me, this is kind of like
Out of Africa
—you know—the biplane scene.”

“Not even close,” Laura laughed.
But it really kind of was. Except for the monster below them that was racing down the valley
. “Just keep it in the air, Redford.”

Sam rocked the wings, pretending to lose control.

“Sam!” Laura screamed, gripping the sides of the cockpit.

* * *

Ten minutes later, as they approached Furnace Mountain, beads of moisture appeared on the windshield and collected along the leading edge of the wings.

The light shifted, and the air turned dense and humid. It was like they’d just entered the tropics.

“Sam. Feel that? The air…” Laura said, removing her sunglasses to clean the lenses.

“Yeah. It’s almost tropical.”

Then they saw it—at their 4 o’clock—an ocean of bristling creepers.

It had made amazing progress since Sam had last seen it. It now covered the entire face of Furnace Mountain and was spilling partway down the valley.

“My God!” Laura said, looking down.

“Incredible,” he said, leaning out. “It looks like the Amazon down there.”

“It doesn’t seem real,” Laura said, an awestruck look on her face.

“Say a prayer. I’m going to see if the old girl can climb over the pass.”

Sam added max throttle. The airframe began to shake and shimmy. He pointed the nose of the plane at a “V” cut in the mountain, the place where the road dropped over the top. The little yellow plane labored up—three thousand feet, four thousand feet—and, as they passed forty-five hundred feet, Sam nosed the plane forward and they slipped over the mountain, clearing it by a couple hundred feet.

They both let out a deep breath.

“That was close,” Laura said, stating the obvious.

Sam didn’t respond. Something else had his full attention: the oil gauge. The needle was lying flat, indicating they had no oil pressure.

Shit
.

Sam leaned forward and tapped the gauge. Nothing, the needle didn’t budge—or even jump. Another couple of taps. Still nothing.
Great
.

“Great… just great.” Sam let out a frustrated sigh, shook his head.

“What? What is it, Sam?” Laura said, leaning towards him.

“Oil pressure.”

“Oil pressure in regards to—”

“The engine. The gauge says we have none.”

Laura thought for a moment, then said, “Tap on it. Maybe it’s broken.”

“Why didn’t I think of that…” He gave the gauge a couple of sharp taps. Nothing—the needle remained stuck on zero.

“Yep. That did it,” Sam lied. “Just like in the movies.”
The engine seemed to be running fine, so hopefully it was just a faulty gauge.

Relieved, Laura smiled. Then she was suddenly hanging out the side of the cockpit, excitedly pointing at something.

“Sam! There. There it is!”

Sam looked. Fifteen hundred feet below, a tanker truck sat off the side of the road. He banked, sending the plane in an arcing circle over the truck’s position. It was right where she had last seen it—untouched—its axels still mired in sand.

Sam circled one more time, checking the road, making sure it was straight enough to land on. “Okay, get ready,” he said. “I’m going to set her down.” He reduced their airspeed to 60 knots, lined up with the road, and began his approach.

A couple of minutes later, the nimble little crop duster’s wheels kissed the ground and ran smoothly along the blacktop. Sam let the plane taxi forward until they were parallel to the spot where the tanker ran off the road.

He revved the engine and turned the plane around, putting it in takeoff position, cut the power, and peeled off his goggles. Then he climbed out of the cockpit as the propeller made one last rotation and stopped. Stepping off the wing and dropping onto the road, he circled the plane and thought to himself,
I can’t believe I just pulled that off.

As he came around to Laura in the passenger’s seat, he said, “How was that for a landing?” sounding very nonchalant. “Ha, I would’ve made a helluva carrier pilot.”

Laura popped her safety harness, unglued herself from the seat, climbed onto the wing, and stepped down next to Sam.

“I wouldn’t know. I had my eyes shut.”

“I thought it went pretty well,” he said, eyeballing the plane again, checking to see if they’d shed any parts on their way over the mountain.

Laura went up to Sam, surprising him with a hug and an affectionate peck on the cheek. “Thanks for not killing us, ace.”

She took his hand.

“C’mon.” Then she led him across the road until they had a good view of the tanker, and, specifically, the logo painted on the side.

“See, just like I said.”

There, directly in front of them, a giant logo emblazoned on the side of the tanker read:
Round-up —Weed Killer
.

Chapter 58

Outside Eller’s Garage, Karl, Tommy, and Curley were fueling vehicles, checking tires—getting ready, just in case they had to make a run for it.

Tommy pulled his Jeep up to the pump. Curley grabbed the hose, flipped the handle, and began to fill the tank. Karl was beneath the deuce and a half working on the balky starter motor, blowing the contacts clean with compressed air.

While Curley filled the tank, Tommy got out of the Cherokee and went to see if Karl needed any help.

“How’s it look?”

“The starter motor is about to take a dump, but I think it will hold for now,” Karl said, sliding out from beneath the tanker. “If we need to run, this baby will plow through anything.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Yeah. You can top off the diesel.” Karl pointed to a 55 gallon drum. “Use that barrel there, it should already have a drum pump attached. Just crank the handle to start the siphon.”

“Got it,” Tommy said, then moved to the barrel and prepared to top off the deuce and half’s fuel tanks.

Inside Nguyen’s, Maya and Donnie sat in a booth, talking. Behind them, a couple of tables away, Kristin was busily sketching on her pad.

“It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing anyone could’ve done,” Maya said, picking at the label on a water bottle. “Lander… he had one of those things
inside
him.”

“Yeah,” Donnie said, his face shadowed beneath the hood of his sweatshirt. “I should’ve…” Then his voice just trailed off.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said, reaching across the table and placing her hand over his.

Donnie lifted his head, looked at her hand, and nodded. “Thanks.”

Maya pulled her hand back and reached inside her purse. She removed a joint, held it up. “We could do this?”

Donnie shook his head. “It won’t help.”

“
It won’t hurt
,” she said, flashing a quick smile.

“I’m done with that shit,” Donnie said, his eyes on the joint. “I’ve been high since I was fifteen. Every fucking day, yo. I don’t even know who I am.”

Maya nodded, then palmed the joint. “That’s cool. That’s good…”

She bucked out of the booth, looked at him, and said, “I’m going outside. I need to get high.”

Donnie stared up at her, nodded, then looked down at his hands.

A moment later Kristin walked up, tore a sheet off the pad, and placed it on the table in front of Donnie.

Donnie glanced up at her, then reached out, picked up the sketch, and looked at it. It was a simple line drawing of Donnie and Maya holding hands.

Kristin reached down and touched his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Donnie said. Then a tear fell from his eye, causing a section of the sketch to blur and run.

Chapter 59

Sam had repositioned the plane, moving it as close to the tanker as possible while still keeping the wheels on the blacktop.

Using four of the truck’s hoses, they cobbled together enough line to reach from the eighteen-wheeler to the crop duster’s belly tank.

Sam held the end of the hose over a funnel that was positioned in the biplane’s tank, while Laura crouched beneath the tanker, waiting for Sam’s signal that the plane was full and it was time to shut the valve.

“Okay! That’s it. Shut it off.”

Laura leapt into action, spinning a valve beneath the tank, cutting the flow of Round-up. She scrambled out from beneath the tank, stripping off a pair of rubber gloves. As she trudged through the loose sand toward the road, she yelled, “How much do you think we got?”

“Hard to say,” Sam said, removing the funnel and screwing the cap back onto the tank. “I’m guessing we got around three hundred gallons.”

“If we get a good drop—if we can concentrate it—it might work.”

Sam lifted a water bottle off the plane’s wing, took a long pull, and handed it to Laura. She raised it to her lips, and as she drank, Sam reached over without thinking and dusted some sand off her arm.

Laura finished drinking, looked at Sam, smiled at him.
Something felt so right about this, about being with him. About being together
.

Sam coiled the hose, clearing it from beneath the plane and dragging it a good distance off the road, just to be sure. He made a quick circle, checking tires, flight surfaces, wing struts. Then he joined Laura, who was standing in the shade beneath one of the wings.

“Well… you ready?”

Laura stared at him, then reached up and straightened his collar. “Bombs away.”

Sam reached out, pulled her to him, and kissed her. “That’s for good luck.”

Chapter 60

Fifteen minutes later, the biplane lifted off the desert floor, labored into the sky, banked, and headed for the mountain pass.

At 4,500 feet, Sam eased the stick forward, leveled the plane, and he and Laura looked down as they slipped over the top of the mountain and back into Furnace Valley.

Sam glanced at the oil gauge. The needle was canted over and lifeless, still pointing to zero. He reached out.
Tap, tap
. The needle didn’t move. He shrugged, then thought to himself,
The engine is running perfectly. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t sweat it.

“Okay, I’m heading for the mineral spring.” Sam banked the plane, nosed over, and reduced air speed, putting them on a gentle descent into the valley.

Laura had her camera out and was taking pictures.
This was one for the book
, she thought. Then:
Ha, that didn’t begin to do justice to what she was seeing in the viewfinder.

As the plane settled in at two thousand feet, Sam pointed and yelled, “
There
. The spring’s on the other side of that tower.”

“What tower?” Laura leaned out, straining to see. Then she saw it, protruding out of a sea of green. “You mean that?”

The high-voltage tower was at their 3 o’clock. It had been completely overgrown by waving tendrils and flashing creeper arms—its legs and metal framework acting as an armature for the unholy piece of topiary.

Thick stalks, knitted together, rose up the tower’s sides and came together in a pulsing topknot, spilling off the crown and dangling like giant dreadlocks.

“Sam… Sam… Look!” Laura pointed at a bright green circle that used to be Big Caliente Hot Springs.

“Got it!” he nodded.

“It’s the ganglion, the thing’s nerve center.”

Sam moved the stick and pressed on the rudder pedal, sending them in a slow circle that would bring them directly over the top of the spring.

As the plane completed its turn, the spring came into view. It was dead ahead now.

“Okay, this is it. Final approach. Wish us luck…”

And with that, he nosed the plane over and dove toward the spring.

The airspeed jumped. The engine screamed. They shot past the high-voltage tower, leaving it on their right, just as—

One of the creeper stalks hanging off the tower whipsawed out and shot into the air. Seconds later, an ear-piercing whistle filled their ears—and then they saw it, a giant creeper stalk floating in the sky—directly in their path!

“Holy shit!” Sam said, shocked by the sight of the airborne creeper.

“Sam!” Laura yelled. She grabbed onto her seat as he hauled the stick over, putting the biplane on its ear in a desperate attempt to slip past.

But the geometry was all wrong…

The creeper flew onward, swinging up and out and slamming point blank into the plane’s propeller.

The fuselage shuddered and shook, and one of the struts parted from the wing. As the propeller shredded the stalk into creeper mulch, the engine bogged and choked. Smoke and flames poured out. A man-sized chunk of creeper flew off the tip of the prop and tumbled back, tearing off a section of tail and most of the left stabilizer.

The plane nosed over and plummeted towards the ground, spiraling down in a death roll. Flames shot from the engine and rolled along the fuselage, licking the windshield inches from Sam’s face.

“Sam! Do something!” Laura screamed, holding on for dear life.

“Hold on…” Sam wrapped both hands around the stick. Then, using his feet, he worked the rudder and elevators, fighting to gain control.

With one last mighty heave, he pulled back on the joystick. The biplane shuddered. The wings bit into the air, the nose lifted and just as they leveled…

The landing gear clipped a dune. The plane jumped up, then nosed over, tearing off a wheel as it struck a boulder—then shuddered, dipped, dropped to the ground, skidded sideways, spun in a 360—and finally ground to a stop, coming to rest on the tip of a lower wing.