CREEPERS (3 page)

Chapter 8

The strange noise that issued from deep inside the Honda’s dashboard sounded like a death rattle. A moment later, an uneven thrashing sound filled the car. Metal on metal. Laura reached forward and thumped the top of the dash, trying to stop the mechanical arrhythmia.

This had happened before.

She thumped the dash again. The car’s cabin fell silent. The damn AC had just flatlined.

In the middle of the desert!

“Shit.”

She rocked forward and pushed a button, clicking it in and out. Then she worked a lever, toggling it back and forth, trying to coax the thing back to life. It was useless. Shot. Alert the next of kin. The thing had gone legs up.

“Great. Just great.”
Why hadn’t just she spent the money and rented a car for the trip?
Laura rolled her window down and was immediately blasted by the desert heat. It looked like she was going to have to revert to the old 2-70 air conditioning for the rest of the trip.
Both windows down at seventy miles per hour
.

With air blasting in, she reached up and pulled her hair back, twisting it in a loose ponytail as the Civic dropped down a gentle rise and she found herself skirting along a straight section of road that paralleled the aqueduct.

Laura slowed the car and took a deep breath. She could smell the water and thought she could detect the slightest hint of a cool breeze blowing off the aqueduct’s surface.

As she leaned out for another breath, she was suddenly pasted across the face by a sheet of water that appeared out of nowhere. It crashed across the car’s hood and sent water racing up the windshield and over the roof.

Shocked and momentarily unable to see, she groped the steering column, found the wipers, flicked them on—and, just as the road came back into view, she heard a man’s voice.

“Hey, beautiful.”

She whipped her head around—and there, not fifty feet away, a sunburned man on a water ski was smiling and waving at her!

“Want to go skinny-dipping?”

Laura laughed and smiled, then waved back. The water evaporating off the front of her top made her feel like the air conditioning was suddenly back on.

“You don’t know how good that sounds,” she said, yelling out to him.

The skier dropped a hand, pretending to unfasten his trunks.

Laura laughed.
Naughty boy
. She shook her head—stepped on the gas—and sped away, leaving the boat and the skier behind. And then she thought,
Besides, waterskiing naked sounds kind of dangerous
.

Chapter 9

Sam was surprised when he saw the gate closed. He let off on the gas and braked, letting the water tanker roll to a stop. Then he saw the sign, bright orange and nailed to the center of the gate. It read:

PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESSPASSING

Trespassers Will be Prosecuted to the Fullest Extent of the Law

(
That means you, Frank Desouza!
)

Sam read the sign and laughed.
Good for you, Doc.
This Frank Desouza was also known as Frankie “Nickels” Desouza—a two-bit thug out of Vegas who favored gaudy Hawaiian shirts and had made his bones squeezing old ladies for nickels and dimes from a string of shabby bingo parlors.

Strictly small time.

But Frankie had a new idea. A big, bright, shiny plan that was going to change everything.

The brass-fucking-ring
, was how he thought about it.

Frankie had just cut a deal with a local Indian tribe to build a two hundred thousand square foot casino and resort smack in the middle of the Furnace Valley Indian Reservation.

It was the perfect set-up. The ultimate scam. And the whole thing entirely legal. Frankie wasn’t reinventing the wheel here, he was just the latest shark to exploit a government policy allowing gaming on the nation’s Indian reservations.

Sam, on the other hand, thought of Indian casinos as the new
firewater
that threatened another generation of Native Americans, dollar bills being substituted for whiskey. Nothing wrong with money. Very handy stuff when you got right down to it. But there was just one small problem—you can’t
buy
a life, or have one given to you, for that matter.

Not one that’s meaningful, anyway.

Chapter 10

There was only one thing standing between Frankie Desouza and his dream of the Furnace Valley Casino.

Fletcher. Dr. Henry Fletcher.

Fletcher’s land offered the only economically feasible access to the reservation. Frankie desperately needed the Fletcher place, and he was determined to get it.

Furnace Valley was surrounded by mountains on three sides and a hundred miles of sand dunes to the south. To call it geographically isolated was like referring to Mt. Everest as tall.

Freeway access was crucial to the proposed casino’s success—and that meant cutting a four-lane road dead through the heart of Fletcher’s land.

Never gonna happen
.

That’s what Frankie found out after spending most of last year trying to get Fletcher to sell his land. Frankie even lowered his sights—instead of trying to buy the entire parcel, he started jockeying for an easement of a hundred acres, just enough for a road and a gas station.

Fletcher refused, asking Frankie: “What part of
no
don’t you understand?” And calling him
scum
for trying to corrupt the local Indian tribe. The gate went up after Desouza’s last visit. Doc had had enough. He told Frankie to stay the hell off his land or there would be trouble.

Frankie had just laughed in his face, telling Fletcher, “See you around.”

* * *

Sam opened the gate, pushing it as far as it would go, then suddenly froze. Something had happened.

The truck! The engine had just quit.

Crap!

He propped open the gate, climbed back into the truck, and tried to start the engine.

Nothing, not even a click.

He tried it again. This time a weak
clicking
sound echoed from the starter. Sam had known the starter was on the way out. At least, he hoped it was
still
on the way out. He sure didn’t want to have to hike all the way back to his place.
Not in this heat.

Cell phone service in Furnace Valley was nonexistent. If you got stuck and didn’t have a CB radio, you were flat out of luck. Sam reached for the CB, then stopped, thinking he should try and fix it himself before bothering someone in town.

He pulled a hammer from under the seat, dropped out of the tuck, slipped beneath the engine—and, applying just the right amount of English—gave the starter two sharp
taps
.

He climbed back behind the wheel, looked skyward, crossed his fingers, then mashed down the starter button. The engine began to crank—and a moment later, it roared to life.

“
Stuck, my ass
.”

But he knew he was pushing it. Starters like this one, with worn brushes, could only reliably be tapped back to life a handful of times. It didn’t take long before that method stopped working—and then you were really stuck.

Sam had a new starter on order, but his supplier was having trouble finding the right one. Which was understandable—the truck was over thirty years old.

Hang in there baby
, he thought as he dropped it into first, chugged through the gate, and bumped across a gravel wash.

Chapter 11

Laura stepped out of the roadside diner’s bathroom wearing a black cotton tank top and khaki shorts that flattered her long, tan legs. More accurately—it was her legs that flattered the shorts.

She had entered the bathroom dressed in jeans and a cotton blouse. As she stepped out of the restroom and walked past the counter filled with lunchtime patrons, every head turned to follow her out the door.

A long cool woman in a black top
.

Just as she stepped outside, a potb ellied rancher wearing a GMC cap and drinking a Coors whistled after her.

In his dreams
.

Laura started the Honda, cut across the road, and pulled into an ancient-looking gas station. The pumps were those old-fashioned rounded kind that looked like toy spaceships from the 1950s. Mounted on a pole to the right of the pumps was the original sign with the flying horse.

A hatchet-faced man stepped out from the service bay and walked up to Laura’s car. He was dressed in mechanic blues and wore glasses with Coke-bottle lenses that were held together by a band of clouded scotch tape.

“Good afternoon,” Laura said with a welcoming smile.

The mechanic bent over, resting his spiny fingers on his crooked knees, and stared in through the open window.

“Miss.”

“Gas, please. Fill it up.” She reached over and pawed the map off the passenger seat, then turned back to the mechanic and said, “Oh, and I could use some directions.”

“So, what’ll it be? The good stuff or near beer?”

“Excuse me…”

The mechanic laughed. “Premium or regular?”

“Regular,” Laura said, catching on. “Regular unleaded.”

The mechanic nodded, then walked back and began filling the Honda’s tank.

“I’m looking for the road to Furnace Valley,” Laura said, leaning out the window and pointing to the map. “But it doesn’t seem to be on here.”

“Nope. It wouldn’t be.”

The mechanic locked the handle on the pump so it would keep filling and moved up next to Laura. “That’s the way folks like it around here. Anon… Anonymm…”

“
Anonymous
,” Laura said, helping him out.

“Bingo,” the mechanic nodded. He reached out, took the map, then held it right up to his eyes. “Let’s see now… Yeah, it’s about fifty miles south. He lowered the map, then pointed to a section, holding his finger right above it. “Directly off this road here.”

Laura took the map and then traced along the road with her fingertip.

“As I remember, that turnoff is marked by a wooden sign,” the mechanic said, watching Laura follow the squiggly line.

“Think I’ll be able to find it?” Laura looked up at him, a little concern creeping into her voice.

“Well, it’s a bit like picking pepper out of fly shit… ah, fly dirt. Sorry, ma’am.” Then he added, “But you shouldn’t have no trouble.”

The mechanic moved to the rear of the car, removed the hose, and returned it to the pump with a metallic clank.

“Sounds like it might be tricky to find.”

“Normally, I’d say you were right.” He tightened the Honda’s gas cap, wiped his hands on the front of his shirt, and then stepped up to Laura’s window. “But yesterday, about this time, a trucker wandered in here on foot. Said he got his rig stuck right close to that turnoff.”

“He got stuck?”

“Yep. Said he fell asleep. Drove clear off the road.” The mechanic shook his head and then rubbed his neck. “Just look for an eighteen-wheeler—a tanker, the man said—sitting right out in the sand. That’ll be your turn.”

The mechanic removed his glasses and pinched the bridge, making sure the tape was still sticking. “This business you got in Furnace Valley—it really necessary?”

“What do you mean?” she said, caught off guard by the mechanic’s question.

“I mean a pretty girl like you, traveling all by herself, shouldn’t be taking no off-road trips.”

“I can handle myself okay,” Laura said, on the verge of getting defensive.

“Never said you couldn’t,” the mechanic said, slipping on his glasses, his eyes morphing into two giant blue marbles. “Only the roads out here got teeth. Make one wrong move, or lose your concentration for even a second—and you could rip the belly out of a little puddle jumper like this.”

“It gets too bad, I’ll turn around.”

“It’s one lane over Furnace Mountain. The only part that’s paved is the top and then down into the valley a ways, and then the county ran out of money. The rest is dirt—sand and gravel mostly.”

“I’ll be fine, Laura said.
This guy was starting to give her the creeps
.

“Won’t argue.”

“How much for the gas?”

“Thirty-five bucks. Can you believe that?”

Laura pulled some bills out of her purse. A twenty, a ten, and a couple of fives.
Good, she had exact change
.

As she turned to hand him the money, something about the guy’s face struck her. “You know, you look familiar. It’s like we’ve met before. No wait, I know what it is—you look like someone famous.”

“I get that a lot,” He laughed. “Just have one of those faces.
Photogenic
was how one customer put it. But I ain’t no movie star or nothing. I’m just no one from nowhere. All I got is this wide spot in the road.”

Unconvinced, Laura kept staring at him. Then she shrugged and laughed and started the engine. “Well, thanks for the help.” Laura waved, and as she pulled onto the road, the mechanic called out:

“Good luck, missy.”

And then it struck her.
The guy was a dead ringer for Stephen King
.

Chapter 12

Sam finished transferring twelve hundred gallons of pure artesian water to Fletcher’s pond. It had made a big difference, almost filling the reservoir to the top. He coiled the heavy hose he’d use to fill the pond—and, not wanting to stop the truck and take a chance of it not starting again—he was about to hail the main house and let Doc know he had been by with the water, when Fletcher appeared on the porch and called out to him instead.

“Sam!” He looked flushed and excited. Darwin was perched on his shoulder, and he held a bottle of scotch in his right hand.

“Hey, Doc!” Sam hooked a thumb at the pond. “Just finished pumping your water.” Fletcher didn’t seem to be paying attention. It was like he hadn’t heard a word.
And why was he drinking? It was barely past noon
.

“Sam…” Fletcher waved for him to come to the house. “I’ve got to show you something.” Sam motioned to the truck and was about to explain how he had to leave it running and couldn’t come—but something about the tone of his voice, and the look on his face, made him realize he had no choice.

* * *

Darwin exploded into a series of loud squawks as Sam followed Fletcher into the lab and over to a sturdy workbench.

“ A little early for that, isn’t Doc?” Sam said, pointing to the scotch.

Fletcher looked affectionately at the bottle of Macallan single malt, then placed it on the bench and gave it a loving pat.

“I’ve done it, Sam. I’ve created the perfect plant. The ultimate groundcover. The
Fletcher Creeper
. Never has to be watered. Can be planted anywhere.”

“The Fletcher
what?
” Sam asked, looking a little confused.

“The Fletcher Creeper. It’s a
creeper vine
. Just engineered. It’s an entirely new creation!”

“Really… Well, that’s a catchy little name you’ve picked for it.”

“I thought so,” Fletcher said, laughing and flashing a broad smile. “It’s the ultimate drought-tolerant plant.” He gave Sam a playful swat on the shoulder, then asked, “Do you know what this means for people living in dry, non-arable lands?”

“Ivy in every pot?” Sam shot back with a straight face.

“Life where none was possible,” Fletcher said, ignoring Sam’s flip comment. “Wastelands made fertile. Marching dunes held back. Watersheds where none existed. Rich topsoil… fooling Mother Nature herself.”

“Marching dunes, eh? Hmm… sounds like a real hardy little plant you’ve got there.”

“Hardy isn’t the half of it.” Fletcher motioned for Sam to follow him. “See for yourself.”