Last Gasp (37 page)

He looked at Dan, mopping up gravy with a piece of bread. Thank God he was healthy. His skin was tanned and his hair black and glossy. Skin and hair usually showed the symptoms of anoxia first, when the body’s tissues were receiving an insufficient supply of oxygen.

“How long are we staying?” Dan wanted to know.

“Overnight, that’s all,” Cheryl said. “Tomorrow we’ll start the drive up into Georgia, to a place called Griffin, south of Atlanta.”

“Is it breathable up there?”

“Oh, sure,” Cheryl smiled. “It’s outside the Official Devastated Area. There’s an Earth Foundation group in Griffin, so we can leave the half-track and carry on to Washington by train.”

“We’ll probably stay a couple of days in Griffin,” Chase said. “They’ve started a small community farm and they want to get as many foundation volunteers as possible.”

Dan made a face. “I suppose that means speeches and handshaking again.”

Chase nodded and Dan rolled his eyes. Like most offspring of well-known public figures he saw the ordinary man with feet of clay—not, as in this case, a leader in the ecology movement worldwide. He still couldn’t accept his father in the role of symbolic crusader. To tell the truth, Chase couldn’t accept it either.

As they chatted, Chase was aware of being watched from a nearby table. This was always happening nowadays—beard or no beard. So when the man called out, he was prepared for it.

“I got you right—that fella Chase, ain’t it?”

Several heads turned as Chase nodded. He looked across at Cheryl, their eyes exchanged a coded message. She knew how much he hated being recognized, but he was stuck with it.

The man raised his voice. “I seen you on TV and read that book you wrote.” He had a broad red face, in fiery contrast to his white hair cut so close that the pinkness of his scalp showed through. Next to him sat a frail hollow-cheeked woman of about fifty with lank mousy hair trailing to thin shoulders.

“Want to know something?” The man leaned forward, hairy forearms flat on the table, face thrust out like a challenge. “I’ll tell you what I think, fella. I think what you wrote was a load of bullshit. Bull. Shit. You dreamed up the whole goddam thing—every last word.”

“Harry, please.” The woman spoke down to the table. “Leave the man alone. So it ain’t true, so what?”

Her plaintive whine seemed to incense her husband. He blurted out, “All that crap about the United States planning to dump poison in the oceans and the Russkies trying to drown us all.” He jabbed a blunt forefinger. “What the hell do you know, you bankrupt Limey?”

Chase said, “You’re entitled to your opinion, sir. But not a word of it was invented, I assure you.”

“I assure you, I assure you,” the man mimicked prissily. The finger stabbed again. “Let me tell you something, smart ass. You—you’re the guy who started this whole fuckin’ mess in the first place. There wasn’t no eco-logi-cal or whatever you call it crisis until that goddamn book came out and you started spouting all over TV and the newspapers. We was getting along swell till you started everybody panicking and running around in circles and up each other’s assholes. And for what? For big bucks is all. That's the bottom line.”

His reasoning was crazy. Too illogical to argue reasonably and sensibly. Chase shrugged and picked up his fork and carried on eating.

“See her—see my wife?” the man suddenly yelled. The circle of quiet had spread along the trestle tables. Heads were inclined like rows of obedient marionettes. “She’s forty-four years old and she’s dying! Her lungs is rotted and the doctor says she can’t take it no more.” His face was pulsing redly and his eyes were moist. “You sure as hell started something with that goddamn trash you’re peddling.”

“Harry, don’t,” the woman pleaded. “Come on now, please, hush up.”

Chase pitied the man in his impotent anger and bewilderment. But what answer could he give? Such ignorance and willful stupidity were beyond all reasoned discussion. In some twisted way the man had acquired the notion that the changes that had taken place over the last ten years were attributable to what Chase had written. By the same argument, Chase supposed, had he never written the book such changes wouldn’t have occurred. The Word had been made flesh; created its own reality. Crazy.

“Gavin,” Cheryl said under her breath, “let’s get out before there’s any trouble.”

There was a kind of collective gasp and a woman’s voice shrieking, “No—no—no!”

Chase ducked and the knife passed inches away from his ear and skittered across the floor. It had been flung by the red-faced man, who was now clambering over the table. Hands reached out to restrain him. He swatted them away, his eyes never leaving Chase’s face. “You fuckin’ son of a bitch, it was you started this—”

“No, Harry, no,” the woman was wailing. “Harry, no, please!” Chase stood up and moved backward into the aisle. He didn’t unfasten his holster flap but rested his hand on it. In the sudden silence the man crouched on the table, eyes wild and bloodshot in the sweating red face. Chase waited, his stomach stiff with tension. The man put one hand across his eyes and then covered it with the other. He curled up, shoulders bowed, and began to shake soundlessly.

Chase wiped his hand on his thigh, feeling a tremor in his fingertips.

Three attacks in one day. If he weren’t careful he’d really begin to believe he was to blame for this miserable mess.

At his side, Cheryl said softly, “The poor man’s deranged.”

“The way things are going he won’t be alone,” Chase said.

The crack of the rifle rolled across the valley and was last heard as a distant reverberation among the wrinkled folds of scrub and rock that girdled Mount Grafton like a piece of old brown sackcloth.

“Did you hit it?” Steve Fazioli pushed back his gray Stetson with his thumb and leaned forward, dark hairy forearms draped over the steering wheel of the jeep.

“Naw, the bastard was too quick.” Chuck Brant stretched to his full six feet three and looked toward the river. The sun visor shading his eyes held a vivid reflection of the broad sandy riverbed and the shallow, meandering muddy-colored trickle of water. Beyond were the forested slopes of Currant Summit and, farther west, Duckwater Mountain.

Chuck ejected the spent cartridge and kicked it viciously in a spinning arc. He was beginning to suspect that he and his brother-in-law had chosen just about the worst part of Nevada for their hunting trip. Too damn dry and bleak. That pathetic damp patch that was the so-called White River wouldn’t bring the game down from the hills. They should have tried farther north, up near Sacramento Pass, near the old copper mines. That entire area, he recalled, was riddled with old shafts and worn-out workings. In fact Cooper Pit was supposed to be one of the deepest glory holes in the country, though it hadn’t been worked these past twenty-five years.

“That’s the first buck we’ve seen all day,” Chuck complained. He tightened his jaw, arched slightly, and forced a dry fart. He slid the large-bore hunting rifle into its sheath, dropped into the passenger seat, and reached behind into the insulated box and pulled out a can of Schlitz. “Want one?” He tossed the can to Steve and got another for himself.

Steve Fazioli tipped his head back and let the cold amber liquid gurgle into his mouth. Drops sparkled on his black moustache. “What else can you expect? People from two hundred miles away, even from Utah, are scouring the area for fresh meat. In a coupla years there won’t be a fucking gopher left, never mind anything big enough to shoot at.”

Chuck wedged the can of beer between his knees and wiped the dust from his visor with his neckerchief. “Let’s get rolling, for Christ’s sake!”

Three miles on they came to another trail, wider than the one they were on and well-used by the look of it, leading steeply up to the right in the general direction of Mount Grafton, whose highest point was about seven miles away.

Chuck studied the deep rutted tracks in the compacted soil and frowned at Steve. “We’re not on military property, are we?” he asked, scratching a damp armpit.

Steve shrugged. “I didn’t see nothing posted. No fences or nothing. The Nellis Air Force Missile Range is a good thirty miles from here and that’s the only government property I know of in this part of the state.”

“Well, something sure as hell’s been here, and something big. Trucks, maybe, judging by those tracks.”

“Which way?”

Chuck jerked his thumb toward the mountain and Steve rammed into first gear. The ride was rough, the trail considerably steeper than they had expected, winding upward in a series of perilous S bends. They passed overgrown trails disappearing into shadowy gullies, with indications here and there that they led to disused mine workings. Broken pieces of bleached timber were scattered about and spoked iron wheels embedded in the ocher soil. There were fragments of pickaxes and shovels, their metal parts crumbling to rust.

After twenty minutes of hard climbing the jeep rounded a bend between two massive shoulders of rock. Chuck cursed. The trail leveled out onto a small enclosed plateau of baked red earth. It led nowhere. Dead end.

Steve swung the jeep around to face the way they had come and switched off the engine. The two men looked about them at the jumble of boulders and near-vertical walls hemming them in. Some of the boulders had dark scorch marks on them, and—even more perplexing—there were piles of smaller rocks and gray shale that had the appearance of being recently excavated. Yet there was no entrance to a mine that they could see: The trail up the mountain ended nowhere.

“This is screwy,” Steve said, shaking his head as he gazed around. “There ain’t even a hiking trail leading out of here.”

“Hey, wait a minute now.” Chuck’s forehead was creased in concentration. “Yeah, that’s it. It’s a dump—right? They use this place to dump rocks and stuff.”

“Oh, sure,” Steve said caustically. He didn’t regard his wife’s brother as the greatest intellect since Einstein. “They move tons of rock up the mountain. They dig it out down there and bring it all the way up here to dump it.” His expressive gestures showed his Italian ancestry. “Right. That makes a whole lotta sense.”

“So you tell me what the fuck does,” Chuck said, flushing.

“How the hell do I know?”

“You think you’re pretty smart, but that’s it—you don’t know.”

“Do you?”

“Least I came up with an idea.”

“A pretty dumb one—” Steve replied and was about to say more when he decided against it. The hunting trip hadn’t been all that terrific and he didn’t want to wreck it completely by getting personal.

Chuck screwed around in his seat and got himself another can of beer; he didn’t offer to get Steve one. His face had gone sullen. Steve was staring at the ground, trying to figure out where the tracks went to. Funny thing was, they didn’t go anywhere—just disappeared. He mulled this over for several moments and then cocked his head. “Listen to that wind.”

“What?” Chuck said, wiping his mouth.

“The wind. Can’t you hear it?”

The two of them went still, listening to the rhythmic pulsing sound that seemed to be coming from underneath them rather than from the peaks above. Steve could have sworn he felt vibrations in the seat of his pants.

Chuck finished the beer in two gulping swallows and crumpled the can in his fist. He glanced over his shoulder. “I ain’t never heard wind like that before,” he said in a low voice.

The sparse bushes that grew from the cracks in the rocks were perfectly still, the thin covering of dust on their leaves undisturbed. There wasn’t a breath of wind.

The sound grew louder, rising and falling like a chant, making the hairs on the back of their necks stiffen.

“I bet it’s a power plant,” said Steve suddenly. “That regular beat, hear it? They must be working on the other side of the mountain and that’s what we can hear. A generator or something.”

But the explanation didn’t satisfy either of them. The sound was mournful, almost like a dirge, and Chuck thought it sounded strangely human. He found he was holding the squashed beer can and flung it away. “Come on, let’s move.” He gave a short nervous bark that was meant to be a laugh. “We’ve been up since daybreak and haven’t shot a damn thing.”

Steve started up the jeep. He didn’t care to admit it, but this place gave him the creeps.

He pushed the stick into first and was about to drive off when he saw something that made his hands tighten clammily on the wheel. It was a figure, hunched, dressed in black, standing motionless on a rock. It was immediately above the point where the trail sloped down from the plateau. He spotted another, on the opposite side of the trail, and then three more materialized from the smooth blank faces of rock.

There might have been more of them, he wasn’t sure, because by now he was too busy pumping the accelerator and concentrating on the gap in the rocks.

Dirt spurted from under the tires as the jeep lunged forward. Chuck grabbed the metal frame of the windshield for support and hung on, and as they reached the gap in the rocks he saw the figures on either side pointing, arms extended, as if guiding them. The next thing he saw he couldn’t believe. From their fingers came tongues of fire. It was like a scene from a biblical epic.