Skorpio (22 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

"The Bus"

Sand had drifted up over the wheels but the roof was swept clean. A coarse patina of sand adhered to the windows. The bus was old school with four tiny windows above the doors. Beadles and Summer stared in silence. As a boy Beadles became fascinated with the story of WW II B-24 bomber
Lady Be Good.
Returning at night from a bombing run over Italy to her base in Tunisia, the plane overshot the African coast and flew a thousand miles inland before running out of fuel. From 10.000 feet at night the desert looked just like the Mediterranean.

The dessicated remains weren't discovered until 1959 when an aerial surveyor searching for oil spotted the ghost plane sitting in the desert. Ground patrols found the bodies of the nine airmen as they had tried to walk to safety. All had died of thirst. One made it thirty miles. They had set off in all directions hoping one of them would find help. Stunned and dehydrated, they often meandered. A map showing their paths would resemble the Azuma symbol.

The bus radiated crazy. A jarring juxtaposition, a relic washed up by the Sea of Time. It didn't belong there any more than a B-24 sitting in the middle of a desert. Or a scorpion in Illinois.

Beadles and Summer approached the ghost in reverent silence. Beadles took several pictures. The sun had baked its once brick exterior a pale orange/pink. All that remained of numerous window decals and bumper stickers were bleached-white markers. Only by looking very closely could you see the Grateful Dead symbol. Sand had drifted up against the windshield so that the bus seemed to be emerging from the ground.

The bus faced east. The driver's side window was missing. Beadles set down his rucksack, walked up the dune and knelt to see inside. After the blazing sun it took his eyes a minute to adjust to the shade.

"Ho - ley shit," he said.

A jumble of ribs and arm bones slumped in the seat. The arm bones remained connected by leathery tissue but there was no skull. Sand filled the interior to knee level. The other seat was empty. Sand had frosted the remaining window glass so that it was impossible to see.

"Skeleton," Beadles said.

Summer came up and crouched on her knees. "Let me see."

Beadles moved aside so Summer could look in the window.

"Wow," she said. "That's so creepy, y'know?"

Beadles noted the coordinates on his Garmin and dialed them in. They'd have to inform the police when they got out. He walked around to the opposite side, the side closest to the oddly-shaped butte. He opened the rear door with an horrendous screech and leaped back as a half dozen pale brown scorpions leaped to the sand and skittered away.

Beadles shivered despite the heat. He hated them. He'd always hated bugs. He'd hated standing in left field as a Little Leaguer feeding the mosquitoes. He hated flies so much he would stand in the parking lot of the A&P for hours smashing them with a copy of
Sports Illustrated
as they landed on the warm outer wall.

But the scorpion. The scorpion was the worst. What god would create such a thing and why? Well, his not to question the Almighty. If the scorpion had a constructive function he couldn't see it. Likewise rattlesnakes.

"UGH!" Summer exclaimed. "Be careful! Do you have an anti-venom kit?"

"Yes I do but it won't help against a scorpion sting." What had they used on Rob?

"They're rarely fatal," Summer said.

"I knew a guy died of one," Beadles said, using his twelve-inch Bowie to poke around in the back of the bus. The sand was lower here and he saw the top of an old ice chest. When they finally found the
Lady Be Good
the coffee in the thermos was still drinkable.

A small camp shovel poured out. Beadles picked it up. It was about two feet long with an adjustable steel spade head. He used it to shovel sand out of the back. Several scorpions joined the exodus, disappearing beneath the van. Beadles uncovered a shoe. He shoveled. The shoe was connected to a leg in ancient faded denim. Beadles stepped back. Summer looked inside.

"Jesus!" she said.

Carefully, Beadles removed sand from around the body. The upper torso was a shriveled mummy in an Electric Flag T-shirt. It lay face up. Its feet were encased in leather hiking boots. Beadles pulled on them gently to shake off the sand. The corpse had no more weight than a satchel. The skeleton had frozen in position. It's left hand had shrunk to fused bones gripping something white, ribbed, and delicate. A rattlesnake skeleton. Beadles saw the scimitar-shaped fangs and the rattle.

Beadles delicately eased the brittle wallet from the skeleton's hip pocket. He opened it and found the well-preserved driver's license.

Curt Mayweather, Evanston, IL. He knew the name from somewhere.

Something shiny tumbled out and slid down the sloping sand. Summer picked it up. It was an aluminum cigarette case decorated with an Indian in a war bonnet. It rattled. She pried it open. Inside were three rolled doobies and a strip of blotter acid. She handed it to Beadles who put the two halves back together and tossed it in the back of the bus. Exposing the side handle of the old Thermos cooler Beadles rotated the spade's head ninety degrees, hooked the chest and dragged it out.

Another scorpion abandoned ship.

Beadles used the shovel to open the chest. There was a green sandwich in a frosted zip-loc, some shrunken apples and a bag of trail mix. There was something beneath the detritus. Beadles reached in and carefully removed the layer of ancient plastic bags.

Beadles and Summer lurched back and repulsion.

"What is it?" Summer wailed in a tinny voice.

A desiccated diamondback, jaws wide open, body twisted like a pretzel.

Beadles shut the chest. He opened the front passenger door, causing a small sand slide around his shoes. From the passenger side he saw that the jumble of bones lay atop a waist-sized hole surrounded by thread-bare denim. Sand must have covered the lower portion of the body preserving it. He looked down. The skull lay in the passenger footwell.

There was a large hole in the windshield directly over the steering wheel as if someone had hurled a softball-sized rock.

He had to get the driver's ID but he feared putting his hand anywhere near the sand-filled cavity of the waist. Straightening the shovel, he gently prodded the bottom half of the corpse. Nothing emerged. He used the shovel to move the sand away from the right hip pocket. Ever so gingerly he slipped his fingers between the threadbare cotton and snagged the wallet. It was made of some exotic leather, perhaps ostrich skin. He opened it up and removed the driver's license

That's when he realized where he'd heard the name Mayweather.

***

CHAPTER SIXTY

"The Wheel"

"Ronald Potts," Beadles said.

"Do you know him?"

"His dad gave me five thou to finance this expedition. Actually he gave me the five thou to go away. He'll be happy to get some closure at least."

Fifty thousand for information leading to the discovery of his son's body.

He snapped a picture of the remains.

It was cooler in the shade with the slight breeze. Summer leaned on Beadles' shoulder. "What do you think happened to them?"

Beadles gestured toward Mayweather. "Looks like he was bit by a rattlesnake. I wouldn't know how Potts died. You'd need a coroner and even he might not be able to tell. It's been thirty years. It must have laid under the sand all these years and that storm uncovered it."

"They call these places the walking hills," Summer said. "Because of the wind. Hey do you mind if I grab that reefer?"

Beadles shrugged. "Be my guest."

What the hell. It wasn't like he'd never smoked dope. In college he'd tried it all: coke, acid, meth. Everything but smack. You had to draw the line somewhere. It all stopped after graduation. No chemical high could compete with academic success. He'd shared the occasional toke at parties over the years but he could take it or leave it. Thank God he wasn't what they called an addictive personality.

He wondered about Summer though. She'd as much as said she was a coke head. Working at a strip club, living with a dealer. It went with the territory. But she hadn't been twitchy. Never mentioned drugs or craving. What harm could a couple of joints do? He might partake himself, but not before they reached their destination.

He pulled out his cell phone. Zippo. He put it back. "Let's get going. We've got about eight hours of daylight left."

They headed east down the zig-zagging canyon which now lay mostly in shadow. Twenty minutes later while negotiating a narrow defile they came upon heiroglyphs on the canyon wall. A tall man leading an army of scorpions against conquistadores, accurately depicted in their double-prowed helms riding surreal horses. These would have been the first horses the Indians saw. The satanic, mummifed horses were larger in proportion to the men than they would have been in reality.

Had they seen the horses as demonic invaders and scorpions as their saviours? Beadles photographed the images. He carried extra batteries in his backpack. Maybe if they got up high he could get a signal. At least the GPS still functioned. According to the GPS they were ten miles from ground zero.

It was the perfect place for an ambush. Beadles looked up. He could practically hear the warriors chanting from the rim as they fired arrows and hurled rocks on the invaders.

They walked in eerie silence through the canyon mesmerized by the different strata. A multi-colored layer cake of rust, beige, brick, charcoal and dozens of infinite variations. At one time the Mojave had been the bottom of a vast inland sea. Beadles was not surprised to discover a trilobite fossil close to the ground. He took a picture.

An hour later the canyon debouched into a broad alluvial plain. And there, hovering in the distance, shimmering over waves of heat was an odd-looking butte.

Beadles felt his pulse quicken. Yes! They weren't there yet but it looked like the butte in Mayweather's drawing and the one on the map. He pulled the map out and opened it on a flat rock. Summer leaned on the rock next to him and looked at the map.

"You think that's it?" she said.

"I'm hoping."

They had entered an hallucinatory landscape out of a Sergio Leone film. There was no sign of man in any direction. Beadles looked up. The faint afterprint of a contrail was the only thing indicating modernity. They walked with the sun at their back. The wind had died down and the heat was intense. Gradually the weight of their canteens transferred into their bodies. Beadles feared they would run out of water before reaching the butte but he still had several bottles in the ruck.

And what if they reached the butte and there was no water? He prayed he could find some cell reception. He opened his phone. No signal. The sun evaporated their sweat as soon as it appeared. Side by side they walked toward the distant butte which never seemed to get any closer. Beadles turned around. They had come at least two miles from the canyonlands. He looked down. The desert floor was covered with obsidian chips. Tiny stunted cacti strugged for survival. A gliding rattlesnake was the only movement.

The cerulean sky was cloudless. They walked in silence to save their energy. A low parabolic shape appeared before them. As they approached they saw it was the top of an ancient wagon wheel protruding from the sand, occuping a slight depression. They arrived. The wood was bleached white. If there had been a metal strip around the perimeter it had long since corroded. The top of the wheel protruded perhaps six inches above the sand revealing two wooden spokes through which a rattlesnake twined. The rattlesnake escaped the depression and disappeared in the sand.

Beadles and Summer looked at the wheel.

"Storm must have uncovered it," Beadles said.

"Oh God," Summer said.

"What?"

She pointed to a tiny white tip protruding perhaps a half inch from the sand at the edge where the wheel emerged. "Is that a bone?"

Beadles stared at the tip with a sense of foreboding. The sky seemed to darken as if a shadow has crossed the sun. He shivered. He knew what it was. He blinked. The brightness returned. It was overwhelming. He felt light-headed. His mouth forced a rictus grin.

"What?" Summer said.

Very carefully Beadles used the blade of the Bowie to draw sand away from the tip revealing a finger bone, then another. "Distal phalange. Finger bone."

Summer's face drained of color. She stepped back and grabbed Beadles' arm. "Skorpio," she whispered.

"What?"

"They tied him to a wagon wheel and left him to die in the sun."

"Skorpio? Is that what they called him?"

"Don't say it. It's bad medicine."

A rock lodged in Beadles' throat, a thrill of terror and triumph. What if he clipped the digit and tested the DNA? Would that constitute proof of an Azuma identity? If Summer were truly part Azuma, would it not match hers in some capacity?

Was it desecration? One philangeal. The thing was over 400 years dead. There was no one to see. Yet standing beneath the baking sun were not his actions open to the sky?

Like a child maliciously spitting in the holy water.

The southwestern tribes believed that if you disturbed the graves of the dead their ghosts would rise to take revenge.

Summer sensed his distress. "What is it?"

"Nothing," he croaked. "We'd better get moving."

He marked the coordinates on his GPS. Let the university sort it out. He wasn't about to disturb the creature's final rest. He also felt a fierce surge of exhiliration. If it was the legendary Azuma warlord, he'd just scored the brass ring.

Summer's fingers sank into Beadles' bicep. She stared west. Beadles followed her gaze.

There was a cloud of dust on the horizon.

***

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

"Cut to the Chase"

Beadles stared dry-swallowing. He took a swig of water. The tiny cloud vibrated representing furious activity. Was it an hallucination?

"It's getting closer!" Summer said, picking up her ruck. "Come on!"

Her fear was contagious. Beadles shouldered his heavy pack and chased after her. They jogged toward the butte, each jarring step causing their backpacks to dig cruelly into their shoulders.

Vince had found a way down.

Summer bounded ahead, her elegant calf muscles flexing. Beadles struggled to keep pace. The butte seemed close but it was difficult to judge distances. He thought it was no more than a mile away. On the flats the Hummer was easily capable of 90 mph. Maybe it would hit a pothole. Maybe it would run over a rock.

Beadles prayed as he ran. He prayed to whomever would listen: God, Buddha, Allah, Wankantanka, Our Father the Sun, Our Mother the Moon and Aleister Crowley. Water sloshed. The heavy Bowie banged against his leg. Their breaths came in gasps as they pounded east running right over a nest of rattlesnakes so fast they were gone by the time the snakes reacted. The afterimage of the viper pit blazed in Beadles' mind and faded.

The butte was getting closer. It wasn't his imagination. He felt a cramp drive like a tiny wedge into his ribs. Ignoring it he forced himself to place one foot in front of the other, grateful that he'd always been a runner and that he wore light, Saucony over-the ankle shoes.

Now they could hear the vehicle, a faint whine like a Junebug hovering too close to the ear--or was it his own breath whistling through his nose? No. There was a fluctuation in the buzzing, a sudden rise and then a fall to silence.

Panting, Beadles turned around. He pulled the binocs from the rucksack and dialed in. It was the Humvee, Vince getting out and walking around to the front. Staring at something. Walking to the back and opening up the gate. A flat tire? A rock? Beadles thanked all his gods for this reprieve and picked up the pace. Summer had stopped to look.

"Come on! Maybe he's got a flat tire!"

Every step sent a jolt up his spine. But they were getting closer. Details began to emerge--vertical striations where volcanic rock had forced its way to the surface millenia ago. It was the butte of his dreams, the butte in the picture, the butte on the map. The epicenter of the Azuma universe--Shipapu. The Great Road. The gateway between this world and the next.

Now Beadles could see the scree of rock surrounding the base, the faint green furze indicating moisture. They ran in silence until the pulse of their blood rushing through their heads became the loudest thing in the universe.

They reached the bottom of the butte and collapsed on a flat rock gasping. Beadles weighed his water. There was no point hoarding if they couldn't reach safety. Fuck it. He tilted back the canteen and drained it in six big gulps. He still had a couple bottles in the ruck.

Summer drank too, stood and looked for a route up. She walked counter-clockwise around the base until she disappeared from sight. With the sun in the western sky all the shade was on the east--too far for Beadles to go. He saved his strength for the climb, if they could find a way. The sun beat down.

From the slight advantage of the scree he trained his eyes to the west. The cloud was back. Whatever problem Vince had encountered was solved. He could hear the engine's roar. Summer appeared, breathless.

"There's a way up!" she said. "Follow me!"

Beadles hoisted his pack and followed her a quarter of a way around the butte to a chimney accessible between two massive boulders tilted together at the top to form a crude arch. Beadles crouched to get through the arch. The chimney, one side open, was approximately three feet in diameter although its width varied as it followed a crooked path up. Crude hand and footholds had been carved into the rock. Exultation blossomed in Beadles' chest--here was proof that the butte had been occupied. Gleefully, almost triumphantly he followed Summer up the butte, his backpack occasionally snagging on a rock outcropping.

Halfway up Summer stopped. "Oh fuck."

"What is it?" Beadles said.

"There's a fucking rattlesnake sleeping on a ledge." She resumed climbing with a renewed sense of urgency until she was well above the spot.

"Wait!" she said. "Maybe I can get it to move." She grabbed a stone off a ledge and pitched it at a downward angle. Then another.

"Great. Now it's awake. Wait a minute." She pitched a couple more rocks "It's gone."

"Where did it go?"

"I don't know--deeper into the ledge."

Well fuck, Beadles thought. Now it was pissed off. Rattlesnakes could leap amazing distances. Might it not have been better to let the snake sleep? He couldn't go back. He had to go up. Carefully he boosted himself to the snake's level. No snake. The ledge on which it had been sleeping seemed to tunnel into the rock. Beadles didn't wait for it to come back. With renewed effort he climbed past the spot urging Summer upward.

Some of the handholds had eroded to nothing but they were sharper near the top and at last Summer heaved herself out of the chimney to find herself in a bubble-shaped depression with a slight incline to the plateau. Seconds later Beadles joined her. They walked up the incline to the top of the butte and froze, slack-jawed.

A grove of cottonwood sprouted from the center of the island. Behind them to the east was an odd structure that looked like a decaying castle keep, natural rock smoothly blended with hand-carved stones to form a cliff-dwelling in the sky. Three small vertical windows punctuated the inner wall. The top of the butte was about 100 feet in diameter.

Vince laid on the horn announcing his arrival with a wail that increased as he approached. Beadles and Summer went to the western rim and looked down. The black Hummer roared up trailing a cloud of dust and jerked to a stop at the foot of the scree 200 feet below. Vince shut off the engine and sat there.

Summer pulled out her tiny automatic. "If he tries to climb up here I'll shoot him."

Beadles doubted whether the tiny caliber weapon would stop the clavigerous thug. They would have to ascertain whether there was another path to the top but Beadles doubted it. They could always prevent Vince from climbing by rolling boulders down the chute. The top of the butte was filled with scattered boulders of various size.

Maybe a snake would bite him. Maybe a scorpion.

The silence was deafening.

Vince opened the car door and got out. He wore his cowboy hat and stretched leisurely in the sun, holding a water bottle in one hand. He uncapped the bottle, drank and tossed it aside. He cupped his hands.

"Professor! How y'all doin'? Summer honey, you done good work."

Beadles checked his phone. No signal. That was wrong. It was the latest Razr and was supposed to have pick-up virtually anywhere in the world via satellite. He checked the power level. Still good.

"What happened to the sheriff?" Beadles yelled.

"The sheriff? Oh him! He let me go. Knew damn well it was self-defense. This here's the place on the map, isn't it? What's up there? I know there ain't no water. Me, I got plenty. I got enough to sit here for a week while you die of thirst. Is that the way you want it?"

***