Authors: Bentley Little

The Influence (43 page)

BOOK: The Influence

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Ross nodded. “We all will,” he said.

Hec shrugged. “If it even comes to that. This thing ain’t registered, so they might not figure out it’s me. Lotta people hated Cameron. He had it comin’.”

“But if someone else here reports it was you…”

Hec nodded toward the still-burning barn, where dazed townspeople were wandering around aimlessly, as though they’d just woken up after sleepwalking. “I ain’t gonna worry about it.”

They left the fires burning. It was a long trek back out to the car, and they hiked through not only strange dying foliage but past the inert bodies of animals that were not quite animals, many of which were deteriorating into a gelatinous mess.

By the time they reached Magdalena, they could hear faint sirens sounding from somewhere up the road to Willcox. The main street of the town still looked abandoned, though Ross thought he detected movement behind the windows of one of the adobe houses. In the parking lot of the market, deflated balloons hung from the crooked antenna of an old pickup truck. A lifeless dog lay in front of the gas pumps.

He thought of the lyrics to an old Simon and Garfunkel song:
Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town
.

Facing the wrong way on the street, he parked in front of the bar and got out. All of them did.

The sirens drew closer.

Kevin tapped him on the shoulder, smiling wryly. “Unc?”

“Yeah?” Ross said.

“We’re even.”

THIRTY NINE

Dirty and disheveled after several days of living out of her van, Jill returned to the house in San Diego to collect her belongings. And take a shower. The place was empty, Ross nowhere in sight, and for that she was grateful. She didn’t want to face him right now.

It felt as though she’d awakened from a long dream. No. From a drunken blackout. She’d been acting like…not herself, and while she understood why, the fact that it had occurred at all was a complete embarrassment to her.

She found the note Ross had left, read it, and relaxed a little. She didn’t have to rush; it looked like he wouldn’t be back for awhile.

After taking a long leisurely shower and changing into some clean clothes, Jill went into the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. She walked around the house as she ate, mentally deciding what she should and shouldn’t take with her. Finishing the sandwich and grabbing a water bottle out of the refrigerator, she started packing her clothes. Cleaning out her half of the dresser and placing her underwear in her open suitcase, she thought about Ross with bewilderment. She had actually moved with him here to California? Why? That wasn’t the sort of thing she did.

He wasn’t even her type.

Not that she
had
a type.

She wasn’t
that
shallow.

But an engineer? That was out of character for her, and she wondered now what she could have been thinking. It wasn’t a knock against Ross. He was a nice guy, and she liked him all right, but not enough to move in with him and follow him to another state.

No wonder her mom was mad at her.

She got a trash bag out of the kitchen and used it to bag up the dirty laundry that she fished out of the hamper. Luckily, she hadn’t taken
everything
out of her house. In fact, most of it was still back in Magdalena. She smiled wryly. At least emergency evacuations were good for something.

She bagged up her toiletries, then started carrying things out to the van, placing the bags, boxes and suitcases next to the godawful paintings of that reservoir that she had wasted her time on. It took only four trips, and after the last one, she walked back inside, looking through each room to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Glancing over at the lone bookshelf on the wall above Ross’ computer, Jill realized that the only books displayed were manuals and technical books on science and engineering.

How could she not have noticed that before?

She left her key on the kitchen counter. And a note, a short message stating simply that she was moving out. It didn’t explain anything, but, then, she didn’t know
how
to explain what she was going through. She didn’t understand it herself.

She would call him later, she decided, once she’d figured out what to say. For now, she just wanted to go back to Mesa.

And see her mom.

FORTY

Ross returned to Magdalena the following weekend in a rented pickup. Lita and Dave were already back at the L Bar-D and in the process of cleaning up, Lita still taking it easy for the most part, following doctor’s orders, limiting herself to housework so she could take frequent rest breaks as instructed, Dave hard at work outside, using a borrowed tractor to drag all the accumulated debris out to a spot in the field, where he intended to burn it. Word had spread that Lita’s cousin Ross was the one who had come up with the plan to destroy the monster, and as a way to say thank you, several people, farmer’s market customers mostly, had volunteered to help Lita and Dave fix up the ranch, and they were there with rakes and shovels, planting new plants, cleaning out the root cellar.

There would be a lot of the communal spirit in the coming weeks, he knew, as neighbor helped neighbor get back on track.

That was one of the things he liked about Magdalena.

The bees, miraculously, had survived. Some might have flown off and not returned, but most of them were back in the boxes, in their hives. The horse and goat were nowhere to be found, but somehow, in the midst of all this chaos, new chickens that Dave ordered had arrived, and they were in their yard, clucking happily and scratching in the dirt. It was both a relief and a welcome change to see the hens acting perfectly normal, and more than anything else, it made Ross feel that everything was going to be all right.

Lita had thrown her arms around him the minute he arrived, and he was grateful to be able to hug her back unreservedly, without a single improper thought crossing his mind. Everyone greeted him with gratitude and enthusiasm, and it felt like a homecoming, even though there were a couple of people he didn’t even recognize.

He’d come back, basically, to pick up the rest of his belongings from the shack, and his original plan was to do it all in one day: speed over to Magdalena, pack up his stuff and hit the road. But Lita convinced him to stay the night, and after she helped him box up his effects, he assisted her in making sandwiches for everyone. They all ate lunch outside, on and around a picnic table that had been set up near the fruit trees, and he heard story after story about the horrors people had endured over the past month.

Ross and Lita stayed at the table after Dave and the others had gone.

“So was your job still there?” Lita asked. “After?”

“It was still there.” He paused. “Jill wasn’t.”

“Oh, Rossie! What happened?”

He picked at the crumbs on his paper plate. “I don’t know, really. She left a note saying she was leaving, but that was all the note said. It didn’t tell me anything other than that. I’ve tried to call her several times, but she won’t pick up. My guess? It was never real in the first place, her interest in me. It was real on my part. Still is,” he said ruefully. “But I’ve never had good luck with women. For a brief time, I did. Now it’s over.”

“Maybe she’ll think about it and come back,” Lita said encouragingly.

“Maybe,” he said, but he knew that wasn’t true. He might still have feelings for Jill, but it seemed pretty obvious that whatever she had felt for him had died with the monster.

Ross stood. “I have a whole afternoon ahead of me here, and you’re trying to get this place in order. You must have something for me to do.”

He ended up performing his old chores, feeding the chickens and collecting eggs. It was relaxing this time, rather than stressful, and afterward he helped Dave and a guy named Don dig a hole to bury the bodies of deformed rodents that had been collected from around the ranch.

Once again, he took dinner in the Big House with Lita and Dave, filling them in with more detail on what had happened at the last, then he walked across the yard to spend one final night in the shack. He had no laptop, but the TV was still here, and he turned it on for white noise as he prepared to go to sleep.

He had no dreams.

Leaving the next morning made him sad. He had grown used to this place and these people. Magdalena felt like home to him, and though he now had the job that he wanted and a rental house near the beach, it was hard to reconcile the fact that if he ever returned, it would be as a visitor rather than a resident, and nothing would be the same.

“I only look forward,” Jill told him once. “It’s too sad to look back.”

He understood what she meant.

“Call me,” Lita said, hugging him and crying.

“I will,” Ross promised.

He drove back to San Diego, stopping off in Yuma for coffee, gas and a bathroom break before making a marathon run across the desert in an effort to beat the heat. Back in California, he unpacked the pickup, took it back to Enterprise, and someone from the rental car agency drove him home. Tired, he lay down on the couch, intending to take a short nap before finding a place for all the boxes he’d brought back, but when he opened his eyes again, it was morning. He’d slept through not only the rest of the afternoon but the entire night, and he awoke hungry, though his body clock was off and he was not in the mood for breakfast. Tacos sounded good, and he wondered if that little stand on the beach, Surfside Tacos, was open this early.

He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and he took them off, got in the shower and changed into clean underwear, pants and a shirt. Tacos still sounded good to him, and he put on some sneakers and walked outside, looking toward the beach.

It was about 75 degrees and clear, the ocean as blue as the sky.

He breathed deeply, thought of Jill, and smiled sadly to himself.

Nice weather for a walk.

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