The Remnant (25 page)

"You think it’s all just myth and
legend?"

"No. I think it’s more than that, but I think
it’s a lot less, too... or a lot different from what any of us have
been led to believe. I think there are... is... something out
there, something that makes contact with us sometimes. But either
it’s not nearly as powerful as we think it is, or maybe it doesn’t
want
to talk to us in any way we can understand. Maybe we’re
not intelligent enough to understand what it wants, or maybe it’s
just playing games with us. Maybe I’m just babbling."

She sighed, nodding. "I know the Mormon faith
is based on lies, but I still feel something greater than me
sometimes. But if there was a message from the bees, I couldn’t
interpret it. Maybe I wasn’t meant to. Maybe it wasn’t aimed at
me."

Trace frowned. "Who else would it have been
aimed at, then?"

"Maybe you’re right. Maybe God or whatever
isn’t as powerful as we think, but what if it is trying to make
contact and just not getting through all the time? Like a staticky
radio or something."

"I’d call that a pretty pathetic God."

She shrugged. "Maybe it’s the only one we
have."

He laughed. "Great. So he sends you bees and
me rats. I wish he’d learn to use the phone and just leave me a
message."

"What do you think it would be?"

"I have no idea. I suspect he’s still waiting
for the new me."

She chuckled, sliding up to kiss him. First
lightly. Then with growing passion.

"I kind of like the old you," she whispered
into his neck.

"Well, here he comes," he said, nudging her
over onto her back.

But instead of rolling onto her he stopped,
staring curiously into her eyes.

"What?" she said, at last.

"You never told me how the Brethren ended up
with the Platinum Casket."

"I stole it," she said, drawing him down to
her.

Stan spotted the light again and crept toward
it, rifle ready. The unsteady beam glimmered through the trees from
bottom to top turning the branches into grasping skeletal claws.
When the breeze carried a whiff of aftershave he didn’t recognize,
his finger tensed on the trigger. But another beam flicked on to
match the first, and he released the trigger and ambled into the
tiny clearing. The two gunmen standing there spun to cover him, but
then lowered their weapons.

"You could have given a little warning," said
Rendt, shaking his head.

Stan shrugged, smirking. "I’d have thought an
Angel would have better woods sense."

"So, you’ve proven your ability again. Did
you accomplish your mission?"

Stan frowned. "I sabotaged the perimeter
warning system, didn’t I"

"I was referring to the crossing."

"The crossing guards are taken care of."

"Are they-"

"They’re taken care of."

Rendt nodded. "I have all our men in place
now. All that remains is to finish off the sleepers, retrieve what
is ours, and leave."

"There’s a problem."

"What problem?"

"The old man lied to me. The casket wasn’t
where he said it would be."

Rendt’s glare was brighter than the
flashlight. His face burned crimson. "That was your main objective.
You have been here what, five years? And in all that time you
couldn’t get the trust of one old man? You said you’d get it today.
Why wasn’t I informed?"

"It took me a hell of a long time to hike to
the spot and dig up the marker the old man had placed there, but it
was just another decoy, and there’s no cell reception in half these
woods. What was I supposed to do?"

"Not kill him until you had the goods for one
thing."

"I got you the location of the other
evidence, didn’t I?"

Rendt nodded again, frowning. "The gentile
who held it will not be releasing any information, but I came here
for the two females and the Casket. Had I been aware that you had
not fulfilled your mission we would have waited."

"Look, the old man is dead. The casket is
history. No one is ever going to figure out what he did with
it."

Rendt chewed on that for a moment. "All
right," he said. "I suppose that will have to do for now. But
before we leave this valley I want every human being in it disposed
of, the houses burnt to ash, even the livestock destroyed."

"Every woman?" said Stan, eying Rendt.

"You know what I meant," said Rendt.

The two men stood in silence as a couple of
dozen men clad all in black slipped past them like well-armed
shadows. As the last Angel disappeared down the trail Rendt stared
at Stan.

"This had better go like clockwork," said
Rendt.

Trace was awakened by a deep-throated growl
from Maxie. Ashley lurched up onto one elbow and whispered to the
dog to be quiet, but Maxie would have none of that. Whatever was
bothering the dog this time he really was riled.

Ashley slipped over Trace, throwing on her
clothes as the big dog gently nudged aside the drape with his nose.
Trace dressed hurriedly, watching Ashley shove the pistol into the
holster in the small of her back.

"The radio didn’t go off," he whispered.

"I just want to see what’s bothering
him."

"Stan said if anything happened to hole up.
Not to go outside... Again."

Ashley ignored him, heading down the hall.
Trace grabbed the shotgun and followed her to the back of the
house. She glanced into Marie’s room and stopped in her tracks.
Trace looked past her at the empty bed.

"Marie?" called Ashley.

There was no answer.

"Marie?" Ashley shouted, rushing through the
small house.

Trace stood in the hallway, waiting until
Ashley came to him, her face frozen in disbelief.

"The front door is unlocked. She must have
seen that light again and gone outside looking for it.

"This is starting to get old," he said,
leaning over her shoulder as she cracked the door.

"No kidding," she whispered.

Maxie stuck his nose into the opening and
sniffed. When he growled again Ashley stroked his neck and shook
him, and he finally quieted grudgingly. She eased the door open
wide, and Maxie trotted out onto the porch testing the air. Trace
thought he caught just a glimpse of a light far off through the
trees. When he glanced at Ashley she nodded that she’d seen it.

"Call out for her?" asked Trace.

Ashley shook her head.

"Wait here," she whispered, slipping back
into the house.

When she returned she was packing a carbine
and what looked like a small monocular. She lifted it to one eye
and scoped the forest all around. Trace gave her a curious look
when she was done.

"Night vision," she whispered, turning to
close the door behind them. "Come on."

"You gonna let the dog go this time?"
whispered Trace, staring at Maxie.

Ashley screwed up her lips, deciding. She
glanced around the outside of the cabin, and Trace noticed an odd
hesitancy in her he’d never seen before, as though even without the
goggles she was seeing things in the night that he could not.

"I think we should," she said. "Hopefully
he’ll lead us to Marie."

Trace shrugged, following her down off the
stoop and across the back lawn into the trees again. But even
before they reached the shelter of the forest Trace got the feeling
that they were being watched. Maxie seemed unconcerned with
anything except the input from his nose, and that kept leading them
farther into the woods, but Trace could feel eyes on his back. He
gripped the shotgun tightly, glancing over his shoulder, but the
shadowy thicket stymied him. The tightly spaced trees and the
intervening brambles and alder brush was the perfect place for an
attacker to hide, and if not for the dog he would have had no way
of knowing if one was about to leap out at them. When Ashley
stopped, Trace closed in beside her. She had Maxie’s collar in one
hand, the carbine slung over her shoulder, and the monocular
against her eye, scanning the woods.

"Anything?" he whispered.

She shook her head.

That just wasn’t right. Maxie was still
sniffing straight ahead into the woods, while with each breath
Trace grew more certain that some danger lay behind. He turned back
toward the house just in time to see a dark silhouette step out of
the trees in the front yard and move toward the house. Finally the
dog sensed what Trace did, spinning on all fours to growl softly.
Ashley frowned at Maxie, then Trace.

Trace pointed through the trees as another
figure trotted up the drive clutching a rifle. The man was clothed
completely in black and moved with a trained stealth. As he took up
a position with his back to the wall beside Ashley’s bedroom window
a third figure stepped out of the trees and hurried to join the
other two.

"Angels," whispered Trace.

Ashley nodded, slipping the carbine from her
shoulder. Trace’s mouth was bone dry as he gripped the shotgun,
waiting for her to decide what to do next. The last thing he wanted
was to go charging out of the woods after those three killers, but
from the look in her eye he was worried that might be her plan. She
wanted revenge, and here was the opportunity to get it, or to get
them both killed, more likely.

One man kicked in the back door. At the same
instant the echo of the front door crashing in rattled through the
trees. Then there were shouts and finally silence. When Maxie
growled again Ashley shsshed him, and Trace tensed.

"If they’re intent on killing everyone in the
houses they might have missed Marie in the woods," whispered
Ashley.

Trace hoped she was right. The thought of the
girl running into trained killers in the forest was too horrible to
contemplate. Ashley glared one last time at the house where jagged
gleams of light were now slashing onto the lawn, then turned back
into the trees and motioned for Trace to follow. But even as they
crept farther away from the Angels the sense of being watched stuck
with him.

Marie sat bareback astride an unbridled
Sparkie, shuddering as a creepy crawling sensation worked its way
up her back. She waited for a moment, glancing back through the
woods where she could barely make out the lights of the house
below, but after a moment her attention returned to the dim light
in the trees ahead.

Sparkie seemed to sense something ahead as
well, and he glanced back at her and pawed the path with one hoof.
She stroked his head to calm him, staring into his great, dark eye,
reading a strange and oddly human concern there. The weird idea
that Sparkie knew what was going on better than she did would not
be unthought.

"Okay, then," she said, giving the house one
last look. "Let’s go find that light."

Sparkie ambled ahead through the trees,
climbing the slope to the old deer trail with a practiced plodding
pace. From her vantage point atop the horse’s back she could
finally tell where the light was headed.

It was following the slopes toward Raven’s
Head.

Ashley scanned the forest one last time with
the monocular then let it drop on its cord around her neck. There
was no sign of Marie, and Sparkie was gone from his corral so she
had to assume the girl was riding. They’d never catch her on
foot.

"What now?" whispered Trace.

"There’s a way up over the back side of
Raven’s Head. We can see the whole valley from there. Maybe we can
spot her."

He shook his head. "That’s where Rendt will
be."

"Why do you think so?"

"Think about it. If he sent a team of killers
in here, he’d want to be where he could watch their progress."

Her forehead knitted, then relaxed. "Then
that’s where we go."

"Are you crazy?"

"No. If he really is up there he won’t be
expecting us to come get him."

"Because we won’t be doing that. Ashley, he’s
a homicidal maniac, but he’s not stupid. Do you think he’ll be
alone up there?"

"No. Look, you don’t have to come."

"Think of some other way. I can’t let you do
this."

"You can’t stop me. If he’s there then that’s
where I’m going."

"To kill him."

"If he’s harmed Marie, or he has her and
won’t give her up, yes."

"And if you get yourself killed?"

"It will be worth it. Trace, I won’t live in
a world any longer with Frederick Rendt in it. I won’t make deals
with him or his Angels except to save Marie’s life, and I’m not
going to associate ever again with people who make a mistake like
that. Got it?"

He nodded. He got it very well. She hated
Rendt’s guts even more than he did, and she had every reason to.
He, himself, had wanted deadly retribution against Rendt for the
past five years. In fact he’d had every intention of murdering the
man after his book was finally published, but that was when he’d
been certain that Ashley was dead. The two of them going after
Rendt here and now was suicidal, and they both knew it, but Trace
recalled the way
he
had felt in front of the attic door that
day long ago. Rendt was Ashley’s Rat King. If she didn’t face him
now she might never get another chance, and of course there was the
girl to think about. There was no way he could allow Marie to be
either murdered or dragged back to California City to live out her
life as one of Rendt’s sex slaves if there was any hope in hell of
preventing it.

"Okay," he said, quietly.

She shook her head. "You’ll get yourself
killed."

"It’ll be on my head, don’t sweat it."

She sighed. "All right," she said, finally,
nudging aside an alder branch to point up the slope. "That’s
Raven’s Head."

A half mile away a wide granite crag jutted
from the mountain rising over two hundred feet to a tiny
escarpment. Moonlight glimmered off a thousand jagged rock surfaces
framed by the darker shadows of indentations and overhangs. Up and
down the face small, weather-twisted junipers jutted out at
impossible angles like windblown feathers which really did cause
the one lone crag to resemble the grasping beak of a giant
bird.