The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (31 page)

Ray drained the last of his beer, belched, and picked up their tale. “We drove on up the mountain, only we took 200, right—all you out-of-towners, it’s the local’s way to get out to these parts—telling it we knew a shortcut. Not a lie,” Ray smiled slowly, “but I bet you can guess it didn’t turn out to be no shortcut for that thing, either.”

The crowd went crazy. Marc, who was not a small man, got pushed around like he was at one of those punker dance parties he saw on the news. He stepped back and let the crowd push in front of him.

He kept his eyes on Ray Greene. Greene let the crowd boil for half a minute or so while he stood there, open-mouthed, chest heaving. His face was dark. The beer was hitting him.

He held up his hands. The crowd quieted down immediately, but Greene still raised his voice to tent-revival-pulpit volume.

“I got two questions for you, friends! Are you ready to answer two questions?”

The crowd yelled in the affirmative.

“Question number one! What’s the color of devil blood? Who can tell me?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Devils run red! Red as you or I—that’s why they’re devils! Now—how many of those damn monsters are crawling around God’s dominion with us? How many Sovereign?”

A lot of voices offered up the standard answer: six thousand. Greene shook his head. Spittle flew from his lips.

“Hell with that! Not as of today! Five thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-nine, my friends! Five thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-nine! And we ain’t done!
We ain’t done
!”

Scott Pond raised both fists above his head and howled in triumph. The crowd—which it seemed to Marc had swelled to include pretty much everyone at the ranch that night, more than two hundred people—exploded.

There it was, Marc thought. There’s the damn Kool-Aid.

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Twenty Eight

Sandy put miles of Idaho behind us while I brought them up to speed. Mostly. I didn’t mention what I’d done to the woman, Evelyn. My father knew the gist if not the details, but he didn’t press for more.

There was some discussion of stopping somewhere and putting me on a plane back to California, or at least calling my mother and letting her know where I was.

I sure as hell wasn’t ready to go back yet, not after coming so far and going through so much. Not getting to Missoula was just not an option. If me and Sandy took shifts, we could be at the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies by morning. Why not just call her from there?

I was surprised Sandy agreed with this. “It’s what makes the most sense, all things considered.”

Denver said, “What do you think Uldare will tell the cops?”

“Maybe nothing,” Sandy said. “Think about it.”

Denver muttered, “We’re all going to jail.”

Sandy slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m not so sure.” She said to me, “Tell me more about the cameras.”

“Uh…well, I didn’t really see any cameras. That’s the weird thing. They were definitely filming Denver’s place, inside and out. But I never saw a camera.”

Denver said, “Sure, but would you know what to look for?”

It was a fair question. “I don’t know. And I didn’t really, like, have time to look too hard, either.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Sandy said. “The fact is, the evidence is there in that house…all that recording equipment, that man’s message on the answering machine…”

The woman’s gun.

Her body.

I focused on Sandy’s voice. “This is really big. Really big.”

Denver grinned. “Your reporter’s instinct kicking in?”

“Reporter?” I asked.

Denver said, “Sandy works for
The Kirby Grizzly
…but before that, she was big-time.”

“I had my moments.” It sounded to me like she wanted a few more. “And yes, any fool could see there’s something there.”

Denver feigned offense. “Hey!”

“Look at it. PrenticeCambrian has two hitmen staking out your house, have you under illegal surveillance, all just in case Andrew Charters shows up. All while, they’re neck-deep in a legal battle with his son and ex-wife? Please!”

“Okay,” Denver nodded. “It’s big. It’s movie-of-the-week stuff, at the very least.”

“Screw that,” Sandy said. “It’s Pulitzer stuff.”

I liked her.

“This is why we have to get Nate and Andy to the Institute,” she said. “Getting Andrew help is one thing, but Donner’s people need to know about this. And they’ve offered both of them sanctuary in the past…”

“Not staying there!” my dad barked.

“Not permanently,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing voice. “But I can’t think of anywhere safer right now. Can you?”

My father laughed, I think. It was a wet, nasty sound. He stabbed a thumb toward the window. “Sure. Out there.” He slumped a little. “Won’t run. Sticking it out. Can still help.”

I nodded. “I think so.”

We were all quiet for a little while. I found myself thinking about everything I knew so far and how little it all made any sense.

“Like, who are those people, anyway?”

“Who?” Denver said.

“Brenhurst. Tyndale Labs. PrenticeCambrian.” I looked at my dad. “What’s the deal with all of this stuff? I mean, like, really.”

He scrunched up his face and seemed to put a lot of effort into thinking. I watched memories play off his face. I smelled fear, and anger, and frustration, play out of his pores.

“Not sure,” he finally said.

That was a little exasperating. “Are you sure you’re not sure?”

He looked irritated, then gave it another go for another little bit. He huffed and shook his head vigorously.

“Big stuff.”

Denver said, “That’s about all you’re gonna get, Nate. You know as much as we do.”

“Sure,” I said. “Project: Rancher. Changing people into fake Sovereigns. My dad, brilliant scientist, being crazy or stupid enough—no offense—to be a test subject.”

“Or principled enough,” Denver said quietly.

My father hacked another burst of laughter. “Stupid.” He looked out the window.

“Anyway.” I didn’t want things to get too weird for everybody, so I plowed through. “Obviously they’re still at it, if those guys with the big horns sticking out of their skin at the cabin last year are any indication, right? But…why?”

Sandy said, “Maybe they saw things coming.”

“What things?”

“The Sovereigns.”

I blinked. That made sense, sort of. I tried my dad again. “Ringing any bells?”

“Bigger,” he said.

“What’s bigger?”

He shrugged. “Bigger thing coming.”

“Bigger than Donner and the Sovereign?”

He scowled. “Dunno. Thinking about it…it’s like catching a scent…wind changes…gone.” He looked depressed about the whole thing.

Sandy said, “Well. There’s another thing we can ask about when we get to Missoula.” She shifted in her seat. “Nate, do you think you can sleep?”

I was exhausted. “Like, five minutes ago.”

“Good. Try to. I’ll need you to spell me in a while, if you’re up for it.”

“Okay. Totally.”

What with the cozy warm darkness of the car and the rhythmic road noise, I was out in seconds.

Thursday was finally over.

Marc Teslowski – Eleven

Marc didn’t need to hear any more. He wandered away from the gathered crowd with deliberate casualness.

With his back to the throng, Marc flashed back to his football days. The ball’s been snapped, you’re looking for your man, defense is doing their job…but you can’t be sure somebody didn’t break through out of your line of sight. You can’t be sure you’re not gonna get slammed with a helmet in your kidneys from out of your blind spot…

Nobody seemed to give a damn that he’d left. The more ground he put between him and them, the more relaxed he felt.

Sixty-some acres, Ray had said. Plenty of space to clear his head and get some fresh air.

Alone with his thoughts, Marc’s head rang loudest with: These people scare the shit out of me.

Did they really kill that girl, or was it just a made-up thing to get the crowd going? How’d they know for sure she was a Sovereign? What if she was just a regular albino? Sure, there was the thing about the eyes, but what if that was just bullshit?

Marc had been pissing about the Sovereigns for most of a year, but he’d never thought about killing anybody. He wanted his son back, whether the Sovereign were holding Byron against his will or the boy was just biding time to get back at his pop. It didn’t matter what the reasons were, just that he get things back the way they were, get control of his family, make sure Byron and Jeri and the whole damn world, for that matter, knew he was nobody’s fool.

He didn’t want to kill anybody to make it happen. That was taking things a little too far.

“Jesus fuck,” Marc sighed. He put his arms behind his head and stretched, tilting his neck back. Light-gray clouds blotted out the stars and reflected the half-moon.

It was nice out here. Marc turned most of a circle, breathing the chill, dry air and trying to figure out if he’d manage to get any sleep tonight.

He stopped when he saw the birds.

They circled over the old barn, a flock like a thick cloud, black against the actual clouds in the sky, turning and swooping, never leaving the barn.

Marc didn’t know how things went on a farm or a ranch or whatever, but he’d seen crows circling over roadkill out in Trimpe Canyon and figured that’s what this was. Something must have died over there.

Marc started for the barn. Maybe it was a coyote. He’d never seen a coyote in real life. Even if this one was dead, it might be neat.

Closer to the barn, he could see them now, flitting by above him. The whirling flock was actually made up of all kinds of birds. It was too dark to name them, and he was no damn bird watcher anyway, but Marc for sure saw crows or ravens and little tiny sparrowish ones, and an owl or two, and some that might be hawks.

They didn’t make any noise. No hoots, no chirps, no cawing…nothing. Just the soft percussion of their wings pushing at the air.

What the fuck was that all about? It almost made Marc want to go back to the crazies. It sounded like they were shooting guns off now.

Marc made it to the barn. Dirty windows in the big doors glowed from inside with a yellowish light. He leaned against the padlocked latch and felt the doors give on their hinges under his weight just a little.

He watched the birds. He felt the breeze from hundreds of pairs of wings. Droppings fell like rain, and Marc was glad for the overhanging roof above him. He pushed a little closer to the door.

A crow—he thought it was a crow—dove for his head. He yelped and ducked.

A soft smack above him, and another crow, or the same one, slapped to the ground at his feet. Its neck was broken.

An owl came for him, thick talons outstretched, just in time for Marc to flinch to his hands and knees. He felt the tips of its wings tousle his hair. Those wings didn’t make any sound at all.

One hand partially shielding his face, Marc looked up and saw the owl furiously battering the window with its wings and scratching at the frame with its claws before pivoting and flying off.

They came faster after that. A few more made for him, but never hit. Marc started to feel like they weren’t trying to hit him at all. He was a big, easy, stationary target, and they kept missing, after all. It was more like they were trying to keep him down.

The birds were much more interested in the windows. Suicidally interested. They fell around him, two and five and now a dozen, finches and jays and ravens and other varieties, with soft thumps that made Marc a little queasy.

He kept his head low and wondered, crazily, if Alfred Hitchcock and Alan Fundt were going to come out of the darkness with a camera.

A crash of glass. The shards fell on and around him. Marc curved his body in the old duck-and-cover and hoped he didn’t get cut up.

Then something big, all stinking feathers and hard claws and beak, ten or fifteen pounds of dead weight, slammed onto his back.

Marc hollered and scrambled away, arms waving.

The thing tumbled from him and flopped, twitching, bloody, and dying, on the ground.

Fuck if it wasn’t a goddamned bald eagle.

Smaller birds streamed in through the broken window. With Marc away from the door, big ones, the owls and ravens and hawks, converged on the door itself.

Feathers flew and blood sprayed like mist. They attacked the door, inside and out, and didn’t seem to care they tore into each other in their frenzy.

Marc couldn’t look away.

Even as they died, slamming into and tearing at the wood, ripping past the shards of glass in the window frames, they still made no sound.

The door latch hit the dirt with a muffled clang. The surviving birds rejoined the circling flock above the barn.

Marc couldn’t ignore the facts. The goddamned birds just broke into the barn.

He shivered. Not because of the thin-air mountain chill. Because he was freaked the fuck out.

The birds inside the barn burst through the doors in a rush to join their pals above. Marc damn near had a heart attack.

They left the doors slightly ajar. The light inside painted a rectangle across the field of broken birds piled on the ground at the front of the barn.

Marc’s heart rate slowed to sledgehammer pace. He caught his breath.

Those birds had gone to an awful lot of trouble. He had to see what was in the damn barn.

Marc slipped through the doors.

Eddie Schwippe swayed a few feet above wet, rusty hay strewn on the floor of the barn. His arms stretched over his lolling head. Heavy bull rope looked like it had been tied and duct-taped around his wrists and looped over a beam that extended from the hayloft.

Schwippe’s naked, bony torso was roadmapped with cuts and blossomed with red and purple bruises. His left nipple was a glistening red hole.

His face was black with caked blood. His right eye was swollen shut. His enormous nose twisted to the right. His lips were cracked, practically exploded over his broken teeth, and slack.

Ray Greene’s guest of honor.

Son of a bitch.