Water Rites (14 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

H
eat woke him, searing heat that glared red through his closed eyelids. Thirst. He opened his eyes, squeezed them shut as light and pain lanced through his skull. Stones grated beneath his cheek. He was lying facedown in the dust. The alley . . . vague memory of a choking arm . . . darkness. Where was he? Carter got his knees under him, got halfway to his feet. Dun land and
light
. It began to revolve slowly and he lurched onto hands and knees again, retching bile onto the sunbaked clay between his palms.

The spasms eased finally, leaving him sweaty and shivering. Memory was coming back, slowly and in pieces. Cautiously he eased himself back into a sitting position; this time, the land stayed still. Empty hills stretched away on all sides, streaked with afternoon shadows. No road, no buildings — just dirt, sun, and rock. The shivering had stopped, and Carter wiped vomit from his chin, trying to think through the fierce ache in his skull. Someone had grabbed him right off the base and had dumped him out here. Nice going, he thought bitterly. Great start. Great security. He was naked except for his shorts. He touched his arm and winced. From the look of the sunburn, he’d been out here for a long time.

Here. Fear tightened his stomach and dewed his face with sweat. Where the hell was
here?
The dun, dead land marched away on all sides of him, broken by tilted bands of rock and gray clumps of struggling sage. Empty. He swallowed, his mouth dry as the ground. The riverbed and the highway could be in any direction.

He had better choose the right one.

He straightened, examining the horizon. The sun was setting beyond the shoulder of a mountain peak. West. So that was probably Mount Hood, unless the people who had jumped him had hauled him an awfully long way to dump him. Which they could have done. Better to assume he wasn’t that far from the riverbed. It would be north. That way. Carter shaded his eyes. Walk that way and sooner or later he’d hit a road, a house, something.

Question was . . . would he reach it in time?

Carter clenched his teeth and staggered to his feet. He owed someone for this. For a moment, he swayed as the world revolved briefly, then it steadied. So far, so good. He had a couple of hours of daylight yet. People lived out here even if it didn’t look like it. He’d see lights even a long way off. Carter picked out a thumb-shaped lump of rock to the north, fixed his eyes on it so he wouldn’t wander, and started limping toward it.

It was tough going. His head stopped hurting after awhile, but thirst tortured him. He tried to chew some of the dusty sage leaves, but the stems cut his mouth and made him feel thirstier than before. His back stung. When he touched his shoulder, blisters burst beneath his fingers, spilling sticky fluid. He must have been unconscious in the sun for hours. Bastards.

Twilight was a blessing when it fell. An early moon rose, three-quarters full, shedding enough light to get by. It was harder to find north, but he managed to identify the Big Dipper, found the pole star and used that. The pleasant cool turned cold quickly. Before long he was shivering. And the landscape didn’t change. He could have been walking in place. Going in circles.

Somewhere, he thought, they were laughing at him, sitting around, drinking beers. He clutched at that thought, squeezing hard rage from it, and for awhile it kept the cold and thirst at bay. Then a sharp piece of obsidian sliced his foot and tripped him onto his knees. He clutched at a rocky outcrop and hauled himself to his feet. His arm hurt and he touched the bend in his elbow gingerly. In the colorless moonlight he could just make out a dark bruise. Someone had shot him up with something. To ask him questions? For a moment the ache in his head intensified, and he had a vague memory of a voice.

Carter forced himself to keep going, limping badly now, barely able to swallow. Step by painful step, he kept going, feeling slippery blood on the stones beneath his cut foot. He started fuzzing in and out of consciousness, saw Johnny watching him with a smile, but his mouth was too dry to yell at him. Then Johnny turned into the kid in the VW, and Carter wanted to ask him what he’d meant to do, when a thin cry banished his ghost, bringing back the night and the cold and the pain.

The sound came again, like a baby crying. Coyotes? Wild dogs? Carter looked around, barely able to stay on his feet, searching for something he could use as a weapon. The moon had been so bright earlier, but it was dim now. Or maybe the darkness was thicker. The coyote or dog baby-cried again. Close. His foot slapped down hard, jolting his teeth together. A road. He stared at the pavement beneath his feet. Then something moved in the darkness behind him, coming at him. The coyote? Carter reached down to scoop up a rock, staggered, the moon wheeling overhead, his balance gone..

The road slammed against his hip and shoulder, knocking the breath out of him. It didn’t hurt. It should have hurt. Hands grabbed him and he swung a fist, remembering hands holding him down, a voice asking, asking, asking through the pain in his head that tore him apart. He swung again, blindly.

“Hey, knock it off.” High pitched voice. A hand locked around his wrist. “I’m trying to help you, okay? Take it easy.”

Carter stopped fighting as his vision cleared. He was lying on his back on a road. The moon floated overhead, casting its pale light.

“What are you doing out here?” A woman knelt beside him, a thick, dark braid dangling over one shoulder. “What happened to you?”

His tongue wouldn’t work right. He tried to ask for water, managed a noise, at least.

“Hang on.”

She walked away and Carter struggled to his elbow, afraid suddenly that she would vanish, like Johnny, like the kid. But she reappeared in a few moments, a plastic jug and a cup in one hand, lit by the small, solar lantern in the other. She set the lantern down and water gurgled as she tilted the jug. The sound made him tremble.

“Here.” She slid an arm beneath his shoulders. “Take it slow, okay? Or you’ll just throw it all up, and it’s all I have until we get to The Dalles.”

He forced himself to sip the water when he wanted desperately to gulp it down. Nothing had ever tasted that good. She refilled the cup and he emptied it again. “Thanks,” he gasped, finally able to speak. “Thanks a lot.”

“I’m sorry if I scared you.” She tilted her head and the lantern light burnished her skin to dark copper and pooled shadow beneath her high cheekbones. “I called but you didn’t hear me.”

“I thought I heard a coyote,” Carter said. She was young. Twenty, maybe, dressed in faded jeans and a patched denim jacket. Hispanic, with a wide face and dark, tilted eyes. “I’m glad you weren’t.”

“Me, too. I’m Nita Montoya,” he said gravely. “How did you end up out here? You might have died. Who did this to you?”

“My name’s Carter Voltaire.” He started to add that he was with the Corps, caught the words in time. Not out here. “I don’t know who dumped me out here.” He pushed himself into a sitting position. “But I’m sure going to find out.”

“Not tonight.” She touched his arm lightly, then got to her feet. “I’ll bring my stuff here. I’ve got some extra clothes that might fit you.”

She left him the light. He listened to the reassuring sound of her footsteps, the crackled of the dry sage. In a few minutes she reappeared, lugging a frame pack and carrying a bundle in her arms. “You don’t have to be afraid of the night,” she said as she laid the bundle on the ground. “Don’t blame the land. It isn’t evil.”

“I’m not . . .” He stopped. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He hunched his shoulders, winced as the blistered skin puckered. “It’s so damn big. And empty. You could die out here and nobody would know.”

“That’s true.” She sat down beside him and reached for the pack. “But you can die anywhere. I know what lives out here.” A smile warmed her voice. “I know what can eat me and how to avoid being eaten. Towns scare me,” she said softly. “People can be so full of ugliness.”

Ugliness? Carter thought of Chicago. “Maybe, but it still bothers me. All this dead emptiness.”

“Empty yes, but not dead.” That smile glimmered in her voice again. She pulled a tight roll of fabric from her pack, shook it out. “You’ll find life in the cracks, even if you don’t see it; mice, insects, the tough weeds, even flowers. This shirt should fit and maybe the jeans. They’re David’s. My husband’s.” She handed them to him.

He reached for the clothes and sucked in a harsh breath. His sunburned back had stiffened while he sat, and it felt as if his skin was splitting open.

Nita knelt behind him with the lantern, hissed between her teeth. “I didn’t realize it was so bad.”

Carter winced as she ran her flingers lightly across his shoulders. “I was out in the sun for awhile.”

“Yes, you were.” She fumbled again in her pack and took out a small plastic tub. “This will help. You’re bad all over, but your back is the worst.”

“No kidding,” he said dryly. Even the cool touch of the salve hurt like hell. “What are
you
doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s not the middle of nowhere.” The smile warmed her voice again. “We’re not too far south of The Dalles.” She capped the tub and tucked it back into the pack. “I’m on my way there. To meet David. He works for the Army.” She reached for the shirt. “I’ll help you. You’ll be warmer.”

“What’s his last name?” Carter gritted his teeth as he eased his arm through the shirt sleeve. “Maybe I know him.”

“You’re from there?” Hope leaped in her voice. “David Ascher. He’s in his forties, with curly brown hair. It’s just going gray. Do you know him?”

“I’m sorry.” Carter buttoned the shirt, grateful for its warmth. This David was bigger than he. He’d have to use something for a belt. “Is he a civilian?” He tugged the jeans on.

“Yes.” Her shoulders slumped. “You’re still shivering. You can wrap my sleeping bag around you.”

He was shivering, although he didn’t feel particularly cold. That was probably bad. Teeth chattering, he zipped the too-large jeans, wondering what they’d used on him. They. The enemy. He wondered if it was Greely.

Nita draped a patched sleeping bag around his shoulders. “David has to be in The Dalles.” She spoke softly, as if she was talking to herself. “I’m sure he’s there.”

Carter looked at her more closely, seeing tears in her eyes. She wasn’t sure at all. “Where are you from?” he asked her gently.

“West of Salem,” she said. She lifted her chin. “We hunted bees in the mountains.”

A thin cry made Carter jump. A baby? That’s what he’d heard and not a coyote? Incredulous, he watched her lift an infant from the bundled cloth. “You walked all the way from Salem with him?”

“Her.” Nita sounded amused. “This is Rachel. I hitched a lot and yes, I walked. How do you get around where you come from, anyway? Go back to sleep, sweetheart.” She rocked the baby gently. “You’re not really hungry.”

She had walked all this way with her child in her arms. Carter felt a small, hot anger for the man who had left her to do that.

She lifted her head suddenly to look at him, her expression defensive. “The bees were dying,” she said sharply. “We couldn’t make it trading honey any more, and we had to do something. A friend told him about this job with the Corps.”

“Listen, I’m with the Corps, in The Dalles. I’m the new CO.” Carter watched her face, half expecting hostility. “I can check on David for you. If he ever worked for us, I can find the records.”

“Could you do that?”

“Yes.” She was almost beautiful when she smiled like that. “I owe you a lot more than that.”

“No, you don’t.” She seemed genuinely surprised by his words. “Out here, you don’t just turn away. It could be you, tomorrow. Remember that, okay?” She smiled. “Pay me back that way.”

“I will.” The sleeping bag seemed to be helping. The shivering wasn’t so bad. “I don’t understand this world,” he said. “And I need to. Fast.”

“Why?” She tugged at her braid, tossed it back over her shoulder. “Why is it so important?”

He didn’t have the words to explain. He had a feeling this land had rules that he didn’t know yet, and if he didn’t learn them in time . . . he’d make the wrong decision.

And end up with another Chicago.

“You’ll be all right.” She took his hand in hers. Fingers closing firm and cool around his.

“I hope so.” He looked restlessly northward, into the darkness beyond the lantern’s yellow pool. “People have to be out looking for me. You don’t have a cell, do you?”

“A phone?” She sounded amused. “You need to rest. We’ll just wait. I don’t have any extra shoes and your feet are a mess. Someone will come by and we’ll get a ride. People still drive on this road. It’s nice and clean. Lots of traffic.”

As if her words had conjured it, the distant sound of an engine broke the silence. Someone. Carter staggered to his feet, wincing at the pain.

“Not yet.” Nita clicked off the lantern. “Get down.” She pulled him off the asphalt, into the sparse sage. “Out here, at night, you want to know who is driving before you ask for a ride. Sometimes it matters, Carter.” She tucked her sleeping daughter against her side.

“How are you going to know who’s driving in the dark?”

She didn’t answer, but he crouched beside her, nervous now. The engine growled suddenly louder. Twin cones of yellow light splashed across the landscape, picking out rocks and sage, casting stark shadows. Carter blinked, momentarily blinded by the light. The car was a 4x4, going slowly, as if the driver was scanning the sides of the road.

Nita’s hand closed tight on his arm and Carter pressed himself against the rocky ground, infected by her caution. The car cruised by. The turreted castle gleamed on the door, illuminated by the backsplash of the headlights. With a whoop, Carter starggered to his feet. For an awful moment he thought the car would drive on down the road, disappear into the darkness. “Here,” he yelled. “I’m here!”

Brake lights glowed and flashed into white backup lights. With a growl from the transmission, the car backed toward him. It stopped and auniformed man sprange out. “Colonel? Is that you?”

Delgado’s voice. “Yes! Major.” Carter limped forward. “Am I ever glad to see you.”