Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Chapter 14 (part 1)

Max Young lived in a modest house with very little furniture. Max was getting old and, no longer having a family, his disassociation from the world showed in his possessions and the way he kept his house. He didn’t own a DVD player, but a VCR sat atop his television, the green digital letters forever flashing 12:00. There were empty soda and beer cans scattered about, some in the kitchen, some in the living room. His service weapon sat on his coffee table, still in its holster beside an out of date TV Guide and a stack of mail.

They sat at the kitchen table as Max did his best to tend to Evan’s finger. The only materials he had to create a splint were gauze tape and a pencil that he snapped in half and placed to either side of the finger. When he wrapped it up, Evan grimaced as Max straightened the finger out. The finger itself was rather dull, but when jarred it sent a rocket of queasy pain through Evan’s body.

“Eventually, you may need to go to a hospital,” Max said. “But for right now, I don’t think we have much time. We really need to figure out where that bus is and where it’s headed. And if we’re going to go visit with Sam beforehand, we really don’t have much time.”

Gulping down three Advil tablets that Max had given him, Evan nodded hesitantly.

“If you want my help, you’re going to have to fill me in on what you know about Lott and the bus and all of the people on it.”

“I really don’t know much,” Max said. “I just know that they go from town to town and practice some sick ritual. They kidnap several people to take into the desert and kill in a very methodic manner. Those that they don’t kidnap, they kill right away.”

Max began spreading the maps he had taken from the compound around the table and thumbing through the notebooks he had taken with them. Some of the maps were older and had been sketched on; specific routes had been traced and circled. Along these routes were the large circles with the Xs marked through them.

“Here it is,” Max said, pointing.

Evan looked over and saw that Max was pointing to a town that had been circled and crossed through. The city was Osprey, Utah. It was a small town located in the southeastern part of the state.

“This is where my family lived. Three years ago this bus comes through town in the dead of the night. These miscreants get off of it with axes and guns and other crude weapons and go to work.”

“The police didn’t help?” Evan asked.

“What police?” Max asked with a laugh. He got up and walked around the kitchen to occupy himself. He assigned himself the task of making a pot of coffee as he told Evan what he knew.

“Osprey was a town with a population of 37 people. The day after the bus came through, twenty-one of them were dead and eight were missing. The rest of us were too disturbed to talk about it after it happened. Three of the survivors were committed to institutions. There was a police investigation for a while, but nothing ever came of it.

“If you look at these maps, these towns that are marked through, they’re all small towns like Osprey. And I don’t just mean tiny little towns; I’m talking dust bowls. Ghost towns that a few stubborn people refuse to give up because of ancestry or heritage. Here’s Cedar Bluff; I know there was no more than fifty people living there. And here’s Keyanne, population of about thirty. Now, this is just a map of Utah. They’ve moved since then. And they were doing this before Osprey, too.”

He pointed to a partially unfolded map of Arizona. “They were doing this exact same thing in Arizona.”