Blood Routes

Chapter 15 (part 2)

2009-09-11T08:07:00.006-07:00

“I already told this asshole everything I know about it,” Sam said, pointing a finger at Evan. “If you’re a policeman, I think you know who I work for. We’ve always heard about it, but never knew what they were up to. So we assumed it was a clever way for someone else—people like this little shit and the men he works for—to sneak drugs through the desert. And that’s competition.”

“So why elect Evan to be your spy?”

Sam seemed reluctant to talk. He looked Max over with suspicion with a nervous stare. “How do I know you’re not wired?”

“I told you, I’m off duty.” He lifted his shirt to reveal that there were no wires or hidden devices underneath. “This isn’t a police matter. This is a personal thing. However, being a policeman, if you don’t cooperate, I can make sure that you’re properly checked out the next time you come into town. Or I can keep checking the highways and make up all kinds of reasons to search your car. You follow me?”

Sam nodded in defeat, the nervous glare once again replaced by an expression of pure hatred. “We made him check it out because his boss apparently tried to pull one over on us. He paid for the merchandise with marked bills.”

Max glanced back to Evan, wanting to ask about this but not wanting to get off of the topic at hand. “And you had no idea what really happens on that bus?” Max asked.

“No. None.”

“You?” Max asked, looking beyond Sam and to his silent companion.

“Nothing. None of us do,” the quiet man said.

“And you’re both with the Tribe, right?”

Both Sam and his friend nodded.

Max took a moment to think things through and finally turned back to Evan. “How are you doing?”

“I’ve been tons better.”

“You still with me on this?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Max grinned, shaking his head. “No.” He then turned to Sam and his partner, the look on his face all business. “Saddle up, boys. We’re going for a ride.”

“Where?” Sam asked.

“I want to go see what your little group is all about. I want to go see the Tribe.”

“Well then go,” Sam said. “But I will not go with you. I can’t possible willingly take a policeman and a customer who tried to swindle us onto the grounds.”

“I’m not stupid,” Max said. “I know that outsiders aren’t allowed on the grounds unless invited. The only other way is with en escort from the Tribe. So, as I said, saddle up.”

Sam and his companion shared an uneasy look. The companion sighed and shrugged. An intense worry came over his face, as if he knew that he was about to get into a lot of trouble.

“Why do you want to go there?” Sam asked.

“I want to speak to your elders about what goes down on that bus.”

Evan spoke up now, almost in a whisper. “Max, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why would you want to get more people involved in this? It’s confusing enough as it is.”

“Because the Tribe has been on these lands for a long time. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t know about something like the ritual that you and I have seen.”

“What ritual?” Sam asked, genuinely interested.

Max took another moment to look around the room. He nodded to Evan and then to the gun in the corner. “Pick that up, would you?”

Evan nodded and did as he was asked. With the gun in his hand, it took every ounce of willpower within him to not turn it towards Sam and take off his head. Or maybe just an ear. Anything to make him suffer slowly.

But he did nothing of the sort. He tucked it away into the waistband of his pants, casting a mimicking look at Sam as he did.

Then, ignoring Sam’s last question, Max opened the door and waved the other three men outside. “Let’s go,” he said. “Time’s a-wasting.”

Chapter 15 (part 1)

2009-06-19T06:27:00.007-07:00

A hesitant dawn was creeping up on them as Max drove into Shinoe. They took Max’s truck, hiding the van behind Max’s house just in case the group had sent members out to look for them. They drove into town slightly ahead of the lazy rush of morning traffic.

When the hotel came into view, Evan felt a growing heat in his chest. He could taste the revenge on the back of his tongue and was a bit afraid that he enjoyed it. There was no doubt in his mind that Sam was capable of violence, but after confronting Lott and his minions last night, Evan wasn’t at all concerned about him. Especially with a hardened rogue cop like Max at his side.

Apparently sensing Evan’s anxiousness, Max drove around the lot a few times. “When you get in there, think with your head and not your anger, okay?” Max said. “I’d like to try to use him to help us out. If you do much damage, chances are that he’s going to be hesitant to help. I’ve seen it in my line of work before—the more civil you are, the more willing others are to offer help and information.”

“I understand,” Evan said. Still, each time Max drove by the van with the Conner’s Produce logo on it, he tightly clenched his left hand. There was a dull throbbing sensation coming from his right hand where his pinky still sat in Max’s crude splint, but that slight pain seemed to only trigger more hate and anger within him.

“Now,” Max said. “If one of them pulls a gun, don’t panic. I’m going in with you and I have two on me, one on each hip.”

“Any chance I could borrow one of them?” Evan asked.

“I don’t really trust you with it right now.” Then, sighing at the look of hate that remained on Evan’s face, Max killed the engine and opened his door.

“You knock on the door and I’ll hang by the side,” Max said. “If they see that you’re with someone, things could get ugly pretty quickly. But I’ll come in behind you as soon as you’re inside.”

Evan nodded. He walked to the door and stared at it for a moment, trying his best to get control of himself. As he waited, a police siren cried out somewhere in the distance. He saw Max looking in that direction with an odd look of concern on his face.

Evan raised his hand and knocked. There was a scuffling sound from inside, a pause, and then the unbolting of the lock on the other side. When Sam opened the door, he said nothing. He grabbed Evan by the collar, jerked him inside and threw him on the nearest bed.

There was a blur of motion as Evan was thrown and then an almost comical bounce as his body hit the bed. But at once, there was Sam’s partner, pinning Evan down in the bed and then, in a flash, there was a gun planted at his temple.

“What did you find?” Sam said. He was hunched over the bed, his face inches from Evan’s.

Evan didn’t have time to think of a response. He scarcely had time to register the fact that the cool surface of the pistol at his head was almost comforting in a way. He had time to do nothing at all because, as promised, Max entered the room with one of his guns drawn.

“Get off of him right now and drop your weapon,” Max said, entering the room and kicking the door shut behind him. He spoke as if the four of them were good friends, his voice calm and smooth.

Max’s sudden presence in the room startled both of the men at the same moment. In his confusion, Evan wasn’t sure which of them was holding the gun to his head and he really didn’t care. He took their moment of distraction and used it to his advantage as well as he could.

Using the palm of his right hand, he punched Sam squarely in the throat. Although his right hand was injured, he did enough damage to get Sam to stumble backwards. He coughed and made dry gasping sounds and he stumbled against the wall.

Evan rolled away but was caught at once by Sam’s partner. The man was stronger than Evan had remembered and, much to Evan’s dismay, had been the one holding the pistol to his head. Evan heard the hammer pull back as the man drew him closer, but Max was on top of things at once.

Max dashed towards Sam and kicked out his legs, pinning him to the floor. He then drew his other weapon while simultaneously placing the other one against Sam’s throat. The aimed the second pistol at Sam’s partner with a fluid ease that surprised Evan. Max looked rather old but he moved with an eerie speed.

“Let him go,” Max said. “We’re not here for violence. Drop your weapon and you have my word that I will holster mine. This is the only time I’m going to ask.”

The partner looked down to Sam’s panicked face, looking for instruction. With a hesitant nod, Sam gave in and signaled for his partner to drop the gun and to release Evan. The man did so, grunting with anger as he let Evan go. He then released the hammer on his pistol and tossed it on the bed.

“Thank you,” Max said. He then looked down to Sam. “How about you? When I let you up, are you going to do something stupid?”

“No,” Sam said. There was obvious rage in his voice, but he wasn’t dumb. He knew that he and his partner had been bested.

Max stood up and gave Sam a moment to get to his feet. Max then holstered his guns, took the one on the bed and tossed it into the furthest corner of the room.

“Who are you?” Sam asked, looking directly at Max with a stare that seemed to look right through him.

“I’m a policeman here in Shinoe,” Max said.

A look of sickening alarm rose up on Sam’s face and he turned his hateful stare towards Evan.

“Don’t you worry,” Max said. “I’m not here on police business this morning. I have some personal issues I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Like what?”

“I want to know everything you know about that bus.”

Chapter 14 (part 2)

2009-05-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

“And now they’re here?” Evan asked. “I wonder why.”

“I’m not sure.” Max shuffled through the maps and found the map of New Mexico. It seemed to be the newest map of the bunch, the folds relatively fresh and the markings along its pages much bolder than the other maps.

There were three towns circled and marked through. Max pointed to them slowly, trying to gather any sort of pattern to them.

“Are those all small towns, too?” Evan asked.

“Seems that way. Fowler is right here, marked through. I personally know that Fowler is a piss pot of a place. I’d say roughly thirty or so people live there. There’s not even a post office. Just one small general store. Everything else is over in Dry Gulch, fifteen miles away.

“This one I’m not too familiar with, this town called Wolf Creek. But being right there in the middle of the desert, I feel certain it’s not much bigger than Fowler.” Max followed the route that led away from Wolf Creek and towards the third X. “Samson is a tiny little place, too. I’ve driven through there several times. It’s basically a twin of Fowler. One or two shops, a few houses, and that’s it. No side roads, no streets, nothing.”

Evan studied the map and located Shinoe. It sat about forty miles to the west of the X that crossed through Fowler. He then looked away from Shinoe and to the criss-crossing of roads that sat between it and the three Xs.

“Where would their shacks be located?” Even asked.

Max studied the map and pointed, as if not quite sure of his answer. “Somewhere around here, between Wolf Creek and Shinoe.”

“Do you think they’re planning on doing something in Shinoe?” Evan asked.

“It’s doubtful. Shinoe is small, but not nearly as small as these other places. Compared to Fowler and Samson, Shinoe is a practical metropolis.”

“Then what do we look for?” Evan asked.

Max shrugged and followed the route that connected the Xs once more with his finger. They seemed to make a curve and then a harsh arch. Studying the markings, he wondered if the circling of a fourth town on the map would make a circle. He made the motion of a circle with his finger and felt certain that this was what the people on the bus were trying to do.

He looked back to the map of Utah and looked at the routes and the Xs. There were three different patterns and all of them made a crude circular shape. Two of the patterns consisted of five circles while the other one—the one with Osprey along its route—were made up of only four. He then checked the map of Arizona and found the exact same patterns.

Max looked back to the map of New Mexico and made the imaginary end to his circle again. There were several towns between the start of the circle—Fowler—and the place where it had stopped—Samson. Max had heard of a few of them and knew that they were all relatively small in size.

“We need to check out these towns,” he said.

“You think they’re traveling in a circle?”

“They did it in Utah and Arizona,” Max said, pointing to the maps. “And if there’s something ritualistic about what they’re doing, I don’t see why they would do anything different this time.”

Evan sighed. “I really don’t want any of this,” he said. “You know that you’re pretty much blackmailing me, don’t you?”

Max said nothing. The coffee pot beeped and he poured himself a cup. He offered a cup to Evan and he took it begrudgingly.

“Not only that,” Evan added, “but you’re going about this as if this was any normal cult. But what about those things you saw in the cellar? What was that about, huh? I think it’s clear that these guys are into some shit that is way over our heads and, quite frankly, I think it’s pretty stupid to chase after them.”

Max said nothing. He did look down to the floor for a moment, clearly thinking hard about something. But all he did was sigh and nod. He folded the maps back up and tucked them under his arms.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go pay your buddy Sam a visit.”

Chapter 14 (part 1)

2009-04-21T05:22:00.001-07:00

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.”

Chapter 13 (part 2)

2009-03-23T17:09:00.002-07:00

Evan looked at the book, at the pages that Max was studying. All along the portion of Utah Max seemed interested in, several of those red X marks had been drawn.
Max looked to the floor and Evan realized that the man was on the verge of either breaking into a fit of rage or succumbing to tears. Not wanting to witness either one, Evan grabbed him lightly by the shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here, okay?”

Max nodded. He handed Evan the book and then went to the wall and tore down the map where Shinoe had been circled. He folded this map, tucked it under his arm and stormed out of the room.

“Come on,” he said, not bothering to look back.

Evan followed him, but was suddenly not so sure if he wanted to be with Max. There were several reasons for this hesitancy. First and foremost, Max was a policeman and this made Evan uneasy enough as it was. But the fact that he was apparently a policeman that killed people at will and knew quite a bit about this cult only made Evan’s unease grow.

But if he didn’t go with Max, his only other option was to be left alone in the desert with the cult and their bus still out there somewhere. That being the case, Evan’s decision was an easy one.

In their haste to escape, Lott’s people had piled into one of the vans and tore away from their ramshackle complex. They had left the second van out front and, much to Max’s delight, the keys were still in the ignition. Max tossed the maps into the back of the van and cranked the engine to life. Evan climbed into the passenger seat, looking furtively around the desert for any signs of the other van or the bus.

“I don’t get it,” Evan said.

“What’s that?” Max asked.

“You said you shot four and that a few of them got away in the other van. But when I was on the bus, there were more than twenty people. Where the hell did the rest of them go?”

“Well, the way I figure it is that they stop by here to drop the really important people off. The rest of them stay on the bus and go into the desert.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know,” Max said as he pulled the van away from the complex and headed back the way he had previously come on the dirt bike. “But that’s why I’m out here. I plan on finding out. And apparently, since you have actually been on that bus, you know more than I do about what they’re up to.”

“That’s doubtful,” Evan said.

“Well here’s the deal. I’ve been after these assholes for the better part of three years. If you can be of any help, I’d appreciate it. I can’t force you, of course. But keep in mind that you were asking me about a particular tribe of Indians earlier tonight that are known simply as the Tribe. And the only reason any white men ever visit their reservation is not for historical purposes. Now, me being a cop...I can put two and two together. I can bust you for something, I’m sure.”

Evan’s mouth went dry. It wouldn’t take much investigative effort to figure out why he had come to Shinoe. If Max knew of the Tribe and ended up talking with Sam, there was no way he was going to get out of this predicament. Essentially, Max Young was blackmailing him.

“It’s okay,” Max said, as reassuringly as he could. “Anything you tell me right now is harmless. I’m not a cop at this moment.”

Evan stared into the night, thinking about Emile Gorrengo. It was because of Emile that he was here, doing his dirty work, his drug deals. And while he was out here in some supremely deep shit, he was certain that Emile was probably lounging by his pool, drinking wine and feeling up some gorgeous beach bimbo. It wasn’t right.

He then thought of Lott. He recalled the maniacal way the man had presented himself. He thought of how he had snapped his finger as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And more than anything, he saw the frail man raising his axes into the air and lopping off the heads of two people in the night.

“Fine,” Evan said. “It’s not like I wouldn’t enjoy helping someone bust these fuckers. As you can see by my hand and the company they threw me in the cellar with, we really didn’t get off to a good start.”

“Believe me,” Max said, “if I thought there was some other way, I’d let you go on your merry way. But they’re up to something big and if I don’t stop them now, I may never get the chance again.”

“Why are you so determined to get to them?”

Max grunted and stared out into the night, maneuvering the van through the rough desert terrain. For a while, Evan thought that the man wouldn’t say anything. But finally, after taking a moment to collect his thoughts, Max spoke. When he did, his voice was low and full of anger.

“They’ve been doing this for a long time. They came through my hometown and killed my wife and daughter a few years ago. They would have got me too if I hadn’t have been out at the bar in the neighboring town getting drunk.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Evan said.

Max only nodded. He eventually came to the spot where he had parked his bike and got out of the van. “Give me a hand, would you?” he asked.

Evan helped Max load the bike into the back of the van as best as he could. He did everything possible to avoid hitting his broken finger. They had to lower the rear seats and even then, the bike barely fit. As they went about this business, Evan found himself looking into the blackness of the night, waiting for a gunshot to sound out or for someone to scream. It just seemed to fit the scene.

“What do you know about the Tribe?” Evan asked as they piled back into the van.

“Enough,” Max said with a sigh. “Are they the reason you ended up here tonight?”

It was Evan’s turn to sound angry now. “Yeah,” he said, and proceeded to tell Max the entire story of how he had been sent to Shinoe by his boss, Emile Gorrengo. He then told him about meeting with Sam and how Sam and his companion had set him up. Max listened with great interest, frowning at certain parts and grinning at others.

“So the Tribe thinks the bus is a competing drug market?” Max asked. “That’s priceless.”

“They’re serious about it, too. They had people on patrol out there tonight, driving around to make sure I got on the bus.”

This seemed to startle Max a bit. He said nothing about it though; he simply furrowed his brow and thought long and hard about something.

The headlights continued to unravel the darkness ahead of them and Evan eventually saw the highway spring into view. Max took a right, headed back to Shinoe, and remained silent for quite some time.

“What are your plans?” Evan asked, not sure if he wanted to hear them or not.

“We’re going to go to my house and grab some things. I’ll properly splint your finger for you, too. Then I think we’ll pay your friend Sam a visit if we can find him.”

“Oh, that’ll be easy,” Evan said, brightening up a bit. “He’s waiting for me at my motel room." He would be delighted to meet Sam again. Especially with a cop in tow. And with the knowledge of what really happened on that bus.

They traveled east, back into Shinoe, winding down the longest night Evan had ever experienced.

Chapter 13 (part1)

2009-03-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

Evan and Max left the hallway in a scramble, Max retreating backwards and aiming his gun down the hallway in the event that any of the creatures decided to follow them. While Max had closed the door, there was a gaping hole along its base where he had shot the lock. Apparently, the monsters preferred the darkness because not a single one of them came through the doorway in search of them.

They came to the main room where Evan had had been questioned and had his pinky snapped in half. It was here that Evan realized that the place was deathly quiet. He recalled hearing the gunshots and the starting of an engine, wondering if Max Young had come here by himself. This idea seemed odd, but after the events he had seen tonight, who was to say what odd really was?

“Did you kill most of them?” Evan asked.

“I don’t know,” Max said. “I took down four, wounded one other one, and then a few of them piled into a van and left.”

As he spoke, Max looked terrified and slightly shocked. It was clear to Evan that Max had not been expecting to see such horrors in the cellar. Max looked as if his mind was still struggling to process it all.

“There was a man with white hair,” Evan said. “Really skinny. Did you kill him?”

“No. The others did everything they could to protect him. He got away with about four others in a van.”

“What about the bus?” Evan asked. “Where is it?”

Max looked at Evan suspiciously. “How do you know about the bus?” It wasn’t an accusatory tone, but one of disbelief.

“It’s a long story,” he said, wincing at the pain that continued to flare through his left hand. His back was also hurting a bit now, a result of falling down the stairs.

“I need you to tell me anyway,” Max said. “But not right now. First there’s something I need to check out.”

Max turned and headed back through the hallway from which they had come. Not knowing what he was supposed to do, Evan followed him. When they passed the door to the cellar, they both cut their eyes towards the door. They both heard the clucks and cries of the creatures and it caused them to quicken their pace. The darkness that bordered the door’s edges seemed to melt out towards them, eager to grasp them if they turned their backs.

Evan followed Max out onto the network of walkways, the boards creaking beneath their feet. They passed one of the men that Max had shot, the bullet having taken him in the upper chest. Evan looked away as soon as his eyes fell on the body. Having witnessed the beheadings, he had seen enough death for the night. Still, he followed Max into one of the other shacks without asking questions. He was just thankful that he was alive and that there was someone here to share this madness with him. With a companion, the threat of insanity didn’t seem as progressive.

In this particular shack, there was a door that had been kicked in (part of Max’s assault, Evan assumed), two more bodies, and various books scattered here and there. Two maps hung perfectly aligned on the wall. One of a map of New Mexico and the other was a more detailed rendering of one particular county within the state. Entering the room, Max headed straight for these maps.

He studied the detailed map, trailing his finger over it quickly. Evan looked over Max’s shoulder and saw that it was a map of the area in which they currently stood. To the east, roughly in the center of the map, was Shinoe. It had been circled in red. Other small towns were scattered here and there, several of them having been tagged with bright red X marks.

Max used his finger to follow these X markings, tracing their course along the map.

“What are you looking for?” Evan asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Max said, stepping away from the map and looking around the room. “Help me look through these books, would you? If you see any other maps, let me know.”

Without question, Evan did as he had been asked despite the fact that his instincts told him to get as far away from this place as fast as he could. But if Max Young had not come here tonight, he (Evan) would most likely be having his insides removed by those slithering things in the basement. So if Max needed his help, he’d gladly give it. Besides that, Max had a gun and the cult apparently did not posses any; knives and axes they had, but perhaps guns were against their religion.

Evan almost laughed at this but was afraid of what his laughter would sound like. He focused on the books, flipping through them for any signs of maps. Most of them were journals, sloppily written in and with no apparent organization. But there were others that were nothing more than notebooks with dates and figures written in them.

They looked the room over for about three minutes before Max found what he was looking for. It was a Rand McNally publication, a book full of maps of every state in America. Max flipped through it with purpose and stopped when he came to the maps of southern Utah.

“This,” Max said quietly, “is what I’m looking for.”

Chapter 12 (part 2)

2009-02-17T06:32:00.002-07:00

He saw the texture of the stairs and his shoes. There was blood on his shoes as well as some other residue, a slimy substance that looked like snot. He wondered if it was the product of whatever had touched his shoe while he had sat on the cellar floor.

The cellar now seemed to be filled with the clucking noises. They were defiantly communicating with one another and they were getting closer.

From somewhere further off, there was a gunshot. The noise made no sense to Evan at first. The thought of a gun was too real and authentic to have a place in this absurd nightmare. But, as if to assure him that he was still awake and attached to the real world, the sound came two more times in quick succession.

He then heard a voice screaming out, “You have no right, you are not…” but another gunshot cut this short.

The gunshots told him that there was something unexpected going on within the complex of shacks. Had an outsider found the place? Maybe even the police?

Wasting no time, Evan turned around and practically leaped up the remaining stairs. He pounded at the door with both hands, temporarily oblivious to the pain in his left hand. He screamed to the top of his lungs, banging on the door in fear and desperation.

“Help me! Please, someone, help me!” These pleas became nothing more than urgent shouts of terror and anxiousness, wordless cries for a rescue.

Still, no matter how much he shouted, he could still hear the sounds of the creatures that he shared the darkness with. He heard them advancing towards him, climbing the stairs in an organic-sounding march: slap-slither-slide, slap-slither-slide.

There was another shot, another scream and then a loud clamor as something crashed to the ground. Two more shots sounded out, these a bit closer, and then Evan thought he heard an engine start up. It was too small to be the bus, but maybe one of the vans.

Realizing that he could hear these things clearly, he understood that he was no longer dazed. His hope of rescue had brought him around and now he seemed to even block out the noises and advancing sounds of the monsters in the dark.

This kept him grounded until he felt their touch at his legs again. There were three at once, one on his ankle and two closer to his knee. He felt them sliding around his leg, looking for purchase and trying to grab him.

Evan shouted, his throat seeming to expand with the effort. It was a scream of pure terror, a scream that amplified a bit more when he felt several other shapes slapping gently at him. He pressed himself to the doorway, screaming and pounding. He was in such a horrified frenzy that he barely noticed that someone was shouting to him from the other side of the door.

“Hold on,” a man’s voice was saying. “I have to shoot the lock. Step back.”

“I can’t,” Evan said. “There’s something here with me…I can’t.”

It was then that there was a tug at his leg and he went sliding down the stairs. As he fell backwards, he felt several other shapes grabbing at him: something fell across his chest in a wet, sticky caress; something fell in his face, a bitter tasting appendage slipping into his mouth and over his tongue.

He hit the ground hard and something juicy popped under his weight. There was a child-like wail of pain from one of the odd clucking voices, followed by an excited clamor of clucks and other throaty sounds.

Evan tried to open his mouth to scream but realized that his mouth was already open. There was something in it, something with a texture of raw fish and tasted a bit like dirt and vomit. He tried to voice something but only gagged.

Above him, at the top of the stairs, a gunshot sounded out. This was followed by a loud metallic clanking sound, and then the sound of something dropping to the floor. Despite having been overtaken by his still unseen assailants on the cellar floor, Evan recognized this sound as the lock falling from its place along the door.

There was one last crashing sound as the door at the top of the stairs was kicked open. Weak yellow tinted light spilled into the cellar in a flood.

Evan could only see the shape of a man standing there. There was a moment of hesitation and Evan could barely hear the man say, “What the hell?” over the eager cries of the things grabbing at him.

Then the man hurried down the stairs, kicking at several shapes along the way. He fired his gun twice at a few of the creatures as he made his way to Evan. He knelt by Evan and grabbed the thing that was working its way into Evan’s mouth, voicing a cry of disgust as he touched it. Evan felt the reaching appendage in his mouth withdraw and heard a defeated cry from the thing’s throat.

As the man tossed the creature to the side in a violent pitch, Evan saw what the things were. They were the same monstrosity he had seen in the restroom on the bus. Some of them were small, about the size of a softball, but a few of them were easily three feet in length. All of them had swarming tentacles and at least six eyes along their tiny heads.

Also, his estimate of six individual creatures was way off. As he got to his feet and helped his rescuer kick the creatures away, Evan glanced around furiously and saw that there were at least twenty of them. All of the eyes on all of those heads…seeing it was dizzying.

There were easily one hundred eyes staring at them in hunger.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the man beside Evan said.

“Yeah,” Evan breathed, not even worried about Lott and his minions at the time. He’d gladly face Lott and another broken finger to get out of this mess. He could still taste the arm or tentacle or whatever of the thing that had reached into his mouth and when he realized that it had actually been inside his mouth, a creeping madness tried to take hold of him.

He looked past that madness as he and his savior climbed the stairs. Both men took the stairs in three bounding leaps. Once he was out of the doorway, Evan collapsed on the floor and started screaming. He was weak, he was hurt, he was tired and he was very much afraid that he might be losing his mind.

Above him, the man closed the cellar door and reached a hand out to him. He opened his mouth to say something but stopped short. He cast a curious look at Evan and then smiled thinly.

“I’ll be damned,” the man said. “A small world indeed.”

Confused, Evan looked up and really wasn’t all that surprised to see the face of Max Young looking down at him.

Chapter 12 (part 1)

2009-02-04T07:53:00.001-07:00

Evan was fully aware that there were slithering sounds in the darkness.

There was something there, something in the cellar with him, but he was too disoriented to locate it. He did his best to focus on his breathing, to look beyond the dizzying darkness and the pain that swept through his body like fire. He sat on the floor and slowly began to use his legs to push himself back. He used his right hand to speed this process, making sure not to put any force at all on his injured left hand. His pinky was a throbbing maelstrom of agony and the pain seemed to be parading through his entire body.

When he came to the stairs that he had fallen down, he nearly screamed. He felt the bottom stair pressing against his back and was sure that it was some terrible instrument that would slice through him.

With the solid feel of the bottom stair at his back, he tried to imagine the layout of the cellar. He had only seen it briefly before he had gone tumbling down the stairs and he had assumed it to be a perfectly square room. So that meant that whatever was making the slithering sounds was very close to him. There were no walls between him and the sound; he was sharing an open space with whatever made the noises.

He kept seeing the creature from the bus toilet, certain that there was another one of those things down here with him. He saw its dented infantile head, its numerous eyes and reaching tentacles in his mind’s eye and it was very easy to imagine it in the darkness with him.

Directly ahead of him, he heard another sound of motion. It sounded like something being dragged across the floor, but he wasn’t certain. Then, following this, there was a gentle clucking sound that reminded him more of the qualities of a frog’s croaking rather than a chicken’s call.

It was this noise that helped him to realize that there were two sources to the noise. He heard the odd sounds coming from two different locations, from two different voices; it was almost like hearing crickets or tree frogs calling out to one another at night. It sounded like it could be one thick voice but it was unmistakably a chorus of voices, communicating something that his ears could not understand.

Evan narrowed his eyes and tried to peer into the darkness. There was not a single light source within the cellar and he could see nothing. He hoped that his eyes would quickly adjust, but the darkness was too thick and his eyes were still muddled from his disoriented state.

As he peered forward into the dark, something soft landed on his right leg. He felt it caressing, searching for purchase. He jerked his leg back with a shout, pressing his back harder against the stairway. In the darkness came that odd call again, a clicking sound from some bizarre throat.

Evan reached back and pushed himself up, using the stairs to help get to his feet. As he did this, he felt another reaching appendage slap against his foot, then another at his right leg where it tried to wrap around his knee. With each touch, he heard that clicking language again.

He tried figuring out how many separate voices he could hear and this only made his panic worse. His heart seemed to stammer when he realized that there were at least six different sources.

He slowly made his way back up the stairs in the darkness. He knew that there was only a locked door behind him, but he didn’t care. Each second he lived in ignorance of what was clucking in the cellar and reaching out for him was a glorious one. He backed up the stairs, tripping once and falling hard on his backside.

From the bottom of the stairs he heard a soft slapping sound. This was followed by another loud slapping, and then another. Following this, there was the sliding noise again. He imagined the creature from the toilet pulling itself along the cellar floor, grabbing onto the bottom step and pulling itself up.

Evan continued to make his way up the stairs, not daring to look back. He knew that there was the thinnest amount of light at the bottom of the door but he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to see any more. Yet, as he took one more step closer to the top, he realized that he could actually see the immediate space beside him. The light that barely crept in through the closed door was working with his slowly adjusting eyes and he was slowly beginning to make out what the darkness was hiding from him.

Chapter 11 (part 2)

2009-01-22T08:32:00.001-07:00

Max left the window and then checked around both sides of the shack. The three other shacks that sat behind the first one were just as featureless, the windows boarded over and looking as if the slightest wind might knock them over. He trailed around the left side of the first shack, looking for another window.

What he found was even better. At the far end of the main shack, there was thin wooden door. It hung loosely to the building on faulty hinges, its lower left side jutting out of the frame a bit. Max experimentally stuck the toes of his boot into this area and pulled the door towards him. The door gave a bit but, even in its dilapidated state, was still locked from the inside.

He looked to the weak doorknob and was sure that a single shot from his pistol would blow the lock apart. But there was no sense in bringing attention to himself. He holstered his gun for the moment and then kneeled down by the bottom of the door. He grabbed the crooked, swollen edge of the door with both hands and pulled forward as hard as he could. The door groaned and popped in protest. Over his head, one of the hinges popped out of the frame and clattered to the ground.

The door didn’t come out of its frame, but the lower half of the door was now completely free and loose. Max eyed the bottom of the door and the frame, pretty sure that he could squeeze through it. He peeked inside first, but only saw darkness.

Inside, he heard another scream of pain. It sounded like it belonged to the same voice that had issued the first scream.

Max paused for a moment, waiting for another scream or any indication that things were still progressing for the worse inside. After ten seconds of silence, Max started crawling through the bottom of the weakened door and into the darkness of the shack.

Inside, it was far too dark to make sense of anything. But now that the outside walls no longer separated him from the people inside, Max could hear things more clearly. He heard faint footfalls, walking away from him. He brought up a mental snapshot of the grounds and the shacks and thought that the footfalls were headed away from that first large room. Perhaps they were headed out to one of the shacks in the back.

Max took the binoculars from his shoulder and put them to his eyes, switching on the night vision feature. After adjusting the sights, he saw that he was in a hallway of some sort. Directly in front of him there was another door, closed and just as weak -ooking as the one that had allowed him entrance into the shack. To both sides, lined up against each wall, were several cardboard boxes and torn fragments of magazines.

Keeping the binoculars to his eyes, Max slowly crept forward. When his hand fell on the door in front of him, he prayed that it wasn’t locked. He took the binoculars away from his face and tried the knob.

It turned freely and with a slight rusty sound. When Max slowly opened the door, a faint murky light spilled into the hallway. Before opening the door any further, Max listened for any signs of a presence immediately beyond the door. The only thing he heard was the faint mumble of conversation coming from somewhere very far off to his left.

He took the chance and poked his head out of the door. He found himself peering into another thin hallway, lit by three kerosene lanterns that hung from crudely made hanging devices that were attached to the roof.

To his left there was an open doorway that looked out onto the three other shacks. A wooden walkway ran from the doorway in both directions, towards the adjoining buildings. He could still hear two faint voices from that direction, seeming to grow farther away, maybe into one of the other shacks.

Max looked to his right and saw two doors along the far wall. One was cracked open a bit, revealing a filthy restroom. The other was a fairly large door that seemed almost inappropriate in the fragile shacks. Five huge locks ran down the side of the door like large metal fingers digging into the wall.

Beyond this locked door there was the open walkway that led into the main room that Max had looked in on through the boarded up window. He listened intently and was certain that the room was empty.

Flexing his grip on his gun, he walked deeper into the darkness of the hall. He closed his eyes, said a silent prayer just in case God was listening, and walked towards the walkways and the voices.

Chapter 11 (part 1)

2009-01-09T08:36:00.002-07:00

Through his binoculars, Max saw the small building a few hundred yards ahead and allowed himself a fleeting moment of triumph. The two vans had come to a stop outside of this small shack but the bus had kept driving into the desert. Assuming that the men inside the vans were more important than the passengers aboard the bus, Max slowed the dirt bike to a crawl and then killed the engine altogether. He set the bike down on the desert floor and hunkered down beside it. Then, lying on his somtahc, he brought the binoculars to his face and watched as events unfolded.

He saw two men remove a single body from the back of one of the vans. Within a few seconds, Max saw that this was the body that had been clubbed with a tire iron. He also saw that this man was still alive. He was obviously groggy, but was able to walk with a little urging from the two men that hauled him out of the van.

Once these three men were inside the shack, Max continued to look in that same direction, making sure no one came outside to take guard duty. The fact that the bus had kept driving out into the desert was a bit puzzling, but Max was sure that this was where he needed to be if he wanted any suitable answers.

Taking another look around with the binoculars, he felt sure that there were no guards anywhere around the odd composition of shacks. He slowly got to his feet, holstering the binoculars around his shoulder. Now that he no longer had the steady drone of the dirt bike’s engine in his ears, every single movement he made seemed impossibly loud. He winced with every movement, afraid that he would somehow be found out.

With extreme caution, he quietly reached down to his gun holster and withdrew his Smith and Wesson .9mm. It was his own personal gun, not the service weapon he carried on his hip while on duty. This way, if things got out of hand, he could not be traced to his service gun. It seemed like an overly cautious approach to the night’s events, but Max didn’t want his fellow officers to find out about his ongoing investigation.

From time to time, Max was sickened at the knowledge of the Shinoe Police Department’s leniency and allowances granted to the men involved with the bus and their horrid practices. Of course, there were only certain members of the force who were aware of it; he had been on the force for five years now and he still hadn’t been filled on what they knew.

But that was okay. Max was certain that he knew much more than anyone on the Shinoe Police Department. Hell, maybe it was wrong to be angry at them for hiding this dark secret. He’d been keeping secrets of his own for quite a while now, so who was he to judge? He was just as guilty for hiding the acts and, as a result, the deaths of countless innocents.

Holding the .9mm in his right hand, Max hunched over and trotted closer towards the shack, bringing the binoculars to his eyes once more. He saw no guards posted anywhere along the perimeter of the building. The lack of security made him feel uncomfortable, as if there were hidden eyes spying on him from somewhere in the night.

He approached the two vans and took cover behind them. He looked into both of the vehicles and saw that their interiors were spotless. There was no trash, no papers, no signs of their foul play. Taking a moment longer to hide behind the vans, Max craned his neck out from behind the rear of the van closest to the shack.

Both windows along the front of the shack had been boarded up. Still, through a few miniscule cracks in the boarding, he could see faint traces of light from inside. They came dancing through the cracks in the boards like knives into the heart of the night. Once again checking the immediate area for anyone who might be outside, Max quickly left the cover of the vans and headed for the front door.

When he approached, he cocked his head forward, listening for anyone who might be inside. Standing by the building, the night seemed darker than ever now; he felt like he was walking on the moon, solitary and alone, rather than in the deserts of New Mexico. As he concentrated, he realized that he did hear someone speaking from behind the closed door and boarded windows, but the voice was too faint to be heard properly. A few seconds later, as Max remained perched at the door, he heard a slight scream from inside.

Shuddering from the sudden cry of pain, Max stepped back a bit, his gun aimed at the front door in case anyone came out. When it was clear that no one was coming out, he reclaimed his place by the front door, rigid in the shadows. Now as he listened, he heard a single chanted word.

“Amen.”

This was followed by the obvious sounds of a scuffling of some kind. Max thought of the man that had been taken out of the back of the van and imagined that he might be trying to escape now, hence the frantic sounds of movement from beyond the closed door.

Irritated at his lack of vision, Max went over to the window to his right. It had been boarded over from the inside, but there were a few minor cracks that he managed to peer between. He could just barely see two shapes, then three. They were moving around frantically for a moment and then a bit more relaxed. Narrowing his eyes to peer through the crack between the boards, Max finally managed to see the scene for a moment.

There were three men, one of which had a headful of disarrayed white hair, forcing a fourth man forward and away from the central large room of the shack. They were moving this fourth man into a hallway and as Max watched, the four men rounded the corner into the hallway and then disappeared from his sight.

Chapter 10 (part 2)

2008-12-23T11:12:00.002-07:00

Evan breathed heavily and fought off a sickening few moments when he was afraid that he might actually start crying in front of this trio. When that moment came and went without the shedding of a single tear, Evan looked Lott squarely in the eye and did his best to explain his situation.

“I’m in the middle of a very screwed up drug deal,” he said. “My life was threatened earlier tonight because the men I work for tried to outwit the men I’m buying from.”

“If you’re buying drugs from around here,” Lott said, “you must be mixed up with the cocaine pushers, yes?”

Evan realized at once that Lott was trying to trip him up, hoping to catch him in another lie. “No,” Evan said. “Peyote. From a tribe somewhere south of here.”

He was delighted to see a flash of recognition in Lott’s face as he heard this. Lott knew that there was not a big cocaine supply out here and, Evan guessed, he was equally aware of the peyote peddling tribe.

“Continue,” Lott said, paying closer attention now.

“They sent someone for me tonight, thinking that I was responsible for trying to pull one over on them. When they realized that I was blind to what was happening to them, they still kept a gun on me and sent me on a little errand.” When he said this, Evan couldn’t help but smile in spite of the situation. “My God, that asshole had no clue what he was talking about.”

There were slight tremors in his voice as a result of the pain in his hand, but as he spoke about Sam, he didn’t care. If he could just have three seconds alone with him…there’d be much more than broken pinkies for Sam to fret about.

The puzzled looks on the faces of his three listeners made him want to stall the story as long as he could. But the insistent pain in his left hand proclaimed that to do so would not be wise. So Evan went on.

“They told me about this bus that had been spotted driving through the desert at night. They said that it was a suspected disguise for running drugs without being picked up by police or competing sellers. These guys thought that the people on the bus were stealing their business.”

“That makes no sense,” Lott said skeptically, although even as he said it, he began to realize where Evan’s story was going.

“Tell me about it,” Evan said. “But drug runners aren’t really known for being clever, now are they?” He paused here and then continued. “So they told me to flag down the bus, to get on and see what sort of things were going on. Tthey dropped me off in the middle of the desert and I did what they asked. And here I am.”

The two men opposite of Lott braced themselves, awaiting any instruction that Lott may give them. But when the last word had left his lips, Evan could tell that Lott didn’t doubt the story.

“So, this tribe knows about our bus?” Lott asked.

“Apparently,” Evan said. “And according to them, I think the local cops know about it, too.”

“The police have known about it for quite some time,” Lott said without much interest. “Tell me, Evan…this tribe and their competitors…they know about the bus and even knew when we would be out, but they have no idea what we do?”

Evan shrugged. “I guess not.”

He was terrified as to what sort of condition he might be in within the hour, but he also knew that in situations like this, it was best to keep your panic at bay and carry on such conversations as if they were as simple as a casual interview. He could feel his heart racing in his chest and still felt as if he could piss his pants as a result of his painfully snapped finger. But the will to live overruled all of that and he did what he thought might help him to get out of there with only a broken finger as a souvenir.

“But you know,” Lott said. “You’ve seen first-hand what we do. Have you not?”

Evan nodded slowly. He didn’t beg ignorance and he didn’t promise that he would never tell anyone. He simply nodded slowly and said, “Yeah, I saw.”

Lott thought this over for a moment and stared at one of the black candles for a good thirty seconds without speaking. As Lott sat there thinking, Evan wondered where the bus and all of the other passengers had gone.

“What else is there?” Lott finally asked. “What else have you seen? You were in the bathroom for quite some time. Did you see anything in there?”

The mere memory of the thing in the toilet made Evan shudder and once again, he told Lott what he wanted to hear as best as he could. “I don’t know what I saw in there, but I saw…I don’t know…I saw something.”

Lott actually chuckled at this. He drummed his fingers on the table again and then stood up slowly. “Well, Evan,” he said. “This is the first time we have been put into a situation like this, so I have no idea what needs to be done. Considering your occupation, I assume that you are good at keeping secrets. So, I suppose we could let you go, so long as you vow to never tell a soul.”

Evan said nothing. He knew that if he did, he would come off as desperate and maybe end up pulling one of Lott’s triggers. But even though Lott showed no signs of having decided his fate, Evan knew that he would not be let off with something as simple as a broken finger. The fact that Lott had claimed that the police knew about their activities made Evan wonder if he’d be safe even if Lott did let him go. If the local PD was in on this somehow, maybe Lott would let him go only to have him arrested or killed.

Evan thought of Max Young from the bar and found it hard to believe that he and his fellow officers could have a hand in all of this.

“I see only one way of solving this,” Lott said, slowly approaching Evan. “Despite what you saw me do tonight, I am not an unjust man. I believe that you have told me the truth, and that truth means that you had no ill intentions towards our group when you stopped the bus. I do not doubt that you are truly a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Evan said.

“If it were up to me,” Lott said, “I’d let you go and request that you never show your face in this part of the state again. But you see Evan, we serve a higher power here and it would be sinful for me to decide your fate. We will leave such decisions in more divine hands.”

Evan slowly began to register things as Lott spoke. The black candles, the talk of a higher power, the ritualistic style murders…Lott and his minions were part of some cult. And if the ungodly thing he had seen in the back of the bus was any indication, it was a cult that dabbled in some truly bizarre shit. The beheadings and the murders were nothing when compared to that monster. There was crazy and homicidal and then there was just plain evil.

“What divine hands?” Evan said. He didn’t care if he came off as afraid anymore.

“We’ll put you before His children, Evan. Only then can your fate be decided.” After Lott said this, the two men beside him stood up from their seats and chanted, “Amen.”

At that single word, Evan felt incredibly cold.

Evan couldn’t help but resist. He pushed himself away from the table but before he had a chance to move, Lott’s two henchmen were on him. He was once again put into that same sleeper hold and was jerked to his feet. As he was raised, his head began to ache again but he did not care. He struggled against them and even when he realized that his efforts were in vain, he kept fighting. His vision grew hazy and his head pounded like a drum. Through all of that, he could hear the chants from the three men that carried him away from the table and into the hallway that Lott had appeared out of.

They chanted in some foreign language that Evan did not understand and he was actually glad that he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He did his best to keep control of himself, to take in his surroundings and make sure he knew where they were taking him. While he knew his chances of escape were incredibly slim, it wouldn’t hurt to have an escape route planned.

Halfway down the dank and featureless hallway, the two men stopped pushing him along but still held their grip on him. Lott came from behind them and stood in front of Evan with a look on his face that could have very well been sincere sadness. Behind Lott, there was a single wooden door with two bolted locks on it. There was a strange marking in the center of the door that looked like some form of ancient hieroglyphics that had been crudely carved with a knife.

Lott chanted a prayer and then cupped Evan’s face in his hands. “Forever we are and forever we will be,” Lott said, “the seeds of His rule, his legacy.”

And with that, he removed a set of keys from his pocket and set to unlocking the pair of locks on the door. Lott unlocked them as if he was taking some sort of sexual pleasure away from the action of inserting the key into each lock. When both of the locks were undone, Lott slowly opened the door to reveal the other side.

There was only a set of ancient wooden stairs to be seen. Other than that, there was total darkness. Evan tried to push away from it but the two men that held him were far too strong. There was a single moment of relaxation when the bearded man removed his arm from around Evan’s neck, but this was quickly replaced by a sheer horror as he was pushed hard from behind.

Evan went tumbling down the stairs and into the darkness. There was a moment when he felt his shoulder hit a stair very hard and then, after several hard thumps and cartwheels, Evan came to rest on a hard dirt surface, landing on his broken finger as he did so.

He screamed out in pain, not caring how desperate he seemed to Lott now. He slowly raised his head up to look up the stairs, but all he saw was a slowly thinning beam of light as Lott and his partners closed the door on him.

Evan was left alone in the darkness with only the brief clicking sound of the locks being reset to keep him company.

And then, after a few tormenting moments of silence, there came the sound of something slithering around with him in the darkness.

Chapter 10 (part 1)

2008-12-16T06:02:00.002-07:00

Evan sensed that he was being moved. He also felt something very cold on his head and something wet touching his mouth. His lips recognized the wetness as water and he opened his mouth to receive it. He gulped at it greedily and when he swallowed, his head began to ache. He heard a door close somewhere behind him and he instantly thought of the bathroom door on the bus. That recollection brought to mind the horrible creature he had seen pulling itself out of the toilet and he began to panic.

Evan opened his eyes but his vision was incredibly hazy. He tried to scream but as soon as he opened his mouth to do so, his head seemed to explode. He could vaguely remember being hit in the head, but that seemed like a dream right now. As his vision swam in and out, he could imagine several of those horrible toilet-monsters scurrying around him and that made his panic intensify.

He felt himself being lifted and then felt solid ground beneath his feet. “Walk,” said a smooth yet demanding voice from beside him.

He then felt a hand grab each one of his arms. He was carried forward by what he thought was two men. They assisted him with the first few steps but then Evan’s disoriented mind seemed to remember what walking was and how to do it.

His vision finally settled down and he was able to see a small house in front of him. It was actually more like a shack than a house, its construction no more inspired than a ten year-old’s clubhouse. There were two windows on the side that he faced, both of which were boarded up. It’s roof sloped down in a sharp triangle, the shingles peeling and falling off.

Behind this shack, there were three other similar structures. The four buildings seemed to be connected by crudely built walkways that were barely boarded over. The construction was flimsy at best, but the almost symmetrical sloppiness of the buildings and the walkways as a whole seemed abstract in the open spaces of the desert.

The two men to his side remained quiet. They stopped for a brief moment as they approached the shack so that the man to his right could open the front door. Evan looked at both men and recognized the one to his left as the bearded man that had spoke to him on the bus.

“Stop looking at me,” the man said. He gave Evan a slight shove towards the open door. “Go inside.”

Evan did so without struggling. He was a fighter at heart and would normally have refused to follow the bearded man’s orders. But it seemed useless to fight in that moment. His head hurt too badly and the pictures from the night that were zooming through his head seemed like a nightmare. He saw the beheadings again, saw the little monster-type thing in the toilet, saw the fat meaty leg sticking out in the aisle of the bus.

Inside, Evan looked around and saw that the shack consisted of a single large room that was lit by several candles and two kerosene lanterns. All of these light sources sat on an enormous table located in the center of the room; the light was so abundant that it was almost as bright as natural overhead light. Scattered around the table there were a few empty chairs and stools. In the farthest corner of the room there was a thin entryway that most likely led out to one of the connecting walkways.

“Take a seat,” the man to Evan’s right said, pointing to the large table. As he pointed with his right hand, his left hand drew a large knife from the waist of his pants. “If you go along with what we say, I won’t have to do anything nasty with this,” he told Evan.

Giving this man an awkward glance, Evan did as he was instructed. He took a seat at the head of the table, noticing for the first time that all of the candles that sat upon it were black. Uneasy with this, Evan looked back to the two men that had carried him in. They were also taking their own seats at the table, sitting at the sides a good distance away from him.

The sight of the black candles made Evan incredibly uneasy. Just what in the hell had he stumbled onto here? Certainly, it was something more than Sam’s crazy drug-trafficking theory.

Before he could give this any thought, he heard footfalls coming from the entry-way across the room. The sound of the footsteps carried as if coming from the depths of some amplified cavern, a sound that added to the ache in Evan’s head. He looked to the entryway, awaiting the source of the footfalls with dread.

The man that finally came through the doorway was frail and looked slightly underfed. His white hair was all over the place and unmistakable. Evan stared at the man and his heart sank. It was the man that had sat in the back of the bus…the man with the electric white hair and the axes…the man that had beheaded those people. The only difference in his appearance as he approached the table was that he was now wearing a shirt and he was not holding his axes. That, at least, put Evan a bit more at ease.

“Good evening, Evan,” the white-haired man said.

He reached into his back pants pocket and withdrew a wallet. He hefted it in his hand and gingerly tossed it onto the table in front of Evan. He then followed the wallet’s progress and took the seat to Evan’s right. He hunkered down calmly, as if he were about to discuss something trivial. He seemed incredibly relaxed and this somehow bothered Evan more than anything else. There were no signs at all that he had just killed four people in the desert.

Evan eyed the wallet on the table and recognized it at once as his own. He then looked stupidly at the thin white-haired man as if to ask a question that he did not yet have the words for.

“I apologize,” the man said. “We never have guests on our bus, so I felt it necessary to find out who you were.”

“Did you come to that decision before or after you had me brained with a crowbar?” Evan asked, not caring if he angered the man or not. The black candles and the memories of the beheadings from earlier led Evan to believe that he was doomed no matter what he did or said.

“Before,” the man answered without a trace of sarcasm. “We wanted to make sure you were an innocent and that you were not sent to snoop around in our activities.”

Evan didn’t respond right away. He looked from this man to the other two that had led him into this room. His original two captors stared in the direction of the thin man with much admiration. The flames from the black candles pasted an eerie wavering light onto their faces.

The thin man habitually ran a hand through his wild white hair and then offered the same hand to Evan. “Well, it’s not fair of me to know your name and not introduce myself, now is it?” he asked. “The name is Lott.”

Evan blinked in surprise at the gesture. “I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t want to shake your hand,” Evan said, looking at the man with as much hatred as his fear would allow.

“I suppose so,” Lott said, withdrawing the offered hand and smirking. Evan was surprised to see that he actually looked a bit hurt at Evan’s response. “I hope you know that we had to bring you here. I know that you saw what we do. I’m not really worried about that, though.”

Lott drummed his fingers on the table and then eyed Evan with suspicion. “What interests me,” Lott said, “is how you knew about us.”

“I told your driver what happened to me when I got on the bus,” Evan said.

“Yes you did,” Lott said. “However, my driver is not stupid, nor am I. So I’m going to give you five seconds to tell me what I want to know. So, I ask again, how do you know about us?”

Evan didn’t know what to do or what to say. But he knew that if he were to change his story, the punishment for his lie might be rather painful. He didn’t have to look back to the man with the knife to be reminded of the blade that was waiting to do him harm.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Evan replied. “I got jumped and I needed a ride.” As the words came out of his mouth, he was achingly aware of how paper thin they sounded.

Lott leaned back in his chair a bit, considering Evan’s explanation. A good ten seconds passed before he made any sort of reply. When he did, it was to his partners. He gave them a simple nod and before Evan was completely aware of what was happening, all three of the men were in motion towards him.

Lott got to him first and did nothing more than grab his left arm. While Evan began to struggle against this, the other two came to assist Lott. The man with the beard wrapped an arm around Evan’s neck and held him in a sleeper-hold position while the other one helped Lott with his left arm. Evan squirmed against the seemingly mammoth arm that was firmly planted around his neck, but there was no resistance. In fact, the harder he fought, the tighter the hold seemed to grow.

Evan knew within moments that he was helpless. So, hoping that it might pay off in the end, he simply stopped fighting. He relaxed against the man’s grip and allowed Lott and the other man to have his arm.

The man that had pulled the knife out moments ago placed Evan’s left arm on the table, securing it by the wrist. It was a peculiar thing to do and Evan found himself tensing up in anticipation of whatever might come next. As he tensed, the vice-like grip at his neck flexed and Evan found that if it grew much tighter, it would be very difficult to breathe.

With his arm on the table, secured even tighter now by Lott’s henchman, Lott took a firm grip on the top half of Evan’s pinky.

“I tried to give you a chance,” Lott said almost sympathetically.

He then pulled Evan’s pinky hard and to the right. Before he was aware of what Lott was doing, Evan heard and felt his finger snap in two. He screamed in the chair even though his throat was mostly closed off by the bearded man’s grip. He tried to fight away from his three tormentors but to no avail. He shuddered in pain and finally relaxed his back against the chair in defeat, breathing hard and grimacing from the pain. The scorching ache in his hand was excruciating, but he knew that he would have to look past it if he hoped to get out of here alive. And besides that, he did not want to sob or whimper in front of these men.

Gasping for breath and in horrendous pain, Evan looked down to his left hand once Lott released his pinky. The finger was hanging onto his hand at a sick slanted angle and it made Evan sick to his stomach to see it. He whimpered against the pain as the other man released his wrist but Evan did not bother attempting to get out of the chair. What would be the point? One of them had a knife and Evan knew that there were axes around here somewhere. He also knew what these assholes were capable of when armed with those axes.

“I hate doing things like that,” Lott said. “But you forced my hand.”

Evan bit the remark before it left his mouth, but he thought, Yeah, breaking fingers is a huge step down from cutting off people’s heads, you crazy fuck!

“Now, Evan,” Lott went on. “I’m going to give you another chance. And here’s how we’re going to do it. I’ll keep asking you and you can keep telling lies if you want. But the next time you lie, I won’t break any more fingers. I’ll simply cut that broken pinky off. And I’ll do that to all ten fingers until you tell us the truth. So save us the time and trouble and save yourself the use of your hands by being truthful.”

The maniac was still speaking calmly and in a soothing tone, as if he were explaining the alphabet to a preschool class. Evan cut his eyes at him, trying to use his anger as a means to control the fear and the warm flashes of pain that were slamming through his left hand and head.

Somehow, Evan got a few words out beyond his trembling lips. What he said was true, but he didn’t think it meant much to Lott and his two helpers. “The truth,” Evan said, “sounds even dumber than what I just told you.”

“It often does,” Lott replied with a smile. “I can tell when I’m being lied to, so as long as you tell me the truth, you’re in good shape.”

Evan found himself feeling more exposed and vulnerable when he noticed the bearded man looking at his broken finger with interest. Evan withdrew his hand from the table slowly and cradled it carefully in his lap, trying not to wince at the pain that flared through his hand as he moved it. He found himself wanting to hide his pain from these three; it wasn’t because it seemed the macho thing to do, but because he knew that they would take him more seriously if he made it through this interrogation without crying like a baby.

“The truth, Evan,” Lott said. “Quickly, or we’ll cut that finger off.”

Chapter 9 (part 2)

2008-12-03T08:17:00.002-07:00

Five minutes into his ride, Max almost wrecked.

He had kept a check on the terrain pretty frequently but had somehow missed a small washed out spot on the desert floor. The hole was no more than six inches deep and maybe a foot across, but when he hit it, he had no idea it was coming. The slight jolt of the bike took him by surprise and he nearly took a nasty spill. Not only that, but in fighting to regain control of the bike, his thumb had somehow hit the switch to cut on the headlight.

He snapped the light off immediately and then corrected the balance of the bike. With his heart hammering in his chest, he checked the terrain with the binoculars again and saw that he had smooth sailing for quite a way. And even though he could not see the bus, he could see the faint trail of dust that it was kicking up. The dirt of the desert was so hard packed that the dust cloud was nearly nonexistent, but it was there. He had to use this faint cloud as his tracking measure because, as on previous nights, the driver of the bus had killed the headlights.

He wondered if he had been seen in the brief moment when his headlight had come on. He was pretty sure no one on the bus had seen him, but Max knew that there were others out here that would get suspicious if they found him.

He knew that there were a few men cruising along the highway, looking for the bus. They were members of a drug cartel that Max knew only as The Tribe. It was the same group that he had discussed briefly with the young man at the bar earlier in the evening.

Thinking of that young man made him think of the two fighting elderly men, particularly the one that had killed himself several hours ago. And then, of course, there had been the unheard of shooting of a police officer by another officer. It had all been so unreal, like something out of a really bad movie. Max had barely known the old man, but he had known both of the officers very well. The shooting had made absolutely so sense at all.

It had certainly been a fucked up day.

But Max had almost been expecting it. The unexplainable violence in Shinoe, the bus and the beheadings…he’d been piecing it all together for a while now. They were both very odd pieces to a puzzle that he had been obsessed with for a few years now.

His thoughts returned to The Tribe and when he thought of them and the behind-the-back deals they had with the Shinoe police department, it both shamed and angered Max. He was in on it just like the rest of them and he was getting the same benefits as everyone else. He was just as guilty as all of the others. But on a day when an officer was shot for no apparent reason by another cop, one was forced to put things into perspective. Illegal dealings with drug runners seemed twice as bad and twice as unnecessary on a day like this.

Max forced himself to stop thinking about it. All he knew was that if one of those assholes from The Tribe found him out tonight, there would be a very intricate mess. How would he explain himself?

The Tribe thought that the bus was a clever tool being used by a competing cartel, but Max knew otherwise. Max knew what was really going on with that bus, but he could never tell anyone. He had his own demons to keep at bay and he could not do away with them until he knew everything about the bus, its occupants, and the reasons behind their actions.

But to Max’s knowledge, The Tribe and a few outside people were the only ones who knew about the bus and its peculiar and seemingly randomly timed routes. The idea that they were a competing drug circuit was a simple stupid assumption that had misled the Tribe. For all Max cared, they could go on thinking that one of their competitors was running drugs on the bus. It was an excellent cover story for what was really happening.

That false assumption had given him plenty of time to hunt them down and study them. It had given him this chance, this very night, to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

But what if The Tribe found out that he knew about the bus? Then he’d have to either go along with their fabricated drug-running story or tell them what was really going on. If this were to happen, he’d basically be putting the entire police department on the chopping block. And if he did that, he would be admitting that he had knowledge of kidnappings and murders over the last two and half years and had told no one. He’d also be getting the Shinoe police is one huge heap of trouble because they knew what really occurred on that bus, too. They knew what Max knew.

But they didn’t know that Max was tied to that bus and its passengers in a way that they would never understand.

Max checked the lay of the land once more with his binoculars and swerved slightly to the left to avoid a boulder the size of a medicine ball. Through the binoculars, he could see that he was getting a little too close to the bus, so he let off of the gas a bit and slowed the bike considerably.

He wondered what the deal was with the man that they had pulled off of the bus after the beheadings. He also wondered what they did with the bodies after every one of their barbaric beheading sessions. He was pretty sure that he knew; he had heard rumors, but he wasn’t gullible enough to believe them.

Perhaps more importantly, he wondered what it was inside of him that justified keeping his knowledge of the bus and the people on it a secret. True, the entire police department was in on it, too. But surely Max could take the matter in secret to the FBI. Still, the reasons he had for hiding what he knew would be justifiable to almost anyone. But being able to watch this demented group do what they did was unnerving. At times, it made Max wonder if there was truly something wrong with him.

But he had his reasons.

And that was more than enough for him to be out here tonight, chasing after a bus that no one knew about, following it to an unknown destination. His hope was that when he arrived there, he would find some answers and a way to close the door on a very dark chapter of his life.

Chapter 9 (part 1)

2008-10-21T05:51:00.001-07:00

Max Young was lying on the desert floor with a pair of night-vision binoculars cupped in his hands. He held the binoculars to his face and lifted his upper body slightly by digging his elbows into the dirt. He gazed into the lenses and let his eyes become adjusted to the bright lime green images the night-vision showed him.

He watched for five minutes as the bizarre events unfolded. He saw the men in blindfolds crouch on the ground and then watched as they were beheaded without mercy. This was nothing new to Max; he had seen the entire act carried out four times before tonight.

He knew the routines of these people. After the beheadings, two vans would come from somewhere else out in the desert and take the bodies away. Then the others would pile back up onto the bus, drive further into the desert and eventually cut the headlights off.

It was at this point that Max had always lost them. But tonight was different. First of all, he had purchased the night-vision binoculars from a highly illegal internet site. It had been a risky venture mainly because he was a member of law enforcement. But if he was able to track these lunatics down, he wouldn’t care if he lost his job.

Hell, he wouldn’t even care if he did jail time for it. He had his own reasons for taking such a risk. These were the same reasons that had essentially placed him on the Shinoe police department in the first place.

Another change in the group’s activity tonight was the fact that after the beheadings, something new had taken place. Whatever it had been, Max could tell by their actions that it was being improvised and had not been expected. Max watched as several members of the group boarded the bus while the remainder of them stayed outside. Moments later they had come off of the bus, carrying a struggling man overhead. This man was then thrown to the ground and whacked across the head. The fact that this man was not beheaded was puzzling to Max because the maniacs on the bus were usually very ritualistic in their killings.

Why had things changed tonight? he wondered.

Max continued to watch as two vans with their headlights turned off drove up from the west. Two men got out of each van and then the beheaded bodies were loaded into the back of one of the vans. With the bodies loaded, this van headed back the way it had come while the other one stayed behind. There was a brief discussion between the leader and a few of the other members. They stood around the fallen man that had been pulled from the bus, as if discussing what the unfortunate fellow’s fate would be.

In the end, they had placed this man in the back of the second van. Max was a good two hundred yards away from the area, so he could not tell if the man was dead or not. He assumed that he was still alive because if the maniacs had have wanted him dead, they would have probably swiped his head off, too.

Max remained still and quiet on the desert floor, making sure not to move at all until the killers had boarded the bus again. As had been the case on the other nights Max had spied on them, the leader that carried the axes got into the remaining van rather than the bus. Max had no idea why things were carried out in such a manner, but it was exactly how they had always done it.

As the killers finished up things, Max found himself wrestling with guilt. He had watched this twice times—three times including tonight—and, as a result of his private investigation, at least fifteen people had been beheaded. But Max knew that if he sprung out at them before he knew their exact intensions, the last two years of his life would be wasted.

Maybe tonight, he’d finally be able to find them. Something in the air felt different tonight, something he couldn’t place. Maybe the cult’s ritualistic killings came to an end tonight.
Tonight, maybe Max would get his revenge.

He remained on the ground until he saw the bus’s lights came on. Once Max could tell that the bus was in motion, he got to his feet. He studied the bus for a while longer through the binoculars, making sure he knew which direction it was headed. When he had a general idea of its course, he removed the binoculars from his eyes and began to run in the opposite direction.

About twenty yards behind him, he had parked a dirt bike. It was a sleek black color that was just about impossible to see in the dead of the night. He had purchased it a week ago from a dealership that had customized the bike so that it was exceptionally quiet. The muffler subdued almost all sounds from the exhaust and the engine purred like a kitten. It had gotten him out here unseen and unheard so far, but the next stage of his pursuit would be the toughest.

He adjusted the gun holster that he wore on his hip so that it would be comfortable while he rode. Comfort would be key in the following pursuit; he wouldn’t be able to use his headlight because it increased his chances of being spotted by a ridiculous measure. Instead, he’d have to creep far behind the bus, using the night-vision binoculars very frequently. Not only did he have to keep up with the bus, but he also had to keep an eye out for any rocks, shallow ravines or other obstructions in his path.

Taking a deep breath, Max cranked the dirt bike to life. He took a final quick glance with the binoculars, then kicked the bike into gear and followed after the bus. He’d been after that bus for a damned long time now and by God, tonight he would find out where these lunatics were hiding out.

Chapter 8 (part 3)

2008-10-14T05:58:00.002-07:00

The bathroom was terribly hot and the smell of piss was almost sickening. But Evan looked past those things right away, sure that within a matter of seconds, the five men on the outside would start hammering away on the door and eventually break it down. He could imagine the tire iron beating dents into the door but the scarier thought was the blade of the skinny man’s axe splitting through the door as if swung by Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

The small square that served as the restroom was no more than six feet wide and Evan suddenly felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He looked around the small space as he heard the footfalls of the passengers getting closer. A small mirror hanging over an even smaller sink and the silver-colored toilet were the only features in the room. The toilet lid was up and the hole in the center of its base looked impossibly black.

As disgusting as he knew it was, he could not take his eyes away from the toilet. The hole where countless passengers had sat to take care of business seemed like a desolate black hole that had floated down from the depths of space, landing here next to him, in this charter bus bathroom with its sticky floors and reeking of piss, with death marching towards him on the other side of the door.

The hammering on the door began and at first the attacks seemed much louder than they actually were. Each strike absorbed into the small confines of the restroom and seemed to resonate in Evan’s head. He flinched back against the wall and jostled the entire bathroom a bit. He once again looked to the toilet, not sure why his eyes kept returning to it.

This time when he looked at it, something was different. There was something inside of it, moving around.

As Evan watched in disgust, something splashed from within the murky water. Following the splash there was a smell that was mostly pure sewage. There was another putrid smell as well but Evan could not place it, nor did he want to.

His nostrils seemed to singe and he felt his stomach lurch. He gagged and did everything he could not to vomit. Inside the toilet, the unseen thing splashed again.

From outside, something hit the door hard and for a terrifying moment, Evan was sure that the force of it would cause the bus to fall over onto its side. The door was dented and it buckled in its frame with the force of the strike. There was a heavy creaking sound as one of the hinges gave way. Evan let out a weak scream, one that he was ashamed of, one that he didn’t want the maniacs outside to hear, but one that he could not contain.

To his left, the water in the toilet continued to splash. Evan glanced over and for a moment the lunatic part of his mind crept into play and instantly thought of Mr. Hanky, the talking turd from South Park.

But Evan clearly saw something come out of the water and slap the side of toilet’s rim. It was slick and light green in color, covered in sludge and muddy grime. Evan blinked against what he saw but there was no denying that it was an appendage of some sort, an appendage with horrid speed and fluid movements.

As he continued to watch, two more of these things came out of the toilet, one of them clinging tightly to the rim. There were no fingers, nothing to grip with, but it wrapped itself around the edge of the toilet with an eerie speed and strength. Evan was sure that all of these tentacle-like appendages were from the same source rather than individual creatures. He tried to imagine the torso and head of such a creature but could not wrap his mind around it.

Suddenly, he found himself wanting to tear the door off and let the passengers have him. He began to whimper and somewhere in his head, he could feel something like a cold drop of water sliding around. He wondered if this was the feeling of having his sanity slip away.

Another tremendous thud sounded out in the bus as something or someone else banged at the door. This time it was a rather metallic sound and Evan once again remembered the man with the tire iron loading up onto the bus as he had retreated into the bathroom.

The door gave a few inches and Evan could now see through the widening crack between the door and its frame. The five people that had originally come into the bus for him had been joined by others. Their eyes looked cold, and insane; the totally blank slates of their faces only added to this appearance.

A louder splashing sound from the toilet drew his attention away from this crowd. This time when he looked over, he saw the slight spherical top of a shiny dome breaking the water. It was dented and had small pucker marks on it, covered in the same slimy residue that clung to the tentacles. As the form broke the water, it made a hideous gurgling sound.

Another thud came from outside. This one freed the door from the frame and there was a moment where Evan felt relieved. He closed his eyes and sank against the bathroom wall, waiting for the coming violence. He waited to see what would take him first: the rough onslaught of human hands or the gruesome caress of that thing in the toilet. As he sank to the floor, he could still hear it splashing around and gurgling.

A pair of human hands fell on his shoulder and jerked him out of the bathroom. Ignoring his better judgment, Evan opened his eyes as he was thrown over a large man’s shoulder as if he weighed no more than a pillow. He didn’t bother fighting. At that moment, it didn’t even seem worth it.

He looked back into the restroom as he was carried away. The domed shape now peered over the toilet’s rim, having pulled itself up by several of the tentacle things. The dome shape was, of course, a head.

It stared out at the commotion as if eager to participate. It looked at the skirmish with five insect-like black eyes on a head that looked almost human and infantile. It cried out in a weak protest and then sank back down into the drain from which it had come.

Sorry, Evan thought mildly and from some far away place within his head. But you lose, my shit-smeared friend.

Evan wasn’t aware of too much after that. He was vaguely aware that he was being carried forward by a series of hands and arms, being carried in the air, over the heads of the passengers. He felt a slight jostling sensation as they carried him down the bus steps and then the next thing he knew, he had the wind knocked out of him as he was thrown to the hard desert ground.

Evan rolled onto his back, looking straight up into the night sky and gasping for breath. The crisp desert air was a blessing to his nose and head but the sight of the approaching group of people surrounding him sent him back into the void of unreality that he had been swimming in since witnessing that first appendage surface through the water in the toilet.

He was vaguely aware that the man with the crowbar was standing closest to him. Behind this man stood the white haired man in the army pants, still holding his axes. Far off behind them, Evan thought he could see twin sets of headlights floating out in the distance.

The man with the tire iron approached him and raised his arm. Evan watched as his arm came down, the tire iron quickly catching the glare of the bus’s headlights. The iron struck Evan squarely on the side of the head.

Evan heard the thunk of the iron against his skull and then felt the momentary rush of blood pouring from his head.Then he closed his eyes and felt nothing.

Chapter 8 (part 2)

2008-10-09T05:38:00.001-07:00

Evan watched in horror, expecting much more gruesome results than what he saw. With the axes planted squarely in each side of his neck, the victim convulsed twice and then went limp. If there was time to scream, the axe blades apparently blocked the man’s windpipe because he died without making a sound.

Even when the skinny man with white hair pulled the axes away, there really wasn’t a lot of blood.

It was watching the man drop to the ground and seeing his head roll away that almost caused Evan to scream. Seeing the act of murder in such a brutal and odd fashion had not quite pushed him to terror, but seeing a human head rolling away from its body across a barren desert and illuminated by headlights had certainly done the trick.

Evan threw a hand to his mouth and it covered the little bit of scream that his voice mustered up before he forced his throat to close.

He watched as the same act was carried out on the other three men. The method was never the same, though. The second man caught the same motions—the blades crisscrossed in the air to fall down and eventually meet one another in the center of his neck—and then fell in almost perfect alignment with the first victim. The third and fourth men were treated to simple swinging motions, as if their heads were no more than the trunks of trees. With graceful but forceful swings, the skinny man lopped their heads off cleanly, as neatly as he might cut firewood.

The fourth man bled quite a bit, and it was the sight of all of the blood that finally made Evan step back from the windshield. He watched as the skinny man walked past the recently murdered as if they weren’t even there. He approached the man with the ZZ Top beard that had come back to speak to Evan before his nap. The bearded man nodded and then turned to speak to a few of the others.

Their circle now began to break up. Some of them went to the dead, pulling gloves onto their hands as they approached the bodies. The rest of them—at least a dozen—turned towards the bus.

Inside the bus, Evan froze. He knew it wasn’t possible, but he felt like all of their eyes were on him. From where they stood, they probably couldn’t even see him. But they knew that he was there.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Evan breathed to himself.

His occupation had sent him headfirst into several situations where his survival instincts were his only way out, but never anything like this. Still, it was those experiences that helped his knees to unlock, to start to let his mind see beyond the panic and fear and into his logical, fight-or-flight rationale.

He had to run. He had no idea where they were in the desert, but it was his only way out. He started for the door but saw that he had apparently frozen longer than he thought because the horde was already at the front of the bus. If he ran for the door, they’d easily cut him off.

He was trapped.

With no other options, Evan remembered the far back row of the bus, the row where the man with the axes had sat. Evan recalled the small enclosed cubicle of a restroom that had been back there and his legs instantly began to carry him in that direction. As far as ideas went, it sucked. But he’d be damned if he’d just stand there in the aisle and let them take him without a fight.
Evan heard the first footfall on the bus steps. As if that single footfall were the sounding shot to start a race, Evan quickened his pace and bolted for the back of the bus.

He never took his eyes off of the plastic-looking door of the restroom as he made his way to the back. Without bothering to look back even once, he grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door swung open so easily that Evan almost fell backwards into the row of seats that the skinny white haired man had occupied. But his senses were at full alert and he kept his balance with ease. As he entered the restroom, he finally glanced back before shutting the door.

There were five people marching slowly down the aisle towards him. One of them had a tire iron in his grip and while the rest were unarmed, they still looked sinister, all of their faces gaunt and zombie-like.

Evan practically fell into the restroom. He slammed the door behind him and set the lock. With his back resting against the wall, he finally allowed himself to scream.

Chapter 8 (part 1)

2008-10-03T09:24:00.003-07:00

Evan was still sitting motionless in his seat when the man with the axes had made his way down the stairs and off of the bus. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides and his head felt like it would float off of his head. From outside, he could hear a hard clasping sound, followed by a few metallic clicks and clanks. This was followed by a slight scuffling noise, during which Evan could feel the bus move a bit.

He realized that what he was hearing and feeling was the luggage compartment on the side of the bus being opened and looked into. But as he pieced this together, another question came to mind: had he simply been overlooked during the unboarding process or had he been left behind on purpose?

The slight rocking of the bus continued, accompanied by a few more metallic clanging sounds and what sounded like muffled voices and grunts. Evan looked to the aisle once more and saw that it was still completely empty. He tried to slowly get to his feet but his legs were shaking and would not cooperate. He stood up anyway, bracing himself with the seat in front of him. He stepped into the aisle and walked a few steps forward.

The overhead lights were still at their brightest peak and when Evan tried to once again look out of the windows, he could see nothing more than the tint of the windows and the glare of the interior lights. As he walked, he noticed that the engine was still idling, something that he had not realized at first due to the rampaging thoughts in his head and the fact that his breath now seemed to be far too loud.

As he took another step, there was a loud metallic slamming sound from outside. The bus rocked a bit and Evan placed the noise to be the closing off the luggage compartment.

Evan froze where he was for a moment, ready to dive into the nearest row of seats when he heard the first footfalls on the entrance steps of the bus. He waited a few moments but the sound never came. Feeling somewhat sure that it was safe to do so, Evan headed forward again. He looked to the front of the bus and saw that the driver had also stepped off. Not only that, but he could tell by the dull glow in the front windshield that the bus’s headlights were still on.

Keeping his eyes on the shine of the headlights through the windshield, Evan walked further down the aisle. He listened closely for any kind of voices from outside but heard nothing.

When he reached the front of the bus, he was a bit tentative. The door stood open and when he peeked over the small enclosure that separated the steps from the bus, the opened door showed only a small area of hardpan dirt. He looked from this to the windshield. He was close enough so that he could now make out what lay in front of the bus and although he wanted to look outside, another part of him was afraid to do so. But, as it always was in Evan’s case, his curiosity was the stronger part of him and he found himself at the windshield, looking out.

The tint of the windshield was obviously not as dark as the passenger windows. This, accompanied by the spotlight that the headlights cast, gave Evan a clear view of his surroundings. He saw that one of his theories had been correct, but this did not ease his mind at all.

At some point during his sleep, the bus had turned off of the main road and had trekked back into the desert. To all sides, as far as the headlights cut through the night, there were no roads to be seen. All there was to see was the large group of people that stood about twenty feet in front of the bus.

The group consisted of all twenty-four heads Evan had counted earlier. In the midst of the group, Evan easily spotted the obese man. He was waddling around as if drunk, with no particular destination in mind, weaving in and out of the people that were around him. Actually, they were all weaving around one another, huddled together as if coming up with a fourth quarter play that would win the game. They stood in a tight group and as Evan spied on them from the bus, he also spotted the biker type with the long grey beard. He could also see the driver among them. He looked closely for the Christopher Lloyd zombie but saw him nowhere.

Seconds later, he discovered why he had been hard to locate.

Eventually, the crowd separated a bit and within the center of the group stood the frail man with the axes.

The crowd began to distance themselves from one another, walking backwards but looking forward the entire time. As they walked away from one another, Evan noticed that they were spreading out into a circle. He watched with a knowing fear in his guts, feeling as if he were about to watch some demented marching band or flag core do a grotesque march.

As they effortlessly walked backwards and made their circle, Evan’s eyes went back to the zombie-like man with white hair. From this distance and through the windshield, his axes looked like extensions of his arms. He still stood in the middle of the circle, looking towards the sky. As he looked upwards, he carried the axes in that direction, holding them up over his head and making a perfect X with them in the air.

Sitting on the ground around him were four human figures, wrapped in what looked to be torn burlap sacks. The sacks started at their necks and covered their bodies to the knees. Their heads were exposed but they had all been gagged and blindfolded. Their arms were tied behind their backs and their legs were bound with thick strands of rope.

They fought helplessly but were unable to move. Evan watched as one—a bald man with a large cut on his head—fought to the point of toppling over, his face landing hard in the dirt.

Evan was pretty sure that these people were what had been taken out of the luggage compartment while he had still cowered in the bus. As he watched all of this unfold, he was suddenly very sure of what was about to happen, yet he could not tear his eyes away from it. Set in the exact center of the headlights’ glare, the whole act seemed like a play acted out by drugged performers.

The shirtless man with the axes looked down from the sky. He said something that Evan could not quite hear clearly from the bus. Whatever it was that he said caused a man to step out of the crowd of twenty-three people. This man was dressed in coveralls and boots, and he carried a large knife in his right hand.

He slowly approached one of the bound figures, walking directly in front of them so that he was almost exactly face to face with the shirtless man with the axes. The man in the overalls used his knife to make a very quick and shallow cut along the victim’s forehead. He said something and then advanced to the next figure where he performed the same act.

He placed this incision on all four of the bound people’s heads. From what Evan could tell, all of the bound were males. By the time the cuts had been made to their heads, their weak fighting and protests had stopped, as if they knew that it was useless. The fourth cut to be made was on the head of the bald man that had toppled over and when he was set back up by the man in coveralls, his fighting spirit was apparently drained.

The man in the coveralls said something else which also went unheard by Evan. He could see their mouths move, but could not hear anything clearly. He watched as this man backed away from the bound victims, reclaiming his place in the circular form the group had made.

Three second passed and then the skinny man with the axes spoke again. Whatever he said drew a unanimous reply from those around him. The reply was so loud and in unison that Evan could actually hear it, although it was apparently a foreign language. To Evan, it sounded like “Bainada.”

With that reply, the skinny man turned slightly to his right. Without any warning and with a speed that Evan’s eyes almost couldn’t keep up with, he brought both axes down in arched, swooping motions. Both blades met one another and would have made a nice clanging noise if they had not been slowed by the thickness of the neck into which they were driven...

Chapter 7 (part 2)

2008-09-25T13:42:00.001-07:00

Evan was aware that the bus had stopped even before he heard the light squeak of brakes. The deceleration of the bus’s speed woke him but he didn’t open his eyes right away. He listened all around him, hearing the light shuffle of people moving about, preparing to get off of the bus. He imagined the passenger with the fat leg standing up and falling straight through the floor. Smirking at this thought, Evan opened his eyes, stretched his neck a bit and then looked at his watch, which read 1:22.

He looked out of the window to his right, trying to see outside. But the windows were tinted a bit too strongly and the night was far too dark to see anything. Evan cocked his head to the side, a bit puzzled by this. If it were truly that dark outside, wouldn’t any kind of light from outside easily show up? Where were the lights of the bus stop, the glow of the stop’s surrounding security lights, the glow of nearby streetlights?

Evan thought back to when he had been walking down the road and spotting the bus’s headlights for the first time. It had appeared as if the bus had been coming directly from the heart of the desert. Perhaps that’s where they had stopped: somewhere in the middle of the desert.

But that didn’t make any sense.

Unless Sam’s story was true.

Yet, that didn’t make any sense either. This bus was without a doubt a normal charter bus. The passengers seemed to be normal passengers and the driver seemed to be an every day bus driver, his kindness and smile completely fake.

Evan didn’t want to stand up. This was far too weird and the world suddenly made no sense at all. But he knew that if he waited for everyone to get off ahead of him, he’d be the last one out and that would mean he’d be the last to know where they were. He mentally kicked himself in the ass for not asking the driver where they were headed. At that time though, he had been afraid to ask too many questions, sure that Sam’s story had contained a great deal of truth.

Evan remained seated, not sure what to do. He glanced ahead, seeing that everyone was getting up from their seats and heading for the front of the bus. Evan watched as the fat person stood up. He now got a better look at the person and saw that it was a man, wearing a stretched out tank top and that too-revealing pair of shorts. Evan saw that his guess of three hundred pounds had been extremely generous. This man was morbidly obese and Evan didn’t doubt that the man weighed a good five hundred pounds. How he could fit in one of the bus seats and waddle down the aisle without much trouble was beyond Evan. His legs jiggled when he walked and the folds of fat and the criss-crossing of varicose veins looked almost like a 3-D road map.

As he watched the obese man manage to squeeze his way down the aisle, Evan heard a shuffling sound from behind him. He turned and saw the man in the far rear row, sitting by himself. He had been sleeping when Evan had first seen him but he was now awake and gathering his things.

The man was frail and thin and was not wearing a shirt. His pants looked to be faded army fatigues with holes torn in both knees. His hair was completely white and disheveled with a large bald spot in the middle of his head but he did not look old. Evan was reminded of Christopher Lloyd’s character “Doc” from the Back to the Future movies. But this man’s face seemed sunken in, his eyes like hollows and his cheeks pulled tight so that the sharp outlines of his jaw were clearly visible.

Evan turned away as the man walked around the seats and started down the aisle. He felt certain that if he made eye contact with this man, he’d probably soil himself. He began to panic, his heart hammering and his eyes fixed firmly on the back of the seat in front of him. He didn’t see how he had overlooked such appearances when he had loaded onto the bus. The lights had been dimmed and the dark desert night outside had done little to help. But now, with the bus stopped and the front door open, the overhead lights were on at full force and Evan felt like he had stepped into another world.

When the frail man with white hair passed him, Evan cringed. He feared that the man would stop and say something to him, like the biker with the gross beard had done earlier. But this man said nothing, did not even look in Evan’s direction. He only stared blankly ahead and walked slowly, falling in behind the other passengers.

Evan forced himself to look out from behind the seat and to the row of marching passengers. He didn’t see much, but what he did see nearly sent him over the edge.

What he saw was the back of the skinny man with the faded camouflage pants. Like the rest of the passengers, this man didn’t have any luggage; he had no suitcases, no bags, no books, nothing.

Instead, he held an axe in each hand, the blades hanging limply by the floor and glimmering sickly in the dull glare of the overhead lights.

Chapter 7 (part 1)

2008-09-23T05:20:00.002-07:00

Evan had taken two of the three stairs to get aboard the bus when the driver pushed the handle in and closed the door behind him. The driver seemed harmless enough and Evan could not find anything particularly odd about the man at first glance. The driver smiled at Evan as he got on but he did not put the bus into Drive yet. Instead, he looked Evan up and down with that smile still on his face.

“What seems to be your trouble?” the driver asked.

Evan started talking before any rational thoughts came. He spun the most unbelievable story he could think of that could be almost believable but not ridiculous enough to sound crazy.

“These three guys jumped me a ways back,” Evan said. “They took my car and most of my money. They beat me up pretty bad. That was sometime just around seven, I think. I came to on the side of the road about an hour and a half ago. I don’t really know where I am.”

“Damn,” the driver said. “That’s tough. Do you have any idea where you need to be going?”

“I’m not really sure,” Evan said. “I guess I could just get off at the next stop and use a phone or something.”

“Sounds like a plan,” the driver said, shifting the bus into drive. “Go ahead and have yourself a seat.”

Evan nodded and climbed the last step thinking it odd that, this apparently being a charter bus of some kind, he had not had to discuss any sort of payment with the driver. He passed the driver and turned to his left, looking down the center aisle. There were a good number of people on the dimly lit bus, but it wasn’t crowded by any means. He walked fairly quickly to the back, doing his best to take a speedy head count as he did so. When he found an empty seat at the back, he had counted twenty-three people in all, the driver included.

Once he was in his seat, Evan took a moment to relax, arching his back and neck against the seat’s cushions. He rolled his head on his neck, the softness of the cushion at his neck and back feeling incredibly good.

He then looked to the row of seats beside him and saw that they were empty. Behind this row there was a final long row that stretched the length of the bus, book-ended by the right side of the bus and the restroom in the far left corner. There was one man sitting back there, hunched over and asleep in the shadows. Evan added this man to his head count, making the number twenty-four.

Evan closed his eyes and tried to think as quickly as he could. The driver certainly didn’t seem as if he was up to any foul play and so far, the bus seemed to be a typical every day, normal bus. It was well kept and smelled highly of a sweet smelling disinfectant cleaner. From somewhere up front, he caught a whiff of a man’s cologne and heard someone snoring lightly.

Evan found himself wishing that he had have paid more attention to the passengers as he took his head count. Maybe by taking in their appearances he could have gotten a better feel for what kinds of people were riding this supposedly suspicious bus. Call it stereotyping or not, but it was sometimes very easy to tell if someone was a drug user. The dealers were a little harder to pick out, but the users were usually no problem. And if you were really good, you could even go so far as to pick out their drug of choice.

Before he did any kind of investigating, Evan kept his eyes closed and sighed, taking deep breaths and steadying his shaken nerves. Although he tried to clear his mind and make sense of everything, his thoughts kept turning to Shinoe and the peculiar events of the day: the Egg and Spit debate from the two old men in front of the diner, Sam breaking into his motel room, the hit and run, and then Officer Max Young’s accounts of the cop-on-cop shooting. For such a small town, there was certainly a lot of shit to be stirred around.

Evan was broken from his thoughts by light footfalls beside him. He opened his eyes, turned his head and watched as a gruff looking biker type took the empty seat directly across the aisle from him. The bus had not stopped, meaning that this man had moved from his seat with specific intentions of taking the empty spot next to Evan.

“Having a rough night, I hear?” the biker type said. He wore a bandana around his presumably shaved head and his long beard looked as if it had not been touched in months…by soap, a comb or a razor.

Evan nodded and said, “Yeah, man.”

“Those kinds of people piss me off,” the stranger said. The large growth of hair on this man’s chin was one of those miniature ZZ Top rip-offs. He pulled at it gently as he spoke. “A bunch of rowdy assholes that pick one single person to attack. Makes me sick, you know?”

It took Evan a while to understand that this man had probably somehow overheard the story that he had given the driver. “Yeah,” Evan agreed. “I’m just happy I came out of it okay.”

“I’ll say,” the stranger said. “There doesn’t seem to be a bruise or scrape on you. I’d say you got out really lucky.”

There wasn’t necessarily an accusatory tone to the man’s voice, but Evan could see it in his face. This man was not buying Evan’s story. He wasn’t buying it at all and there was apparently something about Evan that this man did not like. Evan watched the man tug at his once-brown-now-grey beard, noticing how with each tug, the skin on the man’s chin stretched out, creating on odd leathery effect.

“Very lucky,” Evan agreed. He tried not to be intimidated by the man’s frigid gaze, but it was difficult.

“Well,” the man said, standing up, “thank God for small favors, right?”

Evan nodded, more than anxious for the man to walk back to his own seat and tug on his cheesy old beard from there. The man turned and walked away, but slowly, as if he didn’t want to take his eyes off of Evan just yet.

With the man gone, Evan rolled his eyes and sighed. Letting a few seconds pass, Evan peeked around the side of the seat in front of him, trying to get a look at some of the passengers with aisle seats. But all that he could see was a woman a few rows ahead with her head resting in her hand, her elbow propped against the armrest. The weak light inside the bus made it hard to see her clearly, but from her rigid posture, Evan took her to be an older woman.

A few rows ahead of her, a little over halfway towards the front of the bus, Evan saw a mammoth looking leg sticking slightly into the aisle. Evan turned his head slightly to the left, making sure that he was seeing it right and that the darkness of the bus wasn’t playing tricks with his eyes. He winced when he realized that he was seeing it right. The owner of the leg was wearing a pair of unfortunate shorts that stopped far too high above the knee, revealing a horribly plump leg that looked to Evan like a large Christmas ham. The owner of the leg had to weigh at least three hundred pounds, and that was being generous.

Other than these two, Evan could see no one. He supposed that the only way to discover any sort of foul play was to pay more attention when the bus came to its next stop. But the further the bus drove ahead, the more confident Evan became that he had been duped by Sam and his friend. As far as Evan could tell, he was on a plain old charter bus with a very interesting and annoying group of people.

He relaxed his head again and closed his eyes. He was suddenly exhausted and felt as if he had been thrown against a brick wall about a thousand times. When he felt sleep tugging at his senses, he didn’t fight it. He let his questions about the day in Shinoe and the crazy story Sam had told him about this bus slip away. He fell asleep fairly easy and slept soundly until the bus came to a stop.

Chapter 6 (part 2)

2008-09-16T05:50:00.001-07:00

He stretched his back out, flexed his legs a bit and then started walking again. He walked and he thought of the role that irony played in the life of every human being on the planet. He thought of how he had decided less than a month ago that he was going to wash his hands of his ill-chosen career path. He wanted to get away from all of it, wanted to maybe go to school for a few years and seek something out in communications. But he had also decided that he’d wait until he earned another twenty grand or so, just to have a nice little cushion when he decided to leave it all behind.

Shinoe would have been the first of two jobs that would have eventually gotten him the money but from the looks of it, this might be the last job he ever took…if he got out of it alive. The twenty grand be damned; after a day like this one, who needed any more signs? A day like this one made him wonder if his mother had been right all along. According to her, by making a living off of drugs and the assholes that dealt and shipped them, he was going down a very dangerous and uncertain path.

Well, maybe not a path. Maybe a lonely desert road in the middle of the night.
Evan’s watch read 12:32 when he saw the next set of headlights. He didn’t bother getting excited because the more he thought about Sam’s story, the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed. He was out here walking and being spied on just so they could fuck with him. It was that simple. And when he got back to Shinoe, they’d probably kill him.

Only, he didn’t think that would happen either. Thinking back on it, he thought of how Sam and his buddy had abducted him. They’d done it in the middle of a parking lot where any snooping passerby had the chance of seeing them. Also, now that Evan had a clear head to think with and didn’t have a gun to the back of his head (and the effect the five drinks had on him had split the instant he had felt that gun at his head), he also realized that they had not patted him down for a weapon or a cell phone. They were apparently careless criminals, leading Evan to believe that they really had no idea what they were doing.

But his only weapon was in his car back in Shinoe and his cell phone was lying in tiny shattered bits back at the motel room. As he watched the approaching headlights get closer, he cursed himself silently at the memory of losing his temper and throwing the phone.

Evan strained his eyes, staring ahead at the headlights. They were approaching at an odd angle, as if from the right rather than straight ahead. If Evan’s memory served correct, there was only one turn between the place he currently stood and Shinoe. And that road was at least ten miles away. There was no way that he was seeing headlights from such a distance, no matter how clean, clear and unobstructed his view was.

Whatever this vehicle was, it was relatively close to him and it appeared to be coming through the desert.

Evan slowed his walk a bit. He was tempted to stop but then he recalled the warning shot that had been fired when he had sat down earlier. So he walked at a moderately slow pace and watched the lights get closer at an angle.

A few moments later, he could make out the sounds of an engine. By studying the lights, Evan started to second-guess his dismissal of Sam’s story. From what he could tell, those lights could very well belong to a bus. They were sitting up too high to be a car or a normal sized truck. And the engine sounded a bit too hushed to be any kind of off-road vehicle. If it was one of those jacked up trucks that some people liked to cruise around deserts and ravines in, the engine would have been louder than the one currently approaching him.

Evan watched as the lights turned slightly towards him and straightened. They were now headed directly for him, apparently out of the desert and now on the main road. If this was Sam’s bus, Evan wondered what would have happened if it had have kept on through the desert and not come out onto the road until it was at some point miles behind Evan’s back. If there truly was a drug-trafficking bus and Evan missed it, what would Sam and his friend do to him when he returned to Shinoe?

He didn’t let that thought bother him for long. The headlights were now no more than one hundred yards away and as each second passed, Evan became more certain that it was a bus.
This realization brought on a whole new batch of thoughts. Firstly, who was to say that the driver would let him on? Secondly, if he did manage to get on, Evan felt confident that the drug dealers would not allow him to ride with them all the way to the drop point. The third and perhaps worst scenario Evan imagined was that when the driver saw someone trying to flag the bus down, they’d panic and haul ass without so much as stopping, thinking that someone was on to them and wanting to get away as quickly as possible.

The lights were closing in and Evan could now see that it was indeed a bus. It was a charter bus and looked like a Greyhound or one of the Greyhound rip offs. Without thinking about what he was doing, Evan ran into the middle of the road. He jumped up and down, waving his arms and shouting.

“Hey!” Evan screamed. “Hey! Help me! I need some help!”

As he screamed this, another scenario played itself out in his mind. What if he were to get on and clue the traffickers in on Sam and the people he worked for? If Evan let them know that another chain of drug runners was on to their scam, they’d surely protect him from Sam and his higher-ups, wouldn’t they?

Sam continued to jump and flail his arms about. He was nervous and slightly amused that the story was looking to be true. But more than anything, he was uneasy about the uncertainty of what was going to happen next. He could imagine the driver slamming on the gas and running him down without a second thought.

But as soon as that thought came, the bus began to slow down. The lights were terribly bright and Evan narrowed his eyes against their glare. He watched through the glare as the bus crept to a stop, the squeaking of its brakes a welcome sound against the dead silence of the desert night.

There was a slight clicking sound followed by a faint whoosh as the driver opened the door.
“Everything okay down there?” the driver yelled from inside the bus.

“I uh, I need some help,” Evan said, cautiously walking around the front of the bus and closer to the opened door.

“Well climb aboard,” the driver said rather cheerfully as Evan stepped into sight.

Confused, Evan slowly walked towards the door. He looked up at the smiling driver with an uncertain expression. Then, knowing that he really didn’t have much of a choice, he stepped onto the bus.

Chapter 6 (part 1)

2008-09-04T06:06:00.002-07:00

He thought about the threats that Sam and his friend had made. What were the chances that Sam and his friend had other members of their tribe riding up and down the road to spy on him? He supposed it was likely; if they knew enough to know about this elusive drug-trafficking bus, then they probably had the means to keep an eye on him.

Evan walked on, casting his eyes to the endless stretch of blankness that lay to both sides of the highway. Even the road itself seemed to be disintegrating, the black pavement crumbling away into the abyss that taunted him from both sides.

Evan walked to the center of the road, balancing himself on the broken yellow lines that ran down its surface. They seemed unnaturally bright in the middle of the night but they somehow served to anchor him to what was real. He was sure that if someone spent enough time alone staring out into the featureless dark of the desert night, they might start to slip a bit in the head, especially if they were in a similar situation as the one he currently found himself in the middle of.

A drug trafficking bus! The thought of such a thing slipping under the noses of the police or even the FBI seemed illogical to Evan. Part of him wondered if this wasn’t just Sam’s idea of a prank to play on the delivery boy of the man who had passed off phony money on his people. But then again, there was another part of Evan that thought the idea was genius. He ran a few scenarios through his head, trying to imagine how such a ploy would work, but could never come up with a surefire one.

Sometime shortly after eleven thirty, Evan saw a faint glimmer of light ahead of him. He continued walking towards it, wondering if this could be the bus already. The lights got closer and closer, and soon Evan could tell by simply looking at the headlights that the approaching vehicle was most certainly not a bus. Seconds later, he was proven correct when a beat up SUV went speeding by, probably coming from Shinoe.

Or, as Sam had promised, these could have been someone from Sam’s group that had been sent to spy on him.

Evan turned and watched the SUV’s lights grow smaller in the distance, its tail lights like retreating comets. He then turned around and started walking again. He looked up to the moon which was just barely a quarter full. It did little to illuminate the night and the only advantage Evan had was the fact that his eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark.

When he looked at his watch again, it was 12:06. His feet were killing him again, the pains of his walk to the bar having not yet diminished, and he wondered if he had ever walked so much in one day. Thinking of the bar and a cold beer made his mouth water and he could not remember ever wanting a drink so badly in his life.

Evan sighed and looked all around, still seeing nothing but darkness and the broken yellow lines in the center of the road. He felt exhausted and, in some very intangible way, lost.

“Screw it,” Evan said. He stopped walking and hunkered down on the side of the road. He sat about two feet away from the pavement, his butt resting in the hard packed dirt alongside the highway, allowing his legs to stretch out.

He sat that way for thirty seconds or so and then, from somewhere in the emptiness of the desert night around him, he heard the sound of an engine. It came from his right and it seemed to be pretty far away. Still, it took Evan about five seconds to realize that the engine was really of no concern to him. He wouldn’t be alarmed until he could see actual headlights.

Still, the thought of being caught by Sam and his partner had him paranoid. Who was to say that there weren’t cars parked out in the desert with some of Sam’s men behind the wheel? And what if they had binoculars or night vision equipment to spy on him?...

Bullshit, Evan thought. What sort of an Indian tribe has night vision equipment?

Despite this reasoning, Evan was still growing increasingly nervous. He slowly got to his feet and looked around again, searching for any form of light or signs of movement. But, as had been the case for the last hour or so, there was none.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Evan said loudly, but not quite at scream pitch. He enthusiastically gave the surrounding night the middle finger as he continued to scan the dark horizon.

Chapter 5

2008-08-27T06:26:00.003-07:00

Sam and his henchman were driving a red van with Conner’s Fresh Produce painted on the side. Sam walked closely behind Evan, the gun barrel aimed squarely at his back. The streets of Shinoe were virtually dead and even if anyone happened to pass by, the parking lot was so badly lit that a passerby would not have seen the events unless they had been specifically looking out for them. The van was parked at the far edge of the lot, cloaked almost completely in darkness and shadows.

“Inside,” Sam said.

“Conner’s Fresh Produce,” Sam said. “Nice cover.”

“In!”

Evan opened the sliding door on the side of the van and stepped inside. He was ordered to sit in the front seat while Sam took the wheel and the second attacker sat directly behind him. Sam handed his friend the gun as he started the van. From behind, Sam’s friend leveled the gun at Evan’s head as Sam pulled out onto the road.

“We’re giving you a chance,” Sam said. “We’re giving you a chance to come out of this smelling like roses.”

“How’s that?”

"We’re in the same boat,” Sam said. “We are both drug runners. So is my friend, sitting right behind you. I don’t know your bosses or who you work for, but if they are anything like the people I work for, your job is probably shit. And if you were to tell them that you lost the drugs that their fake money paid for, they’d probably kill you. Does that sound right?”

“It had crossed my mind,” Evan admitted.

“Well, thanks to your fake money, I may be killed,” Sam explained. “I have a considerably huge debt to pay off and your money was supposed to pay it. It was to be paid by tomorrow morning and now that is obviously not going to happen. Not unless you can get me two hundred thousand dollars by tomorrow morning.”

“That’s impossible.” It was a large figure and Evan wondered how Sam had racked up such an enormous debt.

“That’s why you’re going to do me a favor,” Sam said simply.

“What favor?”

Sam had pulled onto a road that Evan was fairly familiar with. It would carry them into the desert, far away from everything living and into the absolute middle of nowhere.

“You’re going to be my spy,” Sam said. It was not a question, nor a suggestion. It was a demand.

“I don’t think I’m really qualified for that,” Evan said. “I didn’t even realize you had slashed my tires until about four hours after you had done it, so I think spy work is a little over my head.”

Sam’s friend tapped the gun barrel against Evan’s head. “No jokes,” he said simply. Evan got the impression that this man didn’t speak very often. He bit his lip to refrain for making any further wisecracks.

“A spy for what?” he asked, ignoring the man sitting behind him and exchanging glances between Sam and the road that unwound ahead of them.

“There’s a bus that runs down this road every so often,” Sam explained. “Usually it’s about two times a month, sometimes three, sometimes only one. This bus…somehow it’s like a ghost. There are stories about it driving down the road but I have never spoken to anyone that has been on it.”

“Like a Greyhound bus?” Evan asked.

“I think so. But rumor has it that a huge drug cartel out of Mexico is using it to deliver drugs back and forth from Mexico to California.”

“That sounds far fetched,” Evan said, baffled at the absurdity of the concept. “Where did that rumor come from?”

“It’s sort of obvious, really,” Sam said, as if Evan had asked an incredibly stupid question. “It’s a bus that runs a route that is not on any local bus schedules and, by all accounts, never stops at any regular bus stops. There aren’t but so many things it could be doing out so late, you know? And I figure that if I can let my debtors in on a tip like this—that there is some secret drug train running under everyone’s noses and stealing their business—then maybe they’ll take it easy on me.”

It was hard for Evan to hide that the idea impressed him. Still, the story about the bus seemed nonsensical to him. “Wouldn’t something like this be reported to the police or something?” he asked.

“I thought so, too,” Sam answered. “But apparently there have been no complaints about missed stops or foul play. And to tell you the truth, I really don’t even know if anyone other than drug dealers and a few of the folk in my tribe know about it.”

Evan was so confused by the story that he had almost forgotten about the gun pointed at his head. “How would people in your tribe know about it?”

“I think you know as well as I do how much peyote and mushrooms my people sell to you stupid white people. Therefore, if you want to get technical, my entire tribe is really nothing more than a drug warehouse.”

“That’s true,” Evan said. Then, once again unable to stop his sarcastic tongue, he added, “It’s nice to see someone take pride in their heritage, but where do I fit in?”

“The bus is running tonight. We’ve had a few people keeping their eyes out for it for the last two months, set up along the routes that it’s been said to follow. I got a call less than an hour ago from one of my guys out in Arizona. It should be through here in about an hour and a half. And when it comes through, you’re getting on it.”

“You think a bus running drugs is going to pick up a hitch hiker?” Evan asked. This notion seemed dumber that the scenario of a secret drug-running bus.

“Well, that’s where it’s all on you,” Sam said, pulling the van over onto the side of the road. Evan had almost completely lost track of where they were, but if he had to guess, he would say they were probably a good twenty miles outside of Shinoe.

“All on me?” Evan said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sam parked the van on the bare and dusty side of the road and turned to Evan. “It means that when you see that bus coming, you do anything you can to get on it. I don’t care what you do, but you have to stop it and convince them to let you on. So when you get out of this van, keep walking to the south to meet the bus.”

“And,” Sam added as an afterthought, “don’t bother trying anything stupid. You’ll see a few cars on the road periodically. Those are members of our tribe that we’ve sent out to check on you.”

With that said, the man with the gun reached up past Evan and opened his door for him. Nudging the gun against Evan’s neck, he pushed Evan out of the seat and into the dry desert night.

“That’s it,” Sam said. “Get on that bus, find out what’s on it and who is running it and then meet me back at your motel tomorrow.”

“So you honestly think that a secret bus that’s running drugs will not only pick me up, but will also let me off with no problems? Are you crazy?”

“That’s your problem for right now. But if you don’t show up tomorrow morning, it had damned well better be because you’re dead.”

Before Evan could even start to protest, Sam closed the passenger side door in Evan’s face. He threw the van into Drive and made a quick U-Turn, headed back towards Shinoe.

“Shit!”

It was the first time Evan had screamed to the top of his lungs in a long time. It felt surprisingly good, despite his situation. His voice didn’t echo; it only rolled gently in all directions to the wide open spaces all around him.

He glanced at his watch. It was approaching eleven o’ clock. The desert was now cloaked perfectly in the night, an endless sea of dust on dark that stretched out further than he cared to imagine. He was all alone in the midst of it and he felt like a very small fish in an enormous sea.

Chapter 4 (part 2)

2008-08-21T10:16:00.002-07:00

The cab picked him up and the ride back to the motel was made in silence. Evan had simply stared out of the windows, wondering if life in Shinoe was always as hectic as today had been. Max Young had spoken about today as if it had possibly been the worst day of his life, so Evan assumed that the town was usually pretty quiet. He then thought about what the desk clerk had told him about how the heat could put people a bit on edge. Evan guessed that this was possible; the sweltering heat of the desert sure as hell irritated him most of the time.

But when the cab dropped him off at the motel, Evan found the air to be a bit cooler, almost pleasant. While Shinoe wasn’t really in the desert per se, it was damned close. It was close enough that Evan considered the warm breeze that swirled around him to be a desert wind.

Evan watched the cab drive away as he took a seat on the hood of his car. He supposed he could just rent the room for another night and then find a garage tomorrow to replace his tires. After that, there was still the decision of what to do about the drugs and his boss. But he’d cross that bridge when he got there.

He stood up and headed for the motel office. He didn’t make it three feet before someone jumped him from behind.

The weight of the attacker was light and Evan nearly saved himself from falling to the ground. But he soon felt the additional weight of a second body on top of him and he knew right away that fighting might only make the situation worse. Besides, whoever was on him was not punching or kicking him. He was simply being pushed to the ground and pinned there. There was a slight yet sharp pain as the right side of his face smacked the pavement.

“Don’t move and don’t speak,” one of his attackers said. This was followed by a familiar clicking sound as a hard cumbersome object was pressed against the back of his head. “You do anything stupid and we’ll kill you. Got it?”

Evan had had his life threatened several times before, but never with a gun to the back of his head. But he knew that it would be best to respond to any comments that were made to him. Staying silent might only infuriate his attackers and from the sounds of it, they were already plenty pissed.

“Yeah, I got it,” Evan said. He realized that his assailants had taken the effort to push him down so that they were on the ground on the passenger side of his car, hidden away from the road. To anyone passing by, they could not be seen.

“Good,” a second voice said. “Not such a stupid white man after all.”

Evan noticed the voice and the cheesy reference and although he knew it might be stupid to do so, his sarcastic side took over. It was something he had always had trouble keeping in check.

“Hey, Sam. What can I do for you?”

“The money was marked. Every single bill.”

“Did you discover that before or after you broke into my room and stole the shit?”

This question prompted a hard elbow to be driven into his back. Evan coughed weakly as the right side of his face was pushed harder into the ground. He could feel pebbles and grime scratching and stinging at his cheeks but that sensation was not nearly as dominant as the insistent weight of the gun pressed to his skull.

“What’s the matter?” Sam asked. “Did we screw you over before you had the chance to screw us? Did you know the bills were marked?”

“No, actually,” Evan answered honestly. And he was suddenly not so mad at Sam; all of his anger was in that moment directed towards his boss, Emile Gorrengo. “I just picked the briefcase up and followed instructions. That’s all I ever do.”

Again, another elbow crunched into his lower back. This time the force of it caused Evan to bite into his bottom lip.

“Don’t lie to us,” the other attacker said. This second voice sounded almost the same as Sam’s, only with a stern edge to it.

“I’m not,” Evan said. “I swear. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

There was a brief silence as the two men pressing him down took a while to sort out their thoughts. Finally, Sam said, “Come with us.”

Chapter 4 (part 1)

2008-08-18T11:09:00.005-07:00

When he reached the bar, he still had no ideas as to how to improve his current situation. He was sweating profusely, his feet were aching when he arrived at the bar, and he had no clue as to where to go from there. His brain remained empty of ideas when he took a barstool, was still empty when he finished off his first drink and emptier still when he ordered his fourth.

After placing the order for his fourth drink, the bartender smiled at him and began to mix his Vodka Tonic. “Rough couple of days, I take it?” the bartender asked.

"You could say that,” Evan said. “Was my performance last night all that memorable?”

“I’ve seen better,” the bartender said. “But just to let you know, if you get that drunk tonight, I’m calling you a cab. I shouldn’t have let you drive as drunk as you were last night.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“Also,” the bartender said, “this drink is already paid for by the nice man sitting there on the other end of the bar.”

Evan looked to his left and saw a man sitting on the opposite side of the bar with a bottle of beer. Seeing that Evan had spotted him, he smiled and waved. It took Evan a while to place the face but it finally came to him. It was the policeman that had pulled up next to him that morning during the fiasco with the elderly boxing match.

Evan had always been nervous around any form of law enforcement, but he figured there was no trouble he could get himself into right now. Sam had the drugs and the drug money, leaving Evan’s hands clean. And as far as his personal life, Evan had not touched any form of drug—other than alcohol—in over three months. So what was the harm in going over to thank the policeman? Besides, the fact that the guy was drinking and not in uniform made him a little less of a threat anyway.

Evan walked to the end of the bar and took the stool next to the officer. “Thanks for the drink, man,” he said. “I really appreciate it. What’s the occasion?”

“For breaking up Senior Citizen Wrestlemania this morning,” the cop said. “Most people would have just had a laugh and carried on with their day, you know?”

Evan tilted his head and shrugged. “Honestly, I usually would have done the same thing. I don’t really know why I stepped in. It seemed like the right thing to do, I guess. And it was just too funny to pass up.”

“Well anyway, it was nicely done.” He took a sip of his beer and then offered his hand. “Max Young,” he said. He was a man of average build. He had a face that men would call haggard but women would call rugged. There was a decent growth of hair on his face but it was not so thick that it could be called a beard.

“Evan Abner,” Evan said, shaking the man’s hand. “What happened to those two old farts anyway?”

Max Young shook his head and took another sip of beer. “Man, today was the worst day I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve been a cop off and on for eleven years and I never saw anything like today.” He then nodded towards the beer in his hands and said, “This is the first beer I’ve had in about two years. Today was that bad.”

“Yeah, I heard about the hit and run and the shooting. That’s terrible.”

“Yeah, we tried to keep the whole shooting incident quiet, but it got out. When one cop offs another one in plain sight, it’s pretty big news, you know? But today, it seemed like everything that happened was bad. There was that hit and run, then the old guys fighting, then the shooting.

“But as far as the thing with the old guys…that got even weirder,” Max explained. “I knew right away that I was going to let them go. I’d just warn them, like a slap on the wrist, you know? So I talked to both of them and they went on their merry ways. Then right around four o’ clock this afternoon, right after I got off duty, I got this call at home. One of those old men—the one in the checkered pants—killed his wife and then tried to kill himself.”

“Oh my God,” Evan said, genuinely shocked.

“It’s obviously not looked well upon when a cop divulges all this kind of information to a stranger, but I had to get it off of my chest somehow, you know? This has been one absolutely fucked up day.”

Max Young truly did seem upset about something and while it did seem peculiar that a cop would spill this type of information, Evan was glad that he could help the man unwind…even if he was a cop. Besides, there was something to Max's voice that made Evan think that he didn't give a damn if someone found out that he was blabbing police business to a stranger. Max Young seemed pissed, upset and extremely anxious about something.

“Yeah, it sounds like it” Evan said, sipping uncomfortably from his drink.

After a moment’s silence, Max said, “So you’re not from around here, I know that. I know every face in this town. What brings you here to Shinoe?”

Evan thought quickly, hoping to kill two birds with one stone. “Well, I heard about this tribe of Indians out in the desert. And I’ve been fascinated with the culture since my freshman year of college.”

“You’re not talking about those peyote freaks out to the west, are you?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Nothing but trouble. We’ve had tips that they’re dealing the stuff to these big name guys in California and Texas. But when we question them, they pull this ‘you’re infringing on our religious practices and rights’ bullshit.”

Evan was well aware of this fact. It was why his Emile Gorrengo had selected the tribe as a source in the first place. “That must suck,” Evan said.

“Yeah,” Max agreed. He tipped his beer to his mouth and finished it. He looked at the empty bottle, contemplated getting another and then decided that it was time to leave. Apparently not having one for two years had made Max cautious around the bottle.

"Well, I just wanted to thank you for your good deed this morning,” Max said. “Be careful driving home. And if you do head out to find those hallucinating-mushroom- eating-peyote freaks, watch out. You could get in a lot of trouble. ”

“You don’t think much of them, do you?”

Max Young shook his head. “Not a bit.”

Evan thought better of asking for directions to where the tribe could be found. Although he could think of no better pleasure than putting a few rounds through Sam’s stupid head, Evan knew not to push things. The last thing he wanted to do was to make a police officer suspicious of him.

“Well, thanks for the drink,” Evan said.

“No problem,” Max answered. “And it was nice to meet you.”

With that, Max paid his tab and left the bar.

Evan sat at the bar by himself for a while. A few stragglers came in and out of the bar as he watched the TV behind the counter and shared small talk with the bar tender. Somewhere in the midst of the talk, Evan finished another drink. His head was a bit swimmy and he was feeling incredibly pleasant.

“What number was this one?” Evan asked the bartender.

The bartender took a moment to count in his head. “That was number six. But I’ll be honest with you…I started making them weak after number three.”

“That was probably for the best.” Evan looked at his watch as was amazed to find that it was 8:45. “Eh, I guess I’ll pay my tab and take you up on that offer for a cab.”

The bartender nodded and handed Evan his bill. “If you don’t mind my asking,” the bartender said, “are you okay? Like, are you in trouble or something? You look sort of antsy and came off as a bit uncomfortable when Officer Young started chatting with you.”

“No, I’m not in any trouble,” Evan said. “It’s just been one of those days, you know? A really strange and messed up day.”

“Yeah, for the whole town or so it seems. What a weird day.”

Evan and the bartender shared a silence as Evan paid his tab with his credit card. The bartender called a local cab company and after that, headed to the other end of the bar to refill another customer.

Evan got off of his barstool and then went to the bathroom. When he came out, he waved to the bartender and headed outside to wait on his cab. As he sat there on the bar’s small porch, he stared into the approaching night.

Somewhere off in the distance he could hear the piercing sound of ambulance sirens.

Chapter 3

2008-08-13T05:43:00.004-07:00

Having been in similar situations several times before, Evan knew that his best bet was not to panic. The instant he discovered that the peyote was missing, he walked back outside and scanned the parking lot again. There was no one suspicious lurking about or watching him, nor were there any suspicious cars parked there. Common sense pointed a finger at Sam, the angry Indian with the Cowboys tee shirt.

“Little bastard,” Evan said, walking back into his room. But he was a ballsy little bastard. Evan couldn’t imagine the guts it took to go through the process of breaking and entering with the police nearly in plain sight.

He sat on the bed to think for a moment, knowing that he had no other choice than to get the drugs back. If he called Emile with this bad news, he’d most likely never get another job from him again. Even worse, Evan had heard of some drug runners being executed for such a disaster. He didn’t think Emile Gorrengo would have any qualms with putting a bullet through his head.

Evan walked back outside and unlocked his car door. The car was a plain looking Camry, as not to catch the eyes of any policemen on any random day and time. Such a plain looking and rather common car would not warrant any unnecessary investigations that would uncover the unregistered handgun beneath the driver’s seat or the various drugs that were often carted around in the trunk.

Evan got into the car, cranked it and cut on the air conditioner. He then reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a map of New Mexico. He looked the map over and realized that even if he was absolutely sure that Sam had come back while he had left for the diner to take the drugs, there was no way to find him. Evan had no idea where Sam lived. According to Emile and various other sources, the peyote was supplied by a small and secretive tribe of Native Americans somewhere out in the New Mexico desert. Having driven along many roads that stretched through that hellish wasteland, Evan knew that it would be a fruitless search.

The only way to get even a clue of the tribe’s whereabouts would be to call back to LA and ask for directions. But that request would no doubt turn a few heads and result in several unwanted questions being asked.

Evan tore the map in half and threw it into the back seat. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror, running a hand through his light brown hair. His eyes still looked tired, making him look a bit older than his twenty-four years. He looked away, sighed and killed the engine.

Back inside his room, he sat on the bed for a while, trying to decide on his best course of action. He glanced to his cell phone from time to time, wondering if the simplest thing to do would be to call LA and try to explain things to Emile. It would be dangerous and could very well end up costing him his life, but it was the only solution he could think of.

Somehow, despite the worry and anger, Evan drifted off to sleep shortly after twelve thirty. When a series of police sirens went blasting by just after one o’ clock, he did not wake up.

___________________________________

What did wake Evan up for the second time on that hot and miserable Tuesday was another knock on the door. This time when he opened his eyes, his head was not hurting as it had in the morning and the world seemed to be a bit clearer.

“Hello?” said a male voice through the door. “Mr. Abner, are you in there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Evan said as he slowly got to his feet.

When he answered the door, he recognized the man on the other side as the fellow that had checked him into his room yesterday afternoon.

“Hey,” Evan said. “What can I do for you?”

“It is three o’ clock,” the short balding man said. “Check out was at two. Are you interested in renting the room for another night?”

Evan considered this for a moment and then said, “No thanks. I’m sorry it’s so late. I sort of drifted off. I’ll be by the office in a second to pay up.”

The balding man smiled and nodded. Without saying anything else, he turned and headed back to the office. Evan closed the door and began packing his clothes into his small suitcase, beginning to really understand for the first time the amount of trouble he might be in. With his clothes packed, he looked to the nightstand where his cell phone sat.

He picked it up and studied it. It was no good to him now. The only person he ever called from it was Emile. If he made any other calls from it, the call could be traced. So, if Evan did decide to simply run away from his current situation, the cell phone would be of no use to him. He frowned at the phone and then, in a sudden fit of anger, hefted it through the open bathroom door. The phone hit the tiled wall and shattered into several pieces which made an oddly pleasant sound as they jingled on the floor.

Evan left the room and was once again assaulted by the dreary heat outside. Growing slightly irritated with the weather, he rattled the broken door handle behind him as he exited. As he made his way to the office, he looked down the road towards the intersection.

The road check was no longer in progress. Evan watched as a small car passed through a green light uninterrupted.

In the office, Evan handed the short balding desk clerk his key and paid for the room. “I noticed that the cops are done with the road checks,” Evan commented as he handed the clerk his money. “I take it they found their man?”

“Yeah,” the clerk said. “It was right at one o’ clock. I don’t see how the sirens didn’t wake you when they passed by. But they found him. The guy was drunk, or so they say. He hauled ass after he hit that boy but he ended up running out of the road a few miles out of town.”

“That’s messed up,” Evan said.

“Well what’s really messed up is what happened when they found him,” the clerk said. He scratched at his balding head as he continued, looking around as he did so as if he were about to tell a juicy secret. “The story goes that when they found him and threw the cuffs on him, two policemen started arguing about something as they put the guy in a patrol car. One of them drew their gun and fired. The other cop died right on the spot.”

“There’s something you don’t hear every day,” Evan said with a smirk. And directly behind this, speaking of things you didn’t hear every day, Evan recalled the old man in the extremely short khaki shorts: This asshole spit in my scrambled eggs!

“I think it’s the heat,” the clerk said. “Once it really settles in, it makes people a little wiry, you know?”

“I guess so,” Evan said. “It’s dreadful out there. Anyway, thanks for the room. Take it easy.”

The clerk smiled and nodded.

Evan walked to his car and looked around the block. Shinoe was almost deathly quiet at this hour. There were only five cars on the street and three people walking on the sidewalk directly across from him. It was such a small town that he was surprised that everyone wasn’t still abuzz from the hit and run incident from that morning, or about the police officer shooting one of his own. The more Evan thought about cop-on-cop violence, the weirder the story seemed. The streets were peaceful and quiet, the perfect scene for a man to clear his head and sort his thoughts. But Evan had other ideas, a better place to sort his thoughts without the afternoon heat pressing down on him. He had been there last night and he was sure that he had downed most of their vodka. After all, there was always a temporary escape to be found in the bottom of a bottle.

As he went to unlock his car, he noticed that the car seemed to be a bit lower to the ground than usual, as if he had a flat tire. He hunkered down to check the front right tire and found that it was indeed flat. Only, to say it was flat was an understatement. There was a large puncture mark torn down the front of it.

Evan knew without checking that the other three would be in the same condition. But he checked anyway and proved himself correct. He had no idea how he had missed this when he had come out to look at the map earlier.

Evan stood there for a while, simply staring at the ground. Sam had done this, too. He was sure of it. He’d probably done the tires first and then broken into the room and taken the peyote. For the second time in his ridiculous drug running career, he had been duped. With a curse, he unlocked the car and threw his suitcase in.

He sat in the driver’s seat for a moment, wondering if he should take his gun with him. He decided not to because as weird as things in this town had been today, there was no telling what might happen to him. If he did come in contact with the police for some reason, the unregistered gun being found on him would surely not go over well.

Evan stepped out of the car, closed the door and locked it. “Oh, to hell with this,” he said loudly.

He kicked the car hard, sending a slight pain up his entire leg. He then shook the pain off and headed out of the parking lot. He walked along the sidewalk next to the main highway and started walking east. The bar was only about five miles away and the sun was finally beginning to lose some of its strength as the late afternoon approached.

He walked alone on the side of the gritty streets, not bothering to look back at the hotel parking lot or his useless car again.

Chapter 2

2008-08-06T10:11:00.003-07:00

Evan nearly collided with the smaller of the two old men. He probably would have walked directly into the middle of the confrontation if he had not been pulled out of his thoughts by the old man’s raspy voice, yelling at a fever pitch.

“If you don’t get in there and pay for my breakfast, I’ll pound your face right into the road!”

Evan blinked in surprise, halting in his tracks. The shouting man looked to be about seventy or so, his skin wrinkled and pocked here and there. He was wearing a plain white tee shirt that was littered with stains, and a pair of khaki shorts that revealed far too much of his old puffy legs.

The other elderly man was dressed in a tacky polo shirt and a pair of green and red checkered pants. He looked as if he might be headed to a golf course, although Evan couldn’t imagine a thriving golf community anywhere near Shinoe.

“I will not pay for you food, you crazy old shit!” the golfer said.

Evan knew that he should just walk into the diner and leave the two men to their skirmish. Not only was watching the argument embarrassing, but his stomach insisted that it was time to eat. But the entire scene was just too comical not to watch. Evan backed up a bit and was surprised when the man in the stained white tee shirt actually threw a punch at the golfer.

The punch was weak and easily dodged, even for men of their ages. This was followed by the laziest grapple that Evan had ever seen and he had to fight not to laugh.

"Pay my bill, asshole!”

“I won’t do such a thing! You should have kept your eyes to yourself.”

“It’s a free country! Aaargh.”

As funny as it was, Evan felt that he had to do something. As the golfer was attempting to throw an old callused right hand into the other man’s gut, Evan approached the two men and managed to push them apart. There was a sickening moment when he feared that he had been too rough with them, and he was sure that the man in the stained tee shirt was going to fall to the sidewalk and dislocate a hip.

With the two men separated, Evan stood his ground between them, hoping that he was hiding the amused expression he had been wearing moments ago. He glanced into the diner’s large window and saw that the scuffle had somehow gone unnoticed to the patrons. Everyone inside was eating and chatting, oblivious to what was going on outside.

“Calm down, now,” Evan said. “There’s no use in fighting.”

The old men temporarily looked shocked, but the man in the stained tee shirt took a single step towards Evan. “How old are you, punk?”

“I’m twenty-three.” Again, he fought hard not to laugh at them. The question was laced with anger and Evan wondered how he could ward off an attack by an old man without looking like the asshole in the situation.

“You’re a piss ant,” the golfer said, the old men now on the same side now that they were confronted by a younger man attempting to fix up their mess.

“Yeah, maybe,” Evan said. “But you two old farts were fighting in the middle of the street. I figured I’d break it up before you caused a scene and made fools of yourselves.”

The golfer seemed to understand this but the man in the short shorts and tee shirt was still clearly upset. “Well, this cretin spit in my scrambled eggs!”

Evan couldn’t stop the laughter this time. He bit his bottom lip in order to contain it, but he did a poor job. And once it was out it felt good, so he let it all out.

“Oh, is that funny?” the golfer asked.

“Well, it’s not something you hear ever day,” Evan said. He turned to the golfer as he managed to control his laughter and said, “Sir, did you spit in his scrambled eggs?”

“Hell yes, I did. He was ogling that poor pretty waitress and grabbing at her every time she walked by.”

Evan caught the laughter before it could escape this time. But he was so busy concentrating on that effort that he didn’t notice the approaching police car. It pulled up from behind them and Evan didn’t see it until it was directly beside him.

It pulled over to the curb slowly and stopped. The officer inside rolled down the window and looked at Evan and the two old men suspiciously. As was his nature, Evan started to panic at the sight of the police car and its driver and he wondered if Sam had maybe ratted on him and turned him in for having peyote in his motel room.

“Thank God, officer,” the man in the stained shirt said as Evan managed to keep his panic back. “This man has spit into my eggs!”

It was still funny to Evan, almost like a completely abstract moment in time, but some of the humor was lost now that there was a cop no more than five feet from him.

At the old man’s accusation, the cop looked directly at Evan. He slowly got out of the car and stood in front of the three of them. The cop was older but not nearly as old as the two quarreling men. He looked tired, distracted and rather pissed off. He looked Evan up and down with a frown.

“Son, did you spit in this gentleman’s eggs?”

“No sir,” Evan said. “I was walking down the street, coming to the diner, and saw these two men fighting. I broke it up but this one seems to be pretty mad,” he said, hitching a thumb at the old man in the tee shirt.

“That’s right,” the man said. “This young man only broke us up. But this ingrate right here, spit in my eggs.”

Evan saw that the officer was also clearly amused at the situation. He looked to the ground, cleared his throat and then looked at Evan with a knowing smile. The suspicion he had worn on his face only moments ago was totally gone.

“Thanks for your help, son,” the officer said. “Go on and get something to eat. I think I can handle these two from here.”

Evan nodded. He and the officer shared another glance that pretty much translated to: Have you ever seen anything this frigging funny? Evan gave the elderly men a brief nod and walked inside the diner as quickly as he could.

Once inside, Evan took a seat in the first booth he came to and let out a large hearty laugh. Everyone turned to look queerly at him but he didn’t care. He let it out and didn’t stop until the waitress came around to take his order.

When his food arrived, he took his time as he ate. He got the burger exactly like he wanted (the waitress clearly questioning his choice of having it topped with eggs and chili) and downed a few glasses of water. He order desert but really only picked at it. He did his best to pick up on bits and pieces of surrounding conversations concerning the hit and run and managed to obtain some valuable information. It was amazing how much a stranger could learn in a small town by simply listening in on the gossip circles.

According to the scattered conversations Evan was able to eavesdrop on, sometime shortly after ten o’ clock a pick up truck had jumped a curb, plowed through a single mother’s front yard and struck her twelve year old son. The kid had been carried to the hospital with several broken bones. Depending on the source of the gossip, Evan had heard several different outcomes concerning the boy’s condition. Some said he was in a coma, some said he had suffered a broken neck while others stuck by the several broken bones scenario. The police had not yet found the truck and would more than likely have the road checks in full force until the driver was found.

Evan assumed that, being a small town, the search would not last long. Happy with the assumption that he’d be out of Shinoe within the hour, Evan paid his bill and left the diner.

Outside, the cop had sent the old men on their way. The street was pretty much dead adn still unbearable hot. Walking the length of the block was enough to cause swaet to pop out on Evan's brow. When he rounded the corner and the motel popped into sight, he was frustrated to see that the road check was still in progress. He checked his watch and found that it was nearly noon. That made it close to a two hour search in a town roughly the size of a welcome mat.

Scowling, Evan made his way back to the motel. He walked to his door, fumbling in his pocket for the key and grimacing at the feeling of sweat trickling down his face. He retrieved his key and placed it in the lock only to find that his door was open a quarter of an inch.

He grew nervous in an instant because he was quite sure that he had locked the door behind him when he had left. He could even remember double checking the lock after the door was closed. Quietly, he jiggled the door handle and found that it had somehow been wrenched loose. Evan cautiously looked around the parking lot for any sign of cops or possible intruders and then threw his shoulder to the door, barreling in.

His room was practically the way he had left it. Nothing had been broken, no objects thrown about, nothing out of place as was the case with any room that had been broken into and thoroughly searched.

Of course, after a closer inspection, the one thing that Evan did notice that had gone missing was the briefcase full of peyote that he had slid underneath the bed.

Chapter 1

2008-07-31T05:39:00.004-07:00

When Evan was stirred awake by a pounding at the door, there was a moment where he thought his head had exploded. When he opened his eyes and realized that his head was indeed still attached to his neck in one neat piece, he grimaced and looked angrily towards the door.

The pounding was loud and repetitive, like muffled gunfire from the other side of the walls. When he looked away from the door his eyes were greeted with the sight of a dingy white motel ceiling overhead. He took a few moments to gather his thoughts, remembered where he was and why his head was hurting so badly, and then slowly rolled out of bed. He licked his dry lips and was very aware of the lingering taste of cheap vodka in his mouth.

As he slipped on a pair of shorts, he looked at the clock on the bedside table. Turning his head in such a sudden movement introduced a new throbbing pain that he felt even in his teeth. Through the haze of pain in his head and the blur that was always present when he did not have his contacts in, he read the clock. It was 10:30 in the morning. He counted backwards, did some rough hangover math and calculated that he had gotten maybe five hours of sleep.

The hammering on the door continued. It sank into his head like a steady drill, aimed for the core of his brain.

“I’m coming, already!” Evan stood up, took a second to catch his balance and then walked to the door. He opened it with a hand that felt like an anvil; his entire body was sluggish from last night’s drinking.

Evan had never seen the man on the other side of the door. It was a Native American guy, about twenty or so—roughly Evan’s age from the look of it. He wore a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt and Evan fought the urge to make an ironic musing on the fact than an Indian was wearing a Cowboys shirt. Behind this man, an unbearably hot New Mexico morning pushed humid air into Evan’s air conditioned motel room.

“Are you Sam?” Evan asked, squinting at the glare of the morning sun and the pulsating ache in his head.

The Indian nodded.

“You don’t look like a Sam.”

The Indian shrugged. He held a large briefcase in his right hand which he carried like a burden. It was cheap and beaten with age, the kind that Evan had seen several times before in his line of work.

“Do you speak English?” Evan asked.

The Indian rolled his eyes and stepped inside. “Yes, I speak English you asshole.”

“No need to get defensive, Tonto.”

Sam closed the door behind him, locked it and then set the briefcase on the small table that sat by evan’s bed. He looked around the room distrustfully and suddenly seemed to be claustrophobic.

“Look,” Sam said. “I’m just the delivery boy. I hate these deals they send me on and I hate the people that use this stuff for the wrong reasons. So just give me the money so I can get out of here and go home.”

“Wrong reasons?” Evan asked. “Is there a right way to use peyote?”

“Stupid white man,” Sam muttered under his breath.

Evan smiled wearily at Sam and then held up a finger. “One second there, Sitting Bull.”

Evan walked into the bathroom and took a moment to put his contacts in. He then retrieved his own briefcase from the small cabinet under the sink. He carried it back into the room and placed it on the bed next to Sam’s case.

“Is it all there?” Sam asked. He sounded bored as he asked the question, as if he really didn’t care. It sounded like he was reciting a line for a badly written play.

“Yeah,” Evan said. “And you?”

Sam nodded. “All there.”

They stared at one another for a moment and then, without caring if the other found it rude or not, investigated their briefcases. After a quick inspection, both of them closed their new baggage. With a quick nod to one another as a sign of approval, their business was done.
“Nice meeting you,” Sam said, heading quickly for the door.

“Sure,” Evan said, smiling. “Hey man, you want to go grab a beer later or something? I don’t have anything to do for the rest of the day.”

“Funny white man,” Sam said. “I don’t associate myself with your kind unless I can help it. Besides, from the smell of this room and your breath, I think you did enough drinking last night.”
“Good guess,” Evan said, cringing at the heat from outside as Sam opened the door to leave.

Sam didn’t even grant Evan a smile. He walked through the door and before he made it to the parking lot, Evan was at the door, holding it open and watching him leave.

“Hey man,” he said. “No joke…thanks a lot. You’re saving my ass here.”

Sam, already at his car with the door open, turned to Evan and smiled a fake smile. “I bet you have a lot of people that play that role in your life, don’t you?”

If he hadn’t have been hung over, Evan would have snapped back quickly and without much tact, but it was too early and too hot. Plus, he could still taste last night drinks and he could feel them sloshing around in his bladder. So instead of a clever rebuttal, Evan simply smiled at Sam and waved him away.

Besides, Sam’s description of him was surprisingly accurate. Even with a blaring hangover to dampen his senses, it stung a little.

Before Evan closed the door, he looked out beyond the motel parking lot and to the road that stretched beyond. A desert breeze was carrying dust across the road, but it didn’t block out the sight of three police cars at the intersection ahead, setting up a road check.

“So, what do you know about that?” Evan asked, pointing behind Sam and to the intersection a quarter of a mile up the road.

Sam sighed, clearly annoyed that Evan kept holding him up. He turned to look at the street behind them and was frowning when he turned back to Evan.

“I don’t know anything about that. But I wouldn’t worry. I doubt it’s for you. There was a report on the radio that there was a hit and run somewhere in town this morning. They’re still looking for the driver.”

“Oh,” Evan said, clearly relieved. “Thanks.”

Sam nodded, got into his car and left. As Evan walked back into the room, he muttered, “How in the hell did I let that cowboy joke just lay to waste?”

Inside, Evan looked at the briefcase that sat on his bed. He then picked it up and slid it under the bed next to one of his shoes which had gotten kicked under there in his stumble to the mattress last night. He looked to the bed and was tempted to get another two or three hours of sleep. But then again, he wanted to get the hell out of Shinoe, New Mexico as fast as he could.

He looked out of his motel window, past the parking lot and to the road that ran parallel to it. The heat was already causing shimmers in the air over the hot asphalt and Evan was not looking forward to stepping outside. He managed to look beyond the heat and its impression on the landscape in order to take in the tiny town.

Shinoe was a terribly small place with a population of just around eight hundred. The only reason it even had a motel was for the truckers that often made their way from California or Arizona, headed for Texas or Mexico. There was dust, dirt and grime everywhere and on particularly windy days, the place looked like something out of a western. There were very few reputable businesses and the only bar was at the far end of town, miles away from Evan’s motel room. That little journey had made for an interesting drive back to the motel at five o’ clock in the morning.

After going into the bathroom to piss and brush his teeth, Evan pulled his cell phone out of his luggage and dialed up his boss. The signal from inside the room was horrible so Evan decided to open the door and stand in the doorway. The signal went up a bit and, from his place in the doorway, Evan was able to keep an eye on the events transpiring at the intersection.

At the intersection there were now five patrol cars and they were beginning to stop traffic. He hoped like hell that they’d find the driver of the hit and run by noon so he could get headed back home to LA. An inspection of his car on the way home would definitely not go over well.
The phone was answered on the second ring. He had been so distracted by the road check that he had nearly forgotten that he had made the call.

“Yeah?” his boss said in his usual gruff voice. His name was Emile Gorrengo and he always spoke as if he had just swallowed a cup of gravel.

“Hey, it’s Evan. Look, I got the stuff. I know you wanted me back as soon as possible, but there’s been a hit and run here in Shinoe and the cops are setting up road blocks. I’m going to hang out at the motel until it breaks up.”

“That’s fine,” Emile said. “Just get out as soon as you can.” And without a goodbye or a thank you, the call was ended. It was the typical Emile Gorrengo phone call.

“You’re welcome,” Evan said to the dead line.

He tossed the phone onto the bed and then returned to the bathroom where he took a long shower. After he had dried off, he got dressed and decided that he would walk down the street to the small diner a block away from the motel to grab a late breakfast. While there, he figured he could eavesdrop on the locals and stay posted on how the hit and run investigation was going.

He stepped out into the blazing morning, looking in the direction of the intersection. The traffic was inching along, the cops doing a quick check of every car and driver and then letting them pass. Evan turned away from this and walked in the opposite direction, towards the diner.

As he walked, he thought about Sam, the very grumpy Native American. But, grumpy or not, there had been one comment that had stung Evan a bit. It was the comment about always having someone save him. Like it or not, Evan knew that it was true. His father had begrudgingly played that part until Evan was fourteen or so and then when his father had left his family of three sons and a wife behind, Evan had been pulled from many fires by his mother. Those two years had been awful, made even worse by his mother’s death. Evan had been seventeen then, already into drugs, already dealing, abusing and running them.

After his mother died, his older brother had tried to play the role of savior but by the time Evan was twenty, there was no saving him. He was making a fortune, working for two different drug curcuits in LA and then dealing on his own on the side. Evan’s father, mother and older brother had all made valiant efforts to get him on the right track, but the allure of money and security had always been more powerful than the words of his loved ones.

Evan winced at the memories. Thoughts of his parents, mingled with his hangover and the unbearable heat, made his head a little swimmy. When he saw the diner just around the corner, he was already sweating from the heat, but his stomach still lurched and growled. He thought he’d get a burger with a fried egg on it, maybe topped off with some chili.

He was so deep in thoughts about food that he almost walked directly into the two elderly men that stood in front of the diner, screaming at one another.