The Graves of Plague Canyon (The Downwinders Book 3) (10 page)

“My tracks,” Deem said. “My boot print is here dozens of
times.”

“We were going in a circle,” Winn said, then turned to look
behind him. In the center of the circle they’d been walking were dozens of
ghosts, hovering off the ground.

“Shit,” Winn whispered, and Deem turned to see what he was
looking at. The ghosts moved three feet, turned to the right, and moved another
three. They were endlessly moving and turning in a circle, walking through each
other with blank faces, like robots left on auto.

Deem wanted badly to drop into the River so she could make
sense of the images in front of her, but she knew it was too great of a risk.
If the ghosts saw her in the River, they’d transform and attack.

“I’m assuming these are the gifteds who were asphyxiated
here,” Winn whispered. “They think they’re still in the tunnel.”

Deem watched their faces — the blank stares from hollow eyes,
the drudgery of having walked endlessly for a hundred years. “Since they were
gifteds,” Deem whispered back, “do you think they’ll transform if I drop in
real quick?”

“Don’t do it!” Winn said. “We don’t know where we are, how
we’d get out.” He glanced around the room. “I don’t see any exits. There’s no
way out of this room.”

“Maybe there’s a false wall somewhere,” Deem replied. “We’d
have to enter the River to see it.”

“Let me try conventional methods first,” Winn said. “I’d
rather err on the side of caution. If I can’t find a way out, we might risk
it.”

Winn began to walk around the large room, the dust kicking up
from his feet. Deem followed, and they made a wide circle around the walking
ghosts, searching the walls of the room for any kind of exit. Several areas of
the room had rock outcroppings, and it took a while to circumnavigate the
entire area.

“We’re back where we started,” Deem said. “At least, I think
so.”

“No way out,” Winn said, and Deem could sense the edge of
panic in his voice. Winn had always been claustrophobic, and she knew it was
getting to him.

“We got here by putting on the gas masks,” Deem said. “That’s
the way out.”

“The gas masks?”

“Yes,” Deem replied. “If we take them off and start to breathe
whatever is in the air here, I think we’ll find ourselves back in the tunnel.”

“Let’s test that theory before we try anything with these
ghosts,” Winn said. He reached for his gas mask and pulled it off, taking two
large breaths of air. Then he began to panic. “Deem? Deem? Where are you?”

Deem pulled off her gas mask and let her lungs fill with the
air. She saw the walls of the tunnel reappear around her.

“Thank god,” Winn said. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I never lost sight of you,” Deem said. “I think the room is
what’s real. This tunnel is the trick, a hallucination brought on by something
in the air.”

“That’s how they asphyxiated the gifteds,” Winn replied.
“They lured them in, and once they were in deep enough, the bad air took over
and finished them off.”

“But where are their bodies?” Deem asked. “We need to find
that vacuum box.”

“There weren’t any bodies in the room with the ghosts,” Winn
answered. “Not that I noticed, anyway.”

“I’m going to ask them,” Deem said, putting her gas mask back
on.

“Deem, no!” Winn said.

“They’re gifteds, I don’t think they’ll attack us,” Deem
said. “And if they do, I’ll just put the gas mask back on, and return here. I think
they’re stuck in the room, not here in the tunnel.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Winn said as Deem disappeared
from his view.

She saw the room reappear around her, the ghosts in the
middle slowly pacing, turning, pacing. She walked a little closer and let
herself slip into the River, knowing she’d be exposing herself to the ghosts.
Their features came into view, and she saw their old clothes, deteriorated and
falling from their bodies. None of them turned to look at her.

She walked closer to the group, estimating that there were twenty
or thirty. She stepped in front of one of them, and it passed through her
without stopping.

Excuse me,
she said, turning to look at another. It didn’t stop either.

Winn joined her.
Talk about being in a rut,
he said.

They’re not attacking,
Deem said.

I don’t think they realize we’re here yet,
Winn replied.

Excuse me!
Deem said again, raising her voice. The ghosts didn’t notice.

EXCUSE ME!
she screamed in frustration.

Nothing,
Winn said.
No sense screaming, they’re not listening.

How do I get their attention?

We could try a trance,
Winn suggested.

Deem picked one of the ghosts and began to follow it as it
walked. She concentrated on it, focusing all of her thoughts toward the entity
moving in front of her. She mimicked its walk, trying to eliminate anything
that might distract her.

I don’t think that’ll work,
Winn said.

Shut up,
Deem replied.
I’m concentrating.

She could hear Winn sigh, and she tried to eliminate him from
her thinking.
Just concentrate on the ghost right in front of me,
she
thought.
Nothing else. Just this guy. Who was he? How did he come to be
here? What was important to him?

To her surprise, the figure in front of her stopped. The
ghosts around her continued to walk and turn, but the man in front of her had
come to a halt. Something she did had reached him.

He turned to face her. She braced for him to react, to
materialize and turn rabid, but he didn’t — he just studied her face.

What kind of creature are you?
he asked, squinting his eyes at her
and sticking his neck out.

Human,
she replied.
I’m wearing a gas mask.
She held her breath and
lifted the mask briefly to expose her face, then pulled it back down.
I have
to use it or I’d be hallucinating that I’m walking through an endlessly
spiraling tunnel.

That’s what I’m doing,
the man replied, his voice thin and raspy. He had a full
beard that came down to his chest, and Deem thought she could see crumbs of
food nestled between the hairs of it.

You died in here, I’m guessing,
Deem said.
Why did you come in,
in the first place?

There’s gold at the end of the tunnel,
the man said, his eyes widening.
Enough
to set me up for life!

Who told you that?
Deem asked.

Brother Johnson, Dewayne Johnson, from Ol’ Port’s gang. Once
I find it, I’ll be rich. Won’t have to work anymore, and neither will my
family. It’s just ahead, around that corner up there.

Deem felt sorry for the ghost, the same sorry she always
felt. Trapped in their pattern, unwilling to move on to the next life, they
endlessly replayed some important moment, over and over. Thinking he was just
inches from becoming rich must have been this man’s important moment.

Do you know where your body is?
Deem asked.

My body?
The man replied, looking down at himself.
Oh, yes, my body. It’s at
the end of the tunnel.

I’ll let you get back to your walking,
Deem said, dropping from the River.
She saw the faint shape of the man turn away from her and resume his trek.

“You heard that?” Deem said to Winn, who was twenty feet
away, at their footprints. “I think we have to go farther down the tunnel.”

“We’ll be breathing the bad air again,” Winn said.

“We’ll stop and use the gas masks every twenty feet or so,”
Deem said, “to clear our heads. Then continue on.”

They removed the gas masks and found themselves back in the tunnel.
Winn turned to shine his flashlight down the slowly narrowing passage. “I don’t
know if I can make it if it continues to shrink.”

“I can make it,” Deem said, walking around him and taking the
lead. “You come as far as you can, then I’ll finish the rest.”

They walked ten more feet, came to another right turn, and
continued on. They stopped to use the gas mask for several breaths, then
continued. Turns began to come faster and faster, and the passage narrowed to
two feet wide.

“Deem!” Winn called from behind her. “I don’t think I can…”

Deem turned to look at Winn, and as she did, she heard
something crunch under her feet. She pointed her flashlight down and saw bone.

“We’ve hit a body,” Deem said. She moved her flashlight farther
down the passage ahead, which made a sharp right after three feet. She could
see the legs of another body sticking out from the corner. “And there’s more
ahead. Can you help me start searching?”

“I think so,” Winn said.

“I’ll go deeper and let you search these bodies here,” Deem
said. “Remember to put on your gas mask every couple of minutes, or you’ll wind
up like these poor suckers.”

“Got it,” Winn said.

Deem turned and walked farther down the passage, making the
turn and continuing another five feet before another right turn appeared. She
walked over at least ten corpses before she decided to start searching. The
bodies were mummified, hard and dried, and the clothes were still intact. She
went through pockets as quickly as she could, coming across penknives, money,
and jewelry. She moved from body to body, trying to be thorough, but it was
hard to see through the gas mask.

One body had a small satchel, and she opened it. Inside were
a couple of old, leather-bound books. She opened one of them and saw that it
was handwritten, using a fancy script. She tried to read the words, but
couldn’t make out their meaning. For a moment she thought it might be written
in another language, but she dismissed that idea when she realized each word
was definitely English. The way the words were strung together didn’t make
sense.

She dropped the satchel, but something told her she was
making a mistake. She stopped for a moment.
Why take it? We need the vacuum
box. Leave it.

But she reached down and grabbed the satchel. Its leather
carrying strap snapped as she pulled it up, so she reached down to grab the
entire thing, and slipped her backpack off to stow the satchel inside.

She kept searching, stopping to remove the gas mask every
three bodies. Eventually she reached the last one. She searched it and found
nothing, then pointed her light down the passage ahead. It continued to narrow,
but went farther than her light would illuminate. She wondered if it went on
forever.

She turned and made her way back, scanning each corpse as she
did, double checking that she hadn’t missed any. Thirty corpses later she ran
into Winn, who was going through the pockets of a face down man.

“Searched that one already,” Deem said to him.

“Any luck?” Winn asked.

“Found a few things, but no vacuum box,” she replied.

“Can we get out of here now?” Winn asked.

“Let’s go,” Deem said, and Winn turned in the tunnel, making
his way back over the bodies until they stood at the first one.

“Look,” Winn said, shining his flashlight down. “This guy was
headed back out. He must have seen the corpses and realized it was a trap.”

“He was too far in to ever make it back out,” Deem replied. “I
wonder how Porter’s gang realized this tunnel was dangerous?”

“Maybe the bad air only works on gifteds?” Winn said.

“That’s a possibility,” Deem replied. “If they came in here
with one, they might have seen the gifted acting strangely and figured it out.
Then they just lured more here with promises of gold.”

“I guess we’ll have to hope Steven and Roy come through,”
Winn said as they made left turn after left turn. “Lyman must have been wrong
about it being on him, either that or he just didn’t bring it in with him.”

“Does it make sense to you that Carma would appear out there
but not in here?” Deem asked as she quickened her pace, wanting to get out of
the tunnel. “Not in the room with the ghosts? Why just out there?”

“Did you really think that was Carma?” Winn said. “I didn’t.”

“Then what? Some kind of sentry?”

“Yes, something like that,” Winn replied. “It read our minds
and used a character it knew we’d trust. Probably set up by Porter’s gang to
respond individually to any gifted who came in here. Help push them the final
step into the tunnel.”

“Didn’t Lyman say he gave the vacuum box to one of Porter’s
men?” Deem asked.

“That’s what I thought he said,” Winn answered.

“And the guy was on the outs with Porter?”

Winn stopped. “You might be on to something. What if Porter
discovered the guy was a traitor? Would Porter have killed him?”