The Slab (27 page)

The skin of that forehead was pale pink, almost porcelain-looking, like the surface of a cameo, with fine lines running parallel to one another above his eyes. The skin was smooth there, and looked soft as a baby’s.

Set into that skin, behind fleshy folds that had always reminded Ken of Robert Mitchum’s eyes, Hal had two sparkling chips of sky blue surrounded by whites clear enough, even at his age, to model for Visine commercials. In spite of what sounded to Ken like a rough life, Hal had loved to laugh, and years of that had etched dozens of fine creases at the corners of his eyes.

His cheeks were round and plump, also sunburn pink, Santa Claus cheeks, almost. They pressed against his eyes from below, as if forehead and cheeks conspired to blind the man, but the piercing blue always managed to show through anyway.

Hal’s nose was generous, pocked with large pores and mottled with broken capillaries, making it red enough to stand out even against the pink skin of the rest of his face. A testament, Ken figured, to the man’s hard-drinking days. A man couldn’t have a nose like that and not be reminded by every mirror of his mistakes.

But Hal had overcome his mistakes, and when Ken tried to envision his mouth he could only see it slightly open and curved in a wide smile. His teeth were white and all his own, he claimed. His lips were thin but sharply-drawn, handsome and masculine. The corners of his mouth dimpled when he grinned, creating a mischievous, almost elfin effect in one so aged.

Finally, Hal’s chin—a strong jaw, giving way in age to the folds of flesh that hung there, but still the lines of his original jaw were evident as they swept down to a serious chin, a chin of substance and character, Ken thought, with a small cleft right in its center.

Having picked out the individual pieces, Ken assembled them and came up with what he thought was a reasonably good picture of the man’s face. He put that on top of a basic representation of Hal’s body—a heavy-set guy, collapsing in on himself as people did when they reached his age. He still filled out a shirt but probably weighed less than he had at any time since reaching his full growth. Ken had noticed before that old people seemed to hollow out, as if their bones became empty tubes and their skin kept an approximation of its former shape but without the mass behind it.

With this image in his mind’s eye and his real eyes shut, Ken focused on Hal. Suddenly a flash of light blinded him, like a strobe going off, and then he saw a section of the Slab, the eastern edge of it, facing the Chocolate Mountains. That spot was just a little ways from where he stood, so he hurried there. Two minutes later, he stood on the same spot, and it looked just like it had in his vision, right down to the plastic grocery bag snared on a jumping cholla and fluttering in a night breeze. Ken flicked on his flashlight and looked for footprints.

There were dozens here, of course. There was a path leading off the Slab, and he didn’t know where it led but of course people walked on it occasionally. Even the most steadfast Slab dweller didn’t spend all his time on those strips of cement. He followed the path a little ways, and the footprints tapered off, and eventually he found a set that he believed were Hal’s. Keeping the light swaying from side to side across the path, he followed them off into the dark.

Part Three

Penny Rice

Chapter Nineteen

Penny clapped a hand across Mick’s mouth, interrupting a diatribe about the environmental costs of globalization. His eyes widened and he looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“Shhh,” she cautioned. “Listen.”

She pulled her hand away and raised a finger to her lips, in case he needed reminding. But he kept his mouth shut, and after a moment he nodded. The evening air definitely carried voices, the tramping of feet, the creak and jangle of equipment.

“They’re coming,” Penny whispered. “They’re not far. We need to get out of here.”

“And go where?” Mick asked, fear making his voice rise.

“Keep quiet!” she instructed. “Listen, I saw a cave when I was exploring before. We’ll go there. They won’t find us inside it in the dark.”

This was not exactly true. She had seen a cave, but not in the actual physical sense of the word. It was more the vague, undefined knowledge of a cave. She knew where it was—was, in fact, willing to bet her life that it was where she somehow knew it would be. But she didn’t know precisely how she knew that, and had not, in fact, ever been to it. The cave’s mouth was in a valley she hadn’t even bothered to explore yet.

No time like the present, she thought. From the noises she heard, it sounded like the soldiers were about to top the rise that would lead them into this valley. The camp she had set up was most of the way up the far hill, so that she’d be able to slip up and over the hill if necessary. It looked like that necessity had arrived.

“We have to go,” she insisted. Mick was still sitting, even though she was up and stuffing things into her backpack—water, notebooks, personal items. She had kept most of her stuff in the pack anyway, ready to move out on short notice. “Mick, I’m not kidding, let’s go.”

It was hard to see him—the night was virtually moonless and they were under the camo netting, but she thought he blinked a few times. “Okay,” he finally said, and slowly got to his feet. She couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe the danger that they were in was real, or thought they wouldn’t be spotted, or if he was stoned or something, but she determined to just move out when she was ready and let him worry about himself. Even if they caught him, he didn’t know where the cave was so he couldn’t give her up. For a moment a thought flitted across her mind—why be so worried about getting caught, she wondered, when you knew all along you probably would be? She didn’t have an answer for that one; it just seemed urgent, all of a sudden, that she not be removed from this bombing range yet.

The sounds of the approaching soldiers grew louder. She slung her backpack over her shoulders and, with a final word to Mick, left the camp. He scrambled behind her, still holding his own pack by its straps and struggling to zip it shut as he walked. The night sky cast very little light, but she had already walked this path several times, in practice, and was able to pick her way up the hill, around the rocks and brush that studded the slope. In just a few minutes, she reached the top of the hill. She waited there for Mick, scanning the opposite hilltop, across the valley. The soldiers would have metal surfaces with matte finishes to avoid any telltale glints from the faint starlight, their faces would be painted, and they’d have night vision goggles, but she was sure she could see forms moving there, blobs of deeper black against the sky, blotting out the stars on the horizon. It could have been her imagination, but she didn’t think so.

When Mick reached her she turned without a word or a look back and led the way down the hill on the opposite side. They made their way in silence, down to the bottom of this slope where a sandy wash cut north-south, and went to the right, heading north along the valley floor. At the end of this valley there was a low rise and then another, deeper valley on the other side, she knew. It was in that valley, on the west-facing slope, that the cave’s mouth was.

If her mind—which, she reminded herself, had never seen this so-called cave—was to be believed.

She didn’t think it was a good idea to start second-guessing herself now, though. She had come this far, convinced of the cave’s reality. No harm in remaining convinced. At worst, they were putting more space between them and the soldiers, covering ground on which it would be hard for the soldiers to follow their tracks in the dark, for the most part. The wash was the exception; their footprints here in the soft sand were deep and readily apparent. But it was still the fastest way to move, and the soldiers would have to get to the wash before they could find prints there.

With his long-legged gait, Mick caught up to her easily here.

“You do know where you’re going, right?” he asked. “Because it’d really suck if we went to all this trouble and just walked right into another troop or whatever.”

“I know where I’m going,” she assured him. “Just trust me. And I don’t think there are any soldiers in that direction—they came just the way I thought they would. Basically, they made circles around the rock message we left, until they eventually cut across our trail. Did you notice they were coming right along the same path we took when we came back from there?”

“No, because I couldn’t really see a damn thing. But I’ll take your word for it, I guess.”

“That’s good enough.”

“It’s a good thing I have you out here,” he said. “I don’t think I’d know what to do on my own in a situation like this. With the Marines or whatever.”

She had to fight back a wry laugh. “You weren’t supposed to be out here in the first place, remember? You’re supposed to be sitting in some nice safe motel room coordinating things.”

“I know, I know. We’ve been over all that.”

“Right.” She was willing to let it go at that.

“I wonder what Larry and Dieter are up to,” he said. “Haven’t heard from them at all.” They’d agreed to only use cell phones in the case of extreme emergency, since they didn’t want to risk giving the authorities any signals to hone in on. “You think this counts as an emergency?”

“I wouldn’t bother them yet,” Penny said. “Surely they’ve heard the helicopters. If it looks like we’re going to get caught, then you can call and give them the word to get out.”

“Yeah, that’s probably best,” Mick agreed. “That’s what I’ll do.”

“That’s good,” Penny said. She walked fast, almost at a jog, as long as they were in the wash and obstacles were few. At one point, they surprised a coyote out for its evening hunt and the beast loped away into the brush, casting occasional glances back over its shoulder to be sure they weren’t following. But otherwise, the nighttime desert was as empty as it was dark, which Penny thought was strange. There should be bats, she thought, and kangaroo rats, ground squirrels. Something. For as pristine as the bombing range was, and as many birds and lizards and snakes as she’d seen during the day, there wasn’t really as much fauna as she’d expected, and very little sign of the large animals, like mule deer and bighorn sheep, that she knew inhabited the area. And tonight was the quietest she’d seen it yet, with none of the nocturnal critters who should have been out and about. She thought it might have had something to do with the presence of all the people on the ground, far more than was usual.

And she thought it might have something to do with the electric taste in her mouth, the taste that seemed to grow ever more intense as they neared the cave.

***

The stars were cold pinpricks against the night sky, and the thin sliver of moon provided precious little light, so Lucy heard the road before she could see it and saw it only when she was practically on top of it.

From a mile away, or maybe a little more, she had heard the unmistakable rumble of a big rig rolling along. The noise had spurred her to new efforts. She had been going since afternoon, when she had taken the knife and canteen from her second victim of the day and struck out across the hills, heading south, getting her bearings from the sun and sticking to as straight a course as the landscape would allow. Since the sun had gone down, though, and the sky darkened, progress had been more difficult and she had been on the verge of giving up for the night when she heard the truck. Renewed, she pressed on through the dark desert, trying her best to dodge the cholla and ocotillo and broad, sharp-tipped yucca leaves that lurked around her.

Finally, she staggered out onto the surface of the roadway itself, its black asphalt shedding the heat it had stored from the day, and fell down to her knees, placing her palms on the road as if to reassure herself of its solidity. The road meant civilization. Safety. She felt herself beginning to weep, and sniffed it back.

It was just a road, she knew. She had no idea where it was, or where it led, or how well trafficked it was. For all she knew, the truck that had passed was the only vehicle that would come along all night. The next one might contain her kidnappers. It wouldn’t do to ascribe too much power to a simple strip of tar.

Lucy needed some rest. As much as she’d have loved to just start walking along the road, she could just as easily walk ten miles in the wrong direction, straight toward those who were certainly still pursuing her, and kill herself from exhaustion in the process. So instead of walking, she found a spot in the desert, a dozen feet from the road, sheltered from it by darkness and the mass of a spreading creosote bush, and lay down.

The passing of a car woke her. She scrambled to her knees just in time to see its taillights disappearing in the distance. Damn it! she thought. She cursed herself for not having woken up on its approach. It was a passenger car, by the looks of the lights, low to the ground. Not the SUV she’d been snatched in. She needed the sleep, but if a ride could be had, that would be good too. She moved closer to the road, and sat instead of laying down. After a few minutes she rested her head on her knees and dozed again.

When she snapped to alertness again, it was because she heard the drone of a vehicle in the distance, growing nearer. She hurried to the roadside and put the rifle down in the dirt, just off the edge of the road. The stolen knife was tucked through her belt, its handle hidden by her shirt, so she didn’t bother trying to disguise it any further. Then she checked herself, as carefully as she could. She knew she was a mess, her hair a tangle rivaling that of Brer Rabbit’s briar patch, her skin filthy and torn, her clothes ragged. But the ragged clothes, at least, could work for her, if the vehicle’s driver was a heterosexual male. She grabbed the ripped neckline of her tight top and tore it farther, exposing an expanse of breast. If she’d had time, she would have taken her pants off altogether, but the car’s headlights were already splitting the darkness and heading toward her. She stepped onto the edge of the road and began waving her hands frantically.