The Vanishing (45 page)

That smelled like sewage.

Maybe it
had
been a compost pile, Brian thought.

He remained where he was, as did Carrie, as did the mercenaries, as did Andrew. All of them were too stunned to move, too overwhelmed by the enormity of what had just occurred to react, their brains still unable to process all of the information they had been fed.

Carrie spoke first. ‘‘Is it over?’’

None of them answered.

‘‘I think it is,’’ she said a few moments later.

Brian looked from her to Todd and watched as a grin slowly spread across the face of the dazed mercenary. ‘‘We did it,’’ Todd said wonderingly, then said it again, louder and with more confidence. ‘‘We did it!’’

‘‘I don’t know what
it
is,’’ Raul responded, ‘‘but you’re fuckin’ A right. We goddamn did it.’’

A cheer went up from the men, and as though some spell had been broken, they were laughing and shouting and high-fiving each other. It made sense, Brian thought. This was what they did. It was what they’d come here to do. But he and Carrie and poor bewildered Andrew were still reeling from the events of the past twenty minutes, and it was taking them longer to decompress.

With the mountain gone, the night seemed lighter, the moon and stars making the sky seem almost as bright as it did in the city, and Brian looked slowly about what was now a massive expanse of seriously damaged ground. He could see for miles, all the way to what looked like another forest, but it was movement closer in that caught his attention.

For stumbling about the smoking land, moving through the adobe rubble, the bodies of monsters and the burned pieces of plant, were men.

One of them was his dad.

Brian ran forward, past a burned apelike monster with cloven feet and a too-small head, around a filled hole whose odor made him gag, to where his father stood looking dumbly up at the stars. He grabbed his dad’s shoulders, was surprised to feel bone so close to the skin, then hugged the old man to him, ignoring the stench of
them
that permeated his father’s coarse wild hair. ‘‘Dad,’’ he said through his tears. ‘‘Dad.’’

A tentative hand reached around his back and patted it. ‘‘Brian,’’ the slow voice said thickly.

The mercenaries rounded up all six of the men who remained alive, placing them together against the still-standing building near the trees that they had apparently called home. Andrew, talking to Carrie and explaining for the third time about his family vacationing in Oak Draw, seemed to be getting better and more coherent by the minute, but the other six, his father included, stood docilely where they had been led.

‘‘What do we do with them?’’ Brian asked Todd. ‘‘Take them back with us? I’m not sure they’re in any shape—’’

‘‘Call it in.’’ Todd tossed him a cell phone. ‘‘The authorities can use the signal to find you.’’

‘‘Are we even . . . in a real place?’’ he asked, thinking of what had happened in the hut on the ridge.

‘‘Only one way to find out,’’ Todd told him.

Brian dialed 911, got an answer but immediately lost the signal. He moved, changed direction, and tried again. This time he got through. It was a Calaveras County sheriff’s office that he reached, and when the dispatcher asked him what the emergency was, he hesitated. He had no idea where to start, and if he gave an honest account of what had just occurred, the dispatcher would probably think it was a prank call and hang up. So he simply said that he was one of fourteen people lost in the woods somewhere east or northeast of Oak Draw. He had no idea of the exact location, so if there was some way to trace the phone signal, the authorities could find them that way and send rescuers out. ‘‘Some of us are injured,’’ he said. ‘‘About six of us.’’

‘‘Fourteen hikers?’’ the dispatcher said in disbelief. ‘‘Six injured?’’

‘‘That’s right.’’

He kept the line open for several minutes, and the sheriff’s office was able to track the signal.

‘‘Keep the line open,’’ the dispatcher said.

‘‘Can’t,’’ Brian told him. ‘‘Batteries are low. I’ll keep it on, though. Call when you’re getting close.’’

The truth was, he didn’t want to keep the line open, didn’t want the sheriff’s office to hear what they were talking about and then think he was bullshitting them, so he pressed the button to end the call.

‘‘I want to get some of that gold,’’ Raul was saying. ‘‘I’m not digging through one of those shit holes for it, but we got miles of that yellow brick road we could pry a few bars apiece out of.’’

‘‘Don’t do it,’’ Andrew said. He stared flatly at Raul. ‘‘That gold is . . . cursed.’’

Brian would have expected at least a couple of the men to laugh, but none of them did.

‘‘I believe that, too,’’ Carrie said quietly. ‘‘As does Brian.’’

He nodded in agreement.

‘‘Okay,’’ Todd said simply. ‘‘That’s good enough for me.’’

Raul blinked. ‘‘You’re going to give up all that money? Millions of fucking dollars?’’

Todd nodded toward Brian’s father and the other men. ‘‘Are you really willing to take a chance?’’

Raul was silent for a moment, then finally shook his head.

‘‘Me neither.’’

Brian and Carrie walked a little ways away, exploring. He had put the cell phone in his pocket and taken one of the lights. ‘‘We did it,’’ he said.

‘‘But that’s not the end,’’ Carrie told him. ‘‘What about other people like Lew who we don’t know about, who are still out there, ready to go off?’’

‘‘The police will just have to take those incidents as they come. Maybe they’ll even be ready this time and know what to look for.’’

‘‘Maybe,’’ she said in a voice that implied exactly the opposite.

Brian frowned.

She nodded toward the mercenaries, who were smoking cigarettes and laughing, already turning what had happened into battle stories. ‘‘Look what they did here. They wiped out everyone and everything. That was their mission. Your buddy Kirk Stewart hired them for just that reason.’’

Realization dawned on him.

‘‘Who’s to say he hasn’t hired them to also go after friends or business associates of his father, men he suspects of being corrupted?’’ she said. ‘‘Or other rich men he’s heard about? Maybe he’s hired other ‘teams.’ I keep thinking about the end of
The Godfather
, where Michael’s attending the baptism of his child while killers are carrying out his orders and murdering his enemies at the same time.’’

Brian remembered the steel he’d heard in Kirk’s weakened voice and thought that her comparison was probably very apt.

How did he feel about that?

He wasn’t sure. But his part in all this was done. He was not going to keep chasing this for the rest of his life. He’d found his father and that was good enough for him.

‘‘Well, kids, gotta go.’’ Todd was waving at them. ‘‘You can keep the light.’’

‘‘What?’’ Brian looked over and saw that the other members of the team were packing up their guns and strapping on their packs.

‘‘Hey!’’ he said, hurrying over. ‘‘Where are you guys going? The helicopter’ll be here pretty soon.’’

‘‘We’re not waiting for any helicopter,’’ Todd said simply. ‘‘We don’t exist.’’ He pointed. ‘‘And you never saw us. You either,’’ he said to Carrie.

Brian nodded slowly, as did she.

The men had secured their gear and were ready to go.

Todd smiled, and the others gave various high signs and salutes. ‘‘See you around.’’

‘‘Thanks . . .’’ Brian started to say.

‘‘Move out!’’ Todd ordered. And then they were gone, disappearing into the trees as though they had never been there.

‘‘What do we do now?’’ Andrew asked fearfully.

‘‘Wait,’’ Brian said, and looked around to make sure his dad had not moved.

The helicopters arrived sometime later, with phone calls announcing their arrival a half hour, fifteen minutes and then five minutes before the landing, and it was not only a local sheriff’s detail that came to rescue them but state and federal agents as well, which made Brian think that someone somewhere had some idea of what was going on.

The next several hours were a blur. They were flown to Sacramento, questioned alone and in pairs. Andrew kept demanding to be returned to his family, and when Brian asked about the fate of his rental car, he was told not to worry, everything would be taken care of. They spoke to police and state and federal agents, and even a woman who seemed like some sort of psychiatrist. ‘‘Don’t talk to any reporters,’’ he remembered telling Carrie at one point.

She smiled. ‘‘My story’s exclusive to the
Los Angeles Times.
’’

His father had been arrested for the murder of Reverend Charles, and Brian thought that at least some of the others had been placed into custody as well, but he didn’t want to think about that right now, didn’t want to deal with it, and he gave Jillian a quick call and a bowdlerized version of what had happened and asked her to find a lawyer and take charge of the situation until he returned to Los Angeles and got everything straightened out.

It was early evening when they were finally allowed to go. Andrew had gotten lost in the shuffle, but he and Carrie were still together, and they were both given plane tickets and a ride to the airport. Both of them were dirty, their clothes wrinkled, stained and torn, and they looked so much like homeless people that others in the terminal made a special effort to avoid them or take a wide walk around them. Both he and Carrie laughed about that, although afterward she said soberly that now she knew how some of her clients felt when they were out in public.

Neither of them had anything to check, and they sat alone near a window, staring out at the night as they waited for announcement of their flights.

‘‘Did we do the right thing?’’ Carrie asked. She was looking at him intently, the expression on her face one of worry and concern. Her eyes had gained a haunted look over the past few days, and he wondered if he looked the same.

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Brian admitted.

‘‘I’ve been thinking about that forest. The one that regrew overnight. Don’t you think that such power could have been harnessed somehow? I mean, with so much deforestation and global warming and all of these environmentalproblems we’re facing, doesn’t it seem like we had a solution at our fingertips that we could have used? And we just wiped it out? Bam! A few explosions and a whole species, extinct.’’

Brian thought of that species, the evil expressions on those hideous faces, the piles of bones and rotting human carcasses. He recalled Lisa LaMunyon’s translation of one of his dad’s letters.

‘‘You said one time that this was a war,’’ he told her. ‘‘Well, maybe it was. And maybe we did what we had to do. What did Phillip Emmons say when he was referring to those things? They were committing defensive acts? I think we did, too.’’

‘‘But we’ll never know.’’

‘‘We shouldn’t have been the ones to find them,’’ Brian admitted. ‘‘And especially not with Kirk Stewart’s army. It should have been scientists or the government or . . . somebody.’’

They were both silent for a moment.

‘‘So what about your dad?’’ she asked finally.

Brian sighed, feeling tired, realizing suddenly that he had been up for forty-some hours straight. ‘‘I’m letting my sister handle that now. I’m pulling a Scarlett O’Hara. I’ll think about it tomorrow.’’

Carrie smiled. ‘‘A man who knows his
Gone with the Wind
. I’m impressed.’’

‘‘Oh, I’m a font of interesting attributes once you get to know me.’’

They were on different flights going in different directions, and when the boarding of Carrie’s plane was announced first, the two of them looked at each other like lovers reluctant to part. They
weren’t
lovers, there hadn’t been even a spark between them, but what they had shared made them closer than many couples who had been together a lot longer, and he thought that under different circumstances they might have had a chance at romance.

‘‘Call me if you’re ever in San Francisco,’’ she told him.

‘‘Or if you’re ever in LA.’’

They hugged awkwardly, and he watched her walk down the long hallway to her plane. Ten minutes later, his own flight was called, and he showed his pass to the crisply uniformed woman, and walked wearily down the corridor, where an attendant helped him find his seat, making no mention of his unkempt appearance or obnoxious odor, treating him as though he were a regular passenger, and for that he was grateful.

He still had notes and supplies at the hotel in San Francisco, he realized as he stared out the window at the terminal building. And clothes. Were the law enforcement officials going to take care of that?

He closed his eyes. He’d think about it later. If he had to, he could call Carrie and have her pick up his stuff and ship it. Right now, he was tired.

Thinking about his belongings made him consider what type of article to write and how much he should tell Jimmy and whether or not he should pull his own experiences into it or go strictly objective.

He was still trying to think of how to write his story when he fell asleep.

The announcement woke him up, and Brian opened his eyes, stretched and straightened.

Brian smiled, feeling relaxed and peaceful for the first time in a long while. Northern California was beautiful, and San Francisco was a wonderful city.

But Southern California was home.

He looked out the window as the plane descended through the clouds and was gratified to see, spread out below him, the twinkling lights of Los Angeles, like jewels on black velvet, stretching westward across the conquered land all the way to the infinite darkness of the vast Pacific Ocean.