Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 (25 page)

The old car with the two drunks inside backed out of its parking space with a throttling rumble. The back end spun a little in the snow on the parking lot, and then fishtailed a little more when the driver hit the gas too hard. She couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not.

After the car left the parking lot, Cole went right to work on the pickup truck. Stella couldn’t see what Cole was doing because he was hidden in the darker shadows between the vehicles, but he was inside the truck within minutes. The dome light inside the truck hadn’t come on … either it didn’t work or Cole had smashed it right away.

“Is Cole going to stay with us?” David asked. “He’s not going to leave, is he?”

The thought of running away had crossed her mind again, but she shook her head no as she looked at David. “No. I told you, he’s getting his friend’s truck so we can drive down to New Mexico.”

David seemed satisfied with her answer, or he didn’t feel the need to question it any further. She was sure he felt safer with both her and Cole around him.

“David … you told me before that your parents are gone.”

David just nodded as he watched Cole out the window. “They’re dead,” he said. “That thing killed them. It was inside my mom … and …”

David let his words trail off and Stella didn’t push him.

“There’s no one else in your family to take care of you?” she asked after a moment.

David didn’t answer.

Was he all alone? Stella wondered. Was he all alone in this world with a monster straight out of a nightmare pursuing him? And now the only protection he had was an archaeologist and a criminal. Stella felt like crying at the hopelessness of it all, but she needed to be strong for David.

She heard the pickup truck start up and she looked across the parking lot.

Cole backed the pickup truck out of the parking space with the lights still off. He drove the truck slowly across the snowy parking lot, the engine idling. The brake lights flashed as he slowed down when he got to the road.

Stella started the Chevy Tahoe and followed him out onto the road.

Southern Colorado

A
n hour later Stella still followed the pickup truck Cole had stolen. They had kept to the backroads for a while and now they were driving down a road through the woods that seemed like a dirt trail covered with snow. She was afraid of getting stuck out here … they couldn’t be trapped out here in the woods, in the dark. The Ancient Enemy would find them again.

She pushed the thought away and concentrated on following Cole. The snow was a little lighter down here than it had been a hundred and twenty miles north, up in the higher mountains. Maybe the snowstorm hadn’t been as bad down here, but the driving was still slippery enough for her.

Finally, Cole pulled the pickup truck over on the side of the road in an area where the road widened out a little and the woods weren’t as close. She parked behind him and watched as he got out of the truck with its lights on, the motor still running. He hurried up to the Tahoe and she rolled the window down.

“Go ahead and get out,” he told her. “I’ll drive the Tahoe into that bare area over there.”

Stella didn’t respond. She turned around to the back seat and looked at David. “We have to get out now. We need to switch vehicles.”

David didn’t complain. He opened his door and stepped out into the night. As they walked away from the Chevy Tahoe, Cole got inside the vehicle and drove it across the road to a bare area, and then he drove it up as far as he could into the brush and the trees. Stella heard the branches and twigs scratching at the Tahoe, and then crunching underneath the heavy vehicle.

David took Stella’s hand as they hurried to the waiting pickup truck, smoke from the exhaust drifting up into the dark night, glowing in the taillights. She felt the night closing in around them, and she thought she heard the sound of twigs and branches snapping somewhere else in the woods, on the other side of the road … something big moving around out there in the darkness.

It’s just your imagination, she told herself. She needed to get inside the pickup truck.

You’re not any safer in there than you are out here,
her mind whispered.

Stella opened the driver’s door and hopped inside. She crawled across the bench seat, over the center console. She didn’t want to get in on the passenger side—she didn’t want to be that close to the woods. David crawled into the truck after her, and snuggled up beside her. She pushed the door lock down for the doors, but she kept the driver’s door wide open for Cole who was already hurrying back through the darkness towards the pickup truck.

If there was a time that the Ancient Enemy could strike, it would be now, she thought. She could imagine a dark and constantly changing lifeform racing out of the trees or floating down through the air and enveloping Cole, trapping him before he could get to the truck.

But Cole made it inside the truck and he slammed the door closed on the cold air and the darkness. He put the truck in gear, turning it around in the middle of the road, and then he drove back the way they had come.

“Shouldn’t we set fire to the Tahoe or something?” she asked as they drove away.

He looked at her strangely.

“Get rid of any evidence,” she added.

“That’s just in the movies,” he told her. “Setting fire to that truck would be like setting a signal fire for the cops. As far as evidence goes, they already know I stole that guy’s truck. Besides, I wore gloves the whole time anyway.”

Stella nodded.

“Stick to archaeology,” he told her with a smile.

David snickered right beside her, looking up at her with a grin.

Stella looked at David. “What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing,” he giggled.

“Aren’t you sleepy?” she asked him. It was about two o’clock in the morning now. “You can hop in the back if want to lay down.” The truck had a full-size king cab in the back but there were a lot of tools and other junk back there that David would have to move out of the way first.

“No,” he answered.

He had slept for a few hours earlier and she suspected that it would be difficult for any of them to relax until they were out of these woods. The claustrophobic walls of trees on both sides of the road reminded her too much of the road to Tom Gordon’s cabin, and the driveway, and everything that had happened there. She didn’t know why Cole had to drive so far into the woods to ditch Bruce’s SUV, but at least it was done and over with.

“There’s a … a smell in here,” Stella said, wrinkling her nose.

“Yeah,” Cole answered. “Like old socks and a wet dog.”

Again, David laughed. He was probably overly tired and happy now that they were safely inside a vehicle and leaving these woods.

Safe? She thought. That was a laugh. They wouldn’t be safe until … until what? Until they found a shaman and he taught David how to defeat that thing out there once and for all? Who was she kidding? What were the chances of all of that happening? What were the chances of finding this shaman that she had only heard whispered rumors about before, the man called Joe Blackhorn? What were the chances Joe Blackhorn was even still alive? What were the chances he would be willing or even
able
to help them? What were the chances that any of them would survive until then?

But she couldn’t think about that. She would drive herself crazy if she kept torturing herself with these thoughts. All she could do was push on and keep moving. If it didn’t work out, then they would figure something else out … but she wouldn’t ever give up.

As Cole drove the rumbling pickup down the rutted, narrow trail through the woods, Stella stared out at the black forest. The trees whipped by in a dark blur. The only light came from a mostly full moon and their headlights. She could imagine the Ancient Enemy, whatever it was, hurrying through the brush and trees, following them as quickly as their truck moved, some kind of constantly shifting creature that could be insectoid at one moment, and then reptilian, and then part sea creature, and then something else that human eyes had never seen before, something that couldn’t be understood, something that could fry human wiring and drive them insane if they stared at it too long.

David snuggled up against Stella. She looked down at him to see if he was nodding off, but he just stared straight ahead out the windshield with wide eyes. He was quiet again. Of course with the trauma he’d been through, she could understand his silence. She was surprised that he hadn’t suffered more serious mental shock so far. But sometimes children were more resilient in these areas than adults were, especially when it came to something unexplainable. It was easier for David’s mind to accept that a monster was out there in the darkness, popping in and out of dimensions, from its own world into ours whenever it wanted to.

Time seemed to stretch out, but eventually they were out of the dark woods and back onto a paved road. They drove south down a road they had mapped out on one of Bruce’s maps earlier.

“We’ll find somewhere to crash for a few hours,” Cole said as he drove. “It’s too risky driving around out here at night with the cops looking for us. We’ll start driving again around five o’clock in the morning, that way we’ll look like any other pickup truck on its way to work.”

Stella didn’t say anything. Cole seemed to know what he was doing when it came to criminal matters. She just stared out the passenger window, comfortable with David snuggled up against her.

Southern Colorado

D
avid crawled into the back seat of the pickup truck and went to sleep by the time they got to the next town.

Cole drove slowly down the streets until he spotted an all-night diner/truck stop. He parked in a far corner where some semi-trucks were parked. Their pickup truck was hidden from view of the street, partially blocked from the other trucks, but it still felt somewhat safe for the moment.

He left the pickup running for a while, but turned off all of the lights. It felt warm and safe to Stella for the first time in a while.

“I guess you don’t have any kids,” Cole said after a long moment as he sipped some coffee that they’d bought at a gas station thirty minutes ago.

Stella shook her head. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. If you had a family, I would think you would be trying to get back to them right now.”

It made sense to her. Maybe Cole was more perceptive than she gave him credit for.

“Let me guess,” Cole said. “You’ve been too focused on your education and career to have a family.”

“You should be a psychologist,” she told him sarcastically as she munched on a cold French fry. “What about you? Too busy stealing stuff for a family?”

He chuckled. “Never wanted a family. I’m right about your career, though. Right?”

She sighed. “After college, I couldn’t wait to get out in the field and work. I had so many theories about the Anasazi, theories that contradicted everything scholars were teaching, but I needed proof. There were accepted theories of the disappearance of the Anasazi. That’s what happens when a bunch of scientists agree on a theory, no one even tries to counter it or seek out other possibilities. It’s too much work for the scientific community, and they will make you out to be some kind of whacko or conspiracy theorist if you don’t go along with academia like you’re supposed to.”

“What were your theories?”

She looked at him for a second, smiling at him. “I’m sure you’re really interested.”

“Well, yeah. Since some ancient thing is chasing us now. Since everything that’s happened, I’m sure you’ve had to have changed your original theories a little, I would guess.”

“Well, yeah. Of course.”

Cole was quiet for a moment, waiting for Stella to continue.

“It’s widely believed as fact now that the Anasazi migrated up to the New Mexico and Arizona areas from Central America nearly a thousand years ago. They built roads and cities, large underground kivas. They raised crops and livestock. Those things were kind of unheard of in this area among the North American tribes at the time. Many peoples of Central and South America had built cities, roads, and complex civilizations, but the other tribes of Native Americans in the southwestern region didn’t really build cities.”

Cole sipped his coffee. He was listening to Stella, but he kept glancing around at the parking lot all around them every few seconds.

“It has always fascinated me that many of those people who built cities in South and Central America eventually abandoned them, and some of the people seemed to have practically vanished.”

“Like the Anasazi?”

“Sort of. Some of these people seemed to have just walked away from the massive cities they had built: The Olmecs, the Maya, the Inca. Some are still around, but it still doesn’t explain why they would just walk away from these massive cities they had spent so much time and effort building. And the Anasazi did the same thing here in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. They built large and complex cities and then for some reason they abandoned them and moved north up into southern Colorado and southern Utah where they built highly defensible cities, some of the cities built right into the sides of mountain faces and rock cliffs.”

“I remember you telling me about that before.”

“Yes. Well, they eventually abandoned these strongholds, too. Evidence shows that they moved south again, maybe down into northern and central Arizona. They left a lot behind at these cities when they left: their pottery, their tools, their dead. It’s like they just ran.”

“So what are your theories?” Cole asked her. “Why do you think they ran?”

“First let me tell you what the accepted theories are right now. There were many signs of strife at these sites, but no real signs of hostile fights with other tribes. It seems more like they were fighting with each other. There is even evidence of sacrifice and cannibalism.”

Stella ate the last of her French fries and then set the bag down on the floorboard with all of the other trash the pickup truck’s owner had thrown there. “Anyway, the accepted theory is that the Anasazi just decided to abandon all of their cities, their technology, their culture, their law, their religion, and go south to either become modern-day Hopi and or Pueblo, or assimilate into those tribes.”