Rescue From Planet Pleasure (5 page)

Chapter Eight

We sopped the last bit of blood with fry bread and handed our empty bowls to Rainelle.

It was two in the morning, and our biorhythms were thoroughly messed up. As vampires, creatures of the night and all that, we’re supposed to keep nocturnal hours. But we live among humans, and to get anything done, we have to abide by their day-job schedules. Venturing into the sunlight wears us out, and after a few days, vampires need to recuperate by sleeping during the day, preferably in a coffin.

Coyote said we were welcome to crash in his doublewide, as if we had much choice. He and Rainelle slept in the master bedroom. The second bedroom was stuffed with a pirate’s booty of clothes, footwear (many still in boxes), small appliances (some also in boxes), and electronics.

That left the living room with the trucker-chalice passed out on the armchair. His rosy-red aura pulsed so serenely it could’ve purred. Jolie called dibs on the sofa, which left me the carpet. Rainelle brought pillows and blankets, all marked with the Motel 6 logo. Jolie and I stripped to our skivvies. She folded those muscular shanks of hers under a blanket, then shoved her .45s under a pillow. I tucked my magnum under mine.

With every snore, the trucker-chalice ratcheted down the armchair until his ass scooted off the edge of the cushion, leaving the nape of his neck hooked on the seat back.

Jolie and I tried our best to ignore his snoring until we could no longer stand his loud-as-a-chainsaw rumblings. At the same instant, we bolted to our feet and each of us grabbed one of his arms. We hauled him to the door of the living room. I kicked it open. We pitched the trucker-chalice off the porch onto a stack of hay bales, where he collapsed like a broken marionette, still snoring and smacking his lips.

The cool night air beckoned for vampiric mischief. But we had a long day tomorrow so we closed the door and lay down to sleep.

Early in the morning, Rainelle woke me as she padded through the living room. I lay on the floor and watched her pull the curtains tight so no outside light could peek through.

Coyote must have taught her the precautions needed to protect us vampires. It was at dawn that the sun’s rays were at their deadliest and even the thickest layers of sunscreen weren’t much help. The best protection was to remain indoors with the windows covered by thick opaque curtains, behind which us brave monsters hid like trapdoor spiders.

I glanced at my watch. Still another hour until dawn. I pulled the blanket over my head and went back to sleep.

It seemed like a moment later when something hit me. “Hey,
ese.
” Coyote was tapping my shoulder with his shoe. “Get up.”

Yawning, I curled upright and smelled coffee brewing. Jolie sat on the sofa, moist hair pinned back, and was busily applying a foundation of Dermablend. My watch read 9:42 a.m., well into the safe zone of morning.

Coyote set cups of black coffee and a creamer with goat’s blood on the coffee table. Rainelle offered fry bread fresh out of the toaster.

Jolie asked Coyote about his mom.

He snorted dismissively. “It’ll be another hour before she comes home. Probably doing the Walk of Shame.”

Jolie quirked an eyebrow at me.
With El Cucuy?

I shrugged.
None of our business.

After breakfast, Jolie visited the second bedroom and sorted through the clothes. She traded her leather touring pants for jeans and her motorcycle boots for a pair of cross trainers. But she kept her Joe Rocket jacket. Gotta look badass.

A half hour later she and I were bouncing in the bed of a battered Ford 150. Slathered in sunscreen. Sunglasses on. Pistols cleaned, oiled, and loaded. Extra ammo in our pockets. With Rainelle at the helm, the pickup clattered toward the rim of the mesa. Coyote sat next to her, his window open and the breeze batting his collar and the ragged strands of hair that poked from under his ball cap. The Rolex glittered on his thin wrist, and the over-sized Ray-Bans on his bony, dark face made him look like an emaciated fly.

The sky was an unspoiled blue. I breathed the fragrant sage and the homey smell from wood fires. Our problems seemed distant, and I wondered if it would be a crime if we played hooky from saving the world.

We passed a line of fence posts made of discarded car bumpers and drive shafts. The pickup dropped off the edge of the mesa onto a road steep as an Olympic toboggan run. Rainelle jiggled the steering wheel and kept us on course—barely—as we caromed down the slope. I was almost pitched out and Jolie clutched my arm. Seconds later, I returned the favor. I comforted myself by hoping this ride might be the most dangerous leg of today’s journey.

I caught Rainelle checking her hair in the rearview. For her, this suicide drop was just another day at the ranch.

At the bottom of the hill, the road forked with a trail that meandered over the rolling, open ground. Rainelle gunned the engine and followed the bumpy trail. The truck shook so hard I was certain it was going to fall apart, and Jolie and I were tossed about like ping-pong balls in a raffle cage.

Miles later, Rainelle ran out of trail and halted on the top of a shallow hill. Even with a 4x4, this desert would murder anything on wheels. Coyote climbed out, as did Jolie and I, grateful for steady earth beneath our feet. Our destination, Fajada Butte, loomed miles ahead, a wrinkled truncated thumb rising from the desert floor. With a wave, Rainelle shifted into reverse, swung the truck between two cactuses, ground the gears, and rumbled away.

Jolie took off her sunglasses and polished the lenses with her t-shirt. She put them back on and faced Coyote. “Now you’re going to tell us how we’re going to get Carmen?”

“No point to it.” He started walking, all sharp angles and baggy clothes, like an animated scarecrow. “Not until we get to the butte.”

Jolie and I fell in step behind him. She asked, “If this is so goddamn important, why don’t you fill in the details?”

He didn’t answer and started to trot.

I asked, “Where’s your burro?”

“Rayo’s on sabbatical,
ese.
”

We jogged over rocks and crusted sand, but Fajada Butte didn’t appear to be getting any closer. The sun rose directly overhead, and its autumn light beamed on us bright and barely warm.

A thirst itched my throat, and I realized that none of us had brought water or blood. Unless Coyote knew of a stash of hemoglobin, we were in for long, miserable foray through this wilderness.

A rumble echoed across the openness. The sky was too clear for the sound to be thunder. The rumble deepened and grew into a menacing
thump, thump, thump
.

Helicopter.

At any moment, I expected to see another Blackhawk pop over the horizon. Not sure of how to react, I took my cue from Coyote, and he continued, unconcerned.

Jolie swiveled her head to get a bearing on the noise.

A rotor disk climbed from behind a hill to our left. The disk rose and lifting beneath it appeared the transmission hump, then the engine pods, then a helicopter big as a locomotive. A gigantic CH-53 Sea Dragon roared straight for us.

Another glance at Coyote. He kept jogging, and so did we.

The immense helicopter cruised at a hundred feet in altitude and at a slow, even speed, maybe thirty miles an hour. Long lattice booms stuck from each side of the fuselage. Each boom was tipped with a large psychotronic diviner that slewed left and right in a steady, synchronized tempo.

The Sea Dragon gained on us. The ground trembled. The aircraft grew huge and terrifyingly loud, a twenty-ton storm cloud of metal and noise.

Its crew remained hidden behind the canopy, and I didn’t see anyone leaning out a side window. The helicopter was the same color as the Blackhawk from yesterday, a green so dark that the machine seemed to be in shadow no matter what angle you looked at it. A sensor turret on the chin made jerky movements to lock on each of us as if taking snapshots.

The Sea Dragon roared overhead and blotted out the sun. Its shadow flashed across the ground. Rotorwash swept the dirt. I tipped my head and covered my face. When I looked back up, the helicopter was receding from us, its shadow hurdling over the ground beneath it.

Jolie brushed dust from her face and jacket. She shouted to Coyote. “What the hell was that about?”

He didn’t break stride or reply.

Jolie picked up a rock, threw it, and it ricocheted by his feet. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Coyote kept his pace at a relentless trot.

Jolie picked up another rock, then dropped it. “Why is he such an asshole?” She turned to me. “What do you think is going on?”

“I’m guessing Cress Tech.”

“What was the helicopter doing?”

“A survey of some kind. Didn’t you notice the strange equipment hanging out the sides of the fuselage?”

“Survey? For what?”

“Something psychic.”

“Is that a guess?”

“Pretty much.”

“Don’t know about you,” she replied, “but I don’t like risking my ass for a bunch of goddamn guesses.”

“Me either. But it seems somebody, and by that somebody I mean Uncle Sam, is paying Cress Tech buttloads of money to do psychic research here. First the towers with the psychotronic diviners, then the armed helicopter response team. The chopper that just flew by is the biggest one in the Navy inventory and keeping it in the air ain’t cheap.”

The CH-53 shrank into the distance. The appearance of the big helicopter made me consider worrisome thoughts.

Human awareness of the psychic world was limited to glimpses revealed in dreams, synchronicity, premonitions, and out-of-body experiences—all fleeting and unreliable. Say the word psychic and most would reply with charlatan. Psychic phenomena remained as mysterious to us as electricity was to the Romans. But if the government unlocked the secrets of the psychic world, what then?

“You’re being quiet,” Jolie said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing good. Since I know humans all too well, I’m gonna say the military helicopters and heavily-armed guards pretty much cinches that the government takes the psychic world real seriously. Harnessing psychic power could be much like the invention of the electric light bulb, radar, computers. Once humans figure out how to access and control the psychic world, then the bean counters and lawyers will get to work.”

“That’s fucking scary,” Jolie replied. “If that happens, then when you dream, expect to pay for access to the psychic plane like paying for an Internet connection, plus all the related bullshit. Paranormal pop-up ads. Subconscious spam.”

She shaded her brow and scanned the horizon. A Cress Tech tower materialized in the distant haze.

“Remember Phaedra’s sketches?” Jolie asked. We had found the drawings in her home soon after she’d disappeared. “She had drawn the psychic plane as an enormous room lined with doors. She could see and project her thoughts through those doors. What if it’s possible for someone to physically travel through them?”

I answered, “Coyote did a lot of strange disappearing acts when we were together in Los Angeles. One time he opened my car door and dropped into traffic. I was sure he was gonna get trampled by the cars behind me, but when I looked back, he was gone.”

Jolie turned towards me. Her eyebrows arched over the tops of her sunglasses.

“Later,” I continued, “renegade vampires blew up Coyote’s pickup—hoping to get me—and instead incinerated him. Or so I thought until three days later, when he showed up in the back seat of my car, famished and covered in soot. After mooching a meal and beer, he disappeared again.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that. I had looked away for a second and then he was gone, like he’d never been there. Nothing left except for discarded burrito wrappers and empty bottles of Löwenbräu.”

“And don’t forget Marina’s disappearing act,” Jolie added. She stared at Coyote. “So it’s no wild leap to say they know how to transport through the psychic plane?”

I knew he was listening. I talked loud to engage him. “What worries me is what if the government also finds out how? I don’t know much about psychic powers, but what I’ve seen scares the hell out of me.”

“No shit,” Jolie added. “Don’t forget Phaedra’s mind blasts.”

Coyote stopped abruptly, faced us, and scowled. “You two
pendejos
sure talk a lot. And you’re forgetting about another bunch of
culeros
fucking things up.”

Jolie and I halted.
Who?

“The aliens.” Coyote scratched his crotch and resumed his run. “And you’re right about me being in a hurry.
Vatos
, it’s a race against catastrophe.”

Jolie and I stared at Coyote as he trotted away. We were now close enough to Fajada Butte that against the horizon, the rocky formation looked as big as my fist.

I thought back to what he had just said.
Aliens.

Great.

Or course I knew that at some point our operation involved the aliens. After all, they held Carmen captive.

But the whole
cabronada
—the aliens, Phaedra, and Cress Tech—pivoted around the psychic world.

About the only thing I could piece together—from my experience with Coyote’s Houdini hocus-pocus—was that access to the psychic world might open shortcuts between points in deep space.

We reached the narrow dirt road we’d been on yesterday. Thin clouds of dust blossomed to the south and to the northeast. I wondered—but not too much—about what had happened to the Texan and his Porsche sedan.

We came across a barbed-wire fence with a placard from the National Park Service that warned against trespassing onto Fajada Butte. Coyote levitated to scale the wires like he was walking up steps and dropped to the other side. Jolie bent her knees and sprang over the fence as if her legs were super Pogo sticks. I followed Coyote’s less athletic example.

He glanced to the sun, put his hand up as if to gauge the sun’s height above the horizon, and then checked his Rolex. He started running with Jolie and me at his heels.

A quarter of a mile farther, we scrambled down Chaco Wash and up the other side. Fajada Butte loomed before us, imposing and portending mystic secrets, like another Mt. Sinai.