The Shroud of Heaven (46 page)
I needed to get out of there. Sooner or later, the shit would hit the fan and I didn’t want to explain to anyone what I was doing there and what had happened. I was heading for the front door, my head swiveling back and forth, when I spied the kitchen. I’d never known exactly where it was located when I was a patient here. Beyond the stove and counters I saw a large door. I walked to the door and indeed it was what I thought it was, a large walk-in freezer. Probably used to store fresh food so no one would have to shop often. That’s what I told myself, giving me an excuse not to look.
The nagger had always screamed and sworn at me, but now it said softly,
“You have to look. You need to see why you’re doing this.”
I pushed open the door. Long shelves filled the place. On them I found ten bodies. I saw where two more had lain and been removed. The long boxes I’d seen them load into the vans had certainly held the latest experiments, the other guinea pigs. My stomach roiled and I wanted to run, but I didn’t. I looked at each one of them. Most were still old, although some were young—at least parts of them were. Grotesque corpses with one arm fresh and smooth, the other old and withered. I wondered what their insides looked like. Then I saw, at least partially.
One body that had changed to a younger age, although not as young as mine, had been opened from sternum to groin. Operations had been performed mainly around his waist and holes drilled into his skull, parts of which were missing. His glands and organs had been harvested. If George hadn’t been excited that night and the cook hadn’t spilled coffee on herself, this would have been me.
How narrow the distance between life and death
, I thought.
Lives are filled with small, seemingly unimportant events that often make a great difference. Two paths open at the same instant, one leads to life, the other death.
I had to go. I was afraid someone would be back to finish cleaning out this place and remove the other bodies. I felt they were gone for good, but what I had seen left me fearful and uneasy. Olivier, whether willingly or not, was changing locations. Where he was going, I had no idea.
I got in the car and headed west. It seemed to me that was the direction to go. I had no reason to feel this way, except Olivier had a hospital in California and Dr. Wyatt was in Houston, all west of my location. As I drove I thought about the numbers I’d gotten from George, especially the one I was certain was a phone number. I knew that 713 was a prefix used in the Houston area, along with 281. Carver Way was probably a street in Houston, or somewhere in a town nearby.
Had I accomplished anything? Had I learned anything? Yes, but would any of it help free me from Olivier? I wanted to get out from under the fear of being found and killed along with Toni, and I wanted revenge, for me and for all of his victims. I needed to stop him from selling the formula to insane despots who would try to enslave nations, and perhaps the world. I needed to be loosened from the umbilical cord that tied me to him. I had yet to explore my sense of connection I had with the man. I suppose deep inside my mind, somehow, I felt he was my creator. I guess he was. One of us dying would be the only way to sever that connection. Which of us would it be? Here I was headed toward what I’d hoped to avoid. Blood would soon be on my hands. My efforts hadn’t panned out. What lay ahead, I didn’t know. But, at last I was ready to do whatever was necessary. Somehow I would rid myself of these people, or die trying.
All Jack wanted was a little adventure. What he got was a battle with the ghosts of his past. And a battle for survival.
© 2007 T.F. Torrey
It’s 1985. After his release from an Arizona mental hospital, Jack Trexlor’s plans are simple: Lay low, tend bar, and stay out of trouble. But when his old friend Macy Barnes turns up, trouble follows close behind.
Macy brings along the enigmatic John Lupo, a Navajo Indian with an incredible past—if their stories of high-adrenaline adventure are to be believed. Hungry for a little adventure of his own, Jack accepts their invitation to spend the weekend fishing on the Verde River. Maybe, just maybe, by cool waters deep in the heart of the desert, he’ll find what he’s been missing.
The journey gets off to a rocky start when John’s girlfriend and Macy’s wife join the group, along with snakes, scorpions—and the ghosts of Jack’s past. Worse, they run afoul of a pack of poachers. Their quiet fishing trip suddenly turns into a fight for survival, and the group must depend on John Lupo to get them out alive.
But Jack comes to realize that, even if they all survive, nothing will ever be the same.
Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Desert King:
Right off the bat, something seemed strange to me. “Something seems weird here,” I said.
Nobody else said anything.
We were overlooking a deep and quiet pool in the bend of the river. Downstream the river curved first to our left, then back to our right, then left again, like an
S
in which we stood inside the lower curve. Beneath us the water was wide and deep, but at the top of the
S
the channel narrowed into rapids where the water roiled angrily.
But none of that captured our attention. All eyes focused instead on the tan truck across the river at the top of the
S
. It was a big, four-wheel drive pickup, backed up toward the water, not quite as close as Macy had parked his. The truck had a dual-rifle rack in its back window and a jagged rock hole in its passenger side window.
“Is that the poachers’ truck?” Sharon asked.
“I think so,” Macy said.
Erica shaded her eyes with her hand. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the hole John smashed in the window. But I don’t see the poachers.”
“That’s great,” Sharon said. “Now they found us. They got us now for sure. We’re never going to make it back to Phoenix.” Almost sobbing, she moved over to Macy and put her head on his shoulder. He gave the top of her head a sour look.
“What do you think, John?” Macy asked.
John Lupo stood motionless. He had his outback hat drawn low against the setting sun, casting most of his face in shadow. It reminded me of the night I’d met him, when Macy and he and I had gone skating. Here in the desert he had that same air of confidence and control. I was glad he was the captain of
our
team.
His eyes probed the truck and the desert foliage around it, looking for the pair of poachers. He didn’t say anything, and I wondered if he’d heard Macy at all.
But just for a second. Then suddenly I was thinking what great targets we were up on the ridge like that.
“If they
are
looking for us,” Erica said, “or even if they’re not, we make great targets up here.”
The way our minds worked the same was uncanny, like we were somehow psychically in sync.
Macy and I looked at each other, then at John. He didn’t take his eyes off the scene.
“Maybe you should get down,” he said finally.
Instantly, Sharon dropped to the ground and sat facing away from the river. Erica crouched beside her, behind John, who remained standing motionless. Macy and I ducked low and crept to the edge of the bluff where we could gaze at the truck and look for the poachers. On John’s left, Macy leaned on his walking stick and peered over the edge of the bluff. I hid, partially behind a mesquite bush, to John’s right. We looked on in silence for a minute or so.
“Where do you think they are?” Macy asked.
John took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, great,” Sharon said, sobbing now from exhaustion or whatever.
“They made a ring of rocks behind their truck like they were going to build a fire,” John said.
We looked at the rough circle of stones at the water’s edge.
“There’s nothing in it,” Macy said.
“Maybe they’re out getting firewood,” John said.
Erica moved forward to where she could see. She crouched so close to me that I could smell her. I didn’t complain.
“Maybe they went after a deer,” she said.
“Could be,” John said. “Their rifles aren’t in the rack.”
“Oh, great,” Sharon said.
“I didn’t hear―whoa!” Macy’s words were cut off by the sound of shifting rocks and sand. The ground beneath him broke loose and began sliding down the face of the bluff. Macy scrambled and pawed on all fours over the sliding mass. His walking stick and about nine square feet of earth disappeared. Before any of us could react, he dived desperately up to the ground beside John. I looked over the edge in time to see the mass of sand and rocks and the walking stick plunge with a chunky splash into the river.
Panting, Macy collected himself on the ground beside John. Erica moved over and grabbed Macy’s arm. Reflexively, probably, but a little late. “Are you okay?” she asked.
I felt a strange twinge in my mind. Jealousy?
Apparently Sharon felt it, too. She got up and sat down between Macy and Erica. “Macy,” she said. “You have to be more careful.”
They exchanged gratitudes and I turned back to the river to ignore them. “That noise might attract the attention of―” I said, and finished quietly, “the poachers.”
John already had his revolver drawn.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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