Skorpio Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX "Mismatched Eyes"

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Mike Baron

  Book Description

  A ghost who only appears under a blazing sun.

  Vaughan Beadles, Professor of Anthropology at Creighton University, is at the top of his game. Married to the beautiful Betty, with a baby son, Beadles has just taken possession of the largest uncatalogued post-Anasazi Indian collection in the world. Creighton has long maintained the existence of the Azuma, a previously unknown and extremely belligerent southwest Amerindian tribe.

  When a scorpion crawls out of a bowl and stings Beadles' student, his world turns upside down. The university charges Beadles with theft and the police charge him with homicide. He loses his job, his wife, and his future. Beadles' only chance at redemption is to prove the Azuma existed, setting him on a path that will inexorably lead to a terrifying confrontation in the desert with a creature beyond belief.

  ***

  Digital Edition – 2013

  WordFire Press

  www.wordfire.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-085-7

  Copyright © 2013 WordFire, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  Electronic Version by Baen Ebooks

  http://www.baen.com

  ***

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Last Chance"

  Heat lingered in the desert, even at dusk. The VW bus, wedged between two dusty pick-ups outside the Last Chance Bar & Grill in Gap, AZ, was plastered with Grateful Dead stickers, peace symbols, and flowers, a relic from the dawn of rock and roll. The symbols were barely visible through the patina of dust that descended on any vehicle on the plateau. Even vehicles kept in closed garages were covered with dust.

  The Last Chance formed the end cap of an exiguous Main Street stretching for two blocks, consisting of a couple two story brick office buildings, a feed store, the Last Chance Bank, Vern's Hardware, Vern's Gas, and directly across the street, Vern's Motel.

  It was 1985. At Vern's Gas, it was a buck eleven a gallon.

  The Last Chance itself was an adobe structure with viga poles protruding from its brow, a plank porch that ran the length, and a landscape window in which the neon Last Chance light flashed over the small Budweiser. The bar had once been pink but now, like everything else exposed to the Sonoran desert, it was sandy beige. Constant wind whipped through the streets sandblasting everything in its path. It was ninety-eight degrees outside, the only living thing an old dog on the bar's porch, which got up and circled five times before settling down on a filthy blanket. A hand-made Navajo bowl held water.

  The only sounds were the wind, the whine of the rooftop air-conditioner, and very faintly, the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit."

  Inside, Curt Mayweather and Ronnie Potts, seniors and roommates at Creighton University in Creighton, IL, sat at the bar. They were stoned to the gills. Each had a sixteen ounce glass of Rattlesnake IPA before them, ten percent alcohol. Curt hunched over the bar, ballpoint pen in hand, sketching in a bristol board pad he carried with him at all times. Ronnie looked at the stuffed rattlesnake and coyote over the bar, the tin signs celebrating defunct motor vehicles, WW II nose art, and shootin', the sawdust-covered plank floor, the dart board, and the patrons themselves, four cowboys in boots, Stetsons, and bonnaroo belt buckles the size of Texas, and thought, how cool is this?

  Ronnie was five eleven, second of three children belonging to Marge and Daniel Potts of Evanston. Daniel Potts of Stankle, Murphy and Crowder, Attorneys at Law specializing in corporate litigation. Ronnie was a varsity wrestler at 170, working toward his bachelor's degree in Anthropology. After which he would go straight for the Masters while trying to hitch a ride on every archaeological dig he could find.

  Curt bent over his drawing. He majored in psychology but was toying with the idea of changing his major to art. He had always drawn, ever since he was a child. He drew in the margins of his books in grade school. He created little flip books by drawing the same image over and over again--with slight variations--so that when you gathered the pages between thumb and forefinger and let 'em rip, you saw a tiny skeleton dance the hoochie-koochie.

  His teachers tried to discourage him at first but by the time he reached Junior High, it had become evident to all, even his parents, that Curt could draw. He was an only c
hild. His father was an accountant for Sheldon Property Management in Evanston, and his mother worked as a librarian. Curt was a round-shouldered hulk with a beer belly and a beard. Unlike the other patrons, the students' faces were as smooth and unblemished as freshly laundered sheets.

  The interior winked and gleamed through its gloom--Christmas tree lights surrounding the bar, the neon in the window, and the bubbling Wurlitzer in the corner into which Ronnie had plugged a buck in quarters, a full album's worth. He'd searched among the Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck and Merle Haggard that dominated the little rotating selection menus. Nobody so much as looked up when Grace Slick began to wail.

  Herders and cowboys, the patrons were taciturn and tolerant and frankly grateful for a change from the usual fare. The bartender was a middle-aged half-Apache with “Muriel” stitched on her blue bowling shirt in red script. Her long grayish hair was tied in a ponytail and she wore a silver and turquoise brooch around her neck. Her skin was the color of brick yet remarkably smooth. Like the regulars, she viewed the two college kids with bemusement. They were so obviously "not from around here" in their cargo-shorts, high-zoot hiking shoes, and backpacks.

  Muriel wandered over to where the boys were grooving and looked at Curt's sketch. Even from upside down it was readily apparent as a butte, beautifully rendered in pencil with shading that looked almost real.

  "Whatcha drawin' there, hoss?" she said.

  Curt reversed the notepad so she could look at it right-side up. "It's this place I keep seeing in my dreams."

  A faint shiver trickled down Muriel's spine. She looked up. Damned condensation from the ancient AC. It seemed to her that she'd seen the butte too, but couldn't recall when or where. Maybe in her dreams.

  "You ever see this place?" Curt asked.

  "Now how would I see that place?" Muriel said. "You couldn't pay me to go out there. I hope you boys ain't goin' out there."

  "That's why we're here!" Ronnie gushed. "I mean, I'm an anthropology major and we hear there are all sorts of glyphs out there." He did not mention the other reason, that they had both read Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception and wanted to trip in the desert like Timothy Leary and Cary Grant.

  "Huh," Muriel said. "Thought you was here for the eclipse. You know not to look directly at the sun, right?"

  One of the regulars eased out of his booth against the front wall and ambled to the bar, slightly bow-legged from years of ranch work. He had a face like a sharpei and a white handlebar mustache. He set a glass tumbler on the counter.

  "Muriel, my love, if you don't mind."

  Muriel emptied the glass, scooped in more ice, and added two inches of Old Buffalo Fine Distilled Spirits. "Here you go, Pete."

  Pete gazed over Curt's shoulder at the drawing, which had returned to its original position. "Seems I seen something like that once."

  Curt looked up. "Where?"

  The old cowboy nodded his head to the east. "Out there. Back when I was young, dumb and fulla come and we used to ride dune buggies out there. Nothin' out there but sand, rattlesnakes and scorpions."

  "That's what I'm tellin' 'em, Pete. This here's an anthro-pologist."

  Ronnie turned, grinning, his horn-rimmed glasses reflecting the neon lights. "Ronnie Potts, sir. Student at Creighton University."

  Pete took the kid's soft hand in his rough one and shook it. "Anthropology, huh? When I was a boy we studied ranching, business, and water management."

  "Understanding ancient cultures is the key to understanding ourselves," Ronnie said.

  "Ain't that the truth. Well you can call me Pete. You goin' out there?"

  "We're prepared," Ronnie said. "We've camped before."

  "Ahuh. Take plenty of water. I mean plenty. Take twice as much as you're thinkin' of takin'. Got any guns?"

  Ronnie's grin went wide-screen. "No, of course not. We're students."

  "Of course not," Pete said. He hefted his glass. "Good luck to ya, son."

  ***

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Groovin"

  They splurged and spent the night at Vern's Motel, $29 for the double. They showered in the morning. They began to sweat as soon as they stepped outside. By eight a.m. it was already in the eighties.

  Curt conducted an inspection of his beloved micro-bus which he had bought from a used car dealer in Midlothian, IL six thousand miles ago for $1500. It only had eighty-eight thousand miles on the clock, a relative youngster. Curt pulled out the old metal toolbox and removed the air gauge. He worked his way around the car with a hand pump making sure the tires were inflated to 33 lbs. per square inch. He'd studied the USGA plat maps and determined there were enough old mining trails laid out on the rock-hard sand that they should be able to drive a couple hundred miles without difficulty. Tread was good. He'd brought a sturdy jack, two spares, and shovels.

  He opened the side passenger door with a skin-rippling screech. A little WD-40 was in order. He removed the blue can from his tool box, attached the short straw, and spritzed the running tracks and hinges. He worked the door back and forth. Ahhh. Better. Inside he had extra air and oil filters just in case. Two five-gallon picnic thermoses. Curt used his plastic ice bucket from the room to deliver loads of ice from the outside ice machine to each of the thermoses. He used the bathtub faucet to fill four half-gallon canteens swathed in canvas he'd purchased at an army surplus store.

  He checked his copious supply of dehydrated meals, cheese and cold cuts in an ice chest that was half melted. He would have liked to replenish the ice, but the old machine had barely filled the two buckets before grinding to a halt. Ronnie emerged from the room into bright morning light, bare-chested and toweling off his mop of auburn hair. Catnip. Catnip to the girls. Curt had always envied Ronnie's easy way with women but Ronnie wasn't stuck-up or greedy and Curt did all right on the leftovers.

  He'd been Ronnie's wingman since freshman year.

  Ronnie placed his hand over his eyes and squinted east into the sun looking past Vern's Hardware at the distant, hazy mountains. The landscape was unrelieved by plant or water. Nothing stirred, nothing moved except for a pair of turkey buzzards hovering in the middle distance. He smacked his hands together and inhaled.

  "Smell that desert air!" He looked up and down Main Street. "Jesus. They never heard of McDonald's?"

  "We'll eat on the road. Come on. I want to find some shade before we stop for the night."

  The VW's 20 gallon gas tank had a range of 350 miles. Curt also carried two steel five gallon gas tanks on the roof next to their camping gear. They'd topped off when they hit town last night. They did not plan to roam the plateau, but rather to seek out an interesting site and camp there. It was Ronnie's idea. It was he who first came across the Azuma in an obscure conquistador's diary in Seville, when he and Curt had back-packed across Europe the previous summer.

  He'd been studying maps of the area and Anasazi texts the whole semester and thought he had the site narrowed down to a ten square mile area. The Spanish breached the Azuma stronghold in 1542. Ronnie had a thousand dollar Nikon his parents gave him for his birthday and had been putting in long hours at the dark room in the Student Union. Dreams of National Geographic danced in his head.

  Aside from fantasies of fame and riches which every young man possessed he was driven by a burning desire to know. Ronnie had been hooked when his parents took him to Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park when he was twelve years old.

  The sight of the ancient cliff dwellings enraptured him. A deep bell rang in his heart. As a boy he had always played the Indian in cowboys and Indians. Between high school and college he'd spent a summer volunteering on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The Indians he met were not the Indians of his imagination. The Pine Ridge Indians seemed enervated, passive, and inured to subsistence living. They drank and did drugs. They were a sharp contrast to the warriors of his imagination and perhaps it was this desire to uncover those warriors of old that drove him.

  For Curt, it was all
about dropping acid in the desert. He'd always had that mystic bent. His drawings were getting spacier.

  They saddled up and headed out, the microbus making its characteristic grinding noise. Five miles out of town on County Highway BB the pavement ended and they rode on the hard flat surface of the desert consisting of silicon, crushed pyrites, sand and gravel. Vegetation was sparse and hardy. It had been a dry year and the desert stretched before them sere and forbidding.

  Curt plugged the Kinks into the 8-track and cranked it to drown out the engine noise, which sounded like a cement mixer filled with metal. "You Really Got Me." They rode without speaking, each lost in thought, chewing beef jerky, sunflower seeds and quaffing water. The old microbus had no air conditioning and they rode with the windows open. It was like sitting near a blast furnace. The air was sweet and dry with a hint of mesquite.

  Ronnie rolled a joint on a copy of Rolling Stone and they lit up. Suddenly they were loquacious.

  "This is gonna be so cool," Curt said.

  "What about rattlesnakes, man?" Ronnie said. "We got to be wary of those suckers."

  "Just watch where you step. We'll sleep in the bus. Shouldn't be a problem."

  "And scorpions. You heard what the man said."

  "Scorpions are generally afraid of humans and their stings are rarely fatal."

  "They give me the creeps," Ronnie said, turning around and digging through his backpack for the snakebite kit he'd purchased at a sporting goods shop in Denver.

  Within an hour they'd left all traces of civilization behind save for the ruts and grooves of the road itself. The microbus jounced across broad stretches of washtub surface. Ronnie pulled out his Zeiss binocs and sighted in on the distant mountains. He thought he saw a communications tower but he couldn't be sure. The distance was clouded in heat haze.

  The Kinks finished with "Sunny Afternoon." Ronnie popped them out and replaced them with New Riders of the Purple Sage.

  It was just past noon. When they saw the old woman.

  ***