Skorpio Page 20

  At least there was no way Vince could get to them without risking his neck. If there were a road down into the canyon they hadn't seen it. It wasn't marked on any map. Beadles estimated it was at least a hundred feet to the rim. Their fall seemed to go on forever but that was just his subjective reaction to being tossed around like a doll.

  The wind howled. Sand flew.

  "We have to seal these windows," Beadles said, reaching for a blanket.

  Summer sprang into action. She opened the tool box and found Gorilla tape. She used a pocket knife to cut the blanket to size, Gorilla tape to fix it to the rim. It was a poor fit but at least it kept most of the sand out. With the windows up it was hot as a stove. Beadles found he still had electricity and ran the blower. It offered some relief.

  They bent the seatbacks back as far as they could go and tried to make sense out of the mess. There was that ass again. Beadles reached out and cupped Summer's unshod breast. She looked at him. She kissed him and pulled him over to the passenger side.

  Then she was on top tearing at his belt.

  The sandstorm went away for several minutes.

  They put their pants back on and the sandstorm was back, blowing grit in through tiny openings around the blanket. Beadles could barely see farther than the hood, which was covered with sand. He worried that they might actually be buried. But that wasn't possible, was it? It had to be much worse up top where Vince waited.

  Maybe the sandstorm would cause Vince to turn around.

  Probably not. Vince didn't get his rap sheet by playing it smart. Like most thugs payback was more important than living well.

  Beadles checked the GPS. There was no signal. He'd brought extra batteries just in case.

  "Let's eat," Beadles said delving into the heap in the back seat. It was dim inside the Jeep due to the storm even though the sun shined straight down. Beadles found beef jerky, individually wrapped string cheese, apples and bottled water. They ate in companionable silence. They napped.

  When they woke the storm was over. Dim sun shined in the cabin through the layer of sand covering the windshield.

  "See if you can open your door," Beadles said.

  Summer had to use her legs to push the door open with a hair-raising shriek against a pile of sand. They eased out. The landscape had changed. Whereas before it had been rock, the ground was now covered with sand to a one foot depth. It wasn't as hot as it had been before the storm but it was hot. Beadles opened the rear hatch and unloaded backpacks and supplies.

  Beadles took out the GPS and four military-style canteens filled with water. He retrieved the ancient map from its folder and opened it on the hood. The map showed the canyons and to the east, the strange rock. Beadles checked his Boy Scout compass. The canyon ran east/west.

  Beadles handed two of the canteens to Summer. "We're going to have to hoof it. I don't think it's more than twelve miles to this butte but we won't know until we're out of these canyons or find a way to the rim."

  He put on his ball cap, handed an extra to Summer. They put on their sunglasses. "How much can you carry?"

  Summer puffed up. "Me strong squaw! Carry wood all day!"

  They spent several minutes sorting through supplies. He found a tube of sun lotion and smeared it over his face and arms. He handed the tube to Summer. Beadles left the tent and the sleeping bag. He was already toting fifty pounds and Summer thirty. Water was heavy but they had to carry as much as they could for the chances of discovering any were slim. By now the sun had edged over so that the north wall of the canyon lay in shadow. They stood close to the wall staying in the shade, heads gyrating like bobbleheads, stunned by the sere beauty of the canyons. The rock rose in multicolored striations. Beadles took pictures with his phone.

  Beadles returned to the cargo area for his Bowie knife. He saw the pommel sticking out from under a towel and pulled out the towel. Something brown and chitinous scurried up over his hand and leaped to the sand. Beadles recoiled and fell on his ass, his face white.

  Summer looked at him with alarm. "What is it?"

  "Scorpion," he croaked. Jesus Fuck. Why couldn't they leave him alone? He used a stick to retrieve his knife.

  They walked in silence for an hour pausing from time to time to sip water. In addition to two canteens Beadles had put six water bottles in his ruck. He felt the weight in his shoulders and legs and was grateful he liked to run. The next time they paused Summer took the lead. The canyon walls closed in as the canyon zig-zagged, following the path of some antedeluvian river. The sand receded exposing the rocky canyon floor. Summer was spry as a springbok. Beadles followed her rump like a donkey after a carrot. She rounded a corner.

  "Vaughan!" she said.

  Beadles stepped around the corner and stopped dead behind Summer. The canyon had opened up into a broad wadi. A hundred yards ahead hulked a massive toadstool-shaped butte. Beneath the overhang, sand over the rocker panels, lay an ancient VW bus.

  ***

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  "The Bus"

  Sand had drifted up over the wheels but the roof was swept clean. A coarse patina of sand adhered to the windows. The bus was old school with four tiny windows above the doors. Beadles and Summer stared in silence. As a boy Beadles became fascinated with the story of WW II B-24 bomber Lady Be Good. Returning at night from a bombing run over Italy to her base in Tunisia, the plane overshot the African coast and flew a thousand miles inland before running out of fuel. From 10.000 feet at night the desert looked just like the Mediterranean.

  The dessicated remains weren't discovered until 1959 when an aerial surveyor searching for oil spotted the ghost plane sitting in the desert. Ground patrols found the bodies of the nine airmen as they had tried to walk to safety. All had died of thirst. One made it thirty miles. They had set off in all directions hoping one of them would find help. Stunned and dehydrated, they often meandered. A map showing their paths would resemble the Azuma symbol.

  The bus radiated crazy. A jarring juxtaposition, a relic washed up by the Sea of Time. It didn't belong there any more than a B-24 sitting in the middle of a desert. Or a scorpion in Illinois.

  Beadles and Summer approached the ghost in reverent silence. Beadles took several pictures. The sun had baked its once brick exterior a pale orange/pink. All that remained of numerous window decals and bumper stickers were bleached-white markers. Only by looking very closely could you see the Grateful Dead symbol. Sand had drifted up against the windshield so that the bus seemed to be emerging from the ground.

  The bus faced east. The driver's side window was missing. Beadles set down his rucksack, walked up the dune and knelt to see inside. After the blazing sun it took his eyes a minute to adjust to the shade.

  "Ho - ley shit," he said.

  A jumble of ribs and arm bones slumped in the seat. The arm bones remained connected by leathery tissue but there was no skull. Sand filled the interior to knee level. The other seat was empty. Sand had frosted the remaining window glass so that it was impossible to see.

  "Skeleton," Beadles said.

  Summer came up and crouched on her knees. "Let me see."

  Beadles moved aside so Summer could look in the window.

  "Wow," she said. "That's so creepy, y'know?"

  Beadles noted the coordinates on his Garmin and dialed them in. They'd have to inform the police when they got out. He walked around to the opposite side, the side closest to the oddly-shaped butte. He opened the rear door with an horrendous screech and leaped back as a half dozen pale brown scorpions leaped to the sand and skittered away.

  Beadles shivered despite the heat. He hated them. He'd always hated bugs. He'd hated standing in left field as a Little Leaguer feeding the mosquitoes. He hated flies so much he would stand in the parking lot of the A&P for hours smashing them with a copy of Sports Illustrated as they landed on the warm outer wall.

  But the scorpion. The scorpion was the worst. What god would create such a thing and why? Well, his not to question the Almighty. If t
he scorpion had a constructive function he couldn't see it. Likewise rattlesnakes.

  "UGH!" Summer exclaimed. "Be careful! Do you have an anti-venom kit?"

  "Yes I do but it won't help against a scorpion sting." What had they used on Rob?

  "They're rarely fatal," Summer said.

  "I knew a guy died of one," Beadles said, using his twelve-inch Bowie to poke around in the back of the bus. The sand was lower here and he saw the top of an old ice chest. When they finally found the Lady Be Good the coffee in the thermos was still drinkable.

  A small camp shovel poured out. Beadles picked it up. It was about two feet long with an adjustable steel spade head. He used it to shovel sand out of the back. Several scorpions joined the exodus, disappearing beneath the van. Beadles uncovered a shoe. He shoveled. The shoe was connected to a leg in ancient faded denim. Beadles stepped back. Summer looked inside.

  "Jesus!" she said.

  Carefully, Beadles removed sand from around the body. The upper torso was a shriveled mummy in an Electric Flag T-shirt. It lay face up. Its feet were encased in leather hiking boots. Beadles pulled on them gently to shake off the sand. The corpse had no more weight than a satchel. The skeleton had frozen in position. It's left hand had shrunk to fused bones gripping something white, ribbed, and delicate. A rattlesnake skeleton. Beadles saw the scimitar-shaped fangs and the rattle.

  Beadles delicately eased the brittle wallet from the skeleton's hip pocket. He opened it and found the well-preserved driver's license.

  Curt Mayweather, Evanston, IL. He knew the name from somewhere.

  Something shiny tumbled out and slid down the sloping sand. Summer picked it up. It was an aluminum cigarette case decorated with an Indian in a war bonnet. It rattled. She pried it open. Inside were three rolled doobies and a strip of blotter acid. She handed it to Beadles who put the two halves back together and tossed it in the back of the bus. Exposing the side handle of the old Thermos cooler Beadles rotated the spade's head ninety degrees, hooked the chest and dragged it out.

  Another scorpion abandoned ship.

  Beadles used the shovel to open the chest. There was a green sandwich in a frosted zip-loc, some shrunken apples and a bag of trail mix. There was something beneath the detritus. Beadles reached in and carefully removed the layer of ancient plastic bags.

  Beadles and Summer lurched back and repulsion.

  "What is it?" Summer wailed in a tinny voice.

  A desiccated diamondback, jaws wide open, body twisted like a pretzel.

  Beadles shut the chest. He opened the front passenger door, causing a small sand slide around his shoes. From the passenger side he saw that the jumble of bones lay atop a waist-sized hole surrounded by thread-bare denim. Sand must have covered the lower portion of the body preserving it. He looked down. The skull lay in the passenger footwell.

  There was a large hole in the windshield directly over the steering wheel as if someone had hurled a softball-sized rock.

  He had to get the driver's ID but he feared putting his hand anywhere near the sand-filled cavity of the waist. Straightening the shovel, he gently prodded the bottom half of the corpse. Nothing emerged. He used the shovel to move the sand away from the right hip pocket. Ever so gingerly he slipped his fingers between the threadbare cotton and snagged the wallet. It was made of some exotic leather, perhaps ostrich skin. He opened it up and removed the driver's license

  That's when he realized where he'd heard the name Mayweather.

  ***

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  "The Wheel"

  "Ronald Potts," Beadles said.

  "Do you know him?"

  "His dad gave me five thou to finance this expedition. Actually he gave me the five thou to go away. He'll be happy to get some closure at least."

  Fifty thousand for information leading to the discovery of his son's body.

  He snapped a picture of the remains.

  It was cooler in the shade with the slight breeze. Summer leaned on Beadles' shoulder. "What do you think happened to them?"

  Beadles gestured toward Mayweather. "Looks like he was bit by a rattlesnake. I wouldn't know how Potts died. You'd need a coroner and even he might not be able to tell. It's been thirty years. It must have laid under the sand all these years and that storm uncovered it."

  "They call these places the walking hills," Summer said. "Because of the wind. Hey do you mind if I grab that reefer?"

  Beadles shrugged. "Be my guest."

  What the hell. It wasn't like he'd never smoked dope. In college he'd tried it all: coke, acid, meth. Everything but smack. You had to draw the line somewhere. It all stopped after graduation. No chemical high could compete with academic success. He'd shared the occasional toke at parties over the years but he could take it or leave it. Thank God he wasn't what they called an addictive personality.

  He wondered about Summer though. She'd as much as said she was a coke head. Working at a strip club, living with a dealer. It went with the territory. But she hadn't been twitchy. Never mentioned drugs or craving. What harm could a couple of joints do? He might partake himself, but not before they reached their destination.

  He pulled out his cell phone. Zippo. He put it back. "Let's get going. We've got about eight hours of daylight left."

  They headed east down the zig-zagging canyon which now lay mostly in shadow. Twenty minutes later while negotiating a narrow defile they came upon heiroglyphs on the canyon wall. A tall man leading an army of scorpions against conquistadores, accurately depicted in their double-prowed helms riding surreal horses. These would have been the first horses the Indians saw. The satanic, mummifed horses were larger in proportion to the men than they would have been in reality.

  Had they seen the horses as demonic invaders and scorpions as their saviours? Beadles photographed the images. He carried extra batteries in his backpack. Maybe if they got up high he could get a signal. At least the GPS still functioned. According to the GPS they were ten miles from ground zero.

  It was the perfect place for an ambush. Beadles looked up. He could practically hear the warriors chanting from the rim as they fired arrows and hurled rocks on the invaders.

  They walked in eerie silence through the canyon mesmerized by the different strata. A multi-colored layer cake of rust, beige, brick, charcoal and dozens of infinite variations. At one time the Mojave had been the bottom of a vast inland sea. Beadles was not surprised to discover a trilobite fossil close to the ground. He took a picture.

  An hour later the canyon debouched into a broad alluvial plain. And there, hovering in the distance, shimmering over waves of heat was an odd-looking butte.

  Beadles felt his pulse quicken. Yes! They weren't there yet but it looked like the butte in Mayweather's drawing and the one on the map. He pulled the map out and opened it on a flat rock. Summer leaned on the rock next to him and looked at the map.

  "You think that's it?" she said.

  "I'm hoping."

  They had entered an hallucinatory landscape out of a Sergio Leone film. There was no sign of man in any direction. Beadles looked up. The faint afterprint of a contrail was the only thing indicating modernity. They walked with the sun at their back. The wind had died down and the heat was intense. Gradually the weight of their canteens transferred into their bodies. Beadles feared they would run out of water before reaching the butte but he still had several bottles in the ruck.

  And what if they reached the butte and there was no water? He prayed he could find some cell reception. He opened his phone. No signal. The sun evaporated their sweat as soon as it appeared. Side by side they walked toward the distant butte which never seemed to get any closer. Beadles turned around. They had come at least two miles from the canyonlands. He looked down. The desert floor was covered with obsidian chips. Tiny stunted cacti strugged for survival. A gliding rattlesnake was the only movement.

  The cerulean sky was cloudless. They walked in silence to save their energy. A low parabolic shape appeared before them. As the
y approached they saw it was the top of an ancient wagon wheel protruding from the sand, occuping a slight depression. They arrived. The wood was bleached white. If there had been a metal strip around the perimeter it had long since corroded. The top of the wheel protruded perhaps six inches above the sand revealing two wooden spokes through which a rattlesnake twined. The rattlesnake escaped the depression and disappeared in the sand.

  Beadles and Summer looked at the wheel.

  "Storm must have uncovered it," Beadles said.

  "Oh God," Summer said.

  "What?"

  She pointed to a tiny white tip protruding perhaps a half inch from the sand at the edge where the wheel emerged. "Is that a bone?"

  Beadles stared at the tip with a sense of foreboding. The sky seemed to darken as if a shadow has crossed the sun. He shivered. He knew what it was. He blinked. The brightness returned. It was overwhelming. He felt light-headed. His mouth forced a rictus grin.

  "What?" Summer said.

  Very carefully Beadles used the blade of the Bowie to draw sand away from the tip revealing a finger bone, then another. "Distal phalange. Finger bone."

  Summer's face drained of color. She stepped back and grabbed Beadles' arm. "Skorpio," she whispered.

  "What?"

  "They tied him to a wagon wheel and left him to die in the sun."

  "Skorpio? Is that what they called him?"

  "Don't say it. It's bad medicine."

  A rock lodged in Beadles' throat, a thrill of terror and triumph. What if he clipped the digit and tested the DNA? Would that constitute proof of an Azuma identity? If Summer were truly part Azuma, would it not match hers in some capacity?

  Was it desecration? One philangeal. The thing was over 400 years dead. There was no one to see. Yet standing beneath the baking sun were not his actions open to the sky?

  Like a child maliciously spitting in the holy water.

  The southwestern tribes believed that if you disturbed the graves of the dead their ghosts would rise to take revenge.

  Summer sensed his distress. "What is it?"