Dark Moon Crossing (34 page)

Freed from his scorching embrace, the night air
chilled my skin. I watched trancelike until his taillights vanished around the
bend, then strolled towards the kitchen door. It wasn’t exactly the proposal
I’d expected, but it was a good start I thought, congratulating myself for
keeping my mouth shut for once. Still flushed with happiness, I entered the
deserted kitchen and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. With all the
activity still centered in the barn, the house seemed eerily quiet. For
several minutes I munched on the apple and wandered aimlessly from room to
room, basking in my newfound tranquility while desperately trying to ignore the
powerful conviction still haunting me. Why couldn’t I just forget the whole
thing?‌ I tried to banish all thoughts of going to Wolf’s Head, but I could not
prevent the unanswered questions from circling endlessly in my mind. Nervously
pacing the corridor for the second time, my steps halted when the startling
answer jumped out at me like a Jack-in- the-box.
Just because Jason was
missing from the equation didn’t mean the entire hypothesis was wrong.
What if…?‌ I ran to the living room, grabbed up the phone and dialed
Information. Dry-mouthed, I waited impatiently through the computerized voice
message then punched the appropriate numbers. Three rings later a female voice
shouted over clanking glass and raucous laughter, “La Gitana.”

I told her who I was, where I was calling from and
asked if she could give Tally a message when he arrived. “He’s a real tall
good-looking guy in a black hat. He’ll be looking for Jason Beaumont and…”

“I’m sorry, who’d you say?‌”

I raised my voice. “I said, he’ll be looking for
Jason Beaumont.”

More noise, clanking, banging, and then, “He’s not
here.”

My pulse jumped. “What time did he leave?‌”

“He hasn’t been in tonight at all.”

I slammed the phone down and rushed around the room
like a mad woman trapped in a maze. I
was
right! I was
right!
Uncertain what to do next, I dashed back to the phone, grabbed the receiver and
just stood there paralyzed. Who was I going to call?‌ No one. And time was
running out. Suddenly, it was as if my brain had been switched onto automatic
pilot. I ran from the room, sprinted upstairs to retrieve my jacket and raced
back down again. When I reached the hook in the hallway where Twyla had hung
Champ’s keys, I grabbed them and ran for the door.

I declared myself officially over the edge. Tearing
along the rough dirt road towards Wolf’s Head, my rambunctious heartbeat
clattering in my ears, I was so wired my adrenalin levels must have been off
the charts. Oh, boy. In addition to all my other transgressions these past
five days, I was now officially a car thief. “O’Dell, you’re in deep guano
now,” I murmured, acutely aware that I really didn’t have the slightest idea
what I was going to do when I finally got there. I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty-five.
The intelligent, less risky decision would have been to wait for Tally’s
return. But that might be too late. As it stood, the trafficking operation
might already be underway. Or had I missed it?‌

Like most people fixated on a particular objective, no
matter how skewered the thinking, I’d convinced myself that if I followed
Felix’s directions exactly, kept out of sight and didn’t try any heroics, I
just might accomplish my goal and be back to the ranch before Tally returned
from his wild goose chase. I had to hand it to those guys. The phony call to
Twyla was fairly brilliant, serving to distract Tally and remove my means of
transportation. But they didn’t know me.

I reached the cutoff within twenty minutes. Instead of
turning left into Morita, I kept going, following the road around the west end
of Wolf’s Head as Froggy had done. Back-dropped against brilliant starlight,
the jagged pillars of stone arched ominously towards the sky like gnarled black
fingers. Spooky, definitely spooky. Russell Greene’s warning to stay away was a
sobering reminder of what might await me. With the initial rush of euphoria
subsiding, the gravity of my hasty decision sank in. This was insane. There
was still time to turn around. Second-guessing myself, I eased up on the
accelerator and coasted until the memory of Javier’s frightened eyes popped
into my head. Was there even an outside chance I could somehow save that little
boy?‌ I had no choice but to try. I jammed my foot on the gas
and raced ahead until I reached the fork in the road. Swerving left, I plunged
between steep canyon walls where even starlight could not penetrate the gloomy
interior. It was almost like driving inside a tunnel and it was a struggle to
keep my claustrophobia at bay. Thankfully, the sky suddenly reappeared to my
right as the cliff diminished in height and slowly angled away to the west,
leaving a trail of weirdly shaped boulders in its wake. Vaguely, I wondered if
the puny flashlight I’d pulled from the glove compartment would be enough to
light my way. What if I got lost?‌ Impatiently, I pushed the thought to the
back of my mind and kept driving until the ground cover became so thick it was
hard to navigate as I searched for the first landmark Felix had mentioned. And
then, there it was. Ahead and to the right, I caught a glimpse of the old
wooden gate he’d described. I braked, cut the lights and slipped on my jacket
as I slid from the cab. It took me several seconds of feeling around in the
dark until I found the section of wire looped over the post. I swung the gate
open, dashed back to the truck, drove through, and then ran back to re-latch
the gate behind me.

After that, the road narrowed even further, finally
deteriorating into nothing more than an overgrown trail. The compass on the
rearview mirror indicated that I had completed almost a full circle around
Wolf’s Head and was now nearing the southern tip of the rock promontory that
bore its name. If I was calculating correctly, Morita lay directly east of me.
Okay, time to ditch the truck. With only the parking lights to guide me, I
drove off the shoulder into tall range grass, coming to a stop in a thick grove
of mesquite trees. No doubt the sharp spidery branches had done a number on
Champ’s paint job. Something else I’d have to deal with later.

Using the flashlight, I reviewed Felix’s directions
once more. As he’d described it to me, for generations thousands of Mexican
migrants had followed a well-worn path north, crossed a wide arroyo and then entered
the United States through a narrow canyon flanking a particular rock that he’d
described as looking like a giant Indian teepee crowned with a hole that
resembled a crescent moon. Since I was already north of the arroyo, all I had
to do was walk east until I found it. He’d said it was only a mile from the
wooden gate and I’d come just about that far already.

Time to go. A fiery tide of excitement washed over me
as I stepped into the brisk night air, zipped my jacket to my chin and then
paused to get my bearings before I set off on foot, staying low. It was
deathly quiet except for an occasional skitter of some small animal scampering
through the unusually tall grass. There had to be a lot of water around
someplace in order to produce such a spectacular display of flora and fauna.
And I could certainly understand why immigrants would choose this secluded spot
as a preferred crossing place. Tucked away behind the massive spires,
attainable only on foot or by off-road vehicles, the jumbled piles of boulders
and lush foliage created an ideal natural barrier which provided excellent
protection against the inquisitive eyes of Border Patrol agents.

I was amazed at how quickly my sight adapted to the
murky landscape and how luminescent it looked even minus a full moon. The
nocturnal beauty of the rough terrain struck me as almost otherworldly and
resurrected thoughts of alien creatures from another galaxy. They might
actually feel right at home here in this secluded dell.

The night sky was breathtaking. Amid radiant stars
that seemed close enough to reach up and touch, the Milky Way glowed like a
glittering river of diamonds. It was actually easier to see without the
flashlight, so I switched it off. Probably safer for me too, since a beam of
light out here would be spotted a mile away.

Unlike most of my childhood girlfriends and even my
younger brother, I’d never feared the dark. In fact, I relished the freedom of
being part of it, darting in and out through the underbrush, resurrecting the
familiar thrill of playing hide and seek in the dense forest behind our house,
waiting with wild heart-thumping anticipation to be discovered. Grimly, I
reminded myself that this was no game.

It took less than ten minutes to locate the ancient
landmark. Awestruck, I stared up at the wind-eroded fissure near the summit.
It did indeed look like a crescent moon. To my advantage, there was no
shortage of hiding places. I tested several possibilities, secreting myself
beneath rock ledges, inside deep crevices and I even climbed a few to get a
better vantage point. Finally, I settled into a cluster of boulders offering a
clear view of both the teepee and the jagged fangs of Wolf’s Head to my left.
With the familiar cold burn of excitement in my belly, I crouched in the
shadows waiting. Time crawled by and soon I wasn’t sure what I feared
most—something actually happening or nothing at all happening.

Another fifteen minutes passed. Then another ten.
Still nothing happened. Somewhere an owl screeched. More rustling in the
brush, but no signs or sounds of any humans, or extraterrestrials for that
matter. The temperature was dropping rapidly, so I pulled up the collar on my
jacket and blew on my fingers. Gradually, disappointment replaced my heady
expectations. Crap. How could I have been wrong?‌ I winced aloud, thinking of
the ridicule I’d have to endure. ‘What’s that?‌ You froze your ass off
crouching under a rock out in the middle of the Arizona desert waiting to
witness an extraterrestrial abduction?‌ Priceless!’ Tally would be more than
bent out of shape and probably never forgive me. The Beaumonts were going to
be royally pissed off that I’d appropriated Champ’s truck. How was I going to
explain what would appear to be totally irrational behavior?‌ No doubt I was
going to look like the biggest dufus on the planet.

I stayed a little longer and then, with a sigh of
resignation, I wriggled from my hiding place and stood up. I’d taken only two
steps when I froze in my tracks. Crunch. Crunch. Craning my head, I listened
closely. Crunch, whoosh, whoosh. Was I mistaken, or was that the sound of
stealthy footsteps whispering through the nearby brush?‌ I ducked back in my
hiding place, folding my body into the shadows as the footsteps grew louder.
Hardly daring to breathe, I cautioned myself to stay calm, stay quiet. I
clapped my hand over my mouth, taking in shallow gulps of air. It seemed to
take forever, but the crunching finally grew fainter as whoever or whatever it
was moved on. My mind swam with possibilities. It may have been as innocent
as an animal passing through, an immigrant stealing by, or maybe, just maybe I
was right, and these guys were on the move.

I sat motionless, my muscles aching, until sure enough,
I heard more movement in the brush, then the soft thud of more footsteps
rushing past. Being careful not to make a sound, I peeked over the rock ledge
and squinted into the darkness. Nothing appeared to be different and then all
at once a series of strange noises reached my ears. Scuffling, then what
sounded like shouts of protest, more scuffling, and then silence again. My
pulse shot higher. Something was definitely happening.

Even though I’d been half expecting it, when a shaft
of bright blue light flashed on, lighting the clearing, I flinched violently
and turned to stare in the direction of Wolf’s Head. Close to one of the giant
rock pillars, perhaps thirty or forty feet from the ground, hovered what
appeared to be a whirling disk of rainbow colored lights.

“Holy shit.” Mesmerized, I gaped at the pulsing
light, which seemed to emanate from the UFO. All at once, a babble of
frightened voices filled the air. Clearly visible in the grassy clearing was a
small group of men and women huddling in a tight circle, shielding their eyes
from the intrusive blaze. Amazing. I’d neither seen nor heard their stealthy
arrival to U.S. soil. Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, a frightening
creature with an elongated head and bug-like features, just as Javier had
described, materialized and jumped down from one of the nearby boulders. The
terrified screams of the immigrants turned my spine into an icicle. One woman
carrying a baby bolted from the group, but she didn’t get far before another
bug-eyed creature, brandishing some sort of weapon I couldn’t identify, pushed
her back. The terror-stricken people were herded like cattle up an embankment
towards the flying disk, which appeared to have landed at the base of the
cliff. For another minute or so, their bone-chilling screams echoed down the
canyon walls, but then inexplicably, they grew fainter and fainter until I
couldn’t hear them at all. Then I heard something else—an odd rumbling noise
that lasted for only a few seconds. The blue light blinked out, the disk rose
into the air, humming, rotating faster and faster until it shot over the top of
the mountain and disappeared from sight. Like someone shutting off a power
grid, the valley was enveloped in silent darkness again. And the immigrants had
vanished before my eyes.

The whole thing happened so fast all I could do was
stand there, paralyzed in horrified amazement, questioning my own eyesight and
my sanity. Had I really seen what I thought I’d seen?‌ Either I’d just
witnessed an honest-to- goodness UFO abduction, or the slickest piece of
showmanship I’d ever seen in my life. I chose to believe the latter. It was
unsettling to realize that there must be many more people involved than I’d
originally thought in order to accomplish such a masterful deception. And,
unless I was ready to believe that the immigrants had actually been spirited
aboard the ‘flying saucer,’ then they had to be around here somewhere. An
important fact jumped to mind. The original name of this place was
Cave
Springs
. Hadn’t Walter told me that numerous caves and natural springs
abounded within the labyrinth of rocks?‌

I waited, shivering with cold and anxiety, for
eternally long minutes, before concluding that it was time to get my butt in
gear. I’d accomplished my goal, verified my supposedly harebrained-theory, and
now all I had to do was convince someone, anyone, that I hadn’t imagined the
entire episode. I took off running like a startled deer, turning every now and
then to peer over my shoulder. Short of breath, my heart pounding like an out
of control jackhammer, I scrambled into Champ’s truck and locked the doors
behind me. My hands shook so badly, I had a devil of a time inserting the
ignition key. Hurry! Hurry! I threw the truck in reverse and peeled out. In
no time, the gate loomed before me. In the split second before I decided to
just crash on through it, I saw a glint out of the corner of my eye. The
peripheral glow of the headlights illuminated something off to my left in the
trees. I slowed down enough to take a closer look and went numb with shock.
It was Tally’s truck! “Oh, my God!” I shrieked, jamming on the brakes. “No!
No!
No
!” For several seconds, my brain cells ceased to function. All I
could do was gape in horror, and then my mind did a quick replay. The
scuffling sound—the one I’d heard right before the strange lights appeared,
could that have been Tally struggling with his captors?‌ How else to explain
that he wasn’t here?‌ But how could he have possibly known where to find me?‌
Oh, no. He must have raced right back to the ranch after discovering he’d been
tricked and found me missing. Obviously, he’d cornered Felix for directions and
then come looking for me. A sob caught in my throat. Because of me, my sweet,
darling guy had probably walked right into the middle of their trap. So that
meant…?‌ I didn’t dare finish the thought. There were only two options—race
back to the ranch for help or try to find him myself. No choice there. I
sprang from the cab, hoping against hope that Tally had left his truck
unlocked. He hadn’t. “Shit!” In a futile gesture, I frantically pounded on
the windows. His loaded .45 was usually in the glove compartment, but more
likely, he had it with him.

No time to waste. I leaped back into Champ’s truck
and retraced my course, so frazzled I almost lost control of the wheel several
times. Back at my original starting point, I jumped to the ground.
Interminable seconds went by before my eyes adjusted to the dark once more. On
a hunch, I searched in the bed of the pickup and found a heavy piece of rebar.
That and my flashlight would have to make do as weapons. Praying to God for
success, I headed towards the last place I’d seen the immigrants before the
whirling disk had departed.

Disjointed thoughts zigzagged through my head as I ran
haphazardly through the clearing and clambered up the slope. How had they
staged the UFO appearance?‌ Now that I thought about it more carefully, the size
of the disc hadn’t altered significantly when it ‘landed’ at the foot of the
cliff. Being closer, it should have looked much larger, so I surmised it was
mock-up of an alien craft and the people involved must be utilizing the same
sort of remote-controlled device to control the disc that model airplane
enthusiasts use. And the alien costumes they’d employed were certainly
frightening enough to scare the hell out of anyone. But why go to the expense
of carrying out such an elaborate production?‌

Entering the murkiness of the canyon, I switched on
the flashlight again. I looked behind me, trying to gauge where the immigrants
had vanished. Right about here. I crashed through underbrush, stumbling over
rocks and pebbles until I reached the bottom of the cliff. Frantic, I shined
the light along the uneven surface, searching for an opening, listening to the
sound of my own tortured breathing. Come on! Come on! I was certain there
had to be a cave entrance somewhere nearby.

Precious moments passed. No success. I slid to the
ground with my back against the wall. Unable to contain my sorrow, I wept
bitter tears of self-condemnation and regret that intensified the aching void
in my chest where my heart should be. I had failed everyone. If Tally were in
the clutches of these maniacs, they would kill him just as surely as they
probably had poor Javier by now. There was nothing for me to do but go for
help and pray that I could find someone who would believe my wild story.
Clever, clever bastards. Even though I’d already seen a preview of their machinations
two nights ago in Morita, they had almost convinced me that I was seeing the
real thing instead of this elaborate ruse.

When I placed one hand behind me to push myself to my
feet, my palm encountered something smooth and sharp. Puzzled, I rolled over
on one hip and felt along the base of the rock. I scratched the dirt and grass
away and aimed the flashlight on something that glimmered back at me. What was
this?‌ As I slid my fingers along it, I felt a chill of comprehension. It was
a metal track, like those used for a sliding patio door. Oh, baby, this was no
natural phenomenon. I took a closer look at the rock above it—poked it,
scratched it, ran my hand along the rutted surface until I reached a deep
crevice, then dropped to my knees. The track ended. I scrambled to my feet
and ran the flashlight over the rock again. It was hard to tell for certain
with only the faint beam, but it appeared to be of a different color and
consistency than those around it. I pushed against it. Nothing. Damn it. I
pushed harder. Nothing. Positioning my back against it, I propped my feet
against the adjacent rock and used my legs to shove as hard as I could. It
moved slightly. Euphoric with glee, I pushed until my breath was gone and
suddenly it rolled open several inches.

A whiff of musty air blew in my face. Unbelievable.
The damn thing was a fake. Someone in this bunch deserved high marks for
ingenuity. I continued pushing until I was able to slip through the opening.
Wow. The interior of the cave was black as pitch. I pressed my hand over my
racing heart and dug deep for courage. I had no idea what I was heading into.
As dangerous as it might be, I had no choice but to use the flashlight. The
thin beam of light did little to dispel the thick darkness, but because of the
cave’s enormity, and the fact that I could feel air moving, at least my usual
claustrophobia didn’t bother me.

I shined the light around the room, marveling at the
colossal stalactites and stalagmites, before noting the sloping sandy floor
riddled with footprints. Gripping the rebar tightly in my right hand, I moved
forward. The ceiling of the cave dropped lower and lower, until soon I was
bent over in a crouch. At one point I paused, hearing a faint noise behind
me. I killed the light and held my breath. I could have sworn I heard
something, but after remaining motionless for more than a minute I resumed my search.
Further on, I stopped again and listened to a steady plop, plop, plop. Most
likely water dripping somewhere. The odor and dampness increased as I
descended into the bowels of the cave, and it was noticeably warmer than the
outside air. I wandered into numerous little side caves and several dead end
tunnels, wasting valuable time. It was now ten o’clock.

Working my way back from yet another blind alley, I
turned a corner, tripped over something, and went sprawling. The flashlight
flew from my hand and blinked out. Panic rose up inside me, but I fought it
down. Unhurt, but disoriented, I struggled to my feet. I took one step and
almost fell over. I’d never experienced such absolute darkness. My
equilibrium was all out of whack and I couldn’t tell what was right, what was
left, up or down. I dropped to my knees and crawled around, frantically
patting the crumbly floor. The flashlight had to be around somewhere! After
what seemed like an eternity, my hand finally closed around it, and the flood
of relief I felt left me limp.

With trembling hands, I switched it on and gawked in
bewilderment, unsure as to what I was seeing. The medium-sized room I’d
crawled into was piled to the ceiling with long metal and rectangular wooden
boxes, crates, barrels and piles of square blocks wrapped in plastic.
Stenciled on the sides of some boxes was:
9mm cartridges
. Another read
.308
rifle
. There were numbers and symbols on other containers I couldn’t
decipher but I sure recognized the word
rocket.
My skin crawled. There
was enough firepower in the room to start World War III!

More perplexed than ever, I hurried out and wound my
way through the maze of tunnels until I saw a pale glow ahead. I doused the
flashlight and crept forward. The light grew brighter. Voices. I distinctly
heard muted voices. I tried to swallow but it seemed as if my throat was
filled with shards of ground glass. I hesitated, fearing what I might find,
yet was spurred on by thoughts of Tally. I crawled to the edge of a rocky overhang
and looked down into a sunken cavern illuminated in wavering white light. The
sight unfolding before me was so gruesome, so unspeakably appalling I could not
immediately absorb its significance. One of the bug-like creatures stood
hunched over a young Mexican man lying on a gurney, sliced open from his neck
to his pelvis. The creature was systematically removing organs, immersing them
in some sort of liquid solution and carefully placing them in plastic bags,
which he then put into iced-down picnic coolers. The bodies, or rather what
was left of the bodies of two dark-haired women, lay on a thick piece of
plastic on the floor nearby. There was blood everywhere and a putrid smell I
couldn’t really describe.

Spanning the far side of the ampitheater-like cavern,
cages had been set into the wall. I blinked in disbelief. There were people
inside. None of them moved. A shudder ran through me remembering Javier’s
fear that the creatures would cut him with their ‘sharp claws.’ Fleetingly, I
wished to heaven I was actually witnessing extraterrestrials perform medical
experiments rather than this cruel reality being perpetrated by fellow human
beings.

Below to my left were four large dog carriers. I
almost shouted aloud with relief at the sight of Javier, curled up like a small
animal inside one of them. He appeared to be sleeping. There was a baby in
the one right next to him. On the brink of hysteria, I scanned the cages
looking for Tally, but he wasn’t there. I ducked lower when two more of the
monster bug-men entered through an archway to my right. Now that I could view
them up close, the alien disguises didn’t look so frightening, but the fact
that I knew there were vicious, psychotic people underneath was terrifying.

I pulled back and looked away, sickened to the depths
of my soul and feeling more powerless than I ever had in my entire life. I
prayed for courage and strength while trying madly to formulate some sort of
rescue plan. How was I going to take on this bunch with only a piece of
rebar?‌ The fact that my mind really wasn’t functioning properly came home to
me when the next thought popped into my mind. Why hadn’t I taken a gun from
the cache of arms in the storage room?‌ But then, would I even know how to load
and use one?‌ Why, oh, why hadn’t I taken the time to enroll in the firearms
safety course Tally had been bugging me about for months?‌ Too late for
recriminations now.

I almost jumped out of my shoes when a muffled voice
shouted, “He’s starting to come around. You wanna do this asshole next?‌”

“With pleasure. Bring him in.”

The fuzz on the back of my neck stood on end. Did I
recognize the barely audible voice?‌

“Wooee!” the first creature hooted. “We ought to get
enough out of this batch to get us a couple of handheld stinger missiles and
maybe some nukes.”

“Just take the bodies to the pool,” said the first
man, his tone clipped.

I edged another look over the rim of the rocks and as
I checked out the room a second time, certainty jabbed me in the gut like a
sharp-toed boot. There was a long table piled with boxes, pans of surgical
instruments, bottles and vials. The cages looked as if they’d come from a
veterinary hospital. Was it possible that the man beneath the monster suit was
Twyla’s brother, Dean Pierce?‌ The more I thought about it the more obvious it
became. Was there anyone else experienced or qualified enough to perform this
type of surgery?‌ But, still, my mind rebelled. The day we met, I had sensed
his antipathy for the never-ending tide of aliens washing across his property,
seen the rage reflected in his eyes as Champ was being carted off to jail, but
somehow he hadn’t struck me as a man who could do something so horrendous.
This was a man who aided sick and injured animals. But then, a vague memory
pushed its way to the front of my mind. Hadn’t there been ice chests piled on
the shelf in the room with Marmalade?‌

“This friggin’ monkey suit is hot,” one of the men
complained, pulling at the face covering. Even with the mask on, I recognized
Jason’s whiny tone.

“They stay on until we’re finished, like always.”