The Five (33 page)

A Company wagon bearing the strongbox of gold dust from San Francisco arrived the next day. It was accompanied by four men with the names of Barton Taggett, Miles Branco, Jerrod Spade and Duke Chanderley. They wore dirty Stetsons on their heads and notched Colts in their holsters. They were ready to declare war, in the name of the Company, on sluggards and malingerers and weak-willed sonsofbitches who didn’t want to dig for silver just because of an old air pump. When they found fifty or so people where four hundred used to be, and the new head foreman a red-bearded Scotsman with one leg, they changed their attitude. When they heard the stories and talked to Sheriff McKee and Doc Lewis and Daniel Kiley, and when they saw the body of the little girl in its casket and the haunted eyes of the boy who’d suffocated her in a bad dream, they sat down for a while in the last remaining saloon with the last of the soiled doves looking on, and they drank some whiskey and smoked some cigars and figured they were getting too old for this shit.

But the thing was, they were moral men who had had immoralities thrust upon them. So as the night went on and the lamps burned across Stone Church, and the church itself stood silent and solid in the center of the town, the Company enforcers decided they didn’t know if demons could bleed, red blood or black, but maybe it was up to four Civil War hellraisers to find out.

“They went down into the mine with Daniel Kiley and Sheriff McKee,” Ariel said, as the Scumbucket passed a huge gated parking lot full of trucks, vans and trailers.
Vendors Park Here
, a sign directed. “They went down to find the woman. The thing. Whatever she was.
It
was. And that’s the end of the story.”

“The
fuck
it is!” Berke had nearly yelled it.

“Come on!” Terry said. “That can’t be the end!”

“There’s no
good
end,” Ariel clarified.

True scanned the vehicles in the vendors’ lot.
Rings Of Saturn Tattoos, Inc
.
Body Art by
Sarafina
.
ShockIt Tattoos
.
Tribal Attitudes
.
The Living Needle
.

“Finish it,” he said, as he drove on.

“I’ve heard and read about a daily journal in a library somewhere. Kept under lock-and-key, available for study only to parapsychologists and the clergy.” Ariel said quietly. “It was written by one of the Stone Church prostitutes. The story is that she and all but two others of her profession left on a wagon as the enforcers, the sheriff and the reverend were walking into the mine. The women didn’t look back. But all the details come from that journal. They talked about it in that documentary on the History Channel. The women heard nothing. They just kept going. But when the Company didn’t hear anything more, they sent a Pinkerton’s detective from Tucson to find out what was happening with their investment. The detective found…nothing and no one. Fifty-something people, and the four enforcers, were gone. There was no evidence of a fight. The horses, mules, cows and pigs…all gone. There was not a living thing left in Stone Church. But clothes still hung on lines, dishes were stacked up in washbasins, and mops and brooms leaned in corners as if their owners had just stepped out for a minute. A pan of browned biscuits sat on a table. Some of the doors to the houses were open, some closed. The strongbox was locked in a cell in the sheriff’s office. All the sacks of gold dust were still there. An empty casket was found in the parlor of the reverend’s house. Child-sized. Two other things…the Pinkerton detective found that all the gravestones in the cemetery had been knocked flat, and the windows had been blown out of the church from the inside.” She’d been looking to her right, through the green tint, and now she narrowed her eyes slightly. “There it is,” she said.

They saw what she was seeing.

It was maybe two or three miles away, commanding a slightly higher elevation. The roof had collapsed; if there ever had been a steeple, there was not one now. The stone walls formed a shell around a hollow center. Even at this distance, in the midday sun, some of the lines of mortar could be made out. Below the walls the earth was an ashen color. Here and there piles of timbers lay jumbled about. The open frame of a building that the wind had gnawed to pieces was still standing, but its days were numbered. But the stone church itself…it had lasted for a hundred years, and might last a hundred more though its congregation now was likely only the lizards and the scorpions. Nomad could see a massive iron gate across the road that wound up to Stone Church. It was secured by what might have been a dark fester of chains and coils of barbed-wire. The wire was strung all around the mountaintop, like spiky hair circling a scabby pate. Day-Glo orange signs were set at intervals in the ground. He couldn’t read them, but he imagined what they probably said: Danger. No Trespassing. Proceed At Your Own Risk. Trespassers Will Be—

What? he wondered.

Swallowed up by Hell?

“That whole story’s some jimcrack bullshit,” he said, but he didn’t say it very loudly.

A wall of brown rock stubbled with brush came up between the Scumbucket and the stone church, and it was gone from view.

EIGHTEEN.

True was thinking. The answer to his original question was that Garth Brickenfield had decided to retire the name ‘Apache Leap’ for a darker image for his annual music festival. It was the kind of story you could email ten people about and a hundred—several hundred?—would know it by the end of the day. Publicity, publicity, publicity. That and a note of weirdness, a smell of Satanic brimstone, and bringing in the vendors that Brickenfield cultivated for this thing and there you had it: an old guy pretending to putter around with antique airplanes while he was building a flying zoopalooza.

Around the next bend, they could feel the music.

It was always the bass, first. It vibrated through the Scumbucket before they could hear it. Somebody’s big huge speakers were cranked up to big huge numbers. The amphitheater’s gates had opened at noon, and by the schedule True had gotten the first band to take the stage was The Bleeding Brains.

They were very, very loud.

True slowed the van down. It rolled toward the orange gate where the GB Promotions security boys were checking the entry passes with hand scanners. True lowered his window and caught the full thunder of bass guitar and bass drum echoing off rock walls and maybe a couple of hundred shaved skulls. He felt like one of the Company’s enforcers; he was way too old for this kind of mess, but to call himself a man he was going to have to go down into that mine.

“Thank you, sir,” the security guy with blue sunscreen on his face said to True when the passes were scanned, and then he looked past True into the van and shouted, “Kick some
ass
!” as he pumped his fist into the air.

They drove onto the dirt lot behind the huge stage, which like any lot behind a festival stage was a phantasmorama of many elements: the military encampment, the neighborhood block party, the mad scientist’s cluttered lab of crates and boxes and strange electronic gizmos, the power station in a constant state of emergency, the lineup of battered trucks, trailers and vans from that seedy auto dealership in the bad part of town, the grimy place behind the colorful banners at the state fair where all the half-eaten candied apples seem to end up.

True found a place to stop, in between a line of green Port-A-Potties and a purple van painted with grinning silver death’s heads. They had arrived.

The first thing for The Five to do was to go to the large black hospitality trailer with GB Promotions in red on the sides, get their stage passes and some bottled water, eat whatever sandwich and chips they were offering, and figure out exactly what the set was going to be. They had about two hours to settle in. The equipment would have to be unloaded, everything plugged in and checked as best as possible in this environment. They wouldn’t have to worry about unloading any merchandise, because that had already been shipped from RCA to Brickenfield’s company and would be for sale up on the ‘Midway’ where the sea of vendors was located. But it would be barely-controlled chaos, no matter how it was sliced.

True’s first task was to take his leather bag out of the van, walk to the other side of the Port-A-Potties to get some relative quiet from the Bleeding Brains, unzip the bag and reach in next to the lightweight aluminum Charter Arms .38 Special. He removed his small black Motorola Walkie-Talkie with its eighteen-mile range and secure codes. He turned on the voice activation capability.

“This is Prime setting up shop,” True said. “Scout, you guys out there?”

“Affirmative.” The reception was so clear Tony Escobar could’ve been standing right next to him.

“Knave, you copy?”

“Affirmative.”

He went through Lance, Logic, Shelter and Signet. He’d chosen the names from the Admirable Class of minesweeping ships in World War II; the guys rolled their eyes at him, but he was the big dog. “All I can tell you is to stay sharp,” he said when the teams had reported. They knew their business, they had their high-powered binoculars and wore camouflage suits that blended them in with the mountain terrain. Their rifles, all Remingtons with scopes similar to what Jeremy Pett would be carrying, were also camouflaged with earth colors. The tac teams were spread out around the clockface of the amphitheater, and were experts at staying invisible. A thought struck True. “Hey, Clark!”

“Yes, sir?”

Clark Griffin was the leader of the Shelter team. He and his men would be hunkered down in a position nearest to that place up on the higher elevation. That place.

Watch your backs
, he almost said.

But that would’ve sounded stupid. It would not be wise for the operation leader to sound stupid. So he said, “This is your kind of music down here.”

“Nobody in that lineup can hold a candle to Buckethead,” Clark answered back. “I’ll make you a fan yet, sir.”

“I’m still in my Crosby, Stills and Nash period,” True said. “Okay, let’s put on our bigboy faces. One reminder: we are
not
shooting to kill. Check you.” He switched off the voice control. Then, satisfied at least that everyone was where they ought to be, he walked back around the line of portable toilets and went into the nearest one to relieve his aching bladder.

On their way to the hospitality trailer, Nomad’s pace slowed. Ariel noticed and also slowed down. He was staring at something off to the right. “John?” she said, and followed his gaze to an Airstream trailer where a nearly-naked man with tattoos on his arms and chest and long hair the color of butter was sitting on a lawn chair in the sun, his face offered to the rays. Nomad told her to go on ahead, that he’d be there in a few minutes. She hesitated only briefly, as Nomad began to walk toward the Airstream, and then she followed Terry and Berke across a landscape strewn with cables.

Nomad had known this man was going to be at Stone Church. His band Mjöllnir—pronounced “Mole Near”—was scheduled to take the stage at eight o’clock tonight. He had gotten here early, to kick back, mix and mingle, to check out the flashy young tail, to score some good dope, to listen to the new bands. Maybe also because his tour calendar was a lot lighter than it had been ten, twenty years ago. Mjöllnir was the name of Thor’s mythical hammer. The man in that lawn chair, catching sun with his eyes closed against the glare, was a fallen god.

Nomad came up on him silently, as the Bleeding Brains thrashed and screamed onstage about a hundred yards away, but fallen gods still retain their sixth sense, and the man opened eyes as green as new emeralds and with The Look speared Nomad in his tracks.

“You just passing through, or what?” Nomad asked, unable to keep a grin off his face.

“There’s the
kid
!” said the blonde-haired man, in a raspy growl that used to be known by the millions and imitated by dozens of lesser vocalists. He stood up, matched Nomad’s grin and opened his arms wide, permitting entrance. “Come on over here, you little motherfucker!”

The man was wearing only a black Speedo and brown sandals. The lump at his crotch was huge. Nomad said, “I’m not getting any nearer to
that
thing.”

“It’s been tamed,” the man said. “Hey, I’m not wasting it on
you
. Come on, gimme a hug.”

Nomad walked forward. Suddenly the long-haired man with the black Speedo and the huge crotch-log crouched over and rushed him. In the next instant a shoulder as hard as reinforced concrete hit Nomad before he could brace himself. He staggered back. He would have gone down had not the buttery-haired bastard grabbed him around the waist to keep him from falling. Then he swung Nomad around like a ragdoll and neatly set him down in the lawn chair.

Thor Bronson gave an explosive cat squall of a laugh into Nomad’s face. “That’s for fucking my mind, Johnny! I thought I was opening for you tonight! How come I’m not?”

“Ow! Jesus! You trying to break my ribs?”

“I ought to break your ass! Come ’ere, I love ya!” Thor grabbed the back of Nomad’s neck and gave him a big wet kiss right on the forehead. “You little
shit
, you never heard of email?” A shadow passed over his face; the half-crazed grin slid away and the emerald eyes darkened. “About Mike and George. Oh man oh man, is that a bad scene. Who the fuck is Jeremy Pett and what did you do to him?”

“You saw that on TV?”

“
Every
fucking
station. For a while. Then the world spun on. Did you know the fucking Duct Tape Rapist nailed somebody I used to
date
? A secretary at Rhino Records. Man, I do not like the way things are headed. Beer. You want a beer? Sure you do.”

“No beer,” Nomad said. He saw a pack of Winstons and a lighter on a little table next to the chair. “I’ll take a cigarette and some bottled water, if you’ve got it.”

“Light it up. Let me go get another chair.” Thor went into the trailer, leaving Nomad sitting alone in the harsh sun. Nomad got his cigarette going. In another minute Thor came back out, gripping two bottles of beer by the necks and carrying a second lawn chair under his arm. He handed Nomad one of the cold brews and set up his own chair. “Hey, we can’t have a pale pussy like you getting a little sunburned!” he said. “Here you go.” He reached over into a plastic bin and brought out a large red-striped umbrella, which had a rubber vise-grip on the handle. He opened the umbrella and screwed the grip to one of Nomad’s armrests so his guest would be sitting in the shade.

“Comforts of home,” Thor said. He sat down and clinked his bottle against Nomad’s. They both drank, and then Thor stretched his wiry legs out and uptilted his sun-lined, rough-weathered face to the celestial Sol.

Nomad’s gaze slipped toward the man on his right and then away again. He took another drink. He hadn’t seen Thor in a couple of years; the last time had been at an outdoor festival in Santa Cruz in June of 2006. Thor was about forty-five years old, give or take. His website said he’d been born in 1963, but that was up for debate. His website also said his own musical influences growing up as a rebellious kid in Bayonne, New Jersey included Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, Mountain, Black Sabbath and of course Led Zeppelin, with special props to Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, Peter Wolf of the J.Geils Band, and Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas. That part was true, but Thor Bronson was a fiction.

He’d been born Saul Brightman to a father named Maury, also known as ‘The Lighthouse’. Many beers, tequila shots and spliffs of whackyweed had gone into these revelations, drawn out over the course of several months when John Charles had been a hanger-on and band wannabe in Hollywood in 1997. At age 18, Nomad had taken the bus from Detroit with great expectations of quickly finding a band and making his mark; within a couple of weeks he was walking the streets looking for any place to play, living on chili dogs and crashing in a dumpy apartment on North Mariposa Avenue with four other big shots like himself. He had finally found semi-steady work as a house painter. And lucky to get that, too. But he had wound up painting an apartment for a young woman in Hermosa Beach who, when she’d found out he wanted to be a musician, had told him her sister was dating an “old guy” who used to be somebody famous in music. Like he was named after that dude in the comic book, that guy with the helmet and the horns.

That guy was playing on Saturday night at the Addiction in Downey, and maybe if a girl could get a discount from her handsome painter there might be an introduction?

That guy was on the cover of many of the old records John Charles had left behind in his teenaged bedroom, in there along with the Aerosmith, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Motley Crue vinyl. That guy used to take the stage with his heavy-metal band, him with his long flowing Nordic-blonde hair, his bared chest thrust out to the world, his body lean and ripped and his voice “a dark broth of pure grimy rock mixed with black-lacquered soul mixed with red mud field hollers mixed with the primal scream of urban desperation”.

That had been straight from the back copy of Mjöllnir’s first album,
Hit It
, which had done some monster sales, especially in Germany, Norway and Sweden.

“They’ll find the sonofabitch,” Thor said after another swig of beer. “Nobody gets away clean these days. They’ll find him on a satellite picture or something.”

“Yeah, they probably will,” Nomad agreed.

“I like it hot,” Thor said, and then he grinned at Nomad because the Bleeding Brains had come to the end of a song and up rose the ragged voices of the multitude, the throng, the infernal engine that kept the wheels of rock ’n roll on the burning rails to Hell. The voices, hundreds strong, merged together into a mass of knotted noise and came rolling across the lot behind the stage like the thunder of a medieval siege machine. “Listen…
listen
,” said Thor. Nomad saw him close his eyes for a few seconds as if he were hearing a choir of angels, be they however deranged. The sound rolled over them and past, and before it was gone The Bleeding Brains’ drummer started pounding his bass and two guitars shredded the air as they fought for supremacy.

“New band,” Thor told him. “Young dudes, scared shitless. I told the lead singer that if he ever felt things getting out of control, he ought to drop his jeans and moon the crowd. Nothing like an asshole on display to show ’em who’s in charge of the party.”

“I think you gave me the same advice.”

“I guess I did, huh?” Thor turned his chair slightly so he could face the kid, which was what he’d always called John Charles.
Where’s the kid with my fucking water? Where’s the kid with the fucking Phillips screwdriver? Where’s the kid with the fucking electrical tape?

That’s what John Charles was, at first: the gofer, unfit as yet to move speakers and carry equipment alongside the guys who’d been with Mjöllnir for years. He had started at the bottom of the crazy birdcage, where all the shit dropped down on a young punk’s feathers.

“How’re you doing?” Thor asked him. “Really.”

Nomad could’ve asked Thor the same question. His old friend—the first person who’d given him a chance to show what he could do, after that long hard summer of grunt work—was looking much older than his years. But then, rock years were like dog years. Thor had been an iron-pumping brute in his prime; now he was more shrivelled than ripped. Coiled around the remains of his biceps were bands of jagged black tattoos. Over his heart and much of his left shoulder was the black-and-red tattoo of the Viking symbol for Mjöllnir, topped with a skull. He hadn’t had those adornments until he’d needed them to stay current. True, he could still knock Nomad sprawling, yet he seemed thin and diminished. Knots and veins stood out under the burnished, sunfreckled skin. The hair plugs were showing in the front, the dreaded “doll’s-hair” effect. His expensive set of teeth had worn down, like those of an old lion that has chewed up too many calcified bones. But he still had the gleaming green eyes, and he still had The Look, and with those two things alone you could go a long, long way.