The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (30 page)

He almost yelped in surprise when Wu grabbed his wrist, yanked him down behind the nearest gas pump.

‘Ow,’ he griped, the cuts on his arm sizzling. ‘Right where the handcuffs—’

‘Shh!’
Wu cut him off, pointing to the highway a hundred yards from the station. Marco peered through the gap between pumps. He saw nothing.

But then he heard it.

Engines.

The desert heat turned cold on his neck.

The noise was faint, like a mosquito, but within moments it was larger, angrier, a swarm just around the bend in the road, approaching from the north.

Run
, Marco urged himself.
Duck into the minimart, go now
…

But before he could move, five Horsemen quads buzzed into view, racing towards the gas station. The drivers appeared fierce and alien; dark motorcycle goggles obscured their faces, green helmets capped their heads. They were a ragtag army, no two men outfitted the same; one wore desert fatigues, the next a thick motorcycle jacket, while a third sported a pilot’s jumpsuit, torn and blue, the wind whipping madly at the fabric. Slung across their backs were guns–mismatched rifles and black machine guns wielded like deadly scorpion stingers. Only their quads were identical, the same mud-coloured model driven by the bearded soldier. Probably all stolen from the same military lot. And on each quad’s hood, a horse skull, bleached and cracked.

It’s like a stampede from hell
, Marco thought.

The fifth quad was different from the others–constructed longer, with a turret behind the driver’s seat where a second man stood, lording over a machine gun mounted to the nest; the weapon was a Browning, massive, loaded with a seemingly endless belt of ammo. The gunman was solid and strong, too, in obvious command as he barked orders at the driver. Even from this distance Marco perceived the man’s power. Unlike the ragged Horsemen, the commander looked sharp in a battle-dress jacket, black and braided red along
the shoulder. His nose was large and dented, as though it had once been broken; his eyes were keen like a hawk’s on a mountain crag. He was the only man without a helmet, and his bald head appeared chiselled from rock–sleek but hard-edged and too large in the cranium. The ridges of his lateral skull bulged outwards above his ears, stretching the skin like an extra inch of bone strapped to his head.

Shaking, Marco crouched lower, trying to make himself as small as he could. He felt Wu beside him, tense and breathless. Parked beside the gas pump, only partially hidden from the street, sat their stolen quad. It seemed gigantic, twice its normal size.

Shit. They’re going to see, they’re going to see it
…

The five quads darted past the station, continuing south.

Wu exhaled. Rivulets of sweat had cleaned thin paths down his grimy forehead. ‘We were fortunate just there,’ he admitted. ‘They’re headed to the train, to meet their comrade. I doubt they realise he’s dead yet. With more luck, they’ll run into the same ambush of corpses. That would improve our odds.’

‘I have news for you,’ Marco said, his stomach still fluttering. ‘Our odds suck, no matter what. Did you see him? That beast with the freaky head?’

‘I saw, yes,’ Wu answered. ‘The Horseman squad leader.’

‘Please say we don’t have to fight him. He’s scary.’

Wu didn’t bother to answer. He stood and tested his arm again, lifting it as high as his shoulder would allow. Halfway up, he grunted. Biting his lip, he sat backwards again on the quad, his feet propped on the rear hitch.

‘You drive,’ he instructed. ‘Before your friend Big Skull comes back.’

‘Nice. Big Skull. Thanks for naming my nightmares.’ Marco stuck the Hemet map into his back pocket. ‘All right then.’

Here we go. Forget the Horsemen.

Onward to the real nightmare. The cemetery in Hemet.

A quick visit.

His chest tightened, constricting his ribs.

Maybe you’re visiting, too, Delle?

Route 111 was an ugly line north out of Salton, dismal and depressing, a two-lane road intercut with blighted side streets that vanished into the fossilised silence of the desert beyond. Marco kept the quad at a low hum, hugging the shoulder, ready to dart off road if another Horseman convoy burst into view ahead. It was a tense ride. His jaw ached, and he was exhausted, and he caught himself slumping against Wu behind him. The two men sat back-to-back. Marco drove; Wu monitored the road already travelled, in case the Horsemen had doubled back after discovering their dead soldier at the train.

Or whatever was left of the guy–probably not much.

Marco focused his gaze ahead, doing his best to ignore the occasional human carcass lying mangled across the yellow highway lines. Lumps of parched skin and bleached vulture-picked bones.
Roadkill
, he thought, not amused.

On the outskirts of town he slowed and steered cautiously through a jumble of collided cars, eight or ten total, their doors rusted open, abandoned in haste. As the quad rolled past a red Ford pickup truck, a pot-bellied corpse in a cowboy hat popped to its feet in the truck bed. Its cheeks were bubbled with soft-looking blisters that throbbed; flies had laid eggs below the facial epidermis, giving birth to maggots. The corpse teetered, its arms extended as if it wanted help getting down.
Yeah, fat chance.
Marco goosed the throttle and zipped from the intersection. The corpse grunted and sat back in the bed.

Five miles later a blue sign for I-10 appeared, but Marco veered left. Stay on 111 a while longer, that was the plan. The interstate was too conspicuous. Too much danger. Big Skull–the name had stuck in Marco’s head–and the Horsemen would be patrolling the major roads. And there would be ghost jams, too, he’d explained to Wu. Plus plenty more corpses.

Wu had agreed without even asking to see the map; he’d simply responded with a firm nod. ‘Good. Let’s go.’

As much as Marco hated admitting it, he’d felt bolstered, as if Wu’s approval meant something.
Great
, he thought, cringing.
The cold-hearted killer likes me.

Now Marco gathered a deep breath. At this pace they’d reach Hemet in about two hours. Part of him wished it would take four. Or eight. Or how about tomorrow?

Entering Palm Desert, his pulse jittered. This town had been higher-populated than the towns before, and the road ventured through a downtown district of tightly grouped brick buildings–strip malls, every recognisable retail chain from McDonald’s to Gap, now vacant and haunted and threateningly close to the road. God knows how many corpses lurked behind dark glass doors and cash register counters, gearing to spring out. But the town seemed quiet. The next block was a black, eerie wonderland of burnt foundations and charred wood, a hundred thousand square feet stripped to a scorched skeleton. Must’ve been a bitch of a fire. Char and ash still lingered faintly in the air, pinning tiny needles into Marco’s nostrils. He eased the quad past a gutted post office. Soot-smeared mail trucks ornamented the lot.

If there were any corpses around, Marco didn’t see them.

Which always made him nervous.

Perhaps Wu was feeling the same. ‘Speed up,’ he called, clapping his hand on the metal quad. ‘We’re far enough from the main road–engine noise is okay.’

‘Horsemen might not hear,’ Marco shot back, ‘but I’d
rather not wake every corpse for five miles. If they hear us coming, they’ll be waiting like a roadblock.’

Still, he revved the throttle higher, and as the quad kicked forward, he felt himself marginally relax. The breeze tickled his forehead, evaporating the nervous sweat. A rise of dirt-coloured mountains beckoned ahead. He turned left again, aiming upwards.

His heart lurched.

Gated communities, once attractive with manicured lawns and hedges, sat in ruin off both roadsides, the grass now like straw, the hedges overgrown into shapeless, dry-looking monsters. The street was scattered with corpses. A Hispanic male loitered beneath a palm tree, a pair of garden shears impaled in its neck. Cross-legged against a stone wall sat a scaly teenager in a black Oakland Raiders jersey, and a shirtless barefoot male in bloodied dress pants wandered along the kerb. Marco eased past them without trouble, then noticed another corpse ahead.

Oh, gross.

On the sidewalk a fat female sprawled on its round belly, naked and obscene, paying the quad no attention. Its eyes were fixed on the ground directly beneath its mangled nose. The corpse was picking black ants from a crack in the cement, stuffing them into its maw, crunching on them like popcorn–and, at the same time, ants marched in streams across the corpse’s jiggly bare ass, pinching off minuscule chunks in their mandibles to import back to the colony to eat. Raw red craters gaped from the flanks of the buttocks.

The dead woman didn’t seem to care. It was a fair trade. Food for food. They would continue trading until one side had no more left to give.

Marco shuddered and edged the speedometer faster before any corpses could draw near. The quad quickly exited the neighbourhood.

‘How’s your shoulder?’ he shouted back to Wu.

‘Fine,’ Wu responded with such immediacy that Marco knew he must be hurting like hell.
Fine
, as in,
I don’t want to think about it, so please shut up.

Up into the mountains the road climbed, then climbed again, leaving civilisation; Marco nearly laughed when he considered how little that term now applied. The quad chugged its way higher, burning precious fuel. A brown road sign on double posts encouraged them onwards.

State Route 74

Pines to Palms Scenic Byway
Slow Traffic

Use Turnaround.

Turnaround
, Marco scoffed.
If only that was an option.

He’d driven this road before, but never here at the eastern end; he’d always approached from the other direction, driving with Danielle from LA out to Lake Hemet. On the map the road resembled a haphazard scribble, a crazy twisting roller-coaster ride through the San Jacinto Mountains. Driving it now, the impression held. The quad swung rudely, tracking the curves through a dizzying landscape of tumbled rocks and thirsty-looking brush. Steep cliffs dropped away from the left. Wu held tightly to the gear rack, at risk of sliding off. The roller coaster continued upwards. The landscape thickened with trees and forest. The views were stunning, and Marco was happy to let his mind slip untroubled into this majestic reprieve from the horrors below; at sea level, only death and corpses and pain awaited, but at this altitude the air was gloriously fresh-smelling, and the trees prospered without a care for the state of the manmade world. Sugar pines spiked high, two hundred feet tall, like quills on a massive porcupine’s back; ponderosa pines decorated the skyline, their orange bark
crisp in the sunlight. The San Bernardino Mountains saluted him from across the valley; small brown shapes stirred on the rocks, mountain goats picking their way along the crags, beyond the reach of any man or corpse.

And then, Marco realised, the ride had peaked, and the quad sank under him as gravity nudged him towards the handlebars, and Wu’s back jostled against his own. The road was descending now. He tapped the brake and felt the check in his spirit.

Down again. He could sense the bottom dropping out from under him, the roller coaster hurdling over the apex of the rails, plummeting him back deeper into his thoughts than he wished to go. The road passed the turn-off to Lake Hemet. He and Danielle had picnicked here once, a hundred miles from Los Angeles, the year they met. He remembered her that day–wet auburn hair slicked behind her ears after an hour of swimming, and in her hand she held that ridiculous straw hat of hers, using it to shoo bees from her salad. She’d looked fantastic in a turquoise bathing suit, and he recalled sitting, flush and giddy, at an old wooden picnic table stained with bird poop, secretly hoping the other picnickers might look over and recognise her.

Hey everyone, look. It’s Danielle Pierce, the movie actress. Sitting there with boring unpopular Henry Marco! The guy nobody liked in high school!

Danielle had always done that to him–inspired those silly schoolboy kind of daydreams. Stupid, but at the same time stimulating. Blame it on the pixie magic he’d sensed in her that first day at Tech Town; the damn stuff just never wore off.

And he’d loved it.

His palms flexed on the handlebars as the quad passed the lake. Almost worth a side-trip to check it out… see if she might be there now, still shooing bees. But he knew Wu
wouldn’t go for that–hell, they were
already
on a side-trip, and he hadn’t even told Wu yet about his plan to stop in Hemet–and besides, he had a much stronger hunch burning in him now. Urging him to keep going.
Hemet. The cemetery. She’s there.

His stomach knotted. His eyes had been gathering tears from the wind beating his face, and now finally he felt two drops leak to the bridge of his nose.

Emotional geography, right? That’s how he’d described memory association to Osbourne. The way your brain tagged your most powerful experiences, like pushing pins into a map so you can find them anytime. So nice and orderly, and the brain thinks it’s doing you a favour. But there’s one thing it doesn’t realise.

Sometimes the emotions take you up–to happy places. To Lake Hemet.

And sometimes they take you down to places that hurt.

Places you don’t want to go again.

The cemetery. She’s there. I can feel it.

The ride was over. Route 74 had levelled out, free of the blanketing forest, and another mile up the road was Hemet, and his heart spasmed and he swallowed a bubble of vomit in his throat.
Because that’s what you do at the end of the roller coaster
, he thought.
You try not to throw up
.

He considered the Glock holstered under his arm. One bullet left in the clip. Which was fine.

Danielle only needed one.

The quad jerked left then right, shaking Wu like a rat in a dog’s teeth.