Dead Men's Dust

i've often wondered if there's anyone more superstitious than a soldier. You'd think that with such a reliance on fact, science, and technology, the basis of modern warfare, there'd be no room for a belief in the supernatural. But there is the firm belief in many a soldier's mind that paranormal skills are often within the warrior's arsenal. I am a believer in a sixth sense, the heightened ability to detect the unseen watcher, the sniper on the rooftop or the tiger hidden in the long grass. It's so widely believed that it has even been given a term: Rapid Intuitive Experience, the soldier's very own ESP.

    I accept that the proof of such a thing is subjective, but it has saved my life enough times that I give it full credence. But up until now, despite my fanciful notions during the assault on Petoskey's building, I hadn't given the existence of ghosts much credibility. How could I? The number of men I've killed, I would go insane if I dwelled on the number who must haunt me.

    Still, belief in ghosts or not, for more than a heartbeat I genuinely accepted that the thing in front of me was a vengeful spirit risen from its grave to exact retribution. I stepped back, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. And if the blade it held in its clawed fist had been animated, I doubt that I could've stopped it scything my head from my shoulders.

    'Holy Christ!' I heard the words, but was unsure whether it was me or Rink that said them. Maybe we both did.

    Point Shooting is based entirely on the natural posture, the natural reaction to lifting the gun and firing wherever danger presents itself. When confronted by this diabolical creature, my reactions failed me. The SIG hung useless by my side.

    Then Rink was beside me. He laid a hand on my shoulder. 'Hunter . . . we gotta keep moving, man. Can't let this damn thing throw us.'

    'It's a little hard not to,' I croaked.

    The miasma of fear gripped me, and it was an effort to shake free of it. When I did, it was through the exhalation of pent-up fear.

    'What the hell is it?' Rink asked.

    I looked again at the specter in the mist. A human skull grinned back at me. But I could see now that there was no life behind the recessed sockets, no drool dripping from its widely splayed teeth. It was a simulacrum, given the illusion of life by Cain's artistic dementia. The skull was mounted on a pole pushed into the sand. A tattered blanket was draped over a crossbar to give the semblance of a body. Hands and forearms—withered skin and tendons holding together the bones—were bound to other poles concealed within the blanket. I shuddered.

    'It's a warning,' I finally managed. 'Or a gatekeeper. I think we've found him, Rink.'

    'You're not kidding.'

    We both heard the music again; a sonorous piping this time. I stepped closer to the skeletal form. The music was coming from its bones. Tiny drill holes along the radius and ulna of the forearms made for a maniac's idea of a flute. When the wind picked up, it disturbed the blanket and produced a racket like a wind chime.

'Son of a bitch's crazy as a bag of weasels,' Rink offered.

    As we walked on, I couldn't help peering back at the ghostly form. Who do those bones belong to? I wondered. Is there a family someplace that to this day hopes that their loved one will turn up one bright morning and announce that he's fine, that he only needed to get away for a while but now he's back? I promised myself that I would see to that return, that I would take this person home again. The day wouldn't be bright, and neither would he be fine, but he would be going home.

    As would the next twelve skeletons we came across as we walked.

    It was an unholy baker's dozen.

    All were posed in similar styles to the first, strung up on poles, bodies formed of blankets. But some were in reclining postures, others placed to give the impression of flight, two of them strung together as though engaged in a slow waltz. Cain was indeed crazy, as dangerous as a pit of venomous reptiles, and every bit as sly.

    Across the amphitheater we went, and with every step my dread grew. I wondered if we were already too late. If John were already strung up in an insane effigy to Cain's dementia.

    The tiny bones strewn in the sand gave me an even greater loathing for Cain than before. Many were the remains of tiny animals and birds fallen out of the sky, but here and there, I saw the phalanges of human fingers protruding from their graves as though clawing their way to an afterlife denied them. Rink looked equally disturbed. I didn't know what face I wore, but I was sure that if my friend studied me now, he'd see that I, too, could fear.

    The wind was picking up. The mist—not true mist, but particles of the alkaline desert borne on the wind— billowed around us. It invaded my mouth and nostrils, caused me to squint. I had the horrifying notion that the desert was actually formed of particles of bone, and I gagged and spat in reflex. It was an absurd notion, but it was there. I pulled my shirt up over my face as protection against inhaling dead men's dust.

'Hunter.'

    I heard Rink's whisper. He was thirty feet to my left, crouching down, gun trained on something I couldn't see. I stopped, took up a crouch of my own. Rink indicated something beyond him that I couldn't discriminate from the shifting veil of sand. Duckwalking, I made my way over.

    'There' was all Rink said. I could make out a hulking formation of rocks jutting out of the desert like the ruins of a mythical castle. Like the sand, the rocks were chalk white and glowed with phosphorescence against the night sky. If this amphitheater had once been the floor of an ocean, then the rocks were millions of years old, ancient testimony to volcanic activity that had shattered the sea floor in a cataclysmic upheaval. Directly ahead of us, two more spectral forms marked a fissure in the rocks. Truly, they were gatekeepers this time.

    This had to be the final place. Cain's place.

43

alone, either man was a formidable enemy. together, Cain had no hope of defeating them. Not when he was armed only with his scaling knife while both of them had semiautomatic handguns. The only chance he had was to separate them; use their loyalty for each other against them. It was a weakness Cain immediately saw. Though they were fearless warriors, neither wanted to die or to lose his friend. Cain, on the other hand, had no such qualms. He was prepared to die to achieve his aims.

    Both Joe Hunter and Jared Rington transcended the level of even the most hard-boiled soldier. Their training . . . no, their indoctrination . . . had seen to that. Maybe they were beyond the normal psychological and