“Exactly,” Sloane replied. “It’s not much of a choice, is it? When Nora returns for you, she’s dead.”
Smithback suddenly rose on one arm. “Nora!” he croaked, as loudly as he could. “Stay away! Sloane is waiting here for you with a—”
With a quick movement, Sloane whipped the gun across the side of his head. The writer flopped sideways, groaned, then lay still.
Sloane stared down at him for a moment. Then she glanced around the medical tent. Finding a small battery lamp among the equipment, she snapped it on and placed it in the far corner. Picking up her flashlight and switching it off, she quietly unzipped the tent and slipped outside into the dark.
The tent was pitched near a low, thick clump of chamisa. Slowly, quietly, Sloane crawled into the chamisa, then turned around and lay on her stomach, facing the tent. The lamp within it gave out a subdued glow, cozy and inviting. She was completely concealed within the dark vegetation, and yet she had an unobstructed view of the tent. Anyone approaching it would automatically be silhouetted by the dim light. When Nora returned for Smithback—as Sloane knew she would—her silhouette would make a perfect target.
Her thoughts drifted briefly to Black, sick and alone, waiting for her back at the kiva. She tried to ready herself for what was to come. Once this business was done, she could quickly drag Nora down to the river. In seconds, the current would sweep her into the narrow meat-grinder of a canyon at the far end of the valley. And when Nora’s body reached the Colorado River—eventually—there wouldn’t be enough left for a postmortem. It would be the same as if Nora had been washed out by the flash flood in the first place—as, by all rights, she should have been. No one would know. And then, of course, she’d have to do the same to Smithback. Sloane closed her eyes a moment, unwilling to think about that. But there was no longer any choice: she had to finish what the flood had failed to do.
Resting both elbows on the ground, Sloane eased the pistol forward, balancing it with both hands. Then she settled down to wait.
63
AARON BLACK LAY IN THE KIVA, CONFUSED and horribly frightened. The fitful glow of the dying lamp still faintly illuminated the close, dusty space. But Black’s eyes were shut fast against the darkness, against the overwhelming evidence of his failure. It seemed that hours had passed since Sloane had left, but perhaps it was only minutes: it was impossible for him to tell.
He forced his gluey eyes open. Something terrible was happening; perhaps it had been coming on for a while, and now that the fevered digging had given way to crushing disappointment, it was upon him at last. Perhaps the air was bad. He needed to get out, breathe some fresh air. He mustered the energy to rise, staggered, and with astonishment felt his legs buckle.
He fell back, arms flailing weakly. A pot rolled crazily around him and came to rest against his thigh, leaving a snake’s trail in the dusty floor. He must have tripped. He tried to rise and saw one leg jerk sideways in a spastic motion, muscles refusing to obey. The lantern, canted sideways, threw out a pale corona, suffused by dust.
From time to time, growing up, Black had been tortured by a recurring nightmare: he found himself paralyzed, unable to move. Now, he felt that he was living that nightmare. His limbs seemed to have grown frozen, unwilling or unable to respond to his commands.
“I can’t move!” he cried. And then, with a sudden terror, he realized he hadn’t been able to articulate the words. Air had come out of his mouth, yes—an ugly splutter, and he felt saliva dribbling down his chin—but no words came. He tried again and heard once more the ugly choking rush of air, felt the refusal of his tongue and lips to form words. The terror increased. In a spasm of panic, he struggled unsuccessfully to rise. Weird shapes and writhing figures began crowding the darkness beyond his eyes; he turned to look away, but his neck refused to move. Closing his eyes now only caused the shapes to spring to greater definition.
“Sloane!” he tried to call, staring up into the cloudy dimness, afraid even to blink. But not even the splutter of air came now. And then the lantern flickered again, and went black.
He tried to scream, but nothing happened. Sloane was supposed to be bringing medicine. Where was she? In the close darkness, the hallucinations were all around him, babbling, whispering: twisted creatures; grinning skulls, teeth inlaid with bloody carnelians; the clinking of skeletons moving restlessly around the kiva; the flickering of fires and the smell of roasting human meat; the screams; the victims gargling their own blood.
It was too terrible. He could not close his eyes, and they burned with an internal pressure. His mouth was locked open in a scream that never came. At least he still recognized the shapes around him as hallucinations. That meant he wasn’t too far gone to tell reality from unreality . . . but how unspeakably dreadful it was to not feel anything; not to know any longer where his limbs were lying, whether or not he had fouled himself; to lose some profound internal sense of where his body was. The panic of paralysis, that dream-fear out of his worst nightmares, washed over him yet again.
He couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. Was Nora really dead? Was he himself also dying, in the horrible darkness of this kiva?
Aragon, Smithback, Nora . . . and he had been as guilty of their deaths as if he had pulled the trigger. He hadn’t spoken up, down there in the valley. He’d let his own desire for immortal fame, for that ultimate discovery, get the better of him. He groaned inwardly: clearly, nobody would come to help, after all. He was alone in the darkness.
Then he saw another light, very faint, almost indivisible from the darkness. It was accompanied by a rustling sound. His heart surged with fresh hope. Sloane was returning at last.
The light grew stronger. And then he saw it, through the film of his sickness: fire, strangely disembodied, moving through the darkness of the kiva, dropping sparks as it went. And carrying this burning brand was a hideous apparition: a single figure, half-man, half-animal.
Black fell into renewed despair. Not a rescue. Just another hallucination. He wept inwardly; he wailed in his mind; but his eyes remained dry, his body flexed and immobile.
Now the apparition was coming toward him. He smelled juniper smoke, mixed with the ripe, sweet scent of morning glories; he saw in the flickering light the glittering black of an obsidian blade.
Distantly, he wondered where such an image, where such an unexpected scent, could have come from. Some grotesque recess of his mind, no doubt; some dreadful ceremony that perhaps he’d read about in graduate school, long forgotten and now, in the extremity of his delirium, resurrected to haunt him.
The figure bent closer, and he saw its blood-stiffened buckskin mask, eyes fiery behind the ragged slits. Surprisingly real. The coldness of the blade on his throat was astonishingly real, as well. Only a person who was as gravely ill as he was, he knew, could hallucinate something so . . .
And then he felt the unyielding knife blade trace a hard cold line across his neck; felt the abrupt wheeze of his own air, the gush of hot blood filling his windpipe; and he realized, with transcendent astonishment, that it was not a hallucination, after all.
64
SLOANE WAITED, EVERY MUSCLE TENSED, LISTENING with rapt concentration. There was a break in the storm, and the rain had slowed to an occasional patter. Cupping her watch to shield the glow, she briefly illuminated it: almost ten thirty. The sky had broken into patches of light as tattered clouds swept past a gibbous moon. Still, it was mostly dark—dark enough for a person to think she could creep into camp unobserved.
She shifted, rubbing her elbows. Once again, she found herself wondering what had happened to Swire and Bonarotti. No one had appeared at the mouth of the city. And they obviously weren’t in camp. Perhaps they’d never left Quivira in the first place, and were even now back in the kiva, watching over Black. In any case, it was best
