He nodded appreciatively when he saw me. “Long day, hot night with that little girl of yours and you’re still up before dawn. You make a sharp troop, Gannon.”
I frowned at him, wondering what he knew about Monika. He ignored me, so I rubbed my eyes and groped for coffee.
“Good time to make plans,” said the Captain, “the cold morning air clears the head.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Nick Hackler brought word about the Preacher.”
I perked up. “What word?”
“Some kind of trouble. He said there were gunshots up there yesterday, after the storm. He heard them. No one else is up on that hill.”
I sat back, thinking hard. “We have to go check it out. One way or the other.”
“One way or the other,” he agreed while having a quiet morning cigarette. The drifting smoke made me want to cough, but I put up with it in silence. I wondered how many years it had been since a cigarette had been quietly smoked in that lobby. Probably thirty, maybe forty or more. Now, no one was likely to come and demand he put it out. Times had changed.
I got out the map that the Preacher had given me. I pondered it. There was a shift line on it, a blue one, across our path to his cabin. I showed it to the Captain. He showed me his teeth in return.
“I’m beginning to like your aggressive style,” he said to me. “More balls than brains and it’s gotten you quite a ways. What do you want to do, sneak around it or bull our way through?”
I looked at him and at the map. “There are some fair-sized caves up there, really close to that spot. I used to play in them as a kid.”
He nodded, looking at it. Monroe county was famous for its limestone caves. In Kentucky, to the south, every farmer seemed to have a cave on his property and that he tried to charge tourists a few bucks to see. Every year in elementary school they gave the kids long-winded speeches about staying out of those dangerous caves. Of course, a country boy like me who had grown up in these hills had often ignored the warnings.
“What if we could find a way through the caves that went under that line?” I speculated.
“Let me guess, you want to try out the cave idea.”
“We can’t just leave him up there. I might as well try out his theory. Maybe he’s dead up there, maybe not. Either way I want to do the last thing he asked me to.”
He nodded and leaned back. “Okay, I’m in, but if you turn into a fanged aardvark, I’m going to blow you away. Fair warning?”
“Fair enough, and the same goes for you.”
He grinned again darkly and nodded. I could tell by his grin he didn’t think I would be able to take him under any circumstances.
Vance didn’t think it was such a good idea when I bounced it off him. “Let me get this straight, you know where the change happens, so you are going to seek out this fantastic danger to your very soul. You’ll go there, down in a
“The idea is to see if the cave prevents the effect. I think I can sense the effect now. I think I’ll know if I’m close to the danger point.”
“Gannon, did you ever read any stories about supernatural monsters and stuff? Did you skip that part of youth? Did you ever notice that they
The Captain appeared, “I, the psycho, agree with your ravings, boy.”
We both reddened. It was hard to keep a secret even if you whispered in this place.
“Here’s a new tactical plan,” he went on, undisturbed. “I’ll be the control on this little experiment of yours. I’ll take the long way around the blue line on the map, going about a mile or so out and swinging around to the cabin from the south. You two ladies will do the cave thing. It should slow you down enough that we should make it at about the same time. If we make it at all, that is.”
“I don’t want to go through the cave!” blurted Vance.
“No problem,” said the Captain with a grin. “I think we have a replacement for you right here.”
“I’ll go,” said Monika. She had been listening in the hallway and came out now. Her hair was tousled and she still wore that dark coat she had come to me in last night. In her hand, casually, she held that.32 pistol I’d given her. “I want to go with you, Gannon.”
Twenty-Three
It was nearly noon by the time we found the cave mouth. During the trip, I kept noticing the Captain’s eyes crawling over Monika. It was more than just a few appreciative glances-I would have expected that from any guy. I recalled a bearded vagrant I’d seen on a subway in Chicago, his eyes had worked over every woman on the train. They’d been hungry eyes, and he’d ridden the subway for hours, like he lived on it. The Captain’s eyes were like that.
His stubble had been coming in further every day, few of us bothered to shave anymore, and there was plenty of white in his beard. I bet it had been a long time since he had been with a young sweet girl like Monika. Maybe he never had, not in his whole life. I bet he’d been frequenting backstreet whores for years up in Bloomington or down in Louisville on the weekends. That was more his speed.
I shook my head, trying to clear away such thoughts. I reminded myself that he’d killed the thing that had killed my dad and half the town along with him, and then there had been the matter of removing a thirty-foot tree-monster’s arm just yesterday. I owed him for that, we all did. But he did give off a strange feeling to us more homey types. I imagined vague suspicion had always been the reward others gave to real warriors, real killers. Everyone needed them when the chips were down, but we had a hard time trusting them completely. Especially the spooky ones like the Captain.
“Okay, I guess we split up here,” I said.
The Captain glanced at me, and then his eyes swung back to latch onto Monika. He stood there staring, leering really. I guessed he was waiting for us to enter the cave. I almost turned my back on him, but I had a dark thought, just then. He had that rifle. What if he just blew me away, had his way with Monika, and then headed back after dark with some story about us turning into werewolves? Maybe he figured we were crazy and doomed by going down there anyway. Maybe in his thoughts he was figuring he might as well finish us now, instead of waiting for us to come back and stalk him in the woods after we had changed. Who would ever know the difference? What policeman would come out and dig up the truth? There weren’t any police anymore. We were our own law.
For an awkward moment I stood there, all of us watching each other, and I didn’t know how to move things forward. Monika had big eyes. I wondered if she knew what I was thinking. She was pretty perceptive. If she was tracking my thoughts, she was playing it cool. Her hands were in her coat pockets, and I knew she had her pistol there. Maybe she had her hand on it with a white-knuckled grip, or maybe she didn’t. I didn’t think an American girl could have kept quiet at a moment like that, if she was having those thoughts. But this girl was different, more serious.
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I thought hard for one more second, and then I had it.
“Hey, I wanted to thank you.”
He startled and looked vaguely surprised.
“For yesterday, and for back when you got that meter man, the one that got my dad.” I said, speaking honestly. “I’ve always wanted to thank you for that. I owe you one, James.”
He looked at me for a moment, and I saw a change come over his face. “You’re welcome,” he said evenly.
I nodded and we parted ways. Monika and I went into the cave, while the Captain took his overland path. I wasn’t sure if had any reason to be, but I felt relieved to get into that cool, dark cave mouth.
When Monika and I were down in the dark hole I lifted the lantern and turned it up. She looked up into my face seriously. I opened her pocket and gently pulled her hand out of her coat. It was wrapped around the pistol
