Black Sun Rising

Chapter Twenty-Four

"What the hell, Dave?" Nina yelled, as Purdue dragged her along the corridor toward the circular room. "You can't just—"

"It's you or her, Nina," Purdue said, with alarming composure. "They have no reason to be concerned about her. You, on the other hand… "

He trailed off, distracted for a moment by the sight of Kai battling the two acolytes. Despite their slight stature they were both strong, and they moved with the speed and grace of snakes. They circled and struck, circled and struck, landing simultaneous blows that were paired to inflict maximum pain in both kidneys, the solar plexus and sternum, the windpipe, and the back of the knees. Grunting in pain, Kai lunged at one then the other until he caught one, the young male.

The female acolyte leaped onto his back, clawing at his face, but it did nothing to loosen his grip on the male. He twisted the young man's arm in two different directions, resulting in a sickening crack and a gut-wrenching scream.

Recklessly, Purdue slammed his hand against the door panel. There was no time for disguising his prints or any other trickery. He snatched his glasses from his nose and stared at the panel, willing it to scan his retinas faster, and then replaced them as he opened his mouth for the cheek swab. The sample stick protruded from the wall on a tiny extendable arm, jabbing quickly at his mouth.

They spilled into the challenge corridor, dashed along it and up the stairs to the connection tent. It was still empty and the campsite was quiet as the sun reached its highest and hottest point, driving everyone to seek shelter. Carefully, the trio crept across the sand. Where the hell are we going to go? Sam wondered. He wanted to ask, but Purdue seemed to have a plan, so he followed.

It did not take him long to work out their destination. Sam had not yet explored the tall rock formation where Nina and Purdue had sheltered just a few nights before, but it was the only visible structure that might provide them with shade and concealment. He wiped the freely flowing sweat from his face as they plodded through the sand. The spiky, scrubby bushes grabbed at his legs and tore long, thin lines into them. Beside him, Nina stumbled. Sam and Purdue both grabbed her arms and propped her up, ushering her toward the shade.

"Henley?"

Half-hidden in the shade of the rocks, the girl raised her head to reveal a sulky, hurt face. "Yeah? What are you people doing here? This is my place."

"Just looking to get out of the sun, Henley," said Sam. "Are you ok?"

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I guess. This place sucks, is all. And you know what, you can tell my mom and dad. I don't care how much they love all this stuff. It's bullshit. I want to go home."

"Christ, you and me both," Nina sighed, collapsing beside her. "I wish I'd never come here." She turned her face toward the sky. It was too hot, even in the shade, and there was not even the slightest breeze to disturb the arid air. Nevertheless, it was the sweetest sensation she could imagine. Above her were miles of open sky, with not a wall in sight.

Despite wearing the lightest clothes he owned, a thin cotton T-shirt and pale beige shorts, Sam felt like he was melting. Beads of sweat trickled down the back of his neck, sticking his hair to his skin. The mental image of his waterskin, resting on top of his backpack back in the teepee, taunted him.

"Does anyone have any water?" Nina asked, as if reading his mind. "They gave me some when I was in the cell, but it had all that weird herbal stuff in it, so I left it alone."

"Good call," said Henley. "Mom says it's fine, but I think it's some kind of drug. She says it can't be drugs because it's just a plant. I told her that weed is just a plant too — I mean, she'd freak if she saw me with a joint but she's fine with me drinking that shit? So stupid. Besides, I don't think she ever saw some of the other shit they put in there." Her brow furrowed as she realized what else Nina had said. "Why were you in the cells?"

Sam and Nina exchanged a glance, noting that Henley did not seem even slightly surprised by the existence of the cells.

"I got on the wrong side of Cody," said Nina. "Although I don't think that's all there was to it. I think — no, Dave." She shook off the hand that Purdue laid on her arm. "I don't care if she runs to Jefferson. Or Sara. Or Cody. If any one of them tries to put me back in those cells, I'll claw their fucking eyes out this time."

"I'm not running to anybody," Henley said, twisting a lock of her dark blonde hair nervously between her fingers. "I don't trust anybody here."

Neither do I, Sam thought, trying hard not to watch Purdue suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. What is your game, Dave Purdue? First you seem to be in with these people, then you're not, then you throw Julia Rose in the cell, and now we're following you and hoping that you've got a plan to get us out of here. I don't trust you an inch, yet for some reason I keep following your lead.

"Not even your parents?" Purdue asked.

Henley looked uncomfortable. "No," she said. "I mean, yeah, kind of… I don't know. It's Mom and Dad. Of course, I trust them, but they're just being so weird right now. It's been like this ever since Dad got into all this FireStorm stuff, and now Mom's drinking the Kool-Aid too. I don't get it, so obviously there's something wrong with me." She shook back her hair in a gesture of practiced defiance. "Well, whatever. I don't even care. I'll be eighteen in a few months, and then I can do whatever I want. I don't have to put up with this crap anymore."

Beneath the teenage bravado, it was clear that Henley was hurting. Even Sam, who prided himself on being as emotionally stunted as a Scotsman could be, could tell how upset she was. Her hands were shaking slightly, and the hand that cupped her crooked elbow had its nails dug deep into the skin of her arm. Little deep pink crescent shapes speckled her tanned skin. A couple of the marks went so deep that they showed a thin line of red where she had broken through the epidermis.

A noise from the camp broke the stillness of the air. It was the sound of the gong in the connection tent, the one that Sam had only ever seen struck by the acolytes. If they were sounding the gong, Sam reasoned, it could only mean that they had overpowered Kai and that he was either in a cell or dead. He won't be dead, Sam told himself, battling the growing feeling of horror in the pit of his stomach. There's no reason to think that he's dead. If they overpowered him, he'll be in a cell. That's all. It's not good, but it would make sense.

"Anyway," Henley suddenly remembered that she had been attempting to ask Nina a question. "You didn't tell me what you did to get put in a cell. What was it?"

Nina let out a long sigh. "I'm not sure if I should tell you, Henley. Not because you might tell — I'm sure you won't. But it's just… it gets gruesome. There's something that happened, and I don't know if I should tell you about it."

"It's the dead guy, isn't it?" Henley met Nina's eye with a steady gaze, facing down her shocked expression.

"Dead guy?" Sam spluttered, an icy finger of fear suddenly running down the back of his neck. "What?"

"Over near the cinder cone. I saw him too." Although she was fighting to keep her tone calm, Henley's voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. "He's really messed up, but I think it's that software guy who knew Sara."

"Hunter," Sam said, hanging on to the one thing he was sure about. "His name was Hunter."

He could see it all in his head, so clearly. The beast being chased and cornered, people claiming parts of the body, the strange juxtaposition between reality and the dream state. "What happened?"

"Hard to tell," said Nina. "I found him when I was trying to get away from Cody. I just walked downriver for a while, and then I could see the cinder cone so I wandered over there. Really, I was just waiting until there would be other people around the camp so it wouldn't be just him and me. Then I saw… oh, god, he was such a mess. I think — well, I thought that maybe a mountain lion had gone for him. I don't think I'd even have recognized him if it hadn't been for the black T-shirt. There are only two people here who wear black shirts in the desert, and I was really sure it wasn't Henley. Anyway, I — Sam?"

Sam lurched out of the shade and into the blazing sunlight, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the others before the contents of his stomach forced their way up and out. He did not get far before he was on his knees, retching and heaving, puking on the sand.

That wasn't a dream, he thought. They killed him. We… We killed him. I had a knife in my hand, I remember that, but did I ever use it? Did I get close enough to use it?

It doesn't matter. The point isn't whether I managed to stick a knife in the poor bastard or not. The point is that I was there, screaming and baying with the rest of them. I was joining in. I didn't stop them; I didn't even try. It didn't even occur to me to try. And that's… that makes me just as much to blame as the rest of them.

And if they killed Hunter, what the hell is happening here?

Another spasm racked his body, but it had no more to give. He gagged pointlessly, bringing up nothing but a mouthful of bile and a slew of unwanted, guilty thoughts.

There was no time for Sam to recount his memories of the hunt. Before he had finished throwing up, another sound had begun over at the campsite. Not the gong or the low, droning horn he had heard during his initiation, but a higher, more urgent horn. With a cold flush of dread he recognized the sound… the hunting horn.

"We have to go," he gasped, staggering back to the camp. "Purdue, what's the plan?"

"We must find Sara and Cody," Purdue said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"What?" Nina exploded, grabbing Purdue's arm in a tight, furious grip. "Are you fucking insane? I'm not going anywhere near them."

"But we must," said Purdue, his voice level, gently prying her fingers from his forearm. "I have something we can exchange for safe passage out of here. I can negotiate with—"

"No." Nina's face was a mask of fear. "You didn't see that corpse, you don't know what they'll do if they—"

"Why don't you take a car?" Henley asked.

"Car?" Sam repeated dumbly. There had been no sights or sounds that indicated the presence of a car anywhere near the camp. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Henley was truly spoiled enough to think that there would be a taxi service tucked away in the far reaches of the Grand Canyon.

"There are cars?" Nina pounced on Henley's question. "Where are they? Can we get to them?"

Henley nodded. "Uh-huh. Well, I can. So if you want a car, you have to take me with you. Just get me as far as Vegas. I can make my own way home from there."

Nina opened her mouth to question the legality of taking a seventeen year old with them without her parents' permission, but Sam stopped her. "We can worry about where she's allowed to go later. We've got to go while there's still time. Henley?"

The girl nodded and beckoned them to follow. Sam stole a quick glance back toward the camp as she led them toward the river. He could see the FireStorm initiates congregating, passing cups back and forth between them. Some were writhing madly. Sam remembered visiting Pakistan in his early days as a journalist and seeing a man bitten by a snake. That man's strange dance of pain and poison had looked almost identical to what he saw now.

They waded their way along the riverbank, walking in the water to conceal their tracks. For a brief moment Sam was concerned that the noise of the splashing water might give away their position, but his fears were quickly eclipsed. The hunting horns stopped dead and for a moment there was silence from the camp. Then a heart stopping cacophony of shrieks and screams split the air, followed by the sound of many feet pounding on the sand as the hunt began its charge.

"In here!" Henley yelled. They had reached the cinder cone where they had spent the night of the first hunt. Between the rocks, half hidden by the sagebrush, was a thin door. Brushing aside the plants, Henley fished out the key that hung from a chain around her neck and unlocked it.

Scratched, bruised, and bitten, the four of them piled into the room behind the door. The light was dim, and it took Sam a minute or two of squinting for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw a vast hangar spreading out before them, stretching across the hollowed-out base of the mountain. Housed within it were generators, presumably powering the underground rooms back at the camp, a number of industrial chest freezers, sacks, and barrels containing food and, best of all, a fleet of 4 x 4s.

Purdue was already on the case. He dashed over to the food storage and snatched up a large can of honey, then threw open the bonnet of the first vehicle he came to and tipped a generous measure of the sweet, sticky stuff into the engine.

"What are you doing?" Henley demanded. "We need that car!"

"We need one of them," said Purdue. "The rest are better off out of action. Sam, Nina, help me, please. Henley, does that key of yours open the door that will let us out, or will I need to access the computers?"

"It's my dad's key, it opens just about anything in this place." Henley stuck her chin out defiantly. "I stole it. Dad said he was going to teach me to drive while we were out here, but then he got too busy with all his FireStorm bullshit, so I was planning on teaching myself. I kind of know how already, it's not that hard."

Nina, limping as she carried cans of honey between the cars, yelled that she could hear the hunt advancing as she passed the door. Sam doubled his pace, vandalizing the 4 x 4s as fast as he could, while Henley went to open the exit door and Purdue selected a vehicle to hot wire. He settled on a large, sand-colored Zibar MK2 and climbed into the driver's seat to access the wires.

The engine roared to life as Henley twisted the key in the lock and the vehicle exit slowly eased open. Sam dropped the can he was carrying and went to help Nina, whose ankle was swelling rapidly and causing her to limp. She grabbed his arm to support herself as she made her way toward the car.

"Wait!"

The thin door swung open, revealing Sara with Jefferson at her shoulder.

"Daddy?" Henley's defiance suddenly deserted her and she wailed, running toward her father and allowing herself to be enveloped in his arms. "I'm sorry I took your key!" she wept. "Don't let them take me away! They said they were going to use me as a hostage!"

For a moment Sam stood dumbstruck, staring at Henley. Then Nina yelled at him to get in the car, and they sped out just as the rest of the hunters came tumbling through the door.