Black Sun Rising

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sam rubbed his bleary eyes. "I'm sorry, folks," he yawned. "I'm going to have to stop the car and pull over."

"It's ok, Sam," Nina gave him an exhausted smile. "We're all exhausted. Purdue's been dead to the world for about twenty minutes now."

"Should we stop here?" he asked. "It's a bit open. Do you think I should find somewhere more sheltered?"

Nina looked out at the moonlit desert. There was nothing to see but an expanse of featureless, grayish sand. There were no trees, no high dunes to give them cover. "That could take a while. Besides, I have a feeling that if these people want to find you, you get found. Let's just stop here and get a couple of hours of sleep, ok?"

"Let's do that. Surely, we can't be too far from the road now."

Nina checked the tablet. "Not far. We'll reach it in the morning. Less than half an hour, I'd say, depending on what the terrain's like."

"If I never drive on sand again, it'll be too soon — bloody nightmare." Sam pulled the key out of the ignition and tucked it safely in his pocket. He pulled up his bony knees, curling himself as best he could in the driver's seat. Feeling something pushing his spine into an odd contortion and the seatbelt dock sticking into his knee, he wondered if he would be able to manage any sleep at all. Seconds later, he was oblivious to all sensation, fast asleep.

Sam and Purdue were woken by the first rays of sunlight creeping over the horizon, flooding the car with harsh yellow light. It took Sam a moment to figure out where he was and what was happening. The conversation with Sara, the challenges, Julia Rose, saving Nina, the drones… he thought. Is it even possible for all that to have happened in a single day?

"Morning," said Nina. She looked exhausted. There were bags under her eyes, and her skin was dull. She had tied up her short hair as best she could, pulling it off her face and catching most of it in an elastic band, which highlighted the haggard look on her face.

"Morning. Did you get any sleep?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't," she said. "My mind kept racing, and I just couldn't. But it's all right. It's more important for you two to sleep. It's not as if I can drive at the moment anyway." She gesticulated toward her injured ankle, now massively swollen and painful looking.

"Ouch," Sam winced. "We need to get something on that — ice or a bandage maybe?"

"Ice would be great, if you've got some," she said with a wry smile, "but in the unlikely event that you struggle to find ice in the desert, I'd settle for being able to bind it. Got anything I can use?"

"I have an idea," said Purdue. "Wait there." He climbed into the back of the vehicle. They heard a gentle ripping noise, and then he reappeared with a long strip of black material.

"Thanks." Nina accepted it gratefully and began to roll it into a cylinder, ready to apply it. "What is it, anyway?"

"A strip of the upholstery from the back," said Purdue. "Would you like some assistance?"

"I'm fine, thanks." She began wrapping the ankle, wincing slightly as she applied pressure to the swelling.

"You never did get a chance to tell us what happened," Sam said.

Nina hesitated. The injury felt like so long ago, even though it had only been a matter of hours, a day at most. She was reluctant to remember the previous day's events. But she had questions of her own, and piecing together what was actually happening would require her to make her contribution.

Bit by bit, she told Sam and Purdue about her encounter with Cody — the reasons for her running away, finding Hunter's mutilated corpse, the fall that had damaged her ankle, her return to the camp in search of help, how Cody had intercepted her just minutes before he had turned up at the teepee to arrest her.

"There are so many things I don't understand," she said, gently massaging above and below the swollen flesh. "I still don't know what happened to that guy — Hunter, did you say his name was? And I don't get why they didn't want to let me leave. I suppose they're doing something dodgy, but it's not as if I even know anything! What do they think I'm going to do? Go back to the outside world and tell them that everyone here is part of a nefarious plot to find themselves? I mean, I think they're creepy and exploitative and probably just after everyone's money, but that's not a crime, as far as I know. At least, no one cares when it's the Church of Scientology doing it. But if that's all that's going on, why do they have drones?"

Sam was suddenly rather glad that they had not yet had breakfast. Knowing that he was going to have to tell the others about the hunt made his stomach churn so violently that if there had been anything in it, he knew he would have brought it up. Haltingly he explained to Nina that there was indeed something sinister going on at the FireStorm base. He dredged up all the details he could remember regarding the hunt and shared them, holding nothing back. His words stuck in his throat as he recounted his own involvement and the memories of wielding the knife, of circling the dying man, baying like a beast as he waited his turn to slice at the prey.

He could not look at them. He did not want to see Nina's face as he described his behavior and the way that he had felt. After a moment of silence, he screwed up his courage and raised his head.

Purdue was watching him, scrutinizing him intently. Sam could read no judgment in his face, just a keen interest. He could almost hear the cogs in that finely tuned analytical mind whirring and spinning.

When he looked at Nina, he saw only anger. Her dark eyes were blazing with fury, her jaw was clenched tightly, and her slim hands were balled into fists. Her shoulders shook slightly. That's it, then, he thought. That's why I didn't fancy telling her about this. She's never going to look at me the same way again.

"Oh, Sam!" Nina lunged forward and grabbed him in a fierce hug. Startled, Sam gave a cry of alarm, but she did not slacken her grip. "How dare they?" she snarled through gritted teeth. "How fucking dare they do that to you, or to anyone? What the fuck is wrong with these people?"

"They have an agenda, Nina," Purdue said gently. "And it is increasingly evident that they will do anything to preserve and further it. What happened to Hunter would, most likely, have happened to you had you continued to resist them. Their treatment of Sam, just like their treatment of every other initiate, is simple programming."

"Programming?" Sam asked. "Like hypnotism?"

"Essentially," said Purdue. "By training people to the point where they will follow a FireStorm leader without question, they exert considerable control. The drugs in the water, the meditation that tips over into hypnotism, and the reinforcement of their message in all of Sara's little speeches… all of these things are part of their process. I would expect that sooner or later, they will also reveal that they have footage of all of these powerful people participating in a hunt, which ended in the ritual slaughter of a human being. You can imagine the power that would give them. After the death of privacy they plan to—"

"Wait." Nina stopped him in mid-sentence. "The death of privacy? What's that? Why do you know so much about this anyway — oh, why am I even asking? You know everything. Of course, you do. You always do. But you never tell us anything. You don't give me a clue what you're about to drag me into! I suppose that I should have expected it after last time, shouldn't I? I mean, after the first time someone almost gets me killed, I suppose I ought to learn, let alone a second time! This is strike three! So are you going to share? Have we reached the moment for your big reveal? Or is this not sufficiently dramatic for you?" In frustration, she slammed her fists down on the cushion of the passenger seat.

Based on what he knew of Purdue, Sam expected him to allow for a dramatic pause, and then reveal everything he knew with a smirk and a flourish. Much to his surprise, the silence that followed Nina's outburst was tense rather than anticipatory. Purdue's face was stark white, his mouth set in a hard straight line. He had only seen that look on Purdue's face once before, when the captain of the ship that had rescued them in the Antarctic had refused to abandon the survivors of the destroyer wreck. Then he had taken it for simple anger at not having his orders obeyed, but now he began to wonder whether what he was seeing was a look of hurt.

"As I have said before, Nina," he said with exaggerated precision, "I cannot talk to you when you are in this mood. I am going to see whether there is any water to be found. I suggest you two get out and walk a little before we move on. I am sure Sam will support you so that you do not damage your leg any further."

Purdue snatched a waterskin from the back, then climbed out of the car and stalked off across the sand. With a sigh and a shrug, Nina pulled herself across the seat and lowered herself to the ground, gingerly testing her ankle. She stifled a gasp as the pain kicked in, but she did not let it stop her.

"Is everything ok?" Sam asked, nodding in the direction Purdue had gone. He was trying his best to be tactful, but could not shake the feeling that it wasn't quite working.

Nina shrugged. "Who knows?" she said. "I probably shouldn't have wound him up like that, not if we're ever going to figure out what's happening. I'm just sick of being part of some game that I don't even know I'm playing. All I want to do is get to somewhere with an airport and go home. I'm so tired of all this."

"I know," Sam nodded. "I know exactly what you mean. I was just meant to come out here so I could help Jefferson write his book. This wasn't part of the plan."

"What irritates me is that I really don't know how far it goes." Nina's hand went to her pocket in an automatic gesture, searching for her cigarettes. The change in her expression was barely perceptible, but Sam caught it. He knew how much the lack of a smoke would be annoying her. It was getting to him too.

"I don't know if I told you this," she continued, picking at the skin around her fingernails in lieu of being able to smoke, "but I think he might be the reason why I'm no longer working for the university. When I was using the tablet the other day an email flashed up from someone he knows at… well, I probably shouldn't name names, but let's just say that if I'd gone there I'd have spent a lot of time imagining myself in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. They were asking whether they should return the money he'd given them to endow a new fellowship because the candidate of his choice wasn't going to take it, or whether they had his permission to open it up to other people. They said that if Ms. Gould chooses to return to academia, they would be happy to discuss the creation of another place. Can you believe it? He'd decided he wanted to spend some time in America and was prepared to buy me a job here! Who does that?"

Sam considered it for a moment. "And all you had to do was sleep with him? Do you think he'd fancy me? If he wants to buy me a column in the Guardian, I'll let him do whatever he likes. If he can stretch to the New Statesman, I'll even go for kinky stuff."

Nina laughed and threw a handful of sand at Sam. "Fuck off," she said. "I read the rest of the conversation. He'd committed to giving them the money long before he asked me out. Besides, I think he gets off on manipulating people's lives more than he does on sex. I have a feeling that he might have been behind Matlock's recommendation that I go and do a fellowship elsewhere. Though Purdue must have known there was a fair chance that I would tell Matlock to take a running jump and just walk away from academia entirely — in which case I suppose this was his backup plan, just ask me out and then see if I'd come with him out here."

Sam could not help but feel a bit of reluctant recitation from Nina. He could not put his finger on it, but he had a hunch, as most hardcore journalists did, that she was either not telling it completely the way it was, or that she was keeping something else to herself. Something that played behind her eyes that her lips would never yield.

They reached a spot where a couple of small cacti grew. There was no sign of a source of water, so Sam pulled out his pocket knife and began sawing at the red fruits of a cactus, determined to plunder them for liquid. While he did so, he filled Nina in on his own experiences — Jefferson's invitation, his strange first encounter with Sara and Cody, the brief moments he shared with Sara. Then, haltingly, he tried to recount what Purdue had told him about FireStorm's plans to create a vast information-gathering resource that would control everyone's data and annihilate the world's concept of privacy.

"The death of privacy," Nina repeated the words, sucking the last of the juice from the prickly pear. "Yes, it sounds like his kind of thing."

"That's what worries me," said Sam. "He seems to have a plan, but… we don't know where we're going or why. Is he actually planning to escape, or are we just heading deeper into all this?"

Between the two of them, their last encounter on the North Sea oil platform and Purdue's fickle allegiance came to mind, but neither bothered to bring it up. It was still fresh in their minds how he became so obsessed with the Spear of Destiny that he abandoned all consideration — how the two of them were left entirely to their own defenses while Purdue was blind to their peril.

"I don't know," Nina sighed. "I wish I did. But what choice do we have? It's not as if you or I can do what Henley did and just change our minds. What was that all about, anyway?"

Sam swore as he caught his finger on the thorn-studded skin of the fruit. "I suppose she didn't think we'd make it. She's a strange little thing. Come on, let's take the rest of these and head back to the car. Mind your hands, they're sharp."

By the time they arrived back at the car, Purdue was already there. He had flung the rear doors open and was sitting in the shade, the waterskins next to him.

"I found a small spring," he said, still sounding a little sullen. "I am not sure how clean the water is, and with no iodine or a means of boiling it, I would not advise drinking it. However, I thought it might be welcome for washing."

Sam wanted to snatch the full waterskin and empty it over his head, but he forced himself to practice some restraint. Handing Purdue a prickly pear in exchange, he took the container and carefully poured enough water into his cupped hand to splash his face and rub down his hands. It made him long for an icy shower, but it was better than nothing, at least.

At least the car has air conditioning, he thought. And now that we don't have any drugged initiates actively trying to murder us, we might even have time to figure out how it works. California, here we come… I just wish I knew why.