The Ghost Ships of Arizona

CHAPTER THIRTY

Matt Drake would never admit to it, but as he ventured closer and closer to the eerie ghost town the hairs on the back of his neck bristled more and more. It wasn’t any Scooby-Doo mentality, nor even a boyhood fear, it was the unnerving fact that everything looked like it had been deserted just yesterday. As they approached the main street he saw a children’s swing set moving gently in a garden, creaking and swaying as if a child had run inside just moments earlier. A timber-built store sat dead ahead at the street corner, its colors as bright as any new store shouting “Motherlode Mercantile” and “Tomahawk Tours”. Tree stumps, dusty and gray, sat all around, old signs tacked to them. An overgrown yard lay behind. The main street was nothing but a gravelly dirt track, but smooth and tidy as if had been raked over just this week.

Jenny appeared between the buildings. Having been gone for over an hour she finally returned with a frown. “Nobody living here as I thought. But there has been activity over the last few weeks. Footprints, shuffle-marks and used condoms aplenty out back there. Handprints — female — against the door. Somebody had themselves alotta perpendicular fun.”

“Kids?” Drake wondered.

The redhead grimaced. “Doubtful. Kids woulda left McDonald’s wrappers and more. This was someone trying to be reasonably careful. Probably slipping away from a large camp.”

“Mercs,” Lauren said. “Maybe Alicia got here early.”

Drake grinned. “Nice. But I gotta say — it doesn’t mean it’s our lot.”

“If that means it might not be the people we’re searching for then I agree. But it is someone, and I can follow their trail.” Jenny nodded at the jagged wall of mountains set dark against the blue sky. “That way.”

Drake pursed his lips. “Well, it’s as good a direction as any, I guess. And within the grid we’re searching. Let’s do it.”

“I was going to.”

Jenny hitched her jeans tighter and strode off toward her Jeep. Smyth stared for a moment before Lauren put an arm around his shoulders. “Ready?”

“Oh yeah. Umm, I mean, sure.”

Drake blinked rapidly. “Well, I guess we’re going to have to follow her.”

Yorgi smiled. “Not a problem. I now see what is meant by your phrase — second skin.”

“Quit it.” Drake tried to remain objective about the new arrival, unsure what her motives were beyond getting paid for a good job. The redhead was short-tempered, tetchy and easily able to incite annoyance among other team members to be sure, but she was also proving to be highly capable and surprisingly knowledgeable. The world out here was a land of expiry and sand, a drifting monument to mortality. Jenny knew it well, and guided them without acknowledging their shortcomings. Her ability to track was beyond any that Drake had ever known, to his own great surprise. He wondered how she might handle herself in a crisis.

He took another look around the silent town, still unable to shake a sense of creepiness, of being watched through unwashed windows. If he stood there long enough he might see a curtain twitch, might even see it slide open… and a skeletal head peering out at him with a grinning death-mask smile.

Drake shivered. Karin, at his side, shuffled her feet. “Do you truly believe in ghosts, Matt? That our loved ones are, even now, at our side?”

“I can’t answer that. It’s a bloody loaded question. No more promises, Karin. You were the last. All I know is these ghost towns are very well named.”

“A village of the damned,” she said.

Drake studied a huge, three-pronged cactus that rose up like a unique signpost at a four-way junction ahead. Lush and green, it contradicted all that stood around it. The ramshackle, haphazard clutter of buildings should be occupied, and not only by the undead. A lady should twirl here, a gentleman tip his hat there. An old timer should be lying back in a chair, watching the world go by, not creeping through the netherworld, reaching for all that he had lost with cracking, emaciated fingers of dead bone.

Drake shook himself out of it. Jenny started up the lead Jeep and rolled out, keeping the revs low. Yorgi waited for Drake and Karin, and then followed. Silence hung like an oppressive curtain. Drake wondered how many more of these ghost towns sat out there, soundless grieving tombstones gazing out at the world through hollow eye-sockets, as unnatural as black rain and more peculiar than moonstone. Someone had painted an old brown sign at the edge of town.

Up here ends the sidewalk

And the Old West begins

Drake focused on the job at hand, keeping his eyes peeled especially now that Jenny had found real signs of a human presence. Human? He thought. Fuck, I hope so.

They came at length to the enormous inland Salton Sea, a shallow rift lake located directly on the San Andreas fault line. Created by accident, its salinity was higher than that of the Pacific Ocean and was once much larger and called Lake Cahuilla. As the vehicles found the marina, Drake saw an abandoned boat stuck in the ground.

“I hope we haven’t gone through all this for that speedboat, guys.”

Jenny didn’t even chuckle. “We’ll be beyond here in just a few minutes, heading west again.”

Drake stared at the pure white earth, bright under the blazing sun. Buildings dotted the marina sparsely and it felt like another ghost town. He was happy to spot a young man leaning out of a window, watching them.

“Another weird area,” he said.

“Dude, this is America. Get used to it.”

“Well, passing an abandoned-looking auto shop painted with the words 24 hour repair doesn’t give me much hope.”

Beyond the Salton Sea, the barren landscape encompassed their horizons once again, dotted and dappled here and there by twisted tangles of green. The marina and its odd lake were left far behind as the day wore on. Jenny forged her own path, staying stealthy and hugging the dunes. How she found her way in such a featureless landscape, Drake never knew but he was glad she was along for the ride. Her progress was sometimes slow, sometimes even stealthy, but always considered and careful. Of course, even his soldier’s patience was beginning to wear thin. They had been out in this wilderness for far too long. Before they crested any hill of significance she always halted the convoy and inspected ahead. It was about thirty minutes later when her standard reaction suddenly changed.

Drake saw her hit the dirt and stay there. At first he was horrified, thinking she had been shot, but then she rolled over, giving them a small signal.

Get out of sight.

Immediately he took charge, guiding Yorgi to drive their Jeep to the nearest cover and then beckoning Smyth over. The small stand of trees huddled up against a dune would work with a lazy, careless observer — aka the Pythians’ new bunch of mercs — but not with anyone of even the slightest prowess.

Nevertheless, Drake and the rest of the team crawled and scrambled their way to Jenny’s side. The tracker had shuffled through heaped sand, dirt and rocks to the bottom of the steep slope by that time.

“Over that rise,” she whispered, her red hair now matted and yellow with sand. “I’m pretty sure it’s what you’re looking for.”

Drake stared at her. Despite his willingness and tenacity to explore he was surprised to find he had believed this entire quest would be nothing but a wild goose chase. Even when the mercenaries attacked he assumed it had to be some kind of trap.

“A ship?” He all but goggled at her. “Up there?”

“Take a look.” Jenny shrugged. “Over the rise.”

Racked by mixed emotions of awe and trepidation, incredulity and astonishment, the Yorkshireman crept steadily up the sandy slope. Smyth wasted no time dropping to his side and Jenny crawled behind them to take another look. Drake stopped twice to listen and to examine their surroundings with a detailed eye. As the crest approached he slowed even further, sinking as low as the hard earth would allow.

At last, he peered over the edge.