Desert Guardian (18 page)

Von
folded his arms. "So you've said before. But it doesn't matter what you
think because it won't be long before you can no longer think at all."

His
survival depended on staying calm, and he was glad Von couldn't hear his heart
hammering against his ribs. One thing he'd learned long ago was that Von and
Valya were excited by panic, much like predators that smelled fear on their
prey.

Sam
rolled to his knees then stood. Dwarfed by Von's unusual height, he faced the
giant man, the top of his head level with Von's chin. "I want my gun back."

Von
smiled, his lips stretching into a reptilian grin. "I bet you do. Come.
Let's talk it over in my tent." He dismissed his little army and turned to
swagger toward a line of tents on the opposite side of the courtyard. The
remaining generator hummed as lights from half the camp blinked on.

Two
sentries closed in on Sam from either side.

"Hey,
don't I know you two?" he asked, as the men grasped his arms above the
elbows and propelled him forward. "Yeah, I remember now. You guys fell for
my snake gag when I was fifteen, remember? You thought there was money in the
box." He laughed. "But instead there was a rattlesnake inside. What a
couple of morons. Good thing you only got bitten one time—"

The
shorter one hooked a foot around Sam's ankle and yanked his leg out from under
him. Sam sprawled forward, his chin banging with a painful thud against the
ground.

The
sentry chuckled. "Oops."

Neither
made a move to help him up, not that Sam expected them to. He lay still, playing
dead.

"Now
you've done it," one said to the other. "He's out cold. What did you
do that for? You want us both hauled into the judgment tent?"

"He's
the kid who got us snake bit. Did you hear what he called us?"

"Yeah.
So what? Sticks and stones. Come on, help me get him to his feet."

Sam
remained limp as the two sentries latched on to either arm and lifted him up.
They struggled with his dead weight, both slightly off balance with the effort.
When he abruptly stood on his own, the men staggered back in surprise.

Sam
whirled a roundhouse kick to the tallest one's head. "Sticks!" He
heaved a booted foot between the legs of the other. "And stones!"

Leaving
both sentries writhing on the ground, he leapt onto the platform that held the
second generator. "Let's find out how well you all see in the dark."

****

Kelly
lay on her side, her knees drawn to her chest. Her skin quivered with the
sensation of a thousand ants crawling over every inch of her body. Darkness
engulfed her, reminding her of the days her father had punished her by locking
her in the basement.

Panic
coated her skin like sweat but singed her nerves like fire. She jumped, trying
to escape the rats she imagined crawling toward her, their bright red eyes like
laser beams that flickered in the dark. What she'd thought were ants suddenly
turned into spiders, the enormous hairy kind like the ones in her father's
basement. They climbed up her arms, her back, her neck, slithered beneath her
hair, and she couldn't move her hands to smack them away.

She
kicked out at shadows, twisting furiously to free herself of the cuffs. Crying
out for help didn't seem to matter because no one came to her rescue. Not Sam.
Not anyone.

It
didn't take long to exhaust herself. By then, the hallucinations had passed.
She licked her dry lips, tasting blood from the cut on her mouth where a sentry
had punched her for not drinking the water he'd offered. It hadn't been water.
But after the numbing blow to her face, she reluctantly took a sip of the
bitter liquid, holding it in her mouth instead of swallowing. Once the sentry
left, she spat it out and forced herself to throw up.

Then
Sam spoke to her. At least it had sounded like Sam. She could have been
hallucinating again, which wouldn't have surprised her. The sound of Sam's
voice had brought tears of longing to her eyes and a strong sense of hope to
her heart. Had he come to save her? Did he really care after all? Probably not,
or she wouldn't still be in this hellhole. She must have made it all up in her
mind because thinking about him was all that was keeping her sane.

She
drifted in and out of a hazy dream filled with paranoia and terror. There were
moments when she felt lucid, but those were few and far between. She had no
concept of how much time had passed since her beating. An hour? A day? A week?
Her stomach rumbled with hunger, and she was terribly tired, wanting only to lie
down, close her eyes, and dream about the world outside this stinking trailer.
But try as she might, sleep wouldn't come.

Her
mind raced with frantic thoughts of escape, and strange visions plagued her
dry, burning eyes. She saw dwarf-like creatures that spoke to her of a new and
better life on another planet, telling her that Earth would soon be destroyed
by war and her only hope of survival was to accept Star Mother's plan for a
utopian future.

"No,"
she murmured, her raw throat dry from thirst. "You lie. All of you lie!"

"They're
telling the truth, Kelly." Jake's voice sounded rough with fatigue, yet
there was an edge to it, as if he held his temper. "Listen to them. They
know."

"You
can see them?" She peered through the thick blackness that permeated the
trailer. Amorphous shapes floated within the inky darkness, shadows on shadows,
each one trailing streaks of luminous green that flickered like a strobe. When
she blinked, the images vanished. "Do you see the lights?"

Jake's
high-pitched barks of laughter cut through the static pouring from the radio. "No
lights. No little green men. Not for me."

Kelly
needed confirmation she wasn't crazy, though she'd rather be crazy than realize
what she saw and heard were real. Still, she had to know. "Jake, please
tell me if they're real."

Instead
of answering, he kicked the trailer wall, the booming echo shuddering through
the floor beneath her. Through gritted teeth, he said, "I never should
have sent you that letter!"

Yes,
the letter. His letter telling her that Star Mother would kill him and all the
other cultists on the first day Anston's comet flew overhead. Now she was on
the death list as well. But it wasn't over. Everything she had been through
these past few days, including her brief but wonderful interlude with Sam,
would all be for nothing if she didn't save them both.

"I'm
being punished for not convincing you to join us," Jake said, the rage gone
from his voice. He sounded subdued now, as if he'd given up. "I've been in
this sewer box since yesterday, Kelly. Valya refused to give me the elixir that
would help me through it. But she gave it to you so that you could see the
starship's pilots. Do you know what an honor that is?"

Honor?
More like a curse. Valya's "elixir" was responsible for making Kelly
see things that weren't there. No more than ten minutes ago, Sam had said just
that. Too bad he had only been a figment of her imagination. And there were no
ET pilots in the trailer because she'd imagined them, too, her visions fueled
by the hallucinogenic drugs and by the voice coming through the radio.

"Jake,
remember the message from Dad?" she asked him, determined to turn him
around.

"A
fake," he said bitterly. "Valya told me The Arrow had someone else
say those things to trick me. And you let him."

"That's
not true. You know me. I'd never try to trick you. I swear that was Dad's voice
in that recording."

"Impossible."
Weariness made his voice so weak that Kelly could hardly hear him. "Dad
would never say he loved me. Never has, never will."

"I
had a hard time believing it myself at first, but Dad really is sorry for what
he did. He's trying to change. He wants us to be a family again and—"

"Shut
up," Jake shouted. "No more lies."

Afraid
of pushing him too far, she didn't say any more.
 

The
invisible ants suddenly assaulted her again, thousands of insectile feet
scurrying across her flesh. She shivered, her ears ringing, her head light as a
helium-filled balloon. She braced herself for the drug-induced terror,
struggling to keep hold of her sanity. As her mind began to slip, she banged
the heels of her shoes against the trailer floor, hoping the pain would shock
her back to awareness. Something stung along the bottom of her foot. Were the
ants biting her now? No. Not ants. It was the nail file she'd hidden inside her
shoe.

Her
temples pounding as she fought to grasp fraying threads of reality, she tugged
against the shackles surrounding her wrists.

Then
she froze as the night outside the trailer suddenly erupted in a cacophony of
shouting.

****

The
second Sam yanked a handful of wires free of the generator, the entire camp
went black. Then the shouting began.

He
jumped off the dead generator and rolled beneath the platform. A troop of
sentries ran across the courtyard, their battery-powered lanterns bobbing in
the darkness. The two sentries he'd taken down were back on their feet and
eagerly telling their comrades what had happened. They spread out to peer
inside tents and beneath trailers, searching for him. He had to find a
different hiding place.

He
leapt free of the platform then clambered on hands and knees between two tents,
emerging outside the camp's circle. An old van sat parked beneath a mesquite
tree, its tires slashed thanks to Sam's earlier visit. He yanked open the door
and climbed inside.

While
catching his breath, he considered his next move. He needed his gun. In fact,
there was no way to rescue Kelly and Jake without it.

Think, damn it, think.
The arsenal. That's where the sentries would have taken his Glock, storing it
among the rest of their stolen armament. Once he located the arsenal, he could
disarm every weapon they had. He thought back to when he was a kid, rebellious
as hell, and the time he'd accidentally stumbled upon the cult's storehouse of
guns. His mischief had resulted in his first acquaintance with the prison
trailer, but not until he'd seen the weapons they possessed. Most were
shotguns, a couple of rifles, a half-dozen handguns. Hardly enough to outfit an
army. Get rid of the ammunition, and Star Mother's camp would be as impotent as
a convent.

Sam
glanced out the van's dirty window at a line of tents. He recognized the
infirmary between the nursery tent for Valya's offspring and the enormous black
tent that housed the royal couple. He remembered the arsenal as an enclosed pup
tent that was never guarded. However, he didn't think the little tent would be
left unguarded tonight of all nights.

A
line of hand-held lanterns swayed beyond the camp's circle, heading toward the
vehicles parked in a line like a fortress wall. The sentries would come this
way next.

He
slipped out of the van. Crouched low to the ground, he made his way behind the
nursery tent. From the narrow alley between infirmary and nursery, he spotted
the squat little pup tent. Sure enough, two sentries stood guard.

Sam
lowered to his belly and snake-crawled between the tents to the back of the
arsenal. He'd always wondered why Valya didn't keep the weapons inside her own
tent, where they would be safe from the children. If one of the kids ever got
hold of a gun and thought it was a toy... He shuddered at the possibility.

"Why
are you crawling on the ground?" whispered a small voice from behind him.

Heart
beating in his throat, he twisted his head around and looked up. A little girl
of about four or five, her long, dark hair hanging in two tangled pigtails,
looked down at him with a puzzled frown. He thrust his forefinger to his lips
and shushed her then crawled back the way he'd come. The child followed him
behind the nursery tent.

He
glanced at the arsenal and the two sentries guarding it, expecting them both to
come after him at any second. Neither of them moved.

"Where
did
you
come from?" he asked her
in the quietest whisper possible.

She
pointed at the nursery tent.

"You
better get back in there before someone comes looking for you."

"I
have to go potty."

That
was more information than he needed to know. Sam mumbled, "Then you better
go."

She
shook her head. "I'm scared of the dark. Will you take me?"

Damn.
What else could go wrong? He didn't have time to escort her to the portable
toilet, let alone look for the darn thing. He motioned toward the vague outline
of a mesquite tree. "Go behind that tree over there."

The
girl scowled up at him. "That's not a potty. That's a tree."

"I
know. I use trees all the time."

Eyes
wide, she whispered, "You do?"

"Every
chance I get." There was something about this kid that looked familiar.
Something about her round, gray eyes framed by thick dark lashes. Even her baby-doll
face reminded him of someone he used to know quite well. His heart gave a jolt.
She reminded him of his mother.