Revenge of the Manitou (27 page)

Harry sniffed.
There was something in these dark woods to which he was allergic. He said,

“What about
Nashuna
and
Osso-bucco
and all
the rest of the demons?”

Singing Rock
told him, “Demons and gods have to be summoned according to a hierarchy.

First they
summoned
Sak
, the guardian of the gateway, and with
Sak’s
help they’re going to summon the lesser demons. Then
they’re going to call
Ossadagowah
. For any kind of
revenge, I would have thought
Ossadagowah
would have
been quite terrible enough. But
Misquamacus
is
obviously hell-bent on using
Ossadagowah
to call on
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
,
and that’s going to be devastation time.”

Neil said,
“We’d better get back there, huh?
Back to the bus?
I
know this stuff is really important, and all that, but Toby-”

Harry put his
arm around Neil’s shoulders. “We’re going to do the best we can, Neil, and a
little bit more besides.”

They made their
way down the gloomy path of the Petrified Forest, down a flight of rough, log
steps, until they reached the turnstile and the gift shop again. The girl was
waiting for them anxiously, and she was obviously relieved that they weren’t
trying to bust their way out with a petrified tree under their arms.

“Did you see
the professor?” she asked.

“Sure,” said
Harry. “Everything’s fine.”

“Did you enjoy
the forest?” she asked.

Harry shook his
head. “No. I was petrified.”

They drove
cautiously back along the highway to Lake
Berryessa
,
but they needn’t have worried about being intercepted by the Highway Patrol.
The bridge across Pope Creek and its immediate surroundings were in chaos.
Floodlights now illuminated the bridge from all sides, and there were police
cars and press cars and armored half-tracks from the National Guard parked all
over the road. Helicopters clattered in and out, bringing television teams and
police officials, and there was a constant echoing blare of amplified comments
from a loudspeaker system.

The night was
still warm, but it was unusually dark already, and the air still trembled with
the vibrations of a coming electric storm. Along the hills on the opposite
shore of Lake
Berryessa
, across the deep, troubled
waters, lightning forked like the fangs of a poisonous snake.

A cop held his
hand up as Harry and Neil and Singing Rock slowly approached the bridge area in
their pickup.

“I’m a parent
of one of the children,” said Neil, and produced his driver’s license again.
“Okay, okay,” said the cop. “Just pull over there and keep your head down.
We’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Neil parked,
and they climbed out of the truck. This time, Singing Rock took his suitcase
with him, and they walked along by the side of the road until they reached the
edge of the creek.

There they
stood against the railings and tried to see what had happened since the Highway
Patrol had sent them away.

The school bus
was still parked across the middle of the bridge, but now, even brighter than
the arc lamps from either side of the
creek,
it was
shimmering with a white, unearthly light of its own, and producing a constant
high-pitched whine that set Harry’s teeth on edge.

Neil said,
“What’s happening?”

Singing Rock
set down his suitcase. “They are almost finished preparing the gateway. As soon
as the moon goddess appears, they will emerge in their real form.”

“What’s the
time?” asked Harry. “I think my watch died of claustrophobia in that tunnel.”

“There’s about
a half-hour to go,” said Neil.

Singing Rock
opened his case and took out a small spherical cage made of curved bones bound
together with human hair. He set it carefully on top of one of the uprights of
the fence, and then hung strings of beads and ribbons around it.

“Is it rude to
ask what that is?” said Neil.

“Not at all,”
smiled Singing Rock. “It’s a caged spirit that’s particularly sensitive to the
presence of other spirits. Rather like a canary that miners take down the mine
shaft to detect the presence of methane. When that cage starts rattling, we’ll
know that the first demons are drawing near to the bridge.”

Neil peered at
the cage worriedly.
“A spirit?
What kind of a spirit?
A human spirit?”

Singing Rock
laughed. “No. It’s the spirit of a wolf. I borrowed it from one of the elders.”

Harry said,
“What about a medicine circle? Can you do something to hold those medicine men
inside that bus? The way you did the first time
Misquamacus
appeared?”

“I don’t think
there’s a chance,” said Singing Rock. “Apart from the fact that it’s physically
difficult to get out there and draw one, your policemen will try to stop me,
and so will
Misquamacus
. I think I prefer to conserve
my energy for the battle itself.”

There were now
only ten minutes to moonrise. A little way away, just beyond a cluster of NBC television
reporters and cameramen, Captain Myers of the Highway Patrol had set up a radio
link post. He had obviously been outranked by the arrival of two police
inspectors and a colonel from the National Guard, but he was tenaciously
keeping in touch with the siege, and sending his men here and there to bring
him news of what the military and the FBI were doing.

In the tense,
warm night, under the unnatural brilliance of the floodlights, a burble of
military voices came over the radio as the National Guardsmen were deployed
along the hills overlooking the bridge, punctuated with occasional terse
comments about the state of the school bus.

“She’s still
glowing. No brighter now.
But still glowing.”

“I don’t know
why the goddamn gas tank doesn’t blow, the way that’s shining.”

“It doesn’t
blow because it’s cold out there. Do you know how cold it is out there? That’s
ice on the handrail. You see it? That’s ice.”

“Crosby and
Margolies
in position, sir.
We got a good view of the bus door.”

“Where’s that
half-track? I want that half-track across the road. I don’t want anybody
entering or leaving unless we say so.”

“Do you think
the children are dead?”

“Who knows? Who
knows what the hell’s going on?”

Singing Rock
lifted his eyes to the thunderous sky. “We won’t see
Nepauz
-had
when she appears,” he said quietly. “How long is it now?”

“Two minutes,”
said Neil.

A Marine
helicopter appeared from the southwest, and hovered around the bus for a while,
taking reconnaissance photographs and trying to see into the iced-up windows.
The draft from the helicopter’s rotors washed fiercely around them, and Singing
Rock’s ribbons and beads flapped from the fence like the wings of ominous
birds. Clouds of dry dust rose from the creek bed, and then gradually settled
again as the helicopter sloped away southwest again, and disappeared.

“About a
minute,” said Neil.

“Then it’s
now,” whispered Singing Rock. “Now is the moment.”

The keening
whine from the bus suddenly died away. The police and the troops didn’t notice
at first, but then gradually the hubbub from both sides of the creek diminished
and sank into silence. Everybody turned and stared at the bus. There was total
quiet under the floodlights, as if they were all waiting for the first take of
a movie sequence.

Over the radio
transmitter, a voice said, “What’s happening now? All of a sudden, it’s like a
graveyard around here.”

The school bus,
in absolute silence, exploded. An intense ball of fire rolled right out of the
middle of it, and pieces of debris flew into the darkness and littered the
roadway.

“They’ve killed
them! They’ve killed all the children!” yelled an NEC reporter. “The bus just
exploded right in front of our eyes, and it must have killed everyone in it!” A
circle of fire still blazed on the roadway, and billows of smoke obscured their
view. But then Singing Rock touched Harry’s arm and said, “Look.”

In the flames
themselves
, standing in a circle, were the tall figures of
the twenty-two greatest Red Indian medicine men who had ever lived. They were
dressed in their full ceremonial robes of buckskin and buffalo hide and
elaborately woven
robes,
and their headdresses were
decorated with horns and feathers and the tails of cougars.

Among them, in
a robe of black and red that shimmered with gold and silver threads, with, a
headdress of outspread eagle’s wings and carrying a mystical, carved staff, was
the greatest of the greatest, the wonderworker whose name was still whispered
by the grasses and the trees of the wide American continent. His high
cheekbones were painted with blue and yellow and white, in the war decorations
of the Iroquois, and his deep-set eyes burned with pride and with a desire for
righteous vengeance.

Neil, with a
feeling of breathlessness and fear, knew that this was the being
who
had possessed and overwhelmed his son; who had come to
life as a man of wood and tried to destroy him. It was
Misquamacus
.

Singing Rock
said, “
Gitche
Manitou, protect us.
Gitche
Manitou, aid us.
Gitche
Manitou, see that our desire for peace is good, and guide our hands.”

He was about to
cast the powders in front of them for protection, when Harry tugged at his
sleeve.
“Singing Rock-for Christ’s sake!
Look what
they’re doing!”

Through the
barricade of police cars and armored trucks
came
a
squad of ten National Guardsmen, young and fresh-faced under their khaki
helmets. They formed a line across the road, and then knelt down, aiming their
rifles at the medicine men.

Singing Rock,
almost desperate, shouted: “They mustn’t! Don’t let them shoot! They mustn’t]”

But over the
transmitter the order snapped: “Aim- fire!”

T
here was a sharp rattle of gunfire. But it was only because they
knew what was going to happen that Harry and Neil and Singing Rock could follow
the fatal action of the next split second.

Misquamacus
swept his arm across in front of him,
dismissing the
manitous
of each bullet, and returning
them to where they came from.

Unprepared,
unprotected, the ten young guardsmen were shot down where they were
kneeling-killed by their own bullets. They died on the road in dark stains of
blood, twisted and crumpled like sleeping children. There was a stunned silence
over the bridge and its surroundings, and even the news reporters stared
without speaking. A brief sharp odor of gunpowder drifted away on the unsettled
wind. The echoes died away.

Singing Rock
bowed his head. “They never listen,” he said softly. “They never, ever listen.
O ancient gods, protect us.”

It was too late
now. A further detachment of National Guardsmen was running forward with rifles
and rocket launchers, and making their way through the fallen bodies of their
comrades. They knelt on the roadway and aimed their weapons, while corpsmen ran
out with stretchers to collect the bodies.

In the middle
of the bridge,
Misquamacns
was spreading his arms,
and he was beginning to recite the words of the summoning of
Nashuna
and Pa-la-
kai
and Coyote.
His voice was deep, and it rumbled with the same timbre as the wind, and the
vibrations that shook from the storm across the lake. The other medicine men
turned inward to face each other, and spread their arms too, ignoring the
intense line of guardsmen who were aiming their weapons at them.

“Pick a target
carefully,” instructed the National Guard colonel. “Then shoot at will until
you’ve brought it down.”

There was a
nervous pause. Then: “Fire!”

The second
holocaust was worse than the first. Both Neil and Harry dropped down to the
dusty roadside as a shrieking, sparkling hail of automatic rifle fire burst
over them in all directions.

The NBC news
reporter beside them was hit in the face, and keeled over backward in a spray
of blood. Police and soldiers and spectators twisted and fell, and bullets
shattered automobile windows and pierced gas tanks. Four Highway Patrol cars
exploded and burst into flames, and the night was lurid with orange fire and
the rank odor of blazing gasoline.

The National
Guard colonel still couldn’t comprehend that the guardsmen’s own bullets were
being turned against them, and he ordered another detachment of sharpshooters
forward.

Harry, crouched
on the ground, said “For God’s sake, Singing Rock, you’ve got to tell them!”

Singing Rock
said, “There’s only one thing I can do. I have seen it done by a great elder of
my tribe, and I have heard it said that Crazy Horse could do it.”

Harry said, “Don’t take any stupid risks!
Just go tell the
National Guard that they’re decimating us!”

They heard
another order to fire, and there was another sharp crackle of rifles.
Instantly, Singing Rock flung back his head and stretched wide his arms.

It happened so
fast that Harry couldn’t really see what was going on. But the entire salvo of
rifle fire flashed in a wide curve away from
Misquamacus
and headed for Singing Rock. Singing Rock spread his fingers, and the bullets
sprayed off his hands in a screeching, whining burst of fire and hot lead. Then
there were nothing but echoes, and they were gone.