The Blood Mesa

CHAPTER NINE

Matt switched on the truck's headlights and leaned on the horn, sending a long, strident blare over the top of the mesa.

That would help the crazed ones track them, but it couldn't be helped. He wanted to draw the unaffected students to the truck. It would be better for all of them to be together.

He had to come up with a plan, and he thought it would be a good idea, too, to get Ronnie's brain working, to distract her from all the confusion and horror she had to be feeling. Besides, she was a highly intelligent woman. He could use her help.

"Listen to me," he said as he sent the truck bucking and bouncing through the ruins. "It's too long a story to tell you how I know this, but believe me, it's true. The reason this is happening is because Dr. Varley and his group uncovered a sacrifical altar in their excavation."

"A sacrificial— What are you talking about? The Anasazi didn't practice human sacrifice."

"April said the same thing . . . just before she started trying to kill me. They changed right before my eyes, Ronnie. I swear it."

He didn't tell her that Hammond had been evil all along. That detail would just complicate things unnecessarily. Let her think Hammond had been affected along with the others. In the end, it didn't matter.

"You're saying this is some sort of supernatural thing? That they've been . . . possessed, for want of a better word?"

"Corrupted might actually be a better word. They've been changed."

"And they can't be changed back?"

"If there's a way to do that, I don't know it," Matt said. "And I've tried."

She looked over at him sharply. "This isn't the first time you've seen something like this?"

"No. I know it sounds nuts, but it's true."

"You aren't here by accident, are you?"

Even under these circumstances, he couldn't hold back a laugh. "No. I'm not."

"You sound like one of those people who wear aluminum foil on their heads to keep the government or the aliens from controlling their thoughts."

"I know. But ask yourself this: how long have you known Dr. Varley?"

"Seven years," Ronnie replied, her voice catching a little.

"In all that time, he never tried to kill you or hurt anybody else, did he? He never danced around with a dead girl's head in his hand."

Ronnie gave a little moan and choked out, "Of course not."

"Then it's obvious something changed."

Silence from Ronnie for a moment, then, "You're right, Matt, something changed. But I can't believe that story about the altar. It's . . . it's a virus or some sort of toxin. It has to be."

If she wanted to believe that, fine, he told himself. It didn't change what they had to do.

Before Matt could say anything else, a shape darted toward them from the right. Matt took his foot off the gas as he recognized Ginger Li. She screamed, "Help! Help me!"

Matt hit the brake. The truck skidded and screeched to a halt. Ronnie started to open her door, then stopped and looked at Matt. He nodded to her. Ginger's face was still clear of sores.

Ronnie swung the door open and said, "Get in here." Ginger crowded in beside her as Ronnie slid closer to Matt. They might be able to get one of the other young women into the cab.

"Close the door," he told them. "We need to keep moving." Ginger slammed the door. "And lock it," Matt added unnecessarily. Ginger was already pushing the button down.

Once that was done, she collapsed in a shuddering heap against Ronnie, who put her arms around her. "I . . . I saw what they did to Astrid," Ginger said. "What's wrong with them?

"Something bad has happened to some of the others," Ronnie told her, which seemed like the understatement of the year to Matt. "We don't know exactly what it is, but we have to stay away from them until we find everybody who's all right; then we're getting out of here."

"I want to go home!" Ginger wailed.

"Soon," Matt told her. "Soon, I hope."

Ronnie comforted Ginger while Matt continued searching for the other grad students who had scattered through the ruins. After a few minutes, Ronnie looked over at him and said, "I've been thinking. If you're right about that altar—and I'm not saying you are—would destroying it put a stop to this madness?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Matt didn't hold out much hope that destroying the altar would save those who were already affected, but at least that might stop the evil it contained from spreading. Whether that evil was caused by Mr. Dark—or had created Mr. Dark—he didn't know. That image of the snake eating its tail, what was it called? Ouroboros. The name leapt into his head, recalled from some otherwise forgotten book.

It was a symbol of something endlessly dying and being reborn. In this case, something that had haunted the dreams and lives of humanity all the way back into antiquity.

"Then we should blow it up," Ronnie said.

"Blow it up? How do we do that?"

"With some of the dynamite we brought with us."

"Dynamite!" Matt repeated. "Nobody said anything to me about having dynamite around!"

"Just one small crate of it, in case we needed to do any blasting in the excavations. It's in Andrew's—Dr. Hammond's—tent. He's handled dynamite before, so he brought it with him."

Matt took a hand off the wheel and scrubbed it over his face. If he had known that Hammond, with the evil already in firm control of him, had brought dynamite along, he would have been even more worried. Of course, things had already gone pretty bad anyway, almost as bad as they could—

Dusk had started its rapid descent on the landscape, and from the corner of his eye Matt saw the sudden spurt of fire in the gray gloom. At the same time, he heard the roar of an explosion. He braked again and looked across the mesa toward the spot where a cloud of smoke and dust billowed into the air.

"Oh my God!" Ronnie said.

It was too much to hope that one of the other grad students had gotten hold of the dynamite and blasted the altar into a million pieces. The others didn't even know about it yet. Someone else had used the explosives.

And Ronnie had just said that Hammond had experience handling dynamite.

"Shit!" Matt said. He goosed the accelerator and cranked the wheel as he swung the truck toward the site of the explosion.

The headlight beams lanced across the mesa and lit up the cloud of dust as it drifted apart. Matt knew what he should be seeing now, but it wasn't there anymore.

"The Indian's Head," Ronnie said. "It's gone."

"The Indian's Head?" Matt repeated. "That big rock?"

She nodded. "The one that sat just above the trail up here. If it's not there anymore, that means Hammond used the dynamite to blast it apart. The pieces must have fallen on the trail and blocked it."

"If that's true, we can't get down. We're trapped up here," Matt said.

That made Ginger let out another frightened wail.

"Hammond may be crazy, but that doesn't mean he's not smart," Matt said. "Yeah, we're stuck."

Ronnie swallowed. "On top of a mesa with seven lunatics who want to kill us, and it's going to be dark in another few minutes. Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Before Matt could answer, a shape hurtled from the top of a partially collapsed wall and smacked into the hood of the truck. Brad Kern grabbed hold of the truck and pressed his leering face against the glass of the windshield.