Glassing the Orgachine Page 2

  Well, tell him to call me. In the meantime, how’s the shutdown going? You two about to wrap things up?

  NS2 1.0

  AS SOON AS the phone call ended, Jace returned to his desk and logged into his email account. You can collect a ton of digital crap in a week, though there were a few appreciated posts from his sister and Michigan friends. But nothing from her, the one person in the world he most hoped to hear from. That her family got any internet service at all on Stubborn Mountain was weird, but the weirdest part was why he even cared. It wasn’t like they were in a relationship or anything. They’d only ever seen each other three times in the last — what? Eighteen months? Was that possible?

  They’d first met during the summer before last when the park service assigned him to an armed task force to complete a boundary survey of the Prophecy mine property. The family patriarch and his larcenous sons did their best to sabotage the work, and the whole affair devolved into what the Rodman later dubbed “the Showdown at the Hoedown.” It was the first time Jace had almost been compelled to kill a man. He’d never forgiven Proverbs for putting him into that position. What an asshole thing to do, make another man shoot you because you’re such an asshole. Jace released the shotgun safety, and his finger trembled on the trigger. Even after all this time, he burned with outrage any time he thought of it. Drop your weapon! he had screamed at him. Drop it now!

  And then, up at the Prophecy house, the screen door slammed and down the yard came two swirling dervishes, the Prophecy twins, singing an old-timey hymn and sashaying their long, pioneer-era dresses on their hips. They danced into the middle of the fray and put their lovely bodies between the gun barrels, gambling their own lives for the life of their worthless brother.

  In awe, Jace lowered his gun. She, Deuteronomy, had managed to disarm them both. And when the girls retreated up the yard to the house with their brother’s rifle, she, Deuteronomy, turned around to sneak a look at Jace. They gazed into each other’s eyes for an extra beat, and that was all it took.

  Even so, eighteen months was still a long time to be mooning over any girl, especially one who lived in a totally bizarre and inhospitable parallel universe.

  NS3 1.0

  JACE DRAGGED THROUGH the rest of the afternoon. He tried Masterson’s cell again and was transferred to voicemail. When Masterson failed to make an appearance by 3:00 p.m., Jace decided the first place to search for him should be his house. So he rode to the northern edge of Caldecott where there were two rows of reconstructed cottages once known as the “silk stocking” residences for mill town managers. Masterson’s cottage had been the home of the company timekeeper.

  The lights were off. Jace knocked, and when no one answered, he went in.

  “Hello? Ethan? You here?”

  Jace walked through the house. The dishes were washed and stacked, the floors swept, the bed made. For a single man, his colleague was tidy.

  So he got back on his snowmobile and returned to the office. He’d need to put a few things together if he was going to mount a proper search. And he’d have to call the superintendent back as well.

  Before entering the ranger station, Jace was stopped by the sight of a small object sitting on the boardwalk next to the door. He dug out his flashlight to see what it was — a portable Yamaha generator. Indeed, it was their generator from the gear locker. It had a NPS decal and inventory sticker affixed to it. He sure hadn’t put it there.

  The office was dark, as he’d left it. When he stepped inside and flipped the switch, the overhead lighting found Masterson seated at his desk.

  “There you are,” Jace said. “I was about to head out looking for you.”

  The LE ranger didn’t react. He was dressed in his arctic parka and overalls, though the room was tolerably warm. He was staring blankly at his computer screen, though it wasn’t turned on.

  “Ethan, you all right?”

  Jace went over to get a closer look at him. Masterson’s clothes were dirty and disheveled. There was a hole in the chest of his parka where the insulation was poking out. No apparent blood though. No cuts or bruises on his face or hands. Masterson’s usually neat hair was sticking up in all directions.

  Jace waved his hand in front of Masterson’s eyes. “Hello? I asked if you’re all right.”

  Masterson looked at him then, and some semblance of awareness crossed his face. “Fuck off.”

  “Gladly, as soon as you tell me you’re all right.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “What happened out there?”

  Without bothering to reply, Masterson opened a desk drawer and started rummaging through it.

  “What about the agents? Where are they? Did they talk to Prophecy? Did they recover the artifact? Talk to me, man.”

  “I said fuck off.”

  “Superintendent Rodgers called. The phones are working again. Or at least they were.” Jace picked up the receiver to make sure there was still a dial tone and offered it to Masterson. “She wants you to call her right back. She might still be there.”

  But Masterson ignored him. He found a set of keys in the drawer and got up, went to the door, and left without a hat, gloves, or good-bye.

  “Be like that,” Jace said. He went to his own desk to gather his things. At least he wasn’t going to have to ride all over the countryside looking for him.

  Outside, a snowmobile started up and drove away. Good riddance.

  It wasn’t until Jace went outside himself and locked the door that he realized Masterson had taken his snowmobile. He could hear its whining engine down the road to McHardy.

  “Fuck you too!” he shouted after it. “You freaking jerk!”

  Now what? Walk home? The evening weather was moderate enough, and it was only a five-mile hike (8 km) to McHardy, not the death march he’d taken a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, there were cross-country skis and boots in the gear locker, so hiking wasn’t necessary. Speaking of the gear locker, the Yamaha generator was gone from next to the door. Masterson had taken it too.

  NS4 1.0

  WHEN JACE REACHED McHardy, he stopped at the hotel. The McHardy Hotel was closed for the season, but Kelly Cobweal had opened a few rooms for the agents and NTSB team to occupy while conducting their investigations. Jace knocked on all the doors in their wing but got no response. So he went next door to the Cobweal house. One of the kids let him in.

  “Daaad!” the boy shouted toward the dining room. “The raaanger’s here.”

  “So, how’s things?” Jace said as they waited. “Get everything you wanted for Christmas?”

  “I guess.”

  Not a very talkative kid.

  The old wooden floorboards creaked in the hallway as Cobweal appeared, wiping his mouth with a dinner napkin. “Kuliak!” he said. “What’s up?”

  “What’s up is I’m looking for that FBI guy and the other one. No one seems to be at home in the hotel.”

  “Bertolli and Nabor. If they’re not in their rooms, I don’t know where they are. Doug Reeves, that’s the leader of the NTSB team.” He nodded his head toward the dining room. “Doug says he doesn’t think they came in last night. What about Masterson? What’s he say?”

  Jace wasn’t sure how to describe his colleague’s strange behavior, so he changed the subject. “What does Doug Reeves say about the crash?”

  “Still too early in the investigation to say anything.”

  “But at least they must agree that wings don’t just fall off airplanes, right?”

  Cobweal shrugged his shoulders.

  BY THE TIME Jace said good-night, the Old El Paso tamales in his belly were wearing off and he was contemplating his own dinner. But he couldn’t quit without recovering his snowmobile first. He’d figured out where Masterson had taken it. The keys the ranger had retrieved from his desk drawer must be to the NPS pickup truck that they kept parked across the footbridge. And the portable generator was for pre-heating its engine block in order to get it started in the cold.

  So Jace
slipped into the skis again and kick-stepped the additional mile to the river and across to the large gravel parking lot. Sure enough, the pickup was missing. The last time they’d used it was in early December, and to use it now Masterson had been compelled to disentomb it from a ton of snow and shovel a path for it to the road. A helluva lot of work for one man. It had probably taken all three of them.

  Jace’s snowmobile, a late model Polaris he was leasing from Cobweal, was parked next to the road, the portable generator resting on its seat.

  So maybe they had managed to retrieve the alien artifact after all and wrench it from Prophecys’ grasp. Maybe the thing woke up. Jace had long wondered why the tulip lamp post had tried to kill him but allowed the Prophecys to take it to their compound without harming them. Or maybe it had harmed them but they kept it to themselves. In any case, something must have happened when the feds showed up. Maybe the tulip attacked them. That would explain Masterson’s disheveled condition at the office. But they neutralized it somehow and proceeded to transport it to Anchorage for study. The tulip was about ten feet in length (3 m), too long to fit into a bush plane. Ergo, the pickup. Or maybe they were afraid it would wake up while in flight and crash the airplane. Ergo, the pickup.

  Jace called Masterson’s number again, and again he was shunted to voicemail.

  “Nice stunt taking my sled like that. Tell Bertolli and Nabor to give me a call. I need to know what happened out at the Prophecy compound. Did they find the artifact? Do you have it?”

  NS5 1.0

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Superintendent Rodgers called Jace to ask if he could manage to finish the shutdown process by himself. Masterson had contacted her last night to say he’d been called away to deal with a family emergency. Did Jace want her to send someone to Caldecott to assist?

  No, he told her, he could handle it. All he had left to do was to winterize the power plant and file paperwork.

  As soon as Rodgers hung up, Jace called the Anchorage FBI field office and asked for Special Agent Bertolli.

  What is this in reference to? asked the receptionist.

  Jace said it was in reference to the investigation into the recent mail plane crash in the national park.

  Special Agent Bertolli is not available. I’ll connect you with another agent who can take your statement.

  “I don’t have a statement, only questions to ask.”

  Like I already said, Special Agent Bertolli is not available, but he checks in regularly, and the quickest way for you to reach him is to talk to another agent. Special Agent Bertolli will then get back to you as soon as he can.

  Jace left his name and number and hung up.

  Their Mountain Keep

  MK1 1.0

  ON THE EVENING of the day that federal agents came to Stubborn Mountain, Poppy called his children together and told them, “We will not spend another night in this, our beloved home, for it’s no longer safe against the armies of the Antichrist.”

  This was literally true. Just that morning the agents of Black Obama had held them at gunpoint, threatened to destroy their family, and attempted to poison their secret fountain of waters with insecticide. The family had survived . . . but not without spilling blood.

  “Go now to your rooms and grab your clothes and blankets and whatever else you can carry in your arms. Tonight and every night for the next seven years, we will sleep in our mountain keep that our gracious Father has provided us. There we will be safe.”

  This last bit was more a statement of faith than of fact. How could you ever call a place safe when a devil had so easily penetrated its defenses? The devil’s name was Beezus, the Bringer of Sorrow. He was Lucifer’s brother. He had tricked Poppy and taken up residence in the keep under the guise of an angel of the Lord named Martha. But don’t blame a devil for deceiving mortals — that’s what devils do — and beguilement is no excuse for gullibility.

  Yet Poppy had been beguiled, and for two weeks he played the fool to false angel Martha. But Beezus overplayed his hand, and Poppy, armed with the power and the glory of the Savior’s Word, banished him from the keep. Sent him straight back to the fires of Hell. The children could still smell the stench of brimstone clinging to Poppy’s clothes.

  “Take only what you need for tonight. Now. Move. Go.”

  “But, lord,” Cora said. As the eldest girl present, it was her duty to inject a note of practicality. “The children are hungry, and dinner is ready on the stove. We were only waiting on you to begin. Can’t we eat first and go up with full bellies?”

  “No!” Poppy’s anger flared up like a grease fire. “Haven’t you been listening, daughter? Go! All of you! Run for your lives!”

  And so they had run for their lives, clutching their belongings like refugees, and climbed the steep tailings slope to the fortified gate of the depleted mine. They spent their first night in the chamber where they were building a cottage. They would remain there for the next couple of weeks, camping out in tents and tarps in the cold stone yard, as they moved their lives from the fallen world into the safety of the mountain keep.

  THERE WAS STILL much construction work to be finished before they could move into their new home in the cottage chamber. The two-story frame building, with no need for windows or roof shingles, would provide nearly double the floorspace of their old house.

  Without the sun to cue them, Poppy used an old windup clock to separate day from night. The days were long and filled to overflowing with labor. The elder and middle boys sawed boards and hammered nails. Poppy allowed Sue Krae to work with them. The middle girls watched over the little kids and pitched in wherever they could. Everyone worked tirelessly. That is, everyone but Deut’s twin, Sarai.

  Sarai pitched a tent a short distance from camp and only left it to eat or pee. Was she sick? The middle kids wanted to know, but no adult volunteered to enlighten them or even to address the topic at all. Sarai lay coiled like a snake in her tent, ready to strike at anyone who dared intrude, even the little kids, but especially at Poppy, who had foolishly tried to visit once. She also turned her wrath on Adam and Hosea, as well as on Deut. So everyone mostly left her alone.

  That meant Deut was in charge of the camp, with only Cora to assist her. Together they served three meals a day to twenty people, supervised all of the cleanup and laundry, and cared for Mama P.

  Deut used the piles of stones cleared from the yard to build a large fire pit in the middle of the camp. She surrounded it with rough benches made from discarded lumber. This became the Prophecy family’s new common room where they gathered to worship and eat and hang out during their limited downtime, and to park Mama P and the toddlers during the day.

  When the house builders went to work in the morning, they started up a portable generator for three 500-watt halogen work lights. One of these work lights illuminated the entire camp and yard all the way to the water spigot at the chamber entrance. Every morning, when the lights came on in their little world, Deut would say, “Somebody just opened the refrigerator door,” which made everyone laugh.

  Everyone, that is, except their guest, Ginger Lawther. Poor, demon-infested Ginger had to be locked up again for her own safety until they could find the time to cast out her tormentors.

  MK2 1.0

  ON THE NIGHT the Prophecys fled to the keep, they hastily transformed the powder room back into a prison cell and led Ginger to it. She didn’t go easy but fought every step of the way. In the end, Hosea had to pick her up and carry her across the threshold kicking and screaming.

  Nevertheless, once the powder room door was locked, Ginger managed to calm herself down, and a few hours later when Proverbs came to talk to her through the food slot, she was rational enough to hear him out. It was only temporary, he told her. It was an emergency. He had to help get the family into the keep. The Antichrist this. The Antichrist that. Blah, blah, blah. He had to keep her safe.

  “That’s enough, Verbs,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to hear another word.” Ginger knew h
ow much Proverbs hated Sue’s nickname for him — Verbs — and she used it every chance she got. “My family is expecting me in Glennallen on Mail Day, five days from now. What do you think they’re going to do when I don’t show up, Verbs?”

  He let the nickname go. “Oh, don’t worry about Mail Day. You won’t be locked up that long. First thing in the morning, we’ll chase those demons out of you, like I said, and then you won’t have to stay in here no more.

  “Besides, there won’t be no more Mail Days. Nellis crashed his plane and died.”

  “Say what?”

  “The angel killed him — or actually it was the devil who did that but we didn’t know it at the time. He knocked Nellis right out of the air like swattin’ a fly. That’s why the feds came to snoop around. And that’s why we took you to the trapper’s cabin that time.” He paused, unsure how to continue. “You have to be strong, Ginger, in case your parents . . . you know . . . can’t never come out to get you.”

  Ginger let her breath out slowly. Proverbs and his family weren’t normal, but they weren’t entirely delusional either. For she had seen this false angel herself. It was huge, powerful, and definitely a supernatural being. For all Ginger knew, the false angel could actually swat airplanes out of the sky. For all she knew, her hometown of Wallis might be engulfed in the flames of the Apocalypse that very moment, just like Proverbs said.

  Still, there were a couple of things she did know that were worth saying out loud.