Empire of Dust (4 page)

The mesa top was too rocky, but Ezekiel's body was only a few feet from the edge of the incline that led to the desert floor. Damon steeled himself, then rolled the hideous carcass, like a huge beach ball stuffed with sand, toward the edge.

Ezekiel bounced down the slope, and his body came to rest near what looked like soft sand, white in the moonlight. Damon bounded down the incline. The sand was soft and deep, almost chalky in consistency, and he began to dig in it.

Digging a grave with his hands was more of a job than he had thought, but he continued to scoop up the sand, throwing it out of the hole he was slowly making. Finally there was a trench three feet deep—two feet to cover the body, and another foot of sand to keep the coyotes away.

Damon pushed and tugged at Ezekiel's corpse until it rolled face up into the grave. The bastard was still leaking, leaving a trail of blood and yellow slime. What was it, anyway, fat?

Damon didn't know and didn't care, but he did realize he'd have to erase any trace of it. At least the wind was helping, blowing over the wet spots and drying them the way sand blotters dried ink.

It was a hell of a lot easier to fill in the grave than to dig it. Damon just pushed with both hands, like a kid playing bulldozer on the beach, and soon only Ezekiel's face and round stomach were protruding. He paused, shaking his aching hands to bring the blood back to his fingers.

Then he stopped. There was a trace of movement in the grave. At first he thought it was the wind stirring the sand again, but as he looked more closely, Ezekiel's stomach seemed to be shrinking beneath the bloody shirt he wore. In a few seconds it vanished, and sand poured down into the cavity it had left.

At the same time, Ezekiel's face seemed to shrink, the fullness going out of it, as though the sand itself was draining it of its fat and moisture. The cheeks went flat, then hollow. The eyes pulled into themselves, and sand flowed into the sockets and filled the empty cheeks. The face was gone. A coyote howled over the roar of the wind. It sounded close.

Suddenly Damon felt very alone and very guilty and very scared. But before he could return to the relative safety of the camp, there were things to do.

He finished filling in the grave and retraced his steps up the flattop to examine the site of the killing. The blood and whatever else had leaked out of Ezekiel's body were already gone. The sand had soaked it up and blown it away. What a great place to kill a fat asshole. Let him leak all over, and the sand would take care of it all.

Damon headed back to camp, trying to keep from whistling in happiness. It couldn't have gone better. Soon this little band would have a new leader, and that leader would have a woman who could lead them to the Divine.

As Damon crept stealthily into the shelter of his tent, he would not have been so happy had he realized with what intensity he was being watched.

T
he panic started before dawn. Damon had slept lightly, anticipating the searches and suspicions the next day would hold. He was not disappointed.

Jezebel had not awakened until four in the morning, and was alarmed to find Ezekiel still gone. She took a flashlight and searched for him, but became scared when she heard the coyotes howling, and returned to camp.

She woke up Rodney, and the two of them went back out with a lantern, walking all the way to the flattop. They found no trace of Ezekiel, nor any sign that he had been there. When they got back they roused the rest of the party.

"Everybody up, c'mon," Rodney shouted. "Ezekiel's missing, man, we gotta find him. Let's go!"

The fourteen people split into seven pairs, and Rodney fanned them out in a shotgun pattern heading north. Damon was paired with Charlotte on the extreme right flank. Rodney and Jezebel, pale with worry, took the center route, which would bring them to the small mesa once again.

Damon was worried. What if he hadn't noticed something, like a pool of blood that the sand hadn't soaked up and blown away? What if his footprints had remained in spite of the wind? Rodney wasn't a total dummy. He was smart enough to know when Ezekiel was putting him down, and he might also be savvy enough to notice, under the bright sun, some disturbance in the sand where Damon had planted Ezekiel.

Some of the others were already looking at Damon with distrust. A stringy young man and his woman kept watching Damon from under glowering brows while Rodney gave them their orders. Though they said nothing, Damon could feel their hatred.

He and Charlotte walked their route, and Damon tried to be the picture of determination and fortitude. "I didn't come all this way," he told her, "to find Ezekiel and then lose him. He's got to be out here somewhere. People don't just disappear. . . ."

Charlotte, who apparently had needed only the proper conversational gambit in order to speak, went on at length about a cousin who had indeed just disappeared during a camping trip to Yosemite, never to be seen again. "That's when I knew," she concluded, "that there was more to life than I thought."

That launched into a story about how she had first found the Swains and learned about the Divine. By the time she finished, they had swept back toward the center as ordered, where they met the rest of the party at the mesa.

A chill went through Damon when he saw the others standing not fifty yards from where Ezekiel's body was buried. No one, however, seemed to have noticed anything, "Well," Rodney said, "at least there's no sign anything bad happened to him."

True enough, the absence of any coyote-chewed bones or shredded clothing was a relief to most of them, but not to Jezebel. She seemed a hair away from flipping out, and kept muttering, "We've
got
to find him, we've
got
to . . . let's look again . . . farther away . . . he must have gone farther away. . . ."

Damon, anxious to draw the group away from the mesa, agreed. "Jezebel's probably right," he said, as the others turned in surprise to hear the newbie express an opinion. "Ezekiel's a holy man, one who receives visions from the Divine. And a holy man possessed . . . who knows where he might have gone? Maybe just kept walking until he couldn't walk any more."

"What the hell are you saying?" asked the man who had looked at him with such suspicion. "That the Divine would lure Ezekiel out into the desert to his death?" A sob escaped Jezebel, and she buried her face in her hands.

"No," Damon answered. "If the Divine took Ezekiel into the desert, it was for a reason. To show him something, give him new wisdom, teach a lesson, not only to him, but maybe to us, too."

"What kinda lesson?"

"About patience, about dedication, I don't know. But I do know that if Ezekiel's out there lost or wandering, we're not going to do him any good by standing around here."

"Well, who the hell are
you
telling us what we oughta do? Funny, you ask me, you cruise in here and the next night Ezekiel disappears, man! What's
that
shit?"

"Okay, Ted, cool it," Rodney said. Then he looked at Damon with flat eyes. "What you got to say about that?"

Damon spoke calmly, but with enough fire to show that he was unjustly accused. "I came here to find the Divine. Why would I try and hurt the only man who can find him for us?"

Rodney nodded slowly, as did Charlotte and a few of the others. "Then we'll just keep lookin'. Right, Jezebel?"

She looked up, her cheeks wet. "Yes. We have to find him, we just
have
to."

They spent several days widening the search, establishing a base camp at the old bunkhouse. Jezebel contributed nothing to the effort; she was too sick with worry over her missing brother. The others cleaned out the bunkhouse for her so that she would have an airy and open place to rest.

Once Damon was shaken when Aileen, Ted's girlfriend, suggested bringing in the police. He could just picture trained dogs going directly to the grave and digging like crazy in the soft sand. Fortunately, Rodney scotched the idea. There were too many of them who couldn't afford to be questioned by the law.

During the next few days, Damon insinuated himself among the others. It wasn't hard. He appeared to search for Ezekiel many long hours, and returned to the camp seemingly exhausted. What the others didn't know was that he spent most of the time resting in the shadows of buttes, or in small canyons.

At the end of four days, they were ready to give up the search. Some thought Ezekiel had been taken by the Divine onto the next plane of existence, while others figured he must have stumbled off a cliff. Whatever the answer, they had to go on.

Jezebel Swain was not sympathetic to this view. She pleaded for them to remain and continue the search, but Damon knew that they had wasted enough time here.

"We have to go on," he told Jezebel in front of the others. "Ezekiel is gone, and you're our hope now, Jezebel. You're the only one who can get us to the Divine so that we can free him."

"I don't know. . . ." She shook her head. Damon thought she had lost ten pounds in the last few days. "Without Ezekiel. . . ."

"You
have
to," Damon said, and the words made her jerk up her head and look at him, trembling. "We followed Ezekiel, but we're not here for him—we're here for the Divine. And you're the only one who can find him." He took a deep breath and shook his head. "You don't have to do anything but take us to him. We can handle the rest."

"But I'm not a leader, not strong the way Ezekiel . . . is."

"You don't have to be the leader. We don't even
need
a leader—we're all here for the same purpose, right?"

"But Ezekiel said one person should make the decisions. What do we do if . . .
when
we find the Divine?" Jezebel asked.

The opening was there, and Damon didn't have to leap in himself. "I think
Damon
would make a good leader," Charlotte said. He could have kissed her. He had worked on her the way he had worked on the others, but she had been the most malleable. Except for Rodney and Ted, the others were born followers. They would fall in behind whoever turned out to be the Alpha dog in the pack, sniffing his ass.

But now Ted staked his claim. "Why the hell Damon? Why not me? Or why not Rodney—shit, he's the strongest."

"Yeah," said Rodney. "But I ain't . . . I'm not the smartest. If we're gonna have a leader, and not just Jezebel, then I say Damon, too." That floored Damon, but he tried not to let his surprise show. "He worked harder'n anybody lookin' for Ezekiel," Rodney went on, "and he knows what's goin' on, and I think . . . well, he oughta be it."

Ted made a noise of disgust, but said nothing more. Damon nodded. "If that's how the majority feels, all right. But I won't lead you unless I know you want me to."

"Okay," said Ted. "Let's vote on it then. I say no, Damon's too new." He put up his hand. "Who else?" Aileen hesitated, then raised her hand. No one else did.

"Who's for Damon, then?" asked Rodney. Everyone except Ted, Aileen, and Jezebel raised their hands. "That's it. But what about you, Jezebel? You're the one with the power."

"I don't care," she said, in a voice heavy with weariness.

"You're going to
have
to care, Jezebel," said Damon. "You've got to do what Ezekiel would have—find the Divine—and we need to start now. We've waited long enough." He turned to the others. "Let's strike camp. It's time to get moving."

He was relieved to see the way they responded. All they needed was someone to tell them what to do.

As he was taking down his tent, Rodney came up and spoke quietly. "You know why I did that? 'Cause I saw you that night, saw you go out and come back." Damon felt ice all along his throat, down into his stomach. "And when we was out there—at that mesa—you buried him in the sand there, didn't you?"

Damon couldn't say a word. Rodney shook his head. "Man, I wanted to kill that bastard for weeks, but I didn't have the balls. You did, so you oughta be king shit. Lemme tell you, though. I want to find the Divine, only reason I put up with Fat Boy's bullshit. He can't find him no more. If Jezebel can, fine. If she can't, then you're toast, friend." Rodney smiled. "And don't think you can jump me the way you did Tubby. I'm big, but I'm fast. We make progress, we'll get along okay. Well?"

Damon smiled back. "Thanks for your continued support." Then he turned his back on Rodney and continued rolling up his tent.

T
hat night, long after the cultists piled into their vans and headed east, a coyote trotted around the base of the small mesa. He was old, and had just been outrun by a jackrabbit, so now he was looking for carrion.