The Resort (40 page)

And here he remained, silent, unmoving, hiding.

Beneath the tree passed a young boy and his father, the same two he'd run into on his first day here.

“Don't worry,” the father was saying. “We'll get them all and bring them to justice.”

Patrick held his breath, not daring to breathe.

“Are they all faggots?” the boy asked.

“Every last stinking one of them.”

And then the two of them were gone, walking around the corner of the building toward the spot where Patrick had heard the pleading of the old man.

Both father and son saw something that made them laugh uproariously.

Time passed. He grew hungry and his stomach growled but luckily no one was around to hear it. One unusual noise as they passed by would cause people to look up and discover him—and that would be the end of it.

Thunderheads rode into the desert on an unfelt wind, and though they blocked out the sun, they did not bring lower temperatures but only served to make the air more humid. For his part, Patrick was glad. It felt more like Chicago, more like home, and he was grateful for anything that could take him away even momentarily from this hellish place.

The storm arrived just after sundown, and he crept out of the tree under the cover of night and rain, knowing he needed to get away from here but not knowing where. He took a quick piss, then ran quickly down one of the gravel paths, the noise of his passage covered by the rain and occasional thunder. He stopped at every corner, peeked carefully around every building, but came across no one else. For all he knew, The Reata could be completely abandoned by now and he the only one left, but he didn't think so and couldn't count on it.

He still had money in his wallet, and he used the last of his one-dollar bills to buy two Cokes from a vending machine near the tennis courts.

He still didn't know where to go, but he thought of the hiking trails that led into the surrounding desert and decided that might be a plan. He'd be exposed to the elements and anyone who followed the trail would be able to find him, but his gut feeling was that it would be safer to be away from the resort itself.

Completely soaked by the now torrential rain, he hurried up a trail that led into the mountains behind The Reata. The path led over a short hilly section of desert before disappearing between two closely aligned bluffs. For all he knew, this was a flash flood area, but at the moment it looked like a good hideout, somewhere he might be able to catch a few winks without fear of being discovered and beaten to death. He started thinking of ways he could booby-trap this entrance into the canyon or how he could hide in a place that would allow him to see anyone approaching from a long ways off. His brain was ticking off endless scenarios from classic westerns. He should write a book:
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Movies.

To his surprise, the downpour slowed to a drizzle as he passed between the sandstone walls, and by the time the canyon had opened out around him, and he found himself in what looked like a wide desert valley between two mountains, the thunder and lightning had stopped.

He could have halted here, but the trail kept going and he knew he'd feel safer the farther he was from The Reata, so he continued walking. The cans of Coke were feeling heavier in his hands, and as he was both thirsty and wanted to have a hand free, he popped open the top of one and drank it. He hated to litter, but he wasn't about to carry an empty soda can around with him. But he couldn't just drop it on the trail because someone might be able to track him that way, so he cocked his arm and heaved it as far as he could to the left of the path.

Where he saw an orangish glow coming from behind a low rise.

Could it be a ranch or a farmhouse? Could someone else live out here? It was possible, and though he knew he was being overly optimistic, he left the trail and slogged through the wet sand toward the source of the light.

The rain started up again, altering perspectives and playing games with distance. Patrick kept his eyes on the now flickering shimmering light, and it was not until he was almost upon it that he realized the source of the light was an old hotel.

Another resort.

The blood turned cold in his veins. From up ahead, he heard the sounds of a party. In fact, it sounded like the same party that had been going on each night in the empty room next to his. His brain and whatever instinct for survival had gotten him this far were telling him to turn around, to hide in the canyon behind a rock or bush somewhere between the two resorts. But he had to know what was there, had to discover the cause of those noises, had to find out whether there really was a party going on and whether it was peopled by humans or ghosts.

He passed a spooky-looking totem pole and, seeing no lights in the lobby, continued on toward the source of the light and noise.

He found it by the pool.

Torches—not kitschy tiki torches but primitive burning branches that smelled of creosote and looked vaguely Native American—had been placed in wrought iron holders next to the doors of the rooms and were embedded in holes in the cement around the pool. There was a party underway, and the participants were doing what any normal person would do at a pool party—swim, drink, talk—but the men and women were ancient, almost mummified. By torchlight, they appeared monstrous. But when they jumped into the pool they became young again. An overweight man with the wrinkled face of a dried apple went into the water, emerging with a hundred years shaved off him, and Patrick recognized the creepy security guard he'd met Friday night after his encounter with the snakes and wolf. Once out of the pool and in the rain, the man shrivelled and turned old again, a transformation so real and recognizably organic that it could never be mistaken for a special effect.

They all turned old when the rain hit them, Patrick noticed now, and he backed up to make sure that he remained in the shadows and did not accidentally reveal himself.

By the deep end of the pool, where the diving board should have been, was an elaborate throne upholstered in red velvet upon which sat a tall skeletal figure with long white hair. He did not do anything, did not move, simply watched over the party like a king surveying his subjects. There was an aura of power about the figure, a deep sense of authority and ancient evil that made the hairs on the back of Patrick's neck prickle.

The Roadrunners, those runaway thugs who now had control over The Reata, no longer seemed so frightening or formidable.

At least they were human.

He backed up, moving as stealthily as possible around the corner of the building, intending to get the hell away from here as quickly as he—

A wrinkled bony arm whipped around his neck from behind and caught him in a headlock, squeezing so tightly he could not breathe. A voice like scratching sandpaper whispered something in his ear he could not understand. He smelled dust and rancid meat.

At least it will be quick, he thought as he was dragged toward the pool.

But it wasn't, he found out.

It wasn't at all.

They awoke in the morning sweaty from the uncirculated air in the stuffy room. The smell of rotting food from the minibar permeated the atmosphere, mixed with the odor of morning breath. Lowell was the first up, and he opened the slat of the shutters slightly and peeked out. He saw nothing unusual, nothing suspicious, but that in itself was suspicious, and he didn't trust the tranquil morning view before him. He opened the slats a little wider and stood as close as he could to the window, trying to look down at the spot directly below, but still there was nothing out of the ordinary, only some flowering desert brush and an expanse of manicured lawn.

Rachel got up and went to the bathroom, and while she was in there the boys and David came out of their room. “Anything for breakfast?” Curtis asked.

“I don't think so,” Lowell said. “But see if you can find anything to scrounge.”

Rachel emerged from the bathroom. “That water's out,” she said. Lowell went in and checked the toilet. It had flushed properly, but there was only a small bit of water at the bottom of the bowl and the tank was practically empty. He stopped up the sink, turned on the faucet, and the only thing that came out was a small trickle and then a series of decreasing droplets.

Great.

“Everybody try to hold it,” he said, coming out. “If you have to pee, use the sink. Anything else, use the toilet in the other bathroom. We might be able to get two flushes out of it if we're careful.”

Sometime in the middle of the morning, Rand Black came by with a small group of men, two of them Cactus Wrens and a couple of others he didn't recognize. Lowell did not invite them in.

“They're gone,” Black said. “Blodgett and his crew. No one's seen them all morning.”

Peeking at them through a crack in the still-chained door, Lowell was not sure he bought that. Where would they go?
The other resort,
a voice in his mind said, but he refused to believe it. No, it was more likely that they had put Black and the other men up to this, threatened or intimidated them into trying to draw out Lowell and his family.

“We're getting a search party together to see if we can find them,” Black said. “Wanted to know if you'd come along.”

“Why would you
want
to find them?” Lowell asked.

“So we can keep tabs. So we know where they are and what they're doing. So we won't be caught off guard.”

It was logical, made sense, but Lowell still didn't believe it. Besides, there was no way he'd leave Rachel and the kids alone. “Sorry,” he said, and closed the door, locking it again.

He expected more knocking, pleas for him to join them, appeals to his team spirit, but there was nothing, and when he peeked out again a moment later, they were gone.

What the hell was wrong with him? There was safety in numbers. He'd had a chance to get out of this suite and see what was happening in the company of five other men, and he'd chosen to stay cooped up in here, hiding. Was he now so paranoid and suspicious that he could no longer tell the good guys from the bad guys?

Rachel was obviously thinking the same thing. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Go with them!”

“I can't leave you and the boys here alone.”

“We'll be fine,” she said in a manner that brooked no argument. “In case you haven't noticed, we can't eat or go to the bathroom. We're going to have to get out of this room anyway if we're going to survive. At least we should know where those killers are.”

“It could be a trap.”

“It's not,” she told him, and although he didn't know why, he agreed with her.

“Okay,” he said. “But if I'm not back within two hours . . .” He trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence, not knowing
what
she should do if he didn't return.

“You'll be back,” she said, and gave him a quick kiss. “Go!”

He caught up to Black and his crew just down the sidewalk. “Hey,” he said. The five of them looked at him suspiciously. They'd obviously been talking about him, and the fact that they didn't trust him made him pretty sure he could trust them. “Sorry,” he said. “About back there. The electricity's off, the water's off, we have no food. It's a bunker mentality.”

Black nodded, satisfied. “Glad to have you.” He introduced the other men. Scott and Rick, the other Cactus Wrens, he already knew. Elijah, a CPA from Wisconsin who seemed befuddled by everything that was happening, had somehow avoided getting drafted into the tournaments, but Mike was a former Coyote, although Lowell could not recall having seen him before.

Strange, Lowell thought, how he had started classifying people by their team affiliation. He didn't like the fact that he was doing that. He thought it was something The Reata probably wanted.

“Glad you're okay,” Black said after introductions had been made and hands had been shaken. “A lot of people aren't.”

“How many . . . ?” He couldn't bring himself to complete the sentence.

“A lot,” Black said. “Too many.”

“And some of them either aren't in their rooms or aren't answering their doors,” Rick said. “So we don't know what's up with that.”

Black nodded.

“Well, where are we going now?” Lowell asked.

“We've divided the resort into quadrants and are making a systematic search of each area, starting with this one.” Black held up a map of The Reata he'd taken from his Welcome packet and marked up with a pen. “Now we're going over to the physical plant and employees' quarters. After that, we'll go down to the next set of buildings and check each room.”

“Okay.”

“But we're not splitting up. We stay together. It'll take us longer, but there's safety in numbers.”

As always, the morning was hot, but the heat and sunlight and blue skies did nothing to dispel the atmosphere of darkness and death that hung over the resort. Even animals seemed to have abandoned the place, and the circling of hawks, scuttling of lizards and other sounds of the desert that Lowell had almost gotten used to over the past few days were nowhere in evidence. Following Black's map, they walked down a sidewalk running next to a narrow service road that wound behind a block of guest rooms.

“What the fuck?” Rick said.

A small city of tents made from linens and towels stretched along both sides of a man-made ditch in front of a series of small duplexes. The doors to the duplexes had been ripped off their hinges and thrown into the ditch along with clothes, furniture and other personal belongings. Windows to the apartments had been shattered and tendrils of smoke curled from most. It looked like The Roadrunners had ransacked the workers' lodgings, taken what they wanted, burned the homes and then fled, leaving the employees to construct makeshift accommodations out of whatever they could find in the maids' supply closets.