The Wind Thief (Vanished, #4), page 15
We hit a straightaway that gives us a decent view of the road ahead, going black to purple in the creeping light of the early morning. We’re in the trust lands now, a checkerboard of valleys and plateaus that look a bit like they could’ve been mountains once but then someone took a knife to the clay and gave them all the same flattop haircut. The land was deeded by alternating sections, so drivers flit in and out of Navajo jurisdiction. Caroline stretches and looks behind us. She sees what I’ve been seeing. A few headlights are staggered in the near distance, but nothing resembles Hosteen’s light array.
“Gas is now or never,” I say.
Caroline looks at me and nods. Grant does too. Joey is still asleep.
That’s what I’ve been waiting for. Family quorum. Pit stop it is.
The exit takes us off trust land. I remember a big chain gas station just before the highway here, awkwardly shiny and clean, coming from the Rez world. I see the halogens before I see the station, lighting up the sky like a parked UFO—the good old Speedy Mart.
Six pumps gleam. Lights in the store windows blink advertisements for the holy trinity of all highway fill-ups: beer, cigarettes, and the lotto.
I rap my thumbs on the steering wheel as we turn in. “Alright. I’m on gas. Caroline, you run in and pee like you’ve never peed before. Grant, Joey, watch our butts.”
I pull in hot and park us with a jolt. Caroline throws open her door and runs toward the mart part, where a quick glance shows a very bored-looking teenager behind the counter.
I watch the purple distance and swipe my card in and out of the reader well past when it says Processing. “C’mon, c’mon.”
I get approved just as Caroline is handed the bathroom key on what looks like a foot-long monkey wrench. She disappears into the back as I accidentally hit Premium. The light goes green—no time to reload the gas. Premium it is. You’re welcome, truck.
I stick the pump nozzle in and click it to max fill then cross my arms and turn to watch the road from whence we came.
The gas keeps filling and filling. I look at my watch as though any of this has anything to do with the seconds that tick into minutes that tick into hours on this earth—force of habit.
“Sure is a thirsty car, Grant,” I say, trying to keep things light.
Grant looks up at me with a look that says he didn’t hear. I drum my fingers on the hood with woodpecker speed.
Lights crest the hill, and my heart skips a beat. But it’s just some old sedan with bouncy shocks, yellowed with age. They pass us by.
Finally, the gas clicks off. I pop it out and vigorously screw on the gas cap before sliding the pump into the holster, then I’m back around and in the driver’s side and buckled in, waiting for Caroline.
“How long can it take her to pee? For crying out loud.” I laugh nervously.
We’ve been here for five minutes, which is four minutes too long. I get whiplash looking back and forth from the road to the store, store to road, road to store.
Caroline appears from the back, distastefully holding the wrench key in one outstretched hand.
“There was no soap,” I say to the quiet crowd in the rear cab. “She hates it when there’s no soap.”
I think maybe we’re actually going to get out of here with enough gas to get us to the mountain, then I turn back toward the road.
Something that looks a bit like a black boulder rolls into view in the distance.
“Shit,” I say.
The black boulder opens up its engine.
Joey’s eyes open in an instant, and he leans forward.
Hosteen’s truck is eating up the road between the hill and the Speedy Mart. Without the light bar, without the blazing double set of headlights, the truck somehow seems even more obscene, a roaring shadow moving far too quickly. And it’s on a collision course with my family.
15
CAROLINE ADAMS
I’m not a huge fan of gas station bathrooms. I don’t know anyone who is, except maybe truckers or anyone else where the alternative is a hole in the ground, but I really do not want to pee in Grant’s truck, and I don’t think the boys want that either, so we all agree that I have precisely four minutes to run in, hit the powder room, and run out. Speedy Mart, speedy pee.
The problem is, of course, that when I get inside the Speedy Mart, I have to spend at least thirty seconds rousing the cashier, who looks incredibly stoned, so that he can find the bathroom key.
“Around here somewhere,” he says, rummaging in a sticky-looking drawer.
I force myself to stop tapping my heel like I’m in a dance recital. “Do you really need to lock the bathroom out here? What’s the concern?”
He looks up at me drolly. “You’d be surprised,” he says and hands over a grubby wrench, which I take without further comment.
The gas station bathroom looks about like one would expect a gas station bathroom under the stewardship of an incredibly stoned teenager to look at five in the morning. I spend way too long considering where the most hygienic place would be to put the grubby key before settling on the top of the basin.
I proceed to do the hover.
Some might assume that being a floor nurse would accustom me to germs, but in reality, the opposite is true. It’s accustomed me to a lifetime of disdain for germs and an overwhelming feeling of disappointment at the many, many people in this world who don’t do the super-easy bare minimum to keep them at bay.
My hover pee done, I chance the soap dispenser and am totally unsurprised to find it empty. Then I give everything up for lost, flush the toilet with my hand and open the door with my hand, which ought to emphasize how seriously I take the Speedy Pee Directive.
I’m walking back up to the register, wondering if I have time to buy a little bottle of hand sanitizer, wondering if this place even has hand sanitizer, but when I get to the register, my droll friend is staring out the window with a quizzical look on his stoned face. I follow his slack gaze and find the boys getting out of the truck one by one: first Joey, then Grant, then Owen, who looks back at me with wide eyes and pushes his hand out in a motion that seems to mean “stay there.”
Very soon, I see why. Hosteen Bodrey’s truck is on a collision course with the gas station. He drove up on us in dark mode.
“Shut off the pumps,” I say.
That’s a thing, right? I know you can shut them off outside. Mom calls those things the idiot buttons. If they can be shut off outside, they can be shut off inside.
The kid just keeps looking out the window.
“Hey! You!” I snap my fingers a few times and get his attention. “Shut off the pumps, or that truck is gonna blow us all to Santa Fe!”
He’s startled back to the present and absurdly checks his pockets before locating the general shutoff in the back by an ancient-looking phone. He flips the cover up and presses the button. Something clicks. I hope that’s enough.
“Get down. Stay low,” I say. Then I walk out the door.
Owen wanted me to stay there.
Yeah, right. In what world would I sit here and watch all of them get blown to pieces at a gas station? Where Owen goes, I go. For the record, I really hope that doesn’t mean getting blown to pieces, but the way Hosteen’s truck is gaining momentum, things aren’t looking great.
Outside, the truck’s engine sounds like some angry giant sucking a milkshake. Owen yells for Joey’s help. He nods and does what he does, which is surgical phasing. He’s gone in a blink, and a second later, a scuffle breaks out in the front of Hosteen’s cab. The tires shimmy shake, and the truck brakes hard, fishtailing on the broken concrete. All sorts of stuff is going on inside, but the glare of the gas station lights on the windshield makes it hard to see.
The truck stutters again, accelerates, then slams into the outer pump maybe fifteen feet from where we parked.
The pump pops with the sound of a tree snapping in half. Glass shatters. I cover my face and feel something glance off my cheek, which goes numb. I’m feeling for blood when someone grabs my hand. Owen looks quickly at my face then pulls me aside, along the wall of the gas station, out into the early-morning air. I take a few deep breaths. I once had a nurse manager who I hated, but she did give me one decent piece of advice: if you can’t do anything, at least take deep breaths. So that’s what I do.
I was hoping the crack came from the truck, but it looks like it came from the pump. The grill of Hosteen’s truck is mashed up, and one headlight hangs like a loose eye, but it seems to have dealt a lot more damage than it took. And now it’s backing up. It moves like a zombie—lurching, braking, lurching—but it moves. The pump line wraps itself around one toothy tire until it goes taut then pops off in a spray of gas. More gas comes out, and more. Then it stops. Cheers to you, master idiot button.
Grant’s voice sounds tinny and distant in my ears. “He should be out by now.”
He’s right. Last time, Joey jumped in, turned the truck, and jumped out. It’s been too long.
The truck shakes from the inside, and someone cries out inside. After a quick look my way, Owen moves forward. Grant follows, one hand on his shoulder, father and son. Their smoke rolls over one another. It’s family smoke. I can’t help but look down at my tummy, hoping. But if something’s there, I can’t see it.
Before they can get to the truck, the door pops open, and Hosteen and Kai jump down, first one, then the other, with Joey Flatwood between them.
I don’t need to see his smoke to tell something’s wrong. He’s stunned, jammed up. He stumbles to the ground, and they pull him standing again. He doesn’t even seem to see us. His eyes are an off-planet kind of distant.
That creepy white smoke streams from the eyes of the Bodreys now just like it did from Dark Sky. In a way, it is Dark Sky. His power is here, a hundred miles from the trading post, and when Hosteen speaks, I feel like Dark Sky is speaking.
“The Diné have regained a true warrior today. Joseph Flatwood will be honored in the world to come.”
Little tendrils of the white smoke that snakes from their eyes have found their way into Joey’s. Bigger tendrils are questing, crawling up his chest, cupping his cheek.
Joey yanks back and forth like a bull in a chute, but only for a moment, before his knees buckle and both Bodreys have to strain to hold him upright again.
Some part of him is still here, but I doubt it will be for long.
“Let him go, Hos!” Grant yells, his voice strong and clear. “Whatever you’re doing, we want no part of it.”
“You have no part in it,” Kai says with such finality that I can almost hear the way it slaps Grant across the face. “You will open the way, and then you will be left behind.”
“I don’t understand,” Grant says, the hurt pushing his voice high. “Kai, you were applying to college a few weeks ago. You were gonna rent a little apartment in ABQ. I was gonna visit you every weekend. We had…” When he trails off, a lump forms in my throat. “We had so much to look forward to.”
Kai blinks the smoke clear from her eyes for a heartbeat, but in a flash, they’re milky white again. Grant couldn’t have seen it, but I did.
“Remember who you’re talking to,” I tell Grant. “This isn’t the girl you know.”
“Yes!” says Hos. “Remember who you’re talking to. The first people. The people who have broken through three worlds to land here. And who will break through three more if that’s what it takes until we find our true home.”
Joey is shaking his head like he’s stuck in a bad dream. His strong, red smoke is changing, drying out, flaking. In its place is this brilliant, burning whiteness that loops from eye to eye to eye across all three of them.
“You’re hurting him,” I say. “I know you can see that. He doesn’t want whatever you’re doing.”
Kai’s quiet answer chills me. “He does. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Owen shifts in that subtle way I know means he’s going to do something brave and reckless. It’s what got him that first bullet wound in the shoulder. He was brave and reckless for me. He reaches into his pocket for his crow.
“Owen, wait—”
In a flash, he’s at Hosteen’s throat with the broadside of his forearm. It’s a solid connection, but Hos barely flinches. The smoke seems to have his back, keeping him standing. And when he grabs Owen with his free hand, the smoke pours over Owen too. He may not be able to see it, but he sure looks like he can feel it. He yanks free again and rubs at his arm with a sick grimace on his face.
Grant starts to walk forward. This, of course, is exactly what they want, what Hosteen wants, what Dark Sky wants. They eye his chest with dripping hunger. But Grant doesn’t see that. He sees his friend being toyed with by a thug who’s been a pain in his ass since the day he set foot on the reservation. Part of me thinks Grant would trade the bell and everything else for one solid uppercut, a knuckle-to-jaw connection. I wouldn’t blame him.
But he can’t. And he would know that if his brain hadn’t gone all thirteen on him again.
My fingers twitch with the need to do something, anything, and that’s when I hear the soft rattle of the bathroom key.
I’m still holding the toilet wrench.
My legs make the decision before my mind can catch up, which, to be honest, is actually a good thing because I sometimes think my brain is still somewhere in my twenties. My body, though, has been living for a long time in this unyielding high and dry desert. And it’s holding a foot-long monkey wrench.
I sprint past Grant’s slow-menace walk and swing low, sweet chariot, right for Hosteen’s knee. He may have some help from Dark Sky and the smoke, but so far as I can tell the toilet wrench doesn’t give a damn about that.
Hos falls to the ground, howling, and as I stand over him, twenty-four-year-old nurse Caroline pipes in from some deep recess of my brain: That patella is no longer where a patella should be, and you made it that way. Then Owen holds on to me like I’m the lifeline he needs, and all that imposter syndrome nonsense flits away. In its place is anger, righteous anger.
I help Owen stand and run a hand lightly down his forearm. Where I pass, the burning white recedes, and his ocean-blue smoke returns in small shoots. Joey staggers to the ground, and Grant moves in to get him, but I don’t want him getting close. Hos seems more interested in his wonky knee at the moment, but Kai still has that awful, open hunger. Without her brother as backup, the burning white tendrils search for a new place to root, and she’s still gripping Joey’s arm with an unnatural strength.
“Kai, honey, let go.”
Kai looks back and forth between me, Hos, and Grant. Her breathing quickens.
“I love you because my son loves you. But so help me, God, I will hit you in that beautiful face of yours with this wrench if you do not let go. And just so we’re clear, this wrench has been in that gross bathroom, getting poo fumes on it for probably years, Kai. And it’s gonna get all over your face.”
She looks at me strangely, and I know I probably went on too long, but this is my first assault with a deadly weapon, and I’m all crazy with adrenaline and something else—something mama bear.
Kai lets go. She backs away, looking at us like we’re the animals.
“Walk inside, Kai,” I say.
She does, slowly, with that weird silence back upon her. The white smoke seems stunned for the moment.
She opens the door to the Speedy Mart, me right behind. The little ding strikes me as so ridiculous that I have to press the back of a hand to my mouth to keep from laughing. I’m trembling like a leaf. Adrenaline is pumping and dumping. I wonder if Kai knows she could probably scare me to death with a strong boo.
The stoned clerk watches us with eyes like dinner plates. “Is this really happening?” he asks.
It is, buddy. Welcome to the club.
I point inside the very soap-free women’s restroom. “Get in.”
As she does, I unclip the grungy old carabiner to free the bathroom key from its prison.
I poke my head in. “I know it may not seem like it at this precise moment, Kai, but I’m still really rooting for you and Grant.” Then I close the door, lock it with the key, and axe chop the key with the wrench until it bends, bends, then snaps off.
I slide the toilet wrench over the counter to the clerk on my way out. He bobbles the catch, and I hear it clatter to the floor as the doors snap open in front of me.
I pause. Back up. “Also, there’s no soap in the ladies’ room. Just FYI.”
16
THE WALKER
Part of me follows my friends in their desperate flight to the Turquoise Mountain. Part of me is already there. But the part of me most present is still standing in the swirling smoke and ash and sand of Dark Sky’s Windway gone wrong.
Chaco snatched the black bear totem, which seems like it was important for Dark Sky to initiate others into his fan club of white-eyed fanatics. He has a solid group of them—almost fifty by now—I can tell because of the way their threads are tugging strangely at the great rope on which I walk. They all yearn to go to the Turquoise Mountain, but not in a good way, not in a pilgrimage way, like Gam. These souls are more like sleepwalkers bumping up against a closed door again and again.
We all stand in the eye of the storm—well, not Dark Sky. He’s sitting, humming deeply to himself and fashioning something out of wet ash and black clay that looks disturbingly like a new bear totem. This guy is relentless.
A good chunk of the crowd that gathered here have understandably decided they want to bail. This wasn’t the Windway they signed up for. But Dark Sky isn’t letting them. A handful of these people of Chaco—my people—try to pass through the vortex penning them in, only to get buffeted back by the spinning grit, sandblasted and bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts.
None of them try for long. Already, I see tendrils of white questing from those he’s turned to those he’s trapped. Soon, everyone in the eye of this storm will be turned. It’ll look like one big spiderweb of white smoke unless I can figure out some way to stop it.
