“Sure, Doc.”
“What precisely is the point of this nocturnal expedition, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
The boy had stopped and grinned at him, as they paused by the fence that separated the old orchard from the pasture. “Sometimes you speak even odder than other times, Doc. Point is to go and take a look-see, see?”
“I suppose so.”
“We can loop around the arroyo to the north. Bring us close to where they are without them spotting us.”
“Unless the flagellants have taken the elementary precautions of placing sentries.”
“Yeah. I mean, no. Triple crazies like that need both hands to find their assholes, Doc.”
“If you say so, my gilded bird of youth.” Doc sighed. “If you say so.”
THE WILDERNESS SEETHED with nocturnal life.
Dean led the way, moving at a fast crouch, followed by Doc, stumbling over the uneven terrain, knees creaking like muffled pistol shots.
An unidentifiable mutie snake, twenty feet long, its skin black as jet with streaks of silver, slithered away from them, looping up and over the brim of the narrow draw, hissing in anger.
A pair of coyotes suddenly appeared ahead of them, eyes glinting in the moonlight like burned rubies. Dean halted, waving his Browning Hi-Power at the scavengers. For several long beats of the heart the animals didn’t move, crouching, bellies down, tails stiff. Their slightly open jaws dripped threads of pearly saliva into the dry sand.
“Move,” the boy whispered, and the coyotes spun and loped off toward the north.
Doc ducked as a hunting owl swooped low over his head, its great skull face as white as parchment, claws raking at the air just above him.
“By the Three Kennedys!” He wiped perspiration from his temples with the swallow’s-eye kerchief. Dean had persuaded him to leave the silver-headed cane behind at the house, but the commemoration Le Mat was snugly bolstered at his waist, the hammer set over the single shotgun round.
“Keep it down,” the eleven-year-old ordered. “Can’t be more than three hundred yards from their camp.” He sniffed at the night air. “Taste their fires.”
Doc tasted the air, nodding as he identified the familiar scent of burning wood.
In the early days of his marriage, he and his young wife, Emily, had taken pleasure in going camping, an activity that most of their friends in 1890s Omaha regarded as being suspiciously bohemian.
The smell of the fires brought back those happy times the small two-person tent, its ridge throwing sharp shadows across the box canyon where they’d pitched it; a pot of fresh coffee brewed over the flames; their empty plates waiting to be washed in the nearby stream; the curved meerschaum pipe that Doc had favored in those far-off days, sending out plumes of smoke, keeping the invasive midges at bay.
And he remembered Emily, her formal hiking clothes disarrayed, the collar of the silk blouse open, revealing the beginnings of the soft swell of her breasts, the roll of hair, unpinned, tumbling about her shoulders, the ankle boots unlaced, her skirt pulled up to her knees as she relaxed.
“Doc?”
He saw the tenderness in her eyes and the pouting smile, half teasing him, both of them knowing that the evening was nearly done, soon they’d be snug in their tent, bundled together, gently exploring each other’s bodies.
“Doc? Come on.”
“What is that?”
“Quiet.” Dean grabbed him by the arm, his fingers digging in hard. “You dropped off into a dream, Doc.”
“My sincere apologies, Dean. I shall do better and concentrate more. I promise you that.”
THE OLD MAN FOLLOWED the boy as he crawled the last few yards, cautiously sticking his head above the top of the arroyo.
“Shit!”
Doc joined him, moving more slowly, looking out the camp of the group of religious crazies, now less than fifty yards away from them.
“My sweet Lord,” he breathed. “It’s like something from the fevered imagination of Bosch, the inner circles of hell! How can they”
There had been fourteen of the Slaves of Sin, including their leader, the Apostle Simon. Thirteen of them paced slowly around the large cross that had been dragged up to the house. Now it was set upright in the sand, in front of the largest fire.