Читать книгу Hands Through Stone - James A. Ardaiz - Страница 8

Prologue

July, 1974

Fresno County, California

The great San Joaquin Valley of California spreads itself out into foothills that rise against its edge. In the heat of summer, the foothills glow golden by day, and by night they shine silver on spring grass dried by the sun. The yellowed blades sway in the summer breeze, their swishing music lost by day to the sounds of birds, rustling leaves, and man’s traffic. It is by night that the symphony of the grass plays out to those who listen as the air moves gently. But on some nights the air lies still. On those nights, there is only silence. On those nights, the only sound is made by the hunters of the darkness.

On that summer night, the air of the great valley barely moved the high grass, which had been dried by the searing daytime heat to the brittleness of straw. A rabbit sat quietly in its burrowed-out hole, waiting to move for forage. The slightest movement would bring the rustle of the grass, breaking the silence, and with it a signal to the predators the rabbit knew were waiting.

The sound of tires on gravel brought the rabbit and nighttime predators to a frozen silence. Even feral minds knew enough to hide themselves from foreign sounds—sounds that might mean death even to those who were accustomed to being the hunter. It was the law of survival. Sometimes the hunter could become the hunted. Eyes meant for the night watched and waited.

The silver moonlight danced off the car as it rolled to a stop at the side of the Piedra Bridge, twenty miles outside of the city of Fresno. The two men’s faces were alternately cast blue by the moonlight and black by the shadows as they got out of the vehicle and moved to the truck bed. They pulled at the limp heaviness of the bundled form rendered shapeless by the blankets which wrapped it. Stepping stones wired tightly around the form added to their burden. Grunting at the weight, the men carried the bundle to the edge of the bridge, balancing it on the retaining wall as they looked down at the canal. The water below ran deep and black, sliding along cement banks slick with moss, shimmering as its ripples caught the thin light.

“Push her over, goddamnit. Let’s get this over with. We got to get back to the old man.”

The other man didn’t respond. He slid his end, the feet, over the cement wall of the bridge and let gravity do the rest. They both watched as the body slipped through the air. There was no scream. There was no sound left to be made except the splash of rushing water as it parted and accepted her into its cold embrace.

The men watched for a moment, waiting to see if she might surface. The swirls left by her last journey closed over her. The water resumed its course into the night, now with one more thing to pull along in its current and dissolve into the flotsam carried by its rushing mass.

The sound of tires on gravel receded into the darkness. The night hunters waited silently for the rustle of grass to make them dominant again. Their world was returned to moonlight and the newly stirring sounds of their prey. They were once again the hunters, left with the night. The rabbit stayed silent. It was not its time.