Читать книгу City Out of Time - William Robison III - Страница 7

Death Valley, California

April 9, 1996

“Is it possible to have a mid-life crisis at 26?” Lanz asked out loud.

The sounds of predators and prey played like muzac around him, but nobody answered him.

Lanz wasn’t sure why he was doing this. When he had finally gotten his driver’s license, he used to take off and head to Baker for pie with Seth. And when they were old enough for fake ID’s and mischief, they had often walked into the desert at night to share a six pack of beer and to lie about the girls they were interested in conquering. Lanz supposed it was the closest thing to bonding the two brothers had ever experienced -- wandering off into the desert alone at night in hopes of finding… what?

In truth, at the end of this particular treasure hunt Lanz half-expected to find a long buried six pack of beer. Though why Seth would hide such a mundane prize so far from the highway, Lanz hadn’t yet figured out.

Lanz checked his watch and realized that he’d already been walking for three hours. It was well past two in the morning. The long strides through dusty deer paths with the occasional stumble over rocks and low lying brush had started to take its toll. His flashlight had failed after only a half hour and Lanz had no idea how far he’d walked. The low hills where Seth had hidden his treasure still loomed ahead of him, rising out of the desert floor. At the rate he was going, Lanz suspected he wouldn’t reach the hills before dawn.

“I’ll go faster if I stay hydrated,” Lanz muttered through dry lips.

He eagerly opened the canteen and took a long sip, sloshing the water around the inside of his mouth to wash away all the dust before swallowing. He hardly felt better.

“Gotta conserve,” he said as he screwed the cap back on and started walking again.

Lanz couldn’t ignore the danger here. Uncle Pete had taken him and Seth camping in the desert when they’d been younger and impressed upon them the basics of survival. You didn’t ever take the desert lightly.

Lanz was older now and wiser. Lanz had had desert survival training at Twenty Nine Palms prior to his deployment in Riyadh. One bottle of water and a ten mile trek through the desert was hardly optimal, but certainly survivable.

Lanz laughed dryly and said to no one in particular, “Famous last words.”

He stopped, took another sip from his canteen and looked back towards the highway. He could no longer see it. The road had long since blended in with the starlit desert to form one long seamless expanse of nothing at all.

Lanz remembered getting a call from Seth one morning about a year after Lanz had graduated from High School. Seth had taken Uncle Pete’s jeep and some girl from his school and headed to the desert with the hope of a little moonlit nookie. Unfortunately, after going about thirty-five miles out into the desert, Seth had tried to impress the girl by four-wheeling over a large boulder. Instead of impressing her, however, Seth had high-watered the jeep on the rock. Seth and his date had spent the entire night walking back towards the road until they’d come across another campground where someone gave them a ride as far as Baker. Lanz had laughed the entire way out into the middle of nowhere as he drove another friend’s truck to help Seth get their Uncle’s jeep off the rock before Uncle Pete found out about it. The young lady had never spoken to Seth again. Lesson learned. You never took the desert lightly.

Lanz shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t dying of thirst just yet. He might as well keep going until he’d reached the point of no return. Besides, he was actually enjoying the walk.

Lanz and Seth had both had just about the same amount of luck when it came to women. Though Seth certainly had more luck when it came to dating, Lanz more than made up for it by having had several of his relationships last long enough to actually call someone a girlfriend. Seth’s dating attempts almost always ended with Seth getting slapped. Lanz’s relationships had almost always ended with the girl finding another guy. This lack of success with women, while frustrating, had certainly given the two brothers interesting things to talk about during their teenage years. A little beer, a little desert moon, and talk about girls just seemed to come naturally. Lanz missed having those discussions with his brother.

In the end it all seemed so pointless. They’d gone their own separate ways to make their own separate lives. Seth had joined the Army, had never gotten married, and had never contributed anything to society. Now he was dead – his ultimate sacrifice was a waste of human potential with absolutely nothing to show for it.

On the other hand, Lanz thought, he hadn’t exactly contributed anything to society either. He wasn’t married – didn’t even have a girlfriend. He had contributed nothing to society – and after failing his pre-med classes, he doubted he ever would. Now he was walking around in the middle of the desert trying to find…

Well, hell, ultimately he was trying to find himself, wasn’t he? This happy little jaunt into the middle of Death Valley with a single bottle of water was like some American version of a walkabout, or vision quest, or some such dorky mid-life crisis thing.

Lanz suddenly felt like some cheap yuppie in loafers looking for spiritual enlightenment. He stopped walking and stared straight ahead at the hill he’d been walking towards just as the first rays of dawn peaked over the top of the craggy hill and bathed the desert plain in deep purples and oranges. It was beautiful, but completely beside the point.

“What am I doing out here?” Lanz said aloud.

This was stupid. He wasn’t some sort of spiritual guru looking for enlightenment. He wasn’t some lost Hippie or Burning Man wannabe. Sure, the past few days had thrown him for a loop, but he was made of sterner stuff than that.

He looked at the hill ahead of him and knew what he had to do. He needed to go back to his car and drive back to his apartment and get some sleep. Then he needed to go back to work and back to school and plead for a second chance – tell them that his brother’s death had had him at a loss. He could get back on track for med school and finish his degree and become a doctor.

Someday, when he’d finally finished his residency and made something of his life, he’d come back here, dig up that old six pack of beer, and have a few beers in honor of his brother’s sacrifice. But for now, it was time to go home.

Lanz turned around and tripped over a rope he hadn’t seen in the early dawn light. He fell hard and landed on something soft and cloth which groaned instantly and sat upright. Lanz rolled to his feet and stood.

He’d walked right into the middle of a campground without even realizing it and he’d just tripped over someone’s tent rope and landed on another person’s sleeping bag – occupied.

“What the…” grumbled the sleeping bag’s occupant.

The sleeping bag unzipped and a bright flashlight beam suddenly splashed into Lanz’s eyes. Lanz raised his arms to cover his eyes, but lost his balance in the process and fell backwards on to the hard sand of the desert.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Sorry,” Lanz said, “I didn’t see you out here in the brush.”

The camper looked skeptical as he passed his light over Lanz’s ill-prepared clothing.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I was hiking.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The camper became wary. He slowly climbed out of the sleeping bag, but kept one hand inside the bag the entire time.

“What are you really doing out here?” he asked again.

“I should ask the same question,” Lanz replied. “Who camps in the desert in the middle of nowhere?”

“We’re an Explorer’s Post out of San Francisco doing a cross-country backpacking trip in Death Valley,” the camper explained. “My name is Paul. Now… your turn.”

The tent flap opened and two young ladies poked their heads out.

“Everything okay, Paul?” they asked quietly.

“I’ll let you know in a moment,” Paul told them, “Stay in the tent.”

Lanz stood back up in case he needed to beat a hasty retreat and said, “Don’t be alarmed, Paul. I really was out here hiking in the middle of the night. I know that that is unusual, but I can explain.”

“Explain.”

“My brother recently died. And last night, I met with his lawyer in Baker for the reading of the will. My brother loved the desert and, I guess, as a sort of last joke the only thing that the will contained was a set of coordinates and a compass.”

“Like a treasure map?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“So you came out here in the middle of the night?”

“Pretty stupid, huh.”

Paul dropped whatever he’d been holding in his sleeping bag and stood up as well.

“How are you fixed for water?”

“I’ve got about a quarter canteen left.” Lanz answered.

“Rita… Bring me some water.”

One of the girls came out of the tent carrying a large thermos full of water. Paul poured it expertly into the canteen, filling it to the rim.

“How far away is this treasure?” Rita asked.

“It’s just up that hill over there,” Lanz pointed to the hill that was maybe a half-mile away from where they were standing.

“Well, we can probably help you get to it,” Paul noted. “We’re headed that direction anyway. We can all go after breakfast.”

“No… no thanks,” Lanz said, “I’ve already decided that I’ve been running a fool’s errand as it is. I was just turning around to head back to my car when I stumbled into your camp. You’ve been kind enough already, but I’m not going to be a further burden.”

“You parked your car on the highway, didn’t you?” asked another man who suddenly approached from behind Lanz.

“This is my brother, Roger,” Paul introduced.

“Yeah,” Lanz answered. “Of course I parked my car on the highway.”

“They don’t like it when you do that,” Roger noted and pointed.

Lanz turned and looked west towards the highway where he’d left his car. The road was still lost in the overall size of the desert, but now with the sun rising Lanz could clearly see the reflection of the sun’s light off his windshield – like a flared beacon pointing directly to where his car was parked on the road. Unfortunately, as Roger pointed, Lanz could see another larger windshield flare approaching his car from the direction of Baker, and more, he could just make out the rotating red lights of a tow truck.

“Son of a…” Lanz muttered.

Rita put her hand on Lanz’s shoulders and said, “Might as well stay for breakfast now.”

“And you’re close enough to that treasure,” Paul added, “You should see what it was that cost you a towed vehicle.”

Lanz stayed for breakfast. There were two other members of the group, the youngest brother Stanley and the younger sister, Barbara - who turned out to be quite adept at whipping up a gourmet meal using a campfire and regular cooking equipment. They served everyone three egg omelets with cheese, bell peppers, and reindeer sausage. The eggs were perfectly fluffy without being runny in the slightest. Lanz felt like asking for seconds, but knew he was already intruding on their lives enough. He offered to wash the dishes, but the others insisted that they would wash the dishes at the next campground where there was available water.

During the meal, each member of the group took turns subtly interrogating their guest. Lanz knew that they didn’t entirely believe his story, but they were too polite to call bullshit on him. Lanz didn’t know what else to tell them. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t find any way to make the truth sound any less bizarre.

But the interrogation wasn’t entirely one-sided. Lanz discovered that Barbara and Rita were the sisters of Roger, Paul and Stanley Citroen. Five grown children camping out in the middle of nowhere – it made Lanz wonder whether the parents had dropped them off on their way to Vegas for a nice quiet weekend alone. He didn’t dare ask.

After breakfast, Lanz helped the Citroen family break camp. The Citroen’s were truly expert outdoorsmen, however, and Lanz felt like he was more in the way than helpful.

As much as he and Seth had traveled this area of the desert, they had rarely packed more than a pup tent and a cooler of beer and water. Besides the tent, sleeping bags, and cooking equipment, the Citroen’s were also packing a telescope, four folding chairs, and enough survival gear to last in the desert for an entire month. Lanz was quite impressed.

He offered to help carry something, but they shook their heads and said, “No, we’ve got it.”

Within half an hour, there wasn’t a single trace of the camp left. Paul turned to Lanz and said, “Let’s go find that treasure of yours.”

They climbed slowly; working their way up the lower part of the foothills. After an hour, Paul called for a water break and everyone gladly complied. The sun was well above the horizon now. When Lanz looked back towards the highway, he could clearly see that there was no car parked along the side of the road. He turned and looked up into the hill that rose above him. In another hour or so, he’d be near the coordinates on the map.

The water recharged his flagging energy. He didn’t want to dwell on the fact that he’d been awake nearly 36 hours straight. It might not have bothered him when he was younger – like 18 or 19 – but now that he was 26, he expected a little more sleep.

It seemed that only a few seconds had passed before Paul called the family back to the hike.

The terrain became steeper and the sun rose faster in the sky. The morning chill baked away quickly. Fifteen minutes later, sweat was pouring from Lanz’s brow. He welcomed the feeling of the air pounding in his lungs and the sting of the salty perspiration in his eyes. Lanz was really feeling alive.

The counter to that was Lanz knew he was getting close to his limits. He was going to have to put a stop to this madness if he was going to have the energy to hike back to the road and hitch a ride back into town. But the top of the hill loomed ahead of him, tantalizingly close, and Lanz felt that he had no choice but to move forward.

Lanz was completely lost in thought when Stanley tapped him on the shoulder. Lanz turned, slightly startled, but recovered quickly.

“Yeah?” Lanz asked through puffs of air.

“I think we’re here,” Stanley noted.

Lanz looked around. They were indeed on top of the hill… well, more like a shoulder of the hill. There was a slight bald rise off to their right, and to the left, the ridge they were on sloped down to an abrupt cliff about 800 yards away. The view from the top of the hill was spectacular.

Behind him, the desert floor that he’d just crossed stretched out for miles – empty except for sage brush and rocks. Its emptiness was filled with a sort of unseen energy that shimmered on the wind. Lanz took a deep breath and felt refreshed – one with the nature around him.

He looked ahead now. The ridge stretched forward about a quarter mile before becoming the balcony overlooking another desert basin. Somewhere in this quarter mile stretch, Seth had hidden an object for Lanz to find.

Without a word nor command, the Citroen family and Lanz started walking slowly towards the other side of the ridge – each one looking for something, anything, that looked out of place.

Before they’d gone halfway, Lanz knew there was nothing here. The ridge top was just too barren to hide anything effectively. As much as his brother could be a pain in the neck, he wasn’t a fool. If it had been here, someone else would have found it.

Still, they searched the entire ridge. As they reached the other side of the ridge, they each shrugged their shoulders, then turned back and tried to retrace their steps with their eyes – hoping to see something that clearly wasn’t there. Lanz was the last to arrive and by the time he reached the other side of the ridge, the entire family surrounded him with looks of pity and condolence.

“Are you sure you got the right coordinates?” Roger asked, hopefully.

Lanz didn’t answer. They all knew the answer anyway.

“Maybe it’s buried? We could get out the shovels and…” Barbara let the suggestion die on her lips.

Lanz felt miserable – far worse than he would have felt had he gone home and never come and looked. Too late he realized that he’d been holding out hope for one last tangible piece of his brother’s story – as if some buried treasure could compensate for all the missed late night conversations, Christmas cards, and other assorted communications that they’d have shared for the rest of Seth’s natural life. Standing on top of the ridge, looking down into a desert basin still covered with a misty residue from the night before, Lanz suddenly felt a gulf open up before him – a deep chasm beyond which he could not pass. Seth was truly and finally gone.

The revelation hit him physically. His knees buckled and Lanz tottered and slowly collapsed. He was immediately joined by the two sisters while Paul and Stanley each pulled out their thermoses and offered Lanz some cool water. Lanz drank deeply, but it didn’t help. He could almost feel Seth’s arm reaching out from the coffin to pull Lanz down into the chasm with him. Lanz loosened his shirt and lay back on the sand. The sky began to swirl and Lanz felt his body tipping over and over and over again with dizzy gravity. Lanz dug his fingers into the sand to keep from falling off the swiftly tilting planet.

The Citroen Family gathered around him, concerned, but out of ideas for helping him. They tried cooling him down, elevating his feet, giving him air. When they set down their packs and started to dig out their tents in order to erect one around him, Lanz finally held up a hand.

The world stopped spinning and Lanz was able to catch his breath. He felt embarrassed. Barbara bent over and asked in a slow, patient voice, “Are you alright?”

“Yes…” Lanz answered after a moment, “I think so.”

He sat up, tested his internal systems enough to realize that the dizziness had completely faded, and then he stood up again.

“Thank you,” he said immediately, “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Shock,” Roger noted. “Classic case.”

They all stood there, silently, as Lanz gathered his wits. It was an awkward silence that seemed to stretch on for minutes. Finally, Lanz took a deep breath and said, “I guess I’ll head back now.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Paul asked.

Lanz opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Through the lingering mist that covered the desert basin far below, he’d just seen a street light blinking red far off in the distance. He looked around to see if anyone else had seen it, but it was clear that none of them had been looking in that direction.

“Is there a town down there?” Lanz pointed into the basin below where he’d seen the light.

The others gave him a strange look and shook their heads.

“Perhaps a road of some sort?” Lanz asked, though he could see that they didn’t understand what he was trying to say, so he added, “I’ll swear I just saw a traffic light down there.”

The Citroen Family, for their part, didn’t immediately dismiss him. They all looked into basin ahead as if they expected to see the exact same thing. Seconds stretched into minutes.

“I don’t see anything, Lanz,” Rita said soothingly.

Lanz pointed in the general direction of where he’d seen the light, but she just shook her head.

“It must have been a reflection or…”

The mist shifted again, just briefly, and Lanz clearly saw a three story building about five miles ahead on the basin floor.

“THERE!” He yelled excitedly. “I saw a building this time!”

This time the members of the Citroen Family shared a look first, before they dutifully looked into the misty basin below. They waited thirty seconds before answering this time.

“There’s nothing down there,” Roger replied emphatically. “We’ve hiked these hills before, Lanz. There’s nothing down there but sagebrush and lizards.”

Lanz knew they were right. He’d been here before as well. There was nothing in that basin – but he’d clearly seen a building.

“You didn’t hit your head… or anything?” Roger asked.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Lanz noted. “I’m going down there.”

He knew that he had to go look. He’d come this far. The coordinates had to mean something. They just had to.

“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Paul asked.

“I’m going,” Lanz answered.

“Then I’m afraid this is where we part company,” Paul replied. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Thanks,” Lanz noted.

“This is stupid, Paul,” Rita said, “He’s clearly in no condition to…”

“I’m fine, Rita,” Lanz interrupted, “There’s nothing to worry about.”

Stanley and Roger shook their heads, incredulous, but kept their mouths shut. Barbara gave Lanz a supportive squeeze on his arm, but then turned and started walking away. Only Rita was still concerned. Lanz took Rita aside.

“Look, I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve been in much worse places than this and lived to tell the tale. All I’m going to do is hike down that path far enough to figure out what it is that I saw. It was probably just an optical illusion or something. And when I’m done, I’ll hike back to the road and hitch a ride back to town.”

“Not a minute ago, I thought you were dying,” Rita noted. “And now I’m supposed to believe you’re fine? If something were to happen to you…”

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” Lanz returned. “I’m going to be just fine. I promise.”

“I still think you should come with us,” Rita said as she put her hand on Lanz’s arm… then seeing what she’d done, she quickly snatched it away.

“I’ll be fine,” Lanz reiterated. “You’ll see.”

Rita couldn’t hide her concern, but she nodded her assent all the same.

Lanz patted her on the shoulder like an older brother might, then waved to the others and said, “Thank you for everything.”

As Rita turned uphill to rejoin her family, Lanz turned eagerly to the edge of the basin and looked for a way down. There appeared to be an animal path about fifty feet below the ridge line. Lanz waved one last time to the Citroen Family, and then he headed left, down the ridge, towards the spot where he hoped the animal path crossed over the ridge.

It didn’t take long to find the trail. It squeezed through a rough patch of rock and brush but then it dropped down about three feet on a steep grade to a tight patch of level ground about two feet wide. It was just enough for Lanz to squeeze on to the pathway. Leaning towards the uphill side, Lanz was able to move down the animal path towards the basin below.

It took him nearly ten minutes to go about five hundred feet, but before he reached the five hundred foot mark, he had dropped far enough to be completely enveloped in the basin valley’s lingering mist. The hot sun flared its light through the top layers of the mist, making visibility pretty tough – which slowed Lanz’s pace even further.

After a half hour, the animal path abruptly ended at the top of a small overhang. Lanz walked to the edge of the overhang and looked down to see a small ledge about ten feet below. He thought he might be able to climb down to the ledge. The path looked like it might continue from the ledge on down below the mist, but he wasn’t entirely sure that once he was down on the ledge that he’d have enough energy to climb back up.

“This is really stupid,” Lanz said to himself.

He looked back towards where he’d left the Citroen family a half hour or so before, but the ridge was completely lost to the fog bank. There was no way to determine how far down the animal path he’d come, but he suspected that getting back up wasn’t going to be nearly as easy.

“If I start back now, I might make it to the main road by two or three in the afternoon,” Lanz calculated. “If I go much later, I won’t make it back until nightfall and then nobody will be on the highway. I’ll freeze tonight waiting for a ride.”

Lanz knew what he had to do. There was really no choice. If he didn’t leave now…

Lanz turned back to the overlook and paused only to take a deep breath before swinging a leg over the side and looking for a foothold. If he didn’t at least climb down to the ledge, he would regret this moment for the rest of his life.

The ledge proved to be difficult to reach and in the end, Lanz simply jumped the final five feet – backwards. He landed awkwardly and his momentum carried him backwards towards the path’s edge. But Lanz let go of his attempt to remain upright and landed hard on his backside, only a foot from the ledge. It hurt, but it kept him from going over the side.

Satisfied that he wasn’t going to plunge to his death, Lanz looked back towards the rock he’d just come down and thought he might see a way to climb back up it – a darker vein just around the edge of the rock that might work as a ladder of sorts.

He stood up, looked down the path that led away from the ledge and realized that he could hike another hour or two and still not get far enough below the mist to see whatever it was he thought he’d seen. No. Nearly falling off the ledge was enough. It was time to admit defeat and head home. He rubbed his bruised tailbone and headed towards the dark rock face.

As Lanz made his way around the edge of the rock he’d just jumped from however, he realized that the dark rock face was not a ladder to climb back up to the path above. Instead, it was the narrow entrance to a cave.

Lanz looked around for another way to climb up the rock, but could not find an obvious one anywhere around him.

“Well the animals must have some way of getting up to the trail,” Lanz reasoned.

He looked down the trail, but seeing nothing in the immediate vicinity that looked like a path back up to the trail above, Lanz turned reluctantly to the cave.

“Maybe…” Lanz pondered.

It seemed crazy, but at this point, Lanz was starting to feel more than a little punch drunk as the adrenalin started to wear off. He took a swig of water and decided to explore the cave as far as the light would allow him to go.

The narrow fissure was filled with cobwebs, plant remains, and a few small animal bones. Lanz suddenly wondered whether he was wandering unwisely into the den of some carnivore. Lanz pushed forward.

After a dozen or so feet the narrow fissure widened into a proper cave nearly twenty feet wide. Through the dim light that squeezed into the cave, Lanz could see Native American symbols and animal paintings adorning the rough natural walls of the cave. He didn’t stop to admire the work, however, because Lanz could also feel a steady, cool, breeze from ahead of him. There had to be an exit ahead – somewhere the animals could get up to the animal path above the cave. He’d made the right choice.

He moved so quickly ahead now that he almost didn’t notice the changes in the cave. The cave remained a uniform width for at least forty feet before the natural cave walls gave way to rough-hewn stone walls, and then, finally to concrete. The floor of the cave changed as well becoming less and less rock strewn until it finally became as straight and flat as a road. But the thing that Lanz actually noticed first was the light source up ahead – faint, blue, and completely man-made.

Lanz slowed down as he looked ahead to the blue light and tried to make out what it was. Though the ground did not change, the light around Lanz faded to the point that he could no longer make out the walls of the man-made cave. He was moving further and further underground, further and further away from the entrance to the cave, but Lanz knew not to stop. The blue light seemed familiar – like something remembered from a long ago dream.

He walked forward for at least another minute before he was aware that there were others in the cave with him, walking as he was, shadows in the darkness, shambling towards the same blue light.

“Hello?” Lanz asked into the darkness around him.

His voice seemed to echo around the cave, “Hello? Halo? Hola?” Each echo was a different timbre, a different language, a different age and sex. There were several hundred people in this cave; all moving forward, all completely clueless as to who else was here and why.

Lanz seriously wondered if he was dead. He stopped and two people nearly knocked him over as they went by. Lanz started to turn around.

“Greetings, Travelers.”

A pleasant English woman’s voice echoed throughout the entire cave. Lanz looked towards the blue light where he was certain the voice had come from.

“Welcome home. Please continue forward for processing.”