Sally's in the Alley - Norbert Davis (reading tree .txt) 📗

THE CADILLAC CRAWLED ALONG LIKE A BUG under a bucket, and the simile is all the more apt because this was no ordinary desert day. They are merely unpleasant. This one had a tinge of horror tucked around its edges. The sky was a gunmetal gray with dark, jagged streaks groping through it like a witch’s fingers.

The wind was a solid, chill mass of pressure that blew without stopping, and the mesquite bush cringed under it, and even the cactus leaned queasily away. It was strong enough so that Doan had to exert constant force on the steering wheel to keep the car from hopping out of the scarred, straggling ruts to march off into the brush on a tour of its own.

“You sure you know where you are?” he asked.

“Yeah, man,” said Dust-Mouth. “Just keep plugging along. Not so far now.”

The road wandered up the side of a hill, switching back and forth. The springs hit bottom with a bang, and Carstairs mumbled critically in Doan’s ear.

“Shut up,” said Doan. “I didn’t build this road, and you can be damned sure I didn’t invent this desert.”

He shifted into second gear. The Cadillac heaved up over the top of the hill, and the desert stretched away in front of them, barren and twisted and empty, with rocks, much too reminiscent of tombstones, pushing up through the sand at odd intervals.

The wind paused just long enough to draw a breath, and then hit them with a bushel of blown sand that scraped like fingernails on a slate.

Doan winced. “This isn’t doing my paint any good.”

“Nope,” Dust-Mouth agreed cheerfully. “Sand will take it off neat as pie. Probably scar up all your windows so you can’t see through ‘em, too.”

The car crawled down into a valley and twisted back around, through rocks that were cold and black and malevolently twisted. Lights flickered quickly along the horizon, and after a while the thunder bumbled sullenly to itself.

“What happens to the road when it rains?” Doan inquired.

“What road?”

“This one!”

“Oh. This ain’t really a road. It’s a sort of a path, you might say. When it gets washed out, you just make a new one.”

“Fine stuff,” Doan commented. “When is it going to rain, or was that just a rumor?”

“Storm’s over behind the Crazy Legs now. When she comes around that mountain yonder she won’t be drivin’ six white horses, but she’ll sure be comin’. Keep goin’.”

The Cadillac topped another hill, and without any warning lightning flicked at them like a gigantic whip in a green, crackling glare that raised the hair on Doan’s head. The thunder hit instantly, not in a roll, but in a blasting report that lifted the Cadillac and slammed it down again.

“Wow!” said Doan groggily.

“Hit back of us in the valley,” Dust-Mouth reported. “Reckon there must be some iron in them rocks.”

Lightning flicked again, and thunder slammed them back in their seats, and a green spitting ball of fire as big as a house went hopping with terrible daintiness down the slope ahead of them and struck a rock head on and split it neatly in two. The thin, cringing stink of brimstone floated in the wind.

“Did you—see what I saw?” Doan asked.

“Yeah, man,” said Dust-Mouth soberly.

A solid gray curtain appeared ahead of them. It marched remorselessly forward over hill and dale, and hit them solidly. It resembled rain just about as much as Niagara Falls does. The Cadillac crouched down under the weight of it, and Doan could see all of a good ten feet ahead of his radiator ornament.

Dust-Mouth pounded him on the shoulder. “Go on! Drown us here!”

Doan turned on the windshield wipers, and effortlessly the wind twisted them loose and threw them aside. It blew out a section of rubber padding around the side window, and rain drops whipped in and hit him in the face like individual needles.

Dust-Mouth pounded his shoulder again. “Stop! Wait!”

Doan halted the car. It rocked ominously. Dust-Mouth was fighting with the door handle on his side.

“What are you doing?” Doan shouted.

“Out. Test road.”

Dust-Mouth got the door open and fell out. The wind snatched the door out of his grasp and slammed it hard enough to rock the car even more violently. It spun Dust-Mouth around and knocked him against the front fender. The rain hit him, but it didn’t soak in. It bounced.

He fought for his balance, finally got it. Bent over nearly double, he staggered ahead. He was a grotesque shadow stamping and dancing on the road edge. His arms flung and beckoned wildly.

Doan drove ahead in low. The Cadillac slewed gently. Doan fed it more gas, and it caught itself with a jerk and ground on around the edge of a knoll.

Dust-Mouth hauled the door open and fell inside. He was panting brokenly.

“Two hundred foot drop,” he said. “On your side. Road edge crumbled under your rear wheel. You feel it?”

“Yes,” said Doan.

“Go down now. Faster. Let her roll.”

The car heaved and banged down the slope, lurching with a sort of giddy dignity. The road leveled out and straightened, water glimmering cold and metallic in the ruts.

“Faster!” Dust-Mouth yelled. “Faster!”

Doan fed it the gas, and the car rolled stubbornly forward. Brush crackled damply under the fenders. “Faster!” Dust-Mouth yelled. “Oh, God! We’ll never make it!”

Water sucked and gurgled evilly under them, brown streaked with rust-red, surface whipped into a froth of scummed bubbles. It tore at the front wheels and lapped eagerly at the fenders and seeped in coldly along the floor boards. Carstairs yelped indignantly and jumped up on the rear seat, arching his back like a cat.

Doan could feel the sand sliding away under the tires. “Oh, God,” said Dust-Mouth numbly.

The Cadillac twitched its rear end like an irritated dowager, and began to climb straight up a cut-bank. It skidded on the top, dipped daintily, made it with a defiant roar. The wheels spun and stopped.

“Well?” said Doan, wiping the perspiration and rain moisture off his face.

“Whew,” said Dust-Mouth. “That there was the flat I spoke to you about.”

“What was in it?”

“A flash flood. It’ll maybe rise ten feet in five minutes. We’re safe here, though.”

“What’ll we do—camp?”

“Naw. There’s a shack just beyond that hump. I think we better hole up. I don’t think we better drive no further right now.”

“I don’t think so, either.”

They got out of the car and stood against the drive of the rain. The wind rippled the fur on Carstairs’ back, and he ducked his head between his shoulders, glaring at Doan in squint-eyed disgust.

“Where the hell are we from that deposit?” Doan shouted, shielding his eyes with a raised forearm.

“Here.”

“What?”

“It’s right here. We’re standing on it. All through this flat here. That’s how I spotted it. Another flood washed some out in the flat.”

“Where’s the shack, then? Let’s go.”

“Come on—”

Edmund stepped out from behind the car. He had his coat collar turned up, and his left hand grasped it tight around his throat. His hair was plastered flat and slick down over his forehead, and water ran down from it in jagged streaks. He was holding a stubby, shiny revolver in his right hand.

“Well, Edmund, my boy,” said Doan. “How are you and all that?”

Edmund’s lips looked white and stiff. “Put your hands up.”

“Sure,” said Doan amiably, raising them.

“Keep your dog close.”

“Come here, stupid,” Doan ordered.

Carstairs edged in reluctantly against his leg.

“I surprised you,” said Edmund.

“Well, yes,” Doan admitted. “You might say you did, to some extent. How’d you get here?”

“I came with you—in your luggage compartment.”

“Well, well,” said Doan.

Edmund lifted his upper lip. “You didn’t think, did you, Mr. Doan, that during the course of your nonsensical and childish game of pretending to be an enemy agent that you might run across a real one?”

“I wouldn’t want to upset you or disappoint you at this moment,” Doan answered, “but yes. I had an idea I might. I must admit that I didn’t think it would be you, though. It’s too bad, too. I mean, you were a pretty good desk clerk. As a