the Devil's Workshop (1999) (30 page)

Cris reached up and pulled him down again. In U
. D. T
., he had once stayed submerged for three and a half minutes. Back then he was in terrific shape; now he was a physical wreck. He wasn't sure how long he could stay under. Then, thankfully, he felt the thrashing of his victim turn to spasms, but his own lungs were exploding. Finally, Cris came up, rolling his mouth across the surface as he'd been taught in U
. D. T
., taking in a breath without completely breaking out of the water. He could hear chaos in the boat near him.

"He's got Cleve!" somebody yelled.

Then Cris dove again, keeping Cleve pinned under him, pushing him down lower and lower.

Cleve was not moving now, buoyant, unconscious below Cris. Cris wanted him alive, but was afraid if he surfaced, he would be target practice for the men in the boat. Then he heard the outboard starting. Cris was five feet under. The engine was a muffled whine, the prop stirring water and moonlight in a bubbling silver froth, as the boat slashed across the lake above him. Then the whine of the engine faded. After the boat left, Cris dragged Cleve to the surface, pulling the unconscious man toward shore.

He was exhausted as he pulled Cleve up on the sand. He tried to sling his captive over his shoulder, but didn't have the strength, so he just flopped him onto his back.

First Cris cleared the man's tongue, then he rolled him onto his stomach and tried to pump water out of him. Nothing. Cris rolled him onto his back again and began mouth-to-mouth. He blew air into Cleve's lungs. He felt the man's heart sputter and stop. Cris banged his fist on Cleve's breastbone, trying to shock the man's heart into starting.

"Shit," he whispered between breaths.

The CPR went on for almost five minutes. It seemed futile, but Cris continued. Then, unexpectedly, the man groaned. Encouraged, Cris kept going, blowing more breath into Cleve's lungs. It took Cris almost ten more minutes before he heard Cleve exhale, but the man still hadn't opened his eyes.

"Don't go brain-dead on me, asshole," Cris whispered. "I need you alive."

Cleve didn't open his eyes. He didn't twitch or move. It was then that Cris suspected that the groan, and later the exhale, was just his own breath coming back out. The man was dead. Cris lay back against a tree, exhausted. He tried to catch his breath. He knew he was incredibly lucky to be alive.

Chapter
28

Fannon Kincaid heard Cleve Robertson scream and saw him thrashing in four feet of water. Then, almost like a creature rising from the slimy lake floor, something reared itself out of the water, caked in black mud. The apparition attacked the Reverend's Acolyte like a monster from the deep.

Fannon pulled his nine-millimeter and aimed it at the roiling bodies, but couldn't make out who was who. So he held his fire, looking for a clean shot.

"Something's got Cleve," someone behind him shouted.

Then he saw the bald mud man clearly. His mouth was open in a silent scream, and he looked like a vision from hell. Blood was streaming down his face onto his shirt; an anguished look was on his face. Fannon finally had a clean shot. He squeezed off a round, but the gun didn't fire because the chamber was soaked with lake water. Then the bald man fired two shots in their direction, and Fannon panicked, afraid Dr. DeMille would be hit. "Get him in the boat!" the Reverend screamed at his men.

Dexter DeMille was wallowing along clumsily in shallow water
,
making no headway. He screamed when the gun was fired. One of the Choir grabbed the skinny scientist by the arm and dragged him. They clambered up onto the one small piece of dock that remained from the inferno. The section was held in place by a concrete piling that had protected the wooden float from the blast. An eighteen-foot metal boat was tied there. Fannon pushed Dexter into the craft, then jumped in along with the three surviving Choir members he had brought with him on the mission. "Let's go," Fannon shouted, deciding in that instant to leave Cleve to the mud demon that had risen from the watery depths and grabbed him.

"We can't leave him!" Randall Rader shouted, looking off at the area where the fight had taken place. Now there was no sign of the combatants. They had disappeared under the water's surface.

"He's in the hands of God. Move out, R
. V
.!" Fannon screamed at Robert Vail in the stern.

R
. V
. was the man who had been tapping on the engine. Despite his ropy build and long, stringy hair, his most distinguishing features were his two facial tattoos: "Fuck You" on the right side of his forehead and "Eat Shit" on the left. R
. V
. pulled the starter cord and the engine caught on the first try. Holding the handle of the seven-and-a-half-horse Evinrude engine, R
. V
. steered the boat right over the place where Cleve and the bleeding bald apparition had been struggling.

"Race and Faith!" Fannon shouted at the bubbles in the water as they sped away.

They were soon out in the middle of the lake. Fannon wondered who, or what, had risen from the water's depths to capture Cleve. The bald man had not resurfaced. Fannon had pulled the nine
-
millimeter, firing a shot directly at the mud-demon from the lake. But the gun had refused to discharge. Was it a sign? Was this the devil of the mud races rising from a crater lake that stretched deep down to the gates of hell? Fannon believed that signs were messages from God. The taking of Cleve was a message. The mud man in the lake was proof that God's enemies from the mud race
s w
ere trying to destroy Fannon's mission. He was being told by God to hurry. He now pushed these thoughts aside and turned his attention to the shivering scientist huddled on the middle seat of the boat.

"Where is the position?" he demanded of Dexter, who jerked his head up like a frightened child and engaged the fiery gaze of Fannon Kincaid. Intense mania shone from Fannon's eyes, revealing the madness inside his head.

"It's halfway out," Dexter said softly. "Position the boat directly off the flagpole on the prison tower, then line it up on the other side with that large silver pine over there." He pointed off to a huge tree that stood down by the water's edge on the east shore.

Fannon nodded to R
. V
., who slowed the boat and moved it into line with the prison tower. From across the water they could see that most of the wooden prison buildings had suffered extensive damage in the fire.

"Right about here," Dexter said dully. "There's an underwater buoy anchored to the bottom. It has a pull cord attached through rings. Find the buoy and then pull up the cord," he said. "The bio-weapon is in two orange watertight pressure containers attached to the cord."

Fannon nodded at two members of the Choir, and they stripped off their shirts and pants. Clad only in ratty underwear, they dove into the cold waters of the lake, splashing moonlight around the perimeter of the boat before kicking hard and disappearing under the surface.

"God is a refuge and a fortress," Fannon said softly.

"Bless Jesus," R
. V
. muttered from behind Dexter, who jerked his head around and saw that the man with "Fuck You" and "Eat Shit" tattooed on his forehead had bowed his head and was praying reverently.

God in heaven save me, Dexter thought, issuing his own desperate plea to the Almighty.

Then, as if by magic, one of the divers poked his head above the surface. "We found it!" he yelled.

"Praise Jesus," R
. V
. and Fannon said in unison.

Fannon looked at the old Timex watch with the broken band that he carried in his overalls pocket. It was almost eleven-fifteen. He knew that even though the Sons of Manas-seh had sent the mud apparition in the lake, God had managed to use the demon to warn Fannon of the need to hurry. Once Dexter had told him of the secret plague, he had looked up the verses in Revelation that foretold of this event and found some striking details: "The fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, shall have their part in the lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone." This lake had burned with fire and brimstone, Fannon thought. The verses continued: "This will be the second death.... And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and he carried me away in the spirit to a high mountain, and showed me that great city, the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God." This had all been written in the words of the Prophets two hundred years after Christ, but surely it was no coincidence that these events so perfectly described in Revelation were coming true here in Texas, as prophesied.

Suddenly his divers came to the surface, carrying two large orange canisters. The men pulled themselves into the boat. Fannon looked at the wet canisters in wonder. "God has arranged our timetable," he said. "We have been given a sign from heaven to leave this place immediately. The Southern Pacific unit train will pass through the Black Hills in twenty minutes. If we hurry, we can make it."

Then R
. V
. started the boat, and they headed toward the eastern shore of Vanishing Lake.

After Cleve died, Cris had washed the mud off in the lake, then went back to the Blazer. He got the sniper's rifle with the long sight out of the back.

"What is it? What happened? Why are you wet?" Buddy pestered, and Stacy waited for Cris to explain.

"Follow me," Cris said, and carrying the gun, he moved off in front of them, heading back down to the lake.

When they got there it was quiet. Then suddenly, from across the water a mile away, they could hear the outboard engine start. Cris found an old tree and slammed the heavy sniper rifle into the crook of a limb and sighted through the scope. He adjusted the focus, and could now see the boat starting to move, its wake a moonlit tail of silver, heading away from them toward the other side.

"Are you gonna shoot 'em?" Buddy asked, surprised.

"No, I'm just tryin' to see. Here, take a look, Stacy." He pulled his eye away, allowing her to take his place at the scope. She could just make out the five men in the boat. One of them definitely looked like the silver-haired Fannon Kincaid. Huddled low, in the middle, she thought she recognized Dexter DeMille.

"It's them," she said, pulling away from the scope, so Buddy could see. Her heart was pounding. "What're they doing back here?"

"Maybe Dexter's doing the same thing we are--looking for evidence to use against Zoll," Cris said.

"No," she said. "No, it wouldn't be that." Then she fell silent.

"What are you thinking?" Buddy asked.

"I can think of only one reason why Dexter DeMille, who's wanted by every law enforcement agency in the country, would ever come back to Vanishing Lake." They waited for her to finish. "He's hidden some of his Pale Horse Prion here," she said.

Chapter
29

They had turned off the highway and were moving too fast along a rutted dirt road that Stacy remembered would cut several miles off the distance around the lake.

"Are you seriously trying to catch them?" Buddy yelled.

"They have to be heading for the rails." She looked over at Cris, but he said nothing.

"Let's slow down and think this out," Buddy yelled from the back seat. "We screw this up, we'll never get the toothpaste back in the tube."

Neither Cris nor Stacy answered him.

"We're just three people. They're armed lunatics. This is nuts." Buddy was more or less shrieking now. "Isn't that right, Cris?"

Again, Cris didn't say anything. He just sat in the passenger seat of the Blazer with his eyes on the road and a grim look on his face.

The headlights swept the darkened road ahead of them each time they rounded the frequent and sharp switchback curves. Several times, Stacy had to reach down and shift into four-wheel drive a
s t
hey climbed steep or sandy sections of the firebreak. Then she would shift out of four-wheel and rocket dangerously along on the narrow rain-rutted path.

Suddenly, they heard the low, mournful whistle on the eleven
-
fifteen unit train.

"Shit," Stacy said. "There's a train coming. We'll never get there in time."

"Turn right up ahead and shoot across the meadow," Cris said. "It's a shorter way to get to the tracks." It was the first thing he'd said since they got in the car.

"Can we fuckin' please slow down and discuss this a minute?"

Nobody answered Buddy. Cris could feel a heavy fatigue settling over him, like a fatal shroud.

"We need to have a plan!" Buddy yelled. "Fer Chrissake, you're just gonna drive up and fuckin' yell at 'em? We're gonna all get killed!"

"Do you wanna get out?" Stacy yelled back, as she geared down and stopped the Blazer. "You can walk back." She glared at the movie producer with fire in her eyes.

He had never seen a woman look so dangerous. "All I said was, I wanta know how we're gonna do this."

"We'll think of something. My husband died trying to stop these killers. If DeMille has this Prion and I can get my hands on it, I can prove what went on here. Without it, I can't prove shit. I'm going to get the bastards who killed Max, so either stay in the car and shut up, or get out and walk. But make up your mind, and stop whining!"