Admittedly Baker wasn’t much. A couple of hundred inhabitants, a few gas stations, a convenience store or two. But it was definitely too big to overlook. He drove another ten miles, searching the salt plain north of the highway. They had yet to see so much as a sign.
At least the sky had brightened. The unnatural darkness had vanished. The absence of their intended destination, however, mitigated the relief he felt at the return of the sky to normalcy. He checked the map. Baker should be twenty miles behind them by now.
“Sweetheart?” Alicia shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Shouldn’t we be there by now?”
“According to the map.” He nodded at the dash.
“Could we have gone past it somehow?”
“You can’t go ‘past’ a whole town out here,” he shot back irritably. “Maybe it ain’t Manhattan, but there’s at least one off ramp. I don’t see how we could have missed it. We’ve both been watching and there are no wrong turns out here. I don’t under—”
She interrupted excitedly. “Oh, there’s a sign!”
Sure enough, they were coming up fast on one of the familiar big green highway signs that were posted on the shoulder. He could read it easily.
LAS VEGAS—152 Miles
HADES JUNCTION—6 Miles
The sign came and went at fifty-five miles per, leaving him little time to ponder the implications. Hades Junction but no Baker. He squinted at the map. There was no town by that name anywhere along I-40.
“They don’t always show the real small towns, Frank,” Alicia said, replying to his concerns. She leaned close to the dash, looked satisfied when she sat back in the chair. “This map’s a couple of years old. They’re always putting in new stops.”
Not in the Mojave, he told himself, but how could he be sure? Since when had he become a specialist in desert real estate? Anyone who wanted to build a new station, maybe a motel, could lobby for state recognition as a town. If you paid for your own off ramp, the state would probably grant you any kind of designation you wanted. He stared at the map.
He could have purchased a more detailed one, but what for? Why worry about the location of details you had no intention of visiting? None of which explained how they’d managed to drive right past Baker without seeing it. Baker had been here for a long time. Could it have been renamed Hades Junction since the map had been printed? He almost smiled. Certainly it would be a more descriptive moniker for a community located in the middle of the desert. If he’d been on the local Chamber of Commerce he would’ve voted for such a change. Hades Junction might attract a few more tourists than the bland Baker. Maybe that was it.
As for it lying twenty-six miles farther east than it should have, that could be his mistake. Or the odometer might be defective.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said at last. She had to be right. There was no other explanation. “Either we missed Baker or they’ve gone and renamed the place.”
“I don’t know.” Alicia was brooding now. “I don’t like the idea of letting anybody off in a place with a name like that.”
He couldn’t keep himself from laughing. “With a name like what? Half the places in the Southwest have names like that. Bad Water or Devil’s Hole or Perdition. We just passed the turnoff to Bagdad yesterday. Bet Hades Junction is a paradise compared to that.”
“You’re probably right. As long as it’s a place where she can find another ride.”
“Pretty lady like her,” he murmured, “shouldn’t have trouble getting a ride anywhere.” But hadn’t she insisted she’d been waiting a long time until they’d paused to pick her up? Or had that just been a line? Here he was worrying about a total stranger again.
As they cruised eastward he kept an eye on the odometer. It looked to be functioning properly. When they’d gone six miles from the sign they’d just passed, he was, by God, going to stop and find himself a town, or a gas station, or something. Otherwise he’d have a few choice words for the highway department and the manufacturers of their so far inadequate road map.
The sky was darkening again, but this time with obvious reason. Clouds were gathering overhead. Peculiar clouds, though. Rain clouds. What was unusual was that they took the form of long, thin tendrils instead of thick, puffy masses. Streamers of storm.
So now you’re a meteorologist, he chided himself. First you decide the plants have gone crazy, now it’s the clouds. He glanced speculatively to his left, out the window. Sword-leafed yuccas pressed close to the barbed-wire fence that bordered the highway limit. Ocotillos waved their tentacle-like arms in the absence of wind. Feeling unexpectedly queasy at the sight, he turned away.
Since the three big trucks and the sports car, not a single vehicle had passed them. Unusual, since he was doing fifty-five and out here it was normal for most drivers to ignore the speed limit. You’d expect to see trucks, if not a lot of cars. As a lifelong Angelino, he felt uneasy at the absence of traffic.
Alicia was leaning forward. “Oh, look, Frank! There are animals on the overpass!”
No off ramp here. Just an elevated crossing for an unknown country road. He tried to identify the shapes as they bore down on the overpass. “Not deer,” he declared with certainty. Then they were passing beneath and the single brief glimpse was lost.
What sounded like a deluge of empty beer cans danced on the motor home’s roof.
“Hey!” Steven put his comic aside to look ceilingward.
“Must’ve been kids,” Frank decided. “They must’ve thrown something down on us.”
Except that couldn’t be the cause because the noise continued. It didn’t sound like beer cans or garbage rattling around the luggage rack. It sounded a lot like feet. Small feet.
“Some idiots jumped onto us.” His knuckles whitened where he gripped the wheel. He knew what he ought to do was pull over and step outside for a look. Something in his gut insisted that that wouldn’t be a good idea.
Whatever was up there, scuttling around among their rented patio chairs and spare tires, there was more than one of them. The cold feeling he’d felt when he’d seen that black tuft at the rear of the gas station attendant’s coveralls now returned. He thumbed a switch. The luxurious, brand-new motor home came equipped with power everything. It took only the quick gesture to lock all the windows and doors.
Almost immediately the main door began to rattle.
“Dad?” Steven’s voice had gone hollow. “Hey, Dad, there’s something trying to get in.”
Frank said nothing, trying not to let his imagination get in the way of deciding what to do next. He should have brought the gun. But Alicia hated guns. Besides, of what use was a pistol on the busy interstate between Los Angeles and Vegas?
That’s when Alicia screamed. Frank let out an oath and fought the wheel, fighting his own panic simultaneously as something came crawling down the windshield. It descended from the roof by clinging to the metal shaft that divided the windshield in two.
It looked like a big rat, complete with reddish-brown fur and naked tail. A rat with a feral intelligence gleaming in its oversized eyes. Halfway to the hood it paused to stare in at them, grinning to display razor teeth. In its right paw it held a crude blade about two inches long.
As Frank tried to keep the motor home from crashing, the verminous passenger crawled the rest of the way down the windshield support. Safely on the hood, it squatted on its hind legs and turned to regard the motor home’s inhabitants with a murderous gaze. It was soon joined by a companion. Instead of a miniature knife, the newcomer carried a tiny pickax.
Alicia had stopped screaming to hold her breath. The rat-things were chittering animatedly to each other. When they finished, they began using their sharp utensils to dig at the insulation that ran around the windshield’s perimeter. Meanwhile the rattling at the door had not ceased. Scraping sounds began above Frank’s head. They were coming from the rim of the skylight a foot behind his seat.
“My God, Frank—what is it? What are they?”
“I don’t know, Alicia. I don’t know!” He could hear Steven whining anxiously somewhere behind him.
“Mom, Dad?” Wendy was whispering. “What’s going on?” All of a sudden she sounded neither cocky nor composed.
Frank swallowed, found his voice. “Alicia, you and Wendy get the big kitchen knives out of the drawers. Look around under the stove. Maybe there’s a firewood ax, too. Anything that can be used as a weapon. Understand?” There were half a dozen of the rat-things on the hood now, cutting and chopping around the windows and vent flaps, hunting for a way in.
“Okay. Okay.” Alicia started to rise, then yelled and pointed.
The vent door that was built into the metal next to the accelerator was opening.
With a curse Frank jammed his left foot down hard, slamming the six-inch-high louver shut. There was a tiny, inhuman screech and the pop of small bones crunching.
“Hold the wheel!”
“Frank?”
“The wheel, hold the damn wheel!”
Alicia grabbed at it, kept the motor home more or less steady as Frank bent over to throw the manual latch on the vent cover. Then he straightened and instructed Alicia to do the same to the vent on her side. She managed, though her hands were shaking badly.
