“Derrick attacked me! I was defending myself!”
“Certainly. Why don’t we save this conversation for another time? Right now, pay attention to the clues. Reverend Pentecost finally warned the townspeople to rid themselves of all vanity and avarice, to take every object they cherished and place it within something he called the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. He told them that the Sepulcher would be an example to the future.”
“Example?” Amanda asked.
“Pentecost fixated on the looming new century and concluded that the continuing deaths were a sign of a coming apocalypse. ”All is vanity,“ he told them. ”As the new century begins, material things will no longer matter.“ But those outside the valley might not see the truth. When the Sepulcher was eventually found and opened… perhaps in a hundred years when another apocalypse occurred… it would show the path of salvation to those left behind.”
“A time capsule,” Amanda realized. “A damned time capsule. That’s why you drugged Frank and me during the time-capsule lecture.” The memory came as a shock. Thinking of Frank, she struggled not to let grief weaken her. I’m going to survive, she thought. I’m going to find a way to get out of here and pay him back for whatever he did to Frank.
In a frenzy, she yanked a board from the fallen fence and plunged it into the mud. “The logical place to put a sepulcher is a graveyard. We’re probably standing on it. The townspeople buried it here.”
“Be careful of your time,” the voice said.
Using the board as a shovel, Amanda hurled wet earth. “Help me!” she told Ray. Again, she drove the board into the mud, but this time, the board broke. “Damn it, help me!”
“Fifteen hours remain,” the voice said.
As Ray picked up a board from the collapsed fence, a grave marker at the end of the row caught his attention.
“Why aren’t you helping?” Amanda shouted.
“This cross. The numbers on it are different.”
Amanda took a moment to react to his puzzled tone. She dropped the broken board and joined him at the cross.
“The month isn’t spelled.” Ray pointed. “Instead, there are only numbers.”
“But those numbers aren’t for a month, day, and year,” Amanda said.
“No. Two sets of them. LT in front of one. LG in front of the other. They’re map coordinates.” Ray programmed them into his GPS unit.
“They’ll take us to the lake,” an unexpected voice said through Amanda’s headset. It belonged to Viv and made Amanda swing in her direction. Viv had finished stacking the boards over Derrick’s corpse and now stared across the ruins toward them. “Whatever this Sepulcher is, they couldn’t have buried it, for the same reason they couldn’t bury coffins. The ground was frozen. What other place is there? The Sepulcher’s in the water.”
“But the lake would have been frozen also,” Ray said.
“That’s the point,” Amanda suddenly understood. “The townspeople could have walked onto the lake, stopped in the middle, and cut a hole through the ice. Then maybe they dropped the Sepulcher, whatever it looks like, through the hole.”
“It must have been huge if it contained everything they cherished. A hell of a big hole,” Ray said.
“Maybe the Sepulcher was big enough that more than it went through the hole.” Viv marched past wreckage toward them. “Maybe the ice cracked. Maybe the entire town went into the water.”
“But in the spring, the search party would have looked for them in the water, in case somehow they’d all drowned,” Ray objected.
“How would the search party have checked the water?” Viv came nearer. “The middle looks deep. It’s not like the searchers had scuba divers or grappling hooks.”
“In the spring, the bodies would have bobbed to the surface,” Ray insisted. Immediately, he paused. “Unless…”
“Unless what?” Amanda asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t an accident.” He looked disturbed. “Could it have been a mass suicide? If the bodies were weighted, they wouldn’t have risen to the surface after the ice melted. They’d never have been found unless the lake was drained.”
It seemed as if a breeze died. The valley became silent.
“The lake.” Ray frowned at the needle on his GPS unit, then stared toward where it pointed. “That’s where the coordinates seem to be.”
“Yes, the lake.” Amanda felt excitement growing in her. “That’s why the snakes are in it. To keep us from searching there.” She looked at Ray. “You said ‘unless the lake was drained.” I don’t see how it’s possible to do that.“
“It’s possible when you realize it’s not really a lake,” Viv said, reaching them.
“What are you talking about?” Ray demanded.
“When this is over, I’ll make you pay for what you did to my husband. I swear to you, I’ll get even.”
Ray met her gaze. “You can try.”
“But I’m not going to die here because I let you distract me. Right now, all that matters is winning.”
“Sure. Later,” Ray said. “We need to get out of here alive. Then you can try to get even.”
Amanda felt the latent violence between them. She interrupted. “Viv, what do you mean it’s not a lake?”
“Did you notice its shape?”
“It’s got water. That’s what I noticed,” Ray told her. “It’s rectangular.”
“No. It’s shaped like a wedge. The tip points toward the western mountains, where the stream comes from. The blunt end has rocks that slope below it. The shape’s symmetrical. Too symmetrical. It’s not a lake. It’s a reservoir.”
Ray needed only a moment to think about it. “Jesus.” He started running.
5
The sun baked the mud. As Balenger guided the Jeep along the narrow dirt road, he heard the crust braking. On either side were sagebrush and scrub grass. Ahead, foothills rose toward snow-capped mountains. The road showed no sign of recent use. He didn’t see any buildings. He permitted himself to hope.
The road descended into a stream. The high chassis on the Jeep allowed him to drive through it, the four-wheel-drive gripping the slippery surface on the other side. Bumps jostled him, preventing him from going faster than twenty miles an hour. Time, he kept thinking. Near the foothills, he reached cattle drinking from a water trough next to a windmill.
The road did not continue. He drove past the windmill and steered between bushes, aiming toward whatever open area presented itself. Rocks and holes forced him to zigzag. The ground began to rise. He avoided more rocks and sagebrush. The incline became steeper. When he crested a ridge, he faced a steep drop on the other side, so he followed the ridge, passing aspen trees. Then he reached another slope, too rocky and steep for him to drive farther. He backed the Jeep to the aspens and stopped where they screened the car.
He changed clothes, putting on the tan boots and hunting outfit, which blended with the terrain. Feeling the strength of the sun, he covered his face with sunscreen, put on the sunglasses and the hat, and drank from one of the water bottles he’d purchased at the truck stop. After clipping the Emerson knife inside a pocket, he loaded the magazines and shoved one into the Mini-14. He buttoned the compass and the packet of Kleenex into his shirt pocket, hooked the canteen to his belt, and stuffed the knapsack with the remaining equipment. He had a memory of packing his gear to go to Iraq, an apt comparison, he thought, because he was about to enter a war zone.
When he put on the knapsack, he estimated that it weighed around forty pounds. I’ve carried worse, he thought. He pulled the bolt back on the Mini-14, arming it, engaged the safety catch, and slung the rifle over his shoulder. What else do I need to do? he thought. There’s always something.