Chapter 1
Fate can hang on the most inauspicious decisions. Sometimes it’s a wrong turn like the one taken by Archduke Ferdinand’s driver in 1914. Sometimes it’s simply drinking one beer too many. Mosby Ellington wasn’t considering fate when he ordered another sixteen-ounce Pabst Blue Ribbon. He didn’t know it, but it would be fair to say that having a third beer in the broken-down saloon on a dusty side-street of Panguitch, Utah, quite possibly altered the geopolitical trajectory of the earth just as surely as Archduke Ferdinand’s driver.
That, and calling a phone number besides 911.
A retired pipefitter from Michigan, currently the only consequence he could see from the third beer was the tongue-lashing he was taking from his wife, now behind the wheel of their RV. She was in a fine mood, and while he wanted to fight back, he knew he would have to spend the night with her in the small enclosure, and he’d learned early during their cross-country trip that she could be an absolute hellion when she was angry—something he’d never had to worry about when he could retreat to his basement after a fight.
Moving slower than was necessary, purely to aggravate him, she said, “I told you I didn’t want to drive these roads at night. I said it over and over, and youstillordered the beer. And you made me wait until the game was over.”
Mosby gritted his teeth and said, “I’m good to drive. I finished the beerbefore extra innings even began. YouknewI wanted to see the end, and there ain’t no television at the campground.”
“You’renotgood. You can barely see at night as it is, forget about while drunk, and I’ll be damned if we die out here in the middle of nowhere.”
That set him off. “I’mnotdrunk Liz, and I can see fine. Fine enough to go faster than twenty miles an hour. At this rate we won’t get to sleep until dawn.”
Liz said, “You and your baseball. If I knew you’d be glued to every damn game I wouldn’t have agreed to be stuck in this RV, stopping at a bar along the route to watch whoever’s playing. We should have just stayed home and saved the money.”
She glared at him and said, “I thought this was supposed to be getting away from all of that. Me out of the ER, you out of the cold. Now, we won’t see any of the lake or the hills. We’ll just get up at the crack of dawn and start driving again.”
The words caused Mosby’s face to redden, precisely because hehadsold the trip that way. Liz was a registered nurse who worked nights in an emergency room, and they’d both grown tired of the grind, with Mosby coming up with the RV trip as an escape.
Wanting to end the fight and not wanting to sleep on the floor—or worse, on the ground—Mosby said, “Okay, okay, it’s not like we’re on a precise time schedule. Let’s get up when we want, go hike the trails, and leave when we want. Spend another night if you want.”
Liz smiled and Mosby was pleased to see he’d mollified her. She said, “You’re sure? We might need to skip the next stop and drive straight through.”
He started to reply, then saw a group of lights headed their way in the darkness, on both sides of the road. He thought it looked like a blob of aliens, each weaving closer together, then farther apart.
Not cars.
He leaned forward, saying, “What the hell is that?”
Liz peered through the windshield, saying, “I don’t know.” She put her foot on the brake, and in seconds the lights swooped around them, followedby a throaty rumble of a half dozen engines. Liz squealed just as a final light sped into the halo of their own headlights. Mosby caught a flash of something larger than a motorcycle, then a blurred image of a van streaked past, its driver-side headlight smashed, the chrome of the reflector aimed in the air, the bulb dangling out like the eyeball of a corpse.
It disappeared as soon as it entered into view, flashing so fast Mosby wondered if he’d imagined the vision. Liz slammed on the brakes, and they skidded to a stop, the suddenness flinging Mosby against his seat belt. He sat back up, staring behind them, the lights disappearing until the high desert shrouded them in darkness again, the rumble of the exhausts fading in the distance like a bad dream.
Liz said, “What on earth was that?”
Mosby shook his head and said, “Crazy bastards on motorcycles. I hope that’s not a sign about this campsite.”
“You think it is?”
“I don’t know. That’s not what the RV travel website said, and they’ve been pretty good so far. Let’s just get there.”
Liz started driving again, this time picking up the pace as if to get some distance between them and the motorcycles. On the horizon she saw another light, saying, “What’s that?”
Mosby leaned forward, again, now regretting that final beer. He said, “It’s not a headlight. It’s bigger and off the road.”
They drew closer, the light growing larger, and Mosby said, “It’s a fire. Something’s on fire.”
Liz said, “It’s a vehicle.”
She slowed as they pulled up beside the blaze, Mosby seeing a pickup truck with flames burning furiously, all the way to the tires. Next to the fire was a figure in the dirt.
He said, “Stop. There’s somebody hurt.”
Liz pulled in front of the burning pyre and said, “Maybe we should just go, call the police and let them handle it.”
“That guy needs help. Pull over.”
