Empire Of Salt (6 page)

They came to what looked like three trailers welded together and Veronica told them that it belonged to an Amish family who'd come out to the Salton Sea for the "simplicity of life," whatever that meant. Natasha and Derrick were quite familiar with Amish people. They saw them all the time coming from Pennsylvania in their horse-drawn buggies, old-timey clothes and existences free of creature comforts. In fact, Lancaster County, where they were from, had a large Amish population, so their presence here provided a strange comfort. Still, Natasha had never expected to see Amish people in the middle of the desert, much less on the shores of a rotting sea. Although the trailers were a modern contrivance, there were no antennas, satellite dishes or electric lines running from the poles alongside the road to the home, like in the other trailers. The shades were drawn and the sun glinted off the siding in places where the paint had worn. Nothing stirred in the yard.

"Creepy," Derrick said.

Veronica laughed. "I know what you mean. I've had better feelings about crack houses than this joint."

"How many kids did you say they had?" Natasha asked.

"Three. Two boys about Derrick's age and a girl nearer my age. They don't talk very much and their father doesn't let them out."

"What do they do?"

Veronica gazed solemnly at Derrick as she considered the question, then her eyes turned to slits as she smiled wickedly. "They worship the dark gods and will hearken in an age of savagery the likes of which the world has never seen."

The air was still for a moment. Derrick stared at the trailer with wide eyes, his mouth forming a small circle of surprise. Even Natasha stared at the U-shaped compound, wondering if there was an altar inside covered with the carcasses of small furry animals, or maybe something larger and with tentacles, or even a block of salt carved into the figure of a Dark God.

"Gotcha!" Veronica laughed.

Derrick and Natasha both jumped, caught in their own imaginations. They smiled self-consciously, feeling like rubes.

"You guys are too easy." Veronica snorted.

Natasha laughed, but was irritated at the girl. She kept a smile on her face, though. Instead, she turned it back on her. "Did you just say 'hearken'? Gandalf called, he wants his word back."

Veronica glared for a moment, clearly not used to the challenge, then let herself laugh again easily. "If you know Gandalf then you're a closet gamer, aren't you?" She said it as fact, rather than as a question.

"My dad made me read the books before he'd let us see the movies," Natasha said. "I thought some of them were too long. Derrick here is the gamer. I don't really care for them."

"What do you play?" Veronica asked Derrick.

"Death Fantasy."

"Which one?"

"All of them. I'm on III right now."

"Have you reached the Demon Lich yet?"

He shook his head.

"Wait until you do. It's awesome. If you get stuck, I know some ways to help."

Derrick smiled, then stepped back and pointed at one of the windows.

"Did you see that?"

Natasha looked but didn't see anything.

"The curtain moved. I swear it did."

Veronica laughed again. "It's not like it's haunted. People live there. They're just weird people."

"Who hearken the coming of savagery," Natasha added.

"An age of savagery."

Natasha rolled her eyes, but relaxed. At least the younger girl would make the summer livable, if not enjoyable.

They continued down the street, passing three empty houses for every occupied one. Some were burned-out hulks. Natasha wasn't certain if it was because of fire run amok or because burning down empty trailers had been someone's strategy to alleviate the boredom. No pets roamed, although she could hear an occasional dog bark. No children played. They only glimpsed people now and then, through windows or in their back yards, never long outside, intent on getting back inside. They'd passed a community center with a basketball court, but the rims were bent, falling and rusted to uselessness. A jungle gym made of tires was home to an Africanized beehive which Veronica said they should leave alone if they knew what was good for them. Still, Natasha had never seen killer bees and knew only what she saw on television.

The tiny town on the edge of the inland sea was a postage stamp, built in a square grid and surrounded on three sides by a twenty foot high seawall of sand and dirt, reinforced with a mesh of iron bars. Veronica explained that the seawall was to keep the sea from flooding the town. When the rainy season hit the Empire Valley, the irrigation ran off the fields and into the Salton Sea. The sea level could rise quickly, sometimes with dire consequences, so most trailers had been set on concrete pylons. It also accounted for the wooden-framed roof decks that had been built atop nearly every trailer, allowing the residents to sit high and dry in their lawn chairs and watch the sea over the seawall that surrounded the town.

Strange machines chugged in the ground at the four corners of Bombay Beach. At each one, a pipe ran from a huge propane tank down into a manmade well covered with wire mesh. Gurgling emanated from the depths, echoing in the concrete tube like a monster's growl. Derrick dropped to his knees in front of one and gripped the mesh as he tried to plumb the shadowy depths with his gaze. The smell coming through the grate was a putrid distillation of everything horrible about the sea, but it couldn't quash the boy's curiosity.

"That's a sump," Veronica said. "This is actually Sump Pump Number Two, if you want to be specific."

Suddenly the machine growled.

Derrick jerked back at the sound, then laughed self-consciously. "Sounds like a dragon down there."

"Whatever it is, the Army Corps of Engineers put it here to suck out the ground water. They say that without it, we'd be nothing more than a salty swamp." She stomped on the cracked clay underfoot. "Instead we have the luxury of this."

Derrick growled into the sump, matching his tone with that of the mechanism. His voice filled the concrete void above the machinery.

"Follow me," Veronica said, snapping her fingers. "I want you to see this."

Across the road from the sump was a set of stairs, broken and sun bleached like the bones of a whale. When they reached the top, the sea in all its inglorious decay spread out before them. But that wasn't why Veronica had summoned them up there. She pointed to what looked like a power plant less than a quarter mile across the quay.

"What's that?" Derrick asked.

"If you believe the Mad Scientist, it's a top secret government facility where they build things and hide them from prying eyes."

Derrick's eyes glowed at the idea of a secret government compound.

Natasha rolled her eyes.

The low gray building had three immense smokestacks. White fists of smoke punched out from two of them, first expanding, then withering under the heat of the all-powerful sun. A row of heavily-tinted square windows ran along the front of the building. Two white Suburban SUVs were parked in the side lot. An access road ran around behind the building. A twelve-foot-high chain link fence protected the entire setup from intrusion from the outside. An access gate could open to the quay, but was now closed and locked with a chain.

"What do they build there?" Derrick asked.

"Don't be a sucker, Derrick. She's pulling your leg."

Veronica put on a
Who, me?
expression.

"Puh-lease," was Natasha's response.

"Seriously. I did not make that up about what the Mad Scientist said and I'm not pulling your leg." Veronica added as she noticed the doubt in the other two faces, "It's really not me. It's the Mad Scientist who's pulling your leg."

"Is there really a Mad Scientist?" Derrick asked.

"Derrick." Natasha shook her head and sighed. "I have got to get you out more."

Veronica laughed. "He's just another one of the crazy people left in Bombay Beach. He used to be some sort of real scientist for the government. His name is Andy Gudgel. I'll show you where he lives. It's kind of cool." She gave Natasha a twinkling look. "Think hobbits."

Natasha mouthed the word then shook her head and gave voice to the question that had been boiling inside of her. "Why are there so many crazy people here?"

Veronica scoffed at Natasha's question. "Look around you. We're kids so we have no choice, but if you were grown up, would you stay? I mean, come on, would you want to live here?"

"Not for a second."

"There you go. Those who could leave, left. They didn't even sell their homes. They just left. Those who couldn't leave, for whatever reason, stayed. And so you're left with the desperate or insane."

"Which one are you?" Natasha asked.

"I think I'm desperate, but I might be insane. They say you never know when you're insane." Veronica poked Natasha in the arm. "And which one are you?"

"Oh, we're not staying here, at least I'm not."

Veronica nodded and grinned. "Sure you're not."

Natasha ignored her and descended the stairs back into the town. She kept a forearm over her nose to help keep out the stink. She wondered if her clothes smelled of the place already. And what about her hair? She glanced back at the others, wishing they'd come down so she could find someplace with air conditioning.

"What is it, really?" Derrick asked, standing at the top of the seawall, gazing intently at the mysterious facility.

"Do you really want to know?" Veronica joined him in staring at the long, gray building perched on the edge of the sea, smoke billowing from two of its three smokestacks.

Derrick nodded.

"It's a desalination plant. Uses osmosis to remove the salt from the water so we can drink it."

"Osmosis," whispered Derrick. "Sounds like the name of a wizard."

Natasha shook her head as she watched the others descend the stairs and join her. Who's to say they all weren't crazy?

They continued trudging through town, eventually arriving at an immaculately-painted, robin's-egg-blue trailer bordered by a chain link fence. The ground was covered in empty beer cans several feet high. A man with poufy black hair and thick black sideburns sat in a bench swing attached to an awning that ran the length of the trailer. He had a beer in a camouflage foam sleeve, and sipped from it like a man of leisure.

As they approached, a car with bumper stickers from Magic Mountain and Disneyland eased past. The man in the swing leaped from his spot, sending cans into a crashing cacophony. He wore a white tank top and hot pink bellbottom pants with rhinestone studs down the sides. He spun, dropped his pants, mooned the passing motorists, and shook his ass in the hot desert air for all it was worth. He shouted something that sounded like
Love me tender
, then hitched up his pants, and with a thunderous clatter of cans beneath his feet, sat back down in his swing. It didn't appear as if he had spilled even a drop of beer.

"That's Kristov," Veronica indicated. "My uncle says he's an ex-Romanian freedom fighter from the days of the Soviet Union."

"What's with the Elvis getup?" Natasha asked.

"He's a little touched in the head. He just sits there, drinks beer all day, mooning the tourists, pretending to be Elvis."

"Is he dangerous?"

"No."

"What happened to him?" Derrick asked.

"He told some of the other kids he'd been in a gulag and had been experimented on."

Derrick asked, "What's a gulag?"

"A prison, I think," Natasha said.

"So he was a criminal?" Derrick asked.

"Who knows?" Veronica pointed to the moat of empty beer cans surrounding the house. "See those cans? The reason he has them all around his trailer is to warn him if someone comes near."

"Veronica, come and drink beer with me. I will teach everything I know to you." His accent was a little slurred, but held a note of playfulness.

"No thanks, Kristov. Gotta show the new folks around."

"These are new peoples? I love new peoples. Come to Kristov and drink beer."

"There's more to life than beer, Kristov," Veronica said.

"Says you." He turned to Natasha. "Hurry and leave while you still can," he shouted. "Look!" He leaped up, spun around and treated them with the view of his ass usually only reserved for tourists.

Natasha and Derrick both recoiled at the hairy protrusion.

"Oh my god," Natasha said.

The ex-Romanian freedom fighter in the Elvis clothes sat back on his swing and began rocking himself back and forth. "You should go now, before it's too late and the monsters get you."

They left him there and continued on their tour of the town. Natasha tried not to think about the warning, especially coming from someone as clearly crazy as Kristov was, but she couldn't get it out of her head.