Rheinman stepped up with his hammer and I held my pistol at the ready. We all stared at the shimmering shapes in the rip. I wondered what they were thinking. They had to have seen what we’d done to the men in the truck.
After another minute, the Gray Men moved away as one. They retreated, stepping back into their own existence. The fires and the rip died together. Soon, there was nothing there in the bowl of the fountain but drifting ash and hot embers. The PVC pipes at the bottom of the fountain had burnt away to nothing. The blue tiles had cracked and been scorched black.
“They won’t suspect our next move,” I told Gilling. “This will help us. We’ve just created a diversion.”
Gilling looked less than pleased. “They will circle around this spot in the desert on their side. Soon they will create their own rip near here and come for revenge.”
“Maybe. But they won’t get any satisfaction if we leave right now.”
The rest of the cultists didn’t need any further urging. They were already climbing into their vehicles.
“Whoever’s with me, we’re taking Gilling’s SUV,” I said. “Come on, Gilling.”
“What if I’ve changed my mind?”
“Then you are a liar and a coward. Did you really think this was going to go perfectly?”
Gilling rubbed his face. After a moment’s inner debate, he threw me a jingling set of keys. “You drive,” he said.
We both climbed into the SUV along with Fiona, Abigail, Rheinman, and the sweating Souza who still gripped his dolly as if it were a bag of cash. We followed the rush of cars out of the grounds and rolled down dark streets. As we reached the bottom of the hill, a fire engine passed us going up the lane. I chuckled. Someone had called the fire department. If they met up with the Gray Men, everyone was in for a shock.
We headed northeast, out of Henderson. I turned onto Pabco road, which led up into the Frenchman Mountain area. This was where I’d estimated the enemy base was located now that I’d seen it from two different angles. My triangulation was very crude, but in both our existences this region was rocky and barren.
Frenchman Mountain itself was a geographical oddity. Standing on the eastern border of Las Vegas, north of Henderson, the mountain was formed of the most ancient rock to be found anywhere on the North American continent. The peaks and ridges had been pushed up from an ancient seabed of a nameless ocean. The stones here were thick with fossils of strange creatures that had been extinct for eons. Trilobite fossils were common, things that resembled lobsters stripped of their claws. They had once crawled here in great numbers.
I didn’t really understand the relationship between our existence and that of the Gray Men, but if we shared a history, this spot was more likely than most to be comparable. I’d done a little thinking about the parallel places we both lived in. Maybe our earth was the same as this place, but there had been a single twist of fate in the distant past of both worlds that had set them apart. Perhaps they represented one possibility, one fork in the road of time, while we represented another. If that were the case, then Frenchman Mountain might be a shared ancestor of history, since every stone here was over a billion years old.
I was peering ahead through the windshield, trying to estimate our distance from Henderson, when something caught my eye off to the north.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing off to the right.
Everyone stared.
“That is someone trying to signal us,” Gilling said with certainty.
“Who…? Could it be the Gray Men?”
“Maybe. But this is unusual behavior. They’ve never crossed to our world and attempted communication. In fact, they’ve never spoken or attempted any form of communication whatsoever.”
“Well, it might only be someone with engine trouble, but I’m going to see who that is. If it is the Gray Men, we are as ready for them now as we’re ever going to be.”
“Madness,” Gilling said. “Why invite trouble? We are quite close to the planned point of departure. Let’s cross over into the world of the Gray Men right now.”
“I can’t ignore this. What if we could establish some kind of dialogue?”
“Who is leading this expedition?” Gilling asked.
“I’m combat, you’re support, remember? So start supporting me.”
I left the road and rolled into the desert. At that moment, the people in the backseat became alarmed.
“Where the hell are you going?” Souza asked.
“As close as I can figure, this is the spot,” I said. “Whoever is out there seems to agree with me.”
“Let’s just stop and form the rip if this is close enough,” suggested Rheinman.
“I want to see who is signaling and why,” I said.
“What if it’s the Gray Men?”
“Then they are smarter than I thought.”
“All right, but we’re off-roading,” Rheinman said in my ear. “What if you run into a rock or fly into a gully and flip us over? At least slow down.”