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Still Life with Crows
| Author: | Lincoln Child Douglas Preston |
| Publisher: |
Warner Books, 2003 |
| Series: | Pendergast: Book 4 |
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1. Relic |
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| Book Type: | Novel |
| Genre: | Horror |
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Synopsis
When a series of murders strikes small-town Kansas, FBI Special Agent Pendergast must track down a killer or a curse -- either way, no one is safe.
A small Kansas town has turned into a killing ground.
Or is it a darker force, a curse upon the land?
Amid golden cornfields, FBI Special Agent Pendergast discovers evil in the blood of America's heartland.
No one is safe.
Excerpt
Chapter One
Medicine Creek, Kansas. Early August. Sunset.
The great sea of yellow corn stretches from horizon to horizon under an angry sky.When the wind rises the corn stirs and rustles as if alive, and when the wind diesdown again the corn falls silent. The heat wave is now in its third week, and dead airhovers over the corn in shimmering curtains.
One road cuts through the corn from north to south; another from east to west.Where the two roads cross lies the town. Sad gray buildings huddle together at theintersection, gradually thinning along both roads into separate houses, thenscattered farms, and then nothing. A creek, edged by scraggly trees, wanders infrom the northwest, loops lazily around the town, and disappears in the southeast. Itis the only curved thing in this landscape of straight lines. To the northeast rises acluster of mounds surrounded by trees.
A giant slaughterhouse stands south of the town, lost in the corn, its metal sidesscoured by years of dust storms. The faint odor of blood and disinfectant drifts in aplume southward from the plant, riding the fitful currents of air. Beyond, just overthe horizon, stand three gigantic grain silos, like a tall-masted ship lost at sea.
The temperature is exactly one hundred degrees. Heat lightning flickers silentlyalong the distant northern horizon. The corn is seven feet high, the fat cobs clusteredon the stalks. Harvest is two weeks away. One. Twilight is falling over the landscape.The orange sky bleeds away into red. A handful of streetlights blink on in the town. Ablack-and-white police cruiser passes along the main street, heading east into thegreat nothingness of corn, its headlights stabbing into the rising darkness. Somethree miles ahead of the cruiser, a column of slow-circling turkey vultures rides athermal above the corn. They wheel down, then rise up again, circling endlessly,uneasily, rising and falling in a regular cadence.
Sheriff Dent Hazen fiddled with the dashboard knobs and cursed at the tepid air thatstreamed from the vents. He felt the vent with the back of his hand but it wasn'tgetting any cooler: the AC had finally bit the dust. He muttered another imprecationand cranked down the window, tossing out his cigarette butt. Furnacelike air boiledin, and the cruiser filled with the smell of late-summer Kansas: earth, cornstalks. Hecould see the circling turkey buzzards rise and dip, rise and dip above the dyingsmear of sunset along the horizon. One ugly motherfucker of a bird, thought Hazen,and he glanced over at the long-barreled Winchester Defender lying on the seatbeside him. With any luck, he'd get close enough to assist two or three of them intothe next world.
He slowed and glanced once again at the dark birds silhouetted against the sky. Whythe hell aren't any of them landing? Turning off the main road, he eased the cruiseronto one of the many rutted dirt lanes that cut their way through the thousandsquare miles of corn surrounding Medicine Creek. He moved forward, keeping awatch on the sky, until the birds were almost directly overhead. This was as close ashe was going to get by car. From here, he'd have to walk.
He threw the cruiser into park and, more out of habit than necessity, snapped on thelightbar flashers. He eased his frame out of the cruiser and stood for a momentfacing the wall of corn, drawing a rough hand across his stubbled chin. The rowswent in the wrong direction and it was going to be a bitch getting through them. Justthe thought of shouldering through all those rows made him weary, and for amoment he thought about putting the cruiser in reverse and getting the hell back totown. But it was too late for that now: the neigh-bor's call had already been logged.Old Wilma Lowry had nothing better to do but look out her window and report thelocation of dead animals. But this was his last call of the day, and a few extra hourson Friday evening at least guaranteed him a long, lazy, boozy Sunday fishing atHamilton Lake State Park.
Hazen lit another cigarette, coughed, and scratched himself, looking at the dry ranksof corn. He wondered if it was somebody's cow who'd wandered into the corn andwas now dead of bloat and greed. Since when was it a sheriff 's responsibility tocheck on dead livestock? But he already knew the answer: ever since the livestockinspector retired. There was nobody to take his place and no longer a need for one.Every year there were fewer family farms, fewer livestock, fewer people. Most peopleonly kept cows and horses for nostalgic reasons. The whole county was going to hell.
Realizing he'd put off the task long enough, Hazen sighed, hiked up his janglingservice belt, slipped his flashlight out of its scabbard, shouldered the shotgun, andpushed his way into the corn.
Despite the lateness of the hour, the sultry air refused to lift. The beam of his lightflashed through the cornstalks stretching before him like endless rows of prison bars.His nose filled with the smell of dry stalks, that peculiar rusty smell so familiar it waspart of his very being. His feet crunched dry clods of earth, kicking up dust. It hadbeen a wet spring, and until the heat wave kicked in a few weeks back the summersun had been benevolent. The stalks were as high as Hazen could ever remember, atleast a foot or more over his head. Amazing how fast the black earth could turn todust without rain. Once, as a kid, he'd run into a cornfield to escape his older brotherand gotten lost. For two hours. The disorientation he'd felt then came back to himnow. Inside the corn rows, the air felt trapped: hot, fetid, itchy.
Hazen took a deep drag on the cigarette and continued forward, knocking the fatcobs aside with irritation. The field belonged to Buswell Agricon of Atlanta, andSheriff Hazen could not have cared less if they lost a few ears because of his roughpassage. Within two weeks Agricon's huge combine harvesters would appear on thehorizon, mowing down the corn, each feeding half a dozen streams of kernels intotheir hoppers. The corn would be trucked to the cluster of huge grain silos just overthe northern horizon and from there railed to feed lots from Nebraska to Missouri, todisappear down the throats of mindless castrated cattle, which would in turn betransformed into big fat marbled sirloins for rich assholes in New York and Tokyo. Ormaybe this was one of those gasohol fields, where the corn wasn't eaten by man oreven beast but burned up in the engines of cars instead. What a world.
Hazen bullied his way through row after row. Already his nose was running. Hetossed his cigarette away, then realized he should probably have pinched it off first.Hell with it. A thousand acres of the damn corn could burn and Buswell Agriconwouldn't even notice. They should take care of their own fields, pick up their owndead animals. Of course, the executives had probably never set foot in a realcornfield in their lives.
Like almost everyone else in Medicine Creek, Hazen came from a farming family thatno longer farmed. They had sold their land to companies like Buswell Agricon. Thepopulation of Medicine Creek had been dropping for more than half a century and thegreat industrial cornfields were now dotted with abandoned houses, their emptywindow frames staring like dead eyes over the billowy main of crops. But Hazen hadstayed. Not that he liked Medicine Creek particularly; what he liked was wearing auniform and being respected. He liked the town because he knew the town, everylast person, every dark corner, every nasty secret. Truth was, he simply couldn'timagine himself anywhere else. He was as much a part of Medicine Creek asMedicine Creek was a part of him.
Hazen stopped suddenly. He swept his beam through the stalks ahead. The air, fullof dust, now carried another smell: the perfume of decay. He glanced up. Thebuzzards were far above now, directly over his head. Another fifty yards and hewould be there. The air was still, the silence complete. He unshouldered his shotgunand moved forward more cautiously.
The smell of decay drifted through the rows, sweeter by the moment. Now Hazencould make out a gap in the corn, a clearing directly ahead of him. Odd. The sky hadflamed its red farewell and was now dark.
The sheriff raised his gun, eased off the safety with his thumb, and broke throughthe last corn row into the clearing. For a moment he looked around in wildincomprehension. And then, rather suddenly, he realized what he was looking at.
The gun went off when it hit the ground and the load of double-ought buckshot blewby Hazen's ear. But the sheriff barely noticed.
Copyright © 2003 by Lincoln Child
Copyright © 2003 by Douglas Preston
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