Hymn by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

deliberate?’
    â€˜Come on, Munoz, use your grey matter. This was no traffic accident, for Christ’s sake. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that. This is a massacre. A crack massacre, or a sect massacre, or maybe both. Santaria maybe. You know the kind of thing. Candles and beads and plaster madonnas and sacrificed chickens, and the kids with the Uzis will get you if the voodoo-dolls don’t. Whoever it was, they were seriously less-than-amiable.’
    He shook his head in exasperation. ‘What I can’t understand is why they all look so frigging happy about it.’
    â€˜It sure seems kind of unusual,’ Ric agreed.
    â€˜Unusual? I’d call it frigging unreal. I mean, think about it. A busload of people get themselves driven out to the desert. Very nice, very scenic. Then they get burned to death with happy smiles on their faces and without making the slightest attempt to escape. That, my friend, is what I personally define as a problem I could do without. A question which may be susceptible to solution, but to which I don’t care to know the answer.’
    They were still waiting for the first helicopters to come into sight when Ric noticed something shifting at the top of the ridge, something tawny-brown, maybe a dog or a coyote. He nodded to Jim Griglak and said, ‘Did you see that?’
    Jim Griglak shaded his eyes with his hand.
    â€˜I can’t see nothing.’
    â€˜Top of the ridge—there, to the left.’
    They glimpsed something of what looked like a shoulder, then an arm. ‘Goddamn it, there’s somebody up there!’ Jim Griglak exclaimed, and then yelled out, ‘Hey! Hey up there! You come on down here! Do you hear me? You come right down here!’
    A dark head bobbed just above the horizon, then ducked away.
    â€˜Goddamn it,’ Jim cursed. ‘Goddamn it to hell!’ He hitched up his gunbelt, and began to trundle around the burned-out bus and up the slope. Ric started after him, but without turning his head, Jim waved him away. ‘You stay there . . . guard the bus. I’ll get this bastard.’
    Ric watched him as he scaled the dusty, heat-dazzled rocks. His arms pumped, his trousers flapped, his saddlebags bounced with every stride, but he clambered up to the top of the ridge with awesome agility, and disappeared from view.
    Ric turned his head. He could see the first helicopter now, its canopy reflecting a sharp star of sunlight as it came skimming low and fast over the desert hills.
    Ric blinked, and grimaced, and looked around him in deep uncertainty. The helicopter was landing now, and lashing up smoke and dust and fragments of blackened fabric. The hair of the half-burned Hispanic girl flew up over her head like a fright-wig. She seemed to be laughing. A blizzard of ash suddenly burst from the busdriver’s face, and was swept away in the downdraught.
    As the helicopter’s rotors were whip-whistling to a standstill, Jim reappeared on the crest of the ridge. At first he looked as if he were alone, but when he moved aside, Ric saw that he was prodding in front of him an Indian boy of about twelve. The boy came down the slope crabwise, clutching at the rocks. He had long greasy black hair, circular grannie Ray-Bans and a red bandana around his forehead. He was dressed in a grubby Elvis Presley T-shirt and yellow-and-purple bermudas.
    â€˜Hey, Sergeant!’ called Ric.
    â€˜Yeah, look what I found,’ Jim called back. He nudged the boy down the slope and around the wreck of the bus.
    Two lean young highway patrolmen climbed out of the helicopter and came walking slowly across toward them, staring at the bus in disbelief.
    â€˜Jesus,’ said one of them, wiping the sweat from his face with his neckscarf. ‘What the hell happened here?’
    â€˜I was hoping Geronimo here might be able to tell us,’ Jim replied. ‘What’s your name, son? Were you here when this bus went