The Prophet Motive by Eric Christopherson Read Free Book Online Page B

traveled southeast to San Jose and then pivoted directly south. Fifty miles later, near the vineyards of Santa Clara County, they turned east onto a small highway that wound through the coastal mountain range. Once through the mountains, they entered into the great flat Central Valley of California.
    The world’s largest and most productive food region , she recalled verbatim from a Frommer’s tourist guide that she’d read only a few nights before, because she always did her homework, the extra homework too.
    The bus wasn’t air-conditioned, and she began to sweat profusely, along with the others. She recalled reading also that the Central Valley stayed hot, dry and dusty all summer long.
    Group singing broke out. They sang a string of early John Denver tunes, which Marilyn actually enjoyed.
    They reached Interstate 5—two lanes of traffic in each direction, narrowly split by a barrier of scarlet, pink, and white oleander—and proceeded south. The concrete flowed perfectly straight for miles at a time, like a pair of endless airport runways. The orchards seemed ocean-size, and the teeming fields, already converging with the shoulders of the interstate, threatened further encroachment, like a jungle at the fringe of civilization. Meanwhile, legions of trailers and flatbeds rattled the bus windows from both directions, hauling produce.
    During a bathroom break at an interstate rest stop, Marilyn drew a lusty stare from a fellow new recruit, a pimply teenage boy in over-sized blue jeans and a white and black Eminem Tee shirt. He wasn’t even fully grown yet, only five foot five or six, a runaway, who had no idea just how far he’d run away now that he’d encountered Earthbound.
    Thirty minutes past Fresno, the caravan of buses abandoned the interstate in favor of an eastbound highway leading through the flat city of Visalia. Beyond the city, they traveled a bumpy country road to the edge of the Sierra foothills. Aura notified Marilyn when their bus reached the outskirts of Earthbound’s main complex, or what Aura called “Natural High Farms.”
    A blood red sun was poised to dip behind the nearest rise. In the distance loomed the bluish mountains of the High Sierra. Nearby, Marilyn could see—through the smudgy, lower portion of the bus window—corn stalks in a field edged with rough, split-rail wooden fencing. There were peach and apple orchards next and then tree crops of some kind. Walnuts, perhaps.
    The scent of manure intensified as the buses passed by a white dairy barn set far back from the road in a grazing pasture, where a hundred dairy cows or more loitered. The buses slowed, with their squeaky brakes and loud downshift noises, as they passed an old red clapboard farmhouse, and turned left through a gated entrance, finally parking in the rear of a gravel lot, beside a weathered, two-story red barn.
    Nearby, a steel-gray eighteen-wheeler with its cargo doors open was being loaded with crates of strawberries. Sunburnt farmhands, male and female both, were toting the crates from the barn, one at a time, in an orderly procession, as if the forklift hadn’t been invented yet.
    Marilyn scanned the strawberry loaders in search of a six-foot six-inch redhead fitting the description of Daryl Finck. But in her heart she hoped that she wouldn’t find him just yet. She wanted her research opportunity.

     
    As he disembarked, John scanned the faces of the strawberry loaders. No Daryl Finck. He didn’t actually expect to find Daryl still residing on the property. Much more likely to be found here were clues to his whereabouts, as well as clues to the identity and location of Daryl’s accomplice.
    Bob Marsh, last night’s global warming lecturer, led the new recruits—numbering about fifteen—behind the red barn, where they edged a little pond ringed with willow trees and picked up a walking trail into the woods. Bob had exchanged his safari outfit for an apricot Oxford shirt and black jeans with cowboy