CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Off To See The Wizard
THAT LINE KEEPS going through Cason’s head: Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. Except that the opposite is true—Kansas is exactly where they are.
He loved and hated that movie as a kid. Something about it always felt off-kilter—men made of metal or stuffed with hay, monkeys with fangs and wings, evil witches, lying wizards, a cold city made of emerald. It never surprised him that all Dorothy wanted to do was go home. Other kids said, why does she want to leave? She just wants to go back to boring old black-and-white Kansas. But boring old black-and-white Kansas at least made sense. Home was where you came from. It had rules. Sanity. But Oz was a place of madness. Of dreams and nightmares, where impossible things were possible.
Even driving through the flat-plane empty-plain nowhere of Kansas in a rental Dodge SUV, Cason can’t help but feel unpinned and lost, like Dorothy—swept up by a funnel cloud, thrown into a land where the impossible was suddenly all-too-terrifyingly-possible. Gods and monsters, good and evil.
Like Dorothy, Cason just wants to go home.
Wants to find out this was all a dream.
He’s not sure he’ll be afforded that luxury.
“It’s empty, man,” Tundu says. “This place is dead nothin’.”
He’s right. It’s flat as a sheet of paper. Cason never much thought of Pennsylvania as having a real intense topography, but compared to Kansas, Pennsylvania’s the Rocky-fucking-Mountains. Some of it is green—corn or wheat, soybeans or sorghum. Some of it is blasted and brown: giant squares of dry, tilled earth growing nothing, not even weeds.
Couple barns and silos, here and there. Some of them run-down, rust-chewed, slowly sinking back to the earth. Sometimes they see a real big operation—metal buildings one after the next, big green tractors and threshers and other farm equipment churning along, leaving a line of black smoke in the air.
And then back to nothing again.
“It’s sort of peaceful,” Psyche says from the back of the car. “It’s like the end of the Earth. Perhaps somewhere ahead we’ll find the horizon line and drop off into nothing.”
Cason thinks but does not say: That’s what I’m afraid of.
The GPS they rented dings, calls out a new direction.
And they turn off the highway.
THE WIND WHIPS across the tall grass, hissing and shaking. Clouds like tufts of fur from a car-struck deer drift across the pale blue sky.
Beneath them, a concrete circle in the earth. Footprint bigger than a barn silo. Diameter of five cars lined up bumper to bumper.
About ten feet past the circle, a small red shack with a padlocked door.
Psyche’s eyes roll around behind her eyelids, like a jawbreaker pressing against the inside of a child’s cheek. They suddenly snap open.
“Something is trying to keep me out.”
“So, this is the address?” Cason asks, slinging his pack over his shoulder. It’s filled with a few provisions from Philly: food, water, a bit of rope, a telescoping baton, and a few other... mementos. “There’s nothing here.”
“Something is down there,” Psyche says, pointing to the concrete. “Down deep. That red thread, that bloodline—it ties you to this place.”
She shudders.
“I don’t like this,” Tundu says. “I think we should go. Maybe get a... a motel room. Think this through.”
Cason sighs. He knows his friend is right, but...
The Wizard of Oz again. What makes a king out of a slave? Courage!
He shakes his head. “No. I need to do this. You guys can go on ahead, though. Get the hell out of here. You got me this far, and I appreciate the company, but I don’t want to put either of you at needless risk. Go home. Or go get a steak somewhere. I’m good.”
Tundu laughs. “That’s some action movie bullshit, man. No way. I’m staying.”
“And like I said,” Psyche explains. “I’m a very curious girl.”
Cason stares at them. Finally, he nods. “All right, then. Let’s figure out how to crack this nut. This is an old missile silo, am I right?”
Tundu gives Psyche a look. Psyche just shrugs.
“I don’t know nothing about missile silos,” Tundu says.
Psyche agrees. “I don’t even know what that is—” But then Cason feels fingers plunging into his mind—a cold mental saline rush—and then she blinks. “Oh. That’s what a missile silo is. Yes, this looks like one. By the way, the human race is sort of terrible. Trying to explode each other with weapons of that scale?”
Cason frowns at her. “Don’t do that again without asking.”
“Yes, sir.” A twinkle of mischief in her otherwise icy eyes.
“Try that shack,” Tundu says.
The shack has paint peeling off in big leprous strips. The padlock isn’t particularly impressive, but it’s enough to keep them from opening the door. Cason rattles the door. Shoulders into it. Nothing.
“I didn’t bring bolt cutters,” Cason says. “Shit. We’re gonna have to find a... hardware store or a Home Depot or something.” In the middle of wide open nowhere.
“Back in the car?” Tundu asks.
Psyche touches Cason. “You’ve got godsblood in you. Maybe it’s time to start acting like it.” He feels her inside his head again, this time giving something a little push, like nudging a coffee mug off the edge of a table—
A blush of power blooms within him.
It channels to his limbs. He feels a rush, a steroidal high.
One hard kick shatters the door inward. The padlock thuds, unbroken, against the ground. Cason laughs, and Tundu just looks amazed.
“That was some shit, man.” Tundu nods. “Respect.”
Into the shack, then.
The shack is shoddy wood, but the ground inside is hard, clean concrete.
And in the center, a hatch. Cason kneels down, tries to turn it. It won’t budge. But he takes Psyche’s words to heart—he wraps his arms around it, puts his shoulder into it like he’s not just trying to choke out a human opponent, but trying to pop the head off a pissed-off grizzly bear. Sweat pops up on his brow, his bones and muscles cry out in pain—
The wheel barks, groans, then turns.
Cason spins it. The hatch opens.
A stainless steel stair twists down into the darkness. A breeze breathes up through the passage. Cason detects smells that don’t make much sense: musty mold, fine, but he also smells the scent of cut mushrooms, of dried leaves, and of a bestial musk like he smelled back in the house of the Sasquatch Man.
“I guess it’s time,” he says. “Into the belly of the beast.”
“I’m ready,” Tundu says.
“No. No way. You’re staying up here.” Tundu starts to protest, but Cason holds up a finger. “I appreciate it. I appreciate like hell you coming out here to help me. But I can’t have you going down there with me. Besides, I need someone up here. To watch our back while we’re down there and to get ready to drive us far, far away from here.” Cason grins. “And I figure you’re too damn big to fit down the tunnel, anyway.”
Tundu chuckles. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, man. I stay up top. You got it.”
Cason looks to Psyche, eyebrows raised.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Half-gods first,” she says, gesturing to the hole.
Down, then, into the dark.