Page 56 of Cold, Cold Bones

“Smith lives there?” Slidell snapped.

Piccitelli glared again. He was very good at it.

“Can we expect other company?”

Piccitelli shrugged.

“Don’t plan no trips,” Slidell said, tossing out the old cliché. With that, he threw the SUV into reverse and gunned backward, spewing mud and gravel onto the shape-changing patches of snow.

“What do you think?” I asked when we were once again on the blacktop.

Slidell snorted. “Real affable guy.”

“Think he’s on the level?”

“Or maybe he’s busting his balls laughing at us right now.”

That was it for conversation until we’d made the split, then the turn.

Piccitelli wasn’t kidding. The road, if it even qualified as one, dropped at about a thirty-degree angle, two frozen tire tracks running the center of a strip of grudgingly softening mud.

Lurching slowly downhill, vegetation scraping both sides of the Explorer, Slidell spoke without turning to me.

“Stay alert.”

“Always.” Then, “Why?”

“I got a bad feeling.”

“Sounds like Boldonado fits the profile for the hanging man.”

“I don’t like these pricks.”

I was about to query which pricks when Slidell hit the brakes so hard I had to brace on the dash.

Just ahead, the road rose a few degrees, then dropped even more abruptly. We both studied the bizarre sight in the small valley below.

To the left was a partially filled pit. To the right was an enormous mound of soil. Sloping at the sides, square at the corners, and flat ontop, the hillock looked like a smaller version of Cahokia Mounds, a burial site in Illinois where I’d worked as a grad student.

Unlike the pre-Columbian ceremonial structure I’d excavated, this mound had been created with a backhoe. Conical bumps from individual front loader bucket dumps rippled its surface. A raw wound, suggesting ongoing pirating of soil, gouged its southeastern corner.

The sequence of events was clear. A hole had been dug; the dirt heaped nearby. Now the heap was being mined to re-fill the hole.

It was the open half of the pit that riveted my attention. More accurately, its contents.

Placed deep enough to eventually be buried by a thick layer of soil, maybe four meters below ground level, were two bright yellow buses parked side by side.

“What the fuck?!” I was with Slidell on that.

“They’re school buses,” I said.

“No shit. But why?”

“To provide living space following a doomsday event.”

I was recalling an article I’d read the day before while studying up on preppers. A story about a survivalist in Ontario who’d buried forty-two buses. Over the decades, the man had outfitted his underground compound with LED lighting, food, tools, even a dental office.

“This is some messed-up shit,” Slidell said.