Prologue

The nightmares were back.

They had declined for a time thanks to his relationship with Shezzie, but had never truly gone away. Now they had come back and there were more of them. Scenes of madness, murder, and evil; the inescapable legacy of Afghanistan haunted the dreams of the man called T. Grafted on were later events. He'd felt the death of Surfer, killed the man who'd been ultimately responsible, then helped slaughter a murderous street gang. His conscious mind understood that it had all been necessary, but the subconscious collected every fear, every doubt, every feeling of guilt and helplessness, and poured them into his dreams.

The dreams always highlighted his inadequacy. Dead friends asked why he'd allowed them to die; T had been the officer in charge, the man responsible! Responsible for their safety, hence responsible for their deaths! For the maiming that left a shell of what had been a young, healthy, alive American soldier.

Worst of all was the memory of a murder. A little girl, a toddler really, looking for her mother. Caught in the crossfire of an ambush and cut to pieces while he watched. He should have been able to help!

Known to the CIA as the Combat Wizard, the world's most powerful psychokinetic, he had been utterly helpless. Conditioned by painful headaches, his abilities had been suppressed to a fraction of their potential. He'd learned the meaning of despair that day. Of being useless. A failure.

His subconscious knew him for the fraud he was, and as soon as he fell asleep it came out to remind him.

***

Depression after combat; it's common. Young men and women die, and for what? Nothing really changes, except that some are dead, some are maimed for life, and the survivors are forever haunted by guilt. When the effects are severe enough, the shrinks call it PTSD. Post-traumatic syndrome is a good label for it, because it's clinical. It doesn't mention the blood, the stink, or the fear. It doesn't remind survivors of the gut-level punch of exploding IEDs, the shattering crash, and the shrieks of the wounded.

Cops know stress as do firemen, but only soldiers and marines, the ground troops at the sharp end, really know the full depths. The victims are family, closer even than parents or siblings. Young, in the best of health, then suddenly chopped down. For combat soldiers, the stress just keeps repeating until something cracks.

Suicide is common. Depression, sleeplessness, then nightmares when he couldn't stay awake any longer; T also considered suicide. And understood it wouldn't happen, couldn't happen, because his treacherous subconscious wouldn't let go. If actual events hadn’t happened the way they did in his dreams, his subconscious didn’t care; it fed on fear, on worry, on what-might-have-been.

After one such nightmare, he'd ended up crouched on the floor, screaming, “Ray! RPG!", before Shezzie woke him. T had gotten a clear look at their faces, the gangsters who’d murdered Marisela. In his dreams he saw their faces clearly. Recognized them as he killed them, one by one. Always, Ray stood by and looked on, and sometimes he shook his head accusingly.

***

The PK, his psychokinetic Talent, had gotten stronger after Afghanistan. Melding his mind with Shezzie's and Ray's had started the process but then had come the final push, when he directly experienced Surfer’s death. Inhibitions had vanished, washed away by all-consuming rage.

But his paranormal abilities couldn't help him now. They wouldn't keep him sane. Every night, with every nightmare, T slid closer to madness. The darkness reached for his mind, ghostly fingers soothing, promising; just let it all slide away, you’ll never feel the fear or guilt again...

T had put the nightmares behind him for a time. Now they were back, and worse than before.

 

Chapter One

T and Shezzie had toured the Southwest, reconnecting with each other and renewing their strained relationship.

They spent a week in Las Vegas, then moved on. California had been fun and they had enjoyed San Francisco, but by mutual agreement they had avoided southern California. Surfer had spent much of his too-short life there before dying across the border in Mexico, a late victim of Henderson’s paranoia. T had attempted to recover the remains, but had been unable to prove family connections, so Surfer’s ashes had eventually been interred in Juarez. Just one more among the unknown and unwanted dead, in a city and nation with too many such.

They traveled up the California coast and passed through Big Sur, sleeping late, making love, dining in local restaurants. Leaving California, they traveled north to Seattle, remaining there for three days before heading southeast to the Utah desert. They marveled at the erosion surrounding the tall buttes that had once been part of the level surface, before ancient water and wind had carved the softer parts away and carried the sediments to the Sea of Cortez. Some had eventually made it all the way to the Pacific.

The Grand Canyon had fascinated too, but only for a day. In the end, it was another example of erosion and in magnitude less dramatic than what had occurred in Utah. They visited Yellowstone, but again only a day was needed before their interest flagged. They had seen too much in too short a time. Jaded, they headed home to northern New Mexico. Possibly, if they’d come from the great plains, New England, or the Gulf coast, it might have been different; but they’d lived in New Mexico, which well deserved the nickname "The Land of Enchantment".

***

New Mexico was, once again, gripped by drought and the Rio Grande was nearly dry, in fact was dry in stretches.

Conservationists worried about wild populations of the endangered silvery minnow. A captive breeding program had been established and might provide a restocking resource when the rains finally came, but there was no sign they would come soon. Tall, cool pines and firs baked on the normally-humid mountain slopes. The standing trees, the ones that still lived, were as parched as kiln-dried lumber. No longer able to resist the onslaught, weakened trees fell victim to infestations of bark beetles. Many died, leaving great swathes of dead forest that fell victim to lightning-sparked fires that occasional extended into Arizona and Texas. New Mexico currently ranked as the state worst-damaged by the drought. Shezzie became increasingly worried as they got closer to home. News reports had mentioned that local conditions around their home were grim.

The village of Jemez Springs was located in a pass north of the Jemez Pueblo and southwest of the town of Los Alamos. A short distance to the north and east of their cabin was Valles Caldera, the dormant crater of a super-volcano that had been formed by the same geological processes that built the Jemez Mountains. There were still several hot springs scattered throughout the mountains, showing that the area was not geologically extinct but only quiescent. Forests within the region of the caldera were open to visitors, but how long that would last no one could say. Bandelier National Monument also lay northeast of the village. The monument, established to preserve the cliff houses located above Frijoles Creek, sheltered a Native-American ruin that had existed long before the Spanish invasion.

The monument was now threatened, and portions of the national forest near there had been closed to visitors because of the extreme fire danger. Only a few miles south and easily within reach of a wildfire, their cabin lay inside the mouth of a canyon about three miles north of Jemez Springs. The slopes behind their home contained trees and brush that led directly to the dry forest above the rim.

***

T had driven back in near silence. He’d heard the news reports that mentioned the fires, but kept his thoughts to himself. He was happy to be home, but for whatever reason his sleep was again troubled by nightmares which had begun almost as soon as the two men split up. Ray set about improving his relationship with Ana Maria, T had disappeared with Shezzie into the isolated town in the mountains of New Mexico.

When they left on the trip, the nightmares had subsided for a time. Shezzie hoped T could now begin to put whatever troubled him into the past, leaving the two of them able to resume their life together. Now they were back.

T hadn’t mentioned them, but the evidence was obvious; night sweats, panic when he woke up in the morning, an exhausted and wrinkled face when they ate breakfast together, and the lingering sour smell of sweat from the night’s terrors. The nightmares were not as bad for Shezzie as they were for T, but they were bad enough. She feared the other symptoms of PTSD had also returned with the nightmares, and had no idea what to do. T refused to discuss whatever had happened in El Paso, Ray was silent as well, and neither appeared comfortable when she tried to open a discussion.

He had been restless that night, but appeared to calm down after Shezzie snuggled close. But the next morning, he was gone. Shezzie noticed his absence as soon as she woke up. He hadn’t been gone long; his side of the bed was still damp from sweat. He wasn’t in the cabin and he hadn’t gone for a walk up the canyon as he sometimes did, because she soon discovered that his truck was also missing. She’d heard nothing, so perhaps he’d allowed the truck to coast silently downhill and starting the motor only after he was some distance away. However he’d left, wherever he’d gone, Shezzie was worried. She tried to comm him but he didn’t respond.

Had the trip been for nothing, their relationship fading as the PTSD once again forced them apart?

***

T held himself responsible for what had happened; he’d allowed Ray to become part of the violence that lived in his mind. But Ray did not blame T, far from it; he’d lost no sleep over the deaths of murderous thugs. T knew nothing of Ray’s feelings, nor would they have mattered. Logic had never played a role in his depression. Sleepless, he had unlocked his truck sometime after midnight. Shezzie was asleep.

T didn’t want to disturb her; she’d lost too much sleep recently as it was. He'd allowed the truck to roll down the gentle grade until it reached the flats, then after starting the engine he’d left the cabin behind. He drove aimlessly through back roads for a time and finally found himself heading east on Interstate 40, following the long canyon eastward from the Rio Grande Valley. Traffic had been light, mostly long-haul trucks trying to get through Albuquerque before the morning traffic rush but mixed with a few recreational vehicles and commuters on their way to work.

The first glimmers of dawn illuminated the landscape as T topped out above Tijeras Canyon. Tiring of the interstate’s sameness, he turned off onto old Highway 66, refueled his truck, then turned south on state highway 337.

In one of the small towns, he found surprising amounts of graffiti. It was a moment’s work to erase every bit that he could see as he drove slowly through the town. An infuriated gang of taggers and a bemused group of residents would wonder what had happened, and for the first time in days T felt a smile crinkle his face.

He found a pull-off beside the highway and slept for an hour while lying stretched across the truck’s front seat. Continuing on his way after waking, he ate a late breakfast in Mountainair. Refreshed, he headed west on US 60 and acting on impulse, pulled off to investigate an Indian ruin.

Abo had once been a thriving pueblo and there was still the shell of a Catholic church within the ruins, but the village had eventually fallen into disuse, crumbling after the native inhabitants moved away. Nearby, a small creek flowed slowly past the ruined church. Why had they settled so far from the river that other Puebloans used to water their crops? Had they come here to escape enemies? The oldest ruins, quite primitive, were partially hidden by drifted sands and signs warned visitors not to approach. T hiked the short trail through the monument, but avoided the ranger’s station. There were no visitors as yet, and the solitude suited his mood.

Soon after, a warning buzz announced the presence of a large western diamondback and T spotted the reptile where it lay loosely coiled under the shade of a scrubby bush. The snake, like all of its kind an ambush predator, might have been waiting for a mouse or rabbit to hop by. Equally, it might have sought to avoid direct sunlight because even this early, the day was warm.

Moved by impulse, T reached out with his Talent and softly lifted the big snake, as thick through as his forearm and nearly six feet in length. Did the numbers of rattles tell the age of the snake, as legend had it? Or did a successful predator need to shed its skin more often, adding a new rattle each time it discarded the old skin? For whatever reason, the string of rattles was as long as T’s hand and they buzzed loudly.

The snake convulsed frantically in the air as it hung in front of T’s face. He took control of the forward end of the snake’s body and brought the head up until it faced him, mouth slightly opened, tongue flicking out to sample the air. A few inches forward of his face, the slitted eyes were poised. T watched as a membrane slid across them, then returned to its slot. The snake’s mouth opened wider. The fangs erected from resting grooves in the snake’s mouth, tiny droplets of venom sparkling in the morning sun.

T attempted to read the snake’s thoughts, but picked up nothing. There were no thoughts or even emotions, not anger, nor hunger, nothing. Perhaps the snake functioned solely on instinct. The rattlesnake found no purchase to support a strike or an escape. Frustrated, it coiled and uncoiled in the air, heavy body knotting and muscles flexing under the scaled skin. Black rings, just forward of the whirring rattles, gave the snake its other common name: coon-tailed rattler.

Tired of looking at the snake, T floated it away and gently released it near one of the partially-buried off-limits dwellings. The snake rapidly disappeared into a hole, perhaps the home of a western pocket gopher. If so, the animal would not appreciate its new tunnel neighbor! Very likely, the angered snake would have folded back on its own length as soon as it entered the hole, head facing outward to defend against any threat. Behind it, the gopher, organic digging machine that it was, would quickly wall off the snake by throwing up a dirt barrier to plug the snake’s branch of the tunnel. In time, the snake would crawl out from its temporary refuge and resume hunting its normal prey, which might include the gopher after it left its tunnel complex.

T had felt no urge to kill the animal. Moving it away where it wouldn’t endanger human visitors was sufficient, because unlike T, the snake belonged here among the ruins. He completed the tour around the path and soon arrived back at his truck. He nodded at a family of four, who nodded back as he passed. One of the children called to him in greeting. He smiled, waved, and walked on. The drive, or perhaps the incident with the snake, had reminded him that he was not alone in suffering from depression and PTSD. Other veterans had troubles too, some much worse than his. Many, unable to adjust to life after military service, ended up homeless.

Far too many killed themselves.

T took state highway 47 north, gassed up again in Los Lunas, then joined Interstate 25 north just past the Isleta reservation. The reservation casino was busy, judging from the cars in the parking lots. He commed Shezzie as soon as he pulled onto the freeway to let her know he was heading home.

He had worked his way through the worst effects of the nightmare by then, and he’d done it essentially by himself. Ultimately, that falls to everyone who finds himself troubled in similar fashion. A combat veteran dealing with shock, any veteran or police officer who finds that the demands of duty have broken a marriage, even a prisoner or drug addict; T understood that rehabilitation does not come from others, it must come from within. By your own bootstraps you lift yourself.

He drove north and arrived home by late afternoon, depression put aside. For now.

***

Another murder was reported in Ciudad Juarez that night.

Bodies hanged from bridges, decapitations, even burning victims alive, these things the city had learned to take in stride as gang warred with gang. The usual victims came from the bottom of the gang hierarchy, soldiers in the wars who could be sacrificed without worry by those at the upper levels. There were always more of the gang-soldiers to be found. Money from drugs, sold to the Norteños, coupled with poverty among young Mexicans; the combination ensured that recruits would not be hard to find, and meantime ordinary Juarenses got on with their lives while wishing all of them would go away.

It was different this time. Even the most jaded of Mexicans, who survived in a city where gang-fights and murders of young women had become commonplace, felt a sense of shock, because this victim was a senior member of the Zeta Cartel. No stranger to violence, the man had trained at the US Army’s School of the Americas, then attended an advanced course for selected soldiers conducted by American Special Operations forces. The courses had been intended to help Latin American military leaders combat guerillas and drug gangs, but instead many of the graduates had used the training to make cartel drug operations and anti-government efforts more effective.

None of that had helped this victim, however, nor had he been able to use his weapons. They were still present on the corpse, unfired. Like five others before him, he had literally been ripped apart. Blood and body parts were scattered around the hotel room where he’d reportedly gone to meet another of the young women who found it exciting to mingle with drug gangsters who were celebrities in Mexico. Songwriters and musicians celebrated their activities and lifestyle, and their braggadocio, swagger, and ready money attracted the young women.

But his time it had attracted something different, something terrible. Within a day, the graffiti along Juarez' streets had begun to change. Now, instead of gang logos, there was often a simple line drawing among the stylized letters left by the taggers.

It consisted of a spare outline of an animal’s head, sometimes with the pointed ears upright, sometimes laid back. The eyes were mere slits, denoted by curved lines, and a black triangular nose suggested dog ancestry. Curved lines below the nose, extending from the mouth, suggested improbably long and sharp canine teeth.

Well-educated Mexicans knew the murders were human caused. Some of them speculated that whoever was slaughtering the gangsters was engaging in counter-terror activities. Who could say? It might be enough to convince the drug gangs to find a less-dangerous place to operate. But not all Mexicans were well educated. The sketch was sometimes labeled. People whispered the name and looked over their shoulder at the quick chill of fear. Chupacabra! The legendary ‘goat-sucker’ had found a new taste he liked.

This time, he craved the taste of human blood, especially the blood of drug bosses.

 

Chapter Two

“I'm glad you're back," Shezzie said. "I'm worried about that fire up on the canyon rim; if the wind changes, we’re directly in its path. We might not have time to do anything but run. What bothers me the most is that there are only two routes out of here, south toward San Ysidro or north toward Los Alamos. I think we should be ready. In fact, if the fire approaches either one, I think we should leave right away, and I'm not the only one who's worried. While you were out, I got a phone call from a woman on the village phone tree; she was notifying people to pack a few emergency supplies in case they have to evacuate.”

“We'll leave as soon as the fire gets close," T agreed. "Did you pass the alert message along?”

“I did. Some knew already and I'm sure the rest know by now. Some may have already gone, but I suppose we can wait a while longer."

"About why I left the way I did," T said, "I had some issues I needed to work out. I went for a long drive and did some thinking, but I think I'm all right now."

Shezzie nodded understanding, then changed the subject. "Did you decide what you're going to do about Ray's proposal, to create a partnership?”

“I’m going to accept it. He'll be the public face, I'll work in the background. I can't afford to attract attention, but nobody's looking for him.” He thought for a moment. “In the meantime, I need to work on my telepathic ability, especially the part involving people I've never met. Reading non-telepath minds is very iffy; I can pick up a word in ten, sometimes a little more, but I almost never catch a complete thought.”

“I know what you mean," Shezzie agreed. "I pick up anywhere from a third to half of the words from non-telepaths, enough to understand most of what they're thinking, but I started out stronger than you and I've improved a lot. Some of the improvement came from melding my mind with yours, I’m convinced of that!”

“My communication ability improved too," T agreed, "just not to your level. Same reason, I think, the melding; it gave what Talent I had a real boost! I don't think the meld helped my psychokinetic Talent. It's gotten stronger, a lot stronger, but that's because I've practiced lifting really heavy objects. My control is better too, just not good enough. Not yet.” He saw no reason to tell her how much stronger he was, and anyway, he needed more practice manipulating heavy objects. He had struggled to place that boulder precisely where he wanted, having to constantly fight inertia. Even after it was resting atop the other rock, he had found that turning it slightly was almost impossible, but he'd done it and that was what counted. He would keep practicing, because improving his skill was important; lack of control, especially when dealing with something that weighed several tons, was dangerous. Meantime, there was a surprise waiting for the next class that visited the Franklin Mountains, a massive rock sitting atop another with no explanation of how it might have happened!

“Did you hear a weather report while you were gone?" Shezzie asked. "If you were listening to the radio—”

“I didn't pay attention," T admitted. "The radio was off most of the time. I was trying to get my mind around everything that's happened. Not only in Afghanistan, but back here too. I really hope the nightmares stop; the lack of sleep is what's hurting me most, but at least the depression seems to be gone so maybe things will get better. Want to go out to dinner?”

“Sure," Shezzie accepted. "Maybe just to the restaurant in Jemez Springs? I don't want to go farther, not until that fire is contained. Santa Fe and Albuquerque are too far away.”

“That restaurant is more vegan than I like," T said, "but I'm OK with it. One night eating healthy won't kill me!" He grinned, and Shezzie shook her head in mock annoyance. "Meanwhile," T continued, "I'll work on clearing away the brush up-canyon in case the fire does head this way. Can't hurt, right?” He took two bottles of water from the fridge, collected his work gloves, and unlocked the shed behind their cabin. He selected a shovel and an axe, and briefly considered the chainsaw but decided it could wait. In any case, he had something else in mind.

He could already see smoke up-slope near the head of the canyon, perhaps six miles or more in the distance. Carrying his tools, T walked up the canyon.

***

Ray:

I decided to see how T and Shezzie were doing. I hadn't seen them since they returned, so if they weren't too busy... <Hi, Shezzie!>

<Morning, Ray! How's it going?>

<Fine. Would it be OK if I stopped in for a visit?>

<Sure. Is Ana Maria coming with you?>

<Not this time. She's back in Juarez, visiting and trying to work through the problems she's having with her family. It's almost like they've pushed her out of the family! They've always been close and their attitude really bothers her.> We dropped the comm link and I headed north.

Turning north on I-10 west in Las Cruces, I changed over to I-25 northbound. Two hours later, I gassed up in Socorro, got a large cup of coffee from the convenience store, and headed back north. Albuquerque's traffic was as usual, heavy especially around the Big I, but two hours later I reached Bernalillo. From there I went west on NM 550. I turned north at San Ysidro onto NM 4, which would take me the rest of the way to Jemez Springs and the cabin where T and Shezzie lived.

Had it helped, the trip they'd taken to mend their relationship? T needed it more than Shezzie, I thought; he needed someone he could feel close to. We were friends, he and I, but it wasn’t the same. 'Close friends' wasn't quite right either. We'd shared danger together, and because of that we were almost like brothers now.

Ray thought back to what had happened that day in El Paso. T had certainly risked his life when that roof fell in on us! He'd realized what had happened to me, and immediately dropped his protective bubble to help. I’d been afraid to collapse my bubble! That frame member had weighed hundreds of pounds, enough to kill me if I was underneath when it fell! But he'd simply lifted the heavy timber off, then set me down outside the worst of the destruction. I had then collapsed my bubble and lifted him to safety. I wouldn't soon forget; that level of risk-taking and cooperation is not often found.

We had lost no time in leaving after that, not that anyone noticed. Or cared; there had been no outcry from neighbors and no police investigation. Perhaps gang members blew up their houses all the time. Weren't meth houses prone to exploding? I remembered hearing something about that.

My thoughts moved on. I knew that T had the classic symptoms of PTSD, but I didn't know how severe they were. He was occasionally depressed and had nightmares, I knew that, but that wasn't at all uncommon among veterans. How bad was his PTSD? I didn't know what he'd experienced in the Rockpile other than that he'd been in combat, so I had no frame of reference. For that matter, over and above what he'd seen in Afghanistan, what we'd done to those gang members would give anyone nightmares!

Except me; I was glad they were dead! How many other young women might they have killed? But not now; good riddance to the lot of them! But my thoughts kept returning to T. PTSD, coupled with strong PK Talent?

I didn't like the thought, but if T needed my help I would do everything I could for him. But what could I do? Was there anything anyone could do? My Talents kept getting better with practice, but T was far stronger, probably in a different class entirely. I might have been able to lift that frame member, had I not been inside my bubble, but T had handled effortlessly a task that usually required a crane!

***

I checked in with Shezzie as soon as I arrived.

She looked good, relaxed from the trip, when she met me at the door. “I think T's over his depression, finally," she said. "He's up the canyon now, clearing brush in case the fire comes this way. Can I get you something? Coffee, tea, a soda perhaps?”

“I had coffee on the way up here, so I'll go see if I can help T.”

“Comm him first," she suggested. "I'm not sure how far up-canyon he is.”

I walked around the back and looked up the slope. The smoke cloud atop the rim seemed to be growing. It billowed higher even as I watched. If the wind up there was as brisk as it was down here, we were in for trouble. It wasn't dangerously strong yet, but it was definitely noticeable and any wind is bad news when fighting a wildfire. For the moment, it appeared to be blowing up-canyon toward the fire, which would force the fire to turn back to where it had already burned and hopefully starve it of fuel.

***

<T?>

<Hey, Ray. What's up?>

<I'm at your place. Shezzie said you were clearing brush. Need a hand?>

<Sure, come ahead. I'm about two miles up the canyon and I'm working on the south slope. I've already cleared the floor and the north slope, up to where the rocky outcrops start.>

<Do I need tools or anything?>

<It's hot up here, so bring a bottle of water or two; ask Shezzie to get you some from the fridge. I've got everything else we need.> So I asked, Shezzie gave me the bottles, and I headed up the slope. The canyon was perhaps a half-mile wide at the lower end. It had shallow, gently sloping sides this far down. Vegetation at this elevation wasn’t thick, mostly saltbush and scrubby juniper trees. Farther up, the canyon narrowed to perhaps a hundred yards wide and the sides got higher and steeper. Piñon pines were more common and beyond the piñons, the trees changed to a mix of ponderosa pine and a few firs.

I soon found where T had been working. It appeared that he had simply dug out the brush. Surprisingly, he'd done the same to a few small trees, or maybe he'd pulled them using his Talent. Regardless of the method, he'd done a good job and as a result there didn't seem to be enough vegetation left to sustain a fire. Grass clumps grew between the rocks and there were occasional patches of fallen leaves, pine needles, and bark, but they didn't appear to be thick enough to worry about.

I pulled a few weeds that he'd missed and kept going, finally spotting T about where I expected, halfway up the canyon wall.

I stopped to rest for a moment and catch my breath before climbing the slope. He hadn't noticed my arrival, because he was looking up at a towering ponderosa pine, growing from a shallow pocket in the rock. It held barely enough soil, blown in over the years, to support the roots, but the pocket had benefited from its position at the foot of a small gully. Runoff would have been trapped there when winter snows melted or whenever it rained, so the tree had grown bigger while others had become stunted during the years of drought. It well deserved the name 'ponderosa' now! I estimated that it was a hundred feet tall, maybe more. It wasn't easy to estimate, because it had grown slightly away from the wall starting just above the roots, then straightened until it now stood upright.

I probably had a better view than T did, since he was below the tree's roots and looking up at the branches.

<What are you going to do T? That one is more of a challenge than clearing brush!>

<Yeah, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I'll just chop out a felling notch, as low as possible. The lower trunk is more dense, but I think I can get enough of a swing to make an undercut. When it's deep enough, I'll notch in from the back. I'll offset the notch enough to leave a hinge. I might need a wedge to start it falling, but that's not a problem and I can control the direction it falls. If I do it right, it should drop straight down-slope. As soon as it's down, I'll chop through the hinge and with luck, it will slide all the way to the canyon floor. What do you think?>

<I think we can do it, but be careful how deep you cut that felling notch! If you weaken the trunk too much, the tree could fall on you! You also want a way to get clear in case it kicks back when it falls.> I looked at the tree, visualizing how much of a cut T would need, and where. Escape would almost certainly be a problem, because there was almost no flat surface to stand on. It was all slope and most of it steep, with a few scrubby bushes and rocks here and there which might cause problems when the tree fell.

Still, we had something other tree-cutters didn't have. T would have already thought of using his bubble if the tree fell wrong. <It's doable, T. I'll help by clearing the brush from downhill so it doesn't get hung up after you cut it free. I've already been doing that, pulling brush on my way up here.>

T didn't bother to reply. He swung the axe, chopping into the trunk just above the curve where the trunk turned upright. His smooth, even swings didn't seem very powerful, but they popped out huge chips. The notch advanced steadily inward, six inches, then nine inches deep, with the top and bottom of the cut angled in about forty-five degrees. Neither of us realized it, but the tree had begun to lean away from the canyon wall. The movement was slight and we were watching the notch, not the crown.

The slight natural lean had already placed enormous pressure on the roots, and the dirt pocket, less than ten feet wide, was too shallow for an extensive root ball. We had no way of knowing, but it was one of nature's wonders that the tree hadn't already fallen in some past windstorm!

T swung again, and the clack of his axe was followed immediately by a loud cracking noise. We froze for a moment, wondering what had happened, but then the chip popped free and broke the silence as it joined others on the ground. A loud popping noise followed, then a louder one. Puzzled, I looked at the notch, but nothing was happening. The popping came again, gunshot-loud this time, and I realized that it had come from beneath the tree! The earth around the base of the trunk was bulging! The rocks surrounding the roots shifted, a grinding sound...

<T! That thing...!> was all I managed before the root ball ripped loose from the pocket. I immediately formed my bubble and let it expand slightly, then glanced over at T.

And froze.

He stood calmly, looking up at the tree as it twisted on its base to more of the loud pops as the tree leaned farther and more roots broke away. Several appeared to be a foot thick, and they had parted like tissue paper!

T had not formed his bubble, that much I saw. His feet rested on the ground as the huge tree leaned over him. The axe was gone, dropped somewhere; I saw that much before I rolled away down the slope, inside my bubble and well ahead of the falling tree. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was on a slope when I formed the bubble, and now I had no control over where it would take me. I tried to keep T in view, but caught only glimpses as I rotated. <T! Form your bubble!>

I lost sight of him after that, my last view of T standing there and just looking up. Sudden fear came, not for myself but for T! Had he decided to end the nightmares by allowing the tree to do what the Mujahedeen had been unable to? Survivor's guilt caused vets to suicide, I knew that, and I wondered. Had T just killed himself? Shit, shit, shit...what would I tell Shezzie?

My heart was in my throat when I reached the canyon floor, and a sudden chill caused me to realize I was sweating with fear by the time my bubble stopped rolling. The tree wouldn't slide this far, I knew that, there were too many boulders in its way; my fear was for T! I shifted my weight, rocking the bubble until I could stand upright. I collapsed it and looked uphill at the fallen pine.
 A heavy cloud of dust drifted away on the wind. I sent out one final despairing comm, <T!>

<You all right, Ray?>

I closed my eyes. Despite everything, he had survived! <What happened? You were right under it!>

<It twisted around and missed me,> T sent. <There was no danger. It cracked where I'd chopped out the notch as soon as it hit and slid a few yards farther down. I’m on the other side of the branches, that’s why you can’t see me.>

<Shit, T! You were right under that thing!>

<Nah, it just looked that way from where you were standing. It wasn't dangerous at all.>

I was stunned. I had been sure he was directly under the trunk when it fell! <I think I've had enough, T. Can we go back to the cabin?>

<Sure, Ray. Just let me grab my axe. Can you bring the shovel? It's over where those rocks are stacked. See the ones I mean?>

I looked around. The shovel was leaning against two largish boulders, one set atop the other. How had they come to be that way? I picked it up and took a last look at the rocks. Something about them bothered me, but I didn't know what it was.

I shouldered the shovel and joined T where he had slid-walked downhill, carrying his axe. We headed down the canyon without talking. The silence lasted until we reached the cabin and continued while T carefully brushed off the dirt and spritzed the tools with oil, then hung them from pegs in the shed’s wall.

Shezzie had coffee ready by the time we entered the cabin. I was still shaking from adrenaline. I didn't know how T could have escaped! The tree had to have weighed several tons, and while it might have been twisting as he'd said, it was still uphill from him! It could have fallen either way, and for that matter the butt of the tree could have whipped across right where he was standing! And yet ,he'd been calmly standing there, watching it. He’d looked perfectly cool, as if a giant tree fell toward him every day! It simply made no sense! He knew about the bubble, he was faster than I was at forming it, and yet he hadn't bothered? I finally gave up. There were no answers, just more worry.

This time he'd survived, but if he had really intended to kill himself, there would be other opportunities.

***

Neither of us mentioned the tree. I didn't want to worry Shezzie, possibly unnecessarily, and T may have had reasons of his own. Instead, we drank the coffee and discussed the company we intended to form. As consultants, we could investigate things that official police officers couldn't, and at the same time be safe while doing it. As for how we would operate, they would deal directly with me, I would pass the information to T, and he would look into whatever they were interested in. I would assist if needed and Shezzie might help out from time to time. The only question was, could they find the funds to pay us? In the meantime, we had enough money put by to live in reasonable comfort until business picked up, and as soon as we'd established a track record we could expect calls from other departments. I had a sudden vision of flitting from city to city, investigating what the regular cops couldn't, then moving on. Sherlock, move over!

“You might want to look at the papers, T," I said. "I brought the El Paso Times and El Diario too. That one's in Spanish, but it has more pictures. I've already seen them. It's a good way to keep up with what the cops are doing in case they might want to hire us. The big news is Juarez; it's happened again, except that this time two drug chiefs ran into whatever killed the previous ones. Lots of new graffiti too; they're calling it what you did, El Chupacabra. The gangs have mostly stopped going after each other, possibly because they're more afraid of what's after them! El Diario writes that they're forted up and might even be thinking about making peace until this is over. The Mexican Army is still patrolling but they're not finding much at the moment, not in Juarez. The gang war is still ongoing in Parral and Chihuahua City. Cuauhtémoc too. But things are a lot quieter in Juarez. People are out on the streets again.”

T thanked me, we chatted for a bit longer, and I said goodbye. I headed for home, still shaky, but Ana Maria might be back from visiting her family by now and I looked forward to seeing her again.

It was nice to have someone to come home to.

 

Chapter Three

A week had passed since Ray and T had worked on clearing the canyon.

The fire had moved upslope since then, moving ever deeper into the forest. Helicopters dropped water and slurry and fire crews worked to contain it. The terrain was rugged, mostly canyons and ridges that made their work more difficult, and as a result it was also much more dangerous.

T had apparently returned to normal. The tranquil period lasted almost ten days, but then the dreams and nightmares returned. He had also became more introspective, another sign that something was troubling him. He went for long walks, and when Shezzie tried to accompany him he rebuffed her. Each night he'd gone to bed as usual, but his sleep had been interrupted more often than not.

Shezzie had tried to help, but with limited success. In the end, she had simply held him until he fell back to sleep.

This time it hadn't worked. Once again, T was gone when she woke up and she hadn’t heard him leave. Exhausted by the interruptions, Shezzie had fallen into a deep sleep during the predawn hours.

She found a note by the coffeemaker next morning telling her where T had gone, but it didn’t keep her from worrying. He had gone up into the forest, following one of the many access roads toward where the fire still burned.

No dwellings were threatened, now that the fire had moved deeper into the mountains, but firefighters struggled against contrary winds. They had not contained the fire, despite assistance from aircraft.

Why had T gone up there? She tried to comm him, but he didn't respond. Worried, she commed Ray and filled him in on what had happened.

***

I listened to Shezzie's voice, faint but clear in my head, as she brought me up to date. Her concern apparent, even through the mental connection, she asked if I could help. Maybe I could get through to T where she couldn't?

<T?> I waited, but there was no answering feel of resonance. Now I was worried too. The incident with the falling tree nagged at me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the tree should have crushed T. At the very least, it should have forced him to bubble up, but he hadn't bothered. Why? Had he managed to somehow deflect a falling tree that weighed perhaps a dozen tons? I had gotten stronger, and my control had improved with practice, but at the same time I was sure I wasn't nearly as strong as T. Certainly not strong enough to chance being killed by a falling tree! The kinetic energy alone...!

I had spent hours lifting objects, moving them around, turning them upside down and then back again. I had practiced rotating them in the air, and I’d even practiced shaking small amounts of salt or pepper into the sink. That was incredibly difficult! I had to lift the shaker, position it upside-down above the sink, move it rapidly up and down, then rotate it back upright and return it to the table. It didn’t take a lot of strength, but it took enormous concentration. Such a simple task, taken for granted by everyone, but fiendishly difficult when you’re doing it by psychokinetics alone!

I wasn't done improving, I knew I could get stronger while simultaneously gaining more control. Alone in the house, I worked at my self-designed exercises whenever Ana Maria wasn’t around.

My thoughts drifted. Having her in my life was a positive thing; I had been happier since establishing our relationship than I could remember ever being. I marveled that this beautiful young woman had found something in me she could respond to! But I didn't allow that to distract me. Someday, I would need all the strength I could muster. I felt it in my bones, and it might not be enough.

Ana Maria spent time with her family whenever her schedule permitted. She intended to continue doing that, but we had decided she was wasting money traveling back and forth to Juarez every day. I’d cleared out some of my clothes, making space, and we now shared the bedroom closet. It was really strange. I had lived alone all my adult life, but now a woman’s clothes shared my closet! Not to mention that I often found skimpy underthings hanging in the bathroom that had once been mine alone!

I was happy, but my level of happiness wasn’t shared by T. I didn’t know what he’d experienced, but whatever it was, the memories wouldn’t leave him alone. And now this!

My thoughts returned to T. <Shezzie?>

She responded immediately, <I’m here, Ray. Did he answer you?>

<No, and I think I’d better come up there. Maybe, by meeting face to face, I can find out what’s bothering him. In any case, he can’t ignore me if I’m there. >

<Thanks, Ray! I was hoping you could help.>

<I don't have a solution yet, but I’ll see what I can do. He needs to find something to occupy his time.>

<I know! I’ve tried, but I can’t get through the wall he’s built around himself. And I’ve been so worried…> Her thought trailed off.

I offered the usual meaningless reassurances and we broke the connection. I filled the Volvo's tank, and worked my way through city streets to I-10, and broke a few speed laws heading north.

I passed a ranger station on the way to their house, stopped, backed up, and went in. I knew approximately where I was going in the forest, based on the information Shezzie had provided, but as I hoped they had topographic maps for sale. The area was simply too large to show any appreciable amount of detail on a single map, so I bought two that covered the region when laid side-by-side.

Back on the road, I passed through Jemez Springs and kept going. Farther along, I drove past the entrance to Valles Caldera and the road twisted as it climbed higher into the mountains. The overgrown caldera of the ancient supervolcano was soon visible, downhill and off to my left. It's a huge expanse of grassland now, bounded by ponderosa pines and a few firs that extend, fingerlike, from where the rim rises above the flats. A movie crew waited by the gate today. The Jeeps and a Toyota 4-Runner were likely for the photography crew and actors, while the pickups and a cargo truck with a crane were for the grips. Perhaps they were waiting for guides; in any case, they paid no attention to me and I had no time for them.

The road climbed higher, winding deeper into the mountains. I watched for the exit that Shezzie had mentioned and soon spotted it. There was a small paved area by the road, so I parked and spread out the maps. T's note had mentioned Obsidian Ridge...

I finally found it, but to get there I would pass through an extension of Bandelier National Monument before reentering national forest land. I folded the maps and turned onto the forest road. The Monument's boundaries were marked by cattle guards that rattled my Volvo as I drove across. The boundary designations appeared haphazard, even confusing. The forest service has a set of rules for their holdings, the national preserves have another set, and the Bureau of Land Management has yet another; perhaps it's because there are different politicians to administer them? That may even be the reason for all the different designations. Maybe the politicians understand the reasoning behind it all, but it looked like a meaningless hodgepodge to me.

Just past the cattle guard marking the edge of the Bandelier National Monument extension was a road branching off to the left. According to the map, it led to a gate in a barbed-wire fence, a boundary that blocked off a part of the forest that had been set aside to protect elk from being disturbed during the breeding season. The gate was usually closed to vehicle traffic, although there was an entrance off to one side for hikers. There was also a parking area by the gate where I expected to find T’s truck, if indeed he’d decided to go on to Obsidian Ridge.

I spared a glance for the forest, so far untouched by the bark beetles or fire, then headed up the gentle rise. The ridge was a remnant of the last great volcanic eruption, weathered now, and almost covered by a thick layer of blown-in soil.

Black, glassy chunks of the obsidian that had given the ridge its name littered the ground. Thousands of years ago, Clovis and Folsom peoples had come here. They'd carried the obsidian back to their villages, then carefully flaked it into arrowheads and spear points. A few finely-made obsidian knives had also been found. Many of the artifacts are now in museums around the Southwest. Modern artisans have tried, but have rarely equaled the workmanship of those ancient masters.

For the most part, the area attracts few visitors, which might explain why T had sought it out. Hikers visit in the summer, and there are a few hunters in the fall but never very many; with no vehicle access, recovering an animal after a kill is difficult at best. The rugged terrain sees to that. Billowing smoke a few miles beyond the ridge showed where the fire was burning. Whatever T's intention, he wasn't going to drive there from here! The road bends around before joining another, but none of them cross the difficult terrain. Had he parked here and tried to reach the fire on foot?

Unlikely, I thought, but he might have hiked into the protected area or simply sat down to experience the forest's peace while he studied the fire. Solitude and silence was supposed to help those suffering from PTSD.,The area appeared deserted at first glance, but his truck should be somewhere around...

It was. I had no trouble finding T’s truck, no indeed! How often do you see a pickup truck hanging vertically in the air, front end down? But there it was, in the parking area but certainly not parked! T stood beneath the truck, eyes focused where it floated just above his head. He had no particular expression on his face; he just stood there, looking up at the suspended truck.

I watched in horror as the truck eased slowly downward. It stopped when it was barely touching T’s forehead, the front bumper making gentle contact with his skin. I didn’t know what, if anything, I could do. I might lift that much, but I doubted my ability to control that much weight, certainly not with the precision he was displaying! Should I even try, or would my efforts distract him enough to endanger his life? Whatever it was, it was intentional. The falling tree hadn't worked, so was this how he intended to end his life? Crushed to death under his own pickup truck? I waited, not even breathing...

But he lifted the truck as gently as he’d lowered it and floated it away. The truck slowly rotated until it was level, wheels hanging down below the wheel wells. Moments later, it sank down and eased into contact with the parking lot's surface. I watched, fascinated, as the tires touched. Their angle with the road changed, approaching 90º as the springs and shocks took up the load. The tires also changed shape; they expanded between the ground and the wheel rim, a slight but noticeable swelling.

T finally noticed me when I closed my car door. “Found me, did you?” His voice was calm, betraying no sign of stress. Had there been any stress? Could he really be that strong?

I nodded. “You were holding that tree last week, weren’t you?”

“Sure," he admitted. "I’ve handled heavier things. The only difference is that this time, I left myself no way out. I would hold the truck, or I would die. I had no time and no room to deploy the bubble if my control failed. But I held the truck up long enough to be confident I could control it before I moved it overhead, and I did that before I went ahead with the exercise. The only hard part was lowering it to just above my head, then lifting it back up, but I knew I could do it. My strength and control had plateaued, but after I melded with Shezzie and later on with you I started getting stronger again. Surfer dying was the catalyst; I got so furious that I just let everything out and…well, I discovered that without knowing it, I had changed. I'm still changing. I don’t know who or even what I am anymore!

"You’re the only one I can talk to. Shezzie’s got more telepathic ability than either of us, but not much psychokinesis. She just wouldn’t understand. She saves lives, but I take them. You too, Ray. That's another reason I can talk to you. It’s what we do.” His tone was bitter. “The ability was always there, locked up inside my head, but I couldn’t save my men. All I could do back then was decide that someone on the other side was better dead, and just like you I could make it happen. You’ve been there, you know what it’s like to kill. With no appeal possible and no chance for them to do anything except die.

"We can do it, we did it, but did we have the right to? We're not gods, we're people! But we have done what no one else can do. We've killed men just by looking at him and deciding to make him dead. It’s not a gift! I don’t know whether it’s a curse, but I can’t believe it’s a gift! I regret the day those people brought me to the School!

"So yeah, I was pushing my Talent today. But I knew I could do it and if I was wrong, I just didn’t care. I killed all those people and if I killed myself, well, it was just karma or maybe fate laughing at me even while it happened.” He sat down on a log and covered his face with his hands.

I had no idea what to say. He might have been crying. It was what I had been afraid of, the depression and the suicidal tendencies, but at least he hadn’t managed to kill himself, not yet.

I would have to do something, but I had no idea what. <Shezzie?>

<I’m here, Ray. Did you find T?>

<Yes. He’s okay, but I think we’ll stay up here for a while. Maybe I can help him get his head back together. I’ll check in with you later; I’m not sure how long we’ll be, but I’ll let you know if anything important happens.>

<Thanks, Ray. I’ll have dinner ready when you guys get back.>

<We’ll be a while, and after dinner I may want to take T back to El Paso with me.>

<You can’t stay for a day or two?> she asked. <We could fix a bunk for you. You’ve certainly slept on enough of those in the Army, it won’t be a new experience.>

<Thanks, but I need to get back to El Paso. Ana Maria was in Juarez when I left; I left a short note to tell her I’d be gone all day, but she'll be expecting me and I need to be there.

<She’s still having family problems and we don’t know if they’ll get better or not, so I need to be there when she gets back.> I hesitated for a moment, then decided to tell her the rest of it. <She’s living at my place now, Shezzie. Our place, I should say.>

<That’s probably a good thing for both of you, Ray. I’m happy that it’s working out. But we can talk when you get here.> With that, she was gone and I turned to T. He had stopped sobbing, if that’s the word for it; now he sat there on the log and just looked empty.

“Time to go for a walk, Buddy. I need the exercise and you do too. I may have a job for us.” The thought had come to me while I was comming Shezzie.

His face showed slight interest. “What kind of a job?”

“How strong are you?” I needed to know before I explained.

“I don’t know," he admitted. "Strong; I haven’t tried to move a mountain, but I don’t know that I couldn’t do it. OK, probably not, but I can do more than grab falling trees and lift pickup trucks. I stack a mean rock too.”

He smiled for the first time since I'd found him. I had no idea what his comment meant, but the smile was promising. “We pulled weeds together and that was easy enough. How would you feel about pulling a few trees?”

T brightened. “Do you think we could? I haven’t tried that, but it might be possible. How about you? Are you strong enough? If you can't, could you move one out of the way after I pull it?”

“Only one way to find out, T. I was thinking that we could move in closer to the fire, but a mile or so ahead of the firefighters. They're having a hard time, what with all those ridges and canyons, and there are almost no roads. They have to leave the trucks behind and walk in. Add in that they've got to carry all their equipment, and that's just to get to where the fire is burning. It's dangerous; if the fire changes direction, there’s no fast way for them to get out. Men on foot can’t run away from a wildfire.

"I suggest we drive in, there's a road that will get us closer, and we drive until we're as close as possible without being discovered. We'll have to do what the fire crews did, park and hike in the rest of the way. Not too close, though; we don’t want anyone seeing what we’re doing. I think we should find a spot five or so miles ahead of the fire and give it a try. But before we do, you need to see if you can pull a tree out of the ground. Foresters do it, but they've got big logging machines. That way, they can replant immediately."

I realized I was babbling a bit, probably because I was nervous. I slowed down and tried to simplify my idea. "The idea is that we uproot trees ahead of the fire line. You pull them, I'll try to stack them out of the way so there's no chance of the fire crowning. If it works, it will be a lot safer for the firefighters and they should be able to suppress the fire as soon as it reaches the cleared part. If they can keep the flames from jumping across to the next ridge, the fire will just burn itself out. I’m willing to try.”

T looked a little dubious, but he nodded. More important, he was interested. We drove out together and I parked my Volvo by the highway. T drove the rest of the way in, his pickup apparently none the worse from its brief stint hanging nose-down in the air.

***

T turned around and we headed back out as soon as we spotted the roadblock. Cops and fire officials want people to stay well back, out of danger and also out of the way of the fire crews, but we weren't going far. We soon found shaded spot under the branches of a giant ponderosa. Leaving the truck, we walked toward the smoke.

T tried pulling a medium sized tree first. The juniper was probably no more than twenty feet tall, but the trunk was easily eighteen inches in diameter and appeared to be dead, probably killed by the bark beetles. He easily ripped it out of the ground, the roots popping louder than the pops from the distant fire.

I tried moving it after he laid it down. It took considerable effort, but I managed it and a second attempt went easier. I would probably pay for it later with a headache, but I thought it was worth it considering what we intended to do. The tree that T had pulled was already dead, so it might have been lighter in weight than what we’d find ahead. We would just have to see, but now we knew that it was worth trying. We soon passed the roadblock, and were soon several hundred yards away from the road, not visible among the trees.

As soon as we'd passed beyond where a firefighter might spot us, we walked directly toward where the smoke was rising. Reddish reflections from the flames lit the underside of the clouds.

“We won't be able to use the bubble," T said. "Feel that breeze? It’s blowing toward the fire, so if we bubbled-up the wind would carry us right into the flames. Light gets through, which means that heat radiation, infrared, can get through too. We’ll just have to be careful and if we can’t do this safely, we leave! Us getting burned won’t help the firefighters.” I nodded agreement. He’d been doing PK a lot longer than I had, so I would let him make the call.

We stopped about four miles ahead of the flames, close enough that we could smell the smoke and hear loud snapping sounds in the distance. Turpentine-rich sap boiled out of the trunks just ahead of the flames, fueling the fire. Where the sap couldn't escape, it simply exploded. Fast-moving fires might only scorch the bark, doing little lasting harm, but this kind of fire would destroy the forest down to bare dead soil. Even the humus would burn away, meaning that the forest wouldn't return for a century or more. Maybe never.

T wordlessly began plucking medium-sized trees and dropping them, and I stacked them along a line parallel to the fire line. Our noise likely blended in with the distant roar of the fire. I watched what T was doing, then decided to give it a try. Knowing it was possible made a difference! I began by pulling small trees, moved to larger ones, then began tackling the same size trees T was working on.

He glanced over at me in surprise, grinned, and began ripping the biggest trees in our way from the ground. I was now doing my share, so we both laid our trees along the same line, forming a barrier in front of the fire. The trees would still burn, but the flames would be near ground level, much less hazardous than a crown fire. Our impromptu firebreak would also help the firefighters contain the fire, meaning that it would burn out within a few days.

We lifted, built our firebreak, and moved on. We worked carefully but steadily, our progress marked by a growing gap in the forest. Behind where we worked, it looked as if a tornado had touched down and our firebreak soon stretched more for more than a mile, crossing two ridgelines and the canyon between. I was beginning to tire, but if T was fatigued he showed no sign of it. So I kept working too; if he could do it...

Okay, I couldn't. I knew that! But I wasn't ready to quit just yet.

We kept working. We cleared two more miles of timber and crossed another ridgeline before I heard the helicopter. It was probably one of the fire-fighting choppers, but news reporters also looked for footage for their evening report and they would definitely see what we'd done. <Time to go, T. What say we beat feet back to the truck?>

He agreed, so that’s what we did. Two and a half hours later found us back at the cabin, having a nice dinner with Shezzie and telling her what we'd done.

T packed a light bag after dinner, kissed Shezzie goodbye, then followed me back to El Paso.

***

The Chupacabra struck again that day, indicating that whatever or whoever it was appeared to be getting bolder.

Two mid-level gang members, this time from the Gulf Cartel, were snatched from the street in late afternoon. Fragments of flesh and bone stuck to the walls of the alley and blood had dripped greasily down, forming puddles near the remnants of the bodies. If anyone saw anything, they weren’t talking. Juarenses had learned wisdom; better to say nothing, keep a low profile, try not to get noticed. The cartels had friends as well as enemies. No sabé, Señor!

More graffiti appeared that night; the chupacabra line drawing was there as before, but now positioned above a smiley face.

No one knew who had done that either.

 

Chapter Four

Ray:

T dropped his bag in the spare bedroom and joined me in the kitchen. I had already started a pot of coffee and put out a plate of muffins. Ana Maria had made them before she left for Juarez. Despite her frequent visits, things weren’t improving. She was by turns sad, angry, or simply troubled. I never knew when her moods would change, nor what specifically was causing them, but having Ana Maria in my life was enough and I was sure she would eventually work her way through her problems.

I realized that I was the only happy one among the four of us. There was nothing I could do about Ana Maria’s family problems, but I might be able to help T. According to what Shezzie had said, he’d been much better after we worked together. I had seen no sign of the moodiness she’d mentioned, but PTSD can be like that. It can hide, only coming out when the sufferer is asleep. “Anything you can tell me, T? Shezzie’s been worried, man. I have, too. That thing with the truck…it scared the hell out of me.”

“I knew I could do it, Ray. Lifting the truck wasn’t nearly as tough as jerking those trees out of the ground! I wonder what the fire crews will make of the stacks? Wind knocks down trees, but it never stacks them in a nice long row!” He grinned.

I chuckled. “I'm sure they’ll wonder what happened, but they'll just file it away with all the other odd things they see. They stay pretty busy during summer, so they don't have time to worry about they can't explain. There’ll be another fire after this one. Arizona, Colorado, California, there’s always another fire somewhere. Floods in the east and south, fires in the west, hurricanes around the Gulf and the east coast, and earthquakes; never a dull moment in North America! Tornadoes in the middle, and if that’s not enough there’s always the chance of a chemical plant explosion in Texas. Europe is different. A freezing spell in the winter, a war now and then to break the monotony, and they argue when they aren’t shooting at each other. Maybe that’s why they have the wars; nature doesn’t provide enough natural disasters to keep them busy!”

“It’s a thought," T agreed. "But after we cleared out the canyon, I was just sitting around the cabin with nothing to do. Watching the paint peel and the grass grow got old, and then everything just came down on me. I can’t forget! I saw things, I did things that people just can't handle. Maybe they could, once; did killing all those people bother those old Romans and Greeks? Did the Spanish inquisitors have nightmares? We’re doing this for your own good, they claimed, but was that enough? Or did they understand that they were torturing people to death?" He was silent for a long moment. I waited; he needed to let it all out and I didn't want to chance stopping him.

“I don’t understand people like that, Ray, and I don’t understand the gangsters. They’re like the terrorists in Afghanistan. People are just objects! If they're not part of the gang, the tribe, or the same religious sect, then killing them is OK. Chop off their heads, blow them up, it doesn’t matter." His voice grew soft. "Money, religion, power, they’re only a motive. Butchering people is what they're really about and I don’t understand them. It's like they've given up their humanity, like they're no longer part of the human race. They're not like me at all.”

“I don’t understand it either, T. It was different back when I first joined the Army; the Soviets were massed on the other side, just waiting. They knew we wouldn't attack but we expected them to, and now I wonder what those Soviet soldiers thought. They just trained and waited for the word which never came. We wouldn't have survived, we knew that, but we were the tripwire that would drag the US into the war. My guess is that the Soviet leaders understood too. They had a lot more troops than we did, so the U.S. wouldn't have had a choice. Nuclear war; they had the troops and the artillery, we had the tactical nukes. And we would have used them, because we would have had no real choice other than to lose Europe.”

“Yeah. That was ancient history by the time the CIA sent me off to the Army," T said. "The Soviet Union was gone, Germany had absorbed East Germany, and the Berlin Wall was a piece of concrete, picked up as a souvenir and stashed in a German cupboard somewhere. The Russians had internal problems back then, so there wasn't a lot they could do. The satellite nations had never wanted to be ruled by Russia, and I suspect they were more restive than we knew. Not to mention that the Russians had bitten off more in Afghanistan than they could chew! But then the Muj turned on us and we ended up in another war, but guess what? The Russians were backing the other side! Same old enemy, different part of the world, and that was when I came in. I wonder what history books will say a century from now?

"Maybe you’re right," T went on. "No hurricane, no tornado, so let’s just have a war! I doubt the Russians understand that the Middle East is worse than Europe! The Europeans stop fighting each other once in a while, but the Arabs never do.”

“We’ll talk about it, T. You’re not the only one with problems, you know. Lots of guys come home with bad memories.”

“One part of me knows you’re right," T agreed, "but at night the other part takes over. It would be nice to get a full night’s sleep." He chuckled. "I can’t even take a sleeping pill! It wouldn’t work. Too bad the body-control Talent doesn’t do anything about the bad memories.”

“Maybe it will, given time," I said, but you’re here, we’ve got things to do, and when I’m busy there’ll be other people around. Part of your problem might be as simple as spending too much time alone, and just maybe, now that you're in the city, you’ll find something to interest you. You do a lot better when you stay busy.”

T brightened. “You know, I think I might know of something. I can help clean up the city and piss off the gangs at the same time. You take care of what you need to do and don't worry about me! I’ve got something else in mind, and no, it won’t be dangerous.”

I heard the front door open. Ana Maria came into the kitchen, a scowl on her face but still the same pretty, leggy woman I’d first been attracted to. “No ‘Hi honey, I’m home?’” I teased.

She greeted T before responding. "Not right now, Ray; I’m just not getting anywhere with my father! My mother has come around, but my father is the main influence and he’s convinced that I’m somehow responsible. Because a gangster murdered my sister! Sometimes I could just scream! I'm thinking I should just stay here for a while, go to class, and spend time with you. Maybe if I leave him alone, he'll change his mind. Anyway, did you feel the earthquake?”

I looked at T, but he shrugged and shook his head.

“We didn’t feel anything. What earthquake?”

“I heard it on the radio. Swimming pools in the northeast sloshed over again. The last time that happened, it was because of the big earthquake in Mexico City. I called Paula—she's my cousin in Chihuahua—and she said they hadn’t felt anything. It must have happened up here somewhere.”

“We didn’t feel anything," I repeated. "It could have happened while we were driving and the road bumps hid it. I’ll turn on the news.” We listened to CNN for a while, more interminable opinions interrupted by constant commercials, until finally they announced there had been a moderate quake in southern Colorado, only the one tremor so far. Any aftershocks hadn’t been severe enough to warrant another news report. While we waited to see if there was anything else on the national news, I glanced through the Times and El Diario. I wanted to see if anything new had happened in Juarez while I was up in New Mexico.

But things had been quiet there too. There had been no new Chupacabra attack since the daylight incident. There was some speculation in El Diario whether that meant anything. Meanwhile, there were gang-related murders down in the Gulf states and over near the Pacific coast. The cartels were fighting to control the routes where drugs were shipped off to the north, but in Juarez, the former flash-point for the drug wars, things were quiet. People were on the streets again and a few tourists had ventured across the bridges. Nothing like as many as there had been before, but people were crossing the border again.

The Chupacabra had done what the police couldn't, put fear into some of the worst gangsters in the world.

We went to bed early that night. It had been a long, eventful day. Ana Maria needed cuddling and I was happy to oblige, a substitute for the caring her family no longer provided. I left the bedroom door ajar in case T had another nightmare, but the night was uneventful.

T left early the next morning to get started on his mysterious project. I had a government class and Ana Maria had things she needed to do at UTEP. We separated after we got to the Student Union Building.

***

T breakfasted at Mickey D’s and parked near the international bridge.

He waited until the first rush of pedestrians slowed, then began popping tiny paint chips from the walls. Blank, unpainted stripes remained but the graffiti was gone. He grinned. Talent could be used for something other than killing! He wiped walls, watched people going about their business, and tried to pick up their thoughts. If he seldom succeeded, it didn't matter. The important thing was to erase the tagging, and sooner or later his telepathy would improve.

Satisfied with his day's work and in a good mood, he returned to Ray’s house late that afternoon.

***

I met T at the door when he rang the bell. “You’re smiling. I take it you’ve had a good day?”

“Oh, yeah; best day I’ve had in a long time! I didn’t kill anyone, but trust me, the gangs know I was there! Okay, not me exactly, but they know that someone did something! You mind if I borrow your car tomorrow? If they're keeping an eye on the areas where I worked, they might connect my truck with what happened.”

“Not a problem if I can use your truck to get to school. I’ll need to park on the street instead the campus parking lot—your truck doesn’t have a sticker—but that’s no big deal. So what have you been up to?”

“Street cleaning, Ray! I wiped graffiti off the walls. If you work carefully, you can feel the tiny flecks of paint. It's easy, just peel them off and let them drop. I did that on both sides of the street for a dozen or so blocks.” T laughed, and continued, “And then I called in a tip to the police! I told them that the taggers would be out tonight and where they could find them.”

I chuckled. “They're pretty overworked, T. Think they’ll send anyone?”

“Even if they don't," he said, "there's a good chance someone from the neighborhood will see them and they might even take a photo or a video. Every cell phone has a camera, and if the video is clear enough, the evening news will be glad to run it. Someone might recognize the taggers and call in a tip of their own. If the police worked more closely with the community and kept a closer watch over the gang areas, they’d stop a lot of the problems. It's too bad; the politicians are more interested in protecting the nicer neighborhoods, so that’s where the cops get sent. No one appears to care about what happens in the barrios, but I do.” A brief, savage look flashed across T's face.

Maybe he was remembering that the barrios, the largely-Hispanic neighborhoods near the border, were where most of El Paso's crime happened and most of the crimes involved Hispanic preying on Hispanic. Street gangs like the ones we'd wiped out, parasitizing poor people that the city government ignored!

“Try to stay out of trouble, T. They'll kill you if they realize what you’re doing, or try to.”

“I’m not worried, Ray. I'm not looking to kill anyone, but I have no problem with busting some saggy-pants ganger's belt! If he’s got a hidden weapon, he’ll have both hands full trying to keep from shooting his dick off while keeping his raggedy ass from hanging out in public after his pants fall down. I don’t like the gangs and I don’t like what they do! I hate the drugs and violence and painting stupid names on walls! They're all about reputation and respect, so if I can embarrass a few that might just be good enough. If I can do it without killing anyone, that's even better.”

Ana Maria had been showering while we talked. She came out and joined us just as T finished, and that ended the verbal conversation; she wouldn't have understood.

We'd been busy and neither of us had thought of putting supper in the crock pot, so T volunteered to take us out to dinner. Between verbal conversations, we commed Shezzie and brought her up to date. She told us what she’d been doing and filled us in on what the local news was reporting. The firefighters had moved on. Between their efforts and what we’d done, the fire was now contained. It would probably take a few days for the last embers to die out, but unless a high wind came up the forest fire was over.

Officials had already found the cause; a dead pine tree, victim of a windstorm, had fallen across a high-tension line. The wire had shorted briefly and the spark had set the tree on fire. It had quickly spread, eventually burning several square miles, but now it was contained and none of the firemen had been injured. T and I shared a quick smile.

Shezzie mentioned there had been two recent aftershocks following the Colorado earthquake. The first had been weak, barely felt by residents, but the second had caused a landslide. Interstate 25 just north of the New Mexico border was now closed.

Some blamed the quakes on fracking and were organizing protests against drilling, but rockfalls had happened many times in Raton Pass. Heavy equipment was already on the scene and the road was expected to open soon. Meantime, traffic was backed up. Several tractor-trailers had elected to seek another route north.

For locals, it had been just another day in the mountains.

That was a preview of Wizard at Work (The Wizard Series, Book Two). To read the rest purchase the book.

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