When I finally drew the door open, the smell swatted me in the face. Not the stench of rotting flesh or anything even remotely resembling death. Still, it was a smell I recognized immediately.
Marijuana.
I pulled out my flashlight and shined it around the interior of the building. There were large wire cages to either side of a central aisle. It reminded me of evidence lockup. Each of the cages was packed with bricks and bags and crates of drugs, all of them carefully catalogued and documented with their weights on the clipboards hanging from the locked doors. I was no expert, but the street value of this one building was probably enough to buy a small country. Or maybe even a large one. Antone had gathered it all here to be found and seized by the proper authorities. And my gut told me that everything he had accumulated was still here, right down to the last gram.
I strolled down the aisle, glancing from one side to the other. Marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, Mexican tar, crates of semiautomatic pistols and assault rifles. Everything that could possibly be smuggled across the reservation shy of a cage full of undocumenteds and an insulated case of plutonium. Or maybe I just hadn’t come across them yet.
It was an impressive collection by anyone’s standards. I couldn’t imagine how much time and effort Antone had invested into confiscating this amount of contraband. It was a wonder he hadn’t already been hunted down and killed by the cartels. I shuddered to think that this volume of drugs could be considered too small to actually be missed.
I found it hard not to respect Antone for making it his mission to help rid his reservation of at least a portion of the drugs being funneled across his land and into the public school system, but that didn’t change the fact that he had crossed the line. No matter what crimes these criminals had committed, they didn’t deserve to be hunted down in the desert by someone like my brother.
Or maybe they did. Was not the definition of morality a code of conduct that served the greater good of society?
The cages ended with about fifteen feet remaining before the garage door. I smelled the faintest hint of gasoline. There were oil stains all over the floor. The concrete was lined with tire tracks. Rubber imprints. Three close together. Parallel. Like a tricycle would make. Or perhaps, more accurately, like an ultralight “trike” one-man aircraft would make. The kind that looked like a hang glider attached to a go-kart with an engine-driven propeller mounted to the back. The kind that could fly at more than thirty miles-an-hour and stay under the radar where the Border Patrol couldn’t see it. The kind that the cartels used to make nighttime drops in remote locations where collection teams were ready and waiting. The kind that could easily get a man across the border and into the kind of town where he could disappear in less time than it took for all of the inept law enforcement officers swarming the desert to find his abandoned police cruiser.
I unlocked the garage door, rolled it upward, and stepped out into the night. The tire tracks led about four hundred feet away from me to a point where they vanished altogether.
Who in his right mind would leave the ‘States and risk his life crossing the desert to get into Mexico, you know?
Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled at the moon.
Coyote is the master of deception.
Coyote.
I’itoi.
This infernal desert was positively crawling with gods of mischief.
THE CALM BEFORE THE SWARM
A Novella
Michael McBride
The Calm Before the Swarm copyright © 2011 by Michael McBride
Previously published in the collection Quiet, Keeps to Himself copyright © 2011 by Michael McBride, from Thunderstorm Books
Cover photograph copyright © 2011 by Konkolas
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Michael McBride.
For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.michaelmcbride.net
THE CALM BEFORE THE SWARM
For Paul…the ultimate publisher/collector
Special Thanks to Paul Goblirsch, Jeff Strand, Gene O’Neill, Leigh Haig, Bill Rasmussen, Brian Keene, my family, and all of my loyal readers, without whom none of this would be possible.
THE CALM BEFORE THE SWARM
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
— John Dewey
Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives.
— Abu Bakr
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
— Arthur C. Clarke
CHAPTER ONE
I
Lithium Springs, Georgia
Dr. Lauren Allen pulled up to the barricade in a wash of red and blue lights and rolled down the window of her Sahara Silver Audi A5. A uniformed officer accepted her proffered badge jacket without a word and compared her identification against the list on his clipboard. His upper lip glistened with a liberal application of Vick’s VapoRub. She could smell it even over the divine scent of the Mongolian beef in the Styrofoam container on the seat beside her. The call had come in during dinner, forcing her box up more than half of her meal. Had she known what the night would bring, she would have gone for the shrimp with lobster sauce. The onions and peppers were murder on her digestive system.