Chapter 1

The nagging, blaring, awful noise slowly penetrated the dark void. Eventually, it woke me up. ‘Woke me up’ is probably too strong a phrase. It was more like swimming through a thick soup of unconsciousness, towards something that vaguely resembled awareness. I’d experienced this feeling before, when I’d awakened in a hospital recovery room from a general anesthetic.

How long I floated in that dream like state of hazy semi-awareness I can’t say. I do remember that as I was peeking out from the haziness, there was a foreboding general sense of vague unexplainable uneasiness. I also felt the rumbling, gurgling, boiling in my head. Somehow, I knew that meant a major, almost paralyzing headache in my near future. None of what I was feeling was helped by that damned noise!

After some unreasonable amount of time I finally gained enough awareness to figure out that I was in my RV, and not in a hospital. With the passage of more time, I finally realized the awful noise was the sound of my RV’s horn. Then came the realization that the horn was blaring, because my forehead was resting on the center of the steering wheel; which was immediately followed by the blossoming of the predicted headache, into mind numbing reality.

A few minutes later, I successfully struggled through the debilitating pain of the headache and managed to raise my head from the steering wheel. In the blessed quiet, I forced my body back into the seat, with my head against the head rest. My eyes still closed, I waited for the rest of the fog to lift from my thoughts, and for the headache to subside.

My first real thought was about the dream I’d been having of my wife Laura, our youngest son Mike, and me.

We’d been riding our horses on a bright spring morning along the Rio Grande at the base of the Robledo Mountains. The air had been crisp, without being cold, seemingly enhancing the smell of creosote and mesquite of the high desert. The feel of the horses moving underneath us as we dashed in and out of the dry riverbed, only added to the exhilaration we all felt. Despite how vivid it all seemed, it had to have been a dream. The last ride all three of us had taken together was in early 2008, almost eight years ago, just before Laura had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

That was closely followed by a new thought. The last thing I remembered was driving south on Highway 185 on my way home from Albuquerque. But why had I been in Albuquerque?

A few moments later I remembered the answer. I had been in Albuquerque for a weekend gun show. Instead of coming home immediately after the show as I normally did, I’d stayed overnight so I could pick up weapons, ammunition, and clothing, from the warehouse at Kirtland Air Force Base. Six months ago, four of my long-time friends had convinced me to join them in a joint bid for a large lot in a government auction. Surprisingly, we had won. I was due in Phoenix in three days to split everything up amongst the five of us, before continuing my normal gun show circuit.

As the fog in my brain completely lifted and the headache subsided to a dull throb, I began to remember details from the last twelve hours. I’d spent the morning cleaning up the paperwork from my weekends sales, had a quick lunch, and had driven over to Kirtland Air Force Base. There I spent the afternoon and early evening loading up my custom twenty-five-foot trailer, and most of the RV, with the surplus we’d bid on. By the time I was done loading and rearranging everything to my satisfaction, it was late evening. With the late start, I knew that the three-hour trip home would see me pulling into my once home - now my daughter’s and her family’s home - near midnight.

I was ten miles from home on Highway 185 when a strange ground fog began welling up from out of nowhere. Seemingly within seconds it had covered all the ground in sight including the road. Slowing the RV to a crawl, I began pulling over to the dirt shoulder by feel alone. By the time I’d moved well off the road, the fog had thickened even more and risen up to where I’d even lost sight of the night sky. The very last thing I remembered before blacking out, was a feeling of profound relief as I reached to shift the transmission into Park.

Without moving my head, I gave a sideways look out of the corner of my eye. Yes, I had successfully put the transmission in Park before I’d blacked out. A quick glance at the dashboard clock told me that whatever this was, it had started just over an hour ago.

So, what the hell happened? Why had I blacked out? I’d been at a complete stop, so it wasn’t possible that I’d hit something. Had something hit me after I stopped? As I was thinking those thoughts, I was also checking myself out just in case. All my toes moved, my knees bent, there was no pain or problem with my back or neck, my fingers all worked, my arms moved, and although my head hurt, there were no bumps, scrapes, or bruises on my head.

A glance out the windshield just added to the puzzle. The glare from the headlights bouncing back distorted the view so much I couldn’t say with certainty, but my general impression was the RV was just a few inches away from a rock wall. I knew for a fact that there weren’t any rock walls anywhere near the road on this stretch of Highway 185.

Swiveling the seat, I struggled to my feet, and opened the door. I was met with extremely cold air as I climbed down from the RV onto sand and gravel. Another puzzle. It was the middle of August, but it felt like late winter. While I could hear the whistle of a strong wind blowing somewhere nearby, I was standing in an eerily cold calm. Despite the unexpected cold, and while being dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, I felt fine. In fact, other than the headache, my sixty-six-year-old body felt better than it had in a very long time.

Moving around to the front of the RV, I found no damage to the front of it, but the bumper was about an inch away from a wall of rock. At the back of the trailer attached to the RV, I discovered it was about fifteen feet from another rock wall. Another puzzle.

As I turned to walk back towards the front of the RV, I noticed an area slightly lighter in shade than the surrounding blackness. A couple of seconds later I was standing in the opening to the cave into which my RV somehow had been inserted. Shivering slightly in the cold, I walked out the opening and into the wind, which wasn’t as strong as I’d feared it would be.

Outside the cave I was met by one of my favorite smells, the smell of the high mountain desert in late evening. The familiar scent of mesquite, creosote, and open water were tinged with the scent of something I didn’t immediately recognize. There had never been a lot of sagebrush in this part of New Mexico, so it took me a moment to place it. The smell of sagebrush was much more powerful than I could ever remember, competing on an almost equal footing with the creosote, mesquite, and water.

The quarter moon gave enough light to see the Rio Grande, a little over five hundred yards away. As I took a quick look around, I realized that something with the view was off. Actually, three things were off. First, I was west of the river, at least thirty feet higher than the opposite bank, and there was no sign of the levees I knew should be there. Second, I didn’t see any lights from Dona Ana. It wasn’t just that I didn’t see any lights; I didn’t even see the reflected glow of lights I expected to see this close to Las Cruces, and up Highway 70 towards San Augustin Pass. Third, there was no road. Nor was there any reflected gleam of asphalt or concrete – anywhere!