Mojave Mud Caves
by Robert Essig

A group of young Spring Breakers headed for Lake Havasu take a sudden detour in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It will be a quick stop, he said. It won’t take long, he said. It’s hot. Over 100 degrees, and no one really wants to meddle around some sweaty desert caves a mile off the highway. Then something goes wrong and no one knows what to do.
Needles, California, a town in regression, home of semi-retired truck driver Big Vic. He’s made a lot of mistakes in life and has vowed to make a change, starting by spending more time his adult daughter who has suddenly gone missing. Is it drugs, a kidnapping, murder? His investigation teams him up with an unlikely ally and he finds that tapping into his rough and tumble past is the only way to get answers.
In the desert of Southern California is something of a phenomenon. Tucked away from passersby on Interstate 40 and widely unknown, a series of tunnels crisscross through the mountains, but they’re not mine shafts or caverns. They’re not teaming with bats and stalagmites. These tunnels are deliberate. Festering with something ferocious, something deadly. Something evil.
What lurks within the Mojave Mud Caves?