“I said we want to see the Fat Man,” Macklin repeated. “Do you take us, or what?”
The bearded man laughed harshly. “You’ve got a lot of guts for a dirtwart!” His eyes flickered toward Sheila Fontana, lingered on her body and breasts, then went back to the pistol Macklin held.
Roland slowly lifted his hand in front of the blond kid’s face, then just as slowly brought his hand down and reached into the pocket of his trousers. The blond boy’s finger was on the trigger. Roland’s hand found what he was after, and he began to draw it out.
“You can leave the woman and we won’t kill you,” the beatded man told Macklin. “Just walk out and go back to your hole. We’ll forget that you even—”
A little plastic bottle hit the ground in front of his left boot.
“Go ahead,” Roland told him. “Pick it up. Take a sniff.”
The man hesitated, glanced around at the others who were still shouting and jeering and eating Sheila Fontana alive with their eyes. Then he knelt down, picked up the bottle Roland had tossed over, uncapped it and sniffed. “What the hell—/”
“Want me to kill him, Mr. Lawry?” the blond kid asked hopefully.
“No! Put that damned gun down!” Lawry sniffed the contents of the bottle again, and his wide blue eyes began to water. “Put the gun down!” he snapped, and the boy obeyed reluctantly.
“You going to take us to the Fat Man?” Macklin asked. “I think he’d like to get a sniff, don’t you?”
“Where’d you get this shit?”
“The Fat Man. Now.”
Lawry capped the vial. He looked around at the others, looked back at the Airstream trailer and paused, trying to make up his mind. He blinked, and Roland could tell the man didn’t exactly have a mainframe computer between his ears. “Okay.” He motioned with the shotgun. “Move ass.”
“Kill ’em!” the stocky woman shrieked. “Don’t let ’em contaminate us!”
“Now listen, all of you!” Lawry held the shotgun at his side and kept the plastic vial gripped tightly in his other hand. “They’re not burned or anything! I mean ... they’re just dirty! They’re not like the other dirtwarts! I’ll take responsibility for them!”
“Don’t let them in!” another woman shouted. “They don’t belong!”
“Move,” Lawry told Macklin. “You try anything funny, and I swear to God you’ll be one headless motherfucker. Got it?”
Macklin didn’t answer. He pushed Sheila forward, and Roland followed him toward the large silver trailer. A pack of people stalked at their heels, including the trigger-happy kid with the .38 revolver.
Lawry ordered them to stop when they’d gotten ten feet from the trailer. He walked up a few bricks that had been set up as steps to the trailer’s door and knocked on it with the butt of his shotgun. A high, thin voice from inside asked, “Who is it?”
“Lawry, Mr. Kempka. I’ve got something you need to see.”
There was no reply for a moment or so. Then the whole trailer seemed to tremble, to creak over a few degrees as Kempka—the Fat Man who, Macklin had learned from another dirtwart, was the leader of the lake shore encampment—approached the door. A couple of bolts snapped back. The door opened, but Macklin was unable to see who had opened it. Lawry told Macklin to wait where he was, then he entered the trailer. The door shut. As soon as he was gone, the curses and jeers got louder, and again bottles and cans were flung.
“You’re crazy, war hero,” Sheila said. “You’ll never get out of here alive.”
“If we go, so do you.”
She turned on him, disregarding the pistol, and her eyes flashed with anger. “So kill me, war hero. As soon as you pull that trigger, these horny bastards’ll take you apart piece by piece. And who said you could use my stash, huh? That’s high-grade Colombian sugar you’re throwing around, man!”
Macklin smiled thinly. “You like to take chances, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for the answer, because he already knew it. “You want food and water? You want to sleep with a roof over your head and not expect somebody to kill you in the night? You want to be able to wash and not squat in your own shit? I want those things, too, and so does Roland. We don’t belong out there with the dirtwarts; we belong here, and this is a chance we’ve got to take.”
She shook her head, and though she was infuriated at losing her stash, she knew he was right. The kid had shown real smarts in suggesting it. “You’re crazy.”
“We’ll see.”
The trailer’s door opened. Lawry stuck his head out. “Okay. Come on up. But you give me the gun first.”
“No deal. The gun stays with me.”
“You heard what I said, mister!”
“I heard. The gun stays with me.”
Lawry looked over his shoulder at the man inside the trailer. Then: “Okay. Come on—and be quick about it!”
They went up the steps into the trailer, and Lawry closed the door behind Roland, sealing off the shouts of the mob. Lawry swung his shotgun up at Macklin’s head.
A blob wearing a food-stained T-shirt and overalls was sitting at a table on the other side of the trailer. His hair was dyed orange and stood up in inch-high spikes on his scalp, and he had a beard streaked with red and green food coloring. His head looked too small for his chest and massive belly, and he had four chins. His eyes were beady black holes in a pallid, flabby face. Scattered around the trailer were cases of canned food, bottled Cokes and Pepsis, bottled water and about a hundred six-packs of Budweiser stacked up against one wall. Behind him was a storehouse of weapons: a rack of seven rifles, one with a sniperscope, an old Thompson submachine gun, a bazooka, and a variety of pistols hanging on hooks. Before him on the table, he had sifted a small mound of cocaine from the plastic vial and was rubbing some of it between his fleshy fingers. Within reach of his right hand was a Luger, its muzzle pointed in the direction of his visitors. He lifted some of the cocaine to his nostrils and sniffed delicately, as if testing French perfume. “Do you have names?” he asked, in a voice that was almost girlish.
“My name is Macklin. Colonel James B. Macklin, ex–United States Air Force. This is Roland Croninger and Sheila Fontana.”
Kempka picked up another bit of cocaine and let it drift back down. “Where did this come from, Colonel Macklin?”
“My stash,” Sheila said. She thought she’d seen all the repulsive things in the world, but even in the low yellow light of the two lamps that illuminated the trailer, she could hardly bear the Fat Man. He looked like a circus freak, and from each of his long, fat earlobes hung diamond-studded earrings.
“And this is the extent of that ‘stash’?”
“No,” Macklin replied. “Not nearly all. There’s plenty more cocaine, and all kinds of pills, too.”
“Pills,” Kempka repeated. His black eyes aimed at Macklin. “What kind of pills?”
“All kinds. LSD. PCP. Painkillers. Tranquilizers. Uppers and downers.”
Sheila snorted. “War hero, you don’t know shit about goodies, do you?” She took a step toward Kempka, and the Fat Man’s hand rested on the Luger’s butt. “Black Beauties, Yellowjackets, Blue Angels, bennies, poppers, and Red Stingers. All high-quality floats.”
“Is that so? Were you in the business, young lady?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She looked around at the messy, cluttered trailer. “What kind of business were you in? Pig farming?”
Kempka stared at her. Then, slowly, his belly began to wobble, followed by his chins. His entire face shook like a plateful of Jell-O, and a high, feminine laugh squeaked between his lips. “Hee hee!” he said, his cheeks reddening. “Hee hee! Pig farming. Hee hee!” He waved a fat hand at Lawry, who forced a nervous laugh as well. When he’d stopped laughing, Kempka said, “No, dear one, it was not pig farming. I owned a gun shop in Rancho Cordova, just east of Sacramento. Fortunately, I had time to pack up some of my stock and get out when the bombs hit the Bay Area. I also had the presence of mind to visit a little grocery store on the way eas
t. Mr. Lawry was a clerk at my store, and we found a place to hide for a while in the Eldorado National Forest. The road brought us here, and other people started arriving. Soon we had a little community. Most of the people came to soak themselves in the lake. There’s a belief that bathing in the salt water washes off the radiation and makes you immune.” He shrugged his fleshy shoulders. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. In any case, I kind of enjoy playing King of the Hill and the Godfather. If someone doesn’t do as I say, I simply banish them to the dirtwart land ... or I kill them.” He giggled again, his black eyes sparkling merrily. “You see, I make the laws here. Me, Freddie Kempka, lately of Kempka’s Shootist Supermarket, Incorporated. Oh, I’m having a real ball!”
“Good for you,” Sheila muttered.
“Yes. Good for me.” He rubbed cocaine between his fingers and sniffed a bit up each nostril. “My, my! That is a potent dust, isn’t it?” He licked his fingers clean, and then he looked at Roland Croninger. “What are you supposed to be, a space cadet?”
Roland didn’t answer. I’ll zap your big fat ass, he thought.
Kempka giggled. “How come you to be out in the dirtwart land, Colonel?”
Macklin told him the whole story, how Earth House had collapsed and how he and the boy had gotten out. Macklin made no mention of the Shadow Soldier, because he knew the Shadow Soldier didn’t like to be talked about to strangers.
“I see,” Kempka said when he’d finished. “Well, like they say: The best-laid plans often go shitty, don’t they? Now, I suppose you came here and brought this potent dust for a purpose. What is it?”
“We want to move into the encampment. We want a tent, and we want a supply of food.”
“The only tents that are here were brought on people’s backs. They’re all filled up. No room in the inn, Colonel.”
“Make room. We get a tent and some food and you get a weekly ration of cocaine and pills. Call it rent.”
“What would I do with drugs, sir?”
Roland laughed, and Kempka regarded him through hooded eyes. “Come on, mister!” Roland stepped forward. “You know you can sell those drugs for whatever you want! You can buy people’s minds with that stuff, because everybody’ll pay to forget. They’ll pay anything you ask: food, guns, gasoline—anything.”
“I already have those things.”
“Maybe you do,” Roland agreed. “But are you sure you’ve got enough of them? What if somebody in a bigger trailer comes into the encampment tomorrow? What if they’ve got more guns than you do? What if they’re stronger and meaner? Those people out there”— he nodded toward the door—“are just waiting for somebody strong to tell them what to do. They want to be commanded. They don’t want to have to think for themselves. Here’s a way to put their minds in your pocket.” He motioned to the snowy mound.
Kempka and Roland stared at each other for a silent moment, and Roland had the sensation of looking at a giant slug. Kempka’s black eyes bored into Roland’s, and finally a little smile flickered across his wet mouth. “Would these drugs,” he said, “buy me a sweet young space cadet?”
Roland didn’t know what to say. He was stunned, and it must’ve shown on his face because Kempka snorted and laughed. When his laughter was spent, the Fat Man said to Macklin, “What’s to keep me from killing you right now and taking your precious drugs, Colonel?”
“One simple thing: the drugs are buried out in the dirtwart land. Roland’s the only one who knows where they are. He’ll go out and bring you a ration once a week, but if anybody follows him or tries to interfere, they get their brains blown out.”
Kempka tapped his fingers on the tabletop, looking from the mound of cocaine to Macklin and Roland—contemptuously dismissing the girl—and then back to the Colombian sugar.
“We could use that stuff, Mr. Kempka,” Lawry offered. “Fella came in yesterday with a gas heater that sure would warm this trailer up. Another guy’s got some whiskey he lugged along in a tow sack. We’re gonna need tires for the truck, too. I would’ve already taken that heater and the bottles of Jack Daniel’s, but both of those new arrivals are armed to the teeth. Might be a good idea to trade the drugs for their guns, too.”
“I’ll decide what’s a good idea and what’s not.” Kempka’s face folded up as he frowned thoughtfully. He drew a long breath and exhaled it like a bellows. “Find them a tent. Close to the trailer. And spread the word that if anybody touches them, they answer to Freddie Kempka.” He smiled broadly at Macklin. “Colonel, I believe you and your friends are going to be very interesting additions to our little family. I guess we could call you pharmacists, couldn’t we?”
“I guess so.” Macklin waited until Lawry had lowered his shotgun, and then he in turn lowered the automatic.
“There. Now we’re all happy, aren’t we?” And his black, ravenous eyes found Roland Croninger.
Lawry took them to a small tent staked down about thirty yards from the Airstream trailer. It was occupied by a young man and a woman who held an infant with bandaged legs. Lawry stuck the shotgun in the young man’s face and said, “Get out.”
The man, drawn and gaunt, hollow-eyed with fatigue, scrabbled under his sleeping bag. His hand came up with a hunting knife, but Lawry stepped forward and caught the man’s thin wrist beneath his boot. Lawry put all his weight down, and Roland watched his eyes as he broke the man’s bones: they were empty, registering no emotion even when the snapping noise began. Lawry was simply doing what he’d been told. The infant started crying, and the woman was screaming, but the man just hugged his broken wrist and stared numbly up at Lawry.
“Out.” Lawry put the shotgun’s barrel to the young man’s skull. “Are you deaf, you dumb bastard?”
The man and woman wearily got to their feet. He paused to gather up their sleeping bags and a knapsack with his uninjured hand, but Lawry grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out, throwing him to the ground. The woman sobbed and cringed at her husband’s side. A crowd was gathering to watch, and the woman shrieked, “You animals! You dirty animals! That’s our tent! It belongs to us!”
“Not anymore.” Lawry motioned with the shotgun toward the dirtwart land. “Start walking.”
“It’s not fair! Not fair!” the woman sobbed. She looked around imploringly at the people who were gathering. Roland, Macklin and Sheila did, too, and they all saw the same thing in those faces: an impassive, uninvolved curiosity, as if they were watching television violence. Though there were faint expressions of disgust and pity here and there, the majority of the onlookers had already been shocked devoid of all emotion.
“Help us!” the woman begged. “Please ... somebody help us!”
Several of the people had guns, but none of them intervened. Macklin understood why: It was the survival of the fittest. Freddie Kempka was the emperor here, and Lawry was his lieutenant—probably one of many lieutenants Kempka used as his eyes and ears.
“Get out,” Lawry told the couple. The woman kept shrieking and crying, but finally the man stood up and, his eyes dead and defeated, began to trudge slowly toward the grim land of car hulks and decaying corpses. Her expression turned to hatred; she stood up with the wailing infant in her arms and shouted to the crowd, “It’ll happen to you! You’ll see! They’ll take evetything you have! They’ll come and drag you out of—”
Lawry struck out with the stock of the shotgun. It crunched into the infant’s skull, the force of the blow knocking the young woman to the ground.
The infant’s crying abruptly stopped.
She looked down into her child’s face and made a weak choking sound.
Sheila Fontana couldn’t believe what she’d just witnessed; she wanted to turn away, but the scene had a dark hold on her. Her stomach churned with revulsion, and she could still hear the infant’s cry, echoing over and over in her mind. She put her hand over her mouth and pressed.
The young man, a corpse in clothes, was walking on across the plain, not even bothering to look back.
/> Finally, with a shuddering gasp, the woman rose to her feet, the silent infant clasped to her chest. Her hideous, hollowed-out eyes met Sheila’s and lingered. Sheila felt as if her soul had been burned to a cinder. If ... only the baby had stopped crying, Sheila thought. If only ...
The young mother turned and began to follow her husband into the mist.
The onlookers drifted away. Lawry wiped the stock of his shotgun on the ground and motioned toward the tent. “Looks like we just got a vacancy, Colonel.”
“Did you ... have to do that?” Sheila asked. Inside she was trembling and sick, but her face showed no sign of it, her eyes cold and flinty.
“Every once in a while they forget who makes the rules. Well? Do you want the tent or not?”
“We do,” Macklin said.
“There you go, then. Even got a couple of sleeping bags and some food in there. Cozy as home, huh?”
Macklin and Roland entered the tent. “Where am I supposed to live?” Sheila asked Lawry.
He smiled, examined her up and down. “Well, I’ve got an extra sleeping bag over in the trailer. See, I bunk with Mr. Kempka, but I’m not funny. He likes young boys, couldn’t give a shit about women. What do you say?”
She smelled his body odor and couldn’t decide whose was worse, his or the war hero’s. “Forget it,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll get you, sooner or later.”
“When Hell freezes.”
He licked a finger and held it up to catch the wind. “It’s getting pretty frosty, darlin’.” Then he laughed and sauntered off toward the trailer.
Sheila watched him go. She looked in the direction of the dirt-wart land, and she saw the vague outlines of the young couple heading into the mist, into the unknown that lay beyond it. Those two wouldn’t have spit’s chance out there, she thought. But maybe they already knew that. The baby would’ve died anyway, she told herself. Sure. The kid was half dead already.
But that incident had knocked her off her tracks more than anything ever had before, and she couldn’t help thinking that a few minutes before there was a living person where a ghost was now. And it had happened because of her drugs, because she’d come in there with the war hero and the punk playing big shots.