“Try that in English,” Tom said.
“I can’t keep the ship on the ground much longer,” Daufin translated. “And I don’t have time to meld into my pod. I need another guardian.”
Jessie felt as if the breath had been punched out of her. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I need physical form to keep the ship from lifting off while you’re in the tunnels. The shock wave would kill you.”
“Please…give Stevie back to us.” Jessie stood up. “Please!”
“I want to.” The face was tormented, and the small hands clutched the black sphere to her chest. “I must have another guardian. Please understand: I’m trying to save all of you as well as myself.”
“No! You can’t have Stevie! I want my daughter back!”
“Uh…is ‘guardian’ kinda the same as ‘custodian’?”
Daufin looked to her right, and up at Sarge Dennison. “What’s a guardian do?” he asked cautiously.
“A guardian,” she answered, “protects my body and holds my mind. I wear a guardian like armor, and I respect and protect the guardian’s body and mind as well.”
“Sounds like a full-time job.”
“It is. A guardian knows peace, in a place beyond dreams. But there’ll never be any returning to Earth. Once this ship takes off—”
“The sky’s the limit,” Sarge said.
She nodded, watching him hopefully.
“And if you get another guardian, you…like…shed your skin? And the Hammonds get their real daughter back? Right?”
“Right.”
He paused, his face lined with thought. He looked at his hands for a few seconds. “Can we take Scooter?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t dream of not taking Scooter,” she said.
Sarge pursed his lips and hissed out air. “What’ll we do for food and water?”
“We won’t need them. I’ll be in a sleep tube, and you’ll be here.” She lifted the pod. “With Scooter, if that’s as you wish.”
He smiled wanly. “I’m…kinda scared.”
“So am I,” Daufin said. “Let’s be brave together.”
Sarge looked up at Tom and Jessie, then over at the others. Returned his gaze to the little girl’s intense and shining eyes. “All right,” he decided. “I’ll be your guardian.”
“Place your fingers against this,” Daufin told him, and he gingerly touched the sphere. “Don’t be afraid. Wait. Just wait.”
Blue threads began to creep across the black surface. “Hey!” Sarge’s voice was high and nervous. “Look at that!” The blue threads connected with each other, and floated like mist beneath their hands. Daufin closed her eyes, blocking out all externals and the insistent bellows’ boom of the ship. She concentrated solely on opening the vast reservoir of power that lay within the sphere, and she felt it react to her like the ocean tides of her world, flowing over and around her, drawing her deeper into their realm and away from the body of Stevie Hammond.
Blue sparks jumped around Daufin’s fingers. “Lord!” Sarge said. “What was—” They danced around his fingers too; he felt a faint tingling sensation that seemed to flow up and down his spine. “Lord!” was all he could say, and that in a stunned whisper.
And in the next instant currents of power snapped out of the sphere, coiled around Daufin’s hands and Sarge’s too. His eyes widened. The bright blue bands intertwined, braided around each other, and shot with an audible humming sound into the eyes of both Daufin and Sarge, into their nostrils and around their skulls. Daufin’s hair danced with sparks. Sarge’s mouth opened, and sparks were leaping off his fillings.
Tom and Jessie held on to each other, not daring to speak or move, and the others were silent.
The power surge snapped Sarge’s head back. His legs buckled, and he fell to the floor. Daufin went down two seconds later. The energy now ceased, and the pod fell out of the child’s hands and rolled to Jessie’s feet.
Daufin sat up. Blinked at Tom and Jessie. Started to speak but nothing came out.
Sarge’s body trembled. He rolled over on his side, slowly got up on his knees.
Daufin rubbed her eyes. Sarge breathed deeply a few times, and then he spoke: “Take your daughter home, Tom and Jessie.”
“Mama?” Stevie said. “I’m…so sleepy.”
Jessie rushed to her daughter, picked her up, and hugged her, and Tom put his arms around both of them. “Why are you crying?” Stevie asked.
Sarge retrieved the sphere and stood up. His movements were quicker than before, and his eyes glinted with a fierce intelligence. “Your language…isn’t big enough to tell you how grateful I am,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought such pain to this world.” He looked down at Curt’s body, and placed his hand on Cody’s shoulder. “It wasn’t what I wanted.”
Cody nodded, but was unable to reply.
“We know,” Tom said. “I wish you could’ve seen a better part of our world.”
“I think I saw a fine part of it. What’s any world but its tribe? And the generations yet to be?” He reached out, gently touching Stevie’s auburn hair with Sarge’s work-gnarled fingers.
Stevie’s eyes and brain were fogged with the need for sleep. “Do I know who you are?”
“Nope. But someday—maybe—your parents might tell you.”
Stevie nestled her head against Jessie’s shoulder. She didn’t care where she was, or what was happening; her body was worn out. But she’d been having such a wonderful dream, of playing in the summer sun in a huge pasture with Sweetpea. Such a wonderful dream…
“The greatest gift is a second chance,” the alien said. “That’s what you’ve given my tribe. I wish there was something I could give in return—but all I can do is promise that on my world there’ll always be a song for Earth.” A smile touched the corners of Sarge’s mouth. “Who knows? Someday we might even learn to play baseball.”
Jessie grasped his hand. Words failed her, but she found some. “Thank you for giving Stevie back to us. Good luck to you—and you be careful, you hear?”
“I hear.” He looked at the others, nodded farewell at Cody and Rick, then back to Jessie and Tom. “Go home,” he told them. “You know the way. And so do I.”
He turned and strode across the floor. One leg folded up at the knee joint like an accordion. He entered the small pyramid, paused only briefly as he studied the instruments, then began to rapidly manipulate the levers.
Tom, Jessie, Cody, Rick, and Miranda left the chamber, with Stevie clinging to Jessie’s neck. They went the way they’d come in, through the passage that spiraled down to a wide black ramp in the tunnel below. The lights they’d thrown away were still burning in the distance.
And in the black sphere in the creature’s hand, Sarge Dennison stood at a crossroads. He was a young man, handsome and agile, with his whole life before him. For some reason, and this was unclear, he was wearing an olive-green uniform. He had a suitcase in his hand, and the day was sunny and there was a nice breeze and the dirt road went in two directions. The signpost had foreign words on it: the names of Belgian villages. From one direction he thought he heard the dark mutter of thunder, and clouds of dark smoke were rising from the ground. Something bad was happening over that way, he thought. Something real bad, that should not ever have to happen again.
A dog barked. He looked the other way, and there was Scooter. A mighty prancy thing, waiting for him. The dog’s tail wagged furiously. Sarge looked toward the clear horizon. He didn’t know what was over that way, beyond the green trees and the soft hills, but maybe it was worth a walk.
He had all the time in the world to get there.
“Hold on!” he called to Scooter. “I’m comin’!” He started walking, and it was funny but the suitcase hardly weighed a feather. He leaned down and picked up a stick, and he flung it high and far and watched Scooter kick up dust as the dog ran to fetch it. Scooter got the stick and brought it back. It seemed to Sarge that they could play this game all day.
He smiled, a
nd passed on along a dirt road into the land of imagination.
58
Dawn
RICK STARTED UP THE rope, and twenty feet had never looked so deep. He made it up about eight feet before his arms gave out. He fell back, exhausted.
A voice came from above: “Tie a loop in the rope and put your foot in it! We’ll haul you up!”
“Okay!” Tom shouted. “Hold on!” He got the loop tied, and Rick stepped into it. He was drawn steadily upward and a few seconds later was pulled onto the floor of Crowfield’s house. He saw a smear of red early-morning sun in the sky. The force field was gone and the desert breeze was drifting the smoke and dust away.
Xavier Mendoza, Bobby Clay Clemmons, Zarra, and Pequin had come from the fortress. They dropped the rope back down and this time reeled Miranda up.
When Rhodes came up, he almost kissed the floor but he was afraid that if he got down on it he’d never get back up. He lurched to the front door, holding his mangled shoulder, breathed deeply of fresh air, and looked out at the world.
Helicopters roared back and forth over Inferno and Bordertown, cautiously circling the black pyramid. Higher up were the contrails of jet fighters, their pilots awaiting orders. On Highway 67 were hundreds of headlights: a convoy of trucks, jeeps, vans, and trailers. Rhodes nodded. Now the shit was about to hit the fan. He could hear the noise of the pyramid: from here, it was a low-pitched rumble. Daufin—Sarge, now—was still holding the ship back, giving them time to get clear of the tunnels.
Ray Hammond heard the chatter of a ’copter overhead, and he opened his eyes. He was lying in a bathtub, Nasty’s Mohawked head against his shoulder. Red stripes of sunlight slanted through a broken window. They had hidden here since Tank’s truck had overturned, had heard the smashing of houses around them, but had stayed put. Climbing into the bathtub had been Ray’s idea.
He started to climb out, but Nasty murmured and clutched at his chest. She was still pretty much out of it, he knew, and she needed to be taken to Doc Early. He looked at her face and smoothed some of her wild hair down—and then the ruddy light showed him what the dark had kept secret: Nasty’s blouse had pulled open, and…
Oh my God! Ray thought. Oh my God there they are!
Both her breasts were exposed. There they were, nipples and everything, just inches away from his fingers.
He stared at them, mesmerized.
So close. So close. Crazy, he thought, how his mind could switch from almost getting killed to the idea of losing his virginity in a bathtub, but that was the Alien Sex Beam for you. Unpredictable.
Maybe just one touch, he decided. One quick touch, and she’d never know.
He moved his fingers toward them, and Nasty’s eyes opened. They were red and swollen. Her whole face was puffy and bruised looking, but he still thought she was pretty. And maybe never prettier, her face against his shoulder and so close to him. Her eyes struggled to focus. She said, “Ray?”
“The one and only.” He gave a nervous little laugh.
“Thought so.” She smiled sleepily. “You’re okay, kid. You’re gonna make some girl feel real special someday. Like she’s a lady.” Her eyes closed again, heavy-lidded, and her soft breath brushed his throat.
He looked at her breasts for a while longer, but his fingers crept no closer. There would be a time, he thought. But not now. Not today. That time was in the future. Maybe not with Nasty, but with some girl he didn’t even know yet. Maybe love would have something to do with it too. And maybe thinking about things like this was what they called “growing up.”
“Thanks,” he said to her, but she didn’t answer. He gathered her blouse together and slipped a couple of buttons through their loops so when somebody found them she’d look like what she did to him: a sleeping Guinevere. And that was his chivalrous deed for the year, he decided. From here on out it was Wild Animal City. His body felt like a bag of knots, and he laid his head back and watched the red sun coming up.
Helicopters were flying over Celeste Street, their rotors stirring the haze away, as Ed Vance, Celeste Preston, and Sue Mullinax emerged from the Brandin’ Iron. They’d stayed behind the counter after the wall had crashed in, flat on their faces in the debris. There had been more sounds of destruction, and Vance had figured it was the end of the world until Celeste had given an ungodly shriek and they’d all heard the helicopters. Now they saw that the force field was gone, and as the wind of ’copter rotors swirled along the street Vance couldn’t help himself. He gave a whoop and hugged Celeste Preston, picking her up off her feet.
Something flapped past Vance’s face like a green bat. Then more of them, running before the wind. Sue shouted, “What is it?”
Celeste reached out and snagged a handful as they rushed past. She opened her hand, and was looking at eight one-hundred-dollar bills.
Money was flying all over Celeste Street. “My God!” Sue snatched up two handfuls and shoved them down her blouse, and now other people were out in the street, amid all the wreckage, picking up money too. “Where’s it comin’ from?”
Celeste struggled out of the sheriff’s bear hug and walked over sliding masses of money. Her yellow Cadillac had gone over on its side, two tires flat, and in the red light she could see the bills whirling up out of the car when the helicopters passed overhead. She reached the car on wobbly legs, and she said, “Shit.”
The hundred-dollar bills were coming from the ripped-open front seat, where the thing’s claws had slashed. Vance came toward her, his wet shirt stuffed with money. “Have you ever seen the like of this?” he hollered.
“We’ve found where Wint hid his money,” Celeste said. “Old crazy sonofabitch stuffed my seats full. He told me never to sell that car. Reckon I know why now.”
“Well, start pickin’ it up, then! Hell, it’s flyin’ all over town!”
Celeste grunted and looked around. The streets were riddled with chasms and cracks, stores appeared to have been hit by bombs, cars were smashed and many still on fire over in Cade’s used-car lot, houses were fit for kindling. “Ain’t much left of Inferno,” she said. “Old town’s ’bout done.”
“Get the money!” Vance urged her. “Come on, it’s yours! Help me get it!”
She stared at her handful of cash for a moment. And then she opened her fingers and the money took flight.
“Are you crazy? It’s goin’ everywhere!”
“Wind wants it,” Celeste said. “Wind oughta have it.” She regarded him with her icy blue eyes. “Ed, I’m damned grateful to be alive after what we just went through. I’ve lived in a shack and I’ve lived in a fancy house, and I’m not sure which suits me best. You want it, you go ahead and take it. All goin’ to the tax man, anyhow. But I’m alive this mornin’, Ed, and I feel mighty rich.” She breathed deep of clean air. “Mighty rich.”
“I do too, but that don’t mean I’ve lost my mind!” He was busy stuffing his pockets, back and front.
“Ain’t no matter.” She waved his objections away. “Sue, you got any more beer in there?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Preston.” Sue had stopped picking up money. Her blouse was full of bills, but her eyes were dazed and seeing Inferno all torn up made everything doubly unreal. “I think I’m…gonna go see if anything’s left of my house. You help yourself to whatever you want.” And then she walked away, through the bluster and scurry of cash, toward Bowden Street.
Celeste saw headlights up at the far end of the street. “Looks like we’ve gonna have company real soon. You want to share another beer with me ’fore they get here?”
Vance reached for another bill. As he grasped it three sneaked away from him. And he realized that he could never scoop up all of it, and trying to would make him crazy. He stood up. Money was already swirling out of his overstuffed pockets. It was a nightmare in the center of a dream nestled in a nightmare, and the only thing solid seemed to be the woman standing in front of him. The crackle of bills taunted him as they flew, and he knew he could work all his life and never
have a bucket’s worth of what was spinning in the breeze.
But he had never thought he’d live to see the sun rising, and there it was. Its heat touched his face. He blinked back tears.
“Come on, Ed,” Celeste said, in a gentle voice. Just for a second, there in the rotors and the wind and the noise of flying money, she thought she’d heard Wint laugh. Or at least chuckle. She took the sheriff’s arm. “Let’s us rich folks get off the street,” she said, and she guided him like a docile bear through the broken facade of the Brandin’ Iron.
Other people came out of the houses where they’d been hiding and blinked in the early light. Inferno looked as if a tornado had zigzagged across it, craters here and there where the weakened earth had collapsed. And some people found more than destruction: on Oakley Street lay the horse creature, which had torn a swath of houses apart across Travis, Sombra, and Oakley but had fallen when Stinger did. Wedged in cracks were other things: scorpionlike bodies with human heads, their eyes blank, their lifeforce extinguished at the same instant as Stinger’s. It would take weeks for all the bodies to be found.
Sue Mullinax was nearing her house at the corner of Bowden and Oakley when somebody shouted, “Hey, lady! Stop!”
She looked up, at Rocking Chair Ridge. The light was strengthening, and the shadows were melting away. On top of the ridge was a small dune buggy, and there were two men standing beside it. One of the men had a videotape camera, aimed at the black pyramid. He swung it in her direction. The other man came down the ridge in a boil of sliding dust and rocks. He had a dark beard and wore a cap that said NBC. “What’s your name, lady?” he asked, fumbling for a notepad and pen.
She told him. He shouted to the other man, “Get down here! We’ve got an interview!” The one with the videotape camera scrambled down the ridge, almost falling on his tail before he made it. “Oh Lord,” Sue said, frantically trying to fix her hair. “Oh Lord, am I gonna be on TV?”
“National news, lady! Just look at me, now.” A red light lit up on the camera, and Sue couldn’t help but stare at the lens. “When did the UFO come down?”