Desperation

  "Go around," she said.

  "I can't on this side of the road--the dropoff's too steep. The trailer park side's pretty steep, too, but--"

  "You can do it," she said, fighting back the quiver in her voice. "And you owe me. I went in that house with you--"

  "Okay, okay." He reached for the transmission lever, probably meaning to drop it into the lowest gear, and then his hand froze in midair. He cocked his head. She heard it a second later and her first panicky thought was (they're here oh Jesus they got in the truck somehow)

  of snakes. But this wasn't the same. This was a harsh whirring sound, almost like a piece of paper caught in a fan, or--

  Something came falling out of the dancing air above them, something that looked like a big black stone. It hit the windshield hard enough to make a bullet-snarl of opacity at the point of impact and send long, silvery cracks shooting out in either direction. Blood--it looked black in this light--splatted across the glass like an inkblot. There was a nasty crack-crunch as the kamikaze accordioned in on itself, and for a moment she saw one of its merciless, dying eyes peering in at her. She screamed again, this time making no attempt to muffle it with her hands.

  There was another hard thud, this one from over their heads. She looked up and saw the roof of the cab was dented down. "Steve, get us out of here!" she cried.

  He turned on the wipers, and one of them pushed the squashed buzzard down onto the outside air vents. It lay there in a lump like some bizarre tumor with a beak. The other wiper smeared blood and feathers across the glass in a fan. Sand immediately started to stick in this mess. Steve goosed the washer-fluid switch. The windshield cleared a little near the top, but the bottom part was hopeless; the hulk of the dead bird made it impossible for the wiper-blades to do their job.

  "Steve," she said. She heard his name coming out of her mouth but couldn't feel it; her lips were numb. And her midsection felt entirely gone. No liver, no lights, just an empty place filled with its own whistling windstorm. "Under the trailer. Coming out from under that trailer. See them?"

  She pointed. He saw. The sand had drifted crosswise along the tar in east-west lines that looked like clutching fingers. Later, if the wind kept up at this pitch, those dunelets would fatten to arms, but now they were just fingers. Emerging from beneath the trailer, strutting like the vanguard of an advancing army, was a battalion of scorpions. She couldn't tell how many--how could she, when she was still finding it difficult to believe she was seeing them at all? Less than a hundred, probably, but still dozens of them. Dozens.

  There were snakes crawling among and behind them, wriggling along in rapid s-shapes, sliding over the ridges of sand with the ease of water moccasins speeding across a pond.

  They can't get in here, she told herself, take it easy, they can't get in!

  No, and maybe they didn't want to. Maybe they weren't supposed to. Maybe they were supposed to--

  Came another of those harsh whickering sounds, this time on her side of the truck, and she leaned toward Steve, cringed toward Steve with her right arm held up to protect the side of her face. The buzzard hit the passenger window of the truck like a bomb filled with blood instead of explosive. The glass turned milky and sagged in toward her, holding for the time being. One of the buzzard's wings flapped weakly at the windshield. The wiper on her side tore a chunk of it off.

  "It's all right!" he cried, almost laughing and putting an arm around her as he echoed her thought. "It's okay, they can't get in!"

  "Yes, they can!" she shouted back. "The birds can, if we stay here! If we give them time! And the snakes ... the scorpions ..."

  "What? What are you saying?"

  "Could they make holes in the tires?" It was the RV she was seeing in her mind's eye, all its tires flat ... the RV, and the purplefaced man back there in the ranch-house, his face tattooed with holes in pairs, holes so small they looked almost like flecks of red pepper. "They could, couldn't they? Enough of them. all stinging and biting at once, they could."

  "No," he said, and gave a strange little yawp of laughter. "Little bitty desert scorpions, four inches long, stingers no bigger than thorns, are you kidding?" But then the wind dropped momentarily, and from beneath them--already from beneath them--they heard scurrying, jostling sounds, and she saw something she could have skipped: he didn't believe what he was saying. He wanted to, but he didn't.

  CHAPTER 4

  1

  The cellular phone was lying all the way across the holding area, at the foot of a file-cabinet with a PAT BUCHANAN FOR PRESIDENT sticker on it. The gadget didn't look broken, but--

  Johnny pulled up the antenna and flipped it open. The phone beeped and the S appeared, good, but there were no transmission-bars, bad. Very bad. Still, he had to try. He pushed the NAME/MENU button until STEVE appeared, then squeezed the SEND button.

  "Mr. Marinville." It was Mary, standing in the doorway. "We have to go. The cop--"

  "I know, I know, just a second."

  Nothing. No ring, no robot, no reception. Just a very faint hollow roaring sound, the sort of thing you heard in a conch shell.

  "Fucked," he said, and closed the phone's speaker-pad. "But that was Steve, I know it was. If we'd only gotten outside thirty seconds sooner ... thirty cocksucking little seconds..."

  "Johnny, please."

  "Coming." He followed her back downstairs.

  Mary had the Rossi shotgun in her hand, and when they were back outside, Johnny saw that David Carver had taken back the pistol and was holding it beside his leg. Ralph now held one of the rifles. He had it in the crook of his arm, like he thought he was Dan'l Boone. Oh, Johnny, a mocking voice spoke up from inside his head--it was Terry, the never-say-die bitch who had gotten him into this fuckarow in the first place. Don't tell me you're jealous of Mr. Suburban Ohio--you?

  Well, maybe. Just a little. Mostly because Mr. Suburban Ohio's rifle was loaded, unlike the Mossberg shotgun which Johnny now picked up.

  "That's a Ruger .44," the old man was telling Ralph. "Four rounds. I left the chamber empty. If you have to shoot, remember that."

  "I will," Ralph said.

  "She'll kick you hard. Remember that, too."

  Billingsley lifted the last gun, the .30-.06. For a moment Johnny thought the old fart was going to offer to trade him, but he didn't. "All right," he said, "I guess we're ready. Don't shoot at any varmints unless they come at us. You'd just miss, use up ammunition, and probably draw more. Do you understand that, Carver?"

  "Yes," Ralph said.

  "Son?"

  "Yes."

  "Ma'am?"

  "Yes," Mary said. She sounded resigned to being a ma'am, at least until she got back to civilization.

  "And I won't swing unless they get close, I promise," Johnny said. It was supposed to be a joke, a little mood-brightener, but all it earned him from Billingsley was a look of cool contempt. It wasn't a look Johnny thought he deserved.

  "Do you have a problem with me, Mr. Billingsley?" he asked.

  "I don't care for your looks much," Billingsley shot back. "We don't have much respect out in these parts for older folks who wear their hair long. As to whether or not I have a problem with you, that I couldn't say just yet."

  "So far as I can see, what you do to folks out in these parts is gutshoot them and then hang them on hooks like deer, so maybe you'll pardon me if I don't take your opinions too deeply to heart."

  "Now listen here--"

  "And if that hair's laying across your ass because you missed your daily quart of sour mash, don't take it out on me." He was ashamed at the way the old man's eyes flickered when he said that, and at the same time he was bitterly gratified. You knew your own, by God. There were a lot of know-it-all buttheads in Alcoholics Anonymous, but they were right about that. You knew your own even when you couldn't smell the booze on their breath or wafting out of their pores. You could almost hear them, pinging in your head like sonar.

  "Stop it!" Mary snapped at him. "If you want to be an asshole, do i
t on your own time!"

  Johnny looked at her, wounded by her tone of voice, wanting to say something childish like Hey, he started it!

  "Where should we go?" David asked. He shone his light across the street, at the Desperation Coffee Shop and Video Stop. "Over there? The coyotes and the buzzard I saw are gone."

  "Too close, I think," Ralph said. "What about we get out of here completely? Did you find any car-keys?"

  Johnny rummaged and came up with the keyring David had taken from the dead cop. "Only one set on here. I imagine they go to the cruiser Entragian was driving."

  "Is driving," David said. "It's gone. It's what he took my mom away in." His face as he said this was unreadable. His father put a hand on the back of the boy's neck.

  "It might be safer not to be driving just now, anyway," Ralph said. "A car's pretty conspicuous when it's the only one on the road."

  "Anyplace will do, at least to start with," Mary said.

  "Anyplace, yeah, but the farther from the cop's home base, the better," Johnny said. "That's the asshole's opinion, anyhow."

  Mary gave him an angry look. Johnny bore it, not looking away. After a moment she did, flustered.

  Ralph said, "We might do well to hide up, at least for a little while."

  "Where?" Mary asked.

  "Where do you think, Mr. Billingsley?" David asked.

  "The American West," he said after a moment's thought. "Reckon that'd do to start with."

  "What is it?" Johnny asked. "A bar?"

  "Movie theater," Mary said. "I saw it when he drove us into town. It looked closed up."

  Billingsley nodded. "Is. Would have been torn down ten year ago, if there was anything to put up in its place. It's locked, but I know a way in. Come on. And remember what I said about the varmints. Don't shoot unless you have to."

  "And stay close together," Ralph added. "Lead the way, Mr. Billingsley."

  Once. again Johnny brought up the rear as they set off north along Main Street, their shoulders hunched against the scouring drive of the west wind. Johnny looked ahead at Billingsley, who just happened to know a way into the town's old deserted movie theater. Billingsley, who turned out to have all sorts of opinions on all sorts of issues, once you got him wound up a little. You're a late-stage alcoholic, aren't you, my friend? Johnny thought. You've got all the bells and whistles.

  If so, the man was operating well for one who hadn't had a shot in awhile. Johnny wanted something to reduce the throb in his nose, and he suspected that getting a drink into old Tommy at the same time might be an investment in their future.

  They were passing beneath the battered awning of Desperation's Owl's Club. "Hold it," Johnny said. "Going in here for a minute."

  "Are you nuts?" Mary asked. "We have to get off the street!"

  "There's nobody on the street but us," Johnny said, "didn't you notice?" He moderated his voice, tried to sound reasonable. "Look, I just want to get some aspirin. My nose is killing me. Thirty seconds--a minute, max."

  He tried the door before she could answer. It was locked. He hit the glass with the rifle butt, actually looking forward to the bray of the burglar alarm, but the only sound was the tinkle of glass falling onto the floor inside and the relentless howl of the wind. Johnny knocked out the few jagged bits of glass sticking up from the side of the doorframe, then reached through and felt for the lock.

  "Look," Ralph murmured. He pointed across the street.

  Four coyotes stood on the sidewalk in front of a squat brick building with the word UTILITY printed on one window and WATER on the other. They didn't move, but their eyes were trained on the little cluster of people across the street. A fifth came trotting down the sidewalk from the south and joined them.

  Mary raised the Rossi and pointed it toward the coyotes. David Carver pushed it down again. His face was distant, abstracted. "No, it's all right," he said. "They're just watching."

  Johnny found the lock, turned it, and opened the door. The light-switches were to the left. They turned on a bank of old-fashioned fluorescents, the kind that look like inverted ice-cube trays. These illuminated a little restaurant area (deserted), a cluster of slot machines (dark), and a pair of blackjack tables. Hanging from one of the light-fixtures was a parrot. Johnny at first thought it must be stuffed, but when he got a little closer, he observed the bulging eyes and the splatter of mixed blood and guano on the wood below it. It was real enough. Someone had strung it up.

  Entragian must not have liked the way it said "Polly want a cracker, " Johnny thought.

  The Owl's smelled of old hamburgers and beer. At the far end of the room was a little shopping area. Johnny took a large bottle of generic aspirin, then went behind the bar.

  "Hurry up!" Mary cried at him. "Hurry up, can't you?"

  "Right there," he said. A man in dark pants and a shirt that had once been white was lying on the dirty linoleum floor, staring up at Johnny with eyes as glassy as those of the hanged parrot. The bartender, from the look of his clothes. His throat had been cut. Johnny pulled a quart of Jim Beam off the shelf.

  He held it up to the light for a moment, checking the level, then hurried out. A thought--not a nice one--tried to surface and he shoved it back down. Hard. He wanted to lubricate the old horse-doctor, that was all, keep him loose. When you got right down to it, it was an act of Christian charity.

  You're more than a sweetheart, Terry said inside his head. You're really a saint, aren't you? St. John the Lubricator. And then her cynical laughter.

  Shut up, bitch, he thought ... but as always, Terry was reluctant to go.

  2

  Be cool, Steven, he told himself. It's the only way you'll get out of this. If you panic, I think there's a good chance both of you are going to die in this goddam rented truck.

  He put the transmission in reverse, and, steering by the outside mirror (he didn't dare open his door and lean out; it would be too easy for a dive-bombing buzzard to break his neck), began to move backward. The wind had picked up again, but he could still hear the crunching from under the truck as they rolled over the scorpions. It reminded him of how cereal sounded when you were chewing it.

  Don't drive off the side, for Christ's sake don't do that.

  "They're not following," Cynthia said. The relief in her voice was unmistakable.

  He took a look, saw that she was right, and stopped. He had backed up about fifty feet, far enough so that the lead trailer across the road was just a vague shape in the blowing sand again. He could see brown blotches against the whitish-gray sand in the road. Squashed scorpions. From here they looked like pats of cowdung. And the others were retreating. In another moment he would find it hard to believe they had been there at all.

  Oh, they were, he thought. If you start doubting that, old buddy, all you have to do is take a look at the dead bird currently blocking the air-vents at the bottom of the windshield.

  "What do we do now?" she asked.

  "I don't know." He looked out his window and saw the Desert Rose Cafe. Half of its pink awning had come down in the wind. He looked out the other window, past Cynthia, and saw a vacant lot with three boards nailed across the entrance. KEEP OUT OF HERE had been painted across the center board in sloppy white capitals, presumably by someone who didn't believe in Western hospitality.

  "Something wants to keep us in town," she said. "You know that, don't you?"

  He backed the Ryder truck into the parking lot of the Desert Rose, trying to think of a plan. What came instead was a series of disjointed images and words. The doll lying face-down at the bottom of the RV's steps. The Tractors, saying her name was Emergency and her telephone number was 911. Johnny Cash, saying he built it one piece at a time. Bodies on hooks, a tigerfish swimming between the fingers of the hand at the bottom of the aquarium, the baby's bib, the snake on the kitchen counter under the microwave.

  He realized he was on the edge of panic, maybe on the edge of doing something really stupid, and groped for anything that would pull him back from th
e edge, get him thinking straight again. What came to his mind, unbidden, was something he never would have expected. It was an image--clearer than any of the preceding ones--of the piece of stone sculpture they had seen on the computer table in the mining corporation's Quonset. The coyote with the strange, twisted head and the starting eyeballs, the coyote whose tongue had been a snake.

  There ought to be a picture of that thing next to ugly in the dictionary, Cynthia had said, and she was right about that, oh yes, no question, but Steve was suddenly overwhelmed by the idea that anything that ugly also had to be powerful.

  Are you kidding? he thought distractedly. The radio turned on and off when you touched it, the lights flickered, the aquarium fucking exploded. Of course it's powerful.

  "What was that little piece of statuary we found back there?" he asked. "What was up with that?"

  "I don't know. I only know that when I touched it ..."

  "What? When you touched it, what?"

  "It seemed like I remembered every rotten thing that ever happened to me in my life," she said. "Sylvia Marcucci spitting on me in the eighth grade, out in the playground--she said I stole her boyfriend, and I didn't even know who the hell she was talking about. The time my dad got drunk at my Aunt Wanda's second wedding and felt my ass while we were dancing and pretended it was a mistake. Like his hardon was a mistake, too." Her hand crept to the side of her head. "Gettin yelled at. Gettin dumped on. Richie Judkins, almost ripping my fuckin ear off. I thought of all those things."

  "Yeah, but what did you really think of?"

  She looked for a moment as if she were going to tell him not to be a wise-ass, then didn't. "Sex," she said, and let out a shaky sigh. "Not just fucking, either. All of it. The dirtier the better."

  Yes, he thought, the dirtier the better. Things you might like to try but would never talk about. Experimental stuff.

  "What are you thinking about?" Her voice was oddly sharp, at the same time oddly pungent, like a smell. Steve looked over at her and suddenly wondered if her pussy was tight. An insane thought to be having at a time like this, but it was what came into his head.