Daufin turned. Her smile was gone, the face serious again. “I de-sire your aid. I de-sire to ex-it this plan-et, poss-i-ble if soon. I shall need a …” She pondered her choice of words. “A ve-hi-cle ca-pa-ble of ex-it-ing this plan-et. Be arrang-ed, can it?”
“A vehicle? You mean … a spaceship?”
“Wow,” Ray breathed, standing in the doorway.
“Space-ship?” The term was unfamiliar, did not register in her memory. “A ve-hi-cle ca-pa-ble of ex-it—”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Rhodes said. “An interstellar flight vehicle, like the one you came in on.” Something occurred to him to ask her. “How did you get out of that vehicle before it crashed?”
“I …” Again, a pause to consider. “I e-ject-ed.”
“In the black sphere?”
“My pod,” she explained, with a note of resigned patience. “May I ex-pect to ex-it, when?”
Oh, great! Rhodes thought; he saw where this conversation was leading. “I’m sorry, but it won’t be possible for you to exit … I mean, leave.”
She didn’t reply. Just stared holes through him.
“We don’t have interstellar flight vehicles here. Not anywhere on our planet. The closest we’ve got is called a space shuttle, and that only orbits the planet before it has to come back.”
“De-sire to ex-it,” she repeated.
“There’s no way. We don’t have the technology for that kind of vehicle.”
She blinked. “No … way?”
“None. I’m sorry.”
Her expression changed in an instant; the face contorted with pain and dismay. “Cannot stay! Cannot stay!” she said emphatically. “Cannot stay!” She began to circle the room restlessly, her eyes wide and shocked, her steps halting. “Cannot! Cannot! Cannot!”
“We’ll take care of you. We’ll make you comfortable. Please, there’s no reason to—”
“Cannot! Cannot! Cannot!” she repeated, shaking her head back and forth. Her hands twitched at her sides.
“Please, listen … we’ll find a place for you to live. We’ll—” Rhodes touched her shoulder, and saw her head swivel toward him and her eyes fierce as lasers. He had time to think: Oh, shit—
And then he was knocked back, skidding on his heels across the linoleum, a charge of energy pulsing up his arm, searing through his nerves, and making his muscles dance. His brain buzzed as the cells heated up, and he witnessed a nova explode behind his eyeballs. He went off his feet, crashed into the kitchen table, and scattered the contents of a bowl of fruit everywhere as the table broke beneath his weight. His eyelids fluttered, and his next conscious image was Tom Hammond bending over him.
“She knocked the shit out of him!” Ray was saying excitedly. “He just touched her, and he sailed across the room! Is he dead?”
“No, he’s coming around.” Tom glanced up at Jessie, who stood watching the creature. Daufin had frozen in the center of the room, mouth half open, eyes glazed, as if the entity had gone into suspended animation.
“Knocked him on his ass!” Ray babbled on. “Wiped him out!”
A stream of urine came from Stevie’s body and ran down the legs to the linoleum.
“What are you?” Jessie shouted at the thing; it remained rock-steady, impassive.
“Gunny, I want you to get out to the crash site,” Rhodes said, trying to sit up. His face was bleached of color, a thread of saliva dangling from his lower lip. Tom saw that his eyes were bloodshot. “I’ve got two daughters myself. A debriefing, I guess you’d call it. Chose her? How?” His brain was skipping tracks with violent speed. “I want to welcome you to planet Earth. We don’t need glas—huh?” He shook himself like a wet dog, his muscles still bunching and writhing like worms under his flesh. The urge to vomit almost overcame him. “What is it? What happened?” He had a headache fit to break his skull, and his legs were twitching with a will of their own.
Jessie saw Daufin come back from wherever she’d been; the face grew expression again, one of urgent concern. “I hurt-ed. I hurt-ed.” It was said fretfully, and in a human might have been accompanied by the wringing of hands. “Still friends? Yes?”
“Yeah,” Rhodes said; a cocked grin hung to his face, which looked moist and a little swollen. “Still friends.” He got to his knees and that was all he could do without Tom helping him up.
“Cannot stay,” Daufin said. “Must ex-it this plan-et. Must have ve-hi-cle. I de-sire no hurt to come.”
“No hurt to come?” Jessie had hold of her senses now. For better or worse, she had to trust this creature. “Come from where? You?”
“No. From …” She shook her head, not finding the proper terms. “If I can not ex-it, there will be great hurt-ing.”
“How? Who’ll be hurt?”
“Tom. Ray. Rhodes. Jes-sie. Ste-vie. All here.” She opened her arms in a motion that seemed to include the entire town. “Dau-fin too.” She went to the kitchen window, reached up for the blind’s cord as she’d seen Jessie do, and gave a tentative pull, then reeled the blinds up. She squinted, seemed to be scanning the reddening sky. “Soon the hurt-ing will start,” she said. “If I cannot ex-it, you must. Go far a-way. Very far. Now.” She released the cord, and the blinds clattered back with the sound of dry bones clacking.
“We … we can’t,” Jessie said, unnerved by Daufin’s matter-of-fact warning. “We live here. We can’t go.”
“Then take me a-way. Now.” She looked hopefully at Rhodes.
“We’re going to. Like I said, after the crew finishes up at the crash site.”
“Now,” Daufin repeated forcefully. “If not now …” She trailed off, unable to put into words what she was trying to convey.
“I can’t. Not until the helicopter gets back. My flying vehicle. Then we’ll get you to the air-force base.” He still felt like electricity was jumping through his nerves. Whatever had hit him, it was one hell of a concentrated energy bolt, probably a more powerful version of what she’d used to flip through the TV channels.
“It must be now!” Daufin had come close to shouting, her face streaked with red light from the blinds. “Do you not un-der-stand”—she struggled for a term, found what she needed—“Eng-lish?”
“I’m sorry. We can’t leave here until my aide gets back.”
Daufin trembled, with either anger or frustration. Jessie thought the creature was going to pitch a fit, just as any child—or elderly woman—might. But in the next second Daufin’s face froze again, and then she stood motionlessly, one hand gripped into a fist at her side, the other outstretched toward the window. Five seconds passed. Ten. She did not move. Thirty seconds later, she was still in her statue trance.
And she stayed that way.
Maybe that was how she pitched a fit after all, Jessie thought. Or maybe she’d just checked out to do some heavy thinking. In any case, it didn’t appear she was coming back for a while.
“Can I touch her and see if she falls over?” Ray asked.
“Go to your room,” Jessie said. “Right now. Stay there until you’re called for.”
“Come on, Mom! I was just foolin’! I wouldn’t really—”
“Go to your room,” Tom commanded, and Ray’s protests ceased. The boy knew that when his father said for him to do something, he’d better do it in a hurry.
“Okay, okay. I don’t guess we’re going to be eatin’ any dinner tonight, huh?” He picked up an apple and an orange from the floor and started for his room.
“Wash those before you eat them!” Jessie told him, and he dutifully went into the bathroom to run water over the fruit before he disappeared, an outcast sentenced to solitary.
Daufin, too, remained in solitary confinement.
“I think I need to sit down.” Rhodes picked up a chair and eased into it. Even his spine felt bruised.
Tom approached the creature and slowly waved his hand in front of her face. The eyes did not blink. He detected the rise and fall of her chest, though, and he started to reach for her p
ulse, but he thought about Rhodes flying through the air and he checked his motion. She was still alive, of course, and Stevie’s bodily functions seemed to be operating just fine. A light sheen of sweat glistened on the cheeks and forehead.
“What did she mean? That about the hurting?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t know.” Rhodes shook his head. “My ears are still ringing. She just about sent me through the damned wall.”
Jessie had to cross in front of Daufin to reach the window, Daufin didn’t budge. Jessie pulled the blinds up to peer at the sky. The sun was setting, and to the west the sky had become a blast-furnace scarlet. There were no clouds.
But a movement caught Jessie’s eye. She saw them then, and counted their number: at least a dozen vultures, circling Inferno like dark banners. Probably searching for carrion in the desert, she figured. The things could smell impending death several miles off. She did not like the sight, and she let the blinds fall back into place. There was nothing to do now but wait—either for Daufin to return from her isolation, or for Gunniston to come back in the helicopter.
She gently touched her daughter’s auburn hair. “Careful!” Tom warned. But there was no shock, no brain-jarring bolt of energy. Just the feel of hair she’d brushed a thousand times under her fingers. Daufin’s—Stevie’s—eyes stared sightlessly.
Jessie touched the cheek. Cool flesh. Put her index finger against the pulse in the throat. Slow—abnormally slow—but steady. She had no choice; she had to trust that somewhere, somehow, the real Stevie was alive and safe. To consider any other possibility would drive her crazy.
She decided then that she was going to be okay. Whatever happened, she and Tom would see it through. “Well,” she said, and pulled her hand away from the pulse. “I’m going to make a pot of coffee.” She was amazed she could sound so steady when her guts felt like Jell-O. “That suit everybody?”
“Make it strong, please,” Rhodes requested. “The stronger the better.”
“Right.” And Jessie began to move about her kitchen with a purpose again as the frozen alien gestured toward the window and the cat-clock ticked off the seconds and the vultures silently gathered over Inferno.
18
New Girl in Town
DARKNESS BEGAN TO CLAIM the sky, and the sign on the First Texas Bank read 88°F. at 8:22.
Under the incandescents of the garage stall, Cody had finished his work for the day and was assembling tools to tune up his motorcycle. Mr. Mendoza would close the station around nine o’clock, and then Cody would be faced with his usual decision: to sleep at home and have to face the old man sometime during the night; to crash at the fortress, which was as rowdy as a fraternity house in hell and reeked of marijuana fumes; or sleep atop the Rocking Chair, not the most comfortable roost but surely the most peaceful of his choices.
He leaned over to pull some clean rags from a cardboard box and the little glass vial fell from his pocket, making a merry tinkling note as it hit the concrete. The vial didn’t break, and Cody quickly picked it up, though Mr. Mendoza was in his office reading the newspaper and waiting for the Trailways bus to pull in.
Cody held the vial up and looked at the crystals. He’d tried cocaine once, on a dare from Bobby Clay Clemmons, and once was enough; he didn’t like the shit, because he understood how people could get hooked on it and feel like they couldn’t live without it. He’d seen several ’Gades go off the deep end because of it, like Tank’s older brother Mitch, who four years ago had driven his Mustang onto the railroad tracks and crashed into an oncoming train at seventy miles an hour, killing not only himself but two girls and Mayor Brett’s son. Cody didn’t drink, either; the most he’d do is some low-powered zooming on a weed or two, but never when anybody’s life depended on his decisions. It was chickenshit to let drugs do your thinking for you.
But he knew people who’d give their right arms for an inhale of what those crack crystals would put out. It would be an easy thing to go up to the fortress, cook them over a flame, and toke until his brains turned blue. But he knew they wouldn’t help him see the world any clearer; they’d just make him think that Mack Cade was the only way out of Inferno and he ought to jump at the sound of the master’s voice.
He set the vial down atop the worktable, pondering the crystals for a moment and what Mr. Mendoza had said about a man being responsible for his actions. Maybe that was tired old bullshit, and maybe there was truth to it too.
But he already knew what he’d decided.
He lifted his right hand. In it was a ballpeen hammer. He brought it down on the vial, shattering it to pieces and crushing the yellow crystals. Then he used his left hand to brush the mess off the table and into a garbage pail, where it sank amid greasy rags and empty oil cans.
Six hundred dollars a month was not the price of his soul.
Cody put aside the hammer and continued gathering the wrenches and sockets he needed for his Honda.
A horn rapped twice: deep bass hoots. The Trailways bus from Odessa. Cody didn’t look up, just kept at his task, and Mr. Mendoza went out to speak to the driver, who was from a town near his own in central Mexico.
The passengers, most of them elderly people, filed off the bus to use the bathroom or the candy and soft-drink machines. But one of them was a young girl with a battered brown suitcase, and when she left the bus it was with finality; this was the end of her journey. She glanced over at the driver, saw him talking to a husky man with silver hair and a mustache. Then her gaze fell on the blond boy who was working in the garage stall, and she lugged the suitcase with her as she walked in his direction.
Cody had all the tools he needed, and the new spark plugs were laid out. He knelt down to start in when a girl’s voice said, from behind him, “Excuse me.”
“Bathroom’s through the door in the office.” He motioned with a nod of his head, used to being interrupted by the bus passengers.
“Gracias, but I need some directions.”
He looked around at her, and instantly stood up and wiped the grease from his hands onto the front of his already-grimy shirt.
The girl was sixteen or maybe seventeen, with jet-black hair cut to her shoulders. Her tawny eyes, set in a high-cheekboned, oval face, made a thrill run along Cody’s backbone. She stood about five-six, was slender, and, in Cody’s lingo, a smash fox. Even if she was Mexican. Her skin was the color of coffee and cream, and she wore hardly any makeup except for some pale lip gloss. Her eyes surely didn’t need any artificial help, Cody thought; they were soulful and steady, if a little red-rimmed from a long bus trip. She was wearing a red-checked blouse and khaki trousers, black sneakers, and a small silver chain and heart that lay in the hollow of her throat.
“Directions,” Cody repeated. There seemed to be too much saliva in his mouth; he was afraid he might drool, and then what would this smash fox think of him? “Uh … sure.” He imagined he must smell like a combination grease factory and barnyard. “Directions to where?”
“I’m looking for a house. Do you know where Rick Jurado lives?”
He felt as if a bucket of freezing water had been thrown into his face. “Uh … yeah, I do. Why?”
“He’s my brother,” the smash fox said.
And he answered, in a small voice, “Oh.”
The blond boy didn’t say anything else. She’d seen his eyes narrow slightly when she’d mentioned Rick’s name. Why was that? A spark of light jumped from his skull earring. He was handsome in a rough kind of way, she decided. But he looked like trouble, and something deep in his eyes was dangerous too, something that might snap fast at you if you weren’t careful. She had the sensation that he was taking her apart and then fitting her back together again, joint by joint. “Well?” she prodded. “How do I get there?”
“That way.” He motioned south. “Across the bridge, in Bordertown. He lives on Second Street.”
“Gracias.” She knew the address from the letters he’d been sending. She began to walk away, carrying the suitcase that held all
her belongings in the world.
Cody let her go a few paces, couldn’t help but watch her tight rear end as she walked. Smash fox, he thought, even if she was Jurado’s sister. Damn, what a panic! He hadn’t even known Jurado had any brothers or sisters. Must take after their mother, he reasoned, because she sure doesn’t look anything like that wetback bastard! He knew other good-looking girls, but he’d never seen such a fine Mexican fox before; it was just kind of an added kick that she was a Jurado. “Hey!” he called after her, and she stopped. “Kinda long walk from here.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Maybe not, but it’s rough over there too.” He emerged from the stall, wiping the rest of the grease from his hands. “I mean, you never know what might happen.”
“I can take care of myself.” She started off again.
Right, he thought. Get yourself raped by some of those crazy fuckers too. He looked up, saw stars coming out. A dark red slash cut the western horizon, and a yellow full moon was on the rise. From the Inferno Baptist Church he heard wobbly piano chords and a few voices struggling for harmony at choir practice. Inferno’s lights had come on: the red flicker of neon at the Brandin’ Iron, the white lights around the roof of the bank building, the garish multicolored bulbs over Cade’s used-car lot. Houses showed squares of yellow and the faint blue glows of TVs. The town had turned the power off at the apartment building, but the ’Gades had used money from their treasury to buy portable incandescents at the hardware store, and those illuminated the corridors. Cody saw a blue pulse of light and a spiral of sparks from the junkyard, and he knew the night work had begun, somebody cutting metal with a blowtorch.
He watched Jurado’s sister striding away, just about to reach the limits of the gas station’s lights. Looked as if the suitcase was going to win the battle of wills at any second. He smiled thinly as an idea crept into his thoughts. Jurado would scream so hard the grease would fly off his hair if he did what he was thinking. Why not do it? What did he have to lose? Besides, it would be fun ….
He decided. Got on the motorcycle and kickstarted the engine.