Irrevocably damaged, the helicopter reeled across the sky. It spun in a wide, fast circle, and through the broken glass Rhodes dazedly watched as the north face of the bank building grew larger.
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Somebody’s blood was everywhere. There was a lump in the pilot’s seat that had no business being there, yet clenched to the control stick was a gray hand that should belong to someone. Red lights flashed all over the instrument panel and alarms buzzed. The roofs of Inferno were coming up fast, and Rhodes had the eerie sense of sitting still while the world and the wind were in terrifying motion. The bank building loomed ahead. We’re going to crash, he thought calmly. He heard laughter, and its incongruous sound amid all the carnage made the slipping gears of his brain latch into place again. Within seconds they would smash into the bank building.
Rhodes reached for the pilot’s control stick, but the gray hand was locked on it and the dead arm’s muscles had seized up; the stick was immobile. He blinked, saw the copilot’s stick in front of his own seat, a twistgrip throttle to the right. He grasped the stick. No reaction from the rotors. Dead controls, he thought. No, no … the transfer switch …
Rhodes reached over Taggert’s corpse and hit the controls-transfer toggle on the instrument panel. The warning lights lit up on his side. He hadn’t flown a helicopter for more than two years, but there was no time for a checkout course; he slipped his feet onto the pedals that operated the rear rotor and angled the control stick with his left hand, at the same time cutting the speed with his right. The building stood before him like a mountain, and even as the ’copter responded to a tight turn Rhodes knew there wasn’t going to be enough room. “Hold on!” he shouted to Gunny.
As the ’copter swerved, its tail rotor smashed one of the few remaining windows on the building’s second floor and chopped a desk to kindling. The main rotors scraped bricks and threw off a shower of sparks, and as the tail rotor slammed against the wall there was a rupture of lubrication lines and fluids exploded into flame. The helicopter kept turning, all control gone and bucking like an enraged bronco.
Rhodes saw the dragonfly hurtling at them, its wings swept tightly back along its body and the spiked tail flailing. He twisted the throttle to full power; the ’copter shuddered violently, hung waiting to be crushed against the building.
There was a gasp like air being sucked into laboring lungs, and the ’copter dropped another twenty feet and lurched forward.
The dragonfly zoomed over Rhodes’s head, hit the bank building, and smashed itself like an insect against a flyswatter. It crumpled with a wet splatting sound, and pieces of dark matter burst over the bricks. Rhodes was engulfed in a squall of amber fluid, and then the helicopter was stuttering through the rain of alien liquid and he saw Cobre Road rising up to take them.
The craft bellied onto the pavement, bounced and slammed down again, skidding along Cobre Road, past Preston Park and caroming off a parked brown pickup truck. It kept going about sixty more feet, its engine dead but its bent rotors still whirling, and stopped just short of the Smart Dollar’s plate-glass window, where a red-lettered sign proclaimed GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE.
“Well,” Rhodes heard himself say, just to verify that he was still alive. He couldn’t think of anything else, so he said it again: “Well.” But now he smelled burning oil and heard the crackling of flames at the tail rotor, and he knew the fuel tank was probably torn open and they’d better get their asses clear. He twisted around to make sure Gunniston was all right; the younger man was splattered with blood and amber juice, but his eyes were wide open and he wasn’t laughing anymore. Rhodes said, “Let’s go!” and unbuckled his seat belt. Gunny didn’t react, so Rhodes popped the seat belt off him, took his arm, and jerked the hell out of him. “Let’s go!”
They clambered out. Rhodes saw four figures running toward them, and he shouted, “Stay back!” They obeyed, and Rhodes and Gunniston staggered away from the wreckage. About eight seconds later the ’copter’s tail section exploded. A piece of metal the size of a pie pan shot through the Smart Dollar’s window.
Three seconds after the first explosion, the helicopter went up in an orange blast, and more black smoke rose to join the clouds at the top of the grid.
Gunniston fell to the curb in front of the Paperback Kastle, and curled up into a shivering ball. Rhodes remained on his feet, watching the helicopter burn. The death of Taggart seemed unreal, something that had happened too quickly to apprehend. He looked at the bank building, could see the dragonfly’s glittering slime oozing down the bricks; when he turned his attention to the black pyramid, he saw that the aperture had sealed itself.
“You sonofabitch,” he whispered—and he thought that somewhere inside the pyramid a creature—or creatures—might be saying the same thing about him in the language of another world.
“I seen it!” said a leathery old man with white hair and a gold tooth, jabbering right in the colonel’s face. “I seen it fly outta there, yessir!”
A rotund woman in overalls prodded Gunniston’s ribs with the toe of a tennis shoe. “Is he dead?” she asked. Gunniston suddenly sat up, and the woman leapt backward with the speed of a gymnast.
Other people were coming, drawn by the burning helicopter. Rhodes ran a hand through his hair—and then he was sitting down, his back against the rough stone of the Paperback Kastle’s wall though he didn’t remember his knees bending. He smelled Taggart’s blood all over himself, and there was another, acidic odor too: it took him back to his youth in the green hills of South Dakota, and the image of catching grasshoppers on a sunny summer afternoon. He remembered the sharp tang of the nicotine-brown juice the grasshoppers sprayed on his fingers: hopper pee, he called it. Well, he was covered with it now, and the thought stirred a grim smile—but the smile faded very quickly as the memory of Taggart’s body being ripped apart came back to him.
“Your bird’s had it,” the old coot observed sagely, and another gout of flame leapt from the charred machine.
“Give ’em room, dammit! Step back, now!” Ed Vance pushed his way through the knot of gawkers. He’d trotted over from Celeste Street, and just that short distance had left him puffing and red-faced. He stopped when he saw the gore-covered Rhodes and Gunniston. “Holy Keerist!” He looked around for a couple of able-bodied men. “Hank! You and Billy come on and help me get ’em to the clinic!”
“We’re all right,” Rhodes said. “Just cut up a little, that’s all.” He saw tiny bits of glass glittering in his forearms, and he figured he was going to have a long bout with a pair of tweezers. There was a gash on his chin and another across his forehead that felt wicked, but they would have to wait. “Our pilot didn’t make it.” He turned to Gunniston. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Think so.” Gunny had been protected from most of the glass by being behind the front seats, but there were several cuts in his hands and a sliver about two inches long was stuck in his left shoulder. He grasped it, yanked it out, and tossed it away.
Rhodes tried to stand, but his legs betrayed him. A younger man in a red-checked shirt helped him up, and Rhodes said, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
“Yeah, and I’m agin’ more every piss-cuttin’ minute!” Vance had watched the aerial duel and had thought for sure that the helicopter was either going to slam into the houses of Inferno or hit the First Texas Bank. He glanced at the building, saw the ooze where the flying monstrosity had impacted, and he recalled the creature in Dodge Creech’s skin peering out the window and saying I don’t like that thing. “Listen, Colonel, we’ve got to talk. Like right now.”
Rhodes gingerly worked the kinked muscles in his arms. “I hope you’ll understand when I say it’ll have to wait.”
“No sir,” Vance said. “Now.”
There was an urgency in the sheriff’s voice that commanded his attention. “What is it?”
“I think we’d best take a little walk down the street.” Vance motioned for him to follow, and Rhodes limped on
stiff legs along Cobre Road. The helicopter was still belching black smoke and red licks of flame, and Rhodes thought he could smell Jim Taggart’s body burning. When they were beyond earshot of the crowd, Vance said, “I think I had myself one of them close encounters. About twenty minutes ago I met somebody who looked like Dodge Creech … only he didn’t, and he sure as hell wasn’t.”
Rhodes listened to the story without interrupting and shook off the shock that kept taking his mind back to the memory of a gray hand and arm and a mangled body. It was the living who were important now, and if the thing in the black pyramid could dig under the river and the houses of Inferno, it could come up wherever it pleased. Whatever it was, it had just turned this piece of Texas badland into a battleground.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Vance asked at the end of his story.
“We sure can’t run,” Rhodes said quietly. “There’s nowhere to run to.” I de-sire to ex-it, he remembered Daufin saying, and how frantic she’d gotten when she’d understood there were no interstellar vehicles here. She’d begged to be taken away, and he hadn’t done it; she must have known the other spaceship was after her. But for what reason? And who—or what—was the thing that Daufin called Stinger?
He touched his chin and looked at the blood on his fingers. His beige knit shirt was a patchwork of bloodstains—mostly Taggart’s. He felt all right, maybe a little weak-headed. No matter, he had to keep going and think about rest and stitches later. He said, “Take me to Creech’s house.”
30
Coffin Nails
A SILENCE SETTLED OVER Inferno in the wake of the helicopter’s crash. People who had been roaming the streets, talking about the pyramid and wondering if it was the Last Days, went home, locked their doors and windows, and stayed there in the violet-tinged gloom. Others went to the safety of the Baptist church, where Hale Jennings and a few volunteers passed out sandwiches and cold coffee in the light of the altar candles. Renegades were drawn to the lights of their fortress at the end of Travis Street; Bobby Clay Clemmons passed around some marijuana but mostly everybody just wanted to sit and talk, drink a few beers, and swap ideas about where the pyramid had come from and what it was doing here. At the Brandin’ Iron, Sue Mullinax and Cecil Thorsby stayed on duty, making sandwiches out of cold luncheon meat for some of the regulars who wandered in, afraid to be alone in the dark.
In the clinic, Tom Hammond was holding a flashlight steady over an operating table as Early McNeil and Jessie worked on the mangled arm of a Hispanic man named Ruiz, who had stumbled across the river a few minutes after the pyramid had crashed down. The arm was hanging by red threads of muscle, and Early knew it had to come off. He said behind his surgical mask, “Let’s see if I’ve still got it in me, kiddies,” and reached for the bone saw.
Across the river, the fire fighters had given up. The wreckage of workshops and storehouses still smoldered in Cade’s autoyard, tangled heaps of debris opening scarlet eyes of flame. Mack Cade cursed and promised to have their asses on keychains, but without water pressure the hoses were just so much flabby canvas and none of the firemen wanted to go any closer to the pyramid than they had to. They packed their gear into the fire truck and left Cade ranting with impotent rage beside his Mercedes, the two Dobermans barking in furious counterpoint.
Smoke suffused the air, lay low in the gash of the Snake River, and hung like gray fog in the streets. Overhead, the moon and stars were blanked out. But time continued to move, and the hands of wristwatches and battery-run clocks crept toward midnight.
Mrs. Santos left the clinic on Dr. McNeil’s orders to find volunteers to give blood, and her attention was caught by the large yellow Cadillac that was parked just down Celeste Street, with a view across the river. A white-haired woman sat behind the wheel, staring at the pyramid as if mesmerized. Mrs. Santos approached the car, knowing who it belonged to; she tapped on the window, and when Celeste Preston lowered it, the chill of air conditioning drifted out. “We need blood at the clinic,” Mrs. Santos said matter-of-factly. “Dr. McNeil says I’m not supposed to come back until I find six volunteers. Will you help us?”
Celeste hesitated, her mind still dazed by the thing out in Cade’s autoyard, the skygrid, and the creature she’d watched crash into the bank building. She’d been on her way home after leaving Vance, but she’d had the urge to slow down, turn right on Circle Back Street, and drive through what remained of Wint’s dream. Ol’ Wint’s rolling in his grave up on Joshua Tree Hill by now, she thought. Wasn’t enough for Inferno to die with a whimper, like a hundred other played-out Texas towns. No, God had to give the coffin nails another twist. Or maybe it was Satan’s work. The air sure smelled like hell. “What?” she asked Early’s nurse, not understanding.
“We need blood real bad. What type do you have?”
“Red,” Celeste answered. “How the hell do I know?”
“That’ll do. Will you let us have a pint?”
Celeste grunted. Some of the steel had returned to her eyes. “Pint, quart, gallon: what the hell? My blood feels mighty thin right now.”
“It’s thick enough,” Mrs. Santos said, and waited.
“Well,” Celeste said finally, “I don’t reckon I’ve got anything better to do.” She opened the door and got out. The seat was lumpy, and her ass had been falling asleep anyway, just sitting out here for the last fifteen or twenty minutes. “Will it hurt?”
“Just a sting. Then you’ll have a rest and get a dish of ice cream.” If it wasn’t melting in the freezer, she thought. “Go tell Mrs. Murdock you want to give blood. She’ll be at the front desk.” Mrs. Santos was amazed at herself, a Bordertown resident giving orders to Celeste Preston. “I mean … if that’s all right?”
“Yeah. Whatever.” Celeste stared at the pyramid for a moment longer, and then she started walking to the clinic; Mrs. Santos continued along the street in the opposite direction.
In Sarge Dennison’s house, across from where Reverend Jennings was leading a group of townspeople in prayer at the Baptist church, Daufin stood next to the chair in which Sarge was sprawled.
Now this was a curious thing, Daufin mused: the creature had been consuming the tasteless material called pork ’n beans from a round metallic receptacle, using a four-pronged tool, when he’d suddenly made an explosive noise from the depths of his chair, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. “Gonna rest for a few minutes,” he’d told her. “Ain’t what I used to be. You keep Scooter company, hear?” And it wasn’t very much longer before the creature’s mouth had begun making a low buzzing sound, as if there were an efficient machine tucked away somewhere within. Daufin had approached him and peered into the half-open mouth, but could see nothing except the strange bony appliances called teeth. It was another mystery.
Her stomach felt weighed. The receptacle of pork ’n beans that Sarge had opened and given to her was empty, and lay on a table along with the tool she’d used to eat it. The act of feeding on this world was a repetitive labor of balance, visual acuity, and sheer willpower. She was astounded that the beings could force such sludgy fodder into their systems. Lying beside Sarge’s chair was a long yellow envelope made of a tough, slick material, and on the envelope was written the cryptic word “Fritos.” Sarge had shared the crunchy food curls with her, and Daufin had found them at least palatable, but now the inside of her mouth was dry. It seemed there was always some discomfort on this world; perhaps, in some strange way, discomfort was this species’ prime motivation.
“I am go-ing to try to find an ex-it now,” she told him. “Thank you for the ed-i-bles.”
Sarge stirred, drowsily opened his eyes. He saw Stevie Hammond and smiled. “Bathroom’s in the back,” he said, and settled himself in for a long nap.
This alien language was a puzzlement. The Sarge creature’s buzzing began again, and Daufin walked out of the house into the warm dark.
Haze hung in the air, thicker than it had been when she’d come out here not long ago and seen the two flying mac
hines whirling across the sky. She’d watched their duel, didn’t really know what was happening, but reasoned it wasn’t a common sight; there’d been humans watching from the street, and some of them had made high shrieking noises that she construed as sounds of alarm. Then, when the battle was over and the surviving machine fell with fire chewing its tail, Daufin was left with a single thought: Stinger.
Sarge had been kind to her, and she liked him; but now the need to find an exit called her. Her gaze swept the sky, scanning the violet mesh that trapped her and the humans in the same huge cage. She knew where it came from, and what powered it. Inside her there was a pressure as if some part of her was on the verge of breaking, and the pumping muscle at her center picked up speed. Hopeless! she thought as she scanned the skygrid from horizon to horizon. There is no exit! Hopeless!
A low gleam of light caught her eye, through the haze that clung close to the street. It was made of many colors, and it was an inviting light. If light could carry hope, Daufin thought, this light did. She began to walk toward the Inferno Baptist Church, where candlelight filtered through a stained-glass window.
The door was open. Daufin slid her head around its corner to peer inside.
Small white sticks with tips of light illuminated the interior, and at the opposite end from Daufin stood two metallic structures that each held six of the light-tipped sticks. Daufin counted, in the crude Earth mathematics, forty-six humans sitting on long high-backed benches, facing an upraised dais. Some of the humans had their heads bent over and their hands clasped. A man with a shiny head stood at the dais, and appeared to be dispensing liquid from a large receptacle into tiny ones held in a metallic tray.