“That’s time enough for us to talk to her! Please … I think we might be able to make her understand better than Rhodes could.”
His gaze lingered on the racing second hand, but his mind was already made up. “All right,” he said. “Take us to her,” he told Cody, and got behind the wheel as Cody lowered his goggles and swung the motorcycle around.
At the end of Travis Street, a dozen cars and pickup trucks were parked haphazardly in the apartment building’s lot; a couple of them had run right up to the front door. Cody waited for Tom and Jessie to get out of their Civic, and then he threaded his motorcycle through the vehicles and to the door, which was covered with gray sheet metal and had a narrow view slit like all the first-floor windows. “Open up, Bobby!” he called, and heard the sound of the many latches being thrown back. Bobby Clay Clemmons pulled the heavy door open, its hinges groaning like the entrance to a medieval castle, and Cody powered the motorcycle on through and into the stark white glare of the wall-mounted incandescents.
He popped the kickstand down and left the Honda near the stairway that ascended to the second floor, and a moment later Tom—carrying the Winchester—and Jessie came in. “Lock it,” Cody said, and Bobby Clay pushed the door shut and shot all four of the bolts home.
Neither Jessie nor Tom had ever been in the Winter T. Preston apartment building before. A long corridor lined with doors—some of them torn off their hinges—went the length of the first floor, and the cracked plaster walls screamed with graffiti in a blaze of Day-Glo orange and purple. The place smelled of marijuana, stale beer, and the ghost aromas of the mine workers and their families who’d lived here: a commingling of sweat, dry heat, and scorched food. For the first time in almost two years, voices other than those of Renegades echoed through the building.
“This way.” Cody led them up the stairs. The second floor was a mirror image of the first, except a ladder ascended through a trapdoor to the roof. People were sitting in the hallway, and bare mattresses had been dragged out of some of the apartments for them to rest on. They were mostly Inferno people, with only seven or eight Hispanic faces among them. As they followed Cody, Tom and Jessie had to step over and around the refugees; the lights revealed familiar faces: Vic Chaffin and his wife Arleen, Don Ringwald and his family, Ida Slattery, the Fraziers, Jim and Paula Cleveland and many others. The apartments were full too, and a few infants keened a discordant chorus. There was some talking, but not a lot; most people were numbed, and some of them were sleeping sitting up. The heat from all these close-packed bodies was tremendous, and the air was tainted with smoke.
Cody took them to a closed door that had HQ and KNOCK FIRST scrawled on it in red spray paint above a Billy Idol poster. Cody did knock, and a little sliding aperture opened. Nasty’s green eyes, outlined with glittery gold mascara, peered out. Then the aperture shut, the door was unlocked, and they went in.
This was Cody’s home whenever he came here. The front room held a cot, a stained plaid sofa with the stuffing leaking out through knife rips, a scarred pinewood table and chairs, and a small, battered refrigerator saved from the dump and forced to gasp out a few more months. The floor was covered with faded brown linoleum that was curling up in the corners, and on the cheaply paneled walls hung motorcycle and rock-star posters. A window, cracked open to admit smoky air, faced south. A short hallway went past a busted-up bathroom and into what used to be a bedroom, now the ’Gades’ armory where a variety of weapons like brass knuckles and pellet rifles hung on wall hooks.
Tank had been sitting on the sofa, and now he quickly stood up as he saw Mr. Hammond and his wife come in. His camouflage-daubed football helmet was snug around his skull. Cody relocked the door, and Nasty stepped back to let the Hammonds see who stood at the window, facing them.
“Hello, Tom and Jessie,” Daufin said, and smiled wanly.
The moment enfolded Jessie. That was Stevie’s body, Stevie’s face, Stevie’s dimpled smile. Even the voice was Stevie’s, if you chose not to hear the fragile undertone like wind chimes in the cradle of a breeze. Inside that body was Stevie’s heart, lungs, veins, and organs; all of it belonged to Stevie except the unknown center where Daufin lived. Jessie took a step forward, and fresh tears broke. Another step, and Tom saw where she was going and he reached for her but let his hand fall short.
Jessie walked across the room to the body of her daughter, and she started to place her hands on the little shoulders with the intention of picking the child up and holding her close—just for a moment, to feel the beating of Stevie’s heart and know that somewhere, in whatever way she couldn’t even begin to fathom, Stevie was alive.
But in the child’s face the eyes sparkled with intelligence and fire—intense and even frightening—that was far beyond Stevie’s years. The face was Stevie’s, yes, but the spirit was not.
That was clear to Jessie in an instant, and her hands poised over Daufin’s shoulders.
“You’re … you’re filthy!” Jessie said, and blinked away the tears. “You must’ve been rolling in the dust!”
Daufin looked down at her own dirty clothes. Jessie’s hands lowered, and brushed loose dust off the T-shirt. “Don’t they teach you to be clean where you come from? My God, what a mess!” The auburn hair was full of tangles, bits of weed and spiderweb strands. Jessie saw Nasty’s buckskin shoulderbag on the table; the bag was open, and the pink handle of a hairbrush protruded. She took the brush out and started going through the child’s hair with the dirt-hating vengeance of a mother.
Puzzled, Daufin started to back away. Jessie snapped, “Hold still!” and Daufin stood at attention while the brush strokes puffed dust into the air.
“We’re glad to see you,” Tom said. He knelt down so his eyes would be on a level with Daufin’s. “Why’d you run away?”
“I went whack-o,” she said.
“Uh … we’ve been … like … teachin’ her Earth lingo,” Tank explained. “She’s been tellin’ us about her planet too. It sounds mighty gnarly, man!” For once, his grim, hatchet-nosed face had taken on a childlike shine of excitement.
“I guess so.” Tom watched his wife brushing their child’s hair with determined strokes, and he thought his heart might break. “Daufin, we just had a talk with something. I can’t say it was a man, and I can’t say it was a machine.”
Daufin knew. “Stinger.”
“Yes.” He looked up at Cody Lockett. “It took Mack Cade’s body and made him into a …” Again, words failed him. “Part man, part dog.”
“One of Cade’s Dobermans is growing out of his chest.” Jessie’s hand continued to guide the brush.
“Freakacreepy!” Nasty said. Her love of danger was stoked and burning. “Man, I’d like to see that!”
“You’re crazy as hell too!” Cody snapped. “It got the Cat Lady,” he said to Tom. “Mrs. Stellenberg. It made her into something with a tail full of spikes, and I shot the bitch full of holes but she just kept comin’.”
“All are Stinger,” Daufin said quietly, standing rigid while she endured whatever it was Jessie was doing. It seemed to be giving Jessie pleasure. “Stinger creates them, and they become Stinger.”
Tom didn’t quite follow that. “Like robots, is that right?”
“Living mechanisms. They think with Stinger’s brain, and they see with Stinger’s eyes. Stinger hears and speaks through them. And kills through them too.”
“Somethin’ mighty big’s been roaming around under the streets,” Cody said. “Is that one of Stinger’s machines too?”
“No,” Daufin said. “That is Stinger itself. Stinger captures and stores bodies for duplication. Signals—you would call them blueprints—pass from Stinger to machines on the ship and there the replicants are made.”
“So we know it got Dodge Creech, Cade, Mrs. Stellenberg, and whoever that was in the autoyard. Plus the thing that left its arm with Rhodes.” Tom stood up and laid the Winchester on the table. “Stinger’s probably taken a lot of others we don’t know about
too.”
“There!” Jessie finished her battle with the last snarl and stepped back. She felt light-headed and drifty, and she’d caught a hint of the apple-scented shampoo she’d washed Stevie’s hair with last night. “Now you look pretty again!”
“Thank you,” Daufin said; it was obviously a compliment, and deserved a reaction, though why these people lavished such attention on strands of limp cellular matter was another mystery of the human tribe. Her gaze went to Tom. “You said you talked to Stinger. About me, of course.”
“Yes.”
“Stinger wants me and my lifepod, and an ultimatum was given.”
Tom nodded. “It said it wants you in one hour”—a glance at the racing hands of his watch—”and we’ve got about forty minutes left.”
“Or Stinger will continue the destruction,” Daufin said. “Yes. That’s Stinger’s way.”
“The sonofabitch wants to take her back to prison!” Cody spoke up. “And all she did was sing!”
“Sing? That’s not what Stinger said. He—it—told us about the chemical on your world,” Tom recounted. “The poison, I mean. Stinger said you …” It was crazy, looking at his little girl’s face and saying these things. “Said you were a wild animal.”
“I am,” she answered without hesitation. “To Stinger and the House of Fists, I deserve a cage and a frozen sleep.”
“The House of Fists? What’s that?”
“Stinger’s masters. A race that worships violence; their religion is the conquest of worlds, and their entrance into the afterlife is determined by the deaths of what they consider lower beings.” A faint, gritty smile surfaced. “Wild animals like me.”
“But if they’re trying to control this chemical, isn’t that for the good of—”
Daufin laughed: a mixture of a child’s laugh and the sound of coins thrown to the floor. “Oh yes!” she said. “Yes, they are trying to control the chemical!” The fires ignited in her eyes again. “But not for the good of their brother creatures, no matter what Stinger told you. They want the chemical for their weapons! They want to build deadlier fleets and more ways to kill!” The little body shook with fury. “The more of the chemical they steal from my planet, the closer my tribe comes to destruction! And the closer all worlds come to being destroyed, as well—including this one! Do you think Stinger will leave here and not tell the House of Fists about your planet?” She searched for words, stumbled over the tangle of human speech, grasped hold of a phrase the humans named Tank and Nasty had taught her: “Get real!”
The flesh of Daufin’s face had drawn tight, showing the sharp angles of the bones. Her eyes blazed with anger, and she began to pace back and forth in front of the window. “I never meant to come here. My ship lost power, and I had to put it down where I could. I know I’ve brought hurting to you, and to others here. For that I will carry a burden for the rest of my life.” She stopped suddenly, looking back and forth between Tom and Jessie. “Stinger will tell the House of Fists about you, and about this world. Stinger will say you are soft, defenseless life forms who were born to be caged, and they’ll come here. Oh yes, they’ll come here—and they might bring their weapons full of the ‘poison’ they’ve stolen from my planet! Do you know what that ‘poison’ is?”
Tom thought she was about to start spouting steam from her nostrils. “No,” he said warily.
“Of course you don’t! How could you?” She shook her head, exasperated. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her cheeks. “I’ll do more than tell you; I’ll show you.”
“Show us?” Jessie said. “How?”
“Through the inner eye.” Daufin saw no comprehension on their faces; they were blank slates, waiting to be written on. She lifted both hands toward them. “If you want to know, I’ll take you there. I’ll show you my world, through the eye of my memory.”
The humans hesitated. Daufin didn’t blame them. She was offering a glimpse of the unknown, and what was home to her would be to them an alien realm. “Take my hands,” she urged, and her fingers strained for contact. “If you want to know, you have to see.”
Tom took the first step forward, and when it was done, the hardest part was over. He walked to Daufin and slid his hand into hers. The flesh was oven hot, and as her fingers gripped tight he could already feel the prickling of an electrical charge passing from her into him.
“Jessie?” Daufin asked.
She came to her daughter’s outstretched hand, and took it.
43
Waiting for the Spacemen
AT TWELVE MINUTES AFTER two, Tyler Lucas sat on the front porch of his house with a rifle beside him and waited for the spacemen to come.
The sky was covered with a hazy violet grid. After the power had gone out, he and Bess had driven into Inferno, had seen the black pyramid and gotten the lowdown from Sue Mullinax and Cecil at the Brandin’ Iron. “The spacemen have landed, sure’s shootin’!” Sue had said. “Cain’t nobody get in or out, and the phones are dead too! I swear to God, when that thing hit, it lifted this whole block and me off my feet too, so you know it must’ve packed a punch!”
Then she’d given that giggly laugh of hers—the laugh that had made her so popular when she was a slim-waisted Preston High School cheerleader—and bustled off to fix Tyler and Bess cold hamburgers.
“Ty? Here y’go.” Bess had come out and offered her husband a glass of iced tea. The tea had been made that morning, which was a good thing because the faucets wouldn’t pull up a drop of water. “That’s the last of the ice cubes.” They were small half-moons, and everything in the refrigerator was thawing out quick in this sullen heat.
“Thanks, hon.” He rubbed the cold glass over his sweating face, sipped at the tea, and gave it back to her when she’d sat down on the edge of the porch next to him. She drank with a deep thirst. Off in the desert a chorus of coyotes howled, their voices jagged and nervous. Tyler watched the road.
They’d decided that when the spacemen came, they would die right here, defending their home. The air-force people had been wandering all over the place before the sun went down, scooping up little fragments of blue-green metal and putting them in weird bags that folded up like accordions. Where were the air-force men now?
Tyler and Bess had driven their pickup west along Cobre Road. A little less than half a mile had cranked off the odometer before they’d come to where the violet grid had entered the earth and blocked their way. Around the grid’s glowing prongs Cobre Road’s asphalt was still bubbling. Tyler had thrown a handful of sand into the grid, and little grains of molten glass had come back at them.
“Well,” Tyler drawled, laying the rifle across his knees, “I never thought there’d come a time when you couldn’t see the stars out here. I reckon progress has caught up with us, huh?”
She started to answer, but could not. She was a tough old bird, and she hadn’t cried for a long time. There were tears in her eyes now, and her throat had constricted. Tyler eased an arm around her. “Kind of a pretty light, though,” he said. “If you like purple.”
“I hate it,” she managed.
“Can’t say I cotton to it much, either.” His voice was soft, but he was mulling over some hard questions. He didn’t know how they would come, or when, but he didn’t mean to give up without one hell of a fight. He was going to drill as many as he could, and go down fighting like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. But the worst question gnawed at him: should he save a bullet for Bess, or not?
He was thinking about it, his gaze on the road, when he heard a woman scream.
He looked at Bess. They stared at each other for a second. The woman’s scream came again.
They both realized what it was at the same time. Not the scream of a woman, but the shrieking of Sweetpea, back in the barn.
“Get a flashlight! Hurry!” he told her, and as she ran inside he sprinted on his wiry legs off the porch and around the house. The barn was about thirty yards back, next to Bess’s cactus garden. He heard the frantic thump of Sweetpea’s
hooves hitting the sides of his stall, and Tyler’s palms were wet around the rifle. Something was at the horse.
He threw back the crossbeam and hauled the doors open. Everything was as dark as sin in there. The big palomino was still screaming, about to bash the boards loose. Tyler shouted, “Whoa there, Sweetpea! Settle down, boy!” but the horse was going wild.
Tyler’s first thought was that a sidewinder or scorpion must’ve gotten into the stall—but suddenly there was a cracking noise and the barn’s floor shook under his boots.
Sweetpea grunted as if he had been kicked in the belly. There followed a thrashing, panicked sound coupled with Sweetpea’s high screams. Tyler looked over his shoulder, saw Bess running with a flashlight’s beam spearing ahead. She gave it to him, and he aimed it at the horse’s stall.
The palomino was sunk up to his flanks in the sandy earth, broken floorboards jutting up around him. Sweetpea’s eyes were red with terror, and foam snorted from his nostrils as he fought. His hind legs had disappeared into the hole, the front legs pawing at the air. Muscles rippled along his body as he tried to tear loose from whatever was pulling him through the barn floor.
Tyler gasped, the sense knocked out of him. The horse sank another two feet, and the barn echoed with Sweetpea’s cries.
“The rope!” Bess shouted, and reached for the lariat coiled near the door. There was a slipknot already on it, and she widened the noose, swung the rope twice around to play it out, and let fly for Sweetpea’s head. Her aim was off by six inches, and she quickly reeled it back to try again as the horse was jerked down to his shoulders in a spray of sand.
On the next attempt, the rope slipped over Sweetpea’s skull and tightened around the base of the neck. The rope pulled taut between them, started smoking a raw groove through Bess’s hands. Tyler dropped the rifle, wedged the flashlight into the joint of two beams, and grabbed the rope, but both he and Bess were wrenched off their feet and dragged across the splintery floor. Sweetpea disappeared into the earth up to his throat.