“KING, STRAUB, AND NOW ROBERT McCAMMON…”
                                     - Los Angeles Times

               ROBERT R. McCAMMON’S SWAN SONG SWEPT THE COUNTRY
                    WITH “A CHILLING VISION THAT WILL KEEP YOU
                 TURNING THE PAGES TO THE SHOCKING END.” - John Saul



                         NOW, HIS BRILLIANT NEW NOVEL CREATES A
                              POWERFUL WORLD OF TERROR…



  Robert R. McCammon, one of the supreme masters of horror, takes us into a mind-bending landscape
 bursting with the most savage terrors imaginable. STINGER… an enemy more fearsome, more hideous
 than the most heart-stopping nightmares. STINGER… who ravages a remote Texas town until the men
and women of Inferno rise up in a final, desperate battle. No evil yet known to man can match the searing
                                                 hell of…




                                          Cody Stepped Through
                                               the Doorway
                                          of the Empty House…



Suddenly he was tumbling forward, falling through darkness. His mouth opened in a cry of terror as he
realized that the room had no floor, that he was crashing through the roof of Hell…



Something whammed underneath his right arm, knocking the wind out of him, and he had the sense to
grab hold of it before he slid off. He gripped both hands to a swaying thing that felt like a horizontal length
of pipe. Dirt and stones cascaded into the darkness beneath him. He didn’t hear them hit bottom. Then
the pipe’s swaying stopped, and he was left dangling in midair…



Minutes passed. Cody’s hands were slick with sweat. His arms had gone dead, all the blood running out
of them, and his legs felt like hundred-pound sacks of concrete. His hands cramped into claws around
the pipe.



“Help me!” he shouted, and instantly regretted it. The pipe swayed again, and a rush of dirt cascaded into
the hole. Panic gnawed his guts. The chill of shocked nerves and blood-drained muscles began to spread
through his shoulders.
And then he heard something that made the hairs stir at the nape of his neck.



It was a furtive, scuttling sound; a moist sound.



Cody held his breath. Something was moving in the darkness below…



Books by Robert R. McCammon



Stinger

Swan Song



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Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS




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Copyright © 1988 by The McCammon Corporation

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The motorcycle roared out of Bordertown, carrying the blond boy and dark-haired girl away from the
horror behind them.

    Smoke and dust whirled into the boy’s face; he smelled blood and his own scared sweat, and the girl
trembled as she clung to him. The bridge was ahead of them, but the motorcycle’s headlight was
smashed out and the boy was steering by the dim violet glow that filtered through the smoke clouds. The
air was hot, heavy, and smelled burnt: the odor of a battleground.

   The tires gave a slight bump. They were on the bridge, the boy knew. He cut his speed slightly as the
bridge’s concrete sides narrowed, and swerved to avoid a hubcap that must have fallen off one of the
cars that had just raced to the Inferno side. The thing that both he and the girl had just seen still clawed at
their minds, and the girl looked back with tears in her eyes and her brother’s name on her lips.

   Almost across, the boy thought. We’re gonna make it! We’re gonna—
   Something rose up from the smoke directly in front of them.

    The boy instinctively hit the brakes, started to swerve the machine, but knew there wasn’t enough
time. The motorcycle smacked into the figure, then skidded out of control. The boy lost his grip, felt the
girl go off the motorcycle too, and then he seemed to turn head over heels in midair and slid in a fury of
friction burns.

  He lay curled up, gasping for breath. Must’ve been the Mumbler, he thought as he struggled to stay
conscious. The Mumbler… crawled up on the bridge… and gave us a whack.

  He tried to sit up. Not enough strength yet. His left arm was hurting, but he could move the fingers
and that was a good sign. His ribs felt like splintered razors, and he wanted to sleep, just close his eyes
and let go… but if he did that, he was sure he would never awaken again.

   He smelled gasoline. Motor’s tank ruptured, he realized. About two seconds later there was a
whump! of fire and orange light flickered. Pieces of metal clattered down around him. He got up on his
knees, his lungs hitching, and in the firelight could see the girl lying on her back about six feet away, her
arms and legs splayed like those of a broken doll. He crawled to her. There was blood on her mouth
from a split lower lip and a blue bruise on the side of her face. But she was breathing, and when he spoke
her name her eyelids fluttered. He tried to cradle her head, but his fingers found a lump on her skull and
he thought he’d better not move her.

   And then he heard footsteps—two boots: one clacking, one sliding.

   He looked up, his heart hammering. Someone was lurching toward them from the Bordertown side.
Rivulets of gasoline burned on the bridge, and the thing strode on through the streams of flame, the cuffs
of its jeans catching fire. It was hunchbacked, a grotesque mockery of a human being, and as it got
nearer the boy could see a grin of needles.

   He crouched protectively over the girl. The clacking boot and dragging boot closed in. The boy
started to rise to fight it off, but pain shot through his ribs, stole his breath, and hobbled him. He fell back
to his side, wheezing for air.

   The hunchbacked, grinning thing reached them, and stood staring down. Then it bent lower, and a
hand with metal, saw-edged fingernails slid over the girl’s face.

   The boy’s strength was gone. The metal nails were about to crush the girl’s head, about to rip the
flesh off her skull. It would happen in a heartbeat, and the boy knew that on this long night of horror there
was only one chance to save her life…



                                                      1
                                                    Dawn


The sun was rising, and as the heat shimmered in phantom waves the night things crept back to their
holes.

   The purple light took on a tint of orange. Muted gray and dull brown gave way to deep crimson and
burnt amber. Stovepipe cactus and knee-high sagebrush grew violet shadows, and slabs of rough-edged
boulders glowed as scarlet as Apache warpaint. The colors of morning mingled and ran along gullies and
cracks in the rugged land, sparkling bronze and ruddy in the winding trickle of the Snake River.

    As the light strengthened and the alkali odor of heat drifted up from the desert floor, the boy who’d
slept under the stars opened his eyes. His muscles were stiff, and he lay for a minute or two looking up at
the cloudless sky as it flooded with gold. He thought he remembered dreaming—something about his
father, the drunken voice bellowing his name over and over again, distorting it with each repetition until it
sounded more like a curse—but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t usually have good dreams, especially not
those in which the old man capered and grinned.

   He sat up and drew his knees to his chest, resting his sharp chin between them, and watched the sun
explode over the series of jagged ridges that lay far to the east beyond Inferno and Bordertown. The
sunrise always reminded him of music, and today he heard the crash and bluster of an Iron Maiden guitar
solo, full-throttle and wailing. He liked sleeping out here, even though it took awhile for his muscles to
unkink, because he liked to be alone, and he liked the desert’s early colors. In another couple of hours,
when the sun really started getting hot, the desert would turn the hue of ashes, and you could almost hear
the air sizzle. If you didn’t find shade at midday, the Great Fried Empty would cook a person’s brains to
twitching cinders.

   But for right now it was fine, while the air was still soft and everything—if just for a short while—held
the illusion of beauty. At a time like this he could pretend he’d awakened a long, long way from Inferno.

   He was sitting on the flat surface of a boulder as big as a pickup truck, one of a jumble of huge rocks
wedged together and known locally as the Rocking Chair because of its curved shape. The Rocking
Chair was marred by a barrage of spray-painted graffiti, rude oaths and declarations like RATTLERS
BITE JURADO’S COCK obscuring the remnants of pictographs etched there by Indians three hundred
years ago. It sat atop a ridge stubbled with cactus, mesquite, and sagebrush, and rose about a hundred
feet from the desert’s surface. It was the boy’s usual roost when he slept out here, and from this vantage
point he could see the edges of his world.

   To the north lay the black, razor-straight line of Highway 67, which came out of the Texas flatlands,
became Republica Road for two miles as it sliced along Inferno’s side, crossed the Snake River Bridge,
and passed mangy Bordertown; then it became Highway 67 again as it disappeared south toward the
Chinati Mountains and the Great Fried Empty. For as far as the boy could see, both north and south, no
cars moved on Highway 67, but a few vultures were circling something dead—an armadillo, jackrabbit,
or snake—that lay on the roadside. He wished them a good breakfast as they swooped down to feast.

   To the east of the Rocking Chair lay the flat, intersecting streets of Inferno. The blocky, adobe-style
buildings of the central “business district” stood around the small rectangle of Preston Park, which held a
white-painted bandstand, a collection of cacti planted by the Board of Beautification, and a life-size white
marble statue of a donkey. The boy shook his head, took a pack of Winstons from the inside pocket of
his faded denim jacket, and lit the first cigarette of the day with a Zippo lighter; it was his dumb luck, he
mused, to have spent his life in a town named after a jackass. Then again, the statue was probably a
pretty fair likeness of Sheriff Vance’s mother too.

   The wooden and stone houses along Inferno’s streets threw purple shadows over the gritty yards and
heat-cracked concrete. Multicolored plastic flags drooped over Mack Cade’s used-car lot on Celeste
Street. The lot was surrounded by an eight-foot-tall chainlink fence topped with barbed wire, and a big
red sign trumpeted TRADE WITH CADE THE WORKINGMAN’S FRIEND. The boy figured that
every one of those cars were chopshop specials; the best junker on the lot couldn’t make five hundred
miles, but Cade was making a killing off the Mexicans. Anyway, selling used cars was just pocket change
to Cade, whose real business lay elsewhere.
    Further east, where Celeste Street crossed Brazos Street at the edge of Preston Park, the windows
of the Inferno First Texas Bank glowed orange with the sun’s fireball. Its three floors made it the tallest
structure in Inferno, not counting the looming gray screen of the StarLite Drive-in off to the northeast.
Used to be, you could sit up here on the Rocking Chair and see the movies for free, make up your own
dialogue, do a little zooming and freaking around, and have a real scream. But times do change, the boy
thought. He drew on his cigarette and puffed a couple of smoke rings. The drive-in shut down last
summer, the concession building a nest for snakes and scorpions. About a mile north of the StarLite was
a small cinder-block building with a roof like a brown scab. The boy could see that the gravel parking lot
was empty, but round about noontime it would start filling up. The Bob Wire Club was the only place in
town making money anymore. Beer and whiskey were mighty potent painkillers.

   The electric sign in front of the bank spelled out 5:57 in lightbulbs, then abruptly changed to display
the present temperature: 78°F. Inferno’s four stoplights all blinked caution yellow, and not one of them
was in sync with another.

    He didn’t know if he felt like going to school today or not. Maybe he’d just go for a ride in the desert
and keep going until the road trailed out, or maybe he’d wander over to the Warp Room and try to beat
his best scores on Gunfighter and Galaxian. He looked way east, across Republica Road toward the W.
T. Preston High School and the Inferno Community Elementary School, two long, low-slung brick
buildings that made him think of prison movies. They faced each other over a common parking lot, and
behind the high school was a football field, the meager grass of autumn long burned away. No new grass
would be planted, and there would be no more games on that field. Anyway, the boy thought, the
Preston High Patriots had only won twice during the season and had come in dead last in Presidio
County, so who gave a flying fuck?

   He’d skipped school yesterday, and tomorrow—Friday, May 25—was the last day for the seniors.
The ordeal of finals was over, and he would graduate with the rest of his class if he finished his
manual-arts project. So maybe he ought to be a choirboy today, go to school like he was supposed to,
or at least check in to see what the action was. Maybe Tank, Bobby Clay Clemmons, or somebody
would want to go somewhere and zoom, or maybe one of the Mexican bastards needed a nitro lesson. If
that was so, he’d be real happy to oblige.

    His pale gray eyes narrowed behind a screen of smoke. Looking down on Inferno like this disturbed
him, made him feel antsy and mean, like he had an itch he couldn’t scratch. He’d decided it must be
because there were so many dead-end streets in Inferno. Cobre Road, which intersected Republica and
ran west along the Snake River’s gulley, continued for about eight more miles—but only past more
failure: the copper mine and the Preston Ranch, as well as a few other struggling old spreads. The
strengthening sunlight did not make Inferno any prettier; it only exposed all the scars. The town was
scorched and dusty and dying, and Cody Lockett knew that by this time next year there’d be nobody
left. Inferno would dry up and blow away; already a lot of the houses were empty, the people who’d
lived in them packed up and gone for greener pastures.

   Travis Street ran north and south, and divided Inferno into its east and west sections. The east section
was mostly wooden houses that would not hold paint and that, in the middle of summer, would become
ovens of misery. The west section, where the shopowners and “upper class” lived, was predominantly
white stone and adobe houses, and in the yards were an occasional sprout of wildflowers. But it was
clearing out fast: every week saw more businesses shutting down; amid the wildflowers bloomed FOR
SALE signs. And at the northern end of Travis Street, across a parking lot strewn with tumbleweeds,
stood a two-story red-brick apartment building, its first-floor windows covered with sheet metal. The
building had been constructed back in the late fifties—in the boomtown years—but now it was a warren
of empty rooms and corridors that the Renegades, the gang of which Cody Lockett was president, had
taken over and made into their fortress. Any member of el Culebra de Cascabel—the Rattlesnakes, a
gang of Mexican kids over in Bordertown—was meat to be fried if he or she was caught on ’Gade
territory after dark. And ’Gade territory was everything north of the Snake River Bridge.

   That was how it had to be. Cody knew the Mexicans would stomp you if you let them. They’d take
your money and your job and they’d spit in your face while they were doing it. So they had to be kept in
their place, and knocked back if they got out of line. That was what Cody’s old man had drilled into his
head, day after day, year after year. Wetbacks, Cody’s father said, were like dogs that had to be kicked
every so often just so they’d know who the masters were around here.

   But sometimes, when Cody slowed down and thought about it, he didn’t see what harm the Mexicans
did. They were out of work, same as everybody else. Still, Cody’s father said the Mexicans had ruined
the copper mine. Said they fouled everything they touched. Said they’d ruined the state of Texas, and
they were going to ruin this country before they were through. Gonna be screwin’ white women in the
streets before long, the elder Lockett had warned. Gotta kick ’em down and make ’em taste dust.

    Sometimes Cody believed it; sometimes he didn’t. It depended on his mood. Things were bad in
Inferno, and he knew things were bad inside himself too. Maybe it was easier to kick Mexican ass than
to let yourself think too much, he reasoned. Anyway, it all boiled down to keeping the Rattlers out of
Inferno after sunset, a responsibility that had been passed down to Cody through the six other ’Gade
presidents before him.

   Cody stood up and stretched. The sunlight shone in his curly, sandy-blond hair, which was cropped
close on the sides and left shaggy on top. A small silver skull hung from the hole in his left earlobe. He
cast a long, lean shadow; he stood six feet, was rangy and fast, and looked as mean as rusty barbed
wire. His face was made up of hard angles and ridges, nothing soft about it at all, his chin and nose sharp,
and even his thick blond eyebrows bristling and angry. He could outstare a sidewinder and give a
jackrabbit a good foot race, and when he walked he took long strides as if he were trying to stretch his
legs free of Inferno’s boundaries.

   He’d turned eighteen on the fifth of March and he had no idea what he was going to do with the rest
of his life. The future was a place he avoided thinking about, and beyond a week from Sunday, when he
would graduate with the sixty-three other seniors, the world was a patchwork of shadows. His grades
weren’t good enough for college, and there wasn’t enough money for technical school. The old man
drank everything he earned at the bakery and most of what Cody brought home from the Texaco station
too. But Cody knew he could keep the job pumping gas and working on cars for as long as he wanted.
Mr. Mendoza, who owned the place, was the only good Mexican he knew—or cared to know.

  Cody’s gaze shifted to the south, across the river toward the small houses and buildings of
Bordertown, the Mexican section. Over there, the four narrow, dusty streets had no names, just
numbers, and all of them but Fourth Street were dead ends. The steeple of the Sacrifice of Christ
Catholic Church, its cross glinting with orange sunlight, was Bordertown’s highest point.

   Fourth Street led west into Mack Cade’s auto junkyard—a two-acre maze of car hulks, heaps of
parts and discarded tires, enclosed workshops and concrete pits, all surrounded by a nine-foot-tall
sheet-metal fence and another foot of vicious concertina wire atop that. Cody could see the flare of
welding torches through the windows of a workshop, and a lug-nut gun squealed. Three tractor-trailer
trucks were parked in there, awaiting cargo. Cade kept shifts working around the clock, and his business
had bought him a huge modernistic adobe mansion with a swimming pool and a tennis court about two
miles south of Bordertown and that much closer to the border of Mexico. Cade had offered Cody a job
working in the autoyard, but Cody knew what the man was dealing in, and he wasn’t yet ready for that
kind of dead end.
    He turned toward the west, and his shadow lay before him. His gaze followed the dark line of Cobre
Road. Three miles away was the huge red crater of the Preston Copper Mining Company, rimmed with
gray like an ulcerous wound. Around the crater stood empty office buildings, storage sheds, the
aluminum-roofed refinery building, and abandoned machinery. Cody thought they looked like what was
left of dinosaurs after the desert sun had melted their skins away. Cobre Road kept going past the crater
in the direction of the Preston Ranch, following the power poles to the west.

   He looked down again at the quiet town—population about nineteen hundred and slipping fast—and
could imagine he heard the clocks ticking in the houses. Sunlight was creeping around curtains and
through blinds to streak the walls with fire. Soon those alarm clocks would go off, shocking the sleepers
into another day; those with jobs would get dressed and leave their houses, running before the electric
prod of time, to their work either in the remaining stores of Inferno or up north in Fort Stockton and
Pecos. And at the end of the day, Cody thought, they would all return to those little houses, and they
would watch the flickering tube and fill up the empty spaces as best they could until those bastard clocks
whispered sleep. That was the way it would be, day after day, from now until the last door shut and the
last car pulled out—and then nothing would live here but the desert, growing larger and shifting over the
streets.

    “So what do I care?” Cody said, and exhaled cigarette smoke through his nostrils. He knew there
was nothing for him here; there never had been. The whole freaking town, he told himself, might’ve been
a thousand miles from civilization except for the telephone poles, the stupid American and even stupider
Mexican TV shows, and the chattering bilingual voices that floated through the radios. He looked north
along Brazos, past more houses and the white stone Inferno Baptist Church. Just before Brazos ended
stood an ornate wrought-iron gate and fence enclosing Joshua Tree Hill, Inferno’s cemetery. It was
shaded by thin, wind-sculpted Joshua trees, but it was more of a bump than a hill. He stared for a
moment toward the tombstones and old monuments, then returned his attention to the houses; he couldn’t
see much difference.

   “Hey, you freakin’ zombies!” he shouted on impulse. “Wake up!” His voice rolled over Inferno,
leaving the sound of barking dogs behind it.

   “I’m not gonna be like you,” he said, the cigarette clamped in a corner of his mouth, “I swear to God
I’m not.”

   He knew to whom he was speaking, because as he said the words he was staring down at a gray
wooden house near where a street called Sombra crossed Brazos. He figured the old man didn’t even
know he hadn’t come home last night, wouldn’t have cared anyway. All his father needed was a bottle
and a place to sleep it off.

   Cody glanced at Preston High. If that project wasn’t finished today, Odeale might give him some
grief, might even screw up his graduation. He couldn’t stand for some bow-tied sonofabitch to watch
over his shoulder and tell him what to do, so he’d purposefully slowed his work to a snail’s pace. Today,
though, he had to finish it; he knew he could’ve built a roomful of furniture in the six weeks it had taken
him to do one lousy tie rack.

   The sun had a fierce glare now. Already the bright hues of the desert were fading. A truck was
coming down Highway 67, its headlights still on, bringing the morning newspapers from Odessa. A dark
blue Chevy backed out of a driveway on Bowden Street, and a woman in a robe waved to her husband
from the front porch. Somebody opened their back door and let out a yellow cat, which promptly chased
a rabbit into a thicket of cactus. On the side of Republica Road, the buzzards were plucking at their
breakfast and other birds of prey were slowly circling in the sullen air above.
   Cody took one last pull at his cigarette and then flicked it off the Rocking Chair. He decided he could
do with something to eat before school. There were usually stale doughnuts in the house, and those
would do.

   He turned his back on Inferno and climbed carefully down the rocks to the ridge below. Nearby
stood the red Honda 250cc motorcycle he’d salvaged from parts bought at Cade’s junkyard two years
ago. Cade had given him a good deal, and Cody was smart enough not to ask questions. The ID
numbers on the Honda’s engine had been filed off, just as they were removed from most of the engines
and body parts Mack Cade sold.

   As he approached the motorcycle, a slight movement beside his right cowboy boot snagged his
attention. He stopped.

   His shadow had fallen across a small brown scorpion that crouched on a flat rock. As Cody watched,
the scorpion’s segmented stinger arced up and struck at the air. The scorpion stood its ground, and
Cody lifted his boot to smash the little bastard to eternity.

   But he paused an instant before his boot came down. The insect was only about three inches long
from head to barb, and Cody knew he could crush it in a heartbeat but he admired its courage. There it
was, fighting a giant shadow for a piece of rock in a burning desert. It didn’t have too much sense, Cody
mused, but it had more than its share of guts. Anyway, there was too much death in the air today, and
Cody decided not to add to it.

   “It’s all yours, amigo,” he said, and as he walked past, the scorpion jabbed its stinger at his departing
shadow.

   Cody swung one leg over the motorcycle and settled himself in the patched leather seat. The dual
chrome exhausts were full of dings, the red paint had mottled and faded, the engine sometimes burned oil
and had a mind of its own, but the machine got Cody where he wanted to go. Out on Highway 67, once
he was far beyond Inferno, he could coax the engine up to seventy, and there were few things he enjoyed
better than its husky growl and the wind hissing past his ears. It was at times like that, when he was alone
and depending on no one but himself, that Cody felt the most free. Because he knew depending on
people freaked your head. In this life, you were alone and you’d better learn to like it.

   He took a pair of leather aviator’s goggles off the handlebars and slipped them on, put the key in the
ignition and brought his weight down on the kick starter. The engine backfired a gout of oily smoke and
vibrated as if unwilling to wake up—then the machine came to life under him like a loyal, if sometimes
headstrong, mustang, and Cody drove down the ridge’s steep slope toward Aurora Street, a trail of
yellow dust rising behind him. He didn’t know what shape his father would be in today, and he was
already toughening himself for it. Maybe he could get in and out without the old man even knowing.

   Cody glanced at the straight line of Highway 67, and he vowed that very soon, maybe right after
Graduation Day, he was going to hit that damned road and keep on riding, following the telephone poles
north, and he would never look back at what he was leaving.

   I’m not gonna be like you, he swore.

   But inside he feared that every day he saw a little more of his old man’s face looking back at him from
the mirror.

   He throttled up, and the rear tire left a black scrawl as he shot along Aurora Street.

   The sun lay hot and red in the east, and another day had begun in Inferno.
                                               2
                                     The Great Fried Empty


Jessie Hammond awakened, as was her habit, about three seconds before the alarm clock buzzed on the
bedside table. As it went off she reached out, her eyes still closed, and popped the alarm button down
with the flat of her hand. She sniffed the air, could smell the inviting aromas of bacon and freshly brewed
coffee. “Breakfast’s on, Jess!” Tom called from the kitchen.

   “Two more minutes.” She burrowed her head into the pillow.

  “Big minutes or little ones?”

  “Tiny ones. Minuscule.” She rolled over to find a better position and caught his clean, pleasantly
musky scent on the other pillow. “You smell like a puppy,” she said sleepily.

   “Pardon?”

  “What?” She opened her eyes to the bright streamers of sunlight that hit the opposite wall through the
window blinds and immediately shut them again.

   “How about some lizard eyeballs in your eggs today?” Tom asked. He and Jessie had stayed up until
well after one in the morning, talking and sharing a bottle of Blue Nun. But he’d always been a quick
starter and enjoyed cooking breakfast, while Jessie took a little longer to get her spark plugs going even
on the best of days.

   “Make mine rare,” she answered, and tried seeing again. The early light was already glary, promising
another scorcher. The past week had been one ninety-degree day after the next, and the Odessa
weatherman on Channel 19 had said today might break the hundred mark. Jessie knew that meant
trouble. Animals weren’t acclimated to such heat so soon. Horses would get sluggish and go off their
feed, dogs would be surly and snap without cause, and cats would have major spells of claw-happy
craziness. Stock animals got unruly too, and bulls were downright dangerous. But it was also rabies
season, and her worst fear was that somebody’s pet would go chasing after an infected jackrabbit or
prairie dog, be bitten, and bring rabies back into the community. All the domesticated animals she could
think of had already been given their boosters, but there were always a few folks who didn’t bring their
pets in for the treatment. It might be a good idea, she decided, to get in the pickup truck today and drive
around to some of the small communities near Inferno—like Klyman, No Trees, and Notch Fork—to
spread the antirabies gospel.

   “‘Morning.” Tom was standing over her, offering her coffee in a blue clay mug. “This’ll get you
started.”

   She sat up and took the mug. The coffee, as usual whenever Tom made it, was ebony and ominous.
The first sip puckered her mouth; the second brooded on her tongue for a while, and the third sent the
caffeine charging through her system. She needed it too. She’d never been a morning person, but as the
only veterinarian within a forty-mile radius she’d learned a long time ago that the ranchers and farmers
were up long before the sun first blushed the sky. “Smooth,” she managed to say.

   “Always is.” Tom smiled slightly, walked over to the window, and pushed aside the blinds. Red fire
hit his face and glowed in the lenses of his eyeglasses. He looked east, along Celeste Street toward
Republica Road and Preston High School—“the Hotbox,” he called it, because the air conditioning
broke down so often. His smile began to fade.

  She knew what he was thinking. They’d talked about it last night, and many nights before that one.
The Blue Nun eased, but it did not heal.

   “Come here,” she said, and motioned him to the bed.

  “Bacon’ll get cold,” he answered. His accent was the unhurried drawl of east Texas, whereas Jessie’s
was west Texas’s gritty twang.

   “Let it freeze.”

   Tom turned away from the window, could feel the hot stripes of sun across his bare back and
shoulders. He wore his faded and comfortable khaki trousers, but he hadn’t yet pulled on his socks and
shoes. He passed under the bedroom’s lazily revolving ceiling fan, and Jessie leaned over in her pale
blue, oversized shirt and patted the edge of the bed. When he sat down, she began massaging his
shoulders with her strong brown hands. Already his muscles were as tight as piano wire.

   “It’s going to work out,” she told him, her voice calm and deliberate. “This isn’t the end of the world.”

    He nodded, said nothing. The nod wasn’t very convincing. Tom Hammond was thirty-seven years
old, stood a bit over six feet, was slim and in pretty good shape except for a little potbelly that resisted
sit-ups and jogging. His light brown hair was receding to show what Jessie called a “noble forehead,” and
his tortoiseshell-framed glasses gave him the look of an intelligent if slightly dismayed schoolteacher.
Which was exactly what he was: Tom had been a social studies teacher at Preston High for eleven years.
And now, with the impending death of Inferno, that was coming to an end. Eleven years of the Hotbox.
Eleven years of watching the faces change. Eleven years, and still he hadn’t defeated his worst enemy. It
was still there, and it would always be there, and every day for eleven years he’d seen it working against
him.

   “You’ve done everything you could,” Jessie said. “You know you have.”

    “Maybe. Maybe not.” One corner of his mouth angled downward in a bitter smile, and his eyes were
pinched with frustration. A week from tomorrow, when school closed, he and the other teachers would
have no job. His résumés had brought in only one offer from the state of Texas—a field job, running
literacy exams on immigrants who followed the melon crops. Still, he knew that most of the other
teachers hadn’t landed jobs yet either, but that didn’t make the pill any sweeter going down. He’d gotten
a nice letter stamped with the state seal of Texas that told him the education budget had been cut for the
second year in a row and at present there was a freeze on the hiring of teachers. Of course, since he’d
been in the system so long, his name would be put on the waiting list of applicants, thank you and keep
this letter for your files. It was the same letter many of his colleagues had received, and the only file it
went into was circular.

   But he knew that, eventually, another position would come his way. Running the exams on the migrant
workers wouldn’t be so bad, really, but it would require a lot of time on the road. What had chewed at
him day and night for the past year was the memory of all the students who’d passed through his social
studies class—hundreds of them, from red-haired American sons to copper-skinned Mexicans to
Apache kids with eyes like bullet holes. Hundreds of them: doomed freight, passing through the badlands
on tracks already warped. He’d checked; over an eleven-year period with a senior class averaging about
seventy to eighty kids, only three hundred and six of them had enrolled as freshmen in either a state or
technical college. The rest had just drifted away or set roots in Inferno to work at the mine, drink their
wages, and raise a houseful of babies who would probably repeat the pattern. Only now there was no
mine, and the pull of drugs and crime in the big cities was stronger. It was stronger, as well, right here in
Inferno. And for eleven years he’d seen the faces come and go: boys with knife scars and tattoos and
forced laughter, girls with scared eyes and gnawed fingernails and the secret twitches of babies already
growing in their bellies.

    Eleven years, and tomorrow was his final day. After the senior class walked out at last period, it
would be over. And what haunted him, day after day, was the realization that he could recall maybe
fifteen kids who’d escaped the Great Fried Empty. That was what they called the desert between Inferno
and the Mexican border, but Tom knew it was a state of mind too. The Great Fried Empty could suck
the brains out of a kid’s skull and replace it with dope smoke, could burn out the ambition and dry up the
hope, and what almost killed Tom was the fact that he’d fought it for eleven years but the Great Fried
Empty had always been winning.

  Jessie kept massaging, but Tom’s muscles had tensed. She knew what must be going through his
mind. It was the same thing that had slowly burned his spirit to a cinder.

   Tom stared at the bars of fire on the wall. “I wish I had three more months. Just three.” He had a
sudden, startling image of the day he and Jessie had graduated together from the University of Texas,
walking out into a flood of sunlight and ready to take on the world. It seemed like a hundred years ago.
He’d been thinking a lot about Roberto Perez lately, could not get the boy’s face out of his mind, and he
knew why. “Roberto Perez,” he said. “Do you remember me talking about him?”

   “I think so.”

   “He was in my senior class six years ago. He lived in Bordertown, and his grades weren’t very high,
but he asked questions. He wanted to know. But he held himself back from doing too well on tests,
because that wouldn’t be cool.” His bitter smile surfaced again. “The day he graduated, Mack Cade was
waiting for him. I saw him get into Cade’s Mercedes. They drove off. Roberto’s brother told me later
that Cade got the boy a job up in Houston. Good money, but it wasn’t exactly clear what the job was.
Then one day Roberto’s brother came to me and said I ought to know: Roberto had been killed in a
Houston motel. Cocaine deal went bad. He got both barrels of a shotgun in his stomach. But the Perez
family didn’t blame Cade. Oh, no. Roberto sent home a lot of money. Cade gave Mr. Perez a new
Buick. Sometimes I drive by the Perez house after school; the Buick’s up on concrete blocks in the front
yard.”

   He stood up abruptly, went to the window, and pulled the blinds aside again. He could feel the heat
out there, gathering power and shimmering off the sand and concrete. “There are two boys in my
last-period class who remind me of Perez. Neither one of them ever made higher than a C-minus on a
test, but I see it in their faces. They listen; something sinks in. But they both do just enough to get by, and
no more. You probably know their names: Lockett and Jurado.” He glanced at her.

   Jessie had heard Tom mention the names before, and she nodded.

   “Neither of them took the college entrance exams,” Tom continued. “Jurado laughed in my face when
I suggested it. Lockett looked at me like I fell out of a dog’s ass. But their last day is tomorrow, and
they’ll graduate a week from Sunday, and that’ll be it. Cade’ll be waiting. I know it.”

   “You’ve done what you could,” Jessie said. “Now it’s up to them.”

   “Right.” He stood for a moment framed in crimson light, as if on the rim of a blast furnace. “This
town,” he said softly. “This damned, godforsaken town. Nothing can grow here. I swear to God, I’m
beginning to believe there’s more use for a vet than there is for a teacher.”
  She tried for a smile, but wasn’t very successful. “You take care of your beasts, I’ll take care of
mine.”

   “Yeah.” He summoned up a wan smile. He walked to the bed, cupped his hand to the back of
Jessie’s head, his fingers disappearing into her dark brown, short-cut hair, and kissed her forehead. “I
love you, doc.” He let his head rest against hers. “Thanks for listening to me.”

   “I love you,” she answered, and put her arms around him. They stayed that way for a minute, until
Jessie said, “Lizard eyeballs?”

   “Yep!” He straightened up. His face was more relaxed now, but his eyes were still troubled and
Jessie knew that, however good a teacher he was, Tom thought of himself as a failure. “I guess they’re
good and cold by now. Come and get ’em!”

   Jessie got out of bed and followed her husband through the short hallway into the kitchen. In this
room also, a ceiling fan was turning, and Tom had pulled up the blinds on the west-facing windows. The
light in that direction was still tinged with violet, but the sky was turning bright blue over Rocking Chair
Ridge. Tom had already fixed all four of the breakfast plates—each with bacon, scrambled eggs (no
lizard eyeballs today), and toast—and they were waiting on the little circular table in the corner. “Let’s
go, sleepyheads!” Tom called toward the kids’ rooms, and Ray answered with an unenthusiastic grunt.

   Jessie went to the refrigerator and liberally doused milk into her muscular coffee while Tom switched
on the radio to catch the six-thirty news from KOAX in Fort Stockton. Stevie bounded into the kitchen.
“It’s horsie day, Mama!” she said. “We get to go see Sweetpea!”

   “We sure do.” It amazed her that anybody could be so full of energy in the morning, even a
six-year-old child. Jessie poured a glass of orange juice for Stevie while the little girl, clad in her
University of Texas nightshirt, climbed into her chair. She sat perched on the edge, swinging her legs and
chewing at a piece of toast. “How’d you sleep?”

   “Good. Can I ride Sweetpea today?”

   “Maybe. We’ll see what Mr. Lucas has to say.” Jessie was scheduled to drive out to the Lucas place,
about six miles west of Inferno, and give their golden palomino Sweetpea a thorough checkup this
morning. Sweetpea was a gentle horse that Tyler Lucas and his wife Bess had raised from a colt, and
Jessie knew how much Stevie looked forward to their trip.

   “Eat your breakfast, cowgirl,” Tom said. “Gotta be strong to stay on a bronco.”

   They heard the television snap on in the front room and the channels being clicked around. Rock
music pounded through the speaker on MTV. In back of the house was a satellite dish that picked up
about three hundred channels, bringing all parts of the world through the air to Inferno. “No TV!” Tom
called, jarred by the noise. “Come on to breakfast!”

   “Just one minute!” Ray pleaded, as he always did. He was a TV addict, particularly drawn to the
scantily clad models in the videos on MTV.

   “Now!”

   The television set was clicked off, and Ray Hammond walked into the kitchen. He was fourteen years
old, beanpole thin and gawky—looks just like me when I was that age, Tom thought—and wore
eyeglasses that slightly magnified his eyes: not much, but enough to earn him the nickname of X Ray from
the kids at school. He yearned for contacts and a build like Arnold Schwarzenegger; the first had been
promised to him when he turned sixteen, and the second was a fever dream that no number of push-ups
could accomplish. His hair was light brown, cropped close except for a few orange-dyed spikes on top
that neither his father nor mother could talk him out of, and he was the proud possessor of a wardrobe of
paisley-patterned shirts and tie-dyed jeans that made Tom and Jessie think the sixties had come back full
vengeful circle. Right now, though, he wore only bright red pajama bottoms, his chest sunken and sallow.

   “‘Morning, alien,” Jessie said.

   “‘Morning, ‘lien,” Stevie parroted.

   “Hi.” Ray plopped down in a chair and yawned hugely. “Juice.” He held out a hand.

   “Please and thank you.” Jessie poured him a glass, gave it to him, and watched as he put it down the
awesome hatch. For a boy who only weighed around a hundred and fifteen pounds in a soaking wet suit,
he could eat and drink faster than a horde of hungry Cowboy linebackers. He began digging into his eggs
and bacon.

   There was purpose in Ray’s all-out attack on his plate. He’d had a dream about Belinda Sonyers, the
blond fox who sat on the next row in his freshman English class, and the details were still percolating. If
he got a hard-on here at the table with his folks, he would be in danger of serious embarrassment; so he
concentrated on the food, which seemed the second-best thing to sex. Not that he knew, of course. The
way his zits were popping up, he could forget about girls for the next thousand years. He stuffed his
mouth full of toast.

   “Where’s the fire?” Tom asked.

   Ray almost gagged, but he got the toast down and attacked the eggs because the gauzy porno dream
was making his pencil twitch again. After a week from tomorrow, though, he could forget about Belinda
Sonyers and all the other foxes who paraded down the halls of Preston High; the school would be shut
down, the doors locked, and the dreams would be just so much red-hot dust. But at least it would be
summer, and that was okay too. Still, with the whole town closing down, summer was going to be about
as much fun as cleaning out the attic.

   Jessie and Tom sat down to breakfast, and Ray got his thoughts under rein again. Stevie, the red
highlights in her auburn hair shining in the sunlight, ate her food knowing that cowgirls did have to be
strong to ride broncos—but Sweetpea was a nice horse, who wouldn’t dream of bucking and throwing
her. Jessie glanced at the clock on the wall—one of those goofy plastic things shaped like a cat’s head,
with eyeballs that ticked back and forth to mark the passing seconds; it was quarter to seven, and she
knew Tyler Lucas was an early riser and would already be waiting for her to show up. Of course she
didn’t expect to find anything wrong with Sweetpea, but the horse was getting on in years and the
Lucases treated it like a household pet.

    After breakfast, as Tom and Ray cleared away the plates, Jessie helped Stevie get dressed in a pair
of jeans and a white cotton shirt with the Jetsons pictured on its front. Then she returned to her own
bedroom and pulled off her nightshirt, exposing the tight, lithe body of a woman who enjoyed working
outdoors; she had a “Texas tan”—arms brown to the shoulders, a deeply bronzed face, and the rest of
her body almost ivory in contrast. She heard the TV click on; Ray was grabbing some more of the tube
before he and his father left for school—but that was all right, because Ray was an avid reader as well
and his brain pulled in information like a sponge. And the way he wore his hair and his taste in clothes
were no causes for alarm, either, he was a good boy, a lot shier than he let on, and he was simply doing
what he could to get along with his peers. She knew about his nickname, and she remembered that it was
sometimes tough to be young.
   The harsh desert sun had added lines to Jessie’s face, but she possessed a strong, natural beauty that
required no aid from jars and tubes. Anyway, she knew, vets weren’t expected to win beauty pageants.
They were expected to be available at all hours and to work damned hard, and Jessie did not disappoint.
Her hands were brown and sturdy, and the things she’d had to grab with them during her thirteen years
as a veterinarian would’ve made most women swoon. Gelding a vicious stallion, delivering a stillborn calf
jammed in a cow’s birth canal, removing a nail from the trachea of a five-hundred-pound prize boar—all
those were operations she’d performed successfully, as well as hundreds of other tasks ranging from
treating a canary’s injured beak to operating on a Doberman’s infected jaw. But she was up to the task;
working with animals was all she’d ever wanted to do, even as a child when she used to bring home
every stray dog and cat off the streets of her neighborhood in Fort Worth. She’d always been a tomboy,
and growing up with three brothers had taught her to roll with the punches—but she gave as good as she
got too, and she could vividly recall knocking her oldest brother’s front tooth out with a football when
she was nine years old. He laughed about it now, whenever they spoke on the phone, and he kidded her
that the ball might’ve sailed to the Gulf if his mouth hadn’t been in the way.

   She walked into the bathroom to sprinkle on some baby powder and brush the taste of coffee and
Blue Nun from her mouth. She quickly ran her hands through her short, dark brown hair. Flecks of gray
were creeping back from the temples. The march of time, she thought. Not as startling as watching your
kids grow up, of course; it seemed like only yesterday that Stevie was a baby and Ray was in third
grade. The years were flying, that was for sure. She went to the closet, pulled out a pair of her well-worn
and comfortable jeans and a red T-shirt, put them on and then a pair of white socks and her sneakers.
She got her sunglasses and a baseball cap, stopped in the kitchen to fill up two canteens because you
never knew what might happen in the desert, and took her veterinary satchel from its place on the upper
shelf of the hall closet. Stevie was hopping around like a jumping bean on a hot griddle, eager to get
going.

   “We’re heading off,” Jessie told Tom. “See you about four.” She leaned over and kissed him, and he
planted a kiss on Stevie’s cheek. “Be careful, cowgirls!” he said. “Take care of your mama.”

   “I will!” Stevie clutched her mother’s hand, and Jessie paused to take a smaller-sized baseball cap off
the hat tree near the front door and put it on Stevie’s head. “See you later, Ray!” she called, and he
answered, “Check six!” from his own room. Check six? she thought as she and Stevie went out into the
already-searing sunlight. Whatever happened to a simple ’Bye, Mom? Nothing made her feel more like a
fossil, at thirty-four, than not understanding her own son’s language.

   They walked along the stone path that led from the house past the small building next door; it was
fashioned of rough white stone, and set out near the street was a little sign that read INFERNO
ANIMAL HOSPITAL and, beneath that, Jessica Hammond, DVM. Parked at the curb, behind Tom’s
white Civic, was her dusty, sea-green Ford pickup truck; in a rack across the rear window, where most
everybody else carried their rifles, was an extendable-wire restraining noose that Jessie had fortunately
only had to use a few times.

   In another moment Jessie was driving west on Celeste Street, and Stevie was tucked behind her seat
belt but hardly able to stand the confinement. She was fragile in appearance, her features as delicate as a
porcelain doll’s, but Jessie knew full well that Stevie had an intense curiosity and wasn’t shy about going
after what she wanted; the child already had an appreciation of animals and enjoyed traveling to the
various farms and ranches with her mother, no matter how bone-jarring the trip. Stevie—Stephanie
Marie, after Tom’s grandmother just as Ray had been named after Jessie’s grandfather—was usually a
quiet child, and seemed to be absorbing the world through her large green eyes, which were just a few
shades lighter than Jessie’s. Jessie had enjoyed having her around and helping at the animal hospital, but
Stevie would start first grade next September—wherever they happened to end up. Because after the
schools in Inferno closed and the exodus continued, the rest of Inferno’s stores and shops would shut
down, and the few remaining spreads would dry up; there would be no work for Jessie, just as there
would be none for Tom, and their only choice would be to pull up roots and hit the road.

    She drove past Preston Park on her left, the Ringwald Drug Store, Quik-Check Grocery, and the Ice
House on her right. She crossed Travis Street, almost crunching one of Mrs. Stellenberg’s big tomcats as
it darted in front of the truck, and followed narrow Circle Back Road as it ran along the foot of Rocking
Chair Ridge and then, true to its name, circled back to connect with Cobre Road. She paused at the
blinking yellow light before she turned west and put the pedal to the metal.

    The desert’s bittersweet tang blew through the open windows in the blessed breeze. Stevie’s hair
danced around her shoulders. Jessie figured this was the coolest it was likely to be all day, and they might
as well enjoy it. Cobre Road took them past the chainlink fence and the iron gates of the Preston Copper
Mine. The gates were padlocked, but the fence was in such bad shape an arthritic old man could’ve
climbed over. Crudely lettered signs said DANGER! NO TRESPASSING! Beyond the gates was the
huge crater where a red mountain rich with copper ore had once cast its shadow. In the last months of
the mine’s existence, the dynamite blasts had gone off like clockwork out here, and Jessie understood
from Sheriff Vance that there were still some charges in the crater that had been unexploded and left
behind, but no one was crazy enough to go down in there and pull them out. Jessie knew that sooner or
later the mine would be exhausted, but nobody had expected the veins of ore to fail with such startling
finality. From the moment the jackhammers and bulldozers had scraped against worthless rock, Inferno
had been doomed.

   With a bump and shudder, the pickup’s tires passed over the railroad tracks that ran north and south
from the mining complex. Stevie leaned toward the window, her back already getting damp. She caught
sight of a group of prairie dogs atop the mound of their nest, standing motionless on their hind legs. A
jackrabbit burst from its cover of cactus and shot across the road, and way up in the sky a vulture was
slowly circling. “How’re you doing?” Jessie asked her.

   “Fine.” Stevie strained against the seat belt, the wind blowing into her face. The sky was as blue as a
Smurf, and it looked like it went on forever—maybe even a hundred miles. Something struck her that
she’d been meaning to ask: “How come Daddy’s so sad?”

    Of course Stevie had felt it, Jessie thought. There was no way for her not to. “He’s not sad, exactly.
It’s because of school closing. You remember, we talked about that?”

   “Yes. But it closes every year.”

   “Well, it’s not going to open up again. Because of that, more people are going to move away.”

   “Like Jenny did?”

   “Right.” Jenny Galvin was a little girl who’d lived a few houses up the street from them, and she and
her parents had moved just after Christmas. “Mr. Bonner’s going to close the Quik-Check store in
August. By that time, I expect most everybody’ll be gone.”

   “Oh.” Stevie mulled that over for a moment. The Quik-Check store was where everybody bought
food. “And we’ll be gone too,” she said finally.

   “Yes. Us too.”

  Then that meant Mr. and Mrs. Lucas would be leaving, Stevie realized. And Sweetpea: what would
happen to Sweetpea? Would they just set him free to run wild, or would they pack him up in a horse
box, or would they get on him and ride away? That was a puzzle worth thinking about, but she’d seen the
end of something and it gave her a sad feeling down near her heart—the same kind of feeling that she
figured her daddy must know.

   The land was cut by gullies and covered with wild thatches of sagebrush and towers of stovepipe
cactus. A blacktopped highway left Cobre Road about two miles past the copper mine and shot
northwestward under a white granite arch with PRESTON embedded in tarnished copper letters. Jessie
looked to her right, could see the big hacienda way up at the blacktop’s end, shimmering in the rising
heatwaves as they sped past. Good luck to you too, Jessie thought, envisioning the woman who was
probably sleeping in that house on cool silk sheets. The sheets and the house might be all Celeste Preston
had left, and those wouldn’t last very much longer, either.

   They went on, following the road that carved across the desert. Stevie stared out the window, her
face composed and thoughtful under the cap’s brim. Jessie shifted in her seat to get her T-shirt unstuck.
The turnoff to the Lucas place was about a half mile ahead.

   Stevie heard a high humming noise and thought a mosquito was at her ear. She flipped her hand
against her ear, but the humming remained and it was getting louder and higher. In another few seconds it
had turned painful, like the jabbing of a needle in both ears. “Mama?” she said, wincing. “My ears hurt!”

  A sharp, prickling pain had hit Jessie’s eardrums as well. Not only that: the fillings in her back teeth
were aching. She opened her mouth, working her lower jaw. “Ow!” she heard Stevie say. “What is it,
Mama?”

   “I don’t know, hon—” Suddenly the truck’s engine died. Just died, without a stutter or gasp. They
were coasting, and Jessie gave it more gas but she’d filled the truck up yesterday and the fuel tank
couldn’t be empty. Her eardrums were really hurting now—pulsing to a high, painful tone like a far-off,
distant wail. Stevie pressed her hands to her ears, and bright tears had come to her eyes. “What is it,
Mama?” she asked again, panic quavering in her voice. “What is it?”

   Jessie shook her head. The noise was getting louder. She turned the ignition key and pumped the
accelerator; still the engine wouldn’t fire. She heard the crackle of static electricity in her hair, and she
caught sight of her wristwatch: the digital display had gone mad, the hours flickering past at runaway
speed. This’ll be some story to tell Tom, she thought as she flinched in a cocoon of ear-piercing noise,
and she reached out to grasp Stevie’s hand.

   The child’s head jerked to the right; her eyes widened, and she screamed, “Mama!”

   She’d seen what was coming, and now Jessie did too. She slammed on the brake, her hands fighting
the wheel.

   What looked like a flaming locomotive was hurtling through the air, burning parts flying off behind it
and spinning away. It passed over Cobre Road, about fifty feet over the desert and maybe forty yards in
front of Jessie’s truck; she could make out a cylindrical form, glowing red-hot and surrounded by flames,
and as the truck went off the road the object passed with a shriek that deafened Jessie and prevented her
from hearing her own scream. She saw the rear of the object explode in yellow and violet flames, flinging
pieces off in all directions; something came at the truck in a blur, and there was a wham! of metal being
struck and the pickup shuddered right down to its frame.

    A front tire blew. The truck kept going over rocks and through stands of cactus before Jessie got it
stopped, her palms sweat-slick on the wheel. The ringing in her ears still kept her from hearing, but she
saw Stevie’s frantic, tear-streaked face and she said, as calmly as she could, “Hush, now. It’s over. It’s
all over. Hush, now.”
   Steam was shooting from around the truck’s crumpled hood. Jessie looked to her left, saw the flaming
object pass over a low ridge and disappear from sight. My God! she thought, stunned. What was it?

   In the next instant there was a roaring that penetrated even through Jessie’s aural murk. The pickup’s
cab filled with whirling dust. Jessie grasped Stevie’s hand, and the little girl’s fingers clamped shut.

    There was dust in Jessie’s mouth and in her eyes, and her cap had blown out the window. When she
got her vision cleared again, she saw three gray-green helicopters, flying in a tight V formation about
thirty or forty feet above the desert, following the flaming object toward the southwest. They too went
over the ridge and out of sight. Up in the blue, the contrails of several jets also tracked to the southwest.

   The dust settled. Jessie began to get her hearing back; Stevie was sobbing, holding on to her mother’s
hand for dear life. “It’s over,” Jessie said, and heard her own raspy voice. “All over.” She felt like crying
herself, but mothers didn’t do such things. The engine ticked like a rusty heart, and Jessie found herself
staring at a geyser of steam that rose from a small round hole right in the center of the pickup’s hood.



                                                  3
                                           Queen of Inferno


“Christ’s drawers, what a racket!” the white-haired woman wearing a pink silk sleep mask cried out,
sitting up in her canopied bed. The entire house seemed to be vibrating with noise, and she angrily pulled
the mask off to reveal eyes the color of arctic ice. “Tania! Miguel!” she shouted in a voice made husky by
too many unfiltered cigarettes. “Get in here!” She reached for the bell cord beside her bed and started
yanking it. Down in the depths of the Preston mansion, the bell clamored for the servants’ attention.

   But the horrendous, roaring noise was gone now; it had only lasted a few seconds, but long enough to
shock her awake. She threw the covers back, got out of bed, and strode to the balcony doors like a
tornado on legs. When she flung them open, the heat almost sucked the breath right out of her lungs. She
went out, squinting toward Cobre Road with one hand warding off the glare. She was fifty-three years
old, but even without glasses her vision was sharp enough to see what had passed dangerously near the
house: three helicopters, racing away toward the southwest and raising a storm of dust beneath them.
They vanished behind that dust after a few more seconds, and Celeste Preston was so mad she could’ve
spat nails.

   Stout, moon-faced Tania came to the balcony doors. She was braced for the onslaught. “Sí, Señora
Preston?”

   “Where were you? I thought we were bein’ bombed! What the hell’s goin’ on?”

   “I don’t know, señora. I think—”

   “Oh, just get me a drink!” she snapped. “My nerves are shot!”

   Tania retreated into the house for her mistress’s first drink of the day. Celeste stood on the high
balcony, its floor a mosaic of red Mexican clay tiles, and grasped the ornate wrought-iron railing. From
this vantage point she could see the estate’s stables, the corral, and the riding track—useless, of course,
since all the horses had been auctioned off. The blacktopped driveway circled a large bed of what had
once been peonies and daisies, now burned brown since the sprinkler system was inoperative. Her
lemon-yellow gown was sticking to her back; the sweat and heat rekindled her fury. She returned to the
cooler temperature of the bedroom, picked up the pink telephone, and punched the numbers with a
manicured fingernail.

   “Sheriff’s office,” a drawling voice answered. A boy’s voice. “Deputy Chaffin speak—”

   “Put Vance on the phone,” she interrupted.

   “Uh… Sheriff Vance is on patrol right now. Is this—”

   “Celeste Preston. I want to know who’s flyin’ helicopters over my property at”—her eye located the
clock on the white bedstand—“at seven-twelve in the mornin’! The bastards almost took my roof off!”

   “Helicopters?”

   “Clean the wax out of your ear, boy! You heard me! Three helicopters! If they’d been any closer,
they could’ve folded my damn sheets! What’s goin’ on?”

  “Uh… I don’t know, Mrs. Preston.” The deputy’s voice sounded more alert now, and Celeste
imagined him sitting at attention behind his desk. “I can get Sheriff Vance over the radio for you, if you
want.”

   “I want. Tell him to get out here pronto.” She hung up before he could reply. Tania had come in and
offered the woman a Bloody Mary on one of the last sterling silver trays. Celeste took it, stirred up the
hot peppers with a celery stick, and took most of it down in a couple of swallows. Tania had added
more Tabasco than usual today, but Celeste didn’t wince. “Who do I have to jaw with today?” She ran
the glass’s frosty rim over her high, lined forehead.

   “No one. Your schedule’s clear.”

   “Thank God and jingle my spurs! Bunch of damned bloodsuckers gonna let me rest a spell, huh?”

   “You have appointments with Mr. Weitz and Mr. O’Connor on Monday morning,” Tania reminded
her.

   “That’s Monday. I might be dead by then.” She finished off her drink and plunked the glass back on
the silver tray. The thought of returning to bed entered her mind, but she was too keyed up now. The last
six months had been one legal headache after another, not to mention the damage done to her soul.
Sometimes she felt like God’s punching bag, and she knew she’d done a lot of down-and-dirty things in
her life, but she was paying for her sins in spades.

   “Is there anything else?” Tania asked, her dark eyes steady and impassive.

   “No, that’s it.” But Celeste changed her mind before Tania could reach the massive, polished
redwood door. “Wait a minute. Hold on.”

   “Yes, señora?”

   “I didn’t mean to jump down your throat awhile ago. It’s just… you know, times bein’ what they
are.”

   “I understand, señora.”

   “Good. Listen, anytime you and Miguel want to unlock the bar for yourselves, might as well go
ahead.” She shrugged. “Ain’t no sense lettin’ the liquor go to waste.”
   “I’ll remember that, Mrs. Preston.”

   Celeste knew she wouldn’t. Neither Tania nor her husband drank, and anyway somebody had to stay
clearheaded around here, if just to keep the human vultures away. Her flinty gaze locked with Tania’s.
“You know, in thirty-four years you’ve always called me either ‘Mrs. Preston’ or ‘señora.’ Haven’t you
once wanted to call me ‘Celeste’?”

   Tania hesitated. Shook her head. “Not once, señora.”

   Celeste laughed; it was the hearty laughter of a woman who was no stranger to the hard life, who
once had been proud of the rodeo dirt under her fingernails and knew that winning and losing were two
sides of the same coin. “You’re a card, Tania! I know you’ve never liked me worth a buzzard’s fart, but
you’re all right.” Her smile faded. “I appreciate your stayin’ on these last few months. You didn’t have
to.”

   “Mr. Preston was always very kind to us. We wanted to repay the debt.”

   “You have.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “But tell me one thing, and tell me true: would the first Mrs.
Preston have handled this shit mess any better?”

   The other woman’s expression was flat and without emotion. “No,” she said finally. “The first Mrs.
Preston was a beautiful, gracious woman—but she didn’t have your courage.”

   Celeste grunted. “Yeah, and she wasn’t crazy, either. That’s why she hightailed it out of this hellhole
forty years ago!”

   Tania abruptly veered back to familiar ground: “Will there be anything else, señora?”

   “Nope. But I’m expectin’ the sheriff pretty soon, so listen up.”

    Her back straight and stiff, Tania left the bedroom. Her footsteps clicked away on the oak floor in
the long corridor outside.

   Celeste listened, realizing how empty a house without furniture sounded. There were a few pieces left,
of course, like the bed and her dressing table and the dining-room table downstairs, but not much. She
walked across the room, took a thin black cheroot from a silver filigreed case. The French crystal lighter
had already gone to the auction house, so Celeste lit her cigar with a pack of matches that advertised the
Bob Wire Club on Highway 67. Then she went out again to the balcony, where she exhaled the pungent
smoke and lifted her face toward the brutal sun.

   Going to be another god-awful hot one, she thought. But she’d lived through worse. And would
again. All this tangled-up mess with the lawyers, the state of Texas, and the Internal Revenue Service was
going to pass like a cloud in a high wind, and then she’d get on with her life.

    “My life,” she said, and the lines around her mouth etched deep. She’d come a long way from a
bayside shack in Galveston, she mused. Now she was standing on the balcony of a thirty-six-room
Spanish-style hacienda on a hundred acres of land—even if the house was without furniture and the land
was rocky desert. In the garage was a canary-yellow Cadillac, the last of the six cars. On the mansion’s
walls were empty spaces where Miro, Rockwell, and Dali paintings used to hang; those were among the
first to be auctioned, along with the French antique furniture and Wint’s collection of almost a thousand
stuffed rattlesnakes.

  Her bank account was frozen tighter than an Eskimo’s balls, but a regiment of Dallas lawyers was
working on the problem and she knew that any day now she’d get a call from that office with the seven
names; they’d say, “Mrs. Preston? Good news, hon! We’ve tracked down the missing funds, and the
IRS has agreed to take their back taxes in monthly payments. You’re out of the woods! Yes, ma’am, old
Wint took care of you after all!”

   Old Wint, Celeste knew, had been slicker than owl shit. He’d danced around government safety
regulations and tax codes, corporate laws and bank presidents like a Texas whirlwind, and the stroke
that had kicked him out of this world on the second day of December, at the age of eighty-seven, had left
her to pay the band.

   She looked east, toward Inferno and the mine. Over sixty years ago, Winter Thedford Preston had
come south from Odessa with a mule called Inferno, searching for gold in the scrub lands. The gold had
eluded him, but he’d found a crimson mountain that the Mexicali Indians had told him was made of
sacred, healing dust. Wint had a knack for metallurgy—though his formal education had ended at the
seventh grade—and his nose had not picked up the scent of sacred dust but of rich copper ore. Wint had
started his mining company with a single clapboard shack, fifty or so Mexicans and Indians, a couple of
trucks, and a whole lot of shovels. The first day of digging had turned up a dozen skeletons, and it was
then that Wint realized the Mexicalis had been burying their dead in the mountain for over a hundred
years.

   And then one day a Mexican with a pickax had uncovered a sparkling vein of high-grade ore a
hundred feet wide. That was the first of many. The new Texas companies that were stringing telephone
wires, electric lines, and water pipes across the state came knocking at Wint’s door. And just beyond the
mountain of ore a few tents sprang up, then clapboard and adobe houses, followed by stone structures,
churches, and schools. Dirt roads were covered with gravel, then pavement. Celeste recalled that Wint
had told her he’d looked over his shoulder one day and seen a town where there used to be
tumbleweeds. The townspeople, most of them mine workers, had elected him mayor, and under the
influence of tequila Wint had christened the town Inferno and vowed to build a statue of his faithful old
mule at its center.

   But, though there’d been plenty of fits and starts, Inferno had never grown much beyond a one-mule
town. It was too hot and dusty, too far from the big cities, and when the water pipeline ruptured, people
got thirsty in a mighty big hurry. The copper mine had remained the only real industry. But folks kept
coming in, the Ice House plugged into the pipeline and froze water into blocks, the church bells rang on
Sunday mornings, the shopkeepers made money, the telephone company strung lines and trained
operators, the high school lettered the football and basketball teams, and a concrete bridge replaced the
shaky wooden one that spanned the Snake River. The first nails were driven into the boards of
Bordertown. Walt Travis was elected sheriff, and in his third month was shot dead on the street that was
thereafter named for him. The next man stuck with the job until he was beaten within a finger of St.
Peter’s handshake and woke up on a northbound train. Gradually, year after year, Inferno sank its roots.
But just as gradually, the Preston Copper Mining Company was chewing away the red mountain where
the dead Indians of a hundred years slept.

  Celeste Street used to be called Pearl Street, after Wint’s first wife. Between wives, it was known as
Nameless Street. Such was the power of Wint Preston’s influence.

   She took one last pull on the cheroot, crushed it out on the railing, and flicked it into space. “We had
some high old times, didn’t we?” she said softly. But they’d fought like cats and dogs too, ever since
Celeste had met him when she was singing with a cowboy band at a little dive in Galveston. Celeste
hadn’t minded; she had a holler like a cement mixer and could cuss Satan into church. The truth was that
she’d fallen in love with Wint over the years, in spite of his womanizing and drinking and gambling. In
spite of the fact that he kept her in the dark about his business affairs for more than thirty years. And
when the machines had begun scraping bottom less than three years ago and frantic dynamiting
uncovered no new veins, Wint Preston had seen his dream dying. What Celeste realized now was that
Wint had gone nutty; he’d started pulling money out of his accounts, selling his stocks and bonds and
gathering cash in a maniacal frenzy. But what he’d done with almost eight million dollars remained a
mystery. Maybe he’d opened up new accounts under false names; maybe he’d put all that cash into tin
boxes and buried them in the desert. In any case, the money of a lifetime was gone, and when the IRS
had swooped down demanding a huge chunk of back taxes and penalties, there was nothing to pay with.

    The lawyers had the mess now. Celeste knew full well that she was simply a caretaker, en route back
to the dives of Galveston.

   She saw the sheriff’s blue-and-gray patrol car turning off Cobre Road and coming slowly along the
blacktop. She gripped the railing with both hands and waited, a tough one-hundred-and-ten-pound figure
backed by a hollow three-thousand-ton house. She stood without moving as the car made the
driveway’s circle and stopped.

  The car’s door opened, and a man who more than doubled her weight got out in sweat-saving slow
motion. The back of his pale blue shirt was drenched, as was the sweatband of his beige cowboy hat.
His belly flopped over his jeans, and he wore a gunbelt and lizard-skin boots.

   “You took your damned time, didn’t you?” Celeste called sharply. “If the house had been on fire, I’d
be standin’ in ashes right now!”

    Sheriff Ed Vance stopped, looked up, and found her on the balcony. He was wearing sunglasses with
mirrored lenses, just like his favorite bad-ass in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Last night’s dinner of
enchiladas and refried beans gurgled in his bulging belly. He showed his teeth in a tight grin. “If the house
had been on fire,” he said, his drawl as sugary as hot molasses, “I hope you would’ve had the good
sense to call the fire department, Miz Preston.” She said nothing, just stared holes through him. “Deputy
Chaffin gave me a call,” he continued. “Said you was gettin’ buzzed by helicopters.” He made a big show
of inspecting the cloudless sky. “Nary a one around here.”

  “There were three. They flew over my property, and I’ve never heard such a noise in all my life. I
want to know where they came from and what’s goin’ on.”

   He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Don’t seem like much is goin’ on anywhere, if you ask me. Seems
like a pretty peaceful day.” His grin widened; now it was more of a grimace. “Up till now, that is.”

   “They went that way.” Celeste pointed toward the southwest.

   “Well, maybe if I hurry I can head ’em off at the pass. Just what is it you expect me to do, Miz
Preston?”

   “I expect you to earn your pay, Sheriff Vance!” she replied coldly. “That means bein’ on top of what
goes on around here! I’m tellin’ you that three helicopters almost knocked me out of my bed, and I want
to know who they belonged to! Does that spell it out any clearer for you?”

   “A mite.” The grimace remained locked on his square, heavily jowled face. “’Course, they’re
probably in Mexico by now.”

   “I don’t care if they’re in Timbuktu! Those damned things could’ve crashed into my house!” Vance’s
obstinacy and slowness infuriated her; if it had been her decision, Vance would never have been
reelected sheriff, but he’d ingratiated himself to Wint over the years and had easily beaten the Hispanic
candidate. She saw clear through him, though, and knew that Mack Cade pulled his strings; and, like it or
not, she realized Mack Cade was now Inferno’s ruling power.

   “Better calm down. Take a nerve pill. That’s what my ex-wife used to do when—”

   “She saw you?” Celeste interrupted.

   He laughed, hollowly and without mirth. “No call to get nasty, Miz Preston. Don’t suit a lady like
you.” Showed your true stripe, didn’t you, bitch? he thought. “So what is it you’re sayin’?” he prodded.
“You want to file a disturbin’ the peace charge against some unknown persons in three helicopters, point
of origin unknown and destination unknown?”

   “That’s right. Is it too much of a job for you?”

   Vance grunted. He couldn’t wait for the woman to be tossed out on her ass; then he was going to
start digging up those cashboxes old Wint must’ve hidden. “I think I can handle it.”

   “I hope you can. That’s what you’re paid for.”

   Lady, he thought, it sure ain’t you who writes my ticket! “Miz Preston,” he said quietly, as if speaking
to a retarded child, “you’d best get on inside now, out of this hot sun. You don’t want your brain gettin’
baked. Wouldn’t want you to have a stroke now, would we?” He gave her his best, most innocent smile.

   “Just do it!” she snapped, and then she turned away from the railing and stalked back into the house.

   “Yes, ma’am!” Vance gave a mock salute and got behind the wheel again, his wet shirt immediately
leeching to the seat. He started the engine and drove away from the hacienda, back to Cobre Road. The
knuckles of his large, hairy hands were white on the steering wheel. He turned left, toward Inferno, and
as he picked up speed he shouted out the open window, “I ain’t your goddamned monkey!”



                                                  4
                                              The Visitor


“I guess this means we walk,” Jessie had said while Celeste Preston was waiting on her balcony for
Sheriff Vance. Her nerves had calmed down somewhat, and Stevie was no longer crying, but Jessie had
gotten the truck’s hood opened and seen at once that a flat tire was the least of their problems.

   The engine had been pierced by the same object that had put a hole in the hood; metal had been
flayed open like a flower, and whatever had passed through had driven itself right into the depths of the
engine block. There was no sign of what it had been, but there was a smell of scorched iron and charred
rubber and the engine was hissing steam from its wound. The truck would do no more traveling for quite
some time—possibly the thing was ready for Cade’s junkyard. “Damn!” Jessie said, staring at the engine,
and instantly regretted it because Stevie would remember the word and spring it on her when she least
expected it.

  Stevie was looking at the direction the fiery thing and the helicopters had disappeared in, her face
covered with dust except for the drying tracks of tears. “What was it, Mama?” she asked, her green eyes
wide and watchful.

   “I don’t know. Something big, for sure.” Like a tractor-trailer truck flying through the air and on fire,
Jessie thought. Damnedest thing she’d ever seen in her life. It might’ve been an airplane about to crash,
but it hadn’t had any wings. Maybe a meteor, but it had looked metallic. Whatever it had been, the
helicopters had been chasing it down like hounds after a fox.

   “There’s part of it,” Stevie said, and pointed.

   Jessie looked. On the ground about forty feet away, in the midst of chopped-down cactus, was a
piece of something sticking up from the sand. Jessie walked toward it, with Stevie right behind. The
fragment was the size of a manhole cover, a strange hue of dark, wet-looking blue green. Its edges were
smoking, and Jessie felt the heat coming off it before she got within fifteen feet. In the air there was a
sweet odor that reminded her of the smell of burning plastic, but the stuff had a metallic sheen. Just to the
right was another chunk of the material, this one shaped like a tube, and more smaller pieces lay nearby,
smoke rising from all of them. She said, “Stay here” to Stevie and approached the first fragment a little
closer, but its heat was intense and she had to stop again. Its surface was covered with small markings
arrayed in a circular pattern, a series of Japanese-like symbols and short wavy lines.

   “It’s hot,” Stevie said, standing right beside her mother.

   So much for obedience, Jessie thought, but this was not the time for discipline. She took her child’s
hand. Whatever had passed this way and thrown pieces off in its passage was unlike anything Jessie had
ever seen before, and she could still feel the static electricity that had crackled through her hair. She
glanced at her wristwatch: the digits had all returned to zeros, flashing erratically. In the blue sky, the jet
contrails all aimed toward the southwest. The sun was beginning to beat down on her unprotected skull,
and she searched for her cap. It was a red speck about seventy yards on the other side of Cobre Road,
blown there by the helicopters’ rotors. Too far to walk when they should be going in the opposite
direction, toward the Lucas place. They had their canteens, thank God, and at least the sun was still low.
There was no need to stand around gawking; they had to get moving.

   “Let’s go,” Jessie said. Stevie resisted her for just a couple of seconds, still looking at the
manhole-sized piece of whatever it was, and then allowed herself to be tugged along. Jessie went back to
the truck to get her satchel, which contained her wallet and driver’s license as well as a few veterinary
instruments. Stevie stood gazing up at the contrails. “The planes sure are high,” she said, more to herself
than to her mother. “I’ll bet they’re a hundred miles—”

   She heard something that stopped her voice.

   Music, she thought. But not music. Now it was gone. She listened carefully, heard only the noise of
steam from the broken engine.

   Then there it was again, and Stevie thought she knew what the sound was but she couldn’t exactly
remember. Music, but not music. Not like the kind Ray listened to.

   Gone again.

   Now slowly, softly returning.

   “We’ve got a ways to go,” Jessie told her. The child nodded absently. “You ready?”

    Stevie knew what it was: it hit her quick and clear. On the front porch of the Galvin house, before
Jenny had moved away, hung a pretty thing that sounded like a lot of little bells ringing when the wind
stirred it. Wind chimes, she remembered Jenny’s mother saying when Stevie had asked what it was.
That was the music she was hearing, but no wind was blowing and there weren’t any wind chimes
around, anyway.
   “Stevie?” Jessie asked. The little girl was just staring at nothing. “What is it?”

   “Can you hear that, Mama?”

   “Hear what?” Nothing but the damned engine spouting.

   “That,” Stevie insisted. The sound was fading in and out again, but it seemed to be coming from a
certain direction. “Hear it?”

   “No,” Jessie’s voice was careful. Did she hit her head? Jessie wondered. Oh Lord, if she’s got a
concussion…!

  Stevie took a few steps toward the blue-green smoking thing out in the cactus. The wind-chimes noise
immediately weakened to a whisper. Not that way, she thought, and stopped.

   “Stevie? You okay, honey?”

   “Yes ma’am.” She looked around, walked in another direction. Still the sound was very faint. Not
that way, either.

   Jessie was getting spooked. “It’s too hot to play games. We’ve got to go. Come on, now.”

   Stevie walked toward her mother. Stopped abruptly. Took another step, then two more.

   Jessie approached her, took off the child’s cap, and ran her fingers through the hair. There was no
knot, no sign of a bruise on the forehead either. Stevie’s eyes were a little shiny and her cheeks were
flushed, but Jessie figured that was just from the heat and excitement. She hoped. There was no sign of
injury that she could see. Stevie was staring past her. “What is it?” Jessie asked. “What do you hear?”

   “The music,” she explained patiently. She had figured out where it was coming from, though she knew
also that such a thing couldn’t be. “It’s singing,” she said, as the clear strong notes swept over her again.
She pointed. “From there.”

  Jessie saw where she was pointing to. The pickup truck. Its torn-up engine, the hood still raised. She
guessed the noise of steam and bubbling fluids from gashed cables might be construed as a weird kind of
music, yes, but…

   “It’s singing,” Stevie repeated.

   Jessie knelt down, checking her daughter’s eyes. They were not bloodshot, the pupils looked to be
fine. Checked her pulse. A little fast, but otherwise okay. “Do you feel all right?”

   That was her mama’s doctor voice, Stevie thought. She nodded. The wind-chimes sound was coming
from the truck; she was certain of it. But why couldn’t her mother hear? The fragile music pulled at her,
and she wanted to walk the rest of the way to the truck and keep searching until she found where the
wind chimes were hidden, but her mother had hold of her hand and was pulling her away. With each
step, the music faded just a little more.

   “No! I want to stay!” Stevie protested.

    “Stop this foolishness, now. We’ve got to get to the Lucas place before it gets really hot out here.
Stop dragging your feet!” Jessie was trembling. The events of the past few minutes were catching up to
her. Whatever that thing had been, it could’ve easily smashed them to atoms. Stevie’d had flights of
fantasy before, but this was certainly neither the time nor the place. “Stop dragging!” she ordered, and
finally the little girl was walking under her own power.

  Ten more steps, and the wind-chimes music was a whisper. Five more, a sigh. Another five, a
memory.

   But it had penetrated deep in Stevie’s mind, and she could not let it go.

   They walked away, following the dirt road to the Lucas place. Stevie kept looking back at the pickup
truck until it was a dusty dot, and only when it was out of sight did she remember that they were on their
way to see Sweetpea.



                                                  5
                                              Bordertown


“Day of reckonin’!” Vance said as the patrol car sped east on Cobre Road. A belch rose from his gut
like thunder. “Yes sir, day of reckonin’s comin’ right soon!” Celeste Preston was going to be out on her
rear end before long. Miss High-and-Mighty was going to wish she could get a job swabbing spittoons at
the Bob Wire Club, if he had anything to say about it.

   The car was moving past the remnants of the mine. Back in March, a couple of kids had climbed over
the fence, gone down into the crater, and gotten themselves blown to flyspecks when they found some
undetonated dynamite left in drill holes in the rock. In the mine’s final weeks, the blasting had been as
constant as doom’s clockwork, and Vance figured more live sticks were probably down there, but
nobody was dumb enough to go dig them out. What was the use, anyway?

  He reached to the dash and lifted the radio’s microphone. “Hey there, Danny boy! Come on back to
me, hear?”

   The speaker crackled as Danny Chaffin responded. “Yes, sir?”

   “Get on the horn and call around to… uh, let’s see here a minute.” Vance flipped down the visor,
took the county map that was clipped to it, and unfolded it on the seat beside him. He let the car have its
own mind for a few seconds and it weaved toward the right shoulder, scaring the sense out of an
armadillo. “Call around to Rimrock and Presidio airstrips. Ask ’em if they’re flyin’ any choppers this
mornin’. Prissy Preston’s in an uproar ’cause her hair got mussed.”

   “Ten-four.”

   “Hold on,” Vance added. “Might as well go out of the county too. Call up to Midland and Big Spring
airports. Hell, call Webb Air Force Base too. That oughta do it.”

   “Yes sir.”

   “I’m gonna take a swing through Bordertown and then I’ll be on in. Any more calls?”

   “No sir. Quiet as a whore in church.”

   “You got Whale Tail on your mind there, boy? Better quit drillin’ that thang ’fore you fall in!” Vance
laughed. The idea of Danny getting it on with Sue “Whale Tail” Mullinax tickled him giddy. Whale Tail
was about twice the kid’s size; she was a waitress at the Brandin’ Iron Cafe on Celeste Street, and he
knew about ten guys who’d dipped their wicks into her flame. So why not the boy too?

   Danny didn’t answer. Vance knew talking about Whale Tail like that got his goat, because Danny
Chaffin was a moon-eyed kid, wet as oceans behind the ears, and didn’t realize Whale Tail was stringing
him along. He’d learn. “Check ya later, Danny boy,” Vance said, and returned the mike to its cradle.
Rocking Chair Ridge was coming up on the left, and along Cobre Road the houses and buildings of
Inferno shimmered in the harsh light.

   It was too early for trouble in Bordertown, Vance knew. But then again, you never could tell what
might set off those Mexicans. “Hispanics,” Vance muttered, and shook his head. They had brown skin,
black eyes and hair, they lived on tortillas and enchiladas, and they jabbered south-of-the-border lingo;
to Vance, that made them Mexicans, no matter where they’d been born or what fancy name you called
them. Mexicans, pure and simple.

   Nestled in its slot underneath the dashboard was a Remington pump shotgun, and beneath the
passenger seat was a Louisville Slugger. That ole baseball bat was just made to bash wetback skulls,
Vance mused. Especially the skull of one smart-ass punk who thought he called the shots over there.
Sooner or later, he knew, Mr. Louisville was going to meet Rick Jurado, and then—boom!—Jurado was
going to be the first wetback in outer space.

  He drove past Preston Park to Republica Road, turned right at Xavier Mendoza’s Texaco station,
and headed across the Snake River bridge onto the dusty streets of Bordertown. He decided to drive
over to the Jurado house, on Second Street, maybe sit in front and see if anything needed correcting.

   Because after all, Vance told himself, correcting was the sheriff’s job. By this time next year he’d no
longer be a sheriff, so he might as well do as much correcting as he could. He winced at the thought of
Celeste Preston ordering him around like a shoeshine boy, and he put his foot down on the accelerator.

   He stopped the car in front of a brown clapboard house on Second Street. Parked at the curb was
the boy’s banged-up black ’78 Camaro, and along the street were other junkers that even Mack Cade
wouldn’t take. Laundry drooped on backyard lines and chickens pecked around some of the grassless
yards. The land and houses belonged to a citizens’ committee of Mexican-Americans, and the nominal
rent went back into the town’s fund, but Vance was the law here as well as across the bridge. The
houses, most of which dated from the early fifties, were clapboard and stucco structures that all looked
to be in need of painting or repair, but the Bordertown fund couldn’t keep up with the work. It was a
shantytown, the narrow streets sifted with yellow dust and the hulks of old cars, washing machines and
other junk standing around like the perpetual monuments of poverty. The majority of Bordertown’s
thousand or so inhabitants had labored at the copper mine, and when that shut down the skilled ones had
gone elsewhere. The others held on desperately to what little they had.

   Two weeks ago, a couple of empty houses at the end of Third Street had caught fire, but the Inferno
Volunteer Fire Department had kept the blaze from spreading. Scraps of gasoline-soaked rags had been
found in the ashes. Just last weekend, Vance had broken up a fight between a dozen Renegades and
Rattlesnakes in Preston Park. Things were heating up again, the same as last summer, but this time Vance
meant to bottle up the trouble before any citizens of Inferno got hurt.

   He watched a red bantam rooster strutting across the street in front of his car. He hit the horn, and the
rooster jumped up in the air and lost three feathers. “Little bastard!” Vance said, reaching into his breast
pocket for his pack of Luckies.

   But before he got a cigarette out, he caught a movement from the corner of his eye. He looked to his
right, at the Jurado house, and he saw the boy standing in the doorway.
   They stared at each other. Time ticked past. Then Vance’s hand moved as if it had a wit of its own,
and he pressed the horn again. The wail echoed along Second Street, stirring up the neighborhood dogs
to a frenzy of barks and wails.

   The boy didn’t move. He was wearing black jeans and a blue-striped short-sleeved shirt, and he was
holding the screen door open with one arm. The other hung at his side, the fist clenched.

   Vance hit the horn once more, let it moan for about six long seconds. Now the dogs were really
raising hell. A man peered from a doorway three houses up. Two children emerged onto the porch of
another house and stood watching until a woman urged them back inside. As the noise died away, Vance
heard the sound of shouted, Spanish cursing—all that lingo sounded like cursing to him—from a house
across the street. And then the boy let the screen door shut as he came down the sagging porch steps to
the curb. Come on, li’l rooster! Vance thought. Come on, just start some trouble!

   The boy stopped right in front of the patrol car.

   He stood about five-nine, his brown arms muscular, his jet-black hair combed back from his
forehead. Against the dark bronze of his face his eyes were ebony—except they were the eyes of an old
man who has seen too much, not the eyes of an eighteen-year-old. They held a cold rage—like that of a
wild animal catching a hunter’s scent. Around both wrists he wore black leather bracelets studded with
small squares of metal; his belt was also made of studded leather. He stared through the windshield at
Sheriff Vance, and neither of them moved.

   Finally, the boy walked slowly around the car and stood several feet from Vance’s open window.
“You got a problem, man?” he asked, his voice a mixture of Mexico’s stately cadence and west Texas’s
earthy snarl.

   “I’m on patrol,” Vance answered.

   “You patrollin’ in front of my house? On my street?”

  Smiling thinly, Vance took off his sunglasses. His eyes were deep-set, light brown, and seemed too
small for his face. “I wanted to drive over and see you, Ricky. Wanted to say good mornin’.”

   “Buenos días. Anythin’ else? I’m gettin’ ready for school.”

   Vance nodded. “Graduatin’ senior, huh? Prob’ly got your future all lined up, right?”

   “I’ll make out okay.”

   “I’ll bet you will. Prob’ly wind up sellin’ drugs on the street, is more like it. Good thing you’re a real
tough hombre, Ricky. You might even learn to enjoy prison life.”

   “If I get there first,” Rick said, “I’ll make sure the fags know you’re on your way.”

   Vance’s smile fractured. “What’s that supposed to mean, smart-ass?”

   The boy shrugged, looking along Second Street at nothing in particular. “You’re gonna take a fall,
man. Sooner or later, the state cops are gonna latch Cade, and you’ll be next. ’Cept you’ll be the one
holdin’ his shitbag, and he’ll be long gone ’cross the border.” He stared at Vance. “Cade doesn’t need a
number two. Aren’t you smart enough to figure that out yet?”

   Vance sat very still. His heart was beating hard, and rough memories were being stirred at the back of
his brain. He couldn’t stomach Rick Jurado—not only because Jurado was the leader of the
Rattlesnakes, but on a deeper, more instinctive level. When Vance was a kid living in El Paso with his
mother, he’d had to walk home from grammar school across a dusty hellhole called Cortez Park. His
mother worked at a laundry in the afternoons, and their house was only four blocks from school, but for
him it was a nerve-twisting journey across a brutal no-man’s-land. The Mexican kids hung out in Cortez
Park, and there was a big eighth-grader named Luis who had the same black, fathomless eyes as Rick
Jurado. Eddie Vance had been fat and slow, and the Mexican kids could run like panthers; the awful day
came when they’d surrounded him, chattering and hollering, and when he’d started crying that only made
it worse. They’d thrown him down and scattered his books while other gringo kids watched but were too
scared to interfere; and the one named Luis had pulled his pants down, right off his struggling butt and
legs, and then they’d held him while Luis stripped off Eddie’s Fruit-of-the-Looms. The underpants had
been wrapped around Vance’s face like a feedbag, and as the half-naked fat boy ran home the Mexican
kids had screamed with laughter and jeered, “Burro! Burro! Burro!”

   From then on, Eddie Vance had walked more than a mile out of his way to avoid crossing Cortez
Park, and in his mind he’d murdered that Mexican boy named Luis a thousand times. And now here was
Luis again, only this time his name was Rick Jurado. This time he was older, he spoke English better, and
he was no doubt a lot smarter—but, though Vance was approaching his fifty-fourth birthday, the fat little
boy inside him would’ve recognized those cunning eyes anywhere. It was Luis all right, just wearing a
different face.

   And the truth was that Vance had never met a Mexican who didn’t remind him, in some way, of those
jeering kids in Cortez Park almost forty years ago.

   “What’re you starin’ at, man?” Rick challenged. “Have I got two heads?”

   The sheriff’s trance snapped. Rage flooded through him. “I’d just as soon get out of this car and
break your neck, you little shit-ass wetback.”

   “You won’t.” But the boy’s body had tensed for either flight or fight.

  Take it easy! Vance warned himself. He wasn’t ready for this kind of trouble, not right here in the
middle of Bordertown. He abruptly put his sunglasses back on and worked his knuckles. “Some of your
boys have been driftin’ into Inferno after dark. That won’t do, Ricky.”

   “Last I heard, it was a free country.”

   “It’s free for Americans.” Though he knew Jurado had been bora at the Inferno Clinic on Celeste
Street, Vance knew also that the boy’s father and mother had been illegals. “You let your gang punks go
over—”

   “The Rattlers isn’t a gang, man. It’s a club.”

   “Yeah, right. You let your club punks go over the bridge after dark and there’ll be trouble. I won’t
stand for it. I don’t want any Rattler across the bridge at night. Do I make myself—”

   “Bullshit,” Rick interrupted. He gestured angrily toward Inferno. “What about the ’Gades, man? Do
they own the fuckin’ town?”

   “No. But your boys are askin’ for a fight, lettin’ themselves be seen where they shouldn’t be. I want it
to stop.”

  “It’ll stop,” Rick said. “When the ’Gades stop makin’ raids over here, breakin’ out people’s windows
and spray-paintin’ their cars. They raise hell on my streets, and we’re not even supposed to cross the
bridge without gettin’ spanked! What about that fire? How come Lockett’s not in jail?”

   “Because there’s no proof he or any of the Renegades set it. All we’ve got are a few bits of
burned-up rags.”

   “Man, you know they set it!” Rick shouted. “They could’ve burned down the whole town!” He
shook his head disgustedly. “You’re a chickenshit, Vance! Big sheriff, huh? Well, you listen up! My men
are watchin’ the streets at night, and I swear to God we’ll cut the balls off any ’Gade we catch!
Comprende?”

   Anger reddened Vance’s cheeks. He was looking into the face of Luis again, and standing on the
battlefield of Cortez Park. Deep down, his stomach was squeezed with a fat kid’s fear. “I don’t think I
like your tone of voice, boy! I’ll take care of the Renegades! You just keep your punks on this side of
the bridge after dark, you got it?”

   Rick Jurado suddenly walked a few feet away, bent down, and picked something up. Vance saw it
was the red rooster. The Mexican boy approached the car, held the rooster over the windshield, and
gave a quick, strong squeeze with his hands. The rooster squawked and flapped, and a grayish-white
blob fell from its rear end onto the windshield and oozed down the glass.

   “There’s my answer,” the boy said defiantly. “Chickenshit for a chickenshit.”

   Vance was out of the car before the white line reached the hood. Rick took two strides back,
dropped the rooster, and tensed himself to meet the onrushing storm. The rooster let out a strangled
crowing as it darted for the cover of a yucca bush.

    Even as he knew he was touching a match to dynamite, Vance reached out to grab the boy’s collar;
but Rick was way too fast for him, and easily dodged aside. Vance clutched at empty air, and again the
vision of Luis and Cortez Park whirled around him. He bellowed with fury, drawing his fist back to strike
at his tormentor.

   But before the blow could fall, a screen door slammed and a boy’s voice called out in Spanish, “Hey,
Ricardo! You need some help?” The voice was followed immediately by a sharp crack! that froze the
sheriff’s fist in midair.

   He looked across the street, where a rail-thin Mexican kid wearing chinos, combat boots, and a
black T-shirt stood on the front steps of a rundown house. “You need some help, man?” he asked again,
this time in English, and then he reared his right hand back and quickly snapped it forward in a smooth,
blurred motion.

   The bullwhip he was holding popped like a firecracker going off, its tip flicking up a cigarette butt
from the gutter. Shreds of tobacco whirled.

   The moment stretched. Rick Jurado watched Vance’s face, could see the rage and cowardice fighting
on it; then he saw Vance blink, and he knew which had won. The sheriff’s fist opened. His arm came
down to his side, and he clasped it like a broken wing.

   “No, Zarra,” Rick said, his voice calm now. “Everythin’s steady, man.”

   “Jus’ checkin’.” Carlos “Zarra” Alhambra wrapped the bullwhip around his right arm and sat on the
porch steps, his gangly legs stretched out before him.

   Vance saw two more Mexican boys walking in his direction along Second Street. Down where the
street dead-ended in a tangle of boulders and sagebrush, another boy stood at the curb, watching the
sheriff. In his hand was a tire iron.

   “You got anythin’ else to say?” Rick prodded.

   Vance sensed the many eyes on him from the windows of the crummy houses. He knew there was no
way to win here; all Bordertown was a big Cortez Park. Vance glanced uneasily at the punk with the
bullwhip, knowing that Zarra Alhambra could snap out a lizard’s eyeballs with that damned thing. He
pointed a thick finger into Rick’s face. “I’m warnin’ you! No Rattlers in Inferno after dark, you hear?”

   “Eh?” Rick cupped a hand behind his ear.

   Across the street, Zarra laughed. “You remember!” Vance said, and then he got into the patrol car. “
You remember, smart-ass!” he shouted once the door was shut. The streak down his windshield
infuriated him, and he switched on the wipers. The streak became a smear. His face burned as their
laughter reached him. He put the car in reverse and backed rapidly along Second Street to Republica
Road, swerved the car around, and roared over the bridge into Inferno.

   “Big lawman!” Zarra hooted. He stood up. “I shoulda popped his fat butt, huh?”

   “Not this time.” Rick’s heartbeat was slowing down now; it had been racing during his confrontation
with Vance, but he hadn’t dared show even a shadow of fear. “Next time you can pop him real good.
You can bust his balls.”

  “Alllllright! Wreckage, man!” Zarra thrust his left fist up in a power salute, the symbol of the
Rattlesnakes.

   “Wreckage.” Rick returned the salute halfheartedly. He saw Chico Magellas and Petey Gomez
approaching, jaunty and strutting as if they walked on a street of gold instead of cracked concrete, on
their way to the corner to catch the school bus. “Later,” he told Zarra, and he went back up the steps
into the brown house.

    Inside, drawn shades cut the sunlight. The gray wallpaper was faded beige where the sun had burned
it, and on the walls hung framed paintings of Jesus against black velvet backgrounds. The house smelled
of onions, tortillas, and beans. Floorboards creaked as if in pain under Rick’s footsteps. He walked
through a short hallway to a door near the kitchen and tapped lightly on it. There was no answer. He
waited a few seconds and tapped again, much louder.

   “I’m awake, Ricardo,” the feeble voice of an old woman replied in Spanish.

   Rick had been holding his breath. Now he let it go. One morning, he knew, he was going to come to
this door and knock, and there would be no answer. But not this morning. He opened the door and
looked into the small bedroom, where the shades were drawn and an electric fan stirred the heavy air. In
this room there was an odor like violets on the edge of decay.

   Under the sheet on the bed lay the thin figure of an elderly woman, her white hair spread like a lace
fan on the pillow, her brown face a mass of deep cracks and wrinkles.

   “I’m leaving for school, Paloma.” Rick’s voice was gentle and articulate now, very much different
from the street inflections of a moment before. “Can I get you anything?”

   “No, gracias. “ The old woman slowly sat up and tried to adjust her pillow with a skinny hand, but
Rick was quickly there to help. “Are you working today?” she asked.

   “Sí. I’ll be home about six.” He worked three afternoons a week at the Inferno Hardware Store, and
would have worked longer hours if Mr. Luttrell let him. But jobs were hard to come by, and his
grandmother needed to be watched over. Someone from the volunteer committee at the church brought
her a boxed lunch every day, Mrs. Ramirez from next door came over to check on her from time to time
and Father LaPrado often stopped by, but Rick didn’t like leaving her alone so much. At school, he was
tormented by the fear that she might fall and break her hip or back, and lie suffering in this awful house
until he came home. But they had to have the money from his stockboy job, and that was all there was to
it.

   “What was that noise I heard?” she asked. “A horn blowing. It woke me up.”

   “Nothing. Just somebody passing by.”

   “I heard shouting. There’s too much noise on this street. Too much trouble. Someday we’ll live on a
quiet street, won’t we?”

   “We will,” he replied, and he stroked his grandmother’s thin white hair with the same hand that had
delivered a power salute.

   She reached up, grasping his hand. “You be a good boy today, Ricardo. You do good at school, sí?”

    “I’ll try.” He looked into her face. The cataracts on her eyes were pale gray, and she could hardly see
at all. She was seventy-one years old, had fought off the effects of two minor strokes, and still had most
of her own teeth. Her hair had turned white at an early age, and that was where her name—Paloma, the
dove—came from. Her real name was peasant Mexican, almost unpronounceable even to his tongue. “I
want you to be careful today,” he said. “Do you want the shades up?”

   She shook her head. “Too bright. But I’ll be fine when I have my operation. Then I’ll see
everything—better than you, even!”

   “You already see everything better than me.” He bent over and kissed her forehead. Again he caught
that odor of decaying violets.

   Her fingers found one of the leather bracelets. “These things again? Why do you wear these things?”

   “No reason. It’s just the style.” He pulled his hand away.

  “The style. Sí.” Paloma smiled faintly. “And who sets that style, Ricardo? Probably somebody you
don’t know and wouldn’t like anyway.” She tapped her skull. “You use this. You live your own style, not
somebody else’s.”

   “It’s hard to do.”

   “I know. But that’s how you become your own man, instead of an echo.” Paloma turned her head
toward the window. The harsh edges of light that crept around the shade made her head ache. “Your
mother… now she’s the stylish one,” Paloma said softly.

   Rick was caught off guard. It had been a long time since Paloma had mentioned his mother. He
waited, but she said nothing else. “It’s almost eight. I’d better go.”

   “Yes. You’d better go on. You don’t want to be late, Mr. Senior.”

    “I’ll be home at six,” he told her, and then he went to the door; but before he left the room he glanced
quickly back at the frail form on the bed and he said, as he did every morning before he went to school,
“I love you.”
   And she answered, as she always did, “Double love back to you.”

   Rick closed the bedroom door behind him. As he walked through the hallway again, he realized that
his grandmother’s wish of double love had been enough for him when he was a child; but beyond this
house, out in the world where the sun beat down like a sledgehammer and mercy was a coward’s word,
a wish of double love from a dying old woman would not protect him.

   Every step he took brought a subtle change to his face. His eyes lost their softness, took on a hard,
cold glare. His mouth tightened, became a grim and bitter line. He stopped before he reached the door
and plucked a white fedora with a snakeskin band from its wall hook. He put the hat on before a
discolored mirror, tilting it to the proper angle of cool. Then he slid his hand into his jeans pocket and felt
the silver switchblade there. Its handle was of green jade and had an embedded cameo of Jesus Christ,
and Rick recalled the day he’d snatched that blade—the Fang of Jesus—out of a box where a rattler lay
coiled.

   He had the mean, ass-kicking look in his eyes now, and he was ready to go.

   Once he stepped through that door, the Rick Jurado who cared for his Paloma would be left behind,
and the Rick Jurado who was president of the Rattlesnakes would emerge. She had never seen that face,
and sometimes he was thankful for the cataracts—but that was how it had to be, if he wanted to survive
against Lockett and the Renegades. He dared not let the mask fall, but sometimes he forgot which was
the mask and which was the man.

   He drew in a deep breath and left the house. Zarra was waiting by the car and flipped him a freshly
rolled joint. Rick caught it, tucking it away for later. Being wrecked—or at least pretending to be—was
the only way to get through the day.

   Rick slid behind the wheel. Zarra got into the passenger side, and the Camaro’s engine thundered as
Rick turned the key. He put on a pair of black-framed sunglasses and, his transformation complete, he
drove away.



                                                    6
                                              Black Sphere


It was after nine when a brown pickup truck pulled up alongside Jessie Hammond’s wrecked vehicle.
Jessie got out, and so did the driver. Bess Lucas was a wiry, gray-haired woman of fifty-eight, with bright
blue eyes in a heart-shaped, attractive face. She was wearing jeans, a pale green blouse, and a straw
cowboy hat, and she winced as she looked into the mangled engine.

    “Lord!” she said. “Nothin’ left but scrap in there, for sure!” The engine had cooled down and was
silent now. A pool of oil shimmered beneath the truck. “What the hell tore it up this way?”

   “I don’t know. Like I said, a piece of whatever passed by hit the hood. Like these over here.” Jessie
walked toward the blue-green fragments, which had ceased smoking. Still, a melting-plastic reek hung in
the air.

   Bess and Tyler had heard the noise too, and the furniture in their house had danced for a few
seconds. When they’d gone outside, they’d seen a lot of dust in the air but no sign of helicopters or
anything like what Jessie had described. Bess shook her head and clucked at the engine. The hole in it
was the size of a child’s fist. She followed Jessie away from the pickup. “Say this thing just shot by, with
no warnin’? Where’d it go?”

   “That way.” Jessie pointed to the southwest. Their view was obstructed by the ridge, but Jessie noted
the new contrails of jets in the sky. She reached the fragment that was embedded in the sand and
covered with the strange markings. Heat was still radiating off it, enough for Jessie to feel it in her cheeks.

   “What’s that writin’ on there?” Bess asked. “Greek?”

   “I don’t think so.” She knelt down, getting as close as she dared. Where the object had dug into the
earth, the sand had been burned into clumps of glass, and blackened cactus lay scattered about.

   “Ain’t that a sight?” Bess had seen the glass clumps too. “Must’ve been mighty hot, huh?”

   Jessie nodded and stood up.

  “Hell of a thing when you’re mindin’ your own business and you get wrecked right in broad daylight.”
Bess gazed around at the desolate land. “Maybe it’s gettin’ too crowded out here, huh?”

   Jessie hardly heard her. She was staring at the blue-green fragment. It certainly was not part of a
meteor or from any aircraft she’d ever seen, either. Possibly it was part of a satellite? But the markings
surely weren’t English, nor Russian. What other countries had satellites in orbit? She recalled that space
junk had fallen over northern Canada some years ago, and more recently in Australia’s outback; she
remembered how people had joked about being hit by falling fragments after NASA had announced that
a malfunctioned satellite was on the way down, and taken to wearing hardhats to deflect several tons of
metal.

   But if this material before her was metal, it was the weirdest kind of metal she’d ever seen.

  “Here they come,” Bess said. Jessie looked up, saw the two figures on horseback approaching. Tyler
was letting Sweetpea go at an easy canter, and Stevie was hanging on behind.

   Jessie walked back to the truck, leaned over, and peered into the hole that had plowed down through
the engine block. Whatever had pierced the engine couldn’t be seen in that oily mess of ripped metal and
cables. Had it gone all the way through, or was it still lodged in there somewhere? She could see Tom’s
face when she told him that a falling spacecraft had crossed their path and smashed hell out of—

   She stopped. Spacecraft. A word she’d been dancing around in her mind. Spacecraft. Well, a
satellite was a spacecraft, wasn’t it? But she couldn’t fool herself; she knew what she’d meant. A
spacecraft, like from outer space. Far, far outer space.

   Christ! she thought, and almost laughed. I’ve got to get my hat before my brain boils! But her gaze
skittered back to the blue-green thing stuck in the sand, and at the other pieces lying nearby. Stop it! she
told herself. Just because you don’t recognize any of it doesn’t mean it’s from outer space, for God’s
sake! You’ve been watching too many sci-fi flicks off that satellite dish late at night!

   Tyler and Stevie, astride the big golden palomino, had almost reached them. A large-boned man in his
early sixties, with a leathery, seamed face and a mane of white hair tucked up under a battered
Confederate army cap, Tyler got off Sweetpea and then effortlessly lifted Stevie down. He came over to
the truck to have a look, and his first reaction was a short, sharp whistle. “You can scratch off an
engine,” he said. “’Fraid even Mendoza can’t patch up that hole.” They’d telephoned Xavier Mendoza at
his Texaco station before they’d left the house, and he’d promised to be out within a half hour to tow the
pickup truck in.
    “Pieces of somethin’ lyin’ all over the place,” Bess told him. She motioned around. “Ever see the
like?”

   “Nope, never have.” Tyler was retired from a job with Texas Power, and wrote fairly successful
western novels about a bounty hunter named Bart Justice. Bess was content to spend her time compiling
sketches of desert flowers and plants, and both of them treated Sweetpea like an overgrown puppy.

   “Neither have I,” Jessie admitted. She saw Stevie coming closer. The little girl’s eyes were wide and
entranced again, but Jessie had checked her over thoroughly at the house and found no injuries. “Stevie?”
she said softly.

   The little girl was pulled by the wind-chimes noise. It was a lovely, soothing music, and she had to find
out where it was coming from. She started to walk past her mother, but Jessie grasped her shoulder
before she reached the truck. “Don’t get in that oil,” Jessie said tensely. “It’ll ruin your clothes.”

   Tyler had on dungarees and didn’t mind getting dirty. He was curious about what had put a hole that
size through the pickup’s hood and engine, and he reached into the mess and started feeling around.
“Watch out you don’t cut your hand, Ty!” Bess warned, but he grunted and kept on with what he was
doing. “You got a flashlight, doc?” he asked.

   “Yes. Just a minute.” There was a pencil flashlight in her vet bag. “Stay out of Mr. Lucas’s way,” she
told Stevie, who nodded vacantly. Jessie retrieved the bag from the truck’s interior, found the little
flashlight, and gave it to Tyler. He flicked it on, aiming the light into the hole. “Lordy, what a mess!” he
said. “Whatever it was, it went right through the engine block. Knocked the valves all to pieces.”

   “Can you see what it might’ve been?”

   He moved the light around. “Nope. Must’ve been hard as a cannonball and movin’ like a bat out of
hell, though.” He glanced up at Stevie. “Oops. Forgive my French, honey.” He returned his attention to
the beam of light. “Well, I’d say it got pulverized in there somewhere. Doc, you sure are lucky it didn’t
go through the firewall or hit the gas tank.”

   “I know.”

   He straightened up and flicked the light off. “Guess you’ve got insurance, huh? With the Dodger?”

   “Right.” Dodge Creech had an Texas Pride Auto and Life Insurance office on the second floor of the
bank building in Inferno. “I don’t know exactly how to describe the accident to him, though. I’m not sure
anything like this is covered in my collision insurance.”

   “Ol’ Dodger’ll find a way. He can talk the tears out of a stone.”

   “It’s still in there, Mama,” Stevie said softly. “I can hear it singing.”

   Tyler and Bess looked at her, then at each other. “I think Stevie’s a little shaken up,” Jessie explained.
“It’s all right, hon. We’re going to be on our way home as soon as Mr. Mendoza—”

   “It’s still in there,” the child repeated. This time her voice was firm. “Can’t you hear it?”

   “No,” Jessie replied. “And neither do you. I want you to stop playacting, now.”

  Stevie didn’t answer; she just kept staring at the truck, trying to figure out exactly where the music
was coming from. “Stevie?” Bess said. “Come on over here and let’s give Sweetpea his sugar, okay?”
She dug into her pocket and brought out a few sugar cubes, and the palomino strode toward her in
anticipation of a treat. “Sweets for the sweet,” Bess said, giving the horse a couple of cubes. “Come on,
Stevie! You give him one, okay?”

   Normally, Stevie would have jumped at the chance to feed Sweetpea his sugar—but she shook her
head, unwilling to be pulled away from the wind-chimes music. She took a step nearer the truck before
Jessie could stop her.

    “Looky here,” Tyler said. He bent down beside the flat right front tire. There was a blister in the metal
of the wheel well’s fender. He clicked the light on again and shone it up into the wheel well. “Somethin’s
lodged in here. Looks like it’s burned to the metal.”

   “What is it?” Jessie asked. Then: “Stevie! Don’t get too close!”

   “Not very big. Haven’t got a hammer on you, do you?” When Jessie shook her head, Tyler gave the
blister a knock with his fist, but the object wouldn’t come loose. He reached up into the wheel well, and
Bess said, “Be careful, Ty!”

    “Thing’s slick with oil. Stuck tight, I’m tellin’ you.” He grasped it and gave a yank, but his hand
slipped off. He wiped his palm on his dungarees and tried again.

  “That oil’ll never come out!” Bess fretted, but she came closer to watch.

   Tyler’s shoulder muscles strained with the effort. He kept working. “It moved. I think,” he said. “Hold
on, I’m gonna give it my best.” His fingers tightened around it, and he yanked again with as much strength
as he could muster.

   The object resisted him for a few seconds longer—and then it popped out from its indentation in the
fender and he had it firmly in his hand. It was perfectly round, and he drew it out like a pearl that had
been nestled inside an oyster’s shell.

  “Here it is.” He stood up, his hand and arm black with grime. “Doc, I believe this is what did the
damage.”

  It was, indeed, a cannonball. Except it was the size of Stevie’s fist, black as ebony and looked to be
smooth and unmarked.

   “Must’ve hit the tire, too,” Tyler said. He frowned. “I swear, that’s the damnedest thing!” This time he
didn’t bother to apologize for his French. “It’s the right size to have made that hole, but…”

   “But what?” Jessie asked.

   He bounced it up and down in his palm. “There’s hardly any weight to it. Thing feels about as tough
as a soap bubble.” He began wiping away the oil and dirt from its surface on his dungarees, but
underneath the black was just more black. “Want to see it?” He offered it to Jessie.

     She hesitated. It was only a small black ball, but Jessie suddenly wanted no part of it. She wanted to
tell Tyler to put it back where it had been, or just to throw it as far as he could and let it be forgotten.

   “Take it, Mama,” Stevie said. She was smiling. “That’s what’s singing.”

  Jessie had a sensation of slow dizziness, as if she were about to pass out. The sun was getting to her,
pounding through her skull. But she extended her hand, and Tyler put the ebony ball into it.

   The sphere was as cool as if it had just come from a refrigerator. Her fingers were shocked by its
chill. But the truly amazing thing was its weight—about three ounces, she figured. She ran a finger across
the smooth surface. Was it glass or plastic? “No way!” she said. “This can’t be what hit the truck! It’s
too fragile!”

   “You got me,” Tyler agreed. “But it was sure tough enough to knock a blister in the metal and not
crack to pieces.”

   Jessie tried to squeeze the thing, but it wouldn’t give. Harder than it appears, she thought. A whole
hell of a lot harder. Looks like a perfect sphere, tooled by a machine that left no marks. And why is it so
cool? It went through a hot engine and now it’s exposed to the direct sun, but it’s still cool.

   “Thing looks like a big ol’ buzzard’s egg,” Bess remarked. “I wouldn’t give you two cents for it.”

  Jessie glanced at Stevie; the child was staring fixedly at the sphere, and Jessie had to ask the question:
“Do you still hear it singing?”

   She nodded, took a step forward and lifted both hands. “Can I hold it, Mama?”

   Tyler and Bess were watching. Jessie paused, turning the ball over and over. There was no mark on it
anywhere, no crack, not even a scuff. She held it up to the sun to try to see into it, but the thing was
utterly opaque. It must’ve had a hell of a velocity when it hit us, Jessie thought—but what was it made
of? And what was it?

   “Please, Mama!” Stevie hopped up and down impatiently.

   It didn’t seem particularly threatening. It was still strangely cool, yes, but her hand felt all right. “Don’t
drop it,” Jessie cautioned. “Be very, very careful. Okay?”

   “Yes ma’am.”

   Reluctantly, Jessie gave it to her. Stevie cradled it in both hands. She now felt the wind-chimes music
as well as heard it; the notes seemed to sigh through her bones—a beautiful sound, but kind of sad too.
Like a song of lost things. It made her feel like she knew what her daddy was feeling, like her heart was a
tear, and all things she knew and loved were soon to be gone, left a long, long way behind; so far behind
you couldn’t even see them if you stood on top of the highest mountain in the world. The sadness sank
deep, but the beauty of the notes entranced her. Her expression was caught between crying and wonder.

   Jessie saw. “What is it?”

  Stevie shook her head. She didn’t want to talk, wanted only to listen. The notes soared through her
bones and made colors spark in her brain. They were colors unlike any she’d ever seen before.

   And suddenly the music stopped. Just like that.

  “Here comes Mendoza.” Tyler motioned toward the bright blue wrecker approaching along Cobre
Road.

   Stevie shook the sphere. The music did not return.

   “Give it to me, hon. I’ll take care of it.” Jessie reached out, but Stevie retreated. “Stevie! Come on,
now!” The little girl turned and ran about thirty feet away, still with the ebony sphere in her hands. Jessie
pressed down her anger and decided to deal with the child when they got home. Right now, they had
enough to worry about.
  Xavier Mendoza, a husky white-haired man with a large white mustache, pulled the wrecker off
Cobre Road and got it situated to hook Jessie’s pickup. He stepped out to have a look at the damage,
and his first reaction was “Ai! Caramba!”

   Stevie walked a little further away, still shaking the black ball, trying to wake up the music. It occurred
to her that it must be broken, and maybe if she shook it hard enough, the wind chimes inside might work
again. The next time she shook it, she thought she heard it slosh faintly, as if it might be filled with water.
And it didn’t seem as cool as it had been a minute before. Maybe it was getting warmer, or maybe that
was just the sun.

   She rotated it between her palms. “Wake up, wake up!” she wished.

    With a jolt, she realized the black ball had changed. She could see her fingerprints on it, and the
prints of her palms, outlined in electric blue. She pressed her index finger on a black place; the fingerprint
held, then slowly began to vanish as if drawn down into the depths. She drew a little smiling face on it
with her fingernail; it too stayed there in a startling blue a hundred times more blue than the sky. She drew
a heart, then a little house with four stick figures; all the pictures held for about five or six seconds before
they melted away. She looked up and started to call for her mother to come see.

   But before the words could come out there was a roaring behind her that almost scared her out of her
skin, and she was engulfed in whirling dust.

   A gray-green helicopter circled over the wrecker and Jessie’s truck. Jessie knew it must have come
speeding out of nowhere—maybe from beyond that ridge to the southwest—and now it made slow,
steady turns above them. Sweetpea neighed and reared, and Bess grabbed his reins to settle him down.
The dust spun around them, making Mendoza curse a blue streak in Spanish.

   The helicopter made a few more rotations and then turned again toward the southwest; it picked up
speed and zoomed away.

   “Damned fool!” Tyler Lucas shouted. “I’ll kick your butt!”

    Jessie saw her daughter standing in the road. Stevie walked toward her and showed her the sphere.
“It went all black again,” Stevie said, her face coated with dust. “Know what?” The little girl’s voice was
low, as if confiding a secret. “I think it was about to wake up—but I think it got scared.”

   What would the world be without a child’s imagination? Jessie thought. She was about to demand the
sphere back, but she didn’t see any harm in letting Stevie hold it; they’d hand it over to Sheriff Vance as
soon as they got to town, anyway. “Don’t drop it!” she repeated, and then turned away to watch
Mendoza at work.

  “Yes ma’am.” Stevie walked off a few paces and kept shaking the black ball, but neither the
wind-chimes music nor its brilliant blue returned. “Don’t be dead!” she told it; there was no response. It
was just black through and through; she could see her own face reflected on its glossy surface.

   Deep down, in the center of the blackness, something might have shifted—a cautious, slow stirring; an
ancient thing, contemplating the shine of light that touched it through the murk. Then it was still again,
pondering and gathering strength.

    Mendoza got the truck hooked to the wrecker. Jessie thanked Tyler and Bess for their help, and she
and Stevie climbed into the wrecker with Mendoza. They drove away toward Inferno, the black sphere
still clutched firmly between Stevie’s hands.
   To the southwest and almost out of sight, a single helicopter followed.



                                                  7
                                           Nasty in Action


The bell shrilled for change of classes, and in another moment the quiet halls of Preston High were
tumultuous. The central air conditioning was still broken, the bathrooms reeked of cigarette and marijuana
smoke, but the rowdy shouts and laughter underscored a joyful abandon.

   Much of the laughter, though, had a false ring. All the students knew this was Preston High’s final
year; even if Inferno was a hot and hellish place, it was still home, and home was a hard place to leave.

    They were walking histories of the struggles that had preceded them, their features a mirror of the
tribes and races that had come up from Mexico and down from the heartland to carve a home in the
Texas desert: here the sleek black hair and sharp cheekbones of the Navajo; the high forehead and
ebony glare of the Apache; the aquiline nose and sculpted profile of the conquistador; there the blond,
brown, or red hair of frontiersmen and pioneers, the wiry builds of bronco busters, and the long,
confident strides of easterners who’d come to Texas seeking their fortunes long before the first shot had
fired at a mission called the Alamo.

    It was all there in the faces and bones, in the walks and expressions and speech of the students
changing classes. A hundred years of showdowns, cattle drives, and saloon brawls moved through the
hallways. But their ancestors, even the buckskinned Indian fighters and the warpainted braves who’d
sliced off their scalps, might have moaned in their graves if they’d been able to see current fashions from
the Happy Hunting Ground. Some of the boys had their heads shaved to a military stubble, some had hair
twisted into spikes and tinted with outrageous colors, some wore crewcuts with long tails of hair hanging
down their backs. Many of the girls had hair cropped just as severely as the boys’ and dyed even more
garishly, some wore sleek Princess Di cuts, and some sported manes swept back and frozen with gel,
then decorated with feathers in an unconscious tribute to their Indian heritage.

   They wore a mixed assemblage of jumpsuits, overalls in military camouflage patterns, madras-plaid
shirts with buckskin fringe, T-shirts that exalted bands like the Hooters, the Beastie Boys, and the Dead
Kennedys, paisley surfer tees in electric hues that slam-danced the eyeballs, tie-dyed khaki trousers,
faded and patched jeans, pegged pants with Day-Glo stripes, combat boots, hand-painted sneakers,
penny loafers, gladiator sandals, and plain old flipflops carved out of used tires. There’d been a dress
code at the beginning of the year, but the principal of Preston High—a short Hispanic man named Julius
Rivera and known as Little Caesar by the student body—had gradually let the code go when it was
apparent there would be no reprieve for the school. Students in Presidio County would be bussed thirty
miles to the high school in Marfa, and in September Little Caesar would be teaching a sophomore
geometry class at Northbrook High in Houston.

   The seconds ticked past on the clocks, and the young descendants of gunfighters, ranch hands, and
Indian chiefs continued to their next classes.

   Ray Hammond was digging his English text from his locker in B Section. His mind was on getting to
his next class, way at the end of C Section, and he didn’t see what was coming up behind him.

   As he brought the book out, a size-ten foot in a scuffed combat boot suddenly kicked it from his
hand. The book opened—notes, page markers, and obscene doodlings sailing into the air—and slammed
against the wall, barely missing two girls at the water fountain.

   Ray looked up, his eyes wide and startled behind his glasses. He saw then that doom had finally come
for him. A hand clenched the front of his shirt and lifted him up on the toes of his sneakers.

    “Hey, fuckmeat,” a slurred, thickly accented voice growled, “you’re in my way, man.” The boy
who’d spoken was about sixty pounds heavier than his captive and stood more than four inches taller; he
was a junior named Paco LeGrande, and he had bad teeth and acne pocks on a grinning, vulpine face. A
tattooed rattlesnake crawled across one thick forearm. Paco’s eyes were red and unfocused, and Ray
knew the boy had been puffing a little too much weed in the bathroom this morning. He usually timed his
visits to the locker so as to miss Paco, who had the one right next door, but the inevitable had caught up
with him. Paco was fueled and high and ready to give somebody a nitro lesson.

   “Hey, X Ray!” Another Hispanic boy was standing behind Paco. His name was Ruben Hermosa, and
he was shorter and not nearly as heavy as Paco but his eyes were also aflame. “Hey, don’t shit in your
pants, amigo!”

   Ray heard his paisley shirt ripping. He was barely balanced on his toes, and his heart was pounding in
his skinny chest but he kept his expression spaceman cool. Other kids were moving back, getting out of
danger’s way, and there wasn’t a Renegade in sight. Paco balled up a tremendous, scarred fist.

   “You don’t want to break the rules, Paco,” Ray said, as calmly as he could manage. “No trouble in
school, man.”

   “Fuck the rules! And fuck school! And fuck you, you little four-eyed piece of—”

  A home economics book with a smiling cartoon family on its blue cover whacked into the side of
Paco’s head with a noise like a gunshot. The blow rocked him, and Ray wrenched free as Paco’s grip
weakened. He scrabbled across the green linoleum to the base of the water fountain.

   “A wetback prick with no balls shouldn’t talk about fuckin’,” a girl’s smoky voice said. “It’ll give you
ideas you can’t do anything about.”

   Ray knew that voice. Nasty stepped between him and the two Rattlers. She was a senior, and she
stood almost six feet tall; her platinum-blond hair was swept back in a Mohawk, the sides shaven to the
scalp. Nancy Slattery wore skintight khakis that clung to her rear and her long, strong legs; a hot-pink
cotton shirt accentuated the flare of her athletic shoulders. She was lithe and quick, had run track last
year for Preston High, and on both wrists she wore a handcuff for a bracelet. Three or four cheap gold
chains sparkled around each ankle, above the size-seven bowling shoes she’d swiped from the
Bowl-a-Rama in Fort Stockton. Nasty had gotten her name from her initiation into the Renegades, Ray
had heard; she’d drunk down what was in a cup the guys had spat their tobacco chews into. And smiled
through brown teeth.

   “Get up, X Ray,” Nasty told him. “These fags won’t bother you.”

   “You watch your mouth, bitch!” Paco roared. “I’ll knock the piss outta you!”

   Ray stood up, started gathering his notes together. He saw with a jolt of horror that his idle drawing of
a huge penis attacking an equally huge vagina had slid under the right sandal of a blond junior fox named
Melanie Paulin.

   “I’ll piss in a glass for you, Paco Fago,” Nasty replied, and a few of the onlookers laughed. She just
missed being pretty: her chin was a shade too sharp, her two front teeth were chipped, and her nose had
been broken when she fell during a track meet. Her dark green eyes glowered under peroxided brows.
But Ray thought Nasty, who sat a few seats away from him in study hall, was a smash fox.

   “Come on, man!” Ruben urged. “We gotta get to class! Forget it!”

   “Yeah, Paco Fago. Better run ’fore you get spanked.” She saw the flare of red in Paco’s eyes and
knew she’d pushed too far, but she didn’t give a shit; she thrived on the smell of danger like other girls
desired Giorgio. “Come on,” she said, beckoning with one finger. Her nails were polished black. “Come
and get it, Paco Fago.”

  Paco’s face darkened like a storm cloud. He started toward her, both fists clenched. Ruben yelled,
“Don’t, man!” but it was much too late.

   “Fight! Fight!” somebody shouted, and Ray scooped up the incriminating drawing as Melanie Paulin
backed away. He gave Nasty room; he’d seen what she had done to a Mexican girl in a wild fight after
school, and he had no doubt about what she was going to do now.

   Nasty waited. Paco was almost upon her. Nasty smiled slightly.

   Paco took one more step.

   One of Nasty’s bowling shoes came up in a vicious kick with all of her hundred and sixteen pounds
behind it. The shoe connected squarely with Paco’s crotch, and afterward no one remembered which
was louder: the sound of the shoe smacking home or Paco’s garbled scream. Paco bent double, clutching
at himself; in no hurry, Nasty grabbed his hair, crunched her knee up into his nose, and then slammed his
face into the nearest locker door. Blood splattered, and Paco’s knees buckled like wet cardboard.

   She helped him to the floor by kicking his feet out from under him. He lay stretched out, his nose a
purple lump. It was all done in about five seconds. Ruben was already backing away from Nasty, his
hands upraised in supplication.

   “What’s going on here?”

   The onlookers scattered like chickens before a Mack truck. Mrs. Geppardo, a white-haired history
teacher with cocked eyeballs, advanced on Nasty. “My God!” She drew up short when she saw the
carnage. Paco was stirring now, trying dazedly to sit up. “Who did this? I want an answer right this
minute!”

   Nasty looked around; her sharp gaze struck everyone with deaf-dumb-and-blind disease, a common
ailment at Preston High.

  “Did you see this, young man?” Mrs. Geppardo demanded of Ray, who instantly took off his glasses
and began cleaning them on his shirt. “Mr. Hermosa!” she called shrilly, but he took off at a run. Nasty
knew that by the end of fourth period every Rattler in school would have heard about this, and they
wouldn’t like it. Tough shit, she thought, and waited for Mrs. Geppardo’s cock eyes to find her.

   “Miss Slattery.” She spoke the name as if it were something catching. “I think you’re at the bottom of
this, young lady! I can read you like a book!”

   “Really?” Nasty asked, all innocence. “Then read this.” She turned and bent over to show Mrs.
Geppardo that her tight trousers had split along the rear seam—and Nasty, as Ray and everyone else
saw, wore no underwear.
   He almost fainted. A roar of hellacious laughter and whooping filled the hallway. Ray fumbled with his
glasses and almost dropped them. When he got them on, he could see the small butterfly tattoo on her
right cheek.

    “Oh… Lord!” Mrs. Geppardo’s face reddened like a chili pepper about to pop its pods. “You
straighten up this instant!”

   Nasty obeyed, swiveling gracefully around like a fashion model. The entire hallway was now in chaos,
as more students flooded out of the classrooms and teachers valiantly tried to stem the tide. Standing with
his English book under his arm and his glasses on crooked, Ray wondered if Nasty would marry him for
one night.

  “You’re going to the office right this minute!” Mrs. Geppardo grabbed for Nasty’s arm but the girl
dodged her.

   “No, I’m not,” Nasty said firmly. “I’m goin’ home and change pants, that’s what I’m gonna do.” She
stepped over Paco LeGrande with one long stride and walked purposefully to the doors of B Section,
her cheeks hanging out and a chorus of howls and laughter following her.

   “I’ll suspend you! I’ll put you on report!” Mrs. Geppardo shook a vengeful finger.

   But Nasty stopped at the door and fixed the woman with a stare that would’ve knocked a buzzard
dead. “No, you won’t. It’s too much trouble. Anyhow, all I’ve done is split my britches.” She gave Ray a
quick wink that made him feel like he’d just been knighted by Guinevere, though her language was
anything but courtly. “Don’t get shit on your shoes, boy,” she told him, and went out the doors and into
the light that glowed like molten gold in her Mohawk.

    “You’ll wind up in women’s prison!” Mrs. Geppardo sputtered—but the door was swinging shut, and
Nasty was gone. She whirled on the gawkers: “Get back to your rooms!” The windows almost rattled
in their frames. A half second later, the tardy bell rang and there was a new stampede.

   Ray felt drunk with lust. The image of Nasty’s exposed rear might remain in his mind until he was
ninety years old and rears didn’t matter anymore. His rod was straining; it was something he had no
control over, as if that part of himself held all the brains and the rest was just useless appendage.
Sometimes he thought he’d been zapped by an alien Sex Beam or something, because he just couldn’t
get it off his mind—though he was likely to be a virgin forever, judging how most girls reacted to him.
Lord, it was a rough life!

   “What are you standing there for?” Mrs. Geppardo’s face thrust into his. “Are you asleep?”

   He didn’t know which eye to look into. “No, ma’am.”

   “Then get to wherever you’re going! Now!”

   He closed his locker, snapped the lock, and hurried off along the hall. But before he turned the corner
he heard Mrs. Geppardo say, “What’s wrong with you, you hoodlum? Can’t you walk?”

   Ray looked back. Paco was on his feet, his face gray; he was still clutching his groin, and he
staggered toward the history teacher.

  “We’re going to see the nurse, young man.” She took his arm. “I’ve never seen such a sight in all
my—”

   Paco suddenly lurched forward, and belched forth his breakfast onto the front of Mrs. Geppardo’s
flower-print dress.

   Ray ran, instinctively ducking his head as another scream shook the windows.



                                                8
                                         Danny’s Question


Danny Chaffin, a somber-faced young man of twenty-two whose father, Vic, owned the Ice House, had
just finished telling Sheriff Vance that his calls had turned up nothing about helicopters when they both
heard the metallic chattering of rotors.

   They ran out of the office and were caught in the teeth of a dust storm. “Christ A’mighty!” Vance
shouted—because he’d seen the dark shape of the helicopter descending right in Preston Park. Red
Hinton, passing by in his pickup truck on Celeste Street, almost swerved into the front window of Ida
Younger’s House of Beauty. Mavis Lockridge emerged from the Boots ’n Plenty shoestore, shielding her
face with a scarf. People peered out the windows of the bank building, and Vance knew the elderly
loungers who sat around in front of the Ice House catching breezes were probably running for their lives.

   He strode toward the park, Danny right behind him. The fierce wind and the whirling dust died down
after a few more seconds, but the helicopter’s rotors continued to slowly turn. Now more people were
coming out of the stores, and Vance figured the unholy racket was going to draw everybody in town.
Dogs were barking fit to bust. As the dust settled, Vance could see the gray-green paint job on the
helicopter and also pick out some lettering: WEBB AFB.

   “I thought you called Webb!” Vance snapped at Danny.

   “I did! They said they weren’t flyin’ any ’copters over this way!”

  “Well, they lied through their teeth! Hold on, here comes somebody!” He saw two figures
approaching, both of them tall and lean. Vance and Danny met them just shy of the mule’s statue.

   One of them, a young man who looked like he spent all his time indoors, wore a dark blue air-force
uniform and a cap with an officer’s insignia. The second man, older, with a black crewcut going gray at
the temples, was tanned and fit looking, and he was dressed in well-worn jeans and a beige knit shirt. A
pilot remained at the helicopter’s controls. Vance said to the officer, “What can I do for—”

   “We need to talk,” the man in blue jeans spoke up. He spoke crisply, accustomed to taking control.
He wore aviator-style sunglasses, and behind them his eyes had already noted Vance’s badge. “You’re
the sheriff here, right?”

   “That’s right. Sheriff Ed Vance.” He held out his hand. “Pleased to meet—”

  “Sheriff, where can we speak in private?” the young officer asked. The other man did not meet
Vance’s grip, and Vance blinked with confusion and then let his hand drop.

   “Uh… my office. This way.” He led them across the park, sweat already surfacing on the back of his
shirt and ringing his armpits.

  When they were inside the office, the younger air-force man took a notebook from his trouser pocket
and flipped it open. “The mayor here is Johnny Brett?”
  “Yeah.” Vance saw other names written in the notebook too—among them his own. He realized
somebody had done a lot of homework on Inferno. “He’s the fire chief too.”

   “He needs to be present. Will you call him, please?”

   “Do it,” Vance said to Danny, and settled himself in his chair behind his desk. These men were giving
him the creeps; their backs were as straight as iron rods, and they looked to be holding themselves at
attention just standing there. “Brett’s office is in the bank buildin’,” Vance offered. “He’s probably
already seen all the commotion.” There was no reaction from either of them. “Mind lettin’ me know what
this is all about, gents?”

    The older man walked to the door that led to the cell block and peered through its glass inset; there
were only three cells, all empty. “We need your help with something, Sheriff.” His accent was less Texan
than midwestern. He removed his sunglasses, showing deep-set eyes that were a cool, clear pale gray.
“Sorry to make such a dramatic entrance.” He smiled, and his face and body relaxed. “Sometimes we
air-force folks kind of play it to the hilt and beyond.”

   “Sure, I understand.” He didn’t, really. “No harm done.”

   “Mayor Brett’s on his way over,” Danny reported, hanging up the phone.

   “Sheriff, about how many people live here?” the younger officer asked; he had taken off his cap,
revealing close-cropped light brown hair. His eyes were about the same color, and he had a spill of
freckles across his nose and cheeks. Vance figured he was no older than twenty-five, while the other man
was maybe in his early forties.

  “Close to two thousand, I reckon,” he answered. “About another five or six hundred in Bordertown.
That’s across the river.”

   “Yes sir. No newspaper here?”

   “Used to have one. It shut up shop a couple of years ago.” He angled around in his chair to watch the
older man approach the glass-fronted gun cabinet, which held two shotguns, a pair of Winchester
repeating rifles, a hogleg Colt .45 in a calfskin gunbelt, and a Snubnose .38 in a shoulder holster along
with boxes of the appropriate ammunition.

   “You’ve got quite an arsenal here,” the man said. “Do you ever have to use all this firepower?”

   “Never can tell when you’ll have need of it. One of the shotguns’ll pump out tear-gas shells.” His
voice swelled with fatherly pride, since he’d fought the town council tooth and nail for the funds to buy it.
“Livin’ with Mexicans so close, you got to be ready for anythin’.”

   “I see,” the man said.

   Johnny Brett came in, puffing from his sprint. He was a barrel-chested man of forty-nine who had
once been a shift foreman on the rock crushers at the copper mine, and he carried with him a sense of
harried weariness. He had eyes like those of an often-kicked hound dog, and he was fully aware of
Mack Cade’s power in the community; he was on Cade’s payroll, just as Vance was. He nodded
nervously at the two air-force men and, clearly out of his depth, waited for them to speak.

   “I’m Colonel Matt Rhodes,” the older man told him, “and this is my aide, Captain David Gunniston. I
apologize for dropping in as we did, but this can’t wait.” He looked at his watch. “About three hours
ago, a seven-ton meteor entered earth’s atmosphere and struck approximately fifteen miles
south-southwest of your town. We tracked it down on radar and we thought most of it would burn up. It
didn’t.” He glanced at both the sheriff and mayor in turn. “So we’ve got a visitor from deep space lying
not too far from here, and that means we have a security problem.”

   “A meteor!” Vance grinned excitedly. “You’re joshin’!”

   Colonel Rhodes fixed him with a steady, level gaze. “I never josh,” he said coolly. “Here’s the kicker:
our friend’s putting out some heat. It’s radioactive, and—”

   “Lord!” Brett gasped.

   “—and the radiation will probably move across this area,” Rhodes continued. “Which is not to say
that it poses an immediate threat to anybody, but it’d be best for people to stay indoors as much as
possible.”

   “Day as hot as this is, most folks’ll stay indoors for sure,” Vance said, and frowned. “Uh… will this
stuff cause cancer?”

    “I don’t think the radiation levels will be critically high in this area. Our weather forecaster says the
winds will take most of it to the south, over the Chinati Mountains. But we’ve got to ask your help in
something else, gentlemen. The air force has to get our visitor out of this area and to a secured location.
I’ll be in charge of the transfer.” His gaze ticked to a clock on the wall. “At fourteen hundred
hours—that’s two o’clock—I’m expecting two tractor-trailer trucks. One of them will be hauling a
crane, and the other will be marked ‘Allied Van Lines.’ They’ll have to pass through your town in order
to reach the impact position. Once there, my crew will start the process of breaking up the meteor to get
it loaded and moved out. If all goes as planned, we’ll be gone by twenty-four hundred hours.”

    “Twelve midnight,” Danny said; he’d wanted to join the army before his father had talked him out of
it, and he knew military time.

   “Right. So what I have to ask of you gentlemen is to help with the security arrangements,” Rhodes
went on. “Webb’s gotten all sorts of calls from people who saw the meteor pass over Lubbock, Odessa,
and Fort Stockton—but of course it was too high for them to tell what it was, and they’re reporting
seeing a UFO.” He smiled again, and pulled nervous smiles from the deputy, sheriff, and mayor. “Par for
the course, isn’t it?”

   “Sure is!” Vance agreed. “Betcha them flying-saucer nuts are comin’ out of the woodwork!”

  “Yes.” The colonel’s smile slipped just a fraction, but none of them noticed. “They are. Anyway, we
don’t want civilians interfering with the work, and we sure as hell don’t need the press prowling around.
The air force doesn’t want to be responsible for any news hound getting a dose of radiation. Sheriff, can
you and the mayor keep a tight lid on this situation for us?”

   “Yes sir!” Vance said heartily. “Just tell us what we need to do!”

   “Firstly, I want you to discourage any sightseers. Of course, we’ll have our own security perimeter set
up on-site, but I don’t want anyone coming out there to gawk. Secondly, I want you to emphasize the
radiation danger; not that it’s necessarily true, but it wouldn’t hurt to scare people a little bit. Keeps them
from getting underfoot, right?”

   “Right,” Vance agreed.

   “Thirdly, I don’t want any media people anywhere near that site.” The colonel’s eyes were chilly
again. “We’ll be patrolling with our ’copters, but if you get any calls from the media I want you to handle
them. Webb’s not giving out any information. I want you to play dumb too. As I say, we don’t need
civilians in the area. Clear?”

   “Clear as glass.”

   “Good. Then I think that does it. Gunny, do you have any questions?”

   “Just one, sir.” Gunniston turned another page in his notebook. “Sheriff Vance, who owns a light
green pickup truck marked ‘Inferno Animal Hospital’? The license is Texas six-two—”

  “Dr. Jessie,” Vance told him. “Jessica Hammond, I mean. She’s the vet.” Gunniston produced a pen
and wrote the name down. “Why?”

   “We saw the truck being towed in the area of the meteor’s impact,” Colonel Rhodes said. “It was
taken to the Texaco station a couple of streets over. Dr. Hammond probably saw the object go past, and
we wanted to check on her.”

  “She’s real nice. Smart lady too. I’m tellin’ you, she’s not afraid to do anything a man vet
wouldn’t—”

   “Thanks.” Gunniston returned the pen and notebook to his pocket. “We’ll take it from here.”

   “Sure thing. You fellas need some more help, you just ask.”

  Rhodes and Gunniston were moving toward the door, their business done. “We will,” Rhodes said.
“Again, sorry about all the commotion.”

   “Don’t worry about it. Hell, you gave everybody somethin’ to jaw about at the dinner table!”

   “Not much jawing, I hope.”

   “Oh. Right. Don’t you worry about a thing. You can count on Ed Vance, yes sir!”

   “I know we can. Thank you, Sheriff.” Rhodes shook Vance’s hand, and for an instant the sheriff
thought his knuckles were going to explode. Then Rhodes released him and Vance was left with a sickly
smile on his face as the two air-force officers left the building and strode out into the hot white light.

   “Wow.” Vance massaged his aching fingers. “Fella don’t look as strong as he is.”

   “Man, wait’ll I tell Doris about this!” Mayor Brett’s voice was shaking and thrilled. “I met a real
colonel! Lordy, she won’t believe a word of it!”

   Danny walked to a window and peered out through the blind; he watched the two men moving away,
heading toward Republica Road. He frowned thoughtfully and picked at a hangnail. “Object,” he said.

   “Huh? You say somethin’, Danny boy?”

   “Object.” Danny turned toward Vance and Brett. He had sorted out what bothered him. “That
colonel said Dr. Hammond probably saw the ‘object’ go past. How come he didn’t say ‘meteor’?”

   Vance paused. His face was blank, his thought processes unhurried. “Same thing, ain’t it?” he finally
asked.

   “Yes sir. I guess. I just wonder why he put it that way.”

   “Well, you ain’t paid to wonder, Danny boy. We’ve got our orders from the United States Air Force,
and we’ll do just what Colonel Rhodes says do.”

   Danny nodded and returned to his desk.

   “Met a real air-force colonel!” Mayor Brett said. “Lordy, I’d better get back to my office in case
people call and want to know what all the ruckus is. Think that’d be a good idea?” Vance agreed that it
would be, and Johnny Brett hurried out the door and just about ran to the bank building, where the
electric sign spelled out 87°F. at ten-nineteen.



                                                   9
                                              Tic-Tac-Toe


Jessie had seen the helicopter come down in Preston Park as Xavier Mendoza pulled the wrecker into
his Texaco station and cut the engine. While Mendoza and his daytime helper, a lean and sullen young
Apache named Sonny Crowfield, labored to unhook the pickup and get it into a garage stall, Stevie
walked away a few paces with the ebony sphere between her hands; she had no interest in the
helicopter, or what its presence might mean.

   A Buick that had once been bright red, now faded to a pinkish cast by the sun, slid off Republica
Road and pulled up to the garage stalls. “Howdy, doc!” the man at the wheel called; he got out, and
Jessie’s eyes were bombarded by Dodge Creech’s green-and-orange plaid sport jacket. He strode
jauntily toward her, his fat round face split by a grin that was all blinding-white caps. One glance at the
pickup stopped him in his tracks. “Gag a maggot! That ain’t a wreck, it’s a carcass!”

   “It’s pretty bad, all right.”

   Creech looked into the mangled engine and gave a low, trilling whistle. “Rest in peace,” he said. “Or
pieces, I might say.” His laugh was a strangled cackle, like a chicken struggling to squeeze out a square
egg. He recovered quickly when he saw that Jessie did not share his humor. “Sorry. I know this truck put
in a lot of miles for you. Lucky nobody got hurt—uh—you and Stevie are okay, right?”

   “I’m fine.” Jessie glanced over at her daughter; Stevie had found a slice of shadow at the building’s far
corner, and looked to be intently examining the black ball. “Stevie’s… been shaken up, but she’s okay.
No injuries, I mean.”

    “Glad to hear that, surely am.” Creech dug a lemon-yellow paisley handkerchief from the breast
pocket of his jacket and mopped the moisture off his face. His slacks were almost the same shade of
yellow, and he wore two-tone yellow-on-white shoes. He owned a closetful of polyester suits in a garish
rainbow of colors, and though he read Esquire and GQ avidly, his fashion sense remained as raucous as
a Saturday night rodeo. His wife, Ginger, had sworn she would divorce him if he wore his iridescent red
suit to church again. He believed in the power of a man’s image, he often told her—and anyone who
would listen; if you were scared to make people notice you, he said, you might as well sink on down and
let the ground swallow you whole. He was a big, fleshy man in his early forties who always offered a
quick smile and a handshake, and he’d sold some form of insurance to almost all the residents of Inferno.
In his broad, ruddy-cheeked face his eyes were as blue as a baby’s blanket, and he was bald except for
a fringe of red hair and a little red tuft atop his forehead that he kept meticulously combed.

  He touched the gaping hole in the pickup’s engine. “Looks like a cannon hit you, doc. Want to tell me
what happened?”
  Jessie began; she registered Stevie standing nearby, then focused all her attention on telling Dodge
Creech the story.

   Stevie, comfortable in the cool shadow, was watching the black ball do magic. Her fingerprints had
begun to appear in vivid blue again; it was a color that reminded her of pictures of the ocean, or of that
swimming pool at the motel in Dallas where they’d spent last summer vacation. She drew a cactus with
her fingernail, watched as the blue picture slowly melted away. She drew scrawls and swirls and circles,
and all the patterns drifted down into the ball’s dark center. This is even better than fingerpaints! she
thought. You didn’t have to clean anything up, and there wasn’t any way to spill the paints—except there
was only one color, but that was okay, because it sure was pretty.

   Stevie had an idea; she drew a little grid across the black ball and began to fill it with Xs and Os.
Tic-tac-toe, she knew the game was called. Her daddy was very good at it, and had been teaching her.
She filled in all the Xs and Os herself, finding that the Os linked up across the bottom row; the grid melted
away, and Stevie drew another one. Xs won this time, in a diagonal line. Time for a third grid, as this one
melted away as well. Again, Xs won. She remembered that her daddy said the middle space was the
most important, so she started an O there and, indeed, the Os won.

   “What’cha got there, kid?”

   Stevie looked up, startled. Sonny Crowfield was staring at her; his black hair hung to his shoulders,
and his eyes were black under thick black brows. “What is it?” he asked, wiping his greasy hands on a
rag. “A toy?”

   She nodded and said nothing.

   He grunted. “Looks like a piece of shit to me.” He sneered, and then Mendoza called him and he
returned to the garage.

  “You’re a piece of shit,” she said to Crowfield’s back—but not too loudly, because she knew shit
was not a nice word. And then she looked back at the black ball, and she caught her breath with a gasp.

  Another blue-lined grid had been drawn in it. The grid was full of Xs and Os, and X had won the
game across the top row.

   It slowly faded away, back into the depths.

    She had not drawn that grid. And she did not draw the one that began to appear, the lines precise and
as thin as if sketched with a razor, on the surface of the black ball.

    Stevie felt her fingers loosen. She almost dropped the ball, but she remembered her mother saying not
to. The tic-tac-toe grid was complete in another couple of seconds, and the Xs and Os began to appear.
She started to call for her mama, but Jessie was still talking to Dodge Creech; Stevie watched the grid’s
spaces being filled—and then, on an impulse, she put an X in one of them as soon as the ball’s inner
finger had finished an O.

   There was no further response. The grid slowly vanished.

   A few seconds ticked past; the ball remained solidly black.

   I broke it, Stevie thought sadly. It’s not going to play anymore!

   But something moved down in the depths of the sphere—a brief burst of blue that quickly faded. The
razor-sharp lines of another grid began to come up, and Stevie watched as an O appeared in the center
space. Then there was a pause; Stevie’s heart jumped, because she realized whatever was inside the
black ball was inviting her to play. She chose a space on the bottom row and drew an X. An O appeared
in the upper left, and there was another pause for Stevie to decide on her move.

   The game ended quickly, with a diagonal of Os from upper left to lower right.

   Another grid appeared as soon as the last vanished, and again an O was drawn in the center space.
Stevie frowned; whatever it was, it already knew the game too well. But she bravely made her move and
lost even faster than before.

   “Stevie? Show Mr. Creech what hit us.”

   She jumped. Her mother and Dodge Creech were standing nearby, but neither of them had seen what
she was doing. She thought Mr. Creech’s coat looked like somebody had sewn it while they had their
finger stuck in an electric socket. “Can I take a gander, hon?” he asked, smiling, and held out his hand.

   Stevie hesitated. The ball was cool and utterly black again, all the traces of the grids gone. She didn’t
want to give it up to that big, stranger’s hand. But her mother was watching, expecting her to obey, and
she knew she’d already disobeyed far too much today. She gave him the black ball—and as soon as her
fingers left it and Mr. Creech had it in his hand, she heard the sigh of the wind chimes singing to her again.

   “This did the damage?” Creech blinked slowly, weighing the object in his palm. “Doc, you sure about
that?”

  “As sure as I can be. I know it’s light, but it’s the right size; like I said, it was lodged up in the wheel
well after it went through the engine.”

   “I just can’t see how somethin’ like this could’ve busted through metal. Feels like glass, kinda. Or wet
plastic.” He ran his fingers over the smooth surface; Stevie noted that they left no blue fingerprints. The
wind-chimes music was insistent, yearning, and Stevie thought, It needs me. “So this is what blew out of
the thing that went by, huh?” Dodge Creech held it up to the sun, could see nothing inside it. “Never seen
the like of this before. Any idea what it is?”

  “None,” Jessie said. “I expect whoever came down in that helicopter might know. Three of them
were following it.”

   “I don’t rightly know what to put in my report,” Creech admitted. “I mean, you’re covered for
collision and injuries and all, but I don’t think Texas Pride’ll understand that a plastic baby bowlin’ ball
tore a hole smack dab through a pickup’s engine. What’re you plannin’ on doin’ with it?”

   “Turning it over to Vance, just as soon as we can get over there.”

   “Well, I’ll be glad to take you. I don’t think your pickup’s goin’ anywhere.”

   “Mama?” Stevie asked. “What’ll the sheriff do with it?”

   “I don’t know. Maybe send it somewhere to try to figure out what it is. Maybe try to break it open.”

   The wind-chimes music pulled at her. She thought that the black ball was begging her to take it again;
of course she couldn’t understand why Mr. Creech or her mother didn’t hear the wind chimes too, or
what exactly was making the music, but she heard it as the call of a playmate. Try to break it open, she
thought, and flinched inside. Oh, no. Oh, no, that wouldn’t be right. Because whatever was in the black
ball would be hurt if it was cracked open, like a turtle would be hurt if its shell was broken. Oh, no! She
looked up imploringly at her mother. “Do we have to give it away? Can’t we just take it home and keep
it?”

   “Hon, I’m afraid we can’t.” Jessie touched the child’s cheek. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to give it to
the sheriff. Okay?”

  Stevie didn’t answer. Mr. Creech was holding the black ball down at his side in a loose grip. “Well,”
Mr. Creech said, “why don’t we head on over and see Vance right now?” He started to turn away to
walk to his car.

   The music pained her and gave her courage. She’d never done anything like what streaked through
her mind to do; such a thing was a sure invitation to a spanking, but she knew she would have only one
chance. Later she could explain why she’d done it, and later always seemed a long way off.

   Mr. Creech took one step toward his car. And then Stevie darted forward, past her mother, and
plucked the black ball from Dodge Creech’s hand; the wind-chimes music stopped as her fingers curled
around the ball, and Stevie knew she’d done the right thing.

   “Stevie!” Jessie cried out, shocked. “Give that back to—”

   But the little girl was running, clutching the black ball close. She ran around the corner of Mendoza’s
gas station, from shadow into sunlight, narrowly missed ramming into the trash dumpster, and kept going
between two cacti as tall as Mr. Creech.

   “Stevie!” Jessie came around the corner, saw the little girl running across somebody’s backyard,
heading toward Brazos Street. “Come back here this minute!” Jessie called, but Stevie didn’t stop and
she knew the child wasn’t going to. Stevie ran along a wire-mesh fence, turned a corner, and had
reached Brazos; she disappeared from sight. “Stevie!” Jessie tried again, but it was no use.

   “I do believe she wants to keep that thing, don’t you?” Creech asked, standing behind Jessie.

   “I don’t know what’s gotten into her! I swear, she’s been acting crazy ever since we got hit! Dodge,
I’m sorry about this. I don’t—”

   “Forget about it.” He grunted and shook his head. “Little lady can fly when she wants to, can’t she?”

   “She’s probably heading home. Dammit!” She was almost too stunned to speak. “Will you give me a
ride to the house?”

   “Sure thing. Come on.”

   They hurried back around the corner to Creech’s Buick—and two men, one in the uniform of an
air-force officer, were standing beside it. “Dr. Hammond?” the man with a black crewcut said, stepping
forward. “We need to talk.”



                                                 10
                                              Blue Void


Still cradling the black ball, Stevie reached the house and paused to search beneath the bay window for
the white rock that opened to reveal an extra house key tucked away inside. She was out of breath, still
shaking from being chased by a dog as she ran along Brazos Street; the dog, a big Doberman, had
snarled and leaped at her, but it had been chained to a pole in the yard and the chain had snapped it
back. She hadn’t even stopped to thumb her nose at it, because she knew her mother and Mr. Creech
would be coming after her.

   She found the white stone and the key and got into the house. The air conditioning chilled the
perspiration on her skin, and she walked into the kitchen, pulled a chair over to stand on, got a
Flintstones glass from the cupboard, and poured herself a glass of cold water from a pitcher in the
refrigerator. The black ball was still cool, and she rubbed it over her cheeks and forehead.

   She listened for the sound of Mr. Creech’s car pulling up out front. It wasn’t there yet, but it would be
soon.

   “They want to break you open,” she said to her playmate inside the ball. “I don’t think that would be
very nice, do you?”

   Of course it didn’t answer. It might know how to play tic-tac-toe, but it had no voice except for the
singing.

    Stevie took the ball into her room. Should she try to hide it somewhere? she wondered. Surely her
mother wouldn’t make her give it up after she’d explained about the music, and how the black ball had a
playmate deep inside it. She thought of places to hide it: under her bed, in the closet, in her chest of
drawers, in her toychest. No, none of those seemed safe enough. Mr. Creech’s car wasn’t there yet; she
still had time to find a good hiding place.

   She was mulling it over when the telephone rang. It kept on ringing, and Stevie decided to answer it
since, at the moment, she was the lady of the house. She picked it up. “’Lo?”

  “Young lady, you’re in for a spanking!” Jessie’s voice was mock furious, but genuinely relieved. “You
could’ve been killed, hit by a car or something!”

   “I’m all right.” Better not to say anything about the dog, she decided.

   “I’d like to know just what you think you’re doing! I’m getting pretty tired of the way you’ve been
acting today!”

  “I’m sorry,” Stevie said in a small voice. “But I heard the singing again, and I had to get it away from
Mr. Creech ’cause I don’t want it to get broken.”

   “That’s not for us to decide. Stevie, I’m surprised at you! You’ve never done anything like this
before!”

  Stevie’s eyes burned with tears. Hearing her mama speak this way was worse than a spanking; her
mama could not hear the singing and would not understand about the playmate. “I won’t do it again,
Mama,” she promised.

  “I’m very disappointed in you. I thought I’d taught you better manners. Now I want you to listen to
me: I’m still at Mr. Mendoza’s, but I’m going to be home soon. I want you to stay there. Do you hear
me?”

   “Yes ma’am.”

    “All right.” Jessie paused; she was mad, but not mad enough to hang up and leave it like this. “You
frightened me by running off like that. You could’ve gotten hurt. Do you understand why I’m upset?”
   “Yes. ’Cause I was bad.”

   “Because you were wrong,” Jessie corrected. “But we’ll talk about it when I get home. I love you
very much, Stevie, and that’s why I got so angry. Do you see?”

   She said, “Yes. And I love you too, Mama. I’m sorry.”

   “Okay. You just stay there, and I’ll see you later. ‘Bye.”

  “‘Bye.” They hung up at about the same time, and at the Texaco station Jessie turned to Colonel
Rhodes and said, “Meteor my ass.”

   Stevie’s tears dried. She returned to her room with the black ball, which was showing blotches of
blue on its surface. Now the idea of hiding it bothered her, but she didn’t want it broken to pieces, either.
She’d been bad—no, wrong—enough for one day; but what was she to do? She crossed her room and
looked out her window at the sun-washed street, trying to figure out what was the right thing: to hide the
black ball, in disobedience of her mother, or give it up and let it be broken open. Her mind reached a
dead end beyond which she could not think, and in the next moment she decided to entertain her
playmate as well as possible before Mr. Creech’s car arrived.

   She wandered over to her collection of glass figurines on a table. Within the black ball there was a line
of blue, like an eyelid beginning to open. She said, “Ballerina,” and pointed to the dancing glass figure,
her favorite. Then: “Horse. This one is like Sweetpea, only Sweetpea’s a real horse and this is made of
glass. Sweetpea is a pal… a pal…” She still had trouble with some words. “A ’mino,” she said, giving up
the struggle. She pointed to the next: “Mouse. Do you know what a mouse is? It eats cheese and doesn’t
like cats.”

   At the center of the black sphere, there were little cracklings of blue like fireworks going off.

   Stevie picked her Raggedy Ann doll off the bed. “This is Annie Laredo. Say hello, Annie. Say we’re
glad you came to visit today. Annie’s a rodeo girl,” she told the black ball, and then, continuing around
the room, came to her bulletin board. On it were construction-paper cutouts that her father had helped
her put up. She pointed to the first. “A… B…C…D…E…F…G… that’s the alphabet. Know what the
alphabet is?” Something struck her as very important. “You don’t even know my name!” she said, and
held the ball up before her face. She watched the stirrings of color at its center, like beautiful fish
swimming inside an aquarium. “It’s Stevie. I know how to spell it. S-T-E-V-I-E: Stevie. That’s me.”

   Also on the bulletin board were pictures of animals and insects clipped from magazines. Stevie lifted
the ball so her playmate could see, and touched each picture as she said the names: “Lion… that’s from
the jungle. Ost… ostr… that’s a big bird. Dolphin”—she pronounced it daufin—“and those swim in the
ocean. Eagle… that flies really high. Grasshopper… those jump a lot.” She came to the final picture.
“Scor… scorp… a stinger,” she said, and touched it too, though it was her least favorite and her father
had put it up as a reminder not to walk barefoot outside.

   What resembled tiny bolts of lightning curled up from the sphere’s center and danced across its inner
surface; they connected briefly with Stevie’s fingers, and a cold tingling shot through her hand all the way
to her elbow before it subsided. The sensation startled her, but it wasn’t painful; she watched the lightning
bolts arc and pulse inside the ball, as its center of brilliant blue continued to grow.

  More entranced than scared, Stevie held the ball between both hands. The lightning bolts curled out
and touched her hands, and for a few seconds she thought she heard her hair crackle like Rice Krispies.

   She thought that just maybe she should put it down now. There was a storm inside the black ball, and
the storm was getting worse. It occurred to her that her playmate might not have liked something she
showed it on her bulletin board.

   She took two steps toward the bed, intending to gently put the ball down and wait for her mother to
get home.

   But she didn’t make it another step.

  The black ball suddenly burst into an incandescent, frightening blue. She started to open her fingers
and drop it, but the movement was too late.

  The tiny lightning bolts shot from its surface, intertwined through her fingers, continued up her arms
and shoulders, wrapped like smoke around her throat, and leapt up her nostrils, into her widened
eyeballs, cocooning her head and piercing through her skull. There was no pain, but in her ears was a low
murmur like distant thunder, or a steady and powerful voice unlike anything she’d ever heard. Her hair
jumped with sparks, her head rocking back and her mouth opening in a soft, stunned exhalation: “Oh.”

   She smelled an odor of burning. My hair’s on fire! she thought wildly, and tried to put it out with her
hands but they would no longer obey. She wanted to scream and tears were in her eyes, but the thunder
voice in her head swelled up and crashed over her senses; she felt herself lifted up as if by waves, pulled
down again into a blue swirling place where there was no bottom nor top. It was cool here, and quiet, far
from the storm that raged somewhere else. The blue void closed around her, held her firmly, continued to
draw her deeper. Only she was no longer in her skin; she seemed to be made of light, and weighed as
much as a feather in the wind. It was not a fearsome thing, and she was amazed that she was not
afraid—or, at least, not crying. She did not fight it, because fighting seemed a bad thing. It was a good
thing to drift down in this blue place, and to rest. To rest, and to dream; because she was certain this was
a place where dreams lived, and they would find her if she did not try to fight.

   She slept, as the blue currents folded around her, and the first dreams came in the shape of Sweetpea,
her mother and father already astride the golden horse and urging her to join them for a long day where
there was no sadness, only pure blue sky and sunshine.

   Stevie’s body fell backward, hitting the floor on its right shoulder. The ball, blue and pulsing, jarred
loose from the frozen hands and rolled under the bed, where it slowly turned to ebony again.



                                                 11
                                           Transformation


“I don’t know what kind of bullshit you’re trying to throw,” Jessie said, “but it was no meteor. You know
that as well as I do.”

   Matt Rhodes smiled faintly and lit a cigarette. He was sitting across from Jessie in a back booth at the
Brandin’ Iron Cafe on Celeste Street, a small but tidy place with, appropriately, branding irons adorning
the walls, red-checked tablecloths, and red vinyl seats. The specialty was the Big Beef Burger, the meat
patty seared with the Brandin’ Iron’s private Double X brand; the remnants of a burger lay on the plate in
front of Rhodes. “Okay, Dr. Hammond,” he said when he’d gotten the cigarette going. “Tell me what it
was, then.”

   She shrugged. “How am I supposed to know? I’m not in the air force.”
   “No, but you seemed to have seen the object clearly enough. Come on, give me your opinion.”

   Sue Mullinax, a big-hipped, big-boned blond woman who wore way too much makeup and had
gentle, childlike brown eyes, came over with a coffeepot and poured another cup for both of them. Ten
years ago, Sue had been head cheerleader at Preston High. As she walked away, she left the scent of
Giorgio in her wake. “It was a machine,” Jessie ventured when Sue was out of earshot. “A secret kind of
airplane, maybe. Like one of those Stealth bombers—”

   Rhodes laughed, cigarette smoke bursting from his nostrils. “Lady, you read too many spy novels!
Anyway, everybody and his Aunt Nellie knows about the Stealth by now; it’s sure as hell not a secret
anymore.”

  “If not a Stealth, then something just as important,” she went on, undaunted. “I saw a piece of it,
covered with symbols. They could’ve been Japanese, I guess. Or maybe a combination of Japanese and
Russian. I’m sure they weren’t English. Want to tell me about that?”

   The man’s smile faded. He looked out the window, showing her a hawklike profile. Not far away, the
helicopter still stood in the middle of Preston Park, drawing a crowd. Captain Gunniston sat at the
counter, drinking a cup of coffee and warding off questions from Cecil Thorsby, the balloon-bellied cook
and owner. “I think we’re back to my original inquiry,” the colonel said after another moment. “I’d like to
know what damaged your pickup truck.”

   “And I want to know what fell.” She’d decided not to tell him about the black ball until she got some
answers; Stevie seemed to be safe with it, and there was no hurry to give it up.

   He sighed, stared at her through slightly slitted, hard eyes. “Lady, I don’t know who you think you
are, but—”

   “Doctor,” Jessie said. “I’m a doctor. I wish you’d stop patronizing me.”

   Rhodes nodded. “Doctor it is.” Change tactics, he thought. She wasn’t as dumb as lumber, like the
sheriff and mayor. “Okay. If I told you what it was, you’d have to sign a lot of top-security forms,
probably even have to make the trip to Webb. The red tape’s enough to make a strong man cry, but
after it’s wrapped around your neck, you’re sworn not to reveal anything on penalty of a very long free
room and board courtesy of Uncle Sam.” He hesitated to let that image sink in. “Is that what you want,
Dr. Hammond?”

   “I want to hear the truth. Not bullshit. I want to hear it now, and then I’ll tell you what I know.”

   He worked the knuckles of one hand and tried his best to look unutterably grim. “We snared a Soviet
helicopter a few months ago. The pilot flew it to Japan and defected. The chopper’s bristling with
weaponry, infrareds and sensors, and it’s got a laser targeting system we’ve been wanting to get our
hands on for a long time.” He smoked his cigarette down a little further. No one else was in the cafe but
Gunniston, Cecil, and Sue Mullinax, but the colonel kept his voice just above a whisper. “The technicians
were running tests on the equipment at Holloman AFB in New Mexico—but there was trouble. Evidently
one of the technicians who’d gotten through security was a deep-cover agent, and he grabbed the
chopper and took off. Holloman asked us to help catch him, because he looked to be heading to the
Gulf. Probably was going to be met by Soviet fighters from Cuba. Anyway, we shot him down. No other
choice. The chopper was going to pieces just as he crossed your path; now we’ve got to pick them up
and get out before the press comes hunting us.” He stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray. “That’s it. You
might read the whole story in Time next week if we don’t keep the lid on.”

  Jessie watched him carefully. He was intent on crushing all signs of life from his cigarette. She said, “I
didn’t see any rotors.”

   “Jesus!” Rhodes’s voice was a little too loud, and both Cecil and Gunniston looked over at their
booth. “I’ve told you what I know, la—Dr. Hammond. Take it or leave it, but remember this: you’re
withholding information from the United States government, and that can get you and your entire family in
some real hot water.”

   “I don’t care to be threatened.”

   “I don’t care to play games! Now: did a piece of the machine hit your truck? What exactly
happened?”

   Jessie finished her coffee, taking her time about it. She’d seen no rotors; how could it have been a
helicopter? Still, it had all been so fast. Maybe she didn’t remember what she’d seen, or maybe the
rotors had already been blown off. Rhodes was waiting for her to speak, and she knew she had to tell
him: “Yes,” she said. “The truck got hit. A piece of the thing went right through our engine; you saw the
hole. It was a black sphere, about so big.” She showed him with her hands. “It shot out of the thing and
came straight at us. But the really weird part is that the sphere only seems to weigh a few ounces, and it’s
made out of either glass or plastic but there isn’t a scratch on it. I don’t know anything about Russian
technology, but if they could create a floor wax that tough, we need to get our hands on—”

  “Just a minute, please.” Rhodes had leaned forward. “A black sphere. You actually picked it up?
Wasn’t it hot?”

   “No. It was cool—which was strange, because the other pieces were still smoking.”

   “Did this sphere have symbols on it too?”

   She shook her head. “No, it was unmarked.”

  “Okay.” There was a quaver of excitement in his voice. “So you left the sphere near where your truck
was?”

   “No. We brought it with us.”

   Colonel Rhodes’s eyes widened.

   “My daughter’s got it right now. Over at my house.” She didn’t like the amazed expression on his
face, or the pulse that beat at his temple. “Why? What is it? Some kind of compu—”

  “Gunny!” Rhodes got to his feet, and at once Gunniston was off the counter stool and standing as
well. “Pay the man!” He took Jessie’s elbow, but she pulled away. He took it again, his grip firm. “Dr.
Hammond, will you escort us to your house, please? As quickly as possible?”

    They left the Brandin’ Iron, and outside Jessie wrenched angrily away. Rhodes did not try to grasp
her arm again but he stayed right at her side, with Gunniston a few paces behind. They went around
Preston Park, avoiding the gawkers who were pestering Jim Taggart, the ’copter pilot. Jessie’s heart was
pounding, and she quickened her pace to what was almost a run; the two men stayed with her. “What’s
inside the sphere?” she asked Rhodes, but he did not—or could not—answer. “It’s not going to explode,
is it?” Again, no reply.

   At the house Jessie was glad to see that Stevie had remembered to relock the door—she was
learning responsibility—but at the same time had to spend a few precious seconds fumbling with her
keys. She got the right one into the lock and opened the door. Rhodes and Gunniston followed her
inside, and the captain closed the door firmly behind them.

   “Stevie!” Jessie called. “Where are you?”

   Stevie didn’t answer.

    White light streamed between the window blinds and gridded the walls. “Stevie!” Jessie strode into
the kitchen. The cat-faced clock ticked, and the air conditioning hissed and labored. A chair had been
left near the counter; a cupboard was open, an empty glass in the sink. Thirsty from all that running, she
thought. But Stevie wouldn’t have left the house again, would she? If she had… oh, was she going to be
in for trouble! Jessie went through the den—nothing disturbed in there—and into the hallway that led to
the bedrooms. Rhodes and Gunniston were right behind her. “Stevie!” Jessie called again, really getting
jittery now. Where could she have gone?

   She was almost to the door of Stevie’s bedroom when two hands thrust out along the floor, the
fingers grasping at the beige carpet.

   Jessie abruptly stopped, and Rhodes bumped into her.

   They were Stevie’s hands, of course. Jessie watched the sinews move in them as the fingers dug at
the carpet for traction, and then Stevie’s head came into view— her auburn hair damp with sweat, her
face puffy and moist, droplets of sweat sparkling on her cheeks. The hands pulled Stevie’s body further
into the hallway, muscles twitching in her bare arms. She continued, inch by inch, into the hall, and
Jessie’s hand flew to her mouth. Stevie’s legs trailed behind her, the sneaker gone from the left foot, as if
the child might be paralyzed from the waist down.

   “Ste—” Jessie’s voice cracked.

   The child stopped crawling. Her head slowly, slowly lifted, and Jessie saw her eyes: lifeless, like the
painted eyes of a doll.

   Stevie trembled, drew one leg beneath her with what appeared to be painful effort, and began to try
to stand.

   “Back up,” Jessie heard Rhodes say; he grasped her arm and pulled her back when she didn’t move.

   Stevie had the other leg under her. She wavered, a drop of sweat falling from her chin. Her face was
emotionless, composed, remote. And her eyes: a doll’s eyes, yes—but now Jessie could see a flicker in
them like lightning: a fierceness, a mighty determination that she’d never seen before. She thought, crazily,
That’s not Stevie.

   But the little girl’s body was rising to its feet. The face remained remote, but when the body had finally
reached its full height, what might have been a quick smile of accomplishment darted across the mouth.

   One foot moved forward, as if balancing on a tightwire. The second, sneakerless foot followed—and
suddenly Stevie trembled again and the body fell forward. Jessie didn’t have time to catch her daughter;
Stevie toppled to the carpet on her face, her hands writhing in midair as if they no longer knew quite what
to do.

   She lay face down, the breath hitching in her body.

   “Is she… is she retarded?” Gunniston asked.

   Jessie pulled free from Colonel Rhodes and bent down beside her daughter. The body was shaking,
muscles twitching in the shoulders and back. Jessie touched her arm—and felt a shock travel through her
hand that left the nerves jangling and raw; she instantly pulled her hand back, before the shock wave
reached her shoulder. Stevie’s skin was damp and unnaturally cool, much as the black sphere had been.
The child’s head lifted, the eyes staring into hers without recognition, and Jessie saw blood creeping from
Stevie’s nostrils where she’d banged against the floor.

   It was too much for her, and she came close to fainting. The hallway elongated and twisted like a
funhouse’s corridor; but then somebody was helping Jessie to her feet. It was Rhodes, his breath smelling
of a cigarette, and this time she didn’t fight him. “Where’s the sphere?” she heard him ask. She shook her
head. “She’s out of it, Colonel,” Gunniston said. “Jesus, what’s wrong with the kid?”

   “Check her room out. Maybe the sphere’s in there—but for God’s sake, be careful!”

   “Right.” Gunniston stepped around Stevie’s body and entered the bedroom.

   Jessie’s legs sagged. “Call an ambulance… call Dr. McNeil.”

   “We will. Take it easy, now. Come on.” He helped her out of the hallway and into the den, where he
guided her to a chair. She settled into it, sick and dizzy. “Listen to me, Dr. Hammond.” Rhodes’s voice
was low and calm. “Did you bring anything else back from the site except the sphere?”

   “No.”

   “Anything else about it that you haven’t told me? Could you see anything inside it?”

   “No. Nothing. Oh God… I’ve got to call my husband.”

  “Just sit still for a few minutes.” He restrained her from getting up, which wasn’t too hard since her
muscles felt like wet spaghetti. “Who found the sphere, and how?”

    “Tyler Lucas found it. He lives out there. Wait. Wait.” There was something she hadn’t told him, after
all. “Stevie said… she said she heard it singing.”

   “Singing?”

   “Yes. Only I couldn’t hear anything. I thought… you know, the wreck had shaken her up.” Jessie ran
a hand over her forehead; she felt feverish, everything spinning out of control. She looked up into
Rhodes’s face and saw that his tan had paled. “What’s going on? There wasn’t a Russian helicopter, was
there?” He hesitated a second too long, and Jessie said, “Tell me, dammit!”

   “No,” he answered promptly. “There wasn’t.”

   She thought she was about to throw up, and she kept one hand pressed against her forehead as if in
anticipation of another shock. “The sphere. What is it?”

   “I don’t know.” He lifted a hand before she could protest. “I swear to God I don’t. But…” His face
tightened; he fought against telling her, but to hell with regulations; she had to know. “I think you brought
back a fragment from a spacecraft. An extraterrestrial spacecraft. That’s what came down this morning.
That’s what we were chasing.”

   She stared at him.

  “It caught fire in the atmosphere,” he went on. “Our radars picked it up, and we figured its point of
impact. Only it veered toward Inferno, as if… the pilot was trying to make it closer to town before he
crashed. The craft started going to pieces. There’s not much left, just a mangle of stuff that’s too hot for
anybody to get close to. Anyway, the sphere is part of it—and I want to find out exactly what it is, and
why that didn’t burn up too.”

   She couldn’t speak. But this was the truth; she saw it in his face. “You didn’t answer Gunny’s
question,” Rhodes said. “Is your little girl mentally retarded? Does she have epilepsy? Any other
condition?”

    Condition, Jessie thought. What a diplomatic way of asking if Stevie was out of her mind. “No. She’s
never had any—” Jessie stopped, because Stevie was lurching out of the hallway on rubbery legs, her
arms dangling at her sides. Her head swiveled slowly from right to left and back again, and she came into
the room without speaking. Jessie stood up, ready to catch her if the child stumbled again, but Stevie’s
legs were working better now. Still, she walked strangely—putting one foot precisely in front of the other
as if treading on a skyscraper’s ledge. Jessie stood up, and Stevie stopped with one foot poised in the
air.

   “Where’s the black ball, honey? What’d you do with it?”

   Stevie stared at her, her head cocked slightly to one side. Then, with slow grace, the other foot
touched the floor and she continued on, gliding more than walking; she approached a wall and stood
before it, seemingly absorbed by the pattern of sunlight on the paint.

    “Not in there, Colonel.” Gunniston walked into the den. “I checked the closet, the chest of drawers,
under the bed, the toybox—everything.” He glanced uneasily at the little girl. “Uh… what do we do now,
sir?”

   Stevie turned, a motion as precise and sharp as a dancer’s. Her gaze fixed on Gunniston and stayed
there, then moved to Rhodes, finally latching on to Jessie. Jessie’s heart fluttered; her daughter’s
expression revealed only a clinical curiosity, but neither emotion nor recognition. It was how a vet might
look at an unfamiliar animal. Stevie began that strange gliding walk again, her knees still wobbly, and she
went to a series of framed photographs on a shelf at the bookcase. She looked at each in turn: one of
Jessie and Tom alone, one of the family taken on vacation in Galveston a couple of years ago, one of Ray
and herself on horseback at the state fair, two more of Tom’s and Jessie’s parents. Her fingers twitched,
but she didn’t attempt to use her hands. She moved past the bookcase and the television set, halted again
to gaze at a wall-mounted painting of the desert that Bess Lucas had done—a painting she’d seen a
hundred times, Jessie thought—and then she continued a few steps more to the doorway between the
den and kitchen. She stopped; her right arm lifted, as if battling gravity, and she used her elbow to feel
the doorframe.

   “I don’t really know,” Rhodes replied finally. He sounded as if all the breath had been punched out of
him. “Honest to God, I don’t.”

   “I do!” Jessie shouted. “My daughter needs a doctor!” She started toward the telephone. The Inferno
Health Clinic was a small white stone building a couple of blocks away, and Dr. Earl
Lee—Early—McNeil had been Inferno’s resident physician for almost forty years. He was a crusty
hell-raiser who smoked black cigars, drove a red dune buggy, and drank straight tequila at the Bob Wire
Club, but he knew his business and he’d know how to help Stevie too. She picked up the receiver and
started to dial.

   A finger came down on the disconnect button.

   “Let’s wait just a minute, Dr. Hammond,” Rhodes told her. “Okay? Let’s talk about—”
   “Get your hand off the phone. Now, damn you!”

   “Colonel?” Gunniston said.

  “Please.” Rhodes grasped the receiver. “Let’s don’t bring anyone else into this yet, not until we know
what we’re dealing—”

   “I said I’m calling Dr. McNeil!” Jessie was furious, close either to tears or to slapping him across the
face.

   “She’s moving again, Colonel,” Gunniston told him, and this time both Rhodes and Jessie broke off
their argument.

   Stevie was gliding to another wall, crisscrossed with sunlight. She stopped before it, stood, and
stared. She lifted her right hand, turning it back and forth as if she’d never seen a hand before; the fingers
wiggled. Then she touched her bloody nose with her thumb and regarded the blood for a few seconds.
Looked at the wall again. Her hand moved forward, and her thumb drew a vertical line of blood on the
beige wall. Her thumb went back for more blood, drew a second vertical line a few inches to the right of
the first.

   More blood. A horizontal line cut the two verticals.

   “What the hell… ?” Rhodes breathed, stepping forward.

   A second horizontal line formed a neat grid on the wall. Stevie’s blood-smeared thumb went to the
center space, and made a small, precise O.

   Her head turned. She looked at Rhodes and glided back from the wall, one foot placed behind the
other.

   “Your pen,” Rhodes said to Gunniston. “Give me your pen. Hurry!”

   The captain gave it over. Rhodes clicked the point out and walked to the wall. He drew an X in the
lower right space.

   Stevie stuck her thumb up a nostril and drew a red O in the center left space.

   Jessie watched the game of tic-tac-toe in tortured silence. Her gut was churning and a scream
pounded against her gritted teeth. This creature with a bleeding nose wore Stevie’s skin, but it was not
Stevie. And if that were so, what had happened to her daughter? Where was Stevie’s mind, her voice,
her soul? Jessie’s hands clenched into fists, and she thought for a terrible second that the scream was
going to escape and when that happened it would be all over. She trembled, praying that the nightmare
would snap like a bad heat spell and she would be in bed with Tom calling that breakfast was ready.
Dear God, dear God, dear God…

  Stevie—or the thing that masqueraded as Stevie—blocked the colonel’s win. In the next move,
Rhodes blocked Stevie’s win.

   Stevie stared at Rhodes for a moment, looked again at the grid, then back to Rhodes. The face
rippled, unfamiliar muscles working. A smile moved across the mouth, but the lips were stiff and
unresponsive. She laughed—a whuff! of air forced through the vocal cords. The smile broadened,
pushing the lips aside to show Stevie’s teeth. The face, beaming, became almost the face of a child again.

   Rhodes cautiously returned the smile and nodded his head. Stevie’s head nodded, with more
deliberate effort. Still smiling, she turned away and glided into the hall with her slow wirewalker’s gait.

    Rhodes’s palms were sweating. “Well,” he said, his voice tense and raspy, “I believe we’ve got a
situation here, don’t you, Gunny?”

   “I’d say so, sir.” Gunniston’s spit-and-polish veneer was cracking. His heart boomed and his knees
shook, because he’d realized the same thing as Colonel Rhodes: the little girl was either totally freaked
out, or she was no longer truly a little girl. And why or how something like that could be was far beyond
his logical, four-square mind.

   They heard a voice—an exhalation of breath that made a voice, a weirdly chirring sound like wind
through reeds: “Ahhhhhh. Ahhhhhh. Ahhhhhh.”

   Jessie was the first one to Stevie’s room. Stevie—not-Stevie—was standing before the bulletin
board; her—its—right hand was extended, the finger pointing to the construction-paper alphabet letters.
“Ahhhhhh. Ahhhhhh,” the voice continued, trying to grasp a remembered sound. The face contorted with
the effort of enunciation. Then: “AhhhhA A. A.” Pointed to the next letter. “Beeeee. Ceeeee. Deeeee.
Eeeeee. Effff. Geeeee.” There was consternation over the next.

   “H,” Jessie said softly.

   “Chah. Achah. H.” The head turned, eyes questioning.

   My God, Jessie thought. She grasped the doorframe to keep from falling. An alien with a Texas
accent, wearing my little girl’s skin and hair and clothes. She was about to choke on a scream. “Where’s
my daughter?” she said. Her eyes brimmed. “Give her back to me.”

   What appeared to be a little girl was waiting, pointing to the next letter.

   “Give her back to me,” Jessie repeated. She lunged forward before Rhodes could stop her. “Give her
back!” she shouted, and then Jessie had the figure’s cool arm and was spinning it around, looking into the
face that used to be her daughter’s. “Give her back!” Jessie lifted her hand and slapped the face hard
across the cheek.

   The Stevie-creature staggered back, its knees almost collapsing. It kept its backbone straight and
rigid, but its head bobbed from side to side for a few seconds like one of those absurd kewpie dolls that
nod in the rear windshields of cars. It blinked, perhaps registering pain, and Jessie watched, newly
horrified, as the red blotch of her palm came up on Stevie’s skin.

   Because it was still her daughter’s flesh, even though something else had crawled inside it. Still her
daughter’s face, hair, and body. The not-Stevie touched the red palmprint on her cheek and swiveled
toward the alphabet letters again; she pointed insistently at the next.

   “I,” Colonel Rhodes offered.

   “Iyah,” the creature said. The finger moved.

   “J.” Rhodes glanced quickly at Gunniston as the letter was laboriously repeated. “I think it’s figured
out the sounds are the base of our language. Jesus, Gunny! What have we got here?”

   The captain shook his head. “I wouldn’t care to guess, sir.”

  Jessie stared at the back of Stevie’s head. The hair was the same as it had always been, only wet with
sweat. And in it were flecks of… what were they? Her fingers touched the hair, and picked out a small
piece of something pink, like cotton candy. Insulation, she realized. What were pink bits of insulation
doing in Stevie’s hair? She let the piece drift to the floor, her mind clogged and beginning to skip tracks.
Her face had gone gray with shock.

   “Take her out, Gunny,” Rhodes commanded, and Gunniston led Jessie from the bedroom before she
passed out.

   “K,” Rhodes continued, responding to the moving finger.

   “Kah. K,” the creature managed to say.

   Outside, the two trucks—one hauling a crane and the other marked ALLIED VAN LINES—turned
off Republica Road and passed by Preston Park on Cobre Road, heading for the desert site where
something that had once been a machine had burned to a blue-green ooze.



                                             12
                                 What Makes the Wheels Turn


The three o’clock bell rang. “Lockett and Jurado!” Tom Hammond called out. “You two stay in your
seats. The rest of you can take off.”

    “Hey, man!” Rick Jurado already had his white fedora on and had started out of his desk at the back
left corner of the sweltering classroom. “I didn’t do anythin’!”

   “I didn’t say you did. Just stay seated.”

   Other kids were gathering their books and leaving. Cody Lockett suddenly stood up from his desk at
the room’s right rear corner. “Hell with this! I’m goin’!”

   “Sit down, Lockett!” Tom rose from his own desk. “I just want to talk to the both of you, that’s all.”

   “You can talk to my south end while I’m headed north,” Cody answered, and the group of
Renegades who sat protectively around him broke into laughter. “Class is over, and I’m gettin’ out.” He
strode toward the door, with the others following.

   Tom stepped into his path. The boy kept coming, as if he were going to try to slam right through. Tom
stayed where he was, braced for the impact, and Cody stopped about three feet short of a collision.
Right behind him was a hulking two-hundred-pound senior who always wore a beat-up football helmet
painted in mottled camouflage colors; his name was Joe Taylor, but Tom had never heard any of the
others call him any name but “Tank.” And right now Tank was staring holes through him with
deep-socketed black eyes in a craggy face only a mother could love—a demented mother, at that. Cody
said, “You movin’, or not?”

   Tom hesitated. Rick Jurado had settled back into his seat, smiling thinly. Around him sat several
Hispanic and Indian kids who belonged to the Rattlesnakes. The other seniors who weren’t members of
either “club” had already hurried out, and Tom was alone with the beasts. I’ve started this, he thought;
I’ve got to finish it. He looked directly into Cody Lockett’s haughty gray eyes and said, “Not.”

   Cody chewed on his lower lip. He couldn’t read the teacher’s face, but he knew he hadn’t done
anything wrong. Lately. “You can’t flunk me. I’ve already passed the final.”
   “Just sit down and hear me out. Okay?”

   “Hey, I’ll hear you out, man!” Rick called. He hooked an empty desk toward him and propped both
feet atop it, leaning back with his arms crossed. “Lockett don’t understan’ no English no how, Mr.
Hammon’,” he said, deliberately thickening his accent.

   “Shut your face, spitball,” Tank rumbled.

   At once several Rattlesnakes were on their feet; a skinny, curly-haired boy sitting next to Rick leapt
up. He wore a red bandanna around his forehead and five or six small crucifixes on chains around his
neck. “Fuck you, fat boy!” he shouted in a thin, reedy voice.

   “Your mother and sister.” Tank showed him a middle finger.

    The Hispanic boy almost flung himself over the rows of desks to get at Tank, who outweighed him by
at least seventy pounds—but Rick’s hand shot out and grasped his wrist. “Easy, easy,” he said quietly,
his smile still in place and his gaze aimed at Cody. “Hang back, muchachos. Pequin, you settle down,
man.”

   Pequin, whose real name was Pedro Esquimelas, was trembling with fury, but he allowed himself to
be restrained. He sat down, muttering obscenities in gutter Spanish; the other Rattlers—among them
Chris Torrez, Diego Montana, and Len Redfeather—remained standing and ready for trouble. Tom
could hear disaster knocking at the door; if he didn’t keep control of this, the classroom could erupt into
a battlefield. But at least Pequin had quieted. Tom knew the boy had a fiery temper that got him into a
fight almost every day; his nickname was appropriate, because a pequin was a small chile pepper that
would make the devil reach for Pepto-Bismol.

   “How about it?” Tom asked Cody.

  The boy shrugged. In his locker was the tie rack he’d finally finished; he wanted to get that home and
work a couple of hours for Mr. Mendoza, but otherwise he wasn’t in a hurry. “If I stay, they stay.” He
nodded at his entourage—six tough ’Gades: Will Latham, Mike Frackner, Bobby Clay Clemmons, Davy
Summers, and Tank.

   “Okay. Just sit down.”

   Cody sauntered back to his desk. The others followed his lead. Tank leaned one massive shoulder
against the cinder-block wall and cleaned his fingernails with an unbent gem clip.

   “I’m gettin’ old waitin’, amigo,” Rick announced.

   Tom walked to his desk and sat on its edge. On the blackboard behind him was the outline of a
Robert E. Howard Conan story he’d asked them to read for a discussion of laws in a barbarian culture.
Very few had done it. “Tomorrow’s your last day of school,” he began. “I wanted to—”

   “Oh, madre!” Rick moaned and pulled the fedora down over his eyes. Pequin put his head on his
desk and snored noisily. The ’Gades watched in stony silence.

   Tom’s shirt was wet, sticking to his back and shoulders. The fan was only blowing hot air around.
Tank suddenly burped; it was like a howitzer going off, and brought laughter from the ’Gades and silence
from the Rattlers. Tom tried again: “I wanted to tell you that—” but his voice snagged. None of them
were even looking at him. They didn’t give a shit, had already retreated behind masks of boredom.
Dammit to hell! he thought. I might as well try to lasso the damned moon as get them to listen! But he
was mad now—mad at their bored poses, mad at whoever was supposed to fix the screwed-up air
conditioners, mad at himself for being so stupid. He felt the walls closing in on him, a rivulet of sweat
running down his neck; a surge of anger grew and swelled, thrashed mightily—then broke its bounds and
rushed through him.

   His hand reacted to it first. He picked up the Governments in Transition textbook from his desk
and threw it with all his strength across the room.

   It whacked against the back wall like a gunshot. Pequin jumped and lifted his head. Rick Jurado
slowly pushed the fedora up off his eyes. Tank stopped cleaning his nails, and Cody Lockett’s gaze
sharpened.

  Tom’s face had reddened. “So that gets your attention, huh? A loud noise and a little destruction?
Does that make the wheels turn?”

   “Yeah,” Cody answered. “You should’ve thrown that fuckin’ book against the wall the first day of
class.”

  “Tough guys—and girl,” Tom said, glancing at Maria Navarre, who sat with the Rattlers. “Real tough.
Lockett, you and Jurado have got a lot in common—”

   Rick snorted with derision.

   “A lot in common,” Tom continued. “Both of you have outdone each other acting tough and stupid so
you can impress the losers sitting around you right now. I’ve seen your tests. I know the difference
between bullshitting and holding back. Both of you could’ve done a whole hell of a lot better if you’d—”

   “Man, you’ve got runnin’ off at the mouth!” Cody interrupted.

   “Maybe so.” Rivers of sweat were flowing from Tom’s armpits. He had to keep going. “I know both
of you could’ve done a lot better. But you pretend you’re dumb, or bored—or just fucked up.” The use
of that word cemented their attention. “I say you’re both cowards.”

  There was a long silence. Lockett and Jurado’s expressions were blank. “Well?” Tom prodded.
“Come on! I can’t believe two tough guys like you can’t come up with some sharp—”

   “Yeah, I’ve got somethin’ to say.” Cody stood up. “Class dismissed.”

   “Okay, go ahead! Get out! At least Jurado has the guts to stay and listen!”

   Cody smiled coldly. “You’re walkin’ a mighty fine wire, mister,” he said. “I’ll sit and listen to your shit
durin’ school hours, but when that bell rings it’s my time.” He shook his head, and his skull earring threw
a red glint of sunlight. “Man, who do you think you are? You think you know all the answers, and you
can just spout ’em out? Mister, you don’t know a jackdamn thing about me!”

   “I know you listen in class, whether you want anybody to know it or not. I know you’re a lot smarter
than you let on—”

   “Forget that! Just forget it! When you walk in my shoes, you can preach to me! Until then you can go
straight to hell!” There was a murmur of assent from the other Renegades.

  Someone applauded. Tom looked over at Rick Jurado, who was slowly clapping his hands. “Hey,
Lockett!” he taunted. “You gonna be an actor, man? You oughta win an award or somethin’!”

   “You don’t like it?” Cody’s tone was chilling, but his eyes burned. “You know what you can do
about it, mother-fuck.”

   Rick’s clapping stopped. His body had tensed, his legs about to spring him from his desk. “Maybe I
do, Lockett. Maybe I’ll come burn your fuckin’ house down like your people’ve been burnin’ ours.”

   “Cut the threats,” Tom said.

   “Yeah, make me laugh!” Cody jeered, ignoring the teacher. “We didn’t burn any houses. Hell, you
burned ’em yourself so you could holler that we did it!”

   “You come across that bridge at night, hombre,” Rick said quietly, “and we’ll give you a real hot
fiesta.” A savage grin hung on his lip. “Understand, shitkicker?”

  “I’m shakin’!” In truth, no ’Gade—as far as Cody knew—had set fire to those houses in
Bordertown.

   “Okay, hold it!” Tom demanded. “Why don’t you two forget that gang crap?”

   They glared at him as if he were the most useless insect to ever crawl from a hole. “Man,” Rick said,
“you’re way off base. About that and all this school shit too.” He looked at Tom with bored eyes. “At
least I hung in and finished. I know a lot who didn’t.”

   “And what happened to them?”

   “Some of ’em got rich, dealin’ coke. Some of ’em got dead too.” He shrugged. “Some of ’em went
into other things.”

   “Like working for Mack Cade? That’s not much of a future, and neither is prison.”

   “Neither is crawlin’ every day to a job you hate and kissin’ ass to keep it.” Now Rick had had
enough, and he stood up. “People in this town kissed old man Preston’s ass for about fifty years.
Where’d it get them?”

  Tom started to reply, but the wheels of logic in his brain froze up. He had nothing to counter the
question with.

   “Don’t have all the answers, do you?” Rick continued. “See, you live in a nice house, on a nice street.
You don’t have to listen to somebody tellin’ you where you can and can’t walk, like you were a dog on a
short leash. You don’t know what it’s like to have to fight for everything you’ve got, or ever will have.”

   “That’s not the point. I’m talking about your educa—”

   “That is the fuckin’ point!” Rick yelled, startling Tom into silence. He trembled, clenched his fists,
and waited out the anger. “That is the point,” he repeated tautly. “Not school. Not books written by
dead men. Not kissin’ ass every day until you learn to like the taste. The point is to fight until you get
what you want.”

   “So tell me what you want.”

    “What I want.” Rick smiled bitterly. “I want respect. I want to walk any street I please—even your
street, Mr. Hammond. In the middle of the night, if I want to, without the sheriff slammin’ me up against
his car. I want a future without somebody ridin’ my ass from dawn to sundown. I want to know that
tomorrow’s gonna be better than today. Can you give me those things?”

   “I can’t,” Tom said. “You can give them to yourself. The first thing is not to give up your mind. You
do that and you lose everything, no matter how tough you think you are.”

   “More words.” Rick sneered. “They don’t mean shit. Well, you read your dead men’s books. Teach
’em if you want to. But don’t pretend they really matter, man, because only this matters.” He lifted his
clenched fist, the knuckles scarred from other battles. He turned toward Cody Lockett. “You! Listen up!
Your whore hurt one of my men today. Hurt him real bad. And I got a visit this mornin’ from that other
whore, the one with the badge. You got a deal with Vance? You payin’ him to let you burn down our
houses?”

   “You’re crazy as hell.” Cody had about as much use for Sheriff Vance as a coyote had for a
sidewinder.

  “I owe you some pain, Lockett. For Paco LeGrande,” Rick went on. “And I’m tellin’ you that any of
my people who cross that damned bridge better be left alone.”

   “They come over at night, they’re askin’ to be stomped. We’ll be real glad to oblige.”

   “Man, you’re not the fuckin’ king around here!” Rick shouted, and before he could think about it he
picked up the desk in front of him and flung it aside. At once all the Rattlers and Renegades were on their
feet, separated only by the imaginary line that divided the classroom. “We’ll go where we please!”

   “Not across the bridge at night,” Cody warned. “Not into ’Gade territory.”

  “Okay, settle down.” Tom stepped between them. He felt like an utter fool for having thought this
would do any good. “Fighting isn’t going to—”

   “Shut up!” Rick snapped. “You’re out of this, man!” He kept staring at Cody. “You want a war? You
keep pushin’ it.”

   “Hey!” Oh, Christ! Tom thought. “I don’t want to hear any of that—”

   Tank started to lunge at Rick Jurado, but Cody grasped his arm. He figured the Rattlers were
carrying blades, like all wetbacks did. Anyway, he didn’t like the odds and this wasn’t the time or place.
“Big man,” Cody said. “Big talk.”

   “I’ll let my boot talk to your ass!” Rick threatened; he kept his tough mask on, but inside he didn’t
want a showdown just yet. He didn’t like the odds and, anyway, he figured all the ’Gades were packing
knives. His own blade was in his locker, and he didn’t allow any of the other Rattlers to bring knives to
school.

  “Let’s get it on right now!” Pequin whooped. Rick restrained the urge to bash him in the mouth.
Pequin liked to start fights, but he rarely finished them.

   “You call it, Jurado,” Cody challenged, and almost winced when Tank started making a clucking
chicken noise to goad the Rattlers.

  “There’s not going to be any fighting!” Tom shouted, but he knew they weren’t listening. “You hear
me? If I see any trouble in the parking lot, I’m going up to the office and call the sheriff! Got it?”

   “Fuck the sheriff!” Bobby Clay Clemmons bellowed. “We’ll whip his ass too!”

  The moment stretched. Cody was ready for the Rattlers to make the first move, and he was
measuring a blow to Jurado’s solar plexus; but Rick stood rock-steady, awaiting the attack that he knew
was coming.
   A figure limped into the doorway. Abruptly halted. “Oh! Red says stop!”

   Cody glanced over his shoulder, but he already knew who it was from the high, childlike voice. The
man in the doorway wore a faded gray uniform, carried a mop, and pushed a combination bucket and
wringer. He was in his early sixties, his moon-shaped face ravaged by deep lines and brown age spots,
his white hair cropped so close to the scalp it looked like a fine layer of sand. At his left temple there was
an unmistakable indentation in his head. The little name tag on his custodian’s uniform said “Sarge.”
“Sorry, Mr. Hammond. Didn’t know anybody was still here. Green says go!” He started to leave,
favoring a right leg that folded up at the knee joint like an accordian.

   “No! Wait!” Tom called. “We’re just clearing out. Aren’t we?” he asked Rick and Cody.

   The only sound was Pequin cracking his knuckles.

   Cody took the initiative. “You want a nitro lesson, you know where to find me. Anytime, anyplace.
But you’re gonna stay off ’Gade territory after dark.” Before the other boy could reply, Cody turned his
back and stalked to the door. Tank stood watchful guard while the Renegades followed, then he left as
well.

   Rick started to shout a profanity, but checked it. This wasn’t the time; it would come, but not now.

   Pequin hollered it for him: “Fuck you, assholes!”

  “Hey!” Sarge Dennison scowled. “Mama’ll wash out that dirty mouth!” He glared reproachfully at
Pequin, then dipped the mop in his bucket and went to work,

  “It’s been a real rush, Mr. Hammond,” Rick told him. “Maybe next time we can all come over to your
house for milk and cookies.”

  Tom’s heart was still racing, but he made the effort to at least appear composed. “Just remember
what I said. You’re too smart to throw your life a—”

   Rick gathered saliva and spat on the linoleum. Sarge stopped mopping, his expression a deuce of
righteous anger and bewilderment. “You just wait!” Sarge said. “Scooter’ll chew your legs off!”

   “I’m real scared.” Everybody knew Sarge was crazy, but Rick liked him. And he kind of admired
Mr. Hammond for what he’d just tried to do, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to cut the teacher any
slack. That just wasn’t how things were done. “Let’s haul,” he told the other Rattlers, and they left the
classroom chattering in Spanish, laughing and beating on lockers with an overspill of nervous energy. In
the corridor, Rick whacked Pequin on the back of his head a little too roughly to be just jiving, but
Pequin grinned anyway, showing a silver tooth at the front of his mouth.

    Tom stood listening to their noise recede along the hall like a wave washing toward a distant shore.
He did not belong to their world, and he felt incredibly stupid. Worse than that: he felt old. Damn, what a
fiasco! I almost stirred up a gang war! he thought.

   “Settle down, boy. They’re gone now,” Sarge said as he mopped the floor.

   “Pardon?”

   “Just talkin’ to Scooter.” Sarge nodded toward an empty corner. “He gets jumpy around them guys.”

  Tom nodded. Sarge returned to work, his wrinkled face a study of concentration. As Tom
understood, “Sarge” Dennison had been hurt as a young soldier in the last months of World War II, and
the shock had left him with the mind of a child. He’d been on the custodial staff for over fifteen years, and
he lived in a small adobe house at the end of Brazos Street, across from the Inferno Baptist Church. The
ladies of the Sisterhood Club brought him home-cooked dinners and kept watch over him so he wouldn’t
wander the streets in his pajamas, but otherwise he was pretty self-sufficient. The matter of Scooter,
though, was something quite different: Sarge would look at you as if you were deranged if you didn’t
agree that a dog—of uncertain breed—was curled up in an empty corner, perched in a chair, or sitting at
his feet. Sure there’s a Scooter! Sarge would say, pointing to the fact that Scooter was fast and shy and
often didn’t want to be seen but that food left in Scooter’s dish on the front porch in the evening would
be gone by first light. The ladies of the Sisterhood Club had long ago stopped trying to tell Sarge there
was no Scooter, because he cried too easily.

   “They’re not so tough,” Sarge said, swabbing up Jurado’s spit. “Those guys, I mean. They’re just
actin’ is all.”

   “Maybe so.” That was no consolation, though. Tom was jangled to the core. It was three-fifteen, and
Ray would be waiting at the car. He opened the top drawer of his desk and got his keys. For some
reason he thought of the car keys that must be somewhere in the Perez house, and he wondered if Mr.
Perez ever held them and weighed them against the life of his son. He felt the swift current of time
passing, and he knew that at this moment vultures were circling over the Great Fried Empty. He closed
his drawer. “See you tomorrow, Sarge.”

   “Green says go,” Sarge said, and Tom walked out of the sun-streaked classroom.



                                                 13
                                             Cody’s House


As he swerved the motorcycle onto Brazos, Cody felt his gut clench: an instinctive reaction, like the
tightening of muscles before a punch landed. His house wasn’t very far, standing near the corner of
Brazos and Sombra. His rear tire tossed dust from the gutter, and on her front porch the Cat Lady, a
broom in her gnarled hands, shouted, “Slow down, you germ!”

   He had to smile. The Cat Lady—the widow Mrs. Stellenberg, her real name was—always stood out
there sweeping about this time of day, and she always shouted the same thing as Cody sped past. It was
a game they played. The Cat Lady had no family but for her dozen or so felines; they multiplied so fast
Cody couldn’t keep count, but the things sneaked all over the neighborhood and wailed like babies at
night.

    His heart was beating harder. His house—weathered gray clapboard, the shutters closed at every
window—was coming up on the right. Parked at the curb was his father’s junker, an old dark brown
Chevy with rusted bumpers and a bashed-in passenger door. A layer of dust lay on the car, and Cody
immediately saw that it was in exactly the same position it had been in this morning, both the right side
tires pinched on the curb. Which meant that his father had either walked to work at the Inferno Bake
Shoppe or that he just hadn’t gone at all. And if the old man had been alone in that stifling house all day,
there could be a fierce storm brewing between the walls.

   Cody drove the motorcycle up over the curb, past the Fraziers’ house, and onto his small front yard.
The only thing growing there was a clump of needle-tipped yucca, and even that was going brown. He
stopped the motorcycle at the foot of the porch’s concrete steps and cut the engine; it died with a clatter
that he knew was bound to alert the old man.

   He got off and unzipped his denim jacket. Held inside it was his manual-arts project. It was no
ordinary tie rack: it was about sixteen inches long, cut from a piece of rosewood, sanded and smoothed
until its surface felt like cool velvet. Squares of white plastic had been painstakingly streaked with silver
paint to resemble mother-of-pearl and inserted into the wood to form a beautiful checkerboard pattern.
The edges had been shaped and scalloped; two more pieces of inlaid rosewood were jointed in place to
hold the wooden dowel from which the ties would hang, and the entire piece was carefully polished
again. Mr. Odeale, the shop teacher, had said it was a good-looking work but couldn’t understand why
Cody had been so slow with it. Cody detested anyone watching over his shoulder; a C was all he could
hope for, but as long as he passed he didn’t care.

   He enjoyed working with his hands, though he’d pretended that manual arts was sheer drudgery. As
president of the ’Gades, he was expected by his people to show a healthy disdain for most everything,
especially if it had to do with school. But his hands seemed to figure out things before his head did;
woodworking was a snap for him, and so was fixing the cars at Mr. Mendoza’s Texaco station. He’d
been meaning to put aside time to tune up his Honda, but he figured it was kind of like the story of the
shoemaker’s kids who went barefoot. Anyway, he’d get around to it one of these afternoons.

  He removed his goggles and slipped them into a pocket. His hair was wild and tangled and full of
dust. He didn’t want to climb those cracked concrete steps and go through that front door; but it was the
house he lived in, and he knew he had to.

   In and out, he thought as he took the first step. In and out.

  The screen door’s hinges shrieked like a scalded cat. Cody pushed on through the flimsy wooden
door into the gloom. Captured heat almost sucked the breath from his lungs, and he left the inner door
open so some of it could drift out. Already he smelled the sour reek of the old man’s Kentucky Gent
bourbon.

   An electric fan whirred in the front room, moving heavy air around. On the table before the stained
sofa was a scatter of playing cards, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, and a dirty glass. The
door to his father’s bedroom was shut. He stopped to open two of the windows, then started for the
door to his own room with the tie rack clutched under his arm.

   But before he reached that door he heard the other one squeak open. His legs turned heavy. And
then there came the voice, raspy as a warped saw blade and ominously slurred: “What’re you doin’
sneakin’ around in here?”

   Cody didn’t reply. He kept going, and the voice shouted, “Stop and answer me, boy!”

   His knees locked. He stopped, his head lowered and his gaze fixed on one of the blue roses in the
threadbare rug.

   The old man’s footsteps creaked on the tired floor. Coming nearer. The smell of Kentucky Gent was
stronger. That and body odor. And, of course, Aqua Velva; the old man slapped that stuff all over his
face, neck, and underarms and called it washing. The footsteps halted.

   “So what it is?” the old man asked. “You didn’t want me to hear you?”

   “I… thought you were sleepin’,” Cody said. “I didn’t want to wake you u—”

   “Bullshit and double bullshit. Who told you to open those windows? I don’t like that goddamned sun
in here.”

   “It’s hot. I thought—”

   “You’re too dumb to think.” The footsteps moved again. The shutters were slammed, cutting the light
to a dusty gray haze. “I don’t like the sun,” the old man said. “It gives you skin cancer.”

   It had to be ninety degrees in the house. Sweat crawled under Cody’s clothes. The footsteps came
toward him once more, and Cody felt his skull earring being tugged. He looked up into his father’s face.

   “Why don’t you get one of these in your other ear?” Curt Lockett asked. His eyes were muddy gray,
sunken into nests of wrinkles in a square-jawed, bony face. “Then everybody would know you were a
whole queer instead of just half a queer.”

   Cody pulled his head away, and his father let him go. “You been to school today?” Curt asked.

   “Yes sir.”

    “You kick a wetback’s ass today?”

   “Almost did,” Cody replied.

   “Almost ain’t doin’.” Curt ran the back of his hand across his dry lips and walked to the sofa. The
springs squalled when he flopped down. He had the same wiry build as his son, the same wide shoulders
and lean hips. His hair was dark brown, shot through with gray and thinning on top, and he wore it
combed back in a stiff Vitalis-frozen pompadour. Cody’s curly blond hair came from his mother, who
had died giving him birth in an Odessa hospital. Curt Lockett was only forty-two, but his need for
Kentucky Gent and long nights at the Bob Wire Club had aged him by at least ten years. He had heavy
bags of flesh beneath his eyes, and deep lines carved his face on either side of a narrow, chiseled nose.
He was dressed in his favorite outfit: no shoes or socks, jeans with patched knees, and a flaming-red shirt
with pictures of cowboys lassoing steers embroidered on the shoulders. The shirt was open, showing his
thin, sallow chest. He took a pack of Winstons from his pocket and lit a cigarette with a match. Cody
watched the flame waver as his father’s fingers shook. “Wetbacks gonna take over this earth,” Curt
announced as he exhaled a lungful of smoke. “Take everythin’ and want more. Ain’t no way to stop ’em
but kick ’em in the ass. Ain’t that right?”

   Cody was a second late in answering. “Ain’t that right?” Curt repeated.

   “Yes sir.” Cody started for his room but his father’s voice stopped him again.

   “Whoa! I didn’t say you could go nowhere. I’m talkin’ to you, boy.” He took another long pull from
the cigarette. “You goin’ to work today?”

   Cody nodded.

   “Good. I need me some smokes. Think that old wetback’ll give you a carton?”

   “Mr. Mendoza’s okay,” Cody told him. “He’s not like the other ones.”

  Curt was silent. He drew the cigarette from his mouth and stared at the burning end. “They’re all the
same,” he said quietly. “All of ’em. If you think different, Mendoza’s got you foxed, boy.”

   “Mr. Mendoza’s always been—”

   “What’s this Mister Mendoza bullshit?” Curt glared across the room at his son. Damn the boy! he
thought. He’s got rocks for brains! “I say they’re all alike, and that finishes it. Are you gonna get me the
smokes or not?”

   Cody shrugged, his head lowered. But he could feel his father watching him, and he had to say, “I
will.”

   “All right, then. We’re settled.” He returned the cigarette to the corner of his mouth, and the ash
glowed red as he inhaled. “What’s that thing?”

   “What thing?”

   “That thing. Right there.” Curt jabbed a finger at him. “Under your arm. What’s that?”

   “Nothin’.”

   “I ain’t gone blind yet, boy! I asked you what it was!”

   Cody slowly took the tie rack from under his arm. His palms were wet. Sweat trickled down his
neck, and he longed for a breath of fresh air. He had trouble looking at his father, as if his eyes couldn’t
bear the sight; and whenever he was close to the old man, something inside him felt dead, heavy, ready to
be buried. But whatever that dead thing was, it sometimes gave a surprising kick, and the gravediggers
would not come to dispose of it. “Just a tie rack,” he explained. “I made it at school.”

   “Lordy Mercy.” Curt whistled, stood up, and came toward Cody, who retreated a pace before he
caught himself. “Hold that up so I can see it.” Curt reached out, and Cody let him touch it. His father’s
nicotine-stained fingers caressed the smooth rosewood and the simulated mother-of-pearl squares. “You
made this? Who helped you?”

   “Nobody.”

    “I swear, that’s a fine piece of work! Them edges are smoother ’n free pussy! How long it take you
to do this?”

  Cody wasn’t used to being praised by the old man, and it made him even more jittery. “I don’t know.
Awhile, I guess.”

  “A tie rack.” Curt grunted and shook his head. “That beats all. I never knew you had it in you to do
somethin’ like this, boy. Who taught you?”

   “I just learned. Kind of hit-and-miss.”

   “Pretty thing. I swear it is. I like those little silver squares. Makes it fancy, don’t it?”

   Cody nodded. And bolstered by his father’s interest, he dared to step over the line that they had
drawn between them a long time ago, over nights of shouting, cold silence, drunken brawls, and curses.
Cody’s heart was pounding. “Do you really like it?”

   “Sure do.”

   Cody held it toward his father. His hands were trembling. “I made it for you,” he said.

  Curt Lockett stared at him, his face slack. His haggard eyes moved to the tie rack, to his son’s face,
and back again. Slowly, he reached out with both hands and took the tie rack, and Cody let him have it.
“Lordy Mercy.” Curt’s voice was soft and respectful as he drew the tie rack to his chest. “Lordy Mercy.
This is better than you could buy at a store, ain’t it?”
   “Yes sir.” The dead thing deep inside Cody suddenly twitched.

   Curt’s fingers played over the wood. He had the scarred, rough hands of a man who had dug ditches,
laid pipes, and mortared bricks since he was thirteen years old. He cradled the tie rack like a child, and
he went back to the sofa and sat down. “This is mighty fine,” Curt whispered. “Mighty fine.” Cobwebs of
smoke from the burning cigarette drifted past his face.

   “I used to do carpentry,” he said, his eyes focused on nothing. “Long time back. Took the jobs that
came along. Your mama used to pack a lunch for me, and she’d say, ‘Curt, you do me proud today,’
and I’d answer, ‘I will, Treasure.’ That’s what I called your mama: Treasure. Oh, she was a pretty thing.
You could look at her and believe in miracles. She was so pretty… so pretty. Treasure. That’s what I
called your mama.” His eyes glistened, and he bowed his head with both hands curled around the tie
rack.

   Cody heard his father make a choking sound, and the thing inside him kicked at his heart. He’d seen
his old man cry drunk tears before, but this was different. These tears smelled of hurt instead of whiskey.
He didn’t know if he could handle the sight or not. He wavered, and then he took a step toward the old
man. The second step came easier, and the third was easier still. He lifted his hand to touch the old man’s
shoulder.

   Curt’s body shook. He wheezed like he was having a choking fit; and then he suddenly lifted his head,
and Cody saw that even though his father’s eyes were wet, the old man was laughing. His laughter got
harder and harsher, until it boomed from his throat like the snarl of a wild beast.

  “You’re the damnedest fool!” Curt managed to say, snorting with laughter. “The damnedest fool! You
know I ain’t got no ties!”

   Cody’s outstretched hand clenched into a fist. He drew it back against his side.

   “Not a one!” Curt hollered, and his head rocked back as the choked laughter spilled out. Tears ran
through the cracks around his eyes. “Lordy Mercy, what a fool I’ve raised!”

   Cody stood very still. A pulse beat at his temple. His lips were tight, and they hid his gritted teeth.

  “Why the hell didn’t you make me a footstool, boy? I coulda used a footstool! How the hell am I
gonna use a tie rack when I don’t own no ties!”

  The boy let his father’s laughter go on for another thirty seconds or so. And finally Cody said, clearly
and firmly, “You didn’t go to the bakery today, did you?”

  The laughter gurgled to a halt like a clogged drain backing up. Curt coughed a few times, his eyes still
watery, and crushed his cigarette out on the burn-scarred tabletop. “Naw. What the fuck is it to you?”

   “I’ll tell you what it is to me,” Cody answered. His spine was rigid, and his eyes looked like scorched
holes. “I’m tired of takin’ up your slack. I’m tired of workin’ at the gas station and watchin’ you piss the
money down the toi—”

    “You watch your mouth!” Curt stood up, one hand gripping the tie rack and the other cocked into a
fist.

   Cody flinched but did not retreat. His guts were full of fire and fury, and he had to get it all out. “You
heard me! I’m not coverin’ for you anymore! I’m not callin’ that freakin’ bakery and tell ’em you’re too
sick to work! Hell, they know you’re a drunk! Everybody knows you’re not worth a piss-ant’s damn!”
  Curt bellowed and swung at his son, but Cody was faster by far. The man’s fist plowed through
empty air.

  “Yeah, try to hit me!” Cody backpedaled out of range. “Come on, you old bastard! Just try to hit
me!”

    Curt lurched forward, tripped, and stumbled over the table. Hollering with rage, he went down onto
the floor in a flurry of playing cards and ashes.

   “Come on! Come on!” Cody urged wildly, and he started running to the windows and flinging the
shutters open. Searing white sunlight flooded the room, exposing the dirty rug, the cracked walls, the
beat-up secondhand furniture. The sunlight fell upon the man who was trying to stagger to his feet at the
center of the room, and he threw his hand over his eyes and screamed, “Get out! Get out of my house,
you little fuck!” He flung the tie rack in Cody’s direction. It whacked against the wall and fell to the floor.

   Cody didn’t look at it. “I’ll go,” he said, his chest heaving but his voice cold now, his eyes as muddy
as his father’s as he watched the old man shield his face from the sun. “Sure, I’ll go. But I’m not coverin’
for you anymore. If you lose the job, it’s your ass.”

   “I’m a man!” Curt shouted. “You can’t talk to me like that! I’m a man!”

   Now it was Cody’s turn to laugh—a bitter, wounded sound. Inside him the weight of the dead thing
had gotten heavier. “You just remember.” He turned toward the door to get out.

   “Boy!” Curt’s voice boomed. Cody paused. “You’d better be glad your mama’s dead, boy,” Curt
seethed. “’Cause if she was still alive, she’d hate you as much as I do.”

    Cody was instantly out the door; it slammed shut like a trap at his back. He sprinted down the steps
to his motorcycle and drew the desert air into his lungs to clear his head, because for a second there he’d
felt like his brain was being squeezed inside a small box and one more ounce of pressure would’ve made
it blow. “You people crazy over there?” Stan Frazier called from his own porch, his gut hanging over the
belt of his trousers. “What’s all the hollerin’ about?”

   “Kiss my ass!” Cody flipped the man a bird as he got onto the Honda and kickstarted it. Frazier’s
face turned crimson; he wobbled down the steps after Cody, but the boy accelerated so rapidly that the
motorcycle’s front wheel reared up and the rear tire shot sand into the air. Cody tore across the yard and
swerved onto Brazos Street, spinning the red Honda around in a skidding turn that left its signature on the
pavement.

   Inside the house, Curt stood up and squinted. He stumbled forward, hurriedly closed the shutters
again. He felt better when the light was sealed away; he remembered that his father had died with the
brown blotches of skin cancer all over his face and arms while the deeper, darker cancer ate his insides
away, and that memory was never far from his nightmares. “Damn kid,” he muttered. Shouted it: “Damn
kid!” If he’d talked to his old man the way that kid spoke to him, he’d be six feet under; as it was, his
back and legs still carried a few scarred welts, some of his old man’s best swings with a shaving strop.

   He walked to the screen door, could smell the exhaust of Cody’s motorcycle lingering in the air.
“Lockett!” It was Frazier’s voice. “Hey, Lockett! I wanna talk to you!” Curt closed the inner door and
turned the latch. Now the only light came through cracks in the shutters, and the heat settled. He liked to
sweat; it cleared the poisons out of a man’s system.

  There was enough light for Curt to see the tie rack on the floor. He picked it up. One end of the little
wooden dowel had split and come loose and one of the perfectly carved edges was a splintered ruin, but
other than that it was okay. Curt had never known the boy could do such work. It reminded him of what
his own hands used to do, back when he was young and tough and he had Treasure at his side.

  That was long before Curt had been sitting in a hospital waiting room, and a doctor with a Mexican
name had come to tell him that he had a son. But—and Curt could still feel the pressure of the Mexican
doctor’s hand on his shoulder—would he please come back to the office? There was something else,
something very important, that needed to be talked about.

   It was because Treasure had been so frail. Because her body was giving everything to the baby.
Odds were ten thousand to one, the Mexican doctor had said. Sometimes a woman’s body was so tired
and worn out that the shock of childbirth was too much. Complications set in—but, señor, your wife has
blessed you with a healthy little boy. Under the circumstances, they both might have died, and for this
baby’s life you can give thanks to God.

   There had been forms to sign. Curt couldn’t read very well; Treasure had done all the reading. So he
just pretended, and scrawled where his name was supposed to be.

   Curt’s hand clenched the tie rack, and he almost smashed it against the wall again. It was just like
Cody, he realized. What damned good was a kid without a mother? And what damned good was a tie
rack without a tie? But he didn’t smash it, because it was a pretty thing. He took it with him into his
bedroom, where the bed was rumpled and the clothes were dirty and four empty bottles of Kentucky
Gent were lined up atop the chest of drawers.

  Curt switched on the overhead light and sat down on his bed. He retrieved the half bottle of Kentucky
Gent with its trademark happy colonel on the label from the floor and unscrewed the cap. His elbow
bent, his mouth accepted, and the taste of life shocked his throat.

  But he felt so much better with whiskey inside him. Already stronger. His mind already clearer. He
could reason things out again, and after a few more swallows he decided he wasn’t going to let Cody get
away with talking uppity. Hell, no! He was a man, by God! And it was high time he cut that damn kid
down a few pegs.

   His gaze wandered to the framed photograph on the little table next to the bed. The picture was
sun-faded, many-times-creased, stained with either whiskey or coffee, he couldn’t remember. It showed
a seventeen-year-old girl in a blue-striped dress, her blond hair boiling in thick curls around her shoulders
and aglow with sunlight. She was smiling and making an okay sign for Curt, who’d snapped the photo
with an Instamatic four days before they were married. Even then the kid had been growing inside her,
Curt thought. Less than nine months later, she would be dead. Why he’d kept the kid he didn’t know,
but his sister had helped him out before she got married for the third time and moved to Arizona. The kid
was part of Treasure, and maybe that was why he’d decided to raise Cody himself. That was the name
they’d already decided on if the kid was a boy.

   He ran a finger over the sunlit hair. “It’s not right,” he said softly. “It’s not right that I got old.”

   Swig by swig, the half bottle died. The burn pulsed in his gut, like the center of a volcano that
demanded more sacrifices. When he realized the bottle was gone, he remembered that there was another
up on the closet’s shelf. He got up, stumbled to the closet—howdy there, legs!—and reached up for it,
groping amid old shirts, socks, and a couple of cowboy hats to where he’d stashed the juice. He didn’t
trust the damn kid not to pour the stuff down the drain when his back was turned.

  He had to stretch way up to the dusty rear of the shelf before his fingers found the familiar shape.
“There y’are! Gotcha, didn’t I?” He pulled it free, dislodging a leather belt, a ragged blue shirt, and
something else that fell to the floor at his feet.
   Curt’s cocked grin fractured.

   It was a necktie, white with red-and-blue circles all over it.

   “Lordy Mercy,” Curt whispered.

    At first he couldn’t place the thing. But then he thought he recalled buying it to wear when the federal
safety boys had toured the copper mine and he was an assistant foreman on the railroad loading dock.
Long time back, before a Mexican took his job away from him. Curt leaned over to get it, staggered, lost
his balance, and fell to the floor on his side. He realized he still had the tie rack gripped in his other hand,
and he carefully set the Kentucky Gent aside, righted himself, and picked up the necktie. From it wafted
a stale hint of Vitalis.

   He had to concentrate to steady his hand; he looped the tie around the tie rack’s dowel. It looked
real pretty against the smooth wood and the silver squares. A thrill coursed through him, and he wanted
Cody to see this. The boy was in the other room; Curt had heard him come in just a minute ago, when
the screen door’s hinges squealed. “Cody!” he shouted, trying to get up. He finally got his legs under
himself and was able to stand. He stumbled to the bedroom door. “Cody, looky here! Looky what I—”

   He almost fell through the door into the front room. But Cody was not there, and the only noise was
the fan’s sluggish stuttering. “Cody?” he asked, the tie trailing from the tie rack in his hand. There was no
answer, and Curt rubbed the side of his head with numb fingers. He remembered having a fight with
Cody. That was yesterday, wasn’t it? Oh, Lord! he thought, speared by panic. I’d better get to the
bakery or Mr. Nolan’ll skin me! But he was very tired, and his legs were unsteady; he thought he might
be coming down with the flu. Missing one day at the bakery wouldn’t hurt anything; those cakes, pies,
and rolls would get baked whether he was there or not and, anyway, there wasn’t much business.

   Cody’ll cover for me, Curt decided. Always has before. He’s a good ol’ kid.

   Mighty thirsty, he thought. Mighty, mighty thirsty! And cradling the tie rack with its single ugly tie
against his chest, he staggered back into the bedroom, where time folded and refolded and the happy
colonel held dominion.



                                                  14
                                            Daufin’s Desire


“What do you mean, she’s changed?” Tom blinked, his senses whirling. He looked at Jessie, who was
leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed and hands cupping her elbows. She stared at a place
on the floor, her eyes dark and distant, her attention turned inward. “Jessie, what’s he talking about?”

    “I don’t mean your daughter’s changed physically.” Matt Rhodes was trying to speak in a calm and
comforting voice, but he didn’t know how successful he was being since his own insides seemed to be
tangled into twitching knots. He’d pulled a chair up so that he was only a few feet from where Tom
Hammond sat on the sofa, directly facing the man. Ray, just as shocked as his father at coming home and
finding two air-force officers, was sitting in a chair to the left. White stripes of sunlight painted the
living-room walls. “Physically, she’s the same,” Rhodes emphasized. “It’s just… well, there’s been a
mental change.”

   “A mental change,” Tom repeated, the words as heavy as stones.
   “The object that crossed your wife’s path this morning,” Rhodes said, “might have come from
anywhere in space. All we know about it is that it entered the atmosphere, caught fire, and crashed.
Now: this other thing that came out of it—the black sphere—has to be found. Captain Gunniston and I
have gone through the house pretty thoroughly; we’ve searched everywhere we figure she could’ve
reached, but she could barely crawl when we got here, so we can’t figure how she disposed of it. Your
daughter did have it when Mrs. Hammond called here around ten-thirty.”

  Tom closed his eyes, because the room had started to revolve. When he opened them, the colonel
was still there. “This black sphere. What is it?”

   “We don’t know that, either. As I said, your daughter seemed to hear something from it that no one
else could—a singing, she called it. Could’ve been an aural beacon, maybe tuned in some way to your
child’s brain waves or something; like I said, we don’t know. But, Captain Gunniston and I both agree
that…” He paused, trying to think of a way to say this. There was no way but to plow straight ahead.
“We both agree that there’s been a transference.”

   Tom just stared at him.

   “A mental transference,” Rhodes said. “Your daughter… isn’t who she appears to be. She still looks
like a little girl, but she’s not. Whatever’s in your den, Mr. Hammond, is not human.”

   “Oh,” Tom said softly, as if the wind had been punched out of him.

   “We think the transference was caused by the black sphere. Why that happened, or how, we don’t
know. We’re dealing with things here that are pretty damned strange—which I guess is the
understatement of the year, huh?” He smiled tensely. Tom’s expression remained blank. “There’s a
reason I’m here,” the colonel continued. “When the object started coming down, and the tracking
computer verified that it wasn’t a meteor or a malfunctioning satellite, I was called onto special duty. I’ve
worked for over six years with the Bluebook Project—investigating UFO sightings, talking to witnesses,
going to close-encounter sites all over the country. So I’ve had experience with UFO phenomena.”

   Tom took his glasses off and cleaned the lenses on his shirt. It seemed very important to him that the
lenses be spotless. Jessie was still lost in her thoughts, but Ray suddenly broke out of his own trance and
said, “You mean… you’ve seen a real flying saucer? Like from another planet?”

    “Yes, I have,” Rhodes answered without hesitation; this whole incident was going to be a new chapter
in the security procedures book anyway, so he figured he might as well tell the truth. “Ninety percent of
what’s reported are meteor fragments, ball lightning, pranks, that kind of thing. But the ten percent is
something else entirely. An ETV—extraterrestrial vehicle—crashed in Vermont three years ago. We got
samples of the metal and parts of alien bodies. Another one came down in Georgia last summer—but it
was a totally different design, and the pilot was a different life form from the Vermont incident.” I’m
revealing national secrets to a kid with orange spikes in his hair! he realized. But Ray was paying rapt
attention, while Tom had mentally checked out and was still scrubbing his glasses. “So, considering all the
sightings of differently shaped ETVs, we’ve concluded that Earth is near… well, a superhighway in
space. A corridor from one part of the galaxy to another, maybe. Some of the ETVs, like our cars, they
break down; they get sucked into Earth’s atmosphere, and they crash.”

   “Wow,” Ray whispered, his eyes huge behind his glasses.

    For revealing that information without authority, Rhodes knew he could get life in prison, but the
circumstances warranted explanation and—besides—nobody ever believed such stories anyway unless
they’d had a personal close encounter. He returned his gaze to Tom. “My crew is cleaning up the crash
site. We’ll be ready to leave around midnight. And… I’m going to have to take the creature with me.”
   “She’s my daughter.” Jessie’s voice was weak, but gaining strength again. “She’s not a creature!”

   Rhodes sighed; they’d already been over this several agonizing times. “We have no choice but to take
the creature to Webb, and from there to a research lab in Virginia. There’s no way we can let such a
thing run loose; we don’t know what its intentions are, or anything about its biology, chemistry, or—”

   “Psychology,” Tom finished for him; he put his glasses back on with trembling fingers. His wits had
clicked back into gear, though everything still seemed hazy and dreamlike.

    “Right. That too. So far, she—I mean, it—has been nonthreatening, but you never know what might
set it off.”

  “Gnarly, man!” Ray said. “My sister the alien!”

   “Ray!” Jessie snapped, and the boy’s grin faded. “Colonel Rhodes, we’re not going to let you take
Stevie.” Her voice cracked. “She’s still our daughter.”

  “Still looks like your daughter.”

   “Okay! So whatever’s in her might leave! If her body’s fine, then her mind might come back—”

   “Colonel!” Gunniston appeared in the doorway between the living room and den. His freckled face
had paled even more, and he looked like what he was: a scared twenty-three-year-old kid in an air-force
uniform. “She’s on the last volume.”

   “We’ll talk about this later,” Rhodes told Jessie, and stood up. He hurried into the den, with Ray at
his heels. Tom put his arm around Jessie and they followed.

   But Tom stopped as if he’d been struck when he came through the door. Ray stood and stared,
openmouthed.

   The volumes of their encyclopedia lay all over the room. The Webster’s Dictionary, World Atlas,
Roget’s Thesaurus, and other reference books lay on the floor as well, and right in the center of the
disarray sat Stevie, holding the WXYZ volume of the Britannica between her hands. She sat on her
haunches, perched forward like a bird. As Tom watched, his daughter opened the book and began to
turn the pages at a rate of about one every two seconds.

   “She’s already gone through the dictionary and the thesaurus,” Rhodes said. Call it an alien, or a
creature, he reminded himself—but she looked like a little girl in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and those cold
terms didn’t seem right. Her eyes were no longer lifeless; they were sparkling and intense, directed at the
pages with all-consuming concentration. “It took her about thirty minutes to figure out our alphabet. After
that, it was open season on your bookcase.”

   “My God… this morning she could barely read,” Tom said. “I mean… she’s not even in the first
grade yet!”

   “That was this morning. I think she’s about ready for college by now.”

   The pages continued to turn. There was a dripping noise, and Tom saw liquid soak into the carpet
beneath his daughter.

   “Evidently the body’s still carrying out its normal functions,” Rhodes told him. “So we know that at
least one portion of a human brain’s at work, if just unconsciously.”
  Jessie grasped her husband’s arm and held on tightly; she’d seen him waver, and was afraid he was
about to pitch onto his face. Stevie was still totally absorbed by the book, and the turning of the pages
was getting faster, becoming almost a blur.

   “She’s goin’ into overdrive!” Ray said. “Man, look at that!” He stepped forward, but the colonel
caught his shirt and prevented him from going any closer. “Hey, Stevie! It’s me, Ray!”

   The child’s head lifted. Swiveled toward him. The eyes stared, curious and penetrating.

   “Ray!” he repeated, and thumped himself on the chest.

  Her head cocked. She blinked slowly. Then: “Ray,” the voice said, and she thumped her own chest.
Returned to her reading.

   “Well,” Rhodes observed, “maybe she’s not ready for college just yet, but she’s learning.”

  Tom looked at all the books scattered about. “If… she’s really not Stevie anymore… if she’s
something different, then how does she know about books?”

   Jessie said, “She found them and must have figured out what they were. After she went through the
alphabet, she walked around the house, examining things. A lamp seemed to fascinate her. And a mirror
too—she kept trying to reach into it.” She heard herself talking and realized she was sounding detached,
like Rhodes. “That is our daughter. It is.” But as she watched the encyclopedia’s pages turning, she knew
that wherever Stevie was—and what made Stevie? Her mind? Her soul?—it was no longer inside the
body that crouched before them, absorbing information over a puddle of urine.

   The last page was reached. The volume was closed and set gently, almost reverently aside. Tom now
truly knew it wasn’t Stevie; their daughter flung things instead of carefully putting them down.

    The creature stood up, with a smooth and controlled motion, no longer unsteady on her feet. It was
as if she’d gotten accustomed to the weight of gravity. She looked at the five people who stared back at
her, her gaze carefully examining their faces. She lifted her hands and studied them, comparing their size
to those on the arms of the others. Particularly intrigued by the glasses both Tom and Ray wore, she
touched her own face as if she expected to find a pair there.

   “She’s got the alphabet, a dictionary and thesaurus, a world atlas, and a set of encyclopedias in her
head,” Rhodes said quietly. “I think she’s trying to learn as much about us as she can.” The creature
watched his mouth moving and touched her own lips. “I guess this is as good a time as any, huh?” He
took a step toward her, then stopped, so as not to get too close and scare her. “Your name,” he said,
trying to enunciate as clearly as possible. His heart was fluttering like a caged bird. “What is your name?”

   “Your name,” she answered. “What is your name?”

   “Your name.” He pointed at her. “Tell us yours.”

   She seemed to be thinking, her eyes fixed on him. She glanced at Ray and pointed. “Ray.”

   “Jeez!” the boy shouted. “An alien knows my name!”

   “Hush!” Jessie almost pinched a plug out of his arm.

   Rhodes nodded. “Right. That’s Ray. What’s your name?”

   The creature swiveled around and walked with a graceful gliding gait to the hallway. She halted,
turned toward them again. “Name,” she said, and walked on into the hall.

   Jessie’s heart jumped. “I think she wants us to follow.”

  They did. The creature was waiting in Stevie’s room. Her arm was lifted, her index finger pointing to
something.

   “Your name,” Rhodes repeated, not understanding. “Tell us what we can call you.”

   She answered: “Dau-fin.”

   And all of them saw that her finger was aimed at the picture of a dolphin on Stevie’s bulletin board.

   “Double gnarly!” Ray exclaimed. “She’s Flipper!”

   “Dau-fin.” It was said with the inflections of a child. Her arm stretched up; the fingers touched the
picture, moved over the aquamarine water. “Dau-fin.”

   Rhodes was unsure if she actually meant the dolphin or the ocean. In any case he was certain the
creature before them was much more than a dolphin in human skin: much, much more. Her eyes asked if
he understood, and he nodded; her fingers lingered for a few seconds on the picture, making a gentle
wavelike motion. Then her interest drifted to another picture, and Rhodes saw her flinch.

   “Sting-er,” she said, like she had tasted something nasty. She touched the scorpion, drew her fingers
quickly back as if afraid she might be stung.

   “It’s just a picture.” Rhodes tapped it. “It’s not real.”

    She studied it for a moment longer—then she removed the little colored pins that fastened the picture
to the cork and looked at it closely, her finger traveling the length of the segmented tail. Finally, her hands
began to work at the paper. Folding it, Rhodes realized. Making it into a different shape.

   Jessie’s hand gripped Tom’s. She watched as Stevie—or Daufin, or whatever—folded the paper and
folded it again, the fingers now fast and supple. It took the creature only a few seconds to produce a
paper pyramid; she twirled the pyramid away, and it flew across the room and bounced against the wall.

   Gunniston picked it up. It was the damnedest paper airplane he’d ever seen.

   The creature faced them; there was expectation in her eyes, and a questioning, but no one knew what
the question might be.

   She took a step toward Jessie, who in turn retreated a pace. Ray backed against the wall.

   Daufin lifted her hand, placed it to Stevie’s chest. “Yours,” she said.

   Jessie knew what the creature was asking. “Yes. My daughter. Our daughter.” Her grip was about to
break Tom’s fingers.

   “Daugh-ter,” Daufin repeated carefully. “A fe-male offspring of hu-man be-ings.”

   “Straight from Webster’s,” Gunniston muttered. “Think she knows what it means?”

   “Quiet!” Rhodes told him. Daufin glided to the window, her chin uptilted. She stayed that way without
budging for over a minute, and Jessie realized she was entranced by a sliver of blue sky through the
drawn blinds. Jessie got her legs unfrozen and went to the window, pulling the blinds up by their cord.
The afternoon sunlight streaming over the sill held a hint of gold, and the cloudless sky was brilliantly
azure.

   Daufin stood staring. She reached up with both hands and stood on tiptoes, the entire body straining
for the sky. Jessie saw a change come over the face: it was no longer a blank, emotionless mask. In it
was a yearning, a mingled joy and sadness that was beyond Jessie’s emotions to comprehend. The face
was at once Stevie’s, with its innocence and fresh curiosity, and at the same time it was an ancient
face—the face, perhaps, of an old woman, careworn and dreaming of what might have been.

   The little hands stretched for the glass, but Stevie’s body was way too short to get there. Daufin gave
a snort of impatience, glided past Jessie, and dragged the chair over from Stevie’s desk; she climbed up
on it, leaned toward the window, and immediately smacked her forehead against the glass. Her fingers
probed at the invisible barrier, pattering like moths trying to get through a screen. Finally, Daufin’s arms
lowered, the hands hanging limply at her sides.

   “I…” Daufin said. “I… de-sire…”

   “What’d she say?” Gunniston asked, but Rhodes put a finger to his lips.

   “I de-sire. To.” Daufin’s head turned, and the eyes—something ancient behind them, something in
dire need—found Jessie’s. “I de-sire to o-rate your aur-i-cles.”

   No one spoke. Daufin blinked, awaiting a reply.

   “I think she wants to be taken to our leader,” Ray said, and Tom elbowed him none too gently in the
shoulder.

   Daufin tried again: “Os-cill-ate your tym-pan-um.”

   Jessie thought she understood. “You mean… talk to us?”

   Daufin frowned, mulling over what she’d heard. She made a little chirping, weirdly musical noise,
climbed down off the chair, glided past Jessie and out of the room. Rhodes and Gunniston hurried after
her.

   And by the time Jessie, Tom, and Ray got to the den, Daufin was crouched on the floor intent on
rereading the dictionary from cover to cover.



                                                  15
                                              Dark Karma


At the moment Daufin was trying to learn the nuances of English, Cody Lockett was operating the
hydraulic lift in a garage stall of Xavier Mendoza’s gas station, cranking up a Ford that needed new
brake drums. He was wearing old, faded jeans and an olive-green workshirt that had his name beneath
the Texaco star; his hands were greasy, his face streaked with grime, and he knew he was a long way
from resembling the well-scrubbed gas jockeys in TV commercials, but staying clean didn’t get the job
done. In the last hour, he’d changed the oil in two cars and the spark plugs and points in a third. The
garage was his territory, its tools hanging in orderly rows on the walls and gleaming like surgical
instruments, a rack of tires giving off the smell of fresh rubber and an assortment of cables, radiator belts,
and hoses hanging from the metal beams overhead. The garage door had been hoisted up and a big box
fan kept the air circulating, but it was still plenty hot anywhere chrome reflected the sunlight and engines
were continually turned over.

   Cody got the lift as high as he wanted and locked it in place. He plugged in the electric gun that
unscrewed lug nuts and began to take the tires off. Working here helped him forget about the old man.
There was more than enough to keep him busy today—including hoisting out the destroyed engine of that
sea-green pickup in the next stall—and sometime this afternoon he wanted to find time to tinker with his
motorcycle’s carb and smooth out the kinks.

   The signal bell rang as a car pulled up to the pumps outside, but he knew Mr. Mendoza would take
care of the gas customers. Sonny Crowfield had knocked off just before Cody came in for work—which
was just as well, since Cody couldn’t stand him; Crowfield, in Cody’s opinion, was a crazy half-breed
and a Rattler to boot, always talking shit about how he was going to someday stomp Jurado and become
president. From what Cody heard, even the Rattlers didn’t have much to do with Crowfield, who lived
on the edge of the autoyard, all alone except for a collection of animal skeletons—and where and how he
got those bones, no one knew.

   A car horn honked. Cody looked up from his work.

   At the pumps sat a silver-blue Mercedes convertible, its paint glossed to a high shine. Behind the
wheel was a man wearing sunglasses and a straw Panama hat. He lifted a hand in a brown leather driving
glove, motioning for Cody to come out. In the seat beside him was a husky Doberman, and another one
crouched in the backseat. Mendoza emerged from his office and went around to speak to the driver.
Cody returned to his job—but the Mercedes’s horn rapped out an impatient tattoo.

   Mack Cade was as persistent as a tick. Cody knew what he wanted. The horn honked again, though
Mendoza was standing right there trying to tell Cade that Cody had work to do. Mack Cade was paying
him zero attention. Cody said, “Shit!” under his breath, put aside the lug-nut gun, and wiped his hands off
on a rag, taking his time about it; then he walked out into the glary sunlight.

   “Fill ‘er up, Cody!” Mack Cade said. “You know what she drinks.”

   “You’ve got garage work to do, Cody!” Mr. Mendoza told him, trying his best to cover for the
boy—because he, too, knew Cade’s game. “You don’t have to come out and pump the gas!” His eyes
were black and fearsome, and with his silver hair and bushy silver mustache he resembled an aged grizzly
ready for a final tooth-and-claw battle; if those damned dogs weren’t there he might have snatched Cade
out of that fancy car and beaten him bloody.

   “Hey, I’m particular about who touches my car.” Cade’s voice was a silky-smooth drawl; he was
used to being obeyed. He smiled at Mendoza, showing a line of small white teeth in his deeply burnished
face. “Bad vibes round here, man. You’ve got a real dark karma.”

   “I don’t need your business, or your bullshit either!” Mendoza’s shout made Typhoid, the dog in the
passenger seat, stiffen and snarl. The dog in the rear, whose name was Lockjaw, was frozen and staring,
his single ear laid back along his skull; that and the fact that Typhoid was a little larger through the
shoulders was the only difference between the two animals.

   “You sure about that? I can bring in my own gas trucks, if you want.”

   “Yeah, maybe that’d be just fi—”

   “Hold it,” Cody interrupted. “You don’t need to be my watchdog,” he said to Mendoza. “I can look
out for myself.” He walked to the diesel pump, withdrew the hose, and primed the numbers back to zero.

   “Let’s give peace a chance, Mendoza,” Cade said as Cody started feeding the fuel in. “Okay?”

   Mendoza snorted angrily and glanced at Cody; the boy nodded that everything was under control.
Mendoza said, “I’ll be in my office. You don’t take no shit from him, understand?” He turned on his heel
and strode away, and Cade revved up the volume on his tape deck. Tina Turner’s raspy voice
thundered, “Better be good to me!”

   “You can clean the windshield, too,” Cade told Cody as soon as Mendoza was in the office.

   Cody went to work with the squeegee; he could see a distorted image of himself in the reflective
lenses of the man’s sunglasses. Cade’s hat was held on by a leather chinstrap, he wore a silk
short-sleeved shirt the color of sangria, and tie-dyed jeans. Around his neck dangled a few golden
chains, among them one with an old peace sign on it, and one of those small gold ingots with foreign
words. On his left wrist was a Rolex watch with diamonds set in its dial, and on the right was a gold
bracelet with “Mack” engraved in it. Both of the Dobermans were watching with keen interest as Cody’s
squeegee went back and forth over the glass.

   Cade lowered the music. “Guess you heard about the meteor. Far out, huh?”

   Cody didn’t reply. Of course he’d seen the helicopter sitting in Preston Park, but he hadn’t known
what was going on until Mr. Mendoza had told him. If Mr. Hammond had heard his wife’s truck had
been hit by a meteor, Cody mused, he sure as hell wouldn’t have dicked around school so long after the
bell rang.

   “Yeah, I hear the meteor’s hot too. Radioactive. That’s supposed to be a secret, but I heard it from
Whale Tail at the Brandin’ Iron, and she heard it from the deputy. Seems to me a little radiation might
spark this damned town up some, huh?”

   Cody concentrated on getting the guts of a smashed moth off the windshield.

  “I’m picking up some more bad vibes, Cody. There’s a real purple haze around this place today,
man.”

   “You’re buyin’ gas, not talk.”

    “Whoa! The stone face speaks!” Cade rubbed Typhoid’s skull and watched the boy work. He was
thirty-three years old, with a soft, cherubic face—but beneath the sunglasses his eyes were cold blue and
cunning. Cody had seen them before, and they made him think of the hard steel of rabbit traps. Under his
Panama hat, Cade’s hair was pale blond and thinning, combed back from a high, unlined forehead. Two
diamond studs glittered in his left earlobe. “Tomorrow’s your last schoolday,” he said; the shuck-and-jive
had dropped from his voice. “Big day for you, man. Important day.” He scratched beneath Typhoid’s
muzzle. “I guess you’ve been thinking about your future. About money too.”

  Don’t answer him! Cody thought. Don’t fall for it!

  “How’s your father doing? I missed him last time I stopped in for a doughnut.”

  Cody finished the windshield and glanced at the diesel pump. The numbers were still clicking.

   “Hope he’s okay. You know, with the town shutting down and all, it probably won’t be too long
before the bakery goes under. What’s he going to do when that happens, Cody?”
   Cody walked over to stand by the pump. Mack Cade’s head turned to follow him, the smile as white
as a scar. “I’ve got an opening for a mechanic,” he said. “A good, fast mechanic. The opening won’t last
but for a week or so. Pay starts at six hundred a month. Do you know anybody who could use the
money?”

   Cody was silent, watching the numbers change. But inside his head six hundred a month kept
repeating itself, gaining power with every repetition. God A’mighty! he thought. What I couldn’t do with
that kind of money!

   “But it’s not just the money,” Cade pressed on, smelling blood in the boy’s silence. “It’s the benefits
too, man. I can get you a car just like this one. Or a Porsche, if you want. Any color. How about a red
Porsche, five on the floor, top speed a hundred and twenty? You name the options, you got them.”

   The numbers stopped. Cade’s tank was full. Cody unhooked the nozzle, closed the gas port, and
returned the hose to the diesel pump. Six hundred a month, he was thinking. A red Porsche… top speed
a hundred and twenty…

   “It’s night work,” Cade said. “The hours depend on what’s in the yard, and I’ll expect you to work
sixteen hours straight if there’s a rush on. My connections pay high green for quality work, Cody—and I
think you can deliver it.”

   Cody squinted toward Inferno. The long fall of the sun had started, and though it wouldn’t be dark
until after eight, he could already feel the shadows creeping up behind him. “Maybe I can, maybe I
can’t.”

  “I’ve seen the work you do here. It’s tight. You’re a natural, and you shouldn’t throw away a
God-given talent on junkers, should you?”

   “I don’t know.”

   “What’s to know?” Cade took a solid gold toothpick from his shirt pocket and dug at a lower molar.
“If it’s the law you’re skittish of… well, that’s under control. This is a business, Cody. Everybody
understands the language.”

   The boy didn’t reply. He was thinking of what six hundred dollars a month could buy him, and how
far away from Inferno he could get in a red Porsche. To hell with the old man; he could rot and turn into
a maggot farm as far as Cody cared. Of course he knew what Mack Cade’s business was. He’d seen
the tractor-trailer trucks turn off Highway 67 and pull into Cade’s autoyard in the middle of the night, and
he knew they were hauling stolen cars. He knew, as well, that when the big trucks headed north again
they were carrying vehicles without histories. After Cade’s workmen had finished, the engines, radiators,
exhaust systems, most of the body parts, even the hubcaps and paint jobs would have been changed,
swapped around, made to look like cars sweet from the showroom floor. Where those finished
chopshop specials went, Cody didn’t know, but he figured they were resold by crooked dealers or used
as company cars by organized gangs. Whoever used them paid heavy money to Cade, who’d found
Inferno the perfect place to stash such an operation.

   “You don’t want to wind up like your old man, Cody.” The boy saw his face reflected in Cade’s
sunglasses. “You want to do something with your life, don’t you?”

   Cody hesitated. He didn’t know what he wanted. Though he didn’t give a shit about the law, he’d
never really done anything criminal, either. Maybe he did smash a few windows and raise some hell, but
what Cade offered was different. A whole lot different. It was like taking a step beyond a line that Cody
had balanced on for a long time—yet to cross that line meant he couldn’t come back. Not ever.
  “Offer’s open for one week. You know where to find me.” Cade’s smile had clicked back on, full
wattage. “How much do I owe you?”

   Cody checked the numbers. “Twelve seventy-three.”

   The man popped open his glove compartment, and Typhoid licked his hand. In the glove box there
was a .45 automatic and an extra clip. His hand came out holding a rolled-up twenty; he snapped the
glove compartment shut. “Here you go, man. Keep the change. And there’s a little something extra in
there for you too.” He started the engine, the Mercedes giving a clean, throaty growl. Agitated, Lockjaw
stood stiff-legged on the backseat and barked in Cody’s face. He smelled raw meat.

   “Think on these things,” Cade said, and accelerated out of the station with a shriek of flayed rubber.

   Cody watched him speed away, heading south. He unrolled the twenty. Inside it was a small, capped
glass vial holding three yellowish crystals. Though he’d never cooked the stuff before, Cody knew what
crack looked like.

   “You okay?”

   Startled, Cody slipped the vial into his breast pocket, nestling the cocaine crystals under the Texaco
star. Mendoza was standing about six feet behind him. “Yeah.” Cody gave him the twenty. “He said to
keep the change.”

   “And what else did he say?”

   “Just chewin’ air.” Cody walked past Mendoza toward the garage stalls, trying to sort things out in his
mind. He felt the pull of six hundred dollars a month on his soul, like a cold hand from the midst of a blast
furnace. What’s the problem? he asked himself. A few hours of work a night, the cops already paid off, a
chance to move up in Cade’s operation if I wanted. Why didn’t I say yes right then and there?

   “You know where his cars go, don’t you?” Mendoza had followed Cody, and now leaned against the
stall’s cinder-block wall.

   “Nope.”

   “Sure you do. About two or three years ago, a DA up in Fort Worth was found in the trunk of a car
with his throat cut and a bullet between his eyes. The car was parked in front of City Hall. Of course it
had no ID numbers. Where do you think it came from?”

   Cody shrugged, but he knew.

   “Before that,” Mendoza continued, his burly brown arms folded over his chest, “a bomb went off in a
pickup truck in Houston. The cops figured it was supposed to kill a lawyer who was workin’ on a drug
bust—but it blew a woman and her kid to pieces instead. Where do you think that truck came from?”

   Cody picked up the lug-nut gun. “You don’t have to lecture me.”

   “I don’t mean to sound like I am. But don’t you believe for one minute that Cade doesn’t know how
his cars are used. And that’s just in Texas—he sends them all over the country!”

   “I was just talkin’ to him. No law against that.”

   “I know what he wants from you,” Mendoza said firmly. “You’re a man now, and you can do as you
please. But I have to tell you something my father told me a long, long time ago: a man is responsible for
his actions.”

   “You’re not my father.”

   “No, I’m not. But I’ve watched you grow up, Cody. Oh, I know all about that Renegade shit, but
that’s small compared to what Cade could drag you in—”

  Cody pressed the gun’s trigger, and its high squeal echoed between the walls. He turned his back on
Mendoza and went to work.

   Mendoza grunted, his gaze black and brooding. He liked Cody, knew he was a smart young man and
could be somebody if he put his mind to it. But Cody had been crippled by that bastard father of his, and
he’d let his old man’s poison seep into his veins. Mendoza didn’t know what was ahead for Cody, but he
feared for the young man. He’d seen too many lives tossed away for the glint of Cade’s fool’s gold.

   He returned to the office and switched on the radio to the Spanish music station in El Paso. Around
nine o’clock the Trailways bus from Odessa would come through on its way south to Chihauhau. The
driver always stopped at Mendoza’s station to let the passengers buy soft drinks and candy from the
machines. Then, except for an occasional truck, Highway 67 would lie empty, its concrete cooling under
the expanse of stars, and Mendoza would shut down for the night. He would go home in time for a late
dinner and a couple of games of checkers with his uncle Lazaro, who lived with him and his wife on
Bordertown’s First Street, until the ticking of the clock eventually urged the time for bed. Tonight he
might dream of being a racecar driver, roaring around the dirt tracks of his youth. But, most likely, he
would not dream.

   And that would be another night gone, and another day approaching, and Mendoza knew that was
the way a man’s life ran out.

   He turned the radio up louder, listening to the strident trumpets of a mariachi band, and he tried very
hard not to let himself think about the boy in the garage, who stood at a crossroads that no one on earth
could help him travel.



                                                 16
                                           Inferno’s Pulse


The shadows grew.

   In front of the Ice House, the old-timers sat on benches smoking their cigars and corncob pipes and
talking about the meteor. Heard it from Jimmy Rice, one of them said. Jimmy got it straight from the
sheriff’s mouth. Hell, I didn’t get to be seventy-four years old to be kilt by no damned rock from out
yonder in space, I’m tellin’ you! Damn thing just about fell right on our heads!

   They all agreed it had been a near miss. They talked about the helicopter, still sitting in the middle of
Preston Park, wondering how such a thing could fly, and would you get up in one? Hell no, I ain’t crazy!
was the unanimous answer. Then their talk drifted to the new baseball season, and when was a southern
team going to win a series? When time runs back-assward and horses stand on two legs! one of them
growled, and kept chewing on his cigar butt.

   In the House of Beauty on Celeste Street, Ida Younger frosted Tammy Bryant’s mouse-brown hair
and talked not about the meteor or the helicopter but about the two handsome men who had gotten out
of it. The pilot’s a hunk too, Tammy said. She’d seen him when he went into the Brandin’ Iron for a
hamburger and coffee—and, of course, she and May Davis just had to go in there for a bite of lunch too.
And you should’ve seen the way that damn Sue Mullinax flounced herself all over the cafe! Tammy
confided. I mean, it was a disgrace!

   Ida agreed that Sue was the nerviest bitch who ever tied a mattress to her back, and Sue’s butt just
kept getting bigger and bigger and that’s what so much sex’ll do to you too.

  She’s a nymphomaniac, Tammy said. A nympho, plain and simple.

   Yeah, Ida said. Plain-lookin’ and simpleminded.

   And they both laughed.

    On Cobre Road, past the Smart Dollar clothing store, the post office, the bake shop, and the
Paperback Kastle, a middle-aged man squinted through his wire-rimmed spectacles and concentrated on
inserting a pin through the abdomen of a small brown scorpion, found dead of Raid inhalation in the
kitchen this morning. His name was Noah Twilley, and he was slender and pale, his straight black hair
lank and going gray. His skinny fingers got the pin through, and he added the scorpion to his collection of
other “ladies and gentlemen”—beetles, wasps, flies, and more scorpions, all pinned to black velvet and
kept under glass. He was in the study of his white stone house, thirty yards behind the brick building with
a stained-glass front window, a stucco statue of Jesus standing between two stucco cacti, and a sign that
read INFERNO FUNERAL HOME.

   His father had died six years ago and left the business to him—a dubious honor, since Noah had
always wanted to be an entomologist. He had made sure his father was buried in the hottest plot on
Joshua Tree Hill.

   “Nooooaaaahhh! Noah!” The screech made his backbone stiffen. “Go get me a Co-Cola!”

   “Just a minute, Mother,” he answered.

   “Noah! My show’s on!”

    He stood up wearily and walked down the corridor to her room. She was wearing a white silk gown,
sitting up against white silk pillows in a bed with a white canopy. Her face was a mask of white powder,
her hair dyed flame red. On the color TV, the Wheel of Fortune was spinning. “Get me a Co-Cola!”
Ruth Twilley ordered. “My throat’s as dry as dust!”

   “Yes, Mother,” he answered, and trudged toward the staircase. Better to do what she wanted and
get it over with, he knew.

   “That meteor’s doin’ somethin’ to the air!” she hollered after him, her voice as high as a wasp’s
whine. “Makin’ my throat clog up!” He was on his way down the steps, but that voice followed him: “I’ll
bet old Celeste heard it hit! Bet it made her shit pickles!”

   Here we go, he thought.

   “That prissy-pants bitch livin’ out there high and mighty, not carin’ a damn about anybody else, just
suckin’ the guts out of this town. She did it, y’know! Prob’ly killed poor Wint, but he was too smart for
her! Yessir! He hid all his money so she couldn’t get none of it! Foxed her, he did! Well, when she
comes to Ruth Twilley askin’ for money and down on her hands and knees, I’m gonna snub her like
she’s a snail! You listenin’ to me, Noah? Noah!”
   “Yes,” he answered, down in the depths of the house. “I’m listening.”

   She kept babbling on, and Noah let himself ponder what life might be like if that meteor had struck
smack dab over the ceiling of her bedroom. There was not a plot on Joshua Tree Hill that was hot
enough.

   Across Inferno and Bordertown, other lives drifted on: Father Manuel LaPrado listened to
confessions at the Sacrifice of Christ Catholic Church, while Reverend Hale Jennings put a pencil to
paper at the Inferno Baptist Church and worked on his Sunday sermon. On his porch, Sarge Dennison
napped in a lawn chair, his face occasionally flinching at unwelcome memories, his right arm hanging
down and his hand patting the head of the invisible Scooter. Rick Jurado stacked boxes in the stockroom
of the hardware store on Cobre Road, the Fang of Jesus heavy in his jeans pocket and his mind circling
what Mr. Hammond had said today. Heavy-metal music blared from a ghetto blaster through the
corridors of the ’Gades’ fortress at the end of Travis Street, and while Bobby Clay Clemmons and a few
other ’Gades smoked reefers and shot the shit, Nasty and Tank lay on a bare mattress in another room,
their bodies damp and intertwined in the aftermath of sex—the one activity for which Tank removed his
football helmet.

    The day was winding down. A postal truck left town, heading north to Odessa with its cargo of
letters—among which were a high percentage of job applications, inquiries for employment, and
supplications to relatives for extended visiting privileges. Of all people, the postman knew the pulse of
Inferno, and he could see death scrawled on the envelopes.

   The sun was sinking, and on the First Texas Bank the electric-bulb sign read 93°F. at 5:49.



                                                17
                                          The Baseball Fan


“I know this is an open line,” Rhodes said to the duty officer at Webb Air Force Base. “I don’t have
closed comm equipment, and I don’t have time, either. My ID is Bluebooker. Look it up.” He held on to
the phone as the duty officer verified his code. From the den he heard the television channel being
changed again: the canned laughter of a sit-com. About six seconds passed, and the channel was
changed once more: a baseball-game commentator, and this time the TV was left alone for a little longer.

  “Yes sir. I copy you, Bluebooker.” The duty officer sounded young and nervous. “What can I do for
you, sir?”

    “I need a transport aircraft waiting with a number one priority. I need it fueled for cross-country, and
I’ll be giving the destination in the air. Alert Colonel Buckner that I’m coming in with a package from our
incident site. I need videotape equipment on board too. My ETA into Webb will be between two and
three hundred hours. Got that?”

   “Yes sir.”

   “Read it back to me.” He heard the channel change: a news broadcast, something about hostages in
the Middle East. The duty officer read everything back correctly, and Rhodes said, “Fine. I’m signing
off.” He hung up the phone and strode into the den.

   Daufin sat on the floor—cross-legged this time, as if it had figured out that its crouching posture put
strain on a human’s knee joints. The creature’s face was about twelve inches from the TV screen,
watching a news story about floods in Arkansas.

   “I wish we’d get some of that rain,” Gunniston said, drinking from a can of Pepsi.

   Daufin reached out and touched the TV screen. The entire picture warped out of shape; there was a
crack! and the channels changed: Woody Woodpecker cartoons.

   “Neat-o!” Ray was sitting on the floor, not too close to Daufin but not so far away, either. “She’s got
a remote control in her fingers!”

   “Probably some kind of electromagnetic pulse,” Rhodes told him. “It may be using the electricity in
Stevie’s body, or maybe it’s generating its own.”

   Crack! Now there was a western movie on TV: Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven.

   “Man, that’s about the coolest thing I’ve ever—”

    “Shut up!” Jessie’s control had finally snapped, and she could stand it no longer. “You shut up!” Her
eyes were bright with tears and anger, and Ray looked stunned. “There’s nothing ‘cool’ about this! Your
sister’s gone! Don’t you understand that?”

   “I… didn’t mean to—”

    “She’s gone!” Jessie advanced on Ray, but Tom quickly stood up from his chair and grasped her
arm. She pulled free, her face strained and agonized. “She’s gone, and there’s just that left!” She pointed
at Daufin; the creature still stared at the TV screen, oblivious to what Jessie was saying. “Jesus Christ…”
Jessie’s voice faltered. She put her hands to her face. “Oh my God… oh God…” She began to sob, and
Tom could do nothing but hold her while she wept bitter tears.

  Crack! A surfing competition appeared, and Daufin’s eyes widened slightly, following the rolling blue
waves.

   Rhodes turned toward his aide. “Gunny, I want you to get out to the crash site and hurry them up. We
need to get out of here as soon as we can.”

  “Right.” He finished his drink, dropped the can into the trash, and put on his cap as he went out the
door, heading for the helicopter.

   Rhodes wished he were anywhere else but here, and his mind drifted to the farm where he lived with
his wife and two daughters, near Chamberlain, South Dakota. On clear nights he studied the stars in his
small observatory, or made notes for the book he was planning on life beyond earth; he wished he was
doing either, right now, because he had no recourse but to take the creature to a research lab, no matter
that it wore a little girl’s face. “Mrs. Hammond, I know this is tough on you,” he said. “I want you to
know th—”

  “Know what?” She was still enraged, her face streaked with tears. “That our daughter’s still alive?
That she’s dead? Know what?”

   Crack: a “Mork and Mindy” rerun. Crack: a financial news show. Crack: another baseball game.

  “That I’m sorry,” he went on resolutely. “For what it’s worth, I’ve got two daughters myself. I can
imagine what you must be feeling. If anything happened to either of them… well, I don’t know what
Kelly and I would do. Kelly’s my wife. But at least you understand now that she—it—isn’t your
daughter. When the crew finishes up at the crash site, we’ll be leaving. I’ll take her—it—Daufin—to
Webb, and from there to Virginia. I’m going to ask Gunny to stay with you.”

   “Stay with us? Why?” Tom asked.

   “Just for a short while. A debriefing, I guess you’d call it. We’ll want to get statements from all of you,
go through the house with a Geiger counter, try to find that black sphere again. And we don’t want this
information leaking out. We want to control—”

   “You don’t want it leaking out,” Tom repeated incredulously. “That’s just great!” He gave a short,
harsh laugh. “Our daughter’s been taken away by some kind of damned alien thing, and you don’t want
the information leaking out.” He felt the blood charge into his face. “What are we supposed to do? Just
go on like it never happened?”

   Crack: not a channel changing this time, but a bat connecting with a baseball. The crowd roared.

   “I know you can’t do that, but we’re going to try to ease you away from this situation as best we can,
with counseling, hypnosis—”

   “We don’t need that!” Jessie snapped. “We need to know where Stevie is! Is she dead, or is she—”

   “Safe,” Daufin interrupted.

    Jessie’s throat seized up. She looked at the creature. Daufin was staring at the baseball game, where
a runner had slid into home plate. The ball was thrown back to the pitcher, and Daufin’s eyes followed its
trajectory with intense interest.

   And then Daufin’s head racheted toward Jessie: a slow, halting motion, as if she was still unsure of
how the bones fit together. “Safe,” she repeated. Her gaze locked on to the woman. “Ste-vie is safe,
Jes-sie.”

   She managed a soft exhalation of breath: “What?”

   “Safe. Freed from in-ju-ry or risk, al-so se-cure from dan-ger or loss. Is that not a cor-rect in-ter…”
Daufin paused, scanning dictionary pages in the massive, perfectly organized library of her memory
banks. “In-ter-pre-ta-tion?”

   “Yes,” Rhodes replied quickly. His heart had jumped; this was the first time the creature had spoken
for over an hour, since that stuff about “oscillating tympanum.” The TV channels had occupied her, and
she’d been going through them again and again like a child with a new toy. “That’s correct. How is she
safe? Where is she?”

  Daufin stood up awkwardly. She touched her chest. “Here.” Touched her head. “Somewhere else.”
Her fingers fluttered in a gesture of distance.

   No one spoke. Jessie took a step forward; her little girl’s face watched her, eyes shining. “Where?”
Jessie asked. “Please… I’ve got to know.”

   “Not far. A safe place. Trust me?”

   “How… can I?”

   “I am not here to hurt.” It was Stevie’s voice, yes, but it was whispery and ethereal as well, the sound
of cool wind across reeds. “I chose this one… but not to hurt.”
   “Chose her?” Rhodes asked. “How?”

   “I call-ed this one. This one answer-ed.”

   “How do you mean, ‘called’?”

   A hint of frustration passed over the face. “I…” She spent a few seconds finding the proper term. “I
sang-ed.”

   Rhodes felt close to pissing in his pants. An alien in the skin of a little girl stood before him, and they
were talking. My God! he thought. What secrets she must know! “I’m Colonel Matt Rhodes, United
States Air Force.” He heard his voice shake. “I want to welcome you to planet Earth.” Inwardly he
cringed; it was corny as hell, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

   “Pla-net Earth,” she repeated carefully. Blinked. “In-sane forms here, par-don my terms.” She
motioned toward the TV screen, where a baseball manager had his face right up in an umpire’s and was
giving him a royal chewing out. “Ques-tion: why are these beings so small?”

   Tom realized what she meant. “No, those are just pictures. On TV. The pictures come through the air
from a long way.”

   “From oth-er worlds?”

   “No. This one. Just other places.”

   Her eyes seemed to pierce him. “Are not the pic-tures true?”

  “Some of them are,” Rhodes said. “Like that baseball game. Some of them are just… playacting. Do
you know what that means?”

   She thought. “Pre-tend. A false show.”

   “Right.” It had dawned on Rhodes, and the others too, how strange everything must appear to Daufin.
Television, taken for granted by humans, would merit explanation, but along the way you’d have to
explain about electricity, satellite transmissions, TV studios, news broadcasts, sports, and actors; the
subject could be talked about for days, and still Daufin would have more questions.

   “Don’t you have TV?” Ray asked. “Or somethin’ like it?”

   “No.” Daufin studied him for a few seconds, then looked at Tom. She touched the air around her
eyes. “What are these? In-stru-ments?”

   “Glasses.” Tom removed his and tapped the lenses. “They help you see.”

  “See. Glasses. Yes.” She nodded, putting the concepts together. “Not all pre-sent can see?” She
motioned to Rhodes and Jessie.

   “We don’t need glasses.” Again, Rhodes realized that the idea of eyeglasses was a tricky subject
involving magnification, the grinding of lenses, optometry, a discussion of visual sense—another day-long
conversation. “Some people can see without them.”

   She frowned, her face briefly taking on the appearance of a nettled little old lady’s. She understood
absolutes, yet there seemed to be no absolutes here. Something was, and yet it was not. “This is a world
of play-act-ing,” she observed, and her attention drifted back to the TV set. “Base-ball game,” she said,
locating the term in her memory. “Play-ed with a bat and ball by two teams on a field with four bases
ar-rang-ed in a di-a-mond.”

   “Hey!” Ray said excitedly. “They must have baseball in outer space!”

   “She’s reciting the definition from the dictionary,” Rhodes told him. “She must have a memory like a
sponge.”

   Daufin watched another pitch. She couldn’t comprehend the purpose of this game, but it seemed to
be a contest of angles and velocities based on the planet’s physics. She lifted her right arm in imitation of
the pitcher’s, feeling the strange tug and weight of alien anatomy. What appeared to be a simple motion
was more complex than it appeared, she decided. But the game’s apparently mathematical basis
interested her, and it would merit further thought.

    Then she began to walk around the room, her hands occasionally touching the walls or other objects
as if making sure they were real and not figments of playacting.

   Jessie was still balanced on a thin wire, and to fall would be frighteningly easy. Watching a creature
wearing Stevie’s skin, hair, and face, strolling around the den as if on a Sunday visit to a museum,
battered feverishly at her mind. “How do I know my daughter’s safe? Tell me!”

   Daufin touched a framed photograph of the family that sat on a shelf. “Be-cause,” she said, “I
pro-tect.”

   “You protect her? How?”

   “I pro-tect,” Daufin repeated. “That is all to know.” Her interest went to another picture, then she
drifted out of the den and into the kitchen.

    Rhodes followed her, but Jessie had had enough; she slumped into a chair, mentally exhausted and
fighting off fresh tears. Tom stood by her, his hands rubbing her shoulders and trying to get his own mind
straight, but Ray hurried after the colonel and Daufin.

  The creature stood watching the cat-clock’s eyes tick back and forth. Rhodes saw her smile, and she
made a sound like a high, clear chime: laughter.

   “I think we’ve got a lot to talk about,” Rhodes said, his voice still shaky. “I guess there are quite a few
things you’d like to know about us—our civilization, I mean. And of course we’ll want to know all about
yours. In a few hours we’ll be taking a trip. You’ll be going to—”

   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 pulse, 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.

   “Cody!” Mr. Mendoza called, from where he stood jawing with the bus driver. “Where’re you
goin’?”

   “To do a good deed,” he replied, and before the man could speak again Cody accelerated away. He
swung the Honda in front of Jurado’s sister just at the edge of the lights, and she looked at him with
puzzlement that became a flash of anger. “Hop on,” he offered.

   “No, I’ll walk.” She sidestepped the Honda and kept on going, the suitcase tugging mightily at her
arm.

  He followed at her side, the engine putt-putting and Cody in the saddle but more or less walking the
machine along. “I won’t bite.”

   No answer. Her steps had gotten faster, but the suitcase was holding her back.

   “I don’t even know your name. Mine’s Cody Lockett.”

   “You’re bothering me.”
   “I’m tryin’ to help you.” At least she’d answered that time, which meant progress of a kind. “If you
hold that suitcase between us and hang on, I’ll get you across the bridge and to your brother’s house in
about two minutes.”

   She’d come this far alone, in a groaning bus with a man snoring noisily in a seat two rows behind her,
and she knew she could make it the rest of the way. Besides, she didn’t know this boy and she didn’t
accept rides with strangers. She glanced back, noting uneasily that there was no more light until she
reached the protection of the glass orbs that illuminated the bridge. But the houses were close, and she
didn’t really feel in any danger. If he tried anything, she could either swing the suitcase at him or drop it
and claw at his eyes.

   “So what’s your name?” he tried again.

   “Jurado,” she answered.

   “Yeah, I know that. What’s your first name?”

   She hesitated. Then: “Miranda.”

   He repeated it. “That’s a nice name. Come on, Miranda; hop on and I’ll take you across the bridge.”

   “I said no.”

   He shrugged. “Okay, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the Mumbler.” It came to him, just like
that. “Good luck gettin’ across the bridge.” He revved the engine, as if about to speed away.

    She took two more determined steps—and then her determination faltered. The suitcase had never
felt so heavy. She stopped, put the suitcase down, and rubbed her shoulder.

   “What’s wrong?”

   “Nothing.”

   “Oh. I thought somethin’ was wrong from the way you stopped.” He read it in her eyes. “Don’t worry
about the Mumbler. He’s not usually creepin’ around before eight-thirty.”

  She stuck her wrist in front of the Honda’s headlight. “It’s after eight-thirty,” she said, looking at her
watch.

   “Oh. Yeah, so it is. Well, he’s not real active before nine.”

   “Who exactly are you talking about?”

   “The Mumbler.” Think fast, he told himself. “You’re not from around here, so you wouldn’t know.
The Mumbler’s dug himself a cave somewhere along the Snake River; at least that’s what the sheriff
thinks. Anyway, the Mumbler comes out of his cave at night and hides under the bridge. Sheriff thinks he
might be a big Indian guy, about six feet eight or so, who went crazy a few years back. He killed a bunch
of people and”—think fast!—“and got acid thrown in his face. Sheriff’s been tryin’ to catch him, but the
Mumbler’s quick as a sidewinder. So that’s why nobody crosses the bridge on foot after dark; the
Mumbler might be underneath it. If you don’t cross over real quick, the Mumbler’s up on that bridge like
greased smoke, and he takes you down with him. Just like that.” He paused; she was still listening.
“You’d do better if you ran across the bridge. ’Course, that suitcase looks mighty heavy. You set it
down on the bridge, and he’s likely to hear the thump. The trick is to get across before he knows you’re
there.” He gazed for a moment at the bridge. “Looks longer than it is, really,” he said.
  She laughed. The boy’s expression during the telling had gone from cool to mock sinister. “I’m not a
dumb kid!” she said.

  “It’s the truth!” He held up his right hand. “Honest Injun!”

   Which made her laugh again. He realized he liked the sound of her laughter: it was clean, like what
Cody envisioned the sound of a mountain stream over smooth stones must be like, someplace where
snow made everything white and new.

  Miranda hefted her suitcase again. Her shoulder protested. “I’ve heard some tall tales before, but that
one wears elevator boots!”

   “Well, go on, then.” He feigned exasperation. “But don’t stop once you start across. Just keep goin’,
no matter what you hear or see.”

    She regarded the bridge. Not much to look at, just gray concrete and pools of light and shadow. One
of the glass globes had burned out, so there was a larger shadow pool about ten feet from the far side.
She found herself thinking that if there really was a Mumbler, that would be the place he might strike. She
hadn’t come all the way from Fort Worth, changing buses in Abilene and again in Odessa, to get killed
by a big scar-faced Indian. No, it was a made-up story, just to get her scared! Wasn’t it?

   “Full moon,” Cody said. “He likes full moons.”

   “If you touch one place you’re not supposed to,” she told him, “I’ll knock you cross-eyed.” She held
the suitcase upright, close to her chest, and sat behind Cody.

   Bingo! he thought. “Grab my sides.” She took his dirty shirt between tentative fingers. “We’re gonna
give it some gas to clear the bridge before the Mumbler knows we’re there. Hold tight!” he
warned—and then he let the engine rev until it howled. He kicked it into first gear.

   The “motorcycle shuddered and reared back, and for an instant Cody felt his heart leap into his throat
and he thought the extra weight was going to tip them over. He leaned forward, fighting gravity. Miranda
clenched her teeth on a scream. But then the Honda was shooting along Republica Road, the front end
bounced down and burned rubber, and they were heading toward the bridge with the wind in their faces.

   Miranda’s hands gripped into his sides, about to claw the meat from his ribs.

   They shot onto the bridge, cocooned in a roar. The bridge’s ornate lampposts with their
smoked-glass globes flashed past. Here came the biggest pool of shadow; it seemed as large as a tarpit
to Miranda.

   And then Cody had a wild hair. He just had to do it.

    He yelled, “There’s the Mumbler!” and jerked the Honda into the left lane as if to escape something
slithering over the bridge’s right side.

   She shrieked. Her arms clutched at his chest, the suitcase pinned between them and about to blow the
breath out of both of them. Her hair was flying around her shoulders, and for a gut-wrenching second she
imagined something had plucked at it with an oozy hand, trying to tear her right off the cycle. Her shriek
kept spilling out, her eyes about to jump from their sockets—but suddenly the shriek reached its limit and
gurgled into laughter, because she knew there was no Mumbler and there never had been, but they were
through the shadow and off the bridge and now Cody was cutting his speed on the streets of
Bordertown.
   She couldn’t stop laughing, though she didn’t know this boy—this gringo—and didn’t trust his hands
not to wander down to her legs. But they did not. She loosened her grip on his sides, holding on to his
shirt again, and Cody relaxed because she’d just about pinched hunks of skin off him. He laughed with
her, but his eyes were wary and flicking from side to side. He had entered the kingdom of the
Rattlesnakes, and he had to watch his ass. But at least for the moment, he figured he sure had a pretty
insurance policy perched behind him.

   Cody swerved onto Second Street, avoided a couple of roaming dogs, and powered toward
Jurado’s house.



                                                 19
                                              One Night


While Cody had been spinning his yarn about the Mumbler, Ray Hammond stared from the window of
his room and let himself think what might happen if he was to go AWOL.

   I’d get my butt beat, that’s what, he decided. And I’d deserve it too.

  But still…

    He’d been in his room for about two hours, had plugged the headphones into his boom box and
listened to Billy Idol, Clash, Joan Jett, and Human League tapes while he worked on a plastic model of a
SuperBlitzer Go-Bot. His mother had come in about twenty minutes ago, bringing him a ham sandwich,
some potato chips, and a Pepsi, and had told him that Daufin was still motionless in the kitchen. It was
best that he stay here, out of the way, until the air-force men took the creature away, she’d said—and
Ray had seen how that idea tore his mother up inside, but what was her choice? The thing in the kitchen
was no longer Stevie; that was a bone-dry fact.

   Thinking about his sister being gone, while her body stood in the kitchen, was a weird trip. Ray had
always thought of Stevie as a little monkey, getting into his tape collection, his models, even once almost
finding the cache of Penthouse magazines at the back of his closet, but of course he loved the brat; she’d
been around for six years, and now…

   And now, he thought, she was gone but her body remained. But what had Daufin meant about Stevie
being protected? Was Stevie gone forever, or not? Weird, weird trip.

   From his window he could see a blue neon sign farther down Celeste Street, between the Boots ’n
Plenty shoestore and the Ringwald Drugstore; the sign read WARP ROOM. That was where everybody
would be hanging out tonight, playing the arcade games and buzzing about the helicopter landing in
Preston Park. They’d be cooking up rumors right and left, really throwing the tales around, and the place
would be full of smash foxes. And of everybody there—all the ’Gades and jocks and party
animals—only he would know the truth.

   Right, he told himself. My sister got dusted today, and I’m thinking about girls. X Ray, you’re the king
turd, man.

   But his mother had said something to him about twenty minutes ago that he heard a lot: Stay out of
the way.
   That seemed to be his middle name. Ray Stay out of the way Hammond. If it wasn’t the older guys
saying it to him at school, it was his own folks. Even Paco LeGrande, today, had been telling him to stay
out of the way. Ray knew he was a zero with girls and not too sharp on looks, his talent in sports was
nonexistent, and all anybody like him could do was stay out of the way.

    “Dammit,” he said, very softly. The Warp Room beckoned him. But he was supposed to stay here,
and he knew for sure that Colonel Rhodes didn’t want him going outside and telling everybody that an
alien had come to visit Inferno. Forget it, he thought. Just stay here, out of the way.

   But for one night—one night—he could stroll into the Warp Room and be somebody, even if he
didn’t tell a soul.

   Before he knew what his fingers were doing, he unhooked the window’s latch.

   Going AWOL was a serious offense, he thought. Like Dad-would-blow-his-top kind of offense.
Indefinite-grounding offense.

   One night.

   He pushed the window up about three inches; it made a faint skreeking noise.

  Still can change your mind, he told himself. But he figured his folks wouldn’t check in with him for a
while; he could go to the Warp Room and come back before they ever knew he was gone.

   He pushed the window up another few inches.

   “Ray?” A knock at his door, and his father’s voice.

   He froze. He knew his dad wouldn’t come in without being invited. “Yes sir?”

  “You all right?”

   “Yes sir.”

   “Listen… sorry I jumped you. It’s just, you know, that this is kind of a trying time for everybody. We
don’t know what Daufin’s doing, and… we want Stevie back, if that’s possible. Maybe it’s not. But we
can hope, huh?” Tom paused, and in that pause Ray almost slid the window back down, but the Warp
Room’s blue neon burned in his eyeglasses. “You want to come out? I think it’d be okay.”

   “I’m…” Oh, Lord, he thought. “I’m… just gonna listen to some music, Dad. On my headphones. I’ll
just stay in here, out of the way.”

  There was a silence. Then: “Sure you’re all right?”

   “Yes sir. I’m sure.”

   “Okay. Well, come on out when you want.” Ray heard his father’s footsteps, moving along the
corridor to the den. Murmured voices, Dad and Mom talking.

   It was time to go, if he was going. He slid the window all the way up, climbed out with his heart
pounding a fugitive rhythm; he slid the window down when he was out, and he ran along Celeste Street
toward the Warp Room. If there was one thing he could do well, it was run.

  But he found the Warp Room not nearly as crowded as he’d expected; in fact, only six or seven kids
were inside, milling around the pinball machines. The Warp Room’s walls were painted deep violet, with
sparkly stars dashed here and there. Day-Glo painted planets dangled on wires from the ceiling, being
stirred into small orbits by the fans. Arcade machines—Galaxian, Neutron, Space Hunter, Gunfighter,
and about ten more—stood bleeping and burping for attention. Every so often the speaker atop the
Space Hunter machine boomed out a metallic challenge: “Attention, Earthlings! Do you dare do battle
with Space Hunter? Prepare for action! Prepare to be destroyed!”

   At the back of the place, its manager—an elderly man named Kennishaw—sat on a folding metal
chair reading a copy of Texas Outdoorsman magazine. A change-making machine stood next to him,
and on the wall was a sign demanding NO CURSING, NO BETTING, NO FIGHTING.

   “X Ray! How’s it hangin’, man?”

   Ray saw Robby Falkner standing with Mike Ledbetter over by the Galaxian machine. Both of them
were freshmen, and both of them were Nerd Club members in good standing. “Yo, Ray!” Mike called, in
a voice that hadn’t yet lost its childhood squeak. Ray walked to them, glad to see anybody he knew. He
noted a ’Gade standing near the back, playing pinball; the boy’s name was Stoplight, because his hair
was dyed red on top and green on the sides.

   “How’s it goin’?” Robby gave Ray a high five while Mike concentrated on beating a few more points
out of Galaxian.

   “Okay. How about you?”

   “I’ll do. Man, that was neat about the chopper, huh? I saw it take off. Man, that was neat!”

   “I saw it too,” Mike commented. “Know what I heard? It wasn’t any meteor that fell, no way! It was
a satellite the Russians put up. One of those death satellites, and that’s why it’s radioactive.”

   “Yeah, well you know what Billy Thellman heard?” Robby leaned in closer, gathering the other boys
together to share a secret. “It wasn’t any meteor or a satellite.”

   “So what was it?” Ray kept his voice cool.

   “It was a jet. A super-secret jet that crashed. Billy Thellman said he knew somebody who drove out
there to see it, only the air-force men have got Cobre Road blocked off. So this guy started out on foot,
and he walked and walked until he came across this crane scoopin’ pieces of somethin’ off the ground,
and all these men in radiation suits. Anyway, they stopped this guy out there and they took his name and
address and they got his fingerprints on a little white card too. They said they could take him to jail for
sneakin’ around out there.”

   “Gnarly,” Mike said.

   “Right. So they asked him what he’d seen, and he told ’em, and that’s when they let him in on the
secret. Billy says he heard it was an F-911, and that was the only one the air force had.”

   “Wow,” Ray said.

   “Man, look at her!” Mike whispered, furtively motioning to a lean blond girl who hung on the shoulder
of a boy playing Gunfighter. “That’s Laurie Rainey. Man, I hear she can just about suck the chrome off a
fender!”

   “Smash fox,” Robby observed. “She’s got skinny legs, though.”

   “Man, you wouldn’t think they were skinny if they were wrapped around your ass! Shit!” Mike
thumped the Galaxian machine with his fist, because the game had ended and he hadn’t beat his best
score. Old Eagle Eyes Kennishaw saw it, and hollered, “Hey, boy! Don’t you hit on the machines!” His
ire vented, he returned to his magazine.

   The three boys drifted past Laurie Rainey for a closer look, and were rewarded with a whiff of her
perfume. She was holding on to her date’s belt, which Mike pointed out in a whisper was a sure sign that
a girl was hotter than a short-fused firecracker.

  “How come you’re so quiet?” Robby asked Ray when they’d wandered over to the row of pinball
machines.

   “Me? I’m not quiet.”

   “Are so. Man, you’re usually jawin’ up a storm. Folks on your case?”

   “No.”

   “So what it is, then?” Robby leaned against a machine and cleaned his fingernails with a match.

   “Nothin’. I’m just quiet, that’s all.” It burned in him, but he knew he must not spill it.

   Mike jabbed him in the ribs. “I think you’re hidin’ somethin’, cockhead.”

   “No, I’m not. Really.” Ray dug his hands into his pockets and stared at a spot on the discolored
linoleum. That crap about an F-911 had almost brought a laugh out, and he struggled not to smile.
“Forget it.”

   “Forget what?” Robby asked, fired up by the idea that a secret was being kept. “Come on, X Ray!
Let’s hear it!”

   It was so close to being told. In one more minute, he might be the most sought-after kid in Inferno. All
kinds of smash foxes would be crowding around to hear. But no, he couldn’t do it! It wasn’t right! Still,
his mouth was starting to open, and what would come out of it he didn’t know. He was forming the
words in his mind: Let’s just say I know it wasn’t any damned F-9—

   “Looky here, looky here! Where’s your girlfriend, fuckmeat?”

   Ray knew that slurred, dark-toned voice. He whirled toward the doorway.

   Three of them were standing there: Paco LeGrande, a plastic splint along the bridge of his nose and
bandages stuck to his cheeks and forehead to secure it; Ruben Hermosa, grinning and damp-faced, his
eyes bloodshot on weed; and Juan Diegas, another husky Rattlesnake.

   Paco limped just a little as he took two steps forward, his combat boots clunking on the floor. All
conversations within the Warp Room had ceased, all attention riveted to the invaders. “I asked you
where your girlfriend was,” Paco repeated, smiling thinly, his face swollen and purple circles ringing his
eyes. He cracked his knuckles. “She’s not around to save your skinny ass, is she?”

   “Attention, Earthlings!” the Star Hunter’s speaker boomed. “Do you dare do battle with Star Hunter?
Prepare for action! Prepare to be destroyed!”

   “Oh, shit,” Mike Ledbetter whispered, and quickly backpedaled from Ray’s side. Robby stood his
ground a few seconds longer before he, too, abandoned Ray to his fate.

   “You’d better get out, man!” It was Stoplight. “You’re on ’Gade territory!”
   “Was I talkin’ to you? Shut your hole, you fuckin’ freak!”

   Stoplight wasn’t nearly as big as the boys who blocked the door, and he knew he had no chance
against them. “We don’t want any trou—”

   “Shut up!” Juan Diegas roared. “Your ass is mine, fucker!”

   Kennishaw was on his feet. “Listen here! I won’t have that kind of language in—”

   With one quick, enraged motion, Paco turned and grasped a pinball machine. Muscles twitched in his
forearms, and he threw the entire thing over on its side. Tilt bells rang madly, glass shattered, and sparks
shot from the machine’s innards.

   The other kids trembled like live wires in a high wind. Kennishaw’s face reddened, and he reached
for the pay phone on the wall, his hand digging for a quarter.

  “You want to keep that hand, you sonofabitch?” Paco asked him—not loudly, just matter-of-factly.
Kennishaw saw the fury in the boy’s eyes, and fear lanced him; he blinked, his mouth working but
making no noise. The red cast of his face was fading to gray. He pulled his hand out of his pocket,
quarterless.

   “Muchas gracias.” Paco sneered. His gaze jerked back to Ray Hammond. “You had a real good
laugh at me today, didn’t you?”

   Ray shook his head. Paco’s eyes were inflamed, and Ray knew all three Rattlers had to be in the
stratosphere on maryjane or they wouldn’t have dared come to the Warp Room.

   “You callin’ me a liar, you li’l fruit?” Two more strides, and Paco was within strike range.

   “No.”

    Juan and Ruben laughed. Ruben leapt up, grabbed a papier-mâché model of Saturn and yanked it off
its wire. Juan slammed into the Aqua Marines machine like a mad bull and crashed it to the floor.

   “Please… don’t…” Kennishaw begged, plastered against the wall like a butterfly.

   “I say you are,” Paco prodded. “I say I heard you laughin’ at me, and now you’re callin’ me a liar.”

    If his heart beat any harder, Ray figured he was going to sound like a human drum. He almost
retreated from Paco, but what was the point? There was nowhere to run. He had to stand and deal with
it, and hope that some ’Gades would walk through the door real soon.

   “Nobody wants to fight, man!” Stoplight said. “Why don’t you take off?”

   Paco grinned. “I want to fight.” And there was a crash and sizzle of sparks as Juan threw over
another machine. Paco stared fixedly at Ray. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you to stay out of my way.”

    Ray swallowed. Laurie Rainey was watching, and Robby, and Mike, and all the others. He knew he
was about to be beaten; that was a fact. But there were worse things, and one of them was cringing. He
felt a tight grin ripple across his mouth, saw that it puzzled even Paco for a second. Ray stepped forward
to meet him, and said, “Fuck you.”

  The blow was so fast he didn’t even see it coming. It hit him in the jaw, lifted him off his feet, and
knocked him into the Neutron machine. He went down on his knees, his glasses hanging from one ear
and the taste of blood in his mouth. Paco’s fist closed on his shirt, began to reel him to his feet.
    Stoplight ran for the door, but Juan Diegas was quick; he aimed a kick that hit Stoplight in the
shoulder and brought a yell of pain from him. Stoplight fell, and at once Juan was on him, flailing with his
fists.

    Ray saw Paco’s leering face above him. He raised his fist to strike that face, but his arm was caught
and pinned. Behind Paco, Ruben was leaping up, whooping with glee every time he plucked a planet off
its wire.

   Paco’s fist lifted. It looked giant-sized, the knuckles scarred and rough.

   Ray thrashed to escape, balanced on the toes of his sneakers. He could find no traction.

   The fist reared back, hesitated—then whammed forward.

   His mouth bleeding, Ray skidded backward under a pinball machine.



                                                 20
                                               Wreckage


“Safe and sound,” Cody said as he pulled the cycle to the curb in front of Rick Jurado’s house. Miranda
got off, clutching her suitcase, her hair wild and windblown.

   “Anybody ever tell you you drive too fast?”

   “Nope.” He glanced around; no Rattlers on the street, not yet at least. The sound of hammers rang
from Cade’s junkyard.

   “Well, I’m telling you. You could’ve gotten us killed.”

   “You can get killed by breathin’ around here,” he answered. “Better get on inside.” He nodded
toward the house; the yellow porch light was on. In the air he could smell onions and beans. “I’ll wait till
you make it in.”

   “You don’t have to.”

   “No sweat,” he said, but he was sweating under his arms.

   “Thanks for the ride. And for saving me from the Mumbler too.” She smiled faintly, then started for
the house.

  “Anytime.” Cody revved the engine, watching as she climbed the steps and knocked at the door. She
was okay, he decided. Too bad that… well, just too bad.

   The door opened. Cody saw Rick Jurado’s face in the yellow light. “Brought you a present, Ricky!”
he shouted, and as Rick stared, bewildered and shocked, Cody spun the Honda around in a tight circle
and rocketed away along Second Street.

  “Damned crazy fool!” Rick raged, in Spanish—and then he looked at the girl who stood at his front
door with a suitcase in her hand.

   “Hi,” she said.
   He answered, “Hi,” not recognizing her; but in the next second the bottom dropped out of his
composure. The last picture she’d sent him had been over two years ago, and in those two years she had
changed from a little girl to a woman. “Miranda?”

   Her suitcase thumped to the porch’s boards, and she reached for her brother. He put his arms around
her, lifted her off her feet, and squeezed; he heard her make a small sob, and his eyes were burning too.
“Miranda… Miranda, I can’t believe this! How’d you get here? I just can’t—” And then it hit him: Cody
Lockett, with his sister. He almost dropped her, and as he set her down his eyes had gone maniacal.
“What were you doin’ with Lockett?”

   “Nothing. He just gave me a ride.”

   “Did he touch you? I swear to God, if he touched you—”

    “No, no!” His expression was scaring her. It was not the face of the gentle brother who wrote her
letters with a graceful, precise hand. “He didn’t do anything except bring me from the bus stop!”

   “You stay away from him! He’s trash! You understand?”

   “No, I don’t!” But she did, in that moment; she saw Rick’s metal-studded bracelets—the macho
fashion of many of the boys who ran with the gangs in Fort Worth—and she remembered how Cody had
reacted when she’d mentioned Rick’s name. Bad blood, she thought. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”

   He was trembling with anger. How dare that bastard touch Miranda! It was yet another score that
must be settled. But he forced the rage off his face and coiled it up inside, to wait. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean to get hot. Come inside!” He picked up her suitcase and took her hand. Once inside the house, he
closed and bolted the door. “Sit down, please!” He started bustling around, trying to straighten up the
dusty room.

   “Where’s Paloma?”

   “Sleeping.” His street inflections were gone. He brushed off the sofa’s pillows and plumped them up.
“I’ll go wake her—”

   “No, not yet. First I have to talk to you alone.”

   He frowned. That sounded serious. “What is it?”

   Miranda walked across the room to Paloma’s shelf of ceramic birds. She picked up a cardinal and
ran her fingers over its wings. “I’m not going back to Fort Worth,” she said finally. “Not ever.”



  “Bash him!” Ruben shouted merrily. “Bash the li’l fucker!”

   Paco had hold of Ray’s ankles and was trying to pull him out from underneath the pinball machine, but
Ray grasped one of its legs and wasn’t about to let go. His glasses had spun away, and blood drooled
from his mouth. Still, his mind was clear; he thought he knew what it must be like to be a wounded animal
set upon by vultures.

    Robby Falkner screwed up his guts and charged, but Paco whirled upon him and smashed him in the
face—one, two, three quick blows. Robby’s nose burst open, and the boy gave a small weak cry as he
fell.
    On the floor Stoplight scrabbled away from Juan Diegas, who began to attack the arcade machines
again. “Stop it! Please stop it!” Kennishaw hollered, crouching in a corner. Stoplight saw the open door
in front of him and, one eye swollen shut and a gash across his cheek from a signet ring, he got up and
ran onto the street. Behind him, Juan roared, “Wreckage!” and threw over the Gunfighter machine, which
shot blue sparks and began to vomit forth its quarters.

   Stoplight kept going past the sheriff’s office. This was Renegade business, and he knew exactly what
to do.



   “It’s her, isn’t it?” Rick’s eyes were black and fierce. “What’s she done to you?”

   “It’s not that. I just had to get—”

    He took her right hand. The palm was dry and cracked, the fingernails broken—she had the hands of
a laborer instead of a Fort Worth high school junior. “I see,” he said tautly. “She’s had you scrubbing
floors.”

  Miranda shrugged. “I did some work for a few people, after school. It wasn’t much. Just sweeping,
washing dishes, and—”

   “Carting some fat gringo’s garbage to the street?”

   “It was a job.” She pulled her hand away from his. “It wasn’t her idea. It was mine.”

   “Yeah.” Rick smiled bitterly. “And there you were being a maid while she sat around waiting for her
pimp to call, huh?”

   “Stop.” Her gaze met his. “Just stop. You don’t know, so you can’t say.”

   “I do know! Hell, I read your letters! I kept them all! Maybe you never spelled it out, but I can read
between the lines pretty good! She’s a worthless puta, and I don’t know why you stayed with her this
long!”

  Miranda was silent. She returned the cardinal to its place on the shelf. “No one’s worthless. That’s
why I stayed.”

   “Yeah, well thank Mother Mary you got away before she could turn you into a whore too!”

   She pressed a finger to his lips. “Please,” she implored. “Let’s talk nice, all right?”

   He kissed her finger, but his eyes remained brooding.

   “Look what I still have!” Miranda went to her suitcase, unlatched it, and dug through clothes until she
found a many-times-folded piece of paper. She began carefully unfolding it, and Rick saw where it had
been taped at the seams to keep it from falling apart. He knew what it was, but he let her open it and
display it to him. “See? It looks almost new.”

   On the paper was a self-portrait, done in pastel crayons about three years ago. His face—a lot
younger then, he thought—was drawn with thick and aggressive lines, lots of black shadow, and red
highlights. It looked damned amateurish to him now. He’d done it in about an hour or so, while staring
into a mirror in his room.

   “Do you still draw?” Miranda asked him.
    “A little.” In his room, in a box under the bed, were dozens of pastel studies, most of them on lined
notebook paper, of Bordertown, the desert, Rocking Chair Ridge, and the face of his grandmother. But
it was a private thing he did, and no one but Miranda and Paloma knew about it. He refused to put any
of his drawings up in the house for fear that the other Rattlers might see.

   “You should do something with your talent,” Miranda persisted. “You should go to art school or—”

   “No more school. Tomorrow’s my last day, and then I’m through.”

   “What are you going to do, then?”

  “I’ve already got a good job, at the hardware store.” He hadn’t mentioned in any of his letters that he
was a lowly stockboy. “I’m… uh… in inventory control. I figure maybe I can start painting houses on
weekends. A fast house painter can make a lot of money.”

   “You can do better than that, and you know it. This says you can.” She held up the self-portrait.

   “No more school,” he said firmly.

   “Mama always said you were—” She stopped, knowing she was treading near a minefield, and then
continued: “As hard to move as a mule train.”

   “She was right. For once.” He watched as Miranda gently refolded the drawing and put it away. “So
what happened?” he asked her, and waited to hear the whole story, even though he knew it was going to
tear him apart.



   “Cody! Cody!”

   He looked up from putting the tools away in the garage stall. Stoplight was staggering toward him,
nearly falling, his face a mask of blood. “They’re killin’ him, Cody!” Stoplight said, struggling for breath.
He bent over, about to puke, and drops of blood spattered on the concrete. “Mr. Hammond’s kid. X
Ray. The Rattlers. They’re at the Warp Room, and they’re killin’ him, man!”

   “How many?” Ice water had flooded his veins, but a hard hot pulse beat in his skull.

   “I don’t know.” He thought his brains must be knocked loose. “Five or six. Seven, maybe.” Mendoza
had been counting money from the register, and now he came out and saw the boy’s bloody face; he
stopped short, his mouth gaping.

   Cody had no hesitation. He reached for the wall and lifted off a leather tool belt that held an array of
wrenches, drawing it tight around his waist and buckling it. “Go find Tank, Bobby Clay, Davy, anybody
and everybody you can. Move it!” Stoplight nodded, mustered his strength, and ran away, an obedient
soldier. At once Cody was astride his motorcycle, and Mendoza’s cry of “Cody! Wait!” was drowned
out by the engine firing. Cody sped off into the darkness.

   “Dammit!” Mendoza ran for the telephone in his office and hurriedly dialed the sheriff. One of the
night deputies, Leland Teal, answered and Mendoza started telling him there was going to be a gang fight
but Teal spent precious seconds fumbling for a pencil and paper to take down the information.

   Cody skidded to a stop in front of the Warp Room. His insides cold and his eyes aflame, he strode
through the doorway and saw the carnage.
   Arcade machines had been overturned, spitting sparks across the floor. Ruben Hermosa was kicking
the glass out of one of them, and from the back old Kennishaw was in a corner moaning “No… please…
no…” Juan Diegas had hold of some kid—Robby Falkner, Cody thought it was—and was methodically
rubbing the boy’s face on the floor, leaving bloody streaks. Other kids cringed at the rear of the Warp
Room.

   And there was Paco LeGrande, splinted nose and all, kicking at Ray Hammond, who had curled up
under a pinball machine and was desperately trying to protect his testicles. Cody heard the breath hiss
between X Ray’s teeth as one of those big combat boots struck his shoulder, and Cody said, “That’s
enough.”

   Paco stopped kicking, turned and grinned. Ruben Hermosa ceased his destruction, and Juan Diegas
released Robby Falkner, who lay sobbing.

   “Hey, man!” Paco said, and showed his palms. “We’re jus’ havin’ us a li’l party.”

  “Party’s over,” Cody told him. He glanced quickly around. Only three Rattlers; what was that shit
about five of them being here? Well, maybe LeGrande and Diegas made two apiece.

   “I think the party’s jus’ startin’,” Paco replied; his grin froze into a rictus, and he began striding
forward, his boots clumping, his body getting ready to launch itself at Lockett.

   Cody let him come on, and didn’t move.

  But when Paco was almost upon him, Cody’s hand blurred to his tool belt. It came away with a
wrench, and he flung it before Paco could register what was going to happen.

  The wrench hit Paco’s collarbone with a solid crunch. Paco yelled in pain and staggered back into
Ruben, his face contorted even further. The wrench clattered to the floor.

    Juan Diegas charged, was too fast for Cody to dodge. The Rattler hit him, head to belly, knocked the
air from his lungs, and lifted him off his feet. He crashed into the Commando machine, and Juan
pummeled wildly at his ribs. Cody jabbed an uppercut at Juan’s chin, only grazed it, hooked his fingers
into the Rattler’s eyes, and twisted. This time Juan screamed and backpedaled, madly rubbing his
scratched eyeballs. Cody wasted no time; he took a step forward, planted himself, and kicked Juan in
the stomach. The other boy wheezed and went down.

    Ruben Hermosa swung at Cody, caught him in the jaw, and rocked him back. Another blow grazed
Cody’s forehead. He lifted his arms, warded off a third punch, gripped Ruben’s T-shirt, and slammed his
fist into the boy’s face; it was an instinct shot, and hit Ruben smack in the nose. Blowing blood, Ruben
tried to retreat but Cody was all over him, hitting him in the face with pistonlike blows. Ruben staggered,
his knees buckled—and then Paco leapt over the Solar Fortress machine and hit Cody with a bodyblock
that knocked him sprawling.

  Ruben scurried for the door on his hands and knees. Once outside, he got up and ran for
Bordertown.

   Cody had blood in his mouth, and his vision was hazed. He could hear the big boots coming, and he
thought, Get up or you’re buzzard bait! He tried to stand, but he knew he was too late. One of Paco’s
boots hit him under the right arm, sending jolts of pain shooting through his ribs. “Stomp him!” he heard
Juan shout. Cody twisted, and the next kick caught his shoulder. His vision was clearing but his legs
wouldn’t move fast enough. He looked up, saw Paco towering over him and another kick about to be
delivered. He had the mental image of it hitting his chin, knocking his head back, and snapping his neck
like a chicken’s. He had to move, and quick.

  But before he could, a figure leapt upon Paco LeGrande’s back and knocked the Rattler off balance.
The kick never came. Cody saw X Ray’s bleeding face—and the little sonofabitch was snarling.

   Paco shouted with rage and reached back to tear X Ray off—but the smaller boy grabbed Paco’s
nose splint and gave it a mighty yank.



   “I love her.” Miranda’s voice was quiet, her hands folded before her as she sat on the sofa. “But I
couldn’t stay with her anymore. I couldn’t stand it.”

   Rick waited without pressing her, because he knew there was more and it had to come out.

   “It got worse with the men,” Miranda went on. “She started bringing them to the apartment. Those
apartments… they have such thin walls.” She picked at a broken fingernail, unable to look at her brother.
“She met this guy. He wanted her to go to California with him. She said he”—a tortured smile flickered
across her mouth—“made her feel pretty. And do you know what else she said?” She forced herself to
meet his solemn gaze. He was waiting to hear it. “She said… we could make a lot of money in California.
The both of us. She said that now I was old enough to start making some real money.”

   Rick sat without moving, his eyes deep ebony and his face like chiseled stone, but inside he was
writhing. Their mother had left him here with Paloma when he was five years old and taken
three-year-old Miranda with her; their father had abandoned them just after Miranda was born. Where
Esteban Jurado was, Rick didn’t know, nor did he particularly care, but over the years his mother had
written him and Paloma chatty letters about her “modeling” career. There always seemed to be a big
break on the horizon that never materialized, and gradually the letters were written more and more by
Miranda. Rick had gotten very good at reading between the lines.

   “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong,” Miranda said. “She was giving me a choice. I could
either leave, or go to California with her. But I don’t believe she really wanted me to. I believe she
wanted me to pack my bag and go to the bus station and buy a ticket to Inferno, just like I did. That’s
what I believe.” Her expression was as firm as his, but the glitter of tears had begun to show. “Please,
Rick… please don’t try to make me think that isn’t true.”

  “Ricardo?” Paloma’s voice drifted from the hallway. Before he could get up to help her, Paloma
walked into the room, dressed in her cotton nightgown and her white hair disarrayed from sleep. “I heard
you talking to someone.”

   “Grandmother,” Miranda said—and Paloma abruptly halted, angling her head toward the dimly seen
figure who stood up from the sofa.

   “Who…”

    “It’s me, Grandmother.” The girl approached her, gently took one of her thin, age-spotted hands.
“It’s—”

   “Miranda,” the old woman whispered. “Oh… Miranda… my little Miranda!” She touched the girl’s
hand, ran trembling fingers over Miranda’s features. “All grown up!” The last time she’d seen the child
was as a three-year-old, being carried north in a Trailways bus. “Oh! So lovely! So lovely!” Miranda
began to cry, tears of joy this time, and hugged her grandmother. And what Paloma would never tell
either Miranda or Rick was that she’d been standing in the hallway for a long while, and had heard
everything.

   “Guerra! Guerra!” someone was shouting out in the street. Dogs started barking like crazy.

  “What’s that?” Paloma asked sharply. The shout kept coming: “Guerra! Guerra!” They all knew
what it meant: gang war.

   Rick had a knot in his throat; he turned away from his grandmother and sister and ran out to the
porch. Ruben Hermosa was standing in the middle of Second Street, his T-shirt splattered with blood
and his jeans wet and muddy from crossing the Snake River’s putrid ditch. He was hollering at the top of
his voice, and Rick saw Zarra come out of his house, and then Joey Garracone from his house up the
street, followed by Ramon Torrez from next door. Other Rattlers were responding, and dogs barked
frantically and raced across the yards, raising whirlwinds of dust.

  Rick sprinted down the steps. “Shut up!” he yelled, and Ruben did. “What are you babblin’ about,
man?”

   “The ’Gades!” Ruben said, his nose oozing blood. “At the Warp Room, man!” He clutched at Rick’s
shirt. “An ambush… Lockett hit Paco with a hammer… Juan got his eyes clawed, man. Oh Jesus… my
nose got busted.”

  “Talk sense!” Rick gripped his arm, because the boy looked as if he were about to keel over.
“What’s goin’ on? What were you doin’ across the bridge?”

  Pequin came running up, gleefully shouting “Guerra!” in imitation of the voice that had roused him
onto the street.

  “Shut up!” Rick commanded, right in his face, and Pequin’s eyes flared with indignant anger but he
obeyed.

   “Jus’ fuckin’ around… not tryin’ to hurt nobody,” Ruben explained. “Jus’ went over there for a kick,
that’s all. They jumped us.” He looked around at the other Rattlesnakes. “They’re killin’ Paco and Juan!
Right now!” He felt his wits get away from him like wild horses. “Maybe six or seven ’Gades, maybe
more… it happened so fast.”

   “War!” Pequin shouted. “We’re gonna stomp some ’Gade asses!”

   “I said shut up!” Rick grasped Pequin’s collar, but the smaller boy jerked away and ran toward Third
Street, hollering his war chant to alert the Rattlers who lived over there. “Somebody stop him!” Rick
demanded, but Pequin was drunk with the smell of violence and running like the wind.

   “We’ve gotta get Paco and Juan out of there, Rick,” Zarra said; his bullwhip was coiled and ready
around his arm. “We’ve gotta save our brothers, man.”

   “Wait a minute. Let me think.” But he couldn’t think. His blood was on fire, and Pequin’s shrill cry
penetrated the walls of every house in Bordertown. There was no time to reason this thing out, because
here came J. J. Melendez and Freddie Concepcion, followed by Diego Montana, Tina Mulapes, and a
big red-haired girl everybody knew as “Animal.”

   “Those fuckers are gonna kill our bloods!” Sonny Crowfield had appeared, his face sweating and
stained by the yellow porch light. “You gonna go over there or not, Jurado?” he challenged, and Rick
saw that he gripped a length of lead pipe in his hand and his eyes were hungry for a fight.

   Rick had to decide, and the decision was clear. The words came out: “We go.”
   As the others whooped and shouted, Rick looked at Paloma and Miranda, standing together on the
porch. He saw his grandmother say No but he couldn’t hear her voice for all the noise, and maybe that
was best. Miranda wasn’t sure what was happening, but she saw chains and baseball bats appearing as
other kids came running up and she knew it had to be a gang fight. Rick touched his pocket, felt the Fang
of Jesus there. Already some of the others were running for their cars and motorcycles, or sprinting
toward the river’s embankment as if rushing to a fiesta. It was all out of control now, Rick realized, and
before this night was done a lot of blood was going to be spilled. Pequin’s cry for war echoed across
Bordertown.

  Mrs. Alhambra was across the street, shouting for Zarra to come home, but he said urgently to Rick,
“Let’s move it!”

   Rick nodded, started to go up the porch steps to his grandmother and sister, but there was no time.
His hard mask settled into place. Wreckage, he thought, and he turned his back on them and strode like
vengeance to his car.



                                                   21
                                                Fireball


Paco’s scream still lingered. He was down on the floor, writhing and holding on to his jerked and freshly
bleeding nose.

   Gotcha, Ray thought—and then Juan Diegas hit him in the side of the head with a swinging fist and he
slid across the floor like a crumpled sack of laundry.

    Cody struggled to stand. He got to his knees, and Juan grasped his collar and hauled him up the rest
of the way. Juan slammed a fist into Cody’s mouth, splitting his lower lip. Cody’s legs sagged. Juan hit
him again, opening a cut under his right eye with that signet ring.

   “Stop it! Stop it!” Kennishaw yelled, still too scared to move.

   Juan lifted his fist for another smash.

  “Hold it right there!” Deputy Leland Teal—middle-aged and potbellied, with a face like a weary
weasel’s—stepped into the doorway. The other nightshift deputy, Keith Axelrod, was right behind him.

   Juan just laughed. He started to deliver the punch that would break Cody’s nose to pieces.

   Headlights stabbed through the Warp Room’s plate-glass window. There was a squeal of tires and
the wailing of a supercharged engine, and Juan shouted, “Oh madre!”

    A pickup truck painted in mottled camouflage grays and greens roared up onto the curb, narrowly
missing Cody’s Honda, clipped away a parking meter, and crashed through the window in a glittering
spray of glass and an ear-popping explosion. The deputies dove for their lives, and the truck smashed a
couple of arcade machines to kindling before it stopped. At once, Bobby Clay Clemmons leapt from the
truck’s bed onto Juan Diegas, swinging at him with a chain. Tank jumped from behind the wheel, roared
like an enraged beast, and kicked at Paco’s ribs. “Party time!” Jack Doss shouted as he tumbled out of
the truck; he was armed with a baseball bat; he attacked the machines in a marijuana-fueled frenzy.
Nasty was there too, urging on the violence. Davy Summers stood atop the truck, looking for somebody
to stomp, and Mike Frackner drank down a beer, crumpled the can, and hurled it at Juan’s head.



   In the Hammonds’ kitchen, Tom was pouring himself another cup of coffee when he thought Daufin
might have moved. Just a fraction, a twitching of a muscle perhaps. Jessie and Rhodes were in the den,
talking about what was to be done. Tom put a spoonful of sugar in his coffee. Again, he thought he
caught a movement from the corner of his eye. He approached Daufin; her face—Stevie’s face—was still
frozen, the eyes staring straight ahead. But—yes! There it was!

   Her right hand, motioning toward the window, had begun to tremble.

   “Jessie?” he called. “Colonel Rhodes?” They came at once. “Look at that.” He nodded toward the
right hand. The shaking seemed to have gotten more severe just in the last few seconds.

   Daufin’s chest hitched, a sudden motion that made Jessie jump.

   “What is it?” Tom asked, alarmed. “Can’t she breathe?”

    Jessie touched the chest. The breathing was shallow and fast. She felt for a pulse at the throat. It was
racing. “Heartbeat’s way up,” she said tensely. Peered into the eyes; the pupils had dilated to the size of
dimes. “There’s some kind of reaction going on, for sure.” Her voice was steady, but her stomach
flipflopped. The outstretched hand kept trembling, and now the tremors were coming up the arm as well.

  Daufin’s breath rattled in the lungs. It exhaled from her mouth, and made what Jessie had thought
might have been a word.

   “What was that?” Rhodes kept his distance from the creature. “What’d she say?”

   “I’m not sure.” Jessie looked into her face, was shocked to see the pupils rapidly contract to
pinpoints and then begin to open up again. “Oh, Christ! I think she’s having a seizure!”

  Daufin’s lips moved, just barely. This time Jessie was close enough to hear the raspy word that
emerged in a bated breath. Or thought she heard it, because it made no sense.

   “I… think she said Stinger,” Jessie told them.

   Stevie’s—Daufin’s—face had begun to bleach of color, taking on a waxy, grayish cast. Her little girl
legs had started trembling, and she whispered it again: “Sting-er.”

   And in that whisper was the sound of utter terror.



   As Juan Diegas begged for mercy from Bobby Clay Clemmons and Tank joined Jack Doss in tearing
up the machines, Cody crawled over to Ray Hammond. The kid was on his hands and knees, shaking his
head back and forth to clear it, blood dripping from his nose and burst lips to the floor.

   “You okay?” Cody asked him. “Hey, X Ray? You hear me, man?”

   Ray looked at him, could tell who it was even without his glasses. “Yeah,” he croaked. “Think I…
shoulda… stayed out of the way.”

   “No,” Cody said, and grasped his shoulder. “I think you were right where you were supposed to be,
bro.”
   Ray’s bloody mouth grinned.

  Horns blared from the street, and headlights flashed. “We’ve got company!” Nasty shouted, reaching
down into the truckbed for a length of wood with nails driven through it. “More Rattlers! A ton of ’em!”

   Cody got to his feet. The wrecked Warp Room spun around him, and Tank kept him from falling
again.

   “Come on out, you shitkickers!” came the first taunt. The horns kept blasting. “Let’s get it on,
assholes!”

   The two deputies backed away, knowing this was more than they’d bargained for. Their meager
salaries weren’t enough to make them face a riot. Four cars, two pickup trucks, and a couple of
motorcycles carrying Rattlesnakes had converged upon the Warp Room. Deputy Teal had called Sheriff
Vance at home before they’d left the office, but if Vance wasn’t here yet, Teal decided not to risk his
own blood and bones. The Rattlers, some of them armed with broken bottles and chains, began to get
out of their vehicles. Deputy Axelrod shouted, “You kids break this up and go on—” but a bottle
shattered against the wall near his head and his attempts at law enforcement were done as he ducked and
ran.

   “Help me!” Juan shrieked. “Get me outta here!” Bobby Clay silenced him with a boot to the gut.

   “Come on!” Ramon Torrez, wielding a chain, shouted at the other Rattlers. “Let’s rush the fuckers!”

  “Rush ’em! Stomp their asses!” Sonny Crowfield motioned everybody on, but he was standing
behind the safety of a car. At that moment Rick’s Camaro pulled up and he and Zarra got out.

   “I want you, bitch!” Animal pointed at Nasty, and in her other hand held a sawed-off bat. More
taunts were flung back and forth, and inside the Warp Room Cody knew they were going to have to
battle their way out.

  Tank was breathing like a bellows, his face gorged with blood in the shelter of his helmet. “Fuckin’
wetbacks! You want some?” he shouted. “Let’s party!” And, bellowing, he propelled himself out of the
Warp Room and into the enemy’s midst.



                                                 ***



   Daufin’s trance broke. The color rushed back into her face. She was trembling wildly, and she sank
to her knees saying, “Sting-er. Sting-er. Sting-er…”

   Over the noise of car horns, Jessie heard the glasses rattle in the cupboard.



   A beer bottle exploded off Tank’s helmet. He drove a fist into Joey Garracone’s face, was hit across
the back by a chain, and staggered. Somebody leapt off a car at him; two more bodies landed on him
and drove him down, still swinging.

   “Get ’em!” Bobby Clay’s eyes shone with homicidal fury. He jumped through the Warp Room’s
shattered window, followed by Jack Doss, Nasty, and the other ’Gades who’d ridden the truck in. Fists
and chains flailed; bottles sailed through the air. Rick ran into the melee, with Zarra at his side. Cody
pulled another wrench from his tool belt and staggered outside, his muscles aching but his blood singing
for violence.

   And in his patrol car about twenty yards away, Ed Vance sat gripping the steering wheel with wet
palms, hearing a singsong Burro! Burro! Burro! at the place in his mind where a frightened fat boy lived.

   He felt the car shudder. No, he realized in another second. It was not the car—it was the ground.



   “Sting-er. Sting-er. Sting-er,” Daufin repeated, her eyes wide with terror. She drew herself across the
floor toward a corner, under the ticking cat-clock, and began to try to fold her body up like a
contortionist.

   The glasses were jumping in the cupboards. Now Jessie, Tom, and Rhodes could all feel the floor
starting to vibrate. A cupboard popped open, and coffee mugs spilled out. The house’s walls were
creaking and popping, little quick fire-cracker sounds.

   “Oh… my… God,” Rhodes whispered.

   Jessie bent down in front of Daufin, who had squeezed herself into a position that must be about to
snap Stevie’s joints. “What is it?” The floor vibrations were getting worse. “Daufin, what is it?”

   “Sting-er,” the creature repeated, staring past Jessie, eyes fixed and glazed. “Sting-er. Sting-er…”

  The light fixtures swung.



   The patrol car’s horn began blaring, without Vance touching it. God A’mighty! he thought, and
scrambled out. He could feel the ground shaking through the soles of his boots, and now there was a low
rumble that sounded like heavy plates of stone grinding together.

   Tank was fighting for his life. Animal swung a bat at Nasty, who dodged and backpedaled, spitting
curses. Rick saw figures fighting all around him, and his hand went to the Fang of Jesus but his fingers
would not close on it. He heard tires squeal, looked over his shoulder, and saw two more cars full of
’Gades barreling along the street; before the cars had stopped, their passengers jumped out and joined
the clash. A misthrown bottle crashed against his shoulder, and he tripped over two fighters and fell. He
was about to struggle up when he felt the concrete shaking, and he thought, What the hell… ? His
eardrums had started aching, his bones throbbing to a deep bass tone. He looked up, and his breath
caught.

   There was a fireball in the sky, and it was coming down on Inferno.

   Rick got to his feet. The fireball was getting larger. Somebody—a ’Gade—grabbed his shirt and
started to deliver a punch, but Rick flung the boy away with furious disdain. The street trembled, and
Rick shouted, “Stop it! Stop it!” but the fighting was too fierce around him, nobody was listening. He
looked up again, being jostled as a Rattler with a bleeding face staggered past him. The fireball’s orange
light licked the street.

   Behind him, Vance had seen the fireball too. He squinted in its glare, felt his heart rise to his throat and
lodge there like a lemon. It’s the end of the world, he thought, unable to run or cry out. The fireball
looked to be coming down right on top of him.
   “Listen!” Rick yelled. He plunged into the thickest of the fighting, trying to separate the battlers for a
second.

   And there he came face-to-face with Cody Lockett.

   Cody’s bones throbbed, his eardrums pounding with pressure, but he’d thought it was his injuries
catching up with him. Now, though, he saw an orange glow, but before he could look up he ran right into
Rick Jurado. His first thought was that Jurado would be carrying a knife, and he had to strike before
Jurado did; he lifted the wrench to bash the other boy across the skull.

   Rick seized his wrist. “No!” he shouted, his eyes wild. “No, listen to—”

   Cody kneed him in the stomach, driving the wind out of him, then he pulled his wrist loose to smash
the weapon down on the back of Jurado’s head.



   Daufin screamed.



   The fireball—almost two hundred feet across—roared down and crashed into Mack Cade’s
autoyard, throwing sheets of dust and pieces of cars into the air. Its shock wave heaved the earth, sent
cracks scurrying along the streets of Inferno and Bordertown, blew out windows, and flung Cody
Lockett off his feet before the wrench could fall. The metal fence around Cade’s autoyard was flattened,
and parts of it sailed off like deadly kites. The west-facing windows of the First Texas Bank exploded,
followed a split second later by the east-facing windows as the shock wave roared through. The
electric-bulb sign blew out as it registered 85°F. at 9:49.

   The Hammonds’ house shuddered, the floor jumping with a squall of stressed joints. Jessie went
down, and so did Tom, and Rhodes was flung against the wall as the southern windows imploded and
the shock hit him like a giant-sized hot skillet.

   Paloma and Miranda were inside the house when the blast and the wind came, and they gripped each
other as the floorboards danced and the walls puffed dust. Glass flew around them, Paloma’s shelf of
ceramic birds crashed down, and both of them were knocked flat as the bass boom passed through.

  Some of the sun-bleached roofs of Bordertown houses ripped off and took flight. Atop the Catholic
church’s spire, the cross was knocked crooked.

   Ruth Twilley was thrown out of her bed, and screamed “Noooaaaahhhh!” as her son shielded his
face from flying glass in his study. In the chapel, coffins rocked like cradles.

   On his porch, Sarge Dennison cried out, “Incomin’ mail!” and jerked awake to find himself sitting in a
dust storm, his eardrums ringing and the steel plate in his skull pounding like Satan’s anvil. Scooter had
jumped into his lap and sat there shaking; Sarge rubbed the dog’s invisible black-and-white-spotted hide
with nervous fingers.

   Burglar alarms were shrilling all along Cobre Road and Celeste Street. Dogs howled, and Inferno’s
three remaining caution lights creaked on their cables; the fourth, at the intersection of Oakley and
Celeste, had crashed to the pavement.

   The shutters had banged open in Curt Lockett’s house, and he lay in the dark in a sweat-damp bed,
his eyes wide as the walls moaned.
   The shock passed on in phantom waves, and the night things darted into their holes.



                                                  22
                                              The Skygrid


Vance stood up. Dust swirled around him, and through it he saw the sputtering of broken neon signs
along Celeste Street. Most of the bulbs over Cade’s used-car lot had exploded, some still spitting
sparks. His cowboy hat was gone, and he felt wetness on his skull; he touched his hair, and his fingers
came away smeared with scarlet. Glass got me, he thought, too stunned to feel any pain. But it wasn’t a
serious cut, just enough to leak some blood. He heard a boy wailing and somebody else sobbing, but the
other combatants had been knocked dumb.

   Flames leapt high over the autoyard. Cade’s paint supply was going up. Black smoke whirled from a
fiery pile of tires, where drums of gasoline had landed and exploded. Where was the fire truck? he
wondered. Not enough time yet for the volunteer firemen to get their drawers on. And in the flash and
coil of red fire Vance saw that something else now occupied Cade’s property.

   Vance fell back against the patrol car, his face turning pasty white. The car’s horn was still blaring, but
he hardly heard it. A thin trickle of red crept down his forehead.

    Rick Jurado was standing, his shirt hanging in tatters. Dust clung to the sweat on his face and chest,
and splinters of glass glittered in his hair. He saw Zarra lurching around a few feet away, the boy’s hands
still clamped to his ears. Around him, the Rattlers and Renegades were fighting different battles—not
against each other, but against their rioting senses.

   Rick saw it then too, amid the flames in the autoyard. He gasped, whispered, “My God,” though he
could barely hear his own voice.

   Cody lay on his knees about ten feet away, fading in and out of consciousness. Bombed us, he
thought. Fuckin’ Rattlers set off dynamite…

   The patrol car’s horn finally got through to Vance; he thought the noise was going to push him over
the edge, and he shouted, “Shut up!” and hammered the hood with his fist. The horn stuttered and
ceased.

   A minute later a siren shrieked. The fire truck, racing along Republica Road past Mendoza’s Texaco
station. It crossed the Snake River Bridge, lights flashing. Gonna need more than one damned hose,
Vance thought—but one was all the fire department had. He knew he should do something, but he didn’t
know what. Everything seemed dreamy, edged with gauze. So after another moment he simply sat on the
patrol car’s dented hood, in a Thinker pose, and watched the fires burn around the thing that stood in
Cade’s chopshop.



   “I don’t know what it was, but it hit across the river.” Tom was standing at a broken window, looking
south. “Something’s on fire over there. Wait a minute.” He took his glasses off and cleaned the lenses on
his shirt; one lens had cracked in a clean diagonal. He put them back on, and then he saw it. “What is
that?”
   Jessie peered over his shoulder, her hair gray with dust. She saw it too, and felt the back of her neck
prickle. “Rhodes! Look at this!”

   He stared for a minute, his mouth half open. His brain was pounding, and even his teeth ached.
“Jesus,” he managed to say. “Whatever it is, it’s big.”

     Jessie glanced down at Daufin—still contorted in the corner, trembling, her eyes darting from side to
side like a trapped rabbit. “What came down?” Jessie asked. Daufin didn’t answer. “Do you know what
it is?”

   Slowly, Daufin nodded. “Sting-er,” she said, her voice strained from the scream.

   “Stinger? What’s that mean?”

   Her face mirrored inner turmoil. She was trying to formulate the terms and express them from her
memory of the dictionary and thesaurus, but they were difficult. These life forms towering before her had
such limited vocabularies and technologies that communication was all but impossible. And their
architecture was insane too; what they called walls, with their straight lines and flat, horrible surfaces,
were enough to drive any civilized being to suicide.

   All this went through Daufin’s mind in a language as melodic as wind chimes and intangible as smoke.
Some things would not translate into the snarling roars that came out of this daughter form’s throat, and
such an untranslatable thing was the event that had just taken place. “Please,” she said, “take me a-way.
Please. Very far a-way.”

   “Why are you so afraid?” Jessie pressed on. “Because of that?” She motioned to the object in the
junkyard.

  “Yes,” Daufin replied. “Afraid, very much. Sting-er life is hurt.”

  The syntax wasn’t proper, but the message was clear. Whatever had just landed across the river
made Daufin quake with terror.

   “I’ve got to get a closer look!” Rhodes said. “My God… I think it’s another ETV!” He searched the
sky; Gunniston would’ve seen that thing fall, and should be coming soon in the helicopter. “It should’ve
shown up on the radar scopes at Webb—unless it slipped through the cracks somehow.” He was
thinking aloud. “Man, I can see those flyboys scrambling right now! Two UFOs in the same day!
Washington’s going to bust their nuts!”

   “Ray,” Tom said suddenly, “Where’s Ray?”

   Jessie followed him to Ray’s room. He knocked. There was no answer, and both of them knew there
was no way Ray’s headphones could be turned up loud enough to have masked that object’s crash. Tom
opened the door, saw the empty bed, and walked straight to the window. His shoes crunched on broken
glass. Tom touched the frame’s unhooked latch; he was bristling with anger, but scared also that Ray had
been in harm’s way when…

   Hell, he thought, getting a good view of the smoke and fire. Everywhere’s in harm’s way.

   “Let’s go find him,” he said.



   A bright red dune buggy shrieked to a halt on Celeste Street. “Get off your ass, Vance!” shouted the
man who jumped out of the vehicle. “What in the name of cock-eyed Judas is goin’ on here?”

   “I don’t know,” Vance said listlessly. “Somethin’ came down.”

   “I can see that! What is it?” Dr. Early McNeil’s face was almost as red as his dune buggy; he had
shoulder-length white hair, his scalp bald and age-spotted on top, a white beard, and blazing blue eyes
that pierced the sheriff like surgical lasers. A big-boned and big-bellied man, he wore an oversized green
scrub shirt and jeans with patches on the knees.

   “That I don’t rightly know, either.” Vance watched an ineffectual stream of water arc toward the
center of the flames. Pissin’ would do just as well, he mused.

  People were coming out of their houses, the younger ones running across the park, the older ones
hobbling the best they could. Most of the Renegades and Rattlers had recovered, and all the fighting was
done; they simply stood and stared, their bruised and sweating faces washed with firelight.

  Cody was on his feet, his brain still murky and one eye swollen almost shut; through his good eye he
saw the object as well as anyone else.

    A black pyramid stood in the center of Mack Cade’s junkyard. Cody figured it as maybe a hundred
and thirty feet tall, maybe more. The fires reflected off its surface, yet the pyramid didn’t exactly look like
it was made of metal; it appeared to have a rough, scaly surface—like snakeskin, or armor plate
segmented in a tight, overlapping pattern. Cody saw the firehose water hit it and turn to steam.

   Someone touched his shoulder. A bruised place. Cody winced and saw Tank beside him. Tank’s
helmet had protected him from most of the beating, but creepers of blood gleamed at his nostrils where a
lucky punch had landed. “You okay, man?”

   “Yeah,” Cody said. “I think.”

   “You look like mighty hell.”

   “Reckon I do.” He glanced around, saw Nasty, Bobby Clay, Davy Summers… all the Renegades
were on their feet, at least, though some of them looked as bad as he knew he did. His eye also found
Rick Jurado, standing not ten feet away and watching the flames. The wetback bastard didn’t seem to
have a scratch on him. And there he was, and most of the Rattlers too, standing on Inferno’s concrete
after dark. Any other time, and Cody would have attacked him in a frenzy; but suddenly all of that
seemed so much wasted energy, like shadowboxing. Jurado’s head turned, and they faced each other.

   Cody still gripped the wrench. He stared back at Rick Jurado.

   “What’re we gonna do, Cody?” Tank asked. “What’s the score, man?”

   “Even,” Cody said. “Let’s leave it like that.” And he threw the wrench; it took out more glass from
the Warp Room’s shattered window.

   Rick nodded and looked away. The battle was over.

   “X Ray,” Cody remembered. He began walking toward the Warp Room, saw that his Honda had
blown over but was still okay, and then he entered the ruins. Ray Hammond was sitting with his back
against the wall, his lips pulped and purple, streaks of blood all over his shirt. “You gonna live?” Cody
asked him.

   “Maybe.” Ray could hardly talk. He’d bitten his tongue during the fight, and it felt the size of a
watermelon. “What’s burning?”

   “Damned if I know. Somethin’ fell and hit over in Cade’s place. Come on, try to stand up.” He
offered Ray his hand, and the smaller boy took it. Cody heaved him up, and instantly Ray’s legs folded.
“Just don’t puke,” Cody warned him. “I have to wash my own clothes.”

   They had just made it out when Jessie saw her son and almost screamed. Behind her, Tom swallowed
a choke. Colonel Rhodes walked through the onlookers, his gaze riveted to the black pyramid, and the
creature with Stevie’s face stayed close to the Civic they’d driven up in.

   “Ray! Oh my God!” Jessie cried out as she reached him; she didn’t know whether to hug him or slug
him, but he looked as if he’d had enough of the second so she did the first.

   “Aw, Mom,” he protested, pushing free. “Don’t make a scene.”

   Tom saw Cody’s bruised face, looked around at the other ’Gades and Rattlers, and had a pretty
good idea of what must have happened. His anger had dissipated, and now he stared in awe at the
towering pyramid as the fires leapt around it.

   “Ain’t gonna put that out with a hose, no sir!” It was Dodge Creech, wearing a yellow coat with blue
plaid, slacks just a shade off the plaid’s hue, and an open-collared pearl-gray shirt. He hadn’t had time to
choose a tie from his vast collection of eye-knockers; the shock wave had thumped his house and
knocked both him and his wife, Ginger, out of their beds. His head shook, his jowls quivering. “Man, I’m
gonna be on the telephone for a solid month tryin’ to get this mess cleaned up with the central office!
Tom, what the ever-lovin’ hell is that thing?”

   “I think… it’s a spacecraft,” Tom said, and Creech’s eyes widened for a second.

   “Excuse my ear wax,” Creech tried again, “but I thought you said—”

   “I did. It’s a spacecraft.”

   “A what?” Vance had been standing close enough to hear. “Tom, you gone crazy?”

   “Ask Colonel Rhodes what it is.” Tom nodded toward the air-force officer. “He’ll tell you.”

   Rhodes scanned the sky—and suddenly saw what he’d been looking for. An F-4E Phantom jet from
Webb Air Force Base streaked over Inferno from east to west, its wingtip lights blinking; Rhodes
followed it, saw it begin to turn for another pass over the black pyramid. Its pilot was probably even now
radioing back what he was looking at, and in a short while the air would be full of jets circling Inferno. He
glanced back at Daufin, saw her still standing near the car, her eyes tracking the jet. Wondering if that
was enough to get her off the planet, he thought. She just appeared to be a scared little girl,
auburn-haired and jittery as a colt.

  It occurred to him that she’d just learned to walk. She probably didn’t know how to run yet, or she
would’ve already taken off.

   “You know somethin’ about this, Colonel?”

   Rhodes pulled his attention away from Daufin. The sheriff and another man, dressed in a god-awful
yellow-and-blue-plaid sportscoat, had approached him. “What the shit is that thing?” Vance asked, his
face marked with a solitary creeper of blood. “Where’d it come from?”

   “I don’t know any more about it than you do.”
  “That’s not what Tom Hammond just said, mister!” Dodge Creech challenged. “Look at this damned
mess! Half the town’s tore up! And you know who’s gotta pay for it? My insurance company! Now
what the hell am I supposed to tell ’em?”

  “It ain’t a meteor this time, for sure.” Vance smelled a whiff of deceit. “Hey, listen here! Is this the
same kinda thing that fell out in the desert?”

   “No, it’s not.” Of that, Rhodes was certain; the color was different, and the ETV that had crashed out
there was about a fifth the size of this one. He watched the Phantom return for another low pass. Where
the hell was Gunny and the chopper? Rhodes had been trained in “fact guarding,” as the Bluebook
Project manual put it, but how could you hide something as big as that—

   There was a low, reverberating sound over the noise of the flames; it sounded to Rhodes like a wet,
husky gasp.

  And in the next second a thin column of glowing violet light shot from the pyramid’s apex, ascending
another two hundred feet or so into the sky.

   “What’s it doin’?” Vance hollered, taking a backward step.

   Daufin knew, and her hands curled into tight fists that left the marks of fingernails in her palms.

   The column of light began to rotate like a stationary cyclone. The stream of water from the firehose
ceased as the firemen fled. Strands of light coiled from the column, as it rotated faster and faster, and the
strands began to interweave. Lines of violet darted off, crossing the horizon to the east, west, north, and
south, gridding the sky over Inferno and pulsing with silent, steady power.

  “Looks like a damn bug zapper!” Cody heard Tank say—and then he saw the jet go into a sharp
upward angle, intending to pierce the violet mesh.

   The Phantom’s nose hit the grid and crumpled inward. The jet exploded in an orange ball, and
Rhodes shouted, “No!” Pieces of the aircraft struck the grid and all of them burst into flame, the burning
fragments spinning down to land in the desert three or four hundred yards south of Bordertown.

   The grid continued to grow, covering the sky with sickly purple light.

   Roughly seven miles in a circle around Inferno and Bordertown, the grid bent and plunged toward
earth. It sliced through the telephone and power lines that marched along Highway 67, and a truck driver
who was too slow on the brakes hit the grid at sixty miles an hour; the truck mashed inward like an
accordion, tires blowing and engine hurtling backward through the cab. The truck bounced off the grid
and blew up, as surely as if it had plowed into a wall of stone. A jackrabbit on the grid’s other side
panicked and tried to run through it to his hole, but he was fried and sizzling before his brain registered
pain.

   The grid’s lines sank through the earth, anchoring deep, and on the way down they cut the water
pipeline that snaked south and ended it in an underground roar of steam.

   Along Celeste Street the lights went out without a flicker. Houses darkened. Television sets died, and
electric clocks ceased ticking. Refrigeration pumps in the Ice House moaned and stopped. The caution
lights went out, and so did the three unbroken glass globes on the Snake River Bridge.

   Jessie heard it, and so did Tom, and Rhodes and Vance, Cody and Rick: the whine of power failing,
the huge everyday network of machinery that ran Inferno and Bordertown now lurching in a lockstep,
everything from the air conditioning in the funeral chapel’s embalming room to the bank’s electronic vault
locks running down their final seconds.

   And then, just like that, it was over.

   Inferno and Bordertown lay under the violet glow of the skygrid, and there was silence but for the
snarl of flames.

   Rhodes’s mouth had gone dry. To the east, another spark of flame erupted against the inside of the
grid—probably a second jet trying to escape and exploding. It faded quickly, and what appeared to be
cinders fell to earth. Rhodes realized he was looking at a force field, generated by a power source inside
the pyramid.

   “Oh… Lordy,” Dodge Creech moaned.

    The chutchutchut of rotors made Rhodes turn toward the southwest. From that direction came an
air-force helicopter, flying about seventy feet from the ground. It gave the black pyramid a wide berth,
slowly circled Inferno, and set down again in Preston Park. The colonel ran to it and saw Gunniston
getting out in a crouch. Jim Taggart, the lanky, red-haired pilot, cut the chopper’s engine and the rotors
whined to a halt.

   “We saw the fire!” Gunniston said when Rhodes reached him. “We were flying when the sky lit up
with that… whatever it is. What happened to the lights?”

   “Power’s out. That’s a force field, Gunny. I just watched two Phantoms get dusted when they haloed
into it. Damn thing must go on for miles!”

   Gunniston stared at the pyramid, his cheeks flushed with excitement and the red glare of the
autoyard’s fire shining in his eyes. “Another ETV,” he said.

   “Right. The other choppers on the way?”

   “No sir. We were the only ones who lifted off. Sanders and O’Bannon are still out at the site.”

   “I’d say this site has just become our number-one priority, wouldn’t you? Follow me.” He strode
toward Sheriff Vance, with Gunniston right behind him. “We have to talk,” Rhodes told Vance, whose
bewildered eyes still begged for an explanation he could understand. “Send somebody to find the mayor.
Better get your church pastors too, and anybody else who can help with crowd control. We’ll meet in
your office in fifteen minutes, and we’ll need flashlights, candles, whatever you can round up.”

   “Fifteen minutes,” Vance repeated. He nodded numbly. “Yeah. Right.” He gazed up at the grid and
his Adam’s apple bobbled as he swallowed. “We’re… we’re caught in a cage, ain’t we? I saw that
plane blow to pieces. That damned cage goes right over the hori—”

   “Listen to me very carefully,” Rhodes said in a low, controlled voice, pushing his face toward the
sheriff’s. He could smell the man’s sour sweat. “I expect you to be clearheaded and thinking straight.
Next to myself and Captain Gunniston, you’re in charge here. Do you understand?”

    Vance’s eyes bulged; never in his wildest nightmares had he ever really believed he’d be in charge of
a crisis situation in Inferno. The most worrisome problem he’d ever faced was keeping the Rattlers and
Renegades from killing each other. But now, in the space of seconds, his whole life was changed. “Y-yes
sir,” he answered.

   “Go!” Rhodes ordered, and Vance hurried away. Now to round up Tom and Jessie and get them to
the meeting too. Have to check the phones—though he already figured they were going to be dead,
disrupted by the same force that had severed the power lines—and try the sheriff’s battery-powered CB
radio. There was the chance a radio transmission might get through to Webb AFB, but Rhodes had no
idea what the limitations of the force field might be or, indeed, if there were any. Caught in a cage,
Vance had said. “You’ve got that right,” he said under his breath.

   He glanced toward Tom’s Civic and suffered another shock.

   Daufin was not there.

   Nor was she anywhere in sight.

   Jessie had seen at about the same time, and her first cry was “Ste—” She checked it. “Tom, Daufin’s
gone!” she said, and Tom saw the empty space where Daufin had been just a moment or two before.
They began to search through the onlookers as Ray sat down on the curb and counted his teeth. All of
them remained, but he felt right on the edge of passing out.

   In a few minutes Tom and Jessie found that Daufin was no longer on Celeste Street.

    The flames were roaring through the supplies of paint and lubricant in Cade’s autoyard, and black
billows of smoke rose from burning tires and oil. The smoke rose to the top of the grid and collected
there like thunderclouds, and overhead the moon turned ebony.



                                                23
                                           After the Fall


“Say what?” Early McNeil asked, his husky voice slow and deliberate.

    “Inside the child’s body is an alien life form,” Rhodes repeated. “From where, I don’t know. Just out
there somewhere.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with a damp paper towel. His shirt was plastered
to his back. The electric fan was, of course, dead, and heat hung heavy in the sheriff’s office. Several
battery-powered lamps had been “requisitioned” from the hardware store and provided glary
illumination. Gathered in the office, along with Dr. McNeil, Rhodes, and the sheriff, were Jessie and Tom,
the Reverend Hale Jennings from the Baptist church, Father Manuel LaPrado, and his younger assistant,
Father Domingo Ortega. Xavier Mendoza had been asked to come by LaPrado as a representative of
Bordertown, and Mayor Brett stood gnawing on his fingernails next to Mendoza.

  “So this creature came out of a ball and got into Stevie Hammond? Is that what you’re askin’ us to
swaller?” Early continued, sitting on a hard bench brought from one of the cells.

   “It’s a little more complicated than that, but you’ve got the gist. I think the creature occupied her
sphere—and I’m referring to ‘it’ as female because that simplifies things too—until she was able to make
the transference. How that happened, or the physics of it, I can’t say. Obviously, we’re dealing with
some pretty strange technology.”

   “Mister, that’s the damnedest tale I’ve ever heard. Pardon me, padres.” McNeil flicked a glance at
Jennings and LaPrado and lit a cigar with a kitchen match scraped across his boot sole, and if anybody
didn’t like the smoke, they could lump it. “Tom, what do you and Dr. Jessie have to say about this?”

  “Just one thing: it’s true,” Tom said. “Stevie’s… not Stevie anymore. The creature calls herself
Daufin.”

   “Not exactly,” Rhodes corrected. “We call her Daufin. I think she saw something in one of Stevie’s
pictures that she identified with. Whether it was a dolphin, or the ocean, I don’t know. But I don’t really
believe that’s the creature’s name, or she’d have a better command of our language.”

   “You mean she can’t talk?” Father LaPrado’s voice was soft and frail. He was a reed-thin man of
seventy-one, with large, sparkling hazel eyes and a headful of snowy hair. His shoulders were stooped,
but he carried himself with great dignity. He occupied the chair at Danny Chaffin’s desk.

   “She can communicate, but only as much as a crash course in English allows her to. She’s got to be
highly intelligent and retentive, because it took her only a few hours to learn the alphabet, the dictionary,
and to read through an encyclopedia. But I’m sure there are still a lot of concepts she can’t understand,
or translate to us.”

   “And she’s missin’?” Vance asked. “A monster from another world’s loose on our streets?”

   “I don’t think she’s dangerous,” Jessie asserted, before Vance’s speculations got out of hand. “I think
she’s scared and alone, and I don’t think she’s a monster.”

   “That’s mighty white of you, considerin’ how she got inside your little girl.” Vance realized what he’d
just said, and he darted a glance at the Bordertown representatives, then back to Jessie. “Listen, she—it,
or whatever—might look like a little girl and all, but how do we know she ain’t got… like, y’know,
powers. Like readin’ minds—”

   Then you don’t have anything to worry about, Jessie thought. Your pages are blank.

   “—or controllin’ em, even. Hell, she might have a death ray or—”

   “Cut the hysterics,” Rhodes said firmly, and Vance immediately silenced. “First of all, Captain
Gunniston and my chopper pilot are out searching for Daufin right now; secondly, I agree with Mrs.
Hammond. The creature doesn’t seem threatening.” He didn’t use the word dangerous—he recalled
shaking hands with a lightning bolt. “As long as we’re not threatening to her,” he added.

   “What are you plannin’ on doin’ when you find her? How you gonna get her back in her ball?” A
shroud of cigar smoke floated around Early’s head.

  “We don’t know yet. The sphere’s missing, and we think she hid it somewhere. If it’s any
consolation, I don’t think she meant to land here. I think her vehicle malfunctioned, and she was on her
way to somewhere else.”

   “By vehicle I reckon you mean spaceship.” Reverend Hale Jennings was standing at the window, his
acorn-shaped bald head tinged violet by the skygrid. He was a stocky, broad-chested man in his late
forties, built like a fireplug, and had been a boxing champ during his days in the navy. “How’d she pilot a
spaceship if she was inside a sphere?”

   “I don’t know. We can only find out from her.”

  “Okay, but what about that?” Jennings’s head tilted toward the black, scale-covered pyramid. “I
don’t know about you gents, but that particular visitor makes me a mite nervous.”

   “Yeah,” Vance agreed. “How do we know Daufin didn’t call it down to help her invade us?”

   Colonel Rhodes measured his words carefully. To tell them that Daufin was terrified of that pyramid
would not help their peace of mind, but there was no longer any use in hiding the truth. “There’s no proof
she brought it down, but she must know what it is. Just before it landed, she kept repeating something:
Stinger.”

   There was a silence, as the possible meanings of that word sank in. “Might be the name of the planet
she comes from,” Vance suggested. “Maybe she looks like a big ol’ wasp under that skin.”

   “As I said,” Rhodes continued doggedly, “she just learned English. Evidently the word stinger was
suggested to her by something she saw.” He remembered the picture of the scorpion on Stevie’s bulletin
board. “What she intended it to mean, I don’t know.”

   “There’s much you don’t know, young man,” Father LaPrado said, with a wan smile.

    “Yes sir, but I’m working on it. As soon as we find Daufin, maybe we can clear some of these
questions up.” He glanced quickly at his wristwatch; it was 10:23, a little more than thirty minutes since
the pyramid had come down. “Now: about the power failure. All of you have seen the smoke clouds
hanging at the top of the grid. We’re in some sort of force field, generated from inside the pyramid. Just
as it keeps the smoke from getting out, it’s cut the power and telephone lines. The thing is solid, though it
appears transparent. It’s just as if a big glass bowl was plopped on top of us. Nothing can get in and
nothing can get out either.” He’d tried the sheriff’s CB radio and gotten a squeal of static as the radio
waves were deflected.

   “A force field,” Jennings repeated. “How far out does it go?”

   “We’re going to take the chopper up and find out. My guess is that it’s limited to the immediate area
around Inferno and Bordertown—maybe ten miles at the most. We don’t have to worry about the air
giving out”—I hope, he thought—“but the smoke from those fires isn’t going to go away.” The blazes
were still burning, and black smoke from burning heaps of tires was not only thickening at the top of the
grid but beginning to haze the streets too, and the air was permeated with a scorched smell.

   Early grunted, took one more long draw on his cigar, puffed the smoke away, and crushed the stogie
out on the floor. “Reckon I’ll do my part against air pollution,” he grumbled.

   “Right. Thanks.”

   “One moment.” Father Ortega, a slim, somber-faced man with swirls of gray at his temples, stood
next to LaPrado. “You say this field of force prevents entering and escape, sí? Is it not clear that it has a
particular purpose?”

   “Yeah,” Vance said. “To keep us caged up while we get invaded.”

   “No,” the priest went on, “not to keep us caged. To imprison Daufin.”

   Rhodes looked at Tom and Jessie; all of them had already warily circled that conclusion. If the black
pyramid—or something inside it—had come for Daufin, she obviously did not want to be taken. He
returned his attention to Ortega, his expression studiously composed. “Again, we can only find that out
from her. What we need to talk about now is crowd control. I doubt if anybody’s going to be getting
much sleep tonight. I think it would be best if people knew they had places to congregate, where there
were lights and food. Any suggestions?”

   “The high school gym might do,” Brett offered. “That’s big enough.”

   “Folks want to be closer to their homes,” Jennings said. “How about the churches? We’ve got a ton
of candles already, and I reckon we can get some kerosene lamps from the hardware store.”
   “Sí.” LaPrado nodded assent. “We can share food from the bakery and the grocery store.”

   “Probably a pot of coffee or two still at the Brandin’ Iron,” Vance said. “That might help.”

   “Good. The next question is, how do we get people off the streets?” Rhodes looked to suggestions
from LaPrado and Jennings.

   LaPrado said, “We have bells, up in the steeple. If they haven’t been knocked loose, we can start
them ringing.”

   “That’s a problem for us,” Jennings answered. “We’ve got electronic bells. Took the real ones out
four years ago. I reckon I can find some volunteers to go house to house, though, and let folks know
we’re open.”

   “I’ll leave that and the food for both of you and the mayor to organize,” Rhodes said. “I doubt if we
can get everybody off the streets, but the more people indoors the better I’ll feel about things.”

   “Domingo, will you see me back, please?” LaPrado stood up with Ortega’s help. “I’ll get the bells
started, and ask some of the ladies to round up food.” He shuffled to the door, and paused there.
“Colonel Rhodes, if someone asks me what’s happening, do you mind if I use your explanation?”

   “What’s that?”

  “‘I don’t know,’” the old priest replied, with a grim little chuckle. He allowed Mendoza to open the
door for him.

   “Don’t go too far, Father,” Early said. “I may be needin’ you pretty soon. You too, Hale. I’ve got
four of Cade’s workmen who aren’t gonna last the night, and I imagine the fireboys’ll be pullin’ more
bodies out when it gets cool enough to go in.”

  LaPrado nodded. “You know where to find me,” he said, and left the office with Ortega and
Mendoza.

  “Fella don’t have half his marbles,” Vance muttered.

   Early stood up. His time for lollygagging was spent. “Folks, this has been real educational, but I’ve
got to get back to the clinic.” Eight of the kids from the gang fight, including Cody Lockett and Ray
Hammond, had been taken to the Inferno Clinic for stitches and bandages, but the seriously injured
workers from Cade’s junkyard—and only seven of a crew of forty-six had come staggering, burned, and
bleeding over the mashed-down fence—were being attended to first. Early’s staff of three nurses and six
volunteers were treating shock and glass-cut patients by the glare of the emergency lights. “Dr. Jessie, I
sure could use you,” he said. “I’ve got a fella with a piece of metal scrapin’ his backbone and another
who’s gonna have to part with a crushed arm pretty soon. Tom, if you can hold a flashlight steady and
you don’t mind a little blood, I can use you too.” It occurred to him that Noah Twilley was going to be
just as busy before long, when the firemen brought the rest of the corpses out.

  “I can handle it,” Tom said. “Colonel, will you let us know when you find her?”

  “As soon as. I’m on my way to meet Gunny right now.”

   They followed Early out into the violet-hued street. A few knots of people remained on the street,
gawking, but most of the onlookers had melted back to their homes. Rhodes walked toward Preston
Park, Tom and Jessie went to their Civic, and Early climbed nimbly into his dune buggy.
    As the buggy roared away, it was narrowly missed by a battleship-sized yellow Cadillac that stopped
in front of the sheriff’s office. Celeste Preston, wearing a scarlet jumpsuit, got out and stood with her
hands on her hips, looking at the massive pyramid across the river. Her sharp-featured face angled up,
her pale blue eyes examining the skygrid. She’d already seen the helicopter sitting in Preston Park; one of
the three that had buzzed her house this morning, she thought with a resurgence of righteous anger. But
the anger collapsed soon enough. Whatever that big bastard was over in Cade’s autoyard, and that
purple mesh covering the sky, they took precedence over her concern for her lost beauty sleep.

   Mayor Brett and Hale Jennings emerged from Vance’s office on their way to Aurora Street, where
the Quik-Check Grocery’s owner lived. Brett almost ran into Celeste, and his heart gave a violent kick
because he was scared to death of her. “Uh… Miz Preston! What can I do for—”

   “Howdy, Pastor,” she interrupted, then turned her cold glare on the mayor. “Brett, I hope to God you
can tell me what that thing is over there, and why the sky’s all lit up and why my power and phones are
out!”

    “Yes ma’am.” Brett swallowed thickly, his face beaded with sweat. “Well… see… the colonel says
it’s a spaceship, and it’s got a force field comin’ out of it that’s stopped the electricity, and—” There was
no way to explain all of it, and Celeste watched him like a hawk poised over a mouse.

  “Mrs. Preston, I think it’d be best if you asked Sheriff Vance,” Jennings advised. “He’ll tell you the
whole story.”

   “Oh, I can’t wait for this!” she said, and as the two men walked to the pastor’s blue Ford she
squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and almost took the door off its hinges when she stormed inside.

  She caught Vance with his hand up the office Coke machine’s innards, working a can free. “I’ve got
some questions that need answerin’,” she said as the door shut behind her.

   Vance had hardly jumped when she came in; his nervous system had reached its quota of shocks. He
kept at the can, which was still deliciously cool under his fingers. One more good twist and he’d have it
out. “Sit down,” he offered.

   “I’ll stand.”

  “Suit yourself.” Damn, why wouldn’t it come out? He did this all the time, and usually the cans
popped out with no trouble. He jiggled it, but it seemed to be hung on something.

   “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Celeste stalked toward him, shoved him none too gently aside, reached her
arm up the vent, and grasped the can. She twisted her wrist sharply to the left and pulled the can out.
“Here! Take the damned thing!”

  Suddenly he didn’t want it so much. Her arm was skinny as a rail, and he figured that’s how she’d
done it. “Naw,” he said, “you can have it.”

  Normally she only drank diet colas, but the air was so hot and stifling she didn’t care to be choosy.
She popped the tab and drank several cool swallows. “Thanks,” she said. “My throat was kinda dry.”

   “Yeah, I know what you mean. The water fountain’s not workin’, either.” He nodded toward it, and
when he did he caught a strange scent: like cinnamon, or some kind of fragrant spice. He realized a
second later that it must be coming from Celeste Preston, maybe the scent of her shampoo or soap. Then
the aroma drifted away, and he could smell his own sweaty self again. He wished he’d put on some more
of his Brut deodorant, because it was wearing off fast.
   “You’ve got blood on your face,” she said.

   “Huh? Yeah, reckon I do. Glass cut me.” He shrugged. “Don’t matter none.” His nose searched for
another sniff of cinnamon.

   Just like a man! Celeste thought as she finished off the drink. Damn fools get cut and bleed like stuck
pigs, and they pretend they don’t even notice it! Wint was the same way, slashed his hand open on
barbed wire once and acted like he’d gotten a splinter in his finger, tryin’ to be tough. Probably wasn’t a
dime’s worth of difference between Wint and Vance, if you could shave about fifty pounds of fat off him.

   She jerked herself back to reality. Either the heat was getting to her, or it was the smoke in the air;
she’d never felt an iota of compassion for Ed Vance, and she sure didn’t intend to start. She flung the can
into a wastebasket and said stridently, “I want to know what the hell’s goin’ on around here, and I want
to know now!”

   Vance stopped sniffing. It wasn’t cinnamon, he decided; it was probably witch hazel. He went to his
desk and got the patrol car’s keys.

   “I’m talkin’ to you!” Celeste snapped.

  “I’ve gotta go over to Danny Chaffin’s house and pick him up. My night deputies have vamoosed.
You want to hear about it, you’ll have to go with me.” He was already on his way to the door.

   “Don’t you walk out on me!”

   He paused. “I’ve gotta lock up. You comin’, or not?”

  Her idea of hell was to be in that patrol car with Vance’s blubber shaking behind the wheel, but she
saw she’d have to endure it. “I’m comin’,” she said through gritted teeth, and followed him out.



                                                   24
                                               Act of God


“Lord have mercy!” Dodge Creech peered out a cracked window at the pyramid. He was still wearing
his yellow-and-blue-plaid sport coat, his red lick of hair damp with sweat and glued to his sparkling
scalp. “Ginger, I’m tellin’ you: if that thing had come down two hundred yards more north, we’d be
laying in our graves right now. How in hell am I gonna explain this to Mr. Brasswell?”

   Ginger Creech thought about it. She was sitting in a rocking chair across the pine-paneled living room,
wearing her plain blue robe, her feet in Dearfoam slippers and pink curlers in her graying hair. Her brow
furrowed. “Act of God,” she decided. “That’s what you’ll tell him.”

  “Act of God,” he repeated, trying it out. “No, he won’t buy that! Anyway, if it was a meteor or
somethin’ that fell without a mind to it, then it would be an act of God. If it’s somethin’ that’s got a mind,
you can’t call it an act of God.” Harv Brasswell was Creech’s supervisor, based in Dallas, and he had a
powerfully tight fist when it came to damage claims.

   “You sayin’ God doesn’t have a mind?” she inquired, her rocking coming to a halt.

   “No, ’course not! It’s just that an act of God has to be like a storm, or a drought, or somethin’ only
God could cause.”

  That still sounded lame, and he didn’t want to stir Ginger up; she was a PTL, Ernest Angsley,
Kenneth Copeland, and Jimmy Swaggart fanatic. “I don’t think God had anythin’ to do with this.”

    The squeaking of her chair continued. The room was illuminated by three oil-burning lanterns that had
been hung from the wagon-wheel light fixture at the ceiling. A couple of candles burned atop the
television set. Bookshelves were packed with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, stacks of National
Geographics, insurance law and motivational salesmanship books, as well as Ginger’s collection of
religious tomes.

   “I’ll bet that thing threw every house in town off its foundations,” Dodge fretted. “I swear, ninety
percent of the windows must be broken. Streets all cracked too. I never believed in spaceships before,
but by God if that’s not one, I don’t know what is!”

   “I don’t want to think about it,” Ginger said, rocking harder. “No such thing as spaceships.”

   “Well, it sure ain’t the Big Rock Candy Mountain out there! Lord, what a mess!” He rubbed the cool
glass of iced tea he was holding across his forehead. The refrigerator had quit along with the power, of
course, but the freezer unit still held a few trays of cubes. In this heat, though, they weren’t going to last
very long. “That Colonel Rhodes is havin’ a meetin’ with the sheriff and Mayor Brett. Didn’t ask me,
though. Guess I’m not important enough, huh? I can sell everybody in town their insurance and wait on
’em hand and foot, but I’m not important enough. There’s thanks for you!”

   “The meek shall inherit the earth,” Ginger said, and he frowned because he didn’t know what she was
talking about and he didn’t think she knew, either.

   “I’m not meek!” he told her. She just kept rocking. He heard the deep, rhythmic tolling of the bell at
the Sacrifice of Christ Catholic Church across the river, calling the parishioners. “Sounds like LaPrado’s
openin’ up for business. Guess Reverend Jennings will too. It’s gonna take more than church bells to
keep folks—”

   There was another sound, one that stopped him midsentence.

   It was a sharp, cracking noise: bricks being wrenched apart.

   Under my feet, Dodge Creech thought. Sounds like the basement floor’s rippin’ to—

   “What’s that noise?” Ginger cried out, standing up. The rocking chair creaked on without her.

   The wooden floor trembled.

   Dodge looked at his wife. Her eyes were glassy and wide, her mouth open in a straining O. Above
their heads the wagon-wheel fixture shook, the oil lamps beginning to swing.

   Dodge said, “I… think we’re havin’ an earthqu—”

    The floor heaved upward, as if something huge had battered it from below. Nails leapt loose, glittering
in the lamplight. Ginger staggered backward and fell, shrieking as Dodge toppled to his knees.

   She saw the floor split open underneath him with a scream of tortured wood, and her husband’s body
dropped into the seam up to his neck. Dust billowed around him and filled the room, but she could still
see his face: chalky pale, eyes holes of shock. He was looking at her as she crawled away from the
collapsing floor on her back.
    “Somethin’s got me,” he said, and his voice was a thin, awful whine. “Help me, Ginger. Please…” He
lifted his hand out of the hole for her, and what looked like gray snot was drooling from his fingers.

  Ginger wailed, curlers dangling from her hair.

   And then Dodge was gone, down the hole in the living-room floor. The house shook again, the walls
moaning as if in pain at giving up their master. Plaster dust welled through cracks in the pinewood like
ghost breath—and then there was silence but for the creakings of the rocking chair and the wagon-wheel
fixture. One of the lamps had fallen and lay unbroken on the round red throw rug.

  Ginger Creech whispered, “Dodge?” She was shaking, tears running down her face and her bladder
about to pop. Shouted it: “Dodge!”

  There was no answer, just the chuckling of water down below, running from a broken pipe. The
water soon ran out, and the chuckling ceased.

   Ginger pushed herself toward the hole, her muscles sluggish as cold rubber bands. She had to look
down it—did not want to, must not, should not—but she had to, because it had taken her husband. She
reached the jagged edge and her stomach threatened eruption, so she had to squeeze her eyes shut and
ride it out. The sickness passed, and she looked over into the hole.

   Just dark.

   She reached out for the oil lamp and turned up the wick. The flame guttered and rose to a knifelike
orange point. She thrust the lamp down into the hole, her other hand gripping the splintered edge with
white-knuckled fingers.

   Yellow dust sifted and stirred in small, cyclonic whorls. She was peering down into the basement eight
feet below; and in the basement floor was another hole that looked—yes, she thought, oh Jesus son of
God Holy Christ yes—gnawed through the concrete bricks. Beneath the basement floor lay more
darkness.

    “Dodge?” she whispered, and it echoed Dodge? Dodge? Dodge? Her fingers spasmed; she lost the
oil lamp, and it fell through the hole in the basement floor, kept falling, maybe ten or twenty more feet,
finally shattered against red Texas dirt and the flames gouted as the rest of the oil caught. Down in that
hole, Ginger could see the glimmering of ooze where something had dragged her husband to hell.

   Her senses left her altogether, and she lay trembling on the warped floor, her body drawn up in a tight
fetal position. She decided to recite the Twenty-third Psalm seven times, because seven seemed like a
holy number and if she recited loud enough and wished hard enough she would lift her head and see
Dodge sitting in his easychair across the room, reading one of his motivational salesmanship books, and
the TV set would be tuned to PTL and the thing that could not possibly be a spaceship would be gone.
She began to recite, but she almost gagged with terror; she’d forgotten the words.

  A church bell was ringing.

 It must be Sunday, she thought. Sunday morning, bright and new. She sat up, listening to the bell.
What was that violet glow coming through the window? Where was Dodge, and why was that hole—

  She had always loved the sound of a church bell, summoning her to worship. It was time to go now,
and Dodge could come along later. And if he wore that red suit today, she’d skin him, just skin him alive.
She stood up, her eyes empty and tear tracks glistening through the dust on her face. She left the house,
walked out of her Dearfoams, and kept going barefoot along Brazos Street.
                                                25
                                        Sarge’s Best Friend


“Don’t you be scared now, Scooter. I’m not gonna let anythin’ bad happen to you, no siree!” Sarge
Dennison patted Scooter’s head, and the invisible animal curled up against his leg. “Don’t you worry. Ol’
Sarge’ll protect you.” He was sitting on the edge of the bandstand in the middle of Preston Park, and had
just witnessed the helicopter take off with the pilot and two men aboard. The aircraft reached a height of
sixty feet and zoomed to the east, the chatter of its rotors rapidly fading.

   Sarge watched it go, until its blinking lights were lost to sight. The bell of the Catholic church across
the river was tolling, and a few people stood out on Celeste Street and Cobre Road, looking at the black
pyramid and talking, but most had retreated to their homes. He observed the column of violet light,
rotating slowly around and around; it reminded him, more than anything, of a barbershop pole. The top of
the purple grid was lost in motionless clouds of ebony smoke, and the air smelled burnt. It was a smell he
didn’t like, because it made dark things in his mind start to move again.

   Scooter whimpered. “Uh-uh, don’t you cry.” Sarge’s voice was soothing, his fingers gentle as they
stroked the air. “I’m not leavin’ you.”

   There was a movement beneath him, and suddenly he was looking down at a little girl’s face, washed
with violet light, her auburn hair full of dust. She had poked her head out from the small crawlspace
underneath the bandstand, and now watched him with eyes full of puzzlement.

   “Howdy,” Sarge said. He recognized the child. “You’re Mr. Hammond’s daughter. Stevie.”

   She said nothing.

  “You know me, don’t you? Sarge Dennison? Your mama brought you to school one afternoon.
Remember?”

   “No,” Daufin said tentatively, ready to draw herself back into the protection of the shell she’d found.

   “Well, I surely do. Guess it was last year, though. How old are you now?”

   Daufin pondered. “Old,” she said.

   She’s got a funny voice, he thought. Kinda raspy, or whispery, or somethin’. Sounds like she could
use a cough drop. “What’re you doin’ under there?” Again, no answer. “Why don’t you come on up and
say hello to Scooter? I ’member he liked you.”

     She hesitated. This creature didn’t seem threatening, and there was a pleasant… what was it termed?
A pleasant smile on his cliff of features. Wasn’t that a symbol of nonaggression? And she was curious as
well; she’d seen him approach, heard him sit on the surface above her head. He’d been solitary; why was
it, then, that he was communicating with an entity he kept referring to as Scooter?

   Daufin crawled out. Sarge saw that her clothes were covered with dust, her hands and arms dirty, her
sneaker laces untied and dragging. “Your mama’s gonna tan your hide!” he told her. “You’re a walkin’
dustball!”
   “I thought I was a daugh-ter,” Daufin said, newly puzzled.

  “Well… yeah, you are. I just meant… aw, forget it.” He touched the whitewashed plank at his side.
“Take a seat.”

   Daufin didn’t fully understand what he meant, since she saw no chair, bench, or stool for the purpose
of resting the rump of the human body, so she simply decided he was inviting her to imitate his position.
She started to sit down.

   “Hold it! Don’t sit on Scooter!”

   “Scoot-er?” she inquired.

  “Sure! He’s right here! Scooter, move your butt and give the little girl room. You ’member her, don’t
you? Stevie Hammond?”

   Daufin tracked Sarge’s line of sight, saw he was talking to what she perceived as empty space.

   “There y’go,” Sarge said. “He’s moved now.”

   “I pre-fer to…” What was the term? “To take the up-right po-si-tion.”

   “Huh?” Sarge frowned. “What kinda talk is that?”

   “Web-ster,” came the reply.

   Sarge laughed, scratched his head. His fingers made a grainy noise in the stubble of his hair. “You’re a
card, Stevie!” She watched the fingers move across his skull, then she plucked up a bit of her own hair
and examined the difference. Whatever these life forms called human beings were composed of, they
certainly had very few common characteristics. “So why are you hidin’ under the bandstand?” Sarge
asked, his right hand rubbing Scooter’s muzzle; Daufin’s eyes followed the wavelike movements. He
took her silence as sullen. “Oh. Did’ja run away from home?”

   No reply.

   He went on. “Ain’t much to run to when you run away from home around here, is there? Bet your
folks are kinda worried about you, huh? ’Specially with that big booger sittin’ over there?”

   Daufin gave the towering object a quick, cold glance, and a shudder passed through her host body.
“Is that what you call it?” she asked. “A big…” This term was not in Webster language. “Boo-ger?”

   “Sure is, ain’t it?” He grunted, shook his head. “Never seen the like. Scooter ain’t either. You could
just about put the whole town inside that thing and still have room left over, I’ll bet.”

   “Why would you?” she asked him.

   “Why would I what?”

  She was patient, sensing that she was dealing with a life form with minimal capabilities. “Why would
you want to put the whole town in-side that big boo-ger?”

    “I didn’t mean really. I just meant… y’know, for instance.” He regarded the skygrid. “I saw a plane
hit up there and blow—boom!—just like that and gone. Sittin’ on my porch, I saw it happen. Talkin’ to
the reverend a little while ago. The reverend says it’s like a glass bowl turned upside down over Inferno.
Says nothin’ can get in, and nothin’ can get out. Says it’s somethin’ from…” He motioned with a wave of
his hand toward the night. “Out there, a long ways off.” His hand reached back to touch Scooter. “But
me and Scooter’ll make out all right. Yessir. We’ve been together a long time. We’ll make out all right.”

  De-lu-sion, she thought. A persistent belief in something false (opposite of true) typical of some
mental (of or relating to the mind) disorders. “What is Scoot-er?” she asked.

   He looked up at her, as if startled by the question. His mouth opened; for a few seconds his face
seemed to sag on the bones, and his eyes glazed over. He stayed that way as she waited for an answer.
Finally: “My friend,” he said. “My best friend.”

   There was a growl, a noise of a kind Daufin had never experienced before. It seemed to gain volume,
a harsh rolling and tumbling of tones that she could feel at her very center.

   “You must be hungry.” Sarge’s eyes had cleared. He was smiling again. “Your stomach’s talkin’.”

   “My… sto-mach?” This was a new and astounding revelation. “What mes-sage does it send?”

  “You need food, that’s what! You sure talk funny! Don’t she, Scooter?” He stood up. “Better get on
home now. Your folks’ll be huntin’ you.”

   “Home,” Daufin repeated. That concept was clear. “My home is…” She searched the sky. The grid
and the smoke clouds blocked off her reference points, and she could not see the star corridor. “Out
there, a long way off.” She mimicked his gesture, because it seemed an appropriate way to demonstrate
great distance.

  “Aw, you’re joshin’ me now!” he chided her. “Your house is just up the street. Come on, I’ll walk
you home.”

    His intention was to escort her back to the box where Stevie, Jessie, Tom, and Ray dwelled, she
realized. There was no reason to hide anymore; there was no exiting this planet. The next move was not
hers. She stood up on stalks that still felt gangly and precarious, and began to follow this creature across
a fantasy landscape. Nothing in her deepest dreams had prepared her for the sights on this planet: rows
of insanely built boxes brooding on either side of a flat, brutally hard surface; towering, ugly-hued
growths studded with fearsome-looking daggers; the people’s means of conveyance smaller boxes that
jarred along the hard surfaces with sickening gravitational pressures and made noises like the destruction
of worlds. She knew the terms—houses, cactus, automobiles—from that nightmarish collection called
Britannica, but absorbing the written descriptions and flat images was far less disturbing than the
realities. As they walked along and Daufin struggled with gravity, she heard the Sarge Dennison creature
talking: “Come on, Scooter! Don’t run off and get all dirty, now! No, I ain’t gonna throw you a stick!”
She wondered if there was a dimension here of which she was unaware—another world, hidden beyond
the one she saw. Oh, there was much here to study and contemplate, but there was no time.

   Her head swiveled back over her shoulder. The pain of unyielding structures stopped her head from a
full rotation. Bones, she knew they were termed. The bones of her host body’s arms and legs still
throbbed from her contortions. She understood that bones were the framework of these creatures, and
she recognized them as marvels of engineering to withstand this gravity and absorb the stunning
punishment that came with “walking.” These creatures, she mused, must have a deep kinship with pain,
because it was ever-present. Surely they were a hardy species, to endure such tortures as “automobiles”
and “streets” and “sneakers.”

   She stared for a moment at the big booger and the violet grid, and if Sarge Dennison had seen the
angle of her neck, he would’ve thought, correctly, that it was on the verge of snapping. The trap is set,
she thought in her language of chimes. Already there had been hurting. Soon the trap would spring, and
here in this lifepod called In-fer-no there would be extinction. Much extinction.

  In her chest there was a crushed sensation, more painful than even the gravity. These human beings
were primitive and innocent, and they did not know what was ahead.

   Daufin’s steps faltered. It will happen because of me, she thought. Because I came here, to this small
planet on the edge of the star corridor—a young civilization, still a distance away from the technology to
take them into deep space where a million worlds and cultures yearned for freedom.

   She’d hoped to learn their language, stay long enough to tell them about herself and why she was
racing along the star corridor, and leave long before this; it had never occurred to her that they wouldn’t
have interstellar vehicles, since most of the civilizations she was familiar with did. The trap is about to
spring, she thought—but I must not throw myself into it. Not yet, not until there is no more chance. She
had promised this daughter would be safe, and she kept her promises.

  Her head swiveled away from the skygrid and the black pyramid, but they remained as ugly as open
wounds behind her eyes.

  They reached the Hammond house. Sarge knocked at the door, waited, knocked again when there
was no response. “Nobody to home,” he said. “Think they’re out lookin’ for you?”

   “I am here,” she answered, not fully understanding. This Sarge creature was a disrupter of language.

   “I know you’re here, and Scooter knows you’re here, but… little lady, you sure know how to throw
a curveball, don’t you?”

   “Curve-ball?”

   “Yeah. Y’know. Fastball, curveball, spitball—baseball.”

   “Ah.” A smile of recognition skittered across her mouth. She remembered the spectacle on the
teeah-veeah. “Safe!”

   “Right.” Sarge tried the doorknob, and the door opened. “Looky here! They must’ve left in a mighty
big hurry!” He poked his head in. “Hey, it’s Sarge Dennison! Anybody to home?” He didn’t figure there
was going to be a reply, and there was none. He closed the door and looked up and down the street.
Candles flickered in a few windows. There was no telling where the Hammonds might be, with all the
confusion of the last hour. “You want to go lookin’ for your folks?” he asked her. “Maybe we can track
’em do—”

   His voice was drowned out by the rotors of the helicopter as it flashed past overhead, going west,
sixty or seventy feet off the ground. The noise shot Daufin off her feet and propelled her forward. She
clamped both hands to one of Sarge’s and stood close, her body shivering.

   Child’s scared to death, Sarge thought. Skin’s cold too, and… Lord, she’s got a strong grip for a
kid! He could feel his fingers prickling with a needles-and-pins sensation, as if his hand was snared by a
low-voltage electric cable. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant, just strange. He saw Scooter running around in
circles, also spooked by the ’copter’s passage. “Ain’t nothin’ to be scared of. Just a machine,” he said.
“Your folks oughta be home pretty soon.”

   Daufin hung on to his hand. The electric tingling was moving up Sarge’s forearm. He heard her
stomach growl again, and he asked, “You had any dinner?” She was still too skittish to speak. “I don’t
live too far from here. Just up Brazos Street a ways. Got some pork ’n beans and some ‘tater chips.”
The tingling had advanced to his elbow. She wouldn’t let go. “You want to have a bowl of pork ’n
beans? Then I’ll bring you back here and we’ll wait for your folks?” He couldn’t tell if that was okay by
her or not, but he took the first step and she did too. “Anybody ever tell you you walk funny?” he asked.

   They continued toward Brazos, Daufin’s hands latched to Sarge’s. The steady pulse of energy she
emitted continued through Sarge Dennison’s nerves, into his shoulder and neck, along his spine, and up
into his cerebral cortex. He had a mild headache; the steel plate’s playin’ its tune again, he thought.

   Scooter trotted alongside. Sarge said to the animal, “You’re a mighty prancy thing, ain’t—”

   There was a pain in his head. Just a little one, as if a spark plug had fired.

   Scooter vanished.

   “Uh-uh-uh…” Sarge muttered; the spark plug short-circuited.

   And there was Scooter again. A mighty prancy thing.

   Sarge’s face was sweating. Something had happened; he didn’t know what, but something. The
child’s hand clung tight, and his head was hurting. Scooter ran ahead, to wait on the front porch, pink
tongue hanging out.

   The door was unlocked; it always was. Sarge let Scooter in first, and then Daufin finally released his
hand as he searched for an oil lamp and matches. But the spark plug kept sputtering in his brain, and one
side of his body—the side she’d been standing on—was full of prickly fire. Sarge got the lamp lit, and the
glow chased some of the shadows away—but they were tricky shadows, and sometimes Scooter was
there and the next second he wasn’t.

   “Little lady,” he said as he sank into a chair in the immaculate room with its swept and mopped floor,
“I’m… not feelin’ so good.” Scooter jumped into his lap and licked his face. He put his arms around
Scooter. The little girl was watching him, standing just at the edge of the lamplight. “Lord… my head.
Really beatin’ the band in—” He blinked.

   His arms were enfolded around nothing.

   His brain sizzled. Cold sweat trickled down his face. “Scooter?” he whispered. His voice cracked,
went haywire; his face contorted. “Scooter? Oh Jesus… oh Jesus… don’t bring the stick.” His eyelids
fluttered. “Don’t bring the stick. Don’t bring the stick!”

   Daufin stood at his side. She realized he was seeing into that dimension that she could not, and she
said, very softly, “Tell me. What is Scoot-er?”

   He moaned. The spark plug fired, sputtered, fired; ghostly images of Scooter faded in and out on his
lap, like scenes caught in a strobe light. His hands clutched at empty air. “Oh dear God… don’t… don’t
bring the stick,” he pleaded.

   “Tell me,” she said.

   His head turned. Saw her there. Scooter. Where was Scooter? The dark things in his mind were
lurching toward the light.

    Tears burned his eyes. “Scooter… brought the stick,” he said—and then he began to tell her the rest
of it.
                                               26
                                        The Creech House


“Found her walkin’ right in the middle of the street, a block south of the church,” Curt Lockett explained.
“Just about knocked her flyin’, but I put on the brakes in time.”

   Sheriff Vance regarded Ginger Creech again; she was standing barefoot in his office, and from the
door she’d left bloody prints. Must’ve slashed her feet on broken glass, he figured. Lord, she’s ready for
the funny farm!

   Ginger’s eyes stared straight ahead, a few remaining curlers drooping in her hair, her face a pale mask
of dust.

  “Swear to God, she scared shit out of me,” Curt said, glancing at Danny Chaffin. The deputy made
another circle of Ginger. “I was on my way to the liquor store. Know where a man can get a drink?”

   “Liquor store’s locked up,” Vance told him, rising from his chair. “That was one of the first things we
did.”

   “Reckon so.” Curt rubbed his mouth and gave a nervous smile; he felt as if he were shaking to pieces,
and finding Ginger Creech walking like a brain-blasted zombie hadn’t helped his jitters any, either. “It’s
just… y’know, I kinda need somethin’ to take me through the night.” From the open collar of his
wrinkled white shirt hung his newly discovered necktie.

  “Ginger?” Vance waved his hand in front of her face. She blinked but did not speak. “Can you hear
me?”

   “I’m lookin’ for my boy,” Curt said. “Either of you seen Cody?”

   Vance had to laugh. He felt like he’d gone ten rounds with Celeste Preston thirty minutes ago, when
he’d driven over to the Chaffin house on Oakley Street to pick up his deputy. He’d wound up explaining
about the spaceship to Vic and Arleen Chaffin too, and Arleen had begun crying and moaning about it
being the end of the world. Vance had returned Celeste to her car, and the last he’d seen of her she was
driving westward in that big yellow Cadillac. Probably headin’ for her hacienda and gonna hide under her
bed, he thought. Well, nobody wanted her hangin’ around here anyway!

   “Curt,” he said, “if you didn’t sleep twenty hours out of the day, you’d be dangerous. Your boy
raised hell at the Warp Room around nine-thirty, started a gang fight that put a bunch of kids in the
clinic—which, with all these hurt people we’ve got, Doc McNeil sure as shit don’t need.”

    “Cody… in a fight?” Time was all screwed up for Curt. He glanced at the clock, saw it had stopped
at two minutes after ten. “Is he all right? I mean…”

   “Yeah, he’s okay. Busted up some, though. He headed over to the clinic.”

   Which meant a doctor’s bill, Curt thought. Damned fool kid! He didn’t have the sense God gave a
bug!

   “Ginger? It’s Ed Vance. Danny, hand me that flashlight on the desk.” He gripped it, flicked it on, and
aimed it at the woman’s sightless eyes. She flinched just a fraction, her arms stiffening at her sides.
“Ginger? What happened? How come you’re—”
    She gave a terrible shudder, and her face strained as if its muscles were about to burst through the
flesh.

   “She’s having a fit!” Curt squalled, and backed across the woman’s bloody tracks toward the door.

  Her gray lips trembled and opened. “‘The… Lord… is my shepherd, I shall not want,’” she
whispered. “‘He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He… He leadeth me beside still waters…’”
Tears broke and ran, and she stumbled on through the Twenty-third Psalm.

   Vance’s heart was pounding. “Danny, we’d better get over to Dodge’s house. I sure as hell don’t like
the looks of this.”

   “Yes sir.” Danny glanced at the glass-fronted cabinet that held the assortment of firearms, and Vance
read his mind because he was thinking the same thing.

   “Break out a shotgun for me,” Vance said. “A rifle for you. Get ’em loaded.” Danny took the key ring
from him and unlocked the cabinet.

   “‘I will… fear no…’” The words gripped in her throat. “‘Fear no… fear no…’” She couldn’t make
herself say it, and fresh tears streamed down her face.

   “Curt, I want you to get Ginger to the clinic. Find Early and tell him—”

   “Hold on!” Curt protested. He wanted nothing to do with this. “I ain’t a deputy!”

  “You are now. I’ll swear you in later. Right now I want you to do what I say: take Ginger over there
and tell Early how you found her.” He took the shotgun Danny gave him and put a few extra shells in his
pockets.

   “Uh… what do you think happened?” Curt’s voice trembled. “To Dodge, I mean?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re gonna find out. Ginger, I want you to go with Curt. Okay? Can you hear
me?”

   “ ‘Fear no…’” She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again. “ ‘Fear no…’”

   “Ed, I don’t know about this,” Curt said. “I’m not deputy material. Can’t you get somebody else to
take her over?”

   “Oh, Christ!” Vance shouted as his own raw nerves stretched toward the breaking point. Ginger
jumped and whimpered and retreated from him. “Here! I’ll pay you to do it!” He dug into his back
pocket, brought out his wallet, and flipped it open. The only thing in there was a five-dollar bill. “Go on,
take it! Go buy yourself a damned bottle at the Bob Wire Club, just move your ass!”

   Curt’s licked his lower lip. His hand burrowed into the wallet and came out five dollars richer.

   Vance gently took Ginger’s arm and led her out. She came along docilely, her feet leaving bloody
prints and her strained whisper of “‘Fear no… fear no…’” sending shivers down the sheriff’s backbone.
Danny locked the door behind them and Curt guided the madwoman to his Buick, got her inside, and
drove away toward the clinic, the tailpipe dragging and scratching sparks off the pavement.

   Vance drove the patrol car while Danny sat in silence on the passenger side with his hands clamped
like vises around the rifle. Dodge Creech’s house, made of sand-colored stucco with a red slate roof,
stood near the corner of Celeste and Brazos streets. The front door was wide open. The sheriff and
deputy could see the faint glow of candles or lamps within the house, but there was no sign of Dodge.
Vance pulled the car to the curb, and they got out and started up the pebbled walk.

   About eight feet from the door, Vance’s legs seized up. He’d seen one of Ginger’s slippers lying on
the dry lawn. A coldness was writhing in his belly, and the doorway looked like a mouth, ready to crunch
down on him as he entered. From a great distance he thought he heard brutal young voices taunting
Burro! Burro! Burro!

   “Sheriff?” Danny had stopped at the door. “You okay?” In the dim violet light Vance’s face glittered
with sweat.

   “Yeah. Fine.” He bent over and rubbed his knees. “Just old football knees. Sometimes they flare up
on me.”

   “I didn’t know you ever played football.”

   “It was a long time ago.” He was perspiring everywhere: face, chest, back, ass. A cold, oily sweat.
His career as a sheriff had been limited to breaking up fights, investigating traffic accidents, and hunting
down lost dogs. He’d never had to fire a gun in the line of duty, and the idea of going into that house and
seeing what had made Ginger Creech go crazy made his balls crawl as if they were packed full of
spiders.

   “Want me to go on in?” Danny asked.

   Yes, he almost said. But as he stared at the doorway, he knew he had to go in first. He had to,
because he was the sheriff. Besides, he had a shotgun and Danny had a rifle. Whatever it was in there, it
could be shot full of holes just like anything else. “No,” he said huskily. “I’ll go first.”

   It took all his flabby willpower to start walking again. He entered the Creech house, flinching as he
cleared the hungry doorway. A loose floorboard mewled under his right boot.

   “Dodge!” he called. His voice cracked. “Dodge, where are you?”

   They walked toward the light, through a foyer and into the living room, where a couple of oil lamps
threw shadows and dust floated in layers from floor to ceiling.

  “Sheriff, look at that!” Danny had seen it first, and he pointed to the jagged-edged hole in the floor.
Vance approached it, and he and Danny stood over the hole peering down into darkness.

   Squeak squeak. Squeak squeak.

   Both of them looked up at the same time, and both of them saw it.

   A figure sat in the rocking chair in the far corner of the room, slowly rocking back and forth, back and
forth. A scatter of National Geographics lay on the floor beside the chair.

   Squeak squeak. Squeak squeak.

   “D-Dodge?” Vance whispered.

   “Howdy,” Dodge Creech said. Most of his face was in shadow, but he was still wearing his
yellow-and-blue-plaid coat, dark blue slacks, pearl-gray shirt, two-toned loafers. His red lick of hair was
greased back on his pate, and his hands were folded in his lap as he rocked.

   “What’s… what’s goin’ on?” Vance asked. “Ginger’s about out of her—”
    “Howdy,” the other man said again, still rocking. There was no color in his face, and his eyes glittered
in the light of the two remaining lamps that hung from the ceiling’s wagon-wheel fixture. The wagon wheel
was crooked. Squeak, squeak went the chair’s runners.

    His voice, Vance thought: his voice is funny. Raspy, like air through the bass pipes of a church organ.
It sounded like Dodge’s voice, yes, but… different too.

   The glittering eyes were watching him carefully. “You’re a person of authority, ain’t you?” the voice
asked, with a humming of sinus cavities.

   “I’m Ed Vance. You know me. Come on, Dodge, what’s this all about?” His knees were freezing
solid again. Something was wrong with Dodge’s mouth.

   “Ed Vance.” Dodge’s head tilted slightly to one side. “Ed Vance,” he repeated, as if he’d never heard
the name before and he was making sure not to forget it. “Yessir, I knew they’d send a person of
authority. That’d be you, wouldn’t it?”

   Vance looked at Danny; the boy was about a hair away from jumping out of his shoes, his hands
clutching the rifle to his chest. The cadence of Dodge Creech’s voice, the flat phrasing, the drawl: all of it
was the same, yet there was that low church-organ undertone, and a rattling like loose phlegm in
Dodge’s throat.

   “So let me pose a question to you, pardner,” the figure in the rocking chair said. “Who’s the
guardian?”

   “The… guardian?”

   “I didn’t stutter. Who’s the guardian?”

   “Dodge… what’re you talkin’ about? I don’t know anythin’ about a guardian.”

   The rocking ceased. Danny gasped and took a backward step, and he might have plunged into the
hole if he hadn’t checked himself.

  “Maybe you don’t at that,” the man in the chair replied. “Maybe you do, and maybe you’re handin’
me bullshit on a platter, Ed Vance.”

   “No, I swear it! I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!” The thought hit him like a bullet between the
eyes: This isn’t Dodge anymore.

   The figure stood up. Its clothes made a stiff crackling noise. Dodge Creech seemed two or three
inches taller than Vance remembered, and much larger around the shoulders too. There was something
funny about the way he moved his head—something like the jerky motion of a puppet on strings, guided
by an unseen hand. The figure walked toward Vance, with that strange puppet’s gait, and Vance backed
away; it stopped, looked from Vance to Danny and back again, and then the white face with its wormy
gray lips smiled—a teeth-clenched salesman’s smile.

   “The guardian,” he repeated, and the light gleamed off teeth that were no longer teeth, but thousands
of close-packed, blue metallic needles. “Who is it?”

   Vance couldn’t seem to get his breath. “I swear… don’t know…”

  “Well sir, maybe I believe you.” The figure in the garish sport coat slowly rubbed its thick, colorless
hands together, and Vance saw that the fingernails were about an inch long, made of that same
blue-tinged metal and edged with tiny saw-blade-like teeth. “You bein’ a person of authority and all, I
ought to believe you, right?” the thing in Dodge’s skin asked.

   Vance had lost his voice.

   Danny’s back hit the wall, and a framed picture of Dodge receiving an award at an insurance
salesmen’s convention clattered to the floor.

    “So I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. See, I’ve come a long way, and I’ve already spent a lot of
time and effort.” The metal-nailed hands kept rubbing together, and Vance realized that a swipe from one
of them could rip his face off right down to the skull. “I can find the guardian myself if I have to.” The
head suddenly whipped to the left with violent motion, and the thing’s gaze followed the helicopter
through a broken window as it circled the pyramid. “I don’t like that thing. Not the least bit. I don’t want
it flyin’ around my property.” Its attention returned to Vance, and the sheriff saw that there was no life in
Dodge’s eyes; they looked wet and dead, like false eyes stuck into a grinning mask. “But I’ll tell you true,
Ed Vance: if I don’t find out who the guardian is real soon, I’m gonna have to lay down the law. My kind
of law.”

   “Who… what are you?” Vance rasped.

   “I’m an…” The figure paused for a few seconds. “An exterminator. And you’re a big fat bug. I’ll be
around, Ed Vance, and I want you to remember me. Okay?”

   Vance nodded, a drop of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose. “Oka—”

   One of Dodge’s hands rose. The fingers probed the left eye and wrenched it from its socket. There
was no blood, just strands of oozing fluid. The eyeball went into the needle-filled mouth and burst apart
like a hardboiled egg as the jaws clamped down.

   Danny moaned, fighting against a faint, and madness clawed at Vance’s brain.

   “When I want you, I’ll find you,” the creature said. “Don’t try to hide. You can’t. We square on that,
pardner?”

   “Sq-sq-square.” The word came out in a choke.

   “Good bug.” And then the figure turned away from Vance, took two long strides, and dropped into
the hole in the living-room floor.

   They heard it thump to the bottom after a long fall. There was a quick scuttling sound. Then silence.

   Danny screamed. He sprang to the edge of the hole, lifted his rifle and began firing into it, his face
contorted with horror. Gunsmoke whirled through the dusty air, and spent cartridges flew. He came to
the end of his bullets, but he kept frantically trying to feed shells into the chamber.

   “Stop it,” Vance said, or thought he had. “Stop it, Danny. Stop it!”

   The deputy shuddered and looked at him, his finger still jerking on the trigger, his nose running, and
the wind whooshing in his lungs.

   “It’s gone,” Vance told him. “Whatever it was… it’s gone.”

   “I saw it—I saw it looked like Dodge but it wasn’t no way no way in hell was it Dod—”

   Vance gripped his collar and shook his hard. “Listen to me, boy!” he roared, right in Danny’s face. “I
don’t want you goin’ as crazy as Ginger Creech, you hear me?” He felt a wetness at his crotch and knew
he’d peed his pants, but right now he had to keep Danny from losing his mind. If the boy went over the
edge, Vance would be right behind. “You hear me?” He gave another hard shake, which served to
loosen the cobwebs of shock in his own brain as well.

   “Wasn’t Dodge. Wasn’t,” Danny mumbled. Then, with a gasp of breath: “Yes sir. I hear you.”

   “Go to the car.” The boy blinked dazedly, still staring into the hole. “Go on, I said!”

   Danny staggered out.

    Vance swung his shotgun up and aimed it at the hole. His hands shook so hard he figured he couldn’t
hit a barn door in broad daylight, much less an alien who ate eyeballs and had a thousand needles for
teeth. Because that’s exactly what it had been, he realized: an alien, dug itself a tunnel from the pyramid
across the river and crawled inside Dodge Creech. My property, it had said. And what was that shit
about a guardian, and how come it could speak English with a Texas accent?

   He backed away from the hole, his nerves sputtering. Tendrils of dust and gunsmoke broke, drifted,
connected anew around him. He felt like a scream trapped in concrete, and right then he swore that if he
got out of this, God willing, he was going to lose fifty pounds by Christmas.

   One step out of the house and he turned and ran to the patrol car, where Danny Chaffin sat
gray-faced and staring at nothing.



                                               27
                                    Scooter Brought the Stick


In a house at the far end of Brazos Street, Daufin listened while Sarge remembered.

    “Scooter brought the stick,” he whispered as the dark things moved in his mind. Over the steady
tolling of the Catholic church’s bell, he thought he heard gunshots: the rapid cracks of a carbine, like
brittle sticks being trod upon. The memories were coming to life, and one half of his brain itched like a
wound that must be torn open and scratched.

    “Belgium,” he said. His hands kneaded the air where Scooter had been, just a minute before.
“Three-ninety-third infantry regiment, Ninety-ninth Infantry Division, Sergeant Tully Dennison, all present
and accounted for, sir!” His eyes were wet, his face strained with internal pressures. “Diggin’ in, sir! Hard
ground, ain’t it? Mighty hard. Froze almost solid. They heard some noise out over the ridge last night.
Down there in the deep woods. Recon heard trucks movin’ around. Maybe tanks too. Get that
telephone cable laid down, yes sir!” He blinked, lifting his chin as if startled by the presence of Daufin.
“Who… who are you?”

   “Your new friend,” she said quietly, standing between the light and the dark.

   “Little girl shouldn’t be out here. Too cold. Snow in them clouds. You speak English?”

  “Yes,” she said, aware that he was staring right through her, into that hidden dimension. “Who is
Scoot-er?”

   “Old dog just took up with me. Crazy ol’ thing, but Lord can he run. I throw a stick, and he scoots
after it. Throw it again, off he goes. Scooter, that’s what he is. Can’t be still. Skinny thing, about half
dead when I found him. Gonna take good care of you, Scooter. You and me, we’ll gonna be all right.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and began to rock. “Put my head on Scooter’s side at night. Good ol’
pillow. Keeps the foxhole warm. Man, he loves to chase those sticks. Run fetch it, Scooter! Lord, can he
run!”

    Sarge’s breath had quickened. “Lieutenant says if there’s any action we won’t see it. No way. Says
it’ll be to the north or the south. Not our position. I just got here, I ain’t killed nobody yet. I don’t want
to. Scooter, we’re gonna keep our heads low. We’re gonna bury our heads in the ground, ain’t we? Just
let all that metal fly right over us, huh?”

   He shuddered, curled his knees up, stared past Daufin. His mouth worked for a few seconds, his eyes
full of violet light, but no sound came out. Then a whisper: “Incomin’ mail. Artillery openin’ up. Long way
off. Gonna go over our heads. Over our heads. Should’ve dug my foxhole deeper. Too late now.
Incomin’ mail.” He moaned as if struck, squeezing his eyes shut. Tears crept from them. “Make it stop.
Make it stop. Please oh Jesus make it stop.”

   Sarge’s eyes flew open. “Here they come! Ready on the right, sir!” It had been a hoarse cry.
“Scooter! Where’s Scooter? God A’mighty, where’s my dog? Here come the Krauts!” He was shaking
now, his body curled up in the chair, the pulse throbbing at his temple like the rhythm of a runaway
machine. “They’re throwin’ potato mashers! Get your heads down! Oh Jesus… oh Christ… help the
wounded… his arm’s blown off. Medic… Medic!” He clasped his hands to his skull, fingers gripping into
the flesh. “Got blood on me. Somebody’s blood. Medic, move your ass! They’re comin’ again!
Throwin’ grenades! Get your heads down!”

   Sarge stopped his frantic rocking. His breath caught.

   Daufin waited.

   “One fell short,” he whispered. “Fell short, and still smokin’. Potato-masher grenade. Got a wooden
handle. And there he is. Right there.” He stared at a point on the wall: the point where the past’s
shadows were emerging, ghostly scenes coagulating and rippling through the grenade smoke of more than
forty years before. “There’s Scooter,” Sarge said. “Gone crazy. I can see it in his eyes. Gone crazy. Just
like me.”

    He slowly thrust his hand forward, fingers outspread. “No,” the whisper came. “No. Don’t bring the
stick. Don’t…”

   A hiss of breath between his teeth: “I haven’t killed yet… don’t make me kill…”

    His hand contorted; now it was clenched around an invisible pistol, the finger gripping the trigger.
“Don’t bring the stick.” The finger twitched. “Don’t bring the stick.” Twitched again. “Don’t bring the
stick.” A third and fourth times.

   He was crying, silently, as the finger continued to twitch. “Had to stop him. Had to. Would’ve fetched
me the stick. Dropped it right into my foxhole. But… I killed him… before the grenade went off. I know
I did. I saw his eyes go dead. And then the grenade blew. Didn’t make a loud noise. Not loud. And then
there was nothin’ left of him… except what was all over me.” His hand lowered, dangled at his side. “My
head. Hurts.” Slowly, his hand relaxed, and the invisible gun went away.

   His eyes had closed again. He sat without moving for a time, just the rise and fall of his chest and the
tears that crawled through the lines on his face.
   There was nothing more.

   Daufin walked to the front door and looked through the screen at the skygrid. She was trying to put
her thoughts together, analyze and categorize what had just been said; she could make no sense of it, but
pain and loss lay at its core, and those things she understood very, very well. She sensed a weariness
coming over her, enfolding her; it was a weakness of muscles, sinews, and bones—the fabric that held
this daughter’s body together. She clicked through her memory and came up with the symbol N and,
behind it, among the neatly assembled subjects: Nutrition. This daughter’s body needed nutrition; it was
running down and soon would approach collapse. The Sarge creature had mentioned food. She focused
on F and found flat images of Food in her memory: Meat Groups, Vegetable Groups, Cereal Groups. All
of them appeared sickening, but they would have to do. The next problem was locating these food
groups. Surely they must be close at hand, stored somewhere in the Sarge creature’s box.

   She walked to his side and plucked at his sleeve. He didn’t respond. She tried again, a little harder.

   His eyes opened. The last firing of the spark plug in his brain was going out; he felt whole again, the
cold tingling sensation gone. He thought he remembered having a terrible nightmare, but that was all gone
too.

   “Food,” she said. “Do you have food here?”

   “Yeah. Pork ’n beans. In the kitchen.” He placed his hand against his forehead. He was trembling all
over, and in his mouth there was a taste like bitter smoke. “Get you somethin’ to eat, and then I’ll take
you home.” He tried to stand up, had difficulty at first, then got to his feet. “Lord, I feel funny. Shakin’
like a wild weed.”

   Terror gripped him. Where was Scooter?

   There was a movement in the corner, behind Mr. Hammond’s little girl. Over where the shadows lay.

   Scooter padded out of the corner and looked expectantly at him, like old friends do.

   “Mighty prancy, aren’t you?” Sarge asked, and smiled. “Let’s crack open a can of pork ’n beans for
our new friend, okay?” He picked up the oil lamp and headed to the kitchen.

   Daufin followed behind, thinking that sometimes the hidden dimension was best left unfathomed.



                                                 28
                                        The Drifting Shadow


Working in the glare of a wall-mounted emergency light, Jessie made the last of six stitches and pulled the
sutures tight under Cody Lockett’s right eye. He winced just a fraction.

   “If I was a horse,” he drawled, “I’d already have kicked you across the barn.”

   “If you were a horse, I’d have already shot you.” She gave a little extra tug on the filament, tied the
sutures off, and snipped the excess. She swabbed another dash of disinfectant on the wound. “Okay, that
does it.”

   Cody stood up from the treatment table and walked to a small oval mirror on the wall. It showed him
a face with a left eye purple and swollen almost shut, a gashed lower lip, and the stitch ridges less than an
inch below his right eye. His Texaco shirt was ripped and splattered with bloodstains—his own and
Rattlesnake blood too. His head had stopped its drumrolls, though, and all his teeth were still in their
sockets. He figured he’d been lucky.

  “You can admire yourself somewhere else,” Jessie said tersely. “Call the next one in as you leave.”
She had four more teenagers to see, waiting in the hall, and she went to the sink to wash her hands.
When she turned the tap, a thin trickle of sandy water spooled out.

   “Pretty good job, doc,” he told her. “How’s X Ray? He gonna be all right?”

   “Yes.” Thank God, she thought. Three of Ray’s ribs were badly bruised, his left arm had been almost
dislocated, and he’d come very near biting a piece out of his tongue, not to mention the other cuts and
bruises. Right now he was resting in a room down the hall. A few of the other kids had lost teeth and
been cut up, but there were no broken bones—except for Paco LeGrande, whose nose had been
shattered. “Somebody could’ve been killed.” She dried her hands on a paper towel, feeling grains of
sand between her fingers. “Is that what you were trying to do?”

  “No. I was tryin’ to keep X Ray from gettin’ his clock cleaned.” He regarded his own skinned
knuckles. “The Rattlers started it. The ’Gades were protectin’ our own.”

   “My son’s not a member of your gang.”

   “It’s a club,” Cody corrected. “Anyway, X Ray lives on this side of the bridge. That makes him one
of us.”

   “Club, gang, whatever the hell you call it—it’s a pile of shit.” She crumpled the paper and tossed it
into the wastebasket. “And my son’s name is Ray, not X Ray. When are you and the Rattlesnakes going
to stop tearing this town to pieces?”

  “It’s not the ’Gades who’re tearin’ things up! We didn’t ask ’em to jump X Ray and bust up the
Warp Room! Besides”—he motioned toward the window, at the black pyramid—“that sonofabitch did
more damage in about two seconds than we could’ve done in two years.”

   Jessie couldn’t dispute that fact. She grunted, realizing she’d come down pretty hard on the boy. She
didn’t know much about Cody Lockett: just what Tom had told her, and that his father worked at the
bakery. She recalled that she had smelled alcohol on the man’s breath one day when she’d gone in for
some sweet rolls.

   “Damn, it’s big.” Cody went to the window. Some of the roughness had left his voice, and it held a
note of awe. A few fires were still burning in Cade’s junkyard, spiraling sparks into the sky. Up at the top
of the glowing violet grid was a massive dark cloud of smoke and dust, hanging motionlessly over Inferno
and blanking out the moon. Cody had never put much stock in the idea of UFOs and aliens before this,
though Tank swore that when he was nine years old he’d seen a hovering light in the sky that had scared
his underpants brown. He’d never thought much about life on other worlds, because life on this one was
tough enough. All that stuff about UFOs and extraterrestrials seemed too distant to be concerned about,
but now… well, this was a horse of a different shade. “Where do you think it came from?” he asked, in a
quiet voice.

   “I don’t know. A very long way from here, I’m sure.”

   “Yeah, I reckon so. But why’d it come down in Inferno? I mean… whatever’s inside it could’ve
landed anywhere in the world. Why’d it pick Inferno?”
   Jessie didn’t answer. She was thinking about Daufin, and where the little girl—no, she corrected
herself—where the creature might be. She looked out the window at the pyramid, and a single word
came to her mind: Stinger. Whatever that was, Daufin was terrified of it, and Jessie was feeling none too
easy herself. She said, “Better tell the next one to come in.”

    “Okay.” Cody tore himself away from the window. He paused at the door. “Listen… for whatever
it’s worth, I’m sorry X Ray got hurt.”

    She nodded. “So am I, but he’ll be all right. I guess he’s tougher than I thought.” She stopped short of
thanking him for helping her son, because the details were still unclear and she saw him and Rick Jurado
as the instigators of a gang fight that could’ve ended in kids getting killed. “You’ll probably need
something for a headache,” she said. “If you ask Mrs. Santos at the front desk, she’ll get you some
aspirin.”

   “Yeah, thanks. Hey, maybe I’ll have a neat little railroad track to remember tonight by, huh?”

  “Maybe,” she agreed, though she knew the scar would be hardly noticeable. “Anybody here to take
you home?”

   “I can walk. Gotta pick up my motor, anyway. Thanks for the patch-up job.”

   “Try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

    He started to flip a witticism at her, but her eyes were honest and he let his swaggering pose drop.
“I’ll try,” he said, and left the room. In the hallway, also lit by the harsh emergency lights, he told the next
boy waiting on the bench to go in; the guy was a Rattler, with sullen eyes and a lower lip that looked as if
it had lost a tangle with a meat grinder. Then he walked along the hall, passing rooms on either side.
From one of them wailed a man’s voice, a sound of pure agony. The smell of burned meat hung in the air,
and Cody kept going. People were bustling around, throwing long shadows in the half-light. A Hispanic
woman with blood all over the front of her dress hurried past him. A man on crutches and with a large
bandage stuck to the side of his face stood in a doorway, staring blankly and muttering. Cody saw Doc
McNeil coming, supporting a woman with dusty gray hair from which pink curlers dangled. She was
wearing a blue robe, her face dead white and her eyes as wide as if she’d just stuck a finger into an
electric socket. McNeil helped her into a room on the left, and Cody couldn’t help but notice the bloody
footprints on the carpet.

   Then he was through the gauntlet of suffering and had reached the front desk, where he asked the
round-faced nurse, Mrs. Santos, for his aspirin. She gave him a few tablets in a little plastic bottle, made
sure she had his name and address down on the records sheet, and said he could go home. The waiting
room was full of people too, most of them Bordertown residents who’d been shaken up by the
concussion or who were waiting for word on injured relatives.

   As Cody crossed the waiting room and headed for the door, his father stood up from a chair in the
corner and said, “Boy? Hold on a minute.”

    Cody glimpsed the garish necktie and almost burst out laughing. No wonder the old man didn’t wear
ties; the thing emphasized his sinewy neck and made him look like a geek. Cody had had enough of the
medicinal odors and anguished noises of the clinic, and he kept striding out the door without waiting for
his father. His motorcycle was still parked in front of the Warp Room, and he meant to claim it. Behind
him, his father called, “Cody! Where’re you goin’?”

   Cody might have slowed a step or two; he didn’t realize it if he had. But then his old man was
catching up with him, really stretching out those long legs. Curt walked to the side with the length of a
man separating them. “I’m talkin’ to you. Don’t you understand English no more?”

   “Just go away,” Cody said, his voice clipped and tight. “Leave me alone.” Over the smells of
scorched metal and burning rubber, the aromas of Vitalis and body odor reached him.

   “I came to see about you. Heard you got yourself in a fight. Lord, you look like you got your ass
busted for sure!”

   “I didn’t.”

  “Looks must be deceivin’, then.” Curt watched the helicopter slowly circling over Cade’s autoyard,
making tentative approaches to the black pyramid and then veering away through the smoke. “I’m tellin’
you,” he said, “hell has sure come to Inferno. Ain’t that about the weirdest sumbitch you ever saw?”

   “I guess so.”

  “It’s spooky. Somethin’ like that shouldn’t be. You know, I almost ran over Ginger Creech awhile
ago. She was just strollin’ down the street in her nightgown. God knows what’s happened to Dodge.
Whatever’s goin’ on, it’s knocked Ginger right off her tracks.”

   The woman in the blue robe, Cody thought. Mrs. Creech. Sure, he should’ve recognized her. But
then again, he’d never seen her looking like a crazy woman before.

    “Guess what?” Curt asked when they’d gone a few more strides. “I’m a deputy. Don’t that beat all?
Yessir! Sheriff Vance said that if I was to take Ginger to the clinic, he’d make me a deputy. Bet I’ll get
me a badge. A silver badge, all shiny and nice.” The helicopter zoomed overhead, stirring a storm of dust
off the street, and turned toward the pyramid again. Curt gazed up at the skygrid. He didn’t know what
the thing was, but it was something else that should not be. It reminded him of jail bars, and started a
crawling sensation of claustrophobia at the back of his neck. Without lights, Inferno resembled a ghost
town, all the swirling dust and running tumbleweeds adding to the sense of desolation. Curt’s thirst was
getting stronger, and he thought it was somehow right that just as he was given some responsibility,
Inferno was falling to pieces. He looked at Cody, walking beside him, and he saw how close that cut was
to the boy’s eye. Tomorrow morning he was going to feel as if he’d stuck his head into a blender. “You
all right?” Curt asked.

   “What the fuck do you care?” It came out before Cody could stop it.

   Curt grunted. “Hell, I didn’t say I cared. Just asked, that’s all.” He let silence reign for a few seconds,
then tried again: “I got busted up like that once. A Mexican did it, in a bar. Fast little bastard, he was.
Man, I couldn’t see straight for a week!”

   “I’m okay,” Cody told him grudgingly.

   “Yeah, you’re a tough pair of nuts, ain’t you? That shirt’s a goner, though. Guess old Mendoza’ll
pitch a fit, huh?”

   “No. Mr. Mendoza won’t.”

   Curt decided to let that “mister” lie. What was the point? It amazed him, though, that Cody could still
speak of that old wetback with respect after a Mexican had just about bashed his fool head in. Well,
Cody had a lot to learn about Mexicans yet. “I found a tie,” he said. “See?”

   “Yeah. It looks awful.”
   Curt’s first impulse was to snarl and clip him on the back of his skull, but he figured the boy had had
enough punishment; anyway, Cody’s comment made a faint smile steal across his mouth. “I reckon it
does, at that,” he admitted. “Never said I had good taste in ties, did I?” Cody glanced at him, and Curt
looked away to hide the smile; it wouldn’t do for Cody to see it, he decided. It was time to go collect on
that bottle of Kentucky Gent. The five dollars was burning a hole in his pocket, and he hoped the Bob
Wire Club was still open. If not, he’d kick the damn door down himse—

  His thoughts were interrupted by a low rumbling noise that made his bones throb like a mouthful of
bad teeth. Curt stopped in his tracks, and Cody halted because he’d both heard and felt the vibration.
The noise continued, like the sound of heavy concrete plates grinding. “You hear that?” Curt asked.
“What is it?” The sound drifted across Inferno and set the dogs howling again.

   Cody looked at the pyramid and pointed. “There!”

  A thin vertical crack of muddy violet light had appeared about thirty feet below the pyramid’s apex.
The grinding noise went on, and the crack of light was widening.

   In the clinic, Jessie heard it and went to the window. Rick Jurado came out of his house, and stood on
the front porch with Miranda beside him. Mack Cade was standing on Third Street next to his
Mercedes, watching the volunteer firemen futilely trying to coax water pressure back into the limp hose,
and his first thought was that the rumbling sounded like a massive crypt opening. Typhoid and Lockjaw
ran around in a circle, yapping.

   Others peered out their windows, and some of the seventy-eight people who had gathered in the
Catholic church came out to the front steps to see. Sheriff Vance, who had returned only a few minutes
before from Dodge Creech’s house, emerged from his office into Celeste Street while Danny sat shaking
inside.

   The vertical line was about fifteen feet long and stretching open like a cyclopean eye. In the helicopter,
Captain Taggart swooped past the fissure. Rhodes, who occupied the copilot’s seat, and Gunniston in
the observer’s seat just behind him were shoved against their backrests by the g-forces. They saw the
reptilian plates sliding away from the aperture, and the glow that drifted through was more like luminous
mist than earthly light. The aperture’s edges appeared moist, rimmed with gray like diseased gums. “Stay
away from that grid,” Rhodes warned as Taggart took the ’copter up again, but he knew Taggart
understood the consequences of hitting that thing as well as he did. The rumbling noise continued as the
plates unhooked and slid away from each other. The opening was now about forty feet wide, and
Taggart lined the ’copter up with it and used his two control sticks to angle the blades so the machine
hovered. Streams of liquid were oozing down from the sides and edges of the opening, running over the
plates beneath it. Rhodes leaned forward, the seat belt tightening across his chest. He could see nothing
but murk inside the fissure; it was like trying to peer through slimy water.

   “Want me to get closer?” Taggart asked.

   “Hell, no!” Gunniston yelped, his hands clenched to the armrests.

   “Just hold this position,” Rhodes told him. Several more plates moved apart, and then the noise
abruptly ceased.

   Mist curled from the opening and was tattered by the rotors. Taggart checked his gauges: fuel was
getting low. They’d followed the grid from east to west and north to south and found that it extended just
over seven miles in all directions. Its highest point was about six hundred feet directly above the pyramid,
sloping away to spear through the earth at the grid’s limits. Below the helicopter were dull red centers of
flame amid the wreckage of Cade’s autoyard, and the rising of heated air made the machine shudder.
   “Thing looks like it’s got skin,” Gunniston said, staring with revulsion at the slick ebony plates.

   Rhodes watched the opening. Banners of black smoke moved past the canopy, and for a few
seconds his vision was obscured. When it cleared, he thought he saw something move inside the
aperture: a drifting shadow, approaching through the mist. He didn’t know what it was, but he realized
they were far too close to the pyramid for comfort. “Move us away,” he said tautly.

   Taggart changed the rotors’ pitch, started to slip the helicopter to the left.

  As he did, the thing that Rhodes had seen emerged from the mist. Gunniston gasped, “Oh, Christ!”
and Taggart throttled the engine up, veering away with such speed that the men were lifted off their seats.
Never in his wildest nightmares had he witnessed such a thing as now cleared the pyramid’s opening and
hovered in the turbulent air.



                                                   29
                                                 The Duel


A helicopter had emerged from the black pyramid—but it was unlike any machine ever created on earth.
Instead of rotors, triangular metallic wings like those of a giant dragonfly beat rapidly along the sleek
black body. Its cockpit—the shape an exact duplicate of the compartment in which Taggart, Rhodes,
and Gunniston sat—was made of what appeared to be blue-green, opaque glass, multifaceted like the
eye of an insect. Most startling of all, and what had caused Taggart to grip the throttle and veer away so
fast, was the craft’s tail section: it was made of intertwined, ropy black muscles, and at its end was a
bony ball of spikes like a knight’s mace. The tail was whipping violently back and forth, the muscles
alternately clenching and relaxing.

   “A doppelganger,” Rhodes said.

    Taggart was concentrating on working the cyclic control stick with his right hand and the twistgrip
throttle with his left, backing the ’copter away without crashing into the bank building or drifting into the
grid. Smoke swirled in front of the cockpit. The dragonfly machine held its position, but slowly angled as
if its insect eye was following the earth craft. Gunniston said, “What?”

    “A doppelganger,” Rhodes repeated, thinking aloud. “A mirror image. At least… maybe that’s how
an alien sees us.” Another thought struck him. “My God… there must be a factory in there!” But was it a
machine, or was it alive? It was a double of their own helicopter, yes, but the way those wings and
muscles worked, the thing might be a living creature—or more bizarre still, a combination of machine and
alien life. Whatever it was, the sight held Rhodes in a thrall of horrified wonder.

   The trance snapped, very suddenly, when the dragonfly darted forward, soundlessly and with a
deadly grace.

   “Go!” Rhodes shouted, but the breath was wasted. Taggart’s hand on the throttle made the engine
scream. The helicopter shot backward and up, missing the overhanging ledge of the bank building’s roof
by about eight feet. Gunniston’s face was a bleached-out shock mask, and he gripped the armrests of his
seat like a cat on a roller coaster. The dragonfly made a quick, twitching correction of flight, angled up,
and came after them.

   The ’copter rose into clouds of smoke and dust. Taggart was flying blind; he eased off on the throttle
and spun the machine in a tight circle, the engine spitting through dirty air. As Taggart made the second
rotation Gunniston yelled, “At starboard!”

    The dragonfly plunged through the murk on their right, twisted violently around in imitation of their
own maneuver, and the tail with its ball of spikes came at them. Taggart jerked the ’copter to the left; as
the machine heeled over, the dragonfly’s tail flashed past so close both Rhodes and Gunniston could see
the razor-sharp edges of the spikes. Then clouds enveloped it, and as the ’copter kept falling Rhodes
realized that a few blows from that damned tail could tear the aircraft to pieces. He didn’t care to think
about what it would do to flesh. Taggart let the helicopter plummet until his stomach lurched, and as they
dropped through the clouds and leveled off he saw the houses of Bordertown about sixty feet below,
people standing in the streets and the glow of candles through windows. He made another tight turn,
zooming over the autoyard—and there was the dragonfly, emerging from the clouds and gaining speed at
it hurtled at them.

   “Head for the desert!” Rhodes said. Taggart nodded, his face sparkling with sweat, and gunned the
throttle. As soon as the helicopter leapt forward, the dragonfly changed direction and maneuvered in
front of them, cutting them off. “Dammit!” Taggart said, and altered course. The dragonfly did too.
“Bastard’s playing games with us!”

   “Get us on the ground!” Gunniston pleaded. “Jesus Christ, set us down!”

  The dragonfly pitched downward, came up again with terrifying speed at the helicopter’s underbelly.
Taggart had time only to rear the helicopter back on its tail rotor and pray.

   In the next second came an impact that knocked the men breathless and rattled their brains. There
was a shriek of tortured metal, even louder than Gunniston’s scream. Everything not bolted down in the
cabin—flight log, pencils, extra helmets, and flight jackets—flew around their heads like bats. The
cockpit’s glass shattered into a crazy quilt, but the glass was reinforced with metal filaments and did not
explode into their faces. Acting on instinct, Taggart jerked the machine to the left again, the engine
stuttering against a stall. The dragonfly swept upward and away, whirling around and around in a deadly
pirouette, bits of the helicopter’s metal flying off its tail like miniature comets.

   The red landing-gear malfunction light blinked on the instrument panel, and Rhodes knew the skids
were either mangled or torn away. “Clipped our skids!” Taggart shouted, panic starting to close around
his throat. “Bastard clipped us!”

   “Here it comes!” Gunniston had seen the thing through the unbroken window at his side. “At three
o’clock!” he yelled.

   Taggart felt the helicopter’s blades respond to the stick, and the machine swung up as his feet worked
the tail rotor pedals. They were on an even keel again, and he laid on the throttle and arrowed straight for
the desert to the east of Inferno.

   “It’s closing!” Gunniston warned, daring to look back through the rear observation port. “The thing’s
hauling ass!”

    Rhodes saw the low-fuel warning light come on. The airspeed indicator was nosing toward a hundred
and twenty, violet-washed desert flashing past about ninety feet below and the grid’s eastern boundary in
sight. Gunniston made a choked sound of terror as the dragonfly pulled up even with them at a distance
of twenty or thirty yards to the right, its triangular wings a whirring blur. It hung there for about five
seconds before it darted ahead, rapidly gained altitude, and vanished into the haze at the top of the grid.

   Taggart could no longer see it through the cracked glass. He whipped the ’copter around in a spiraling
turn that shoved Rhodes and Gunniston into their seats and dropped twenty feet lower to the desert,
speeding back in the direction of Inferno. “Where is it? Where’d the bastard go?” he babbled. “You see
it, Colonel.”

   “No. Gunny?”

   Gunniston could hardly speak. He got out a weak “No, sir.”

   Taggart had to cut his speed before the reserve fuel drained. The speed-indicator needle trembled at
sixty. “She’s handling like a tractor!” Taggart said. “Must have a mess hanging down underneath! Damn
sonofabitch just pulled away like we were sitting still!” Air was shrilling in through the cockpit’s cracks,
the control stick was sluggish, and they were flying on fumes. “I’ve got to set her down!” Taggart
decided. “Gotta belly her in, Colonel!”

   They were almost over Inferno again. “Clear the town first!” Rhodes said. “Slide her in on the other
si—”

    “Jesus!” Taggart screamed, because the dragonfly was dropping down from above, almost on top of
them, and for an instant he thought he could see a distorted image of himself—an alien image—reflected
in the multifaceted glass. He turned the ’copter over on its right side, trying to whip past—but the thing
was too close, and its tail was swiping toward him. He drew a breath.

   The tail smashed through the cockpit’s glass, filling the compartment with a thousand stinging hornets.
Fragments slashed into Rhodes’s cheeks and forehead, but he’d flung his arms up and saved his eyes. He
saw what happened to Taggart.

   The spikes on the end of the tail buried themselves in Taggart’s chest. His head, left arm, and most of
the upper half of his torso disappeared in a blizzard of blood, metallic sparks, and flying glass. The
dragonfly’s tail continued through the pilot’s backrest like a can opener, and Gunniston saw the clenching
ebony muscles and the ball of spikes pass him with the velocity of a freight train before it tore through the
’copter’s side and out again. He laughed hysterically, his face covered with Taggart’s blood.

   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 machines 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.

   And above the dais was a curious sight: a suspended vertical line crossed by a shorter horizontal line,
and at its center the figure of a human being hung with arms outstretched. The figure’s head was capped
with a circle of twisted vegetation, and its face angled up toward the ceiling; the painted eyes were
imploring, and seemed to be fixed on a distance far beyond the confines of this structure. Daufin heard a
painful sound from one of the people on the benches: a “sob,” she thought it was called. The hanging
figure indicated this might be a place of torture, but there were mixed feelings here: sadness and pain, yes,
but something else too, and she wasn’t quite certain what it was. Perhaps it was the hope that she’d
thought was lost, she decided. She could feel a strength here, like a collection of minds turned in the same
direction. It felt like a sturdy place, and a safe shelter. This is an abode of ritual, she realized as she
watched the man at the dais preparing the receptacles of dark red liquid. But who was the figure
suspended at the center of two crossed lines, and what was its purpose? Daufin entered the building,
going to the nearest bench and sitting down. Neither Hale Jennings nor Mayor Brett, who sat with his
wife Doris on the first pew, saw her come in.

  “This is the blood of Christ,” the reverend intoned as he finished pouring the sacramental grape juice.
“With this blood we are whole, and made new again.” He opened a box of Saltines, began to crush
them, and the pieces fell into an offering plate. “And this is the body of Christ, which has passed from this
earth into grace so that there should be life everlasting.” He turned to the congregation. “I invite you to
partake of holy Communion. Shall we pray?”

    Daufin watched as the others bowed their heads, and the man at the dais closed his eyes and began to
speak in a soft rising and falling cadence. “Father, we ask your blessing on this Communion, and that you
strengthen our souls in this time of trial. We don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring, we’re afraid,
and we don’t know what to do. What’s happening to us, and to our town, is beyond our minds to
comprehend.…”

   As the prayer continued, Daufin listened closely to the man’s voice, comparing it to the voices of
Tom, Jessie, Ray, Rhodes, and Sarge. Each voice was unique in a wonderful way, she realized. And the
correct enunciation was far different from her halting tongue. This man at the dais almost turned speaking
into song. What she’d first considered a rough, guttural language—full of barbarity and made of
unyielding surfaces—now amazed her with its variety. Of course a language was only as good as the
meaning behind it and she still was having trouble understanding, but the sound fascinated her. And
saddened her a little, as well; there was something indescribably lonely about the human voice, like a call
from darkness into darkness. What an infinity of voices the human beings possessed! she thought. If each
voice on this planet was unique, just that alone was a marvel of creation that staggered her senses.

    “… but guard us, dear Father, and walk with us, and let us know that thy will be done. Amen,”
Jennings finished. He took the plate holding the little plastic cups of juice in one hand and the cracker
crumbs in the other, and began to go from person to person offering Communion. Mayor Brett accepted
it, and so did his wife. Don Ringwald, owner of the Ringwald Drugstore, took it, as did his wife and their
two children. Ida Slattery did, and so did Gil and Mavis Lockridge. Reverend Jennings continued along
the aisle, giving the Communion and saying quietly, “With this you accept the blood and body of Christ.”

   A woman sitting in front of Daufin began to cry, and her husband put his arm around her shoulder and
drew her closer. Two little boys sat beside them, one wide-eyed and scared and the other staring over
the back of the pew at Daufin. Across the aisle, an elderly woman closed her eyes and lifted a trembling
hand toward the figure above the dais.

   “With this you accept the blood and—” Jennings stopped. He was staring at the dusty face of Tom
and Jessie’s little girl. A thrill of shock went through him; this was the alien creature Colonel Rhodes was
searching for. “—the body of Christ,” he continued, offering the grape juice and cracker crumbs to the
people on the pew in front of her. Then he stood beside her, and he said gently, “Hello.”

   “Hello,” she answered, copying his dulcet voice.

  Jennings bent down, and his knees creaked. “Colonel Rhodes is looking for you.” The little girl’s eyes
were almost luminous in the golden candlelight, and directed at him with intense concentration. “Did you
know that?”

   “I sus-pect—” She stopped herself, wanting to try again with more of a human’s smooth cadence
instead of the halting Webster’s pronunciation. “I suspected so,” she said.

   Jennings nodded. His pulse rate had kicked up a few notches. The figure sitting before him resembled
Stevie Hammond in every way but for her posture: she sat rigidly, as if uncomfortable with the way her
bones fit together, and her right leg was drawn up underneath her. Her arms hung limply by her sides.
The voice was almost Stevie’s, but with a reedy sound beneath it, as if she had a flute caught in her
throat. “Can I take you to him?” he asked.

   There was a quick expression of fear on her face, like a glimpse of dark water through white ice; then
gone, frozen over again. “I must find an exit,” she said.

   “You mean a door?”

   “A door. An escape. A way out. Yes.”

  A way out, he thought. She must be talking about the force field. “Maybe Colonel Rhodes can help
you.”

   “He cannot.” She hesitated, tried again: “He can’t help me find an exit. If I am unable to exit, there will
be much hurting.”

   “Hurting? Who’ll get hurt?”

   “Jessie. Tom. Ray. You. Everyone.”

   “I see,” he said, though he did not. “And who’ll do this hurting?”

   “The one who’s come here, searching for me.” Her eyes were steady. Jennings thought something
about them looked very old, as if a small ancient woman was sitting there wearing a little girl’s skin.
“Stinger,” she told him, the word falling from her mouth like something hideously nasty.

   “You mean that thing out there? Is that its name?”

   “An approx-i-ma-tion,” she said, struggling with the stubborn fleshy slab inside her mouth. “Stinger
has many names on many worlds.”

    The reverend thought about that for a moment, and if anybody had ever told him he’d be talking to an
alien and being told firsthand that there was life on “many worlds” he would have either decked the fool
with a good right cross or called for the butterfly wagon. “I’d like to take you to Colonel Rhodes. Would
that be all right?”

   “He can’t help me.”

   “Maybe he can. He wants to, like we all do.” She seemed to be thinking it over. “Come on, let me
take you to—”

   “That’s her!” someone shouted, startling the trays of grape juice and cracker crumbs out of the
reverend’s hands. Mayor Brett was on his feet, standing halfway up the aisle, his wife right behind him
and shoving him into action. Brett’s finger pointed at Daufin. “That’s her, everybody!” he yelled. “That’s
the thing from outer space!”

   The couple in front of Daufin recoiled. One of the little boys jumped over the pew to get away, but
the one who’d been watching her just grinned. Other people were standing up for a good look, and
nobody was praying anymore.

   Jennings rose to his feet. “Hold on now, John. Don’t make a fuss.”

  “Fuss, my ass! That’s her! That’s the monster!” He took a backward step, collided with Doris; his
mouth was a shocked O. “My God! In church!”

  “We don’t want to get all riled up,” Jennings said, making an effort to keep his voice soothing.
“Everybody just take it easy.”

   “It’s because of her we’re in this fix!” Brett howled. His wife’s pinched face nodded agreement.
“Colonel Rhodes said that thing got inside Stevie Hammond, and there she sits! God only knows what
kinda powers she’s got!”

   Daufin looked from face to face and saw terror in them. She stood up, and the woman in front of her
snatched her grinning little boy and backed away. “Get her out of here!” the mayor went on. “She don’t
have no right to be in the Lord’s house!”

    “Shut up, John!” Jennings demanded. People were already heading to the door, getting out as fast as
they could. “I’m about to take her over to Colonel Rhodes. Now why don’t you just sit down and put a
lid on—”

   The floor shook. Daufin saw the light sticks waver. One of the metallic holders toppled, and burning
light sticks rolled across the crimson carpet.

   “What was that?” Don Ringwald yelled, his owlish eyes huge behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.

   There was a crackling noise. Concrete breaking, Jennings thought. He felt the floor shudder beneath
the soles of his shoes. Annie Gibson screamed, and she and her husband Perry ran for the door with their
two boys in tow. Across the aisle, old Mrs. Everett was jabbering and lifting both hands toward the
cross. Jennings looked at Daufin, saw the fear slide into her eyes again, and then fall away, replaced by a
blast-furnace glare of anger beyond any rage he’d ever witnessed. Daufin’s fingers gripped the pew in
front of her, and he heard her say, “It’s Stinger.”

   The floor bulged along the aisle like a blister about to pop open. Brett staggered back, and his elbow
clipped Doris solidly in the jaw and knocked her sprawling to the floor. She didn’t get up. Someone
screamed on the other side of the sanctuary. Stones were grinding together, timbers squealed, and the
pews rolled as if on stormy waves. Jennings had the sense of something massive under the sanctuary’s
floor, something surfacing and about to burst through. Cracks shot up the walls, and the figure of Jesus
on the cross broke loose and crashed down upon the altar in a flurry of rock dust.

   A section of the church on the left collapsed, the pews splitting apart. Dust whirled through the last of
the candlelight, and Daufin shouted, “Get out! Get out!” as people surged toward the doorway, trailing
screams. Jennings saw the carpet rip apart, and a jagged fissure opened along the aisle. The floor
heaved, shuddered, began to collapse inward as dust billowed up from the earth. Ida Slattery almost
knocked Jennings off his feet as she barreled past him, shrieking. He saw Doris Brett fall through the
floor, and the mayor was climbing over the twisting pews like a monkey to get to the doorway.

   Gil Lockridge fell through, and his wife Mavis a second afterward as the floor opened under her feet.
The Ringwalds’ oldest boy pitched through, and hung screaming to its side as Don reached down for
him. “Praise be to Jeeeesus!” Mrs. Everett was shouting insanely.

   Pews were splitting with gunshot cracks as the floor pitched wildly, fissures snaking up the walls.
Overhead, the wooden rafters began breaking and plummeting down, and the stained-glass windows
shattered as the walls shook on their foundations.

   Some of the candles had set fire to the carpet up near the altar, and the nibbling flames threw
grotesque shadows as people fought to get out the door or climb through the windows. Jennings scooped
Daufin up and held her, as he would any child, and he could feel her heart pounding at furious speed.
Mrs. Everett fell as the floor collapsed beneath her; she hung to the splintered edge of a pew, her feet
dangling over darkness, and Jennings grasped her arm to haul her up.

   But before he could, Mrs. Everett went down with such force that his own arm was almost wrenched
from its socket. He heard her scream turn into strangling, and he thought, Something pulled her down.
   “No! No!” Daufin was shouting, twisting to get out of the human’s grip. Her insides were aflame with
rage and terror, and she knew that what was happening in this place was because of her. The screams
pierced her with agony. “Stop it!” she cried out, but she knew the thing beneath the floor would not hear
her, and it knew no mercy.

   Jennings turned, started for the door.

   He took two strides—and then the floor broke open in front of him.

   He fell, both arms scrabbling for a grip as Daufin held around his neck. He caught the broken edge of
a pew, splinters driving into his palms. His legs searched for a foothold, but there was nothing there. A
rafter slammed down so close he felt its breeze on his face. He sensed more than felt something moving
sinuously underneath him—something huge. And then he did feel it—a cold, gluey wetness around his
feet, closing over his ankles. In another second he was going to be jerked down as Mrs. Everett had
been; his shoulder muscles popped as he heaved himself and Daufin up, and the suction on his ankles
threatened to tear him apart at the waist. He kicked frantically, got one leg loose and then the other, and
he latched his knees on the pitching floor. Then he was up again and running, and as the roof began to
sag he cleared the doorway, tripped over a crawling body, and pitched onto the sandy lawn. His right
side took most of the impact; he let go of Daufin and rolled away to keep from crushing her. He lay on
his back, stunned and gasping, as the church’s walls were riddled with cracks and sections of the roof
crashed inward. Dust plumed up through the holes like dying breath. The church’s steeple fell in, leaving a
broken rim of stones. The walls trembled once more, wooden beams shrieked like wounded angels, and
finally the noise of destruction echoed away and faded.

  Slowly the reverend sat up. His eyes were itchy with grit and his lungs strained air from the whirling
dust. He looked to his side, saw Daufin sitting up with her legs splayed beneath her like those of a
boneless doll, her body jerking as if her nerves had gone haywire.

    She knew how close the hunter had been. Maybe it had sensed the gathering of creatures in that
abode and had struck as a demonstration of its strength. She didn’t think it had known she was there, but
it had been so very close. And too close for some of the humans; she looked around, quickly counting
figures through the dust. She made out thirty-nine of them. Stinger had taken seven. The knot of muscle
at her center would not cease its hammering, and her face felt gorged with pressure. Seven life forms
gone, because she had crashed on a small world where there was no exit. The trap had closed, and all
running was useless.…

   “You did this!” Someone’s hand closed around her shoulder and yanked her to her feet. There was
rage in the voice, and rage in the touch. Her legs were still wobbly, and the human hand shook her with
maddened fury. “You did this, . you little… alien bitch!”

  “John!” Jennings said. “Let her go!”

   Brett shook her again, harder. The little girl felt as if she were made of rubber, and her lack of
substance further infuriated him. “You damned thing!” he shrieked. “Why don’t you go back where you
came from!”

  “Stop it!” The reverend started to rise, but a pain shot from his shoulder down his back. He stared
numbly at his feet; his shoes were gone, and gray slime clung to his argyle socks.

   “You don’t belong here!” Brett shouted, and shoved her roughly away. She stumbled backward, all
balance lost, and gravity took her to the ground. “Oh God… oh Jesus,” the mayor moaned, his face
yellow with dust. He looked around, saw that Don and Jill Ringwald and their two sons had made it out,
as well as Ida Slattery, Stan and Carmen Frazier, Joe Pierce, the Fancher family, and Lee and Wanda
Clemmons among the others. “Doris… where’s my wife?” Fresh panic hit him. “Doris! Hon, where are
you?”

   There was no reply.

   Daufin stood up. Her center felt bruised, and the foul taste of pork ’n beans soured her mouth. The
anguished human being turned, started staggering back toward the ruined abode of ritual. Daufin said,
“Stop him!” in a voice that reverberated with power and made Al Fancher clasp his hand on Brett’s arm.

   “She’s gone, John.” Jennings tried to stand again, still could not; his feet were freezing cold, and
seemed to have been shot full of novocaine up to his ankles. “I saw her go down.”

   “No, you didn’t!” Brett pulled free. “She’s all right! I’ll find her!”

   “Stinger took her,” Daufin said, and Brett flinched as if he’d been struck. She realized the human had
lost a loved one, and again pain speared her. “I’m sorry.” She lifted a hand toward him.

   Brett reached down and picked up a stone. “You did it! You killed my Doris!” He took a step
forward, and Daufin saw his intention. “Somebody oughta kill you!” he seethed. “I don’t care if you’re
hidin’ in a little girl’s skin! By Jesus, I’ll kill you myself!” He flung the stone, but Daufin was faster by far.
She dodged aside, and the stone sailed past her and hit the pavement.

   “Please,” she said, offering her palms as she retreated to the street. “Please don’t…”

   His hand closed on another rock. “No!” Jennings shouted, but Brett threw it. This time the rock
clipped Daufin’s shoulder, and the pain made her eyes flood with tears. She couldn’t see, couldn’t
understand what was happening, and Brett hollered, “Damn you to hell!” and advanced on her.

   She almost stumbled over her legs, righted herself before she fell; then she propelled herself away
from the human being in the complex motion of muscles and bones called running. Pain jarred through her
with every stride, but she kept going, cocooned in agony.

   “Wait!” Jennings called, but Daufin was gone into the haze of smoke and dust.

    Brett took a few paces after her, but he was all used up and his legs gave out on him. “Damn you!” he
shouted after her. He stood with his fists clenched at his sides, and then he turned back toward what was
left of the church and called for Doris in a voice racked with sobbing.

   Don Ringwald and Joe Pierce helped Jennings up. His feet felt like useless knobs of flesh and bone,
as if whatever had grasped him had leeched all the blood out and destroyed the nerves. He had to lean
heavily on the two men to keep from going down again.

   “That does it for the church,” Don said. “Where do we go now?”

   Jennings shook his head. Whatever had broken through the church floor would have no trouble
coming up through any house in Inferno—even through the streets themselves. He felt a tingling in his feet;
the nerves were coming back to life. He caught lights through the haze and realized where they were
coming from. “Up there,” he said, and motioned toward the apartment building at the end of Travis
Street. That place, with its armored first-floor windows and its foundation of bedrock, would be a
tougher nut for Stinger to crack. He hoped.

    Other people were coming from the houses nearby, alerted by the noise and screams. They followed
as the two men helped Jennings along the street, and the rest of the congregation moved toward the only
building that still showed electric lights.
  After a few minutes, Mayor Brett wiped his nose on his sleeve, turned away from the ruins, and
walked after them.



                                                   31
                                                  Below


“Flashlight,” the colonel said, and Vance gave it to him.

   Rhodes bent down, his knees on the basement’s cracked concrete floor, and aimed the light into the
hole. There was a drop of about ten feet, and the red dirt glistened as if a huge snail had tracked over it.

    “He was sittin’ in a rockin’ chair up there,” Vance repeated for the third time, motioning toward the
hole in the den floor above their heads. “It, I mean. Whatever it was—’cause it sure as hell wasn’t
Dodge.” He was whispering; his gut churned, and the skin had drawn tight at the back of his neck. But
the flashlight beam had shown them that nothing was hiding in the Creech basement except a little green
lizard over by the washing machine. “It knew English,” Vance said. “Spoke it like a Texan. How the hell
could it know the way we talk?”

    Rhodes shone the light around and saw a broken pipe, slick with some kind of gelatinous excretion. A
bittersweet chemical smell—not unlike the odor of peaches rotting under a high summer sun—drifted up
from the hole to sting his nostrils. “I’ve got two theories, if you want to hear them,” he said.

   “Shoot.”

   “One, that the creature monitored earth’s satellites and figured out our language. But that wouldn’t
account for it speaking with a Texas accent. Two, that it somehow got into the man’s language center.”

   “Huh?”

    “It might’ve tapped the brain’s language center,” Rhodes explained. “Where an individual’s dictionary
is stored. That way it would pick up the accent too.”

   “Jesus! You mean… it like got into Dodge’s brain? Like a worm or somethin’?” Vance’s hand
tightened around the loaded shotgun at his side. He and Rhodes had gone by the office to pick up the
flashlight, and the sheriff also wore a shoulder holster with a fully loaded Snubnose .38 in it. Lying on the
concrete within easy reach of Rhodes’s right hand was one of the repeating rifles from the sheriff’s gun
cabinet.

    “Maybe. I don’t know what the process might be, but it could’ve read the language center like a
computer reading a program.” He angled the light in another direction, saw more gleaming red dirt and
darkness beyond. “Whatever this thing is, it’s highly intelligent and it works fast. And one other thing I’m
fairly sure of: it’s not the same kind of creature as Daufin.”

   “How do you figure that?” He jumped; that damned green lizard was scurrying around again.

    “Daufin had to learn our language from scratch, starting with the alphabet,” Rhodes said. “The other
creature—the one Daufin calls Stinger—uses a much more aggressive process.” Understatement of the
year, he thought. “I believe it killed Dodge Creech—or stored him somewhere—and what you saw was
its simulation of him, just like that flying bastard simulated our helicopter.”
   “Simulated? Is that like a mutant or somethin’?”

   “Like a… a replicant,” Rhodes explained. “An android, for want of a better word, because I think
part of that weird chopper was alive. Probably the thing you saw was alive too—but just as much of a
machine as a living creature. Like I say, I don’t know how it works, but I think one thing’s particularly
interesting: if Stinger did create a replicant of Dodge Creech, it screwed up on the teeth and fingernails.”

   “Oh. Yeah. Right,” Vance agreed, recalling that he’d told Rhodes about those metallic needles and
the blue saw-edged nails.

   “There are probably other differences too, internally. Remember, to it we’re the aliens. If somebody
showed you a blueprint of a creature you’d never seen before, and gave you the raw materials to make it
with, I doubt if the final result would look much like the real thing.”

   “Maybe so,” Vance said, “but it seems to me the sonofabitch has just figured out a better way to kill.”

  “Yeah, that too.” One more revolution of the light’s beam in the hole, and he knew what had to be
done. “I’ve got to go down in there.”

   “Like hell! Mister, your head must be screwed on with rusty bolts!”

   “I won’t argue that point.” He shone the light around the basement and stopped it at a coil of garden
hose hanging from a wall hook. “That’ll have to do for rope.” His light found a water pipe on the wall
nearby. “Help me secure it around there.”

   They got the hose tied and knotted and Rhodes threw its free end into the hole. He pulled at it a few
times to make sure it would bear his weight, and then he balanced on the hole’s edge for a minute until his
heartbeat calmed down. He tossed Vance the flashlight. “Drop that and the rifle to me when I get to the
bottom.” He felt a flagging of his courage. He still had Taggart’s blood up his nose and brown streaks of
gore and grasshopper pee all over him.

   “I wouldn’t do it,” Vance advised soberly. “Ain’t worth gettin’ yourself killed.”

   Rhodes grunted. He’d just as soon mark this off as a sorry misadventure, but Vance sure as hell
wasn’t going to do it; there was no one else but him, and that was how things were. His testicles crawled,
and he had to go before all his courage ebbed away. “Here goes,” he said, and swung his weight out
over the hole. The pipe creaked ominously but remained bolted to the wall. Rhodes climbed down into
the darkness, and a few seconds later his shoes squished as they touched bottom. “Okay.” His voice
echoed back to him, doubled in volume. “Drop the light.”

    Vance did—reluctantly—and Rhodes caught it though his palms were already slick with sweat. He
shone the light around in a quick circle. A film of pale gray ooze maybe an inch deep covered the red
dirt; it was still fairly fresh and crept down the walls in rivulets. To Rhodes’s right, a tunnel had been
bored through the dirt and extended beyond the light’s range. His mouth dried up as he realized the size
of the thing that had dug it; the tunnel was almost six feet high and about four or five feet in width.

   “The rifle,” he said, and caught that too as it fell.

   “You see anythin’?”

   “Yeah. A tunnel’s ahead of me. I’m going in.”

   “Lord God!” Vance said under his breath. He felt as defenseless as a skinned armadillo without the
flashlight, but he figured the colonel was going to need it more. “Anythin’ moves in there, you blow the
bejeezus outta it and I’ll haul you up!”

  “Check.” Rhodes hesitated, looked at his wristwatch in the glare of the light. It was almost eighteen
minutes until midnight. The witching hour, Rhodes thought. He took the first step into the tunnel, having to
bend over only a few inches; the second step was no easier, but he kept going with the flashlight in his left
hand and the rifle stock braced against his right shoulder. His finger stayed close to the trigger.

   As soon as the light was gone, Vance heard the lizard rustle over in its corner and came within a
bladder’s squeeze of wetting his trousers.

   Step by slow step, the colonel moved away from beneath the Creech house. About ten feet in, he
paused to examine the substance on the walls, floor, and ceiling. He tentatively touched a drool of it and
jerked his hand back; the stuff was slick and as warm as fresh snot. Some kind of natural lubricant, he
decided. Maybe an alien equivalent of saliva or mucus. He would’ve liked to have gotten a sample of it,
but he couldn’t bear to carry any of it back with him. Anyway, the gunk was all over his shoes. He went
on, following the tunnel as it made a long curve to the right. The walls were slowly dripping and the dirt
was blood red. He had the weird sensation of walking deeper into a nostril, and at any second he
expected to see damp hairs and blood vessels.

   The tunnel went straight for about thirty feet before it snaked slowly to the left. Was Stinger a
part-machine, part-living hybrid like the dragonfly had been? Rhodes wondered. Or was Stinger Daufin’s
term for not a single creature, but a collection of them?

   He stopped. Listened. A strand of ooze dripped from the ceiling and clung to his shoulder.

   There was a distant rumbling noise, and a slight vibration in the tunnel floor. It ceased after a few
seconds—and then there it was again, a rumbling like a subway train somewhere beyond the walls. Or a
subterranean bulldozer, he thought grimly. Little scurryings of fear ran in his belly. The noise seemed to be
coming from somewhere to his left. Maybe it was the sound of something digging, or the sound of a
massive thing moving through an already-dug tunnel. Heading where, and for what reason? If Stinger was
digging tunnels like this one under the entire town, then it was either wasting a lot of energy or preparing
for a major assault. There was no way to know what its intent and capabilities were until Daufin
explained why it was after her. And first of all, she had to be found—he hoped by himself and not by
Stinger.

   The noise of either digging or tunnel travel again faded away. There was no telling how far this tunnel
went—probably all the way under the river to the black pyramid—but Rhodes had seen and heard
enough. He could feel the slimy excretion in his hair, and a strand of it was sliding slowly down his neck.
It was time to get the hell out.

   He retreated, the light’s beam spearing along the tunnel in front of him.

    And the light caught something: a figure, jerking in and then out of the beam, way down at the far end
of the tunnel.

   Rhodes’s legs locked up. The breath froze in his lungs.

   There was silence, except for a slow dripping noise.

  Something’s down there, he thought. Watching me. I can feel the sonofabitch. Just beyond the light.
Waiting.

   He couldn’t move, and he feared that if he did break his legs loose from their terror lock and start
running, whatever was down there would be on him before he could make it the sixty feet back to where
Vance waited.

   Still silence.

   And then a voice. An old woman’s voice, singing: “Jeeesus loves the little chillllldren, allllll the
chillllldren in the worrrlllld.…”

   “Who’s there?” Rhodes called. His voice shook. Smart move! he thought. Like it’s really going to
answer!

   The singing had a metallic undertone, and it drifted past him like a half-remembered Sunday school
song from a tinny record player. After a few more seconds, it stopped in midphrase, and the silence
descended again.

   The flashlight’s beam trembled. He aimed the rifle’s barrel down the tunnel.

   “Praise the Lord!” the old woman’s voice called. “Glory be!”

   “Step into the light,” Rhodes said. “Let me see you.”

   “Hot hot hot! You’re a very naughty boy and you’ll get a switchin’!”

   It occurred to him that it might really be an old woman, fallen down here and gone crazy in the
darkness.

   “I’m Colonel Matt Rhodes, United States Air Force!” he said. “Who are you?”

  The silence stretched. He sensed a figure, standing just beyond the light. “God don’t like naughty
boys,” the old woman’s voice answered. “Don’t like liars, neither. Who’s the guardian?”

   It was the question that Vance had told Rhodes the Dodge Creech creature had asked, and now the
colonel knew for sure it was no crazy old lady down there in the dark.

   “What guardian?” Rhodes asked.

   “God chews up liars and spits ’em out!” the voice shouted. “You know what guardian! Who is it?”

   “I don’t know,” he said, and he began to back away again. The ooze squished underfoot.

   “Colonel?” It was Vance’s voice, echoing through the tunnel from behind him. “You okay?”

   “You okay?” the awful voice in front of him mimicked. “Where you goin’, Colonel Matt Rhodes
United States Air Force? Love thy neighbor as thyself. Put out that hot wand of hell and let’s have us a
tea party.”

   The flashlight, Rhodes realized. It’s afraid of the flashlight.

   “Naughty, naughty boy! Gonna switch you good and proper!” The thing sounded like a demented
grandmother on speed.

   He kept backing away, moving faster now. The thing didn’t speak again, and all Rhodes wanted to
do was to get out of this tunnel, but he dared not turn his back and run. The light was holding it at bay;
maybe something in the wavelength of electric light, he reasoned. If alien eyes had never been exposed to
electric light before, then…
   He stopped. Why wasn’t the thing still taunting him? Where the hell was it? He glanced over his
shoulder, quickly shone the light behind him. Nothing there. A bead of sweat crawled into his eye and
burned it like a torch.

    And in the next instant there was the crack of earth splitting open and he whirled to see a flurry of dirt
erupt in front of him and two gaunt arms with metallic saw-edged fingernails coming up from the floor.
The thing scuttled up like a roach, white hair red with Texas dirt and flower-print press hanging in slimy
tatters, the old woman’s face slick and shining. Needle teeth glinted like blue fire in its mouth as Rhodes
thrust the flashlight right into the dead and staring eyeballs.

   “Naughty boy!” the thing shrieked, throwing up one arm over its face and the other swinging viciously
at Rhodes.

   He backpedaled and fired the rifle. It bucked against his shoulder and almost knocked him flat; the
bullet tore a gash across a gray cheek. He fired again, missed, and then the creature that looked like an
old woman was charging him, an arm still covering its eyes and its head thrashing with what was either
rage or pain.

    The thing’s other hand closed on his left wrist. Two metal nails winnowed into his skin, and he knew
that if he lost the light he was finished. He heard himself scream; the hand had a terrible, crushing power
in it, and his wrist felt as if it was about to break.

    He jammed the rifle barrel right up against the crook of the thing’s elbow and pulled the trigger. Pulled
it again. And again, and this time wrenched his arm away from her. There was a roar coming from the
creature’s mouth like air through a cracked steampipe.

   The thing abruptly turned and, its eyes shielded and back bowed with a dowager’s hump, scurried
away from Rhodes down the tunnel. It flung itself to the floor, began to frantically dig itself down with feet
and fingers, throwing damp dirt backward upon Rhodes. In about five seconds it had burrowed halfway
into the earth.

   Rhodes could stand no more. His nerve snapped, and he fled.

   Vance had heard an old woman’s shout, the sound of rifle fire, and a scream that had made the hairs
on the back of his neck do the jitterbug. Now he heard someone running down there—shoes squishing
on that shit in the tunnel—and then the choked thunder of Rhodes’s voice: “Get me out!” The rifle was
flung up, but Rhodes held on to the flashlight.

   Vance started hauling up the hose, and Rhodes climbed up it as if the devils of hell were snapping at
his ass. The colonel fought upward the last three feet, grabbed the broken concrete, and pulled himself
out of the hole, scrabbling away from it on his hands and knees; he lost the flashlight, which had been
clamped under his arm, and it rolled away across the floor.

   “What happened? God A’mighty, what happened?” Vance reached down for the light and turned it
on the colonel’s face; it was a mask of chalk with two gray-ringed cigarette burns where the eyes had
been.

   “I’m all right. All right. I’m all right,” Rhodes said, but he was cold and clammy and the sweat was
running off him and he knew he was one giggle away from the funny farm. “The light. Doesn’t like it.
Nope! Shot it. Shot it, sure did!”

  “I heard the shots. What were you shootin’ a—” His voice clogged and stopped. He had seen
something, there in the light, and he felt his stomach heave.
   Rhodes lifted his left arm. A gray hand and forearm was hanging on to his wrist, two metal nails dug
into his skin and the other fingers clamped tight. At the end of the forearm, where the elbow’s crook had
been, was a mass of torn tissue that oozed pale gray fluid.

   “Shot it!” Rhodes said, and a terrible grin flickered across his mouth. “Shot it, sure did!”



                                                  32
                                             Landscape of
                                              Destruction


Rick Jurado stood in the front room of his house, staring through a cracked window toward the
smoldering junkyard. Candles burned around the room, and his Paloma was softly crying.

   Mrs. Garracone, from a few doors down, was crying too, and her son Joey stood with his arm
around her shoulders to steady her. Zarra was in the room, his bullwhip coiled around his arm, and
Miranda sat on the sofa beside her grandmother, Paloma’s hands in her own.

   Father Ortega waited for an answer to the question he’d just posed. Mrs. Garracone had come to
him about twenty minutes before. She’d been to the clinic, had waited anxiously for word about her
husband, Leon. But Leon Garracone, who labored in one of the machine shops in Cade’s autoyard, had
not been found.

   “I know he’s alive,” she repeated, speaking to Rick. “I know it. John Gomez came out alive, and he
worked right beside my Leon. He said he crawled out and he could hear other people in there callin’ for
help. I know my Leon’s still in there. Maybe he’s pinned under somethin’. Maybe his legs are broken.
But he’s alive. I know it!”

  Rick glanced at Father Ortega, saw that the priest believed as he did: that the odds of finding Leon
Garracone alive in the debris of the autoyard were very, very slim.

   But Domingo Ortega lived on Fourth Street, two doors down from the Garracones, and he had
always counted Leon as a good friend. When Mrs. Garracone and Joey had come to him, begging him to
help, he’d had to say yes; he’d been trying to find other volunteers, but no one wanted to go into the
autoyard with that outer-space machine sitting in there and he didn’t blame them. “You don’t have to
go,” he told Rick. “But Leon was… Leon’s my friend. We’re going to go in and try to find him.”

   “Don’t do it, Rick,” Paloma begged. “Please don’t.”

   “Help us, man,” Joey Garracone said. “We’re brothers, right?”

  “There’s been enough death!” Paloma tried shakily to stand, but Miranda restrained her. “It’s a
miracle anybody got out of that place alive! Please don’t ask my son to go in there!”

   Rick looked at Miranda. She shook her head, adding her opinion to Paloma’s. He was ripped
between what he knew was the sensible thing and what he considered to be his duty as leader of the
Rattlers. Gang law said that if one of the brothers needed help, you gave it without question. He took a
deep breath of smoke-tainted air and released it. The whole town smelled like scorched metal and
burning tires. “Mrs. Garracone,” he said, “will you take my grandmother and sister to the church with
you? I don’t want them being alone.”
   “No!” This time Paloma did stand up. “No, for the love of God, no!”

   “I want you to go with Mrs. Garracone,” he said calmly. “I’ll be all right.”

   “No! I’m begging you!” Her voice broke, and new tears ran down her wrinkled cheeks.

   He walked across the crooked floor to her and put his arm around her. “Listen to me. If you believed
I was still out there, and alive, you’d want someone to go in after me, wouldn’t you?”

   “There are others who can do it! Not you!”

   “I have to go. You know that, because you taught me not to turn my back on my friends.”

   “I taught you not to be a fool, either!” she answered, but Rick could hear in her voice that she had
grudgingly accepted his decision.

    He held her for a moment longer, and then he said to Miranda, “Take care of her,” and he let his
grandmother go. Paloma seized his hand, squeezed it tightly, and the cataract-covered eyes found his
face. “You be careful. Promise it.”

  “I promise,” he said, and she released him. He turned toward Father Ortega. “All right. Let’s get it
done.”

   Mrs. Garracone left with Paloma and Miranda, heading to the Catholic church on First Street. Armed
with a flashlight, Father Ortega led Rick, Zarra, and Joey Garracone in the opposite direction, along
smoky Second Street toward the blown-down fence of the autoyard and the fires beyond.

   At the yard’s edge, they stopped to survey a landscape of destruction: car parts had been thrown into
tangled heaps of metal, piles of tires billowed dense black smoke, and what had been either wooden or
brick buildings were either smashed flat or turned to rubble.

   And overshadowing all was the black pyramid, its base sunken into the earth.

   “I wouldn’t do what you’re thinking,” someone warned. Sitting on the hood of his Mercedes was
Mack Cade, smoking a thin cheroot and regarding the ruins like a fallen emperor. Typhoid crouched at
his feet, and Lockjaw sat in the backseat. Cade still wore his Panama hat; his tanned face, wine-red shirt,
and khaki trousers were streaked with soot. “Nothing in there worth going after.”

   “My dad’s in there!” Joey answered adamantly. “We’re gonna bring him out!”

   “Sure you are.” Cade spewed a thread of smoke. “Kid, there’s nothing left but bones and ashes.”

  “You shut your filthy mouth!”

    Typhoid stood up and growled darkly, but Cade rested one booted foot on the dog’s back. “Just
telling it like it is, kid. There are some drums of paint and lubricant that haven’t blown up yet. That’s what
I’m waiting on. You want to get yourselves killed, you go right ahead.”

  “You know where Leon Garracone was working,” Ortega said. “Why don’t you do something
worthwhile for once in your life and help us find him?”

   “Garracone, Garracone…” He thought for a moment, trying to place a face with the name. They all
looked alike to him. “Oh, yeah! Garracone was always bitching for a raise. He worked in the engine
shop. That’s what’s left of it.” He pointed, and through the haze they could make out a heap of broken
bricks about fifty yards in.
    “John Gomez got out,” Ortega said, undaunted. “He’s cut up and burned, but he’s alive. Leon could
still be—”

   “Sure. Dream on, padre. Anyway, what the hell is Garracone to you?” He removed the cheroot from
his mouth and flicked it away. The gold chains around his neck made a tinkling noise as he moved.

   “Leon is my friend. Which is something I don’t suppose you understand.”

   “I’ve got all the friends I need, thanks.” Cade had a staff of five Mexican servants at his house, a
live-in teenage mistress—a little coked-up go-go dancer from San Antonio—and a fat-bellied cook
named Lucinda, but his real friends were always with him. The two dogs never judged him, or pressured
him, or gave him bad vibrations. They were always ready to rip the throats out of his enemies, and they
obeyed without question: to him, that was true friendship. “Jurado, you’ve got more sense than this. Tell
’em how crazy they are, man.”

   “We’ve got to see for ourselves.”

   “You’ll see, all right! Man, didn’t you get a look at that flying bastard? There’s something alive in that
fucker!” He motioned toward the pyramid. “You go out there and it’ll chew your asses up too!”

   “Let’s go,” Ortega urged. “This leech is useless.”

   “My mama didn’t raise any fools!” Cade retorted as the others started into the autoyard, watching
their steps over the twisted sheet-metal fence and the wicked coils of concertina wire. “I’ll tell Noah
Twilley where to find your bodies!” But they paid him no more attention and moved into the yard past
heaps of razor-sharp metal and smoking debris. Soon afterward, they heard the blare and crash of
Cade’s tape deck, cranked up loud enough to blast God’s eardrums: Alice Cooper, wailing about dead
babies in a cupboard.

   The sandy ground was littered with parts of engines and cars, charred wooden planks, bricks, and
other junk. Zarra lagged behind to poke around the warped chassis of what appeared to have been a
Porsche, thrown upside down by the concussion. Father Ortega saw a man’s bloodstained shirt lying
nearby, but he didn’t call attention to it. The dark smoke of smoldering tires hung close to the earth,
unstirred by a breeze, and piles of wreckage glowed fierce red at their centers. The black pyramid
loomed frighteningly close. Rick hesitated, looking up toward the column of light that whirled around and
around with hypnotic effect at its apex, then got his legs moving again.

   But he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. It was a sense he’d developed by necessity, to
guard against a ’Gade coming up behind him at school and taking him down with a kidney punch. The
back of his neck prickled and he kept glancing around, but nothing moved through the smoke. It was
more than being watched, he decided; it was a sensation of being taken apart, measured, dissected like a
frog in biology class. “Creepy in here,” Zarra muttered, walking just to Rick’s right, and Rick knew Zarra
must be feeling it too.

   They crossed the yard to the jumble of bricks and metal beams that Cade had pointed out. Not far
away was a mound of cars and pickup trucks that had been crunched together like a bizarre sculpture.
Joey Garracone got down on his knees in the sand and started tossing broken bricks aside and calling for
his father.

   “You and Zarra start on the other side,” Ortega suggested, and they went around the collapsed
building—where they came face-to-face with a burned-up corpse lying next to a crumpled sky-blue
Corvette. The corpse’s head was smashed in, and broken teeth gleamed in the gaping mouth. Whoever
he was, he had reddish-blond hair; a white man, not Joey’s father. The heavy, sickly-sweet odor of
burned meat reached them, and Zarra gasped. “I’m gonna volcano, man!” He turned and ran away a few
yards, bending his head toward the ground. Rick clamped his teeth together, walked past the dead man,
and stood waiting for the dizzy sickness to pass. It did, mercifully, and then he was ready to work. Zarra
came back, his face yellow.

   They began to search through the ruins of the engine shop, clearing away some of the mountain of
bricks. After about ten minutes of work, Ortega uncovered another dead man: it was Carlos
Hermosa—Ruben’s father—and the way the man’s body was contorted Ortega knew the spine and
neck must be broken. Joey stared for a moment at the corpse, his face covered with dust and sweat, and
then he silently continued his labor. Ortega made the sign of the cross and kept tossing bricks aside.

    The work was hard. It looked to Rick as if the whole building—which had been a flat-roofed
structure about forty feet long—had caved in on itself. He moved a length of pipe, and broken bricks
tumbled down along with a charred sneaker that he at first thought might have a foot in it but was empty,
its owner either buried or blown out of his shoe by the concussion.

  He came to a metal beam that Zarra helped him shift with back-wrenching effort, and after the beam
was laid aside Zarra looked at him and said quietly, “Do you hear that?”

   “Hear what?”

  “Listen!”

   Rick did, but all he could hear was Cade’s tape deck playing.

   “Hold it. I don’t hear it anymore.” Zarra walked into the wreckage, searching for the sound he’d
heard. He bent down, tossed more bricks and rubble away. Then: “There! You hear that, man? Over this
way!”

   “I didn’t hear anything.” Rick went to where Zarra was and waited. A few seconds passed—and
then, muffled and indistinct, came the clink of metal against metal. It was a steady rhythm, coming from
somewhere deep within the ruins, and Rick realized somebody was signaling. “Hey! Father!” he shouted.
“Over here!”

   Ortega and Joey came running, their clothes and skin filmed with dust. Zarra picked up a piece of
pipe and hit it against a brick a few times, and they all heard the answering knocks from below. Ortega
got down on his knees, shining the flashlight in amid the bricks in search of an airspace. Zarra kept
signaling, and the clinking noise came back to him.

   “It’s Domingo Ortega!” the priest shouted. “Can you hear me?”

    They waited, but heard no response. “Help me,” Ortega said, and he and the boys began to work at
a fever pitch, digging their way down through three or four feet of rubble. Within minutes their hands
were scraped raw, and blood seeped from cuts in Rick’s palms. Ortega said, “Hold it,” and leaned
forward, listening. There was the sound of metal on metal again, someone hammering at a pipe. “Can you
hear me down there?” Ortega hollered.

   A weak, raspy shout drifted up: “Yeah! Oh Christ, yeah! Get us outta here!”

   “Who are you? How many are with you?”

   “Three of us! I’m Greg Frackner! Will Barnett and Leon Garracone are down here too!”

   “Papa!” Joey yelled, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Papa, it’s Joey!”
   “We’re down in the work pit, and there’s all kinds of shit wedged in on top of us,” Frackner
continued. “I can see your light, though!”

   “Are you hurt?”

   “Broken arm, I reckon. Ribs don’t feel too swift either. Will’s coughin’ up blood, and Leon’s passed
out again. I think his legs are busted. What the hell hit us, man? A bomb?”

   Ortega avoided the question. “Can you move at all?”

  “A little bit, but it’s mighty tight in here. We’re breathin’ okay, though.”

   “Good.” It was clear to Ortega that they were going to need more muscle power to get the three men
out. “Just take it easy, now. We’re going to have to go back for some picks and shovels.”

  “Whatever it takes, man! Listen… can you leave the light where I can see it? I keep thinkin’ I hear
somethin’ diggin’ down here. Like underneath us. I’m scared of rats. Okay?”

   “Okay,” Ortega said, and wedged the flashlight in between two bricks so its beam would shine down
into the airspace. “We’ll be back!” he promised, and he grasped Joey’s shoulders and pulled the boy up
too.

   They started back across the autoyard, under the violet glow and the motionless black clouds, and
Rick had that crawly sensation of being watched again. He turned toward the pyramid.

   A man was standing about twenty feet away. He was lean, tall, and broad around the shoulders; he
stood slightly hunchbacked, and his arms dangled limply at his sides. Rick was unable to tell much about
the man’s face, other than that it looked to be wet. The man wore dark pants and a striped short-sleeve
shirt, the clothes covered with dirt. He was just standing there, his head cocked slightly to one side,
watching them. “Father?” Rick said, and Ortega heard the raw nerves in Rick’s voice and stopped; he
looked back, and then all of them saw the hunchbacked man who stood like a statue.

  Ortega’s first thought was that it was one of Cade’s workmen who’d just dug himself out of the ruins.
He stepped forward. “You all right?”

   “Who’s the guardian?” the man asked, in a thick, slow drawl that had an undercurrent like the whistle
of steam from a teakettle.

    The priest’s steps faltered. He couldn’t see much of the man’s face—just some slicked-down gray
hair and a damp and gleaming slab of forehead—but he thought he recognized the voice. Only the voice
usually said What can I fit you for, padre? It was Gil Lockridge, Ortega realized. Gil and his wife
Mavis had owned the Boots ’n Plenty shoestore for over ten years. But Gil wasn’t so tall, Ortega
thought. And he wasn’t so large around the shoulders, nor was he hunchbacked like this man was. But…
it was Gil’s voice. Wasn’t it?

   “I asked you a question,” the man said. “Who’s the guardian?”

   “Guardian?” Ortega shook his head. “Guardian of what?”

   The man drew in a long lungful of air and released it—a long release—with a noise that reminded
Rick of the way that sidewinder had rattled when he’d reached into the box for the Fang of Jesus. “I
don’t like bein’…” There was a hesitation, as if he were searching for the correct phrase. “Bein’ trifled
with. I don’t like it a’tall.” He took two strides forward, and Ortega backed away. The man stopped,
and now Ortega could see some kind of ooze sliding off the man’s lantern-jawed face. Gil’s eyes were
black, sunken, terrible. “I know the one I’m lookin’ for is here. I know there’s a guardian. Maybe it’s
you.” The eyes fixed on Zarra for a second. “Or maybe it’s you.” A glance at Rick. “Or is it you?” The
gaze returned to Father Ortega.

   “Listen… Gil… how’d you get out here? I mean… I don’t understand what you’re—”

   “The one I’m seekin’ is a subversive criminal,” the man went on. “An enemy of the collective mind. I
don’t know how you deal with criminals on this”—he looked around with a sinuous movement of the
neck and said contemptuously—“world, but I’m sure you understand the concepts of law and order. I
intend to bring the creature to justice.”

   “What creature?” It hit him then: what Colonel Rhodes had said about Stevie Hammond. “The little
girl?” he asked before he could think about what he was saying.

   “The little girl,” the voice repeated. The eyes had taken on a keen glint. “Explain.”

    Ortega stood very still, but his insides had twisted into knots. He damned his tongue; there was an
awful hunger on the wet and waxy face of the man-thing that stood before him. It was not Gil Lockridge;
it was a mocking imitation of humanity.

   “Explain,” the thing commanded, and took a gliding step forward.

   “Run!” Ortega shouted to the boys; they were frozen with shock, couldn’t move. “Get away!” he
yelled, and as he backed up he saw a length of pipe lying on the ground beside his left foot. He picked it
up and held it threateningly over his head. The thing was almost upon him, and he had no choice; he
hurled the broken pipe at the Gil Lockridge face with the strength of panic.

   The pipe smashed into the moist features with a noise like a hammer whacking a watermelon. The
right cheek split open from eye to corner of mouth, and gray fluid dripped out. The face showed no
reaction, no pain. But there was a slight smile on the crooked mouth now, and needlelike teeth glinted
inside the cavity. The rattling voice said with a hint of pleasure, “I see you speak my language.”

   There was a ripping sound: the tearing of brittle cloth. Little crackling noises like a hundred bones
breaking and rearranging themselves within seconds. Joey Garracone screamed and ran, but Rick and
Zarra stood their ground, transfixed with terror. The man’s hunched back was swelling, bowing his spine
downward; his eyes were riveted to Ortega, who moaned and retreated on trembling legs.

   The thing’s shirt split open, and a bulbous lump rose at the end of the spine. It tore through the pale
counterfeit skin and revealed black, interlocking scales similar to those on the pyramid. From its lower
end uncoiled a dripping, segmented tail about five feet long and triple the thickness of Zarra’s bullwhip;
the tail rose into the air with a clicking, bony sound, and at its tip was a football-sized nodule of metallic
spikes.

   “No,” Rick heard himself croak—and the grinning, split-open face ticked toward him.

    Father Ortega turned to run; he got two strides away before the monster leapt after him. The spiked
tail whipped forward in a deadly blur, caught the side of the priest’s head, and demolished it in an
explosion of bone and brains. Ortega fell to his knees, his face a crimson hole, and slowly, with exquisite
grace, toppled into the sand.

  The monster whirled around, crouched and ready, the tail flicking back and forth with fragments of
Ortega’s head clinging to the spikes.

   Zarra let out a choked shriek, backed away, and stumbled over a pile of rubble. He went down hard
on his tailbone, sat there gaping as the creature took a step toward him.

    Rick saw automotive parts scattered all around him; there was no time to judge if he should run or
not, because in another few seconds that spiked tail would be within range of Zarra. Rick picked up a
twisted hubcap and flung it, and as it sailed at the monster’s head the tail flicked out almost lazily and
knocked the piece of metal aside.

   Now Rick had the creature’s undivided attention, and as it stalked toward him Rick hefted a car’s
door from the sand and held it before himself like a shield. “Run!” he shouted to Zarra, who started
crawling frantically on his hands and knees. “Go!”

   The tail swept at Rick. He tried to dance out of its way, but the thing hit his makeshift shield and threw
off a shower of sparks; the impact lifted him off his feet and hurled him onto his back on the ground. His
hands still gripped the dented-in car door, which lay on top of him, and as he struggled up, his head
ringing, the monster advanced in a crouch and the tail swung again.

   This time the car’s door was ripped away from him and flung through the air. Rick twisted, scurrying
toward the unpainted frame of a Jaguar sedan that sat near a pile of rusted metal six feet away. As he
flung himself into the doorless and windowless car, he heard the bony rattling of the monster’s tail right
behind him; he pulled his legs in just as the ball of spikes whammed against the Jaguar’s side, making the
frame shudder and moan like a funeral bell. He scrambled through the opposite door hole, got his feet
under him, and ran.

    He didn’t know where Zarra was, or if he was heading out of the autoyard or deeper into it. The
hanging layers of dark smoke accepted him, and fitful fires glowed red through the gloom. On all sides
stood heaps of car parts, chassis, rows of BMWs, Mercedes, Corvettes, and other high-ticket vehicles
awaiting transformation. The place was a maze of metal walls, and Rick didn’t know which way to run;
he looked over his shoulder; he couldn’t see the thing behind him, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. He
ran on, his lungs straining for air through the smoke, and in another moment found his way blocked by a
steep ridge of scrap metal. He turned back, ran past a collapsed building where a dead man in a blue
shirt lay sprawled amid the bricks.

   Rick stopped below a pile of flattened car bodies, his lungs heaving, to try to get his bearings. He’d
never been in here before, the smoke seared his eyes, and he couldn’t even think straight. What had
happened to Father Ortega seemed unreal, a pull from a bad dose of weed. He was shaking now, his
body out of control. He was going to have to start running again, but he feared what might be waiting for
him out there in the smoke. He slid his hand into his pocket to grasp the Fang of Jesus.

  But before he could get his fingers on the switchblade, something dark dropped down like a noose
and tightened around his throat.

   He knew what it was, because he heard the bony clicking of the tail’s segmented joints. The monster
was above him, sitting on one of the flattened cars. Rick’s heart stuttered, and he felt his face freeze as
the blood left it. Then he was being lifted off his feet, the pressure just short of strangling him, and he
thrashed until a hand gripped his hair.

   “The little girl,” the awful, hissing voice said. The thing’s mouth was right beside Rick’s ear. “Explain.”

   “I don’t… I don’t… know. I swear…” His feet were about six inches off the ground. He didn’t know
anything about a guardian, or a little girl, and he felt the gears of his brain start to smoke and slip.

   The tail tightened. Rick squeezed his eyes shut.
   Maybe five seconds passed; to Rick it was an eternity he would never forget. And then the voice
said, “I have a message for the one called Ed Vance. I want to meet with him. He knows where. Tell
him.”

   The tail went slack—click click click—and Rick fell to his knees as it released him.

    At first he could only lie huddled up, waiting for the spikes to smash his head in, unable to move or
think or cry for help. But gradually he realized that the thing was going to let him live. He crawled away
from it, still expecting a blow at any second, and finally he forced himself to stand. He could sense the
thing watching him from its perch, and he dared not turn around to look at it; the slick, bony feel of the
tail remained impressed in the flesh of his throat, and he wanted to scrub that skin until it bled.

   Rick almost broke into a run, but he feared that his legs were too weak and he’d fall on his face. He
started walking, retracing the way he thought he’d come; the smoke parted before him and closed at his
back. He was dimly aware that his legs were moving on automatic, and in his mind the images of the
monster killing Father Ortega and pursuing him through the autoyard darted like a cageful of shadows.

   He came out of the autoyard about forty yards north of where they’d gone in, and how long that
journey had taken he had no idea. He kept walking south along the collapsed fence, and finally he saw
Cade’s Mercedes sitting in front of him.

   Instantly Lockjaw began barking furiously, rearing up in the backseat. Zarra was sitting on the
pavement, shivering, his knees drawn up to his chin and both arms clutching the bullwhip to his chest. He
looked up, saw Rick, and scrambled to his feet with a grunt of surprise.

   Mack Cade stood at the edge of the autoyard, the .38 in a white-knuckled grip in his right hand. He
whirled around, aiming the pistol at the figure that had just lurched out of the smoke. About fifteen
minutes ago, Joey Garracone had raced past him, trailing a scream that had even overpowered Cade’s
tape deck. Soon afterward, Zarra had come out babbling about something with a tail that had killed
Domingo Ortega. “Hold it!” Cade shrieked, his blue eyes wide. “Stop right there!”

   Rick did. He wavered, almost fell. “It’s me,” he said.

  “Where’s Ortega?” Cade’s false cool had cracked like cheap plastic, and underneath it was a little
boy’s terror. “What happened to the priest, man?” He kept his finger on the trigger.

   “Dead. Out there somewhere.” Rick motioned with a leaden arm.

   “I told you not to go in there!” Cade shouted. “Didn’t I? I told you not to, you stupid shits!” He
peered into the haze, searching for Typhoid; the dog had raced out there a few minutes ago, barking and
growling at something, and hadn’t returned. “Typhoid!” he hollered. “Come on back, boy!”

   “We’ve got to tell Vance,” Rick said. “It wants to see him.”

  “Typhoid!” Cade took three steps into the autoyard, but could make himself go no farther. The
concertina wire snagged his trousers, and oily beads of sweat rolled down his face. “Typhoid, come on!”

    Lockjaw kept barking. Cade prowled along the wire, calling for Typhoid in a voice that began to
strain and quaver.

   “I said we’ve got to tell Vance!” Rick repeated. “Right now!”

   “I’ve gotta find my dog!” Cade shouted, his face stricken. “Something’s happened to Typhoid!”
   “Forget the dog! Father Ortega’s dead! We’ve got to tell the sheriff!”

   “I told you not to go in there! I said you were all crazy as hell!” Cade felt a weakness falling over him,
like a sun in eclipse. The yard and its fortune of cars were reduced to true junk, and in that smoke Cade
could smell the burning of syndicate money and his own skin. “Typhoid!” he yelled, his voice rasping.
“Come back!” His voice echoed over the ruins. There was no sign of the Doberman.

   “You going to take us to Vance or not?” Rick asked him.

    “I can’t… leave my friend,” Cade said, as something that had been nailed in place for a long time
broke inside him. “Typhoid’s out there. I can’t leave him.” He stared at the boy for a few seconds, to
make sure he understood, and then Cade said thickly, “You can take the car. I don’t give a shit.” He
started walking into the yard, and Lockjaw saw his master going and leapt out of the Mercedes to
follow.

   “No!” Rick shouted. “Don’t!”

    Cade went on. He looked back, a terrible smile on his sweat-damp face. “You gotta know who your
friends are, kid. Gotta stick up for them. Think on these things.” He gave a short, sharp whistle to
Lockjaw, and the Doberman walked at his side. Cade began to call for Typhoid again, his voice getting
weaker, and the two figures vanished into the haze.

  “Get in the car,” Rick told Zarra, and the other boy stumbled dazedly toward it. Rick slid behind the
wheel, turned the keys in the ignition, and laid rubber in reverse.



                                                  33
                                               The Flesh


“Howdy, Noah,” Early McNeil said as Tom escorted Noah Twilley into the clinic lab. “Shut the door
behind you, if you please.”

   Twilley blinked in the glare of the emergency lights and looked around. His eyes were used to the
funeral chapel’s candlelight. In the lab were Sheriff Vance, Jessie Hammond, and a dark-haired man with
a crewcut and blood all over his shirt. The dark-haired man was sitting on a stainless-steel table, holding
his left wrist. No, Twilley realized in another second; no, that was not the man’s hand on his wrist. It was
a hand and arm that ended at a mutilated elbow.

   “Lord,” Twilley whispered.

   “Kinda thought you might say that.” Early sneaked a grim smile. “I asked Tom to fetch you over
’cause I figured you’d want to see this thing, you bein’ on a speakin’ acquaintance with bodies and all.
Come take a closer look.”

   Twilley approached the table. The dark-haired man kept his head down, and Twilley saw a syringe
lying nearby and realized the man had been sedated. Also on the table, lying in a little plastic tray, was an
arrangement of scalpels, probes, and a bone saw. Twilley took one look at the nub of the elbow and
said, “That’s not bone.”

   “Nope. Sure as hell isn’t.” Early picked up a probe and tapped what appeared to be a tight coil of
flexible, blue-tinged metal that had erupted from the wound. “That’s not muscle, either.” He indicated the
ripped red tissue, which had oozed a spool of gray fluid onto the floor. “But it’s pretty close. It is
organic, though it’s not like anythin’ I’ve ever seen before.” He nodded toward a microscope set up on
the counter, with a slide that held a smear of the tissue. “Take a gander at it, if you like.”

    Twilley did, his pale, slender fingers adjusting the lens into focus. “Lord A’mighty!” he said, which
was about the strongest language he used. He had seen what all of them already knew: that the muscle
tissue was part organic and part tiny metallic fibers.

   “Too bad you didn’t shoot the head off this shitter, Colonel,” Early told him. “I sure would like to get
a look at the brain.”

   “You go down in that hole!” Rhodes’s voice was a harsh rasp. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

   “No thankee.” Early picked up a pair of forceps and said, “Doc Jessie, will you shine that light a bit
this way, please?”

   Jessie clicked on a small penlight and aimed it where the metallic fingernails had pierced the colonel’s
flesh. One of the fingers had crunched into the face of Rhodes’s wristwatch and stopped it at four
minutes after twelve, about a half hour ago. The colonel’s hand had taken on a blue tinge from the
pressure. “Well, let’s start with this one,” Early decided, and started trying to withdraw the little saw
blade from the man’s flesh.

   By the penlight, Jessie could see age spots scattered over the top of the false hand. There was a small
white scar on one knuckle—maybe a burn scar, she thought. A knuckle’s brush against a hot pan.
Whatever had created this mechanism had gotten the texture and color of an elderly woman’s flesh down
to perfection. On the ring finger was a thin gold band, but strands of the pseudo-skin had grown over and
around it, entrapping it as if the thing that had made this replica had assumed the ring was somehow an
organic part of the hand.

   “Thing don’t want to come out.” The finger was resisting Early’s forceps. “It’s gonna take some skin
out of you, Colonel. Hope you don’t mind.”

   “Just do it.”

  “I told him not to go down there.” Vance felt woozy, and he sat on a stool before his legs gave way.
Thin creepers of blood had intertwined around Rhodes’s wrist. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

   “Find Daufin,” Rhodes said. “She’s the only one who knows what we’re up against.” He flinched and
drew a breath as Early pulled the first fingernail loose. “That tunnel… probably goes all the way under the
river.” He stared at the penlight in Jessie’s hand. His brain gears were thawing out, and he remembered
the creature protecting its eyes from the flashlight’s beam. “The light,” he said. “It doesn’t like light.”

   “What?” Tom asked, coming closer to the table.

   “It… tried to shield its eyes. I think the light was hurting it.”

   “That damned thing with Dodge’s face didn’t mind the light,” Vance said. “There were oil lamps
hangin’ from the ceilin’.”

    “Right. Oil lamps.” Rhodes was getting some of his strength back, but he still couldn’t bear to look at
the gray hand clamped to his wrist. Early was struggling to extract the second fingernail. “You didn’t have
a flashlight, did you?”
   “No.”

   “Maybe it’s just electric light that hurts it. Firelight and electric light have different spectrums, don’t
they?”

   “Spectrums?” Vance stood up. “What the hell’s that?”

   “A fancy word for the strength of wavelengths in light,” Early told him. “Hold still, now.” He gripped
the forceps hard and jerked the finger’s metal saw blade out of Rhodes’s skin. “That one just about
grazed an artery.” The other fingers still held on to Rhodes’s wrist like the legs of a spider.

   “So maybe the wavelengths in electric light do something to its eyes,” Rhodes went on. “It said ‘hot,’
and it had to tunnel underneath me because it didn’t like the light. If it screwed up on the bones and the
teeth, maybe it screwed up on the eyes too.”

   “Hell, light’s just light!” Vance said. “Ain’t nothin’ in it to hurt anythin’!”

   “A bat would disagree with you, Sheriff.” Noah Twilley turned toward them from the microscope.
“So would a whole encyclopedia of cave-dwelling rodents, fish, and insects. Our eyes are used to
electric light, but it blinds a lot of other species.”

   “So what are you sayin’? This thing lives in a cave?”

   “Maybe not a cave,” Rhodes said, “just an environment where there’s no electric light. That could be
a world full of tunnels, for all we know. From the speed it digs, I’d say Stinger’s used to traveling
underground.”

   “But electric lights don’t bother Daufin,” Jessie reminded him. “All the lights were on in our house
before the pyramid came down.”

    He nodded. “Which goes along with what I think is true: Daufin and Stinger are two different forms of
life, from different environments. One transfers itself in and out of a black sphere, and the other travels
underground and makes replicants like this one”—he glanced distastefully at the false hand—“so it can
move above ground. Maybe it makes copies of life forms on whatever world it lands on. I can’t imagine
what the process is, but it must be damned fast.”

  “Damned strong too.” Early was doing his best to pry the fingers loose with the forceps and a probe.
“Noah, reach in that bottom drawer down there.” He motioned to it with a lift of his chin.

   Noah opened it. “Nothing in here but a bottle of vodka.”

  “Right. Open it and hand it here. If I can’t smoke, I can sure as shit drink.” He took the bottle,
swigged from it, and offered it to Rhodes, who also took a swallow. “Not much, now. We don’t want
you keelin’ over. Doc Jessie, get me some cotton swabs and let’s mop up some of this bleedin’.”

   Early had to ask Tom to take another pair of forceps and help him twist each finger out of Rhodes’s
flesh. It took the strength of both men, working hard, to do the job. The fingers broke with little metallic
cracking sounds, and the hand finally plopped to the table. On Rhodes’s wrist was a violet bruise in the
shape of a hand and fingers, and he immediately doused his flesh with vodka and scrubbed it with a
paper towel, opening up the cuts again. He poured more vodka on it, wincing with the pain, and kept
rubbing until the paper towel came apart and Early clutched his shoulder with a pressure that would have
made a Brahma bull pay attention.

   “Settle down, son,” Early said calmly. He took the fragments of paper from Rhodes and tossed them
into the wastebasket. “Tom, will you help the colonel to a room down the hall, please? I believe he could
do with some rest.”

   “No.” Rhodes waved Tom away. “I’m all right.”

   “I don’t think you are.” Early took the penlight from Jessie and used it to examine the man’s pupils.
Their reaction was sluggish, and Early knew Rhodes was tottering right on the edge of serious shock.
“I’d say you’ve had kind of a rough night, wouldn’t you?”

   “I’m all right,” Rhodes repeated, pushing the light aside. He could still feel those damned cold fingers
on his wrist, and he didn’t know if he would ever stop shaking inside. But he had to put up a brave front,
no matter what. He stood up, averted his gaze from the false hand. “We’ve got to find Daufin, and I
don’t have time to rest.” He smelled the blood and acrid juice that had spurted out of the dragonfly. “I’d
like to change shirts. This one’s had it.”

   Early grunted, watching the younger man below beetling brows. Rhodes didn’t fool him for a second;
the colonel was holding himself together with spit and gristle. “I can get you a scrub shirt. How about
that?” He walked over to a closet, opened it, and pulled out one of the lightweight sea-green shirts. He
tossed it to Rhodes. “They come in two sizes: too small and too large. Try it on.”

  The shirt was a little too large, but not by much. Rhodes’s blood-smeared knit shirt followed the
paper towel into the wastebasket.

   “I left my mother alone,” Noah Twilley explained. “I’d better get back.”

   “Ought to get yourself and ol’ Ruth to a place with electric lights—like here,” Early said, motioning
toward the emergency floods. “If the colonel’s right, that damned Stinger’ll stay away from ’em.”

   “Right. I’ll go get her and bring her back.” He paused for a moment to jab a probe at the hand that
lay palm up, fingers curled like the legs of a dead crab, on the table. The probe touched the center of the
palm, and the fingers gripped into a fist, the sudden movement almost shooting all of them—especially
Rhodes—out of their shoes. “Reflex action,” Noah said, with a sickly half smile, and he tried to pull the
probe free but the fingers had locked around it. “I’ll go get my mother,” he told them as he hurried out of
the lab.

   “Just what we need: that crazy loudmouth woman runnin’ around here,” Early groused when Noah
was gone. He picked up a towel and wrapped the hand in it, probe and all, and when he was done he
took another swig from the vodka bottle.

   Someone knocked on the door. Mrs. Santos looked in without waiting for an invitation. “Sheriff,
there’re two boys here to see you.”

   “What do they want?”

   “I don’t know, but I think you’d better come quick. They’re pretty torn up about something.”

   “Take ’em to my office,” Early said. “Ed, you can talk to ’em in there.”

   Mrs. Santos left to get them, but Vance hesitated because he smelled more trouble and he knew Doc
Early did too. “How are we gonna find Daufin?” he asked Rhodes. “There are plenty of places she could
be hidin’.”

   “She can’t have gotten out of the force field, but that’s still a seven-mile radius,” the colonel
answered. “I don’t think she’s left town, though. At least she knows she can hide here, and she doesn’t
know anything about what’s beyond Inferno and Bordertown.”

   “There are a lot of empty houses around,” Tom said. “She could be in any one of them.”

  “She’s not going to get very far from the sphere.” Jessie couldn’t remember if she’d locked the front
door or not; that detail had been lost in the hurry to find out what had come down in Cade’s autoyard.
“Either Torn or I ought to go back to our house and wait there. She might show up.”

   “Right. I can get Gunny to round up some volunteers and start combing the streets.” The search was
not going to be an easy task, he knew, with all that haze out there and the visibility eroding more every
hour. “If we go door to door, maybe we can find someone who’s seen her.” He tried to rub warmth into
his left wrist, but the feel of the cold fingers would not go away. “I need some black coffee,” he decided.
“I’ve got to keep going.”

   “Probably some left over at the Brandin’ Iron,” Vance said. “They keep a pot full until the stuff gets
out and walks off.”

   Jessie stared at Colonel Rhodes for a moment. He was still pale, but some of the color had resurfaced
in his face and his inner fires were lit again. A question had been hanging in her mind: a question that she
knew she shared with Tom. It had to be asked, and now was the time. “If… when… we find Daufin,
what are we going to do with her?”

   Rhodes already knew where the question was aiming. “It looks to me as if Stinger’s a lot stronger
than she is—and a hell of a lot stronger than any of us too. Stinger must know Daufin’s out of her sphere
and in a host body, and that’s what it means by ‘guardian.’ It’s not going to drop the force field until it
has her, so I’ll jump ahead and tell you that I don’t know what’s going to happen to Stevie.”

   “If there is a Stevie anymore,” Tom said quietly. Jessie had been thinking that too, and she felt a
clench of anguish inside her. But Daufin had said Stevie was safe, and Jessie realized she was clinging to
the word of a creature she hadn’t even dreamed existed twenty-four hours ago. “I’m going to check on
Ray,” she told them, and she tore her mind away from the alien that lived in her little girl’s skin, walked
out of the lab and down the hall to Ray’s room.

    “I’d best see what those boys want.” Vance moved toward the door, dreading the news that waited
for him in Doc Early’s office. When it rains it pours! he thought, merrily going crazy. He stopped just shy
of the door. “Tom, will you come with me?”

   Tom said he would, and they left the lab.

   McNeil’s cluttered office was decorated with bullfight posters and thickets of potted cacti sat on the
windowsills. Vance took one look at the strained faces of Rick Jurado and Zarra Alhambra, their eyes
sunken and ringed with gray, and he knew the shit had just deepened to about neck level.

   “What happened?” Vance asked Rick, who kept shivering and rubbing his throat.

   Rick told him, speaking in a halting, brain-blasted voice. He and Zarra had gone to the sheriff’s office,
where Danny Chaffin had told them where Vance was. The deputy had been sitting at the CB radio,
calling for help into a sea of static and surrounded by loaded weapons from the gun cabinet.

  When Rick reached the part about the thing’s body bursting a spiked tail, Vance made a soft, choking
moan and had to sit down.

   “It killed Father Ortega,” Rick continued. “Hit him in the head. Just like that.” He stopped, drew in a
breath and let it out. “It went after me. Caught me, with that… that tail. It wanted to know about the little
girl.”

   Tom said, “Oh, Jesus.”

   “I thought it was going to kill me. But it said…” Rick’s eyes found the sheriffs. “It said for me to take
a message to you. It wants to see you. It said you’d know where.”

   Vance didn’t reply, because the room was spinning too fast and the emergency lights threw gargoyle
shadows on the walls.

   “Where?” Tom asked him.

   “The Creech house,” he answered finally. “I can’t go back in there.” His voice broke. “Oh God, I
can’t.” A brutal echo drifted to him: Burro! Burro! Burro! Cortez Park and pantherish faces swirled
around him, and he clenched his hands into fists.

  He was the sheriff of Inferno: a joke job. A chaser of lost dogs and traffic offenders. One hand out to
Mack Cade and the other over his eyes. The little fat boy inside him quivered with terror, and he saw the
door of the Creech house stretching to engulf him.

   A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up, wet-lashed, into Tom Hammond’s face.

   “We need you,” Tom said.

   No one had ever said that to him before. We need you. The sound of it was shockingly simple, and
yet it was strong enough to tatter the long-ago, distant taunts like cobwebs in the desert wind. He
lowered his head, the fear still jabbing at his guts. Only it didn’t seem as bad as it had been a few
seconds before. He had been alone for a long time—way too long, and it was time for that weakling fat
boy who carried a Louisville Slugger onto the streets of Bordertown to grow up. Maybe he couldn’t
make himself walk into the Creech house again; maybe he’d get to that door and scream and keep
running until he dropped or a monster with a tail full of spikes reared up before him.

   Maybe. Maybe not. He was the sheriff of Inferno, and they needed him.

  And knowing it was true made the taunts drift away, like bullies who had realized the fat little boy
walking across Cortez Park cast a man-sized shadow.

   Vance lifted his head and wiped his eyes with the back of a pudgy hand. “All right,” he said. No
promises. The doorway still had to be dealt with.” He stood up, and said it again: “All right.”

   Tom left to get Colonel Rhodes.



                                                34
                                             Worm Meat


“Typhoid! Here, boy!” Mack Cade’s voice was giving out from shouting, and at his side Lockjaw was
whining and jumping in a jangle of nerves, stopping to fire rapid barks in the direction of the pyramid.
Cade let the dog bark, hoping the sound would attract Typhoid.

   There was no sign of the Doberman. Smoke from burning tires drifted slowly around him, and he
walked through a dark wonderland of destruction. The .38, gripped in his right hand, was cocked and
ready for whatever might be waiting.

   Each step took him deeper into the yard. He knew every inch of the place, and now he feared all of
them. But Typhoid had to be found, or no amount of coke in the world would ease his brain tonight. The
dogs were his friends, his good-luck charms, his bodyguards, his power translated into animal form.
Screw humans, he thought. None of them were worth a shit. Only the dogs mattered.

  He saw the black pyramid, its damp-looking plates washed with violet light, looming terrifyingly close,
and he veered away from it. His polished Italian boots stirred up ashes and dust, and when he looked
back he could no longer see any of the houses of Bordertown, just dark upon dark.

   The yard’s familiar buildings—its workshops and storage structures—had been flattened and blasted
by the concussion and the explosion of drums of gasoline and lubricants. The sleek rebuilt Porsches,
BMWs, Corvettes, Jaguars, and Mercedes that had been lined up ready for pickup and delivery to
Cade’s masters had been scorched, warped, and tossed like Tonka Toys.

   My ass is grass, he thought. No: lower than grass. My ass is worm meat.

   The troopers would come, eventually. Then the reporters. It was all over, and the sudden change of
his fortunes unhinged him a little further. He’d always expected that if the end came it would be an
undercover bust by the federals, or some wild-hair lawyer who decided the money wasn’t enough, or
one of the fringe players who sang to save his own skin. No scenario of disaster had ever had a
sonofabitching black pyramid from outer space in it, and Cade figured that would be really funny if he
were on the shore of a Caribbean island where there were no extradition treaties.

   “Typhoid! Come on, boy! Please… come back!” he shouted. Lockjaw whined, nudged his leg, raced
off a few yards, and then darted back to him.

   Cade stopped. “It’s you and me, buddy,” he said to Lockjaw. “Us two against the world.”

   Lockjaw yipped. A small sound.

   “What is it?” Cade knew that sound: alarm. “What do you h—”

   Lockjaw growled, deep in his throat, and his ears lay back.

  There was a splitting noise in the earth, like a seam of stone breaking. The sand swirled around
Cade’s boots like a whirlpool, and he was twisted around in a violent corkscrew motion. The ground
beneath him collapsed, and his legs disappeared up to the knees.

  He drew a sharp breath, tasted bitter smoke at the back of his throat. Something moist and lurching
had his legs, was drawing him under. He was almost down to his waist within seconds, and he thrashed
and screamed but his legs were held fast. Lockjaw was barking fiercely, running in circles around him.
Cade fired into the ground, the bullet kicking up a spray of sand. Whatever had him continued to pull him
down, and he kept firing until the bullets were gone.

   The earth was up to his chest. Lockjaw darted in, and Cade’s flailing arms grabbed the dog, pulled
the Doberman against him, and tried to use its weight to pull himself free. Lockjaw scrabbled wildly, but
the sand began to take the dog’s body along with Cade’s. He held on, and when he opened his mouth to
scream again, sand and ashes filled it, slithering down his throat.

   The man and his dog disappeared together. Mack Cade’s Panama hat whirled in the eddies of the
sand, then lay half buried as the earth’s circular motion slowed and stopped.
                                                  35
                                             The Open Door


While Rick and Zarra had been waiting in McNeil’s office, Cody Lockett opened his eyes to candlelight
and sat up with a jolt that made the hammering in his skull start up again.

   He held his Timex up to the candle stuck on the plywood table beside his bed: 12:58. It had been
about an hour since he’d come to the house, swallowed two aspirin with a swig of Seven-Up from a
half-drained can in the refrigerator, and laid down to rest his brain. He wasn’t sure he’d actually been
sleeping, maybe just drifting in and out of an uneasy twilight, but his head did feel a little better and his
muscles had unknotted some too.

    Cody didn’t know where his father was. The last he’d seen of Curt, the old man was hightailing it
down the street as the helicopter and that other flying thing had battled above Inferno. Cody had watched
it all, and after the ’copter had crashed on Cobre Road, he figured he’d zombied out, somehow walking
to his motorcycle in front of the Warp Room and winding up here.

    He was still wearing the bloody rags of his Texaco shirt. He stood up from the bed, steadied himself
against its iron frame as the walls swelled and slowly rotated. When they stopped turning, he unlatched
his fingers and walked across the room to his chest of drawers, opened the top drawer, and got out a
fresh white T-shirt. He threw aside the Texaco tatters and worked the T-shirt on over his head, wincing
at a stitch of pain along his rib cage. His belly growled, and he uprooted the candle from its little puddle
of dried wax and followed its light into the kitchen.

    The refrigerator held a few mold-ravaged TV dinners, some brown meat wrapped up in foil, a chunk
of Limburger cheese that Cody wouldn’t have offered to a dog, and assorted bowls and cups full of
leftovers. He didn’t trust any of them, but the candlelight found a grease-stained paper sack in there and
he pulled it out and opened it; inside were four stale glazed doughnuts, booty from the bakery. They were
as tough as lawnmower tires, but Cody ate three of them before his stomach begged for mercy.

  In the back of the refrigerator was a bottle of Welch’s grape juice. He reached in for it, and that was
when he felt the floor tremble.

   He stopped, his hand gripping the bottle’s neck.

   The house creaked. There was a polite clink of dishes and glasses in the cupboards. Then the rude
bang of a pipe breaking deep in the earth.

   Something’s under the house, he realized. His heart picked up hot speed, but his mind was cold and
clear. He could feel the tremor of the boards under his sneakers, like the way the floor used to shake
when slow-moving freight trains passed, heavy-laden, on the copper company’s tracks.

   The floor’s vibration ebbed and stopped. A whiff of dust floated through the candlelight. Cody was
holding his breath, and only when his lungs jerked for air did he gasp. The kitchen smelled of burning
rubber; the stink of Cade’s autoyard was sliding through the cracks. Cody brought the grape juice out,
unscrewed the cap, and washed down the last of a glazed doughnut that had lodged in his craw.

   The world had gone freak-o since that damned bastard had crashed down across the river. Cody
didn’t care to speculate about what might have passed underneath his feet; whatever it was, it had been
maybe ten or twelve feet below the ground. He wasn’t planning on waiting around to see if it came back,
either. Wherever the old man was, Cody thought, he’d have to cover his own ass this time. Anyway,
God always looked out for fools and drunks.

   He blew the candle out, laid it on the kitchen counter, and left the house, getting astride his motor at
the bottom of the steps and putting on his goggles. The street was tinged with violet, layers of smoke lying
close to the concrete and making Inferno look and smell like a battle zone. Through the pall, Cody could
see the shine of the lights up at the fortress. That was the place to go, he decided; there was too much
dark everywhere else. First he wanted to run past Tank’s house, over on Circle Back Street, to see if the
dude was there with his folks before he went up to the apartment building. He stomped a couple of times
on the starter before the engine cranked, and drove toward Celeste Street.

   His headlamp’s glass had been broken during the fight—beer bottle probably clipped it, he
reckoned—but the bulb was still working. The light stabbed through the dirty haze, but Cody kept his
speed down because Brazos Street was riddled with cracks and in some places buckled upward as
much as six inches. His tires told his backbone that whatever had gone under his house had passed this
way too.

   And then he was almost upon her.

   Somebody standing in the middle of the street.

   A little girl with auburn hair, her eyes glowing red in the headlamp’s beam.

   “Look out!” Cody shouted, but the little girl didn’t budge. He jerked the wheel to the left and hit the
brakes; if he’d passed any closer to the child he could’ve flicked her earlobe. The Honda flashed past
her and the front tire hit a bulge in the pavement that made the frame shudder; Cody wrestled the
handlebars and brakes to keep from crashing into a stand of cactus. He pulled up about two feet short of
porcupine city and skidded the Honda around in a flurry of sand. Its engine coughed and quit.

  “Are you crazy?” Cody hollered at the child. She was just standing there, holding something in
cupped hands. “What’s wrong with you?” He whipped off his goggles, beads of sweat burning his eyes.

   She didn’t answer. She seemed not to even know how close she’d been to kissing a tire. “You almost
got yourself killed!” He chopped down the kickstand, got off, and strode toward her to pull her out of
the street.

    But as he reached her, she lowered her arms and he could see what was cradled in her hands. “What
is this?” she asked.

   It was an orange-striped kitten, probably only a month or so old. Cody glanced around to get his
bearings and saw they were standing in front of the Cat Lady’s house. A few feet away, the orange
mama tabby sat on her haunches, patiently awaiting the return of her own.

  “You know what it is,” he snapped, his nerves still raw. “It’s a kitten. Everybody in the world knows
what a kitten is.”

   “A kit-ten,” the child repeated, as if she’d never heard the word before. “Kitten.” It was easier that
time. Her fingers stroked the fur. “Soft.”

   Something weird about this kid, Cody thought. Mighty weird. She didn’t talk right, and she didn’t
stand right either. Her back was too rigid, as if she were straining against the weight of her bones. Her
face and hair were dusty, and her blue jeans and T-shirt looked as if she’d been rolling on the ground.
Her face was familiar, though; he’d seen her somewhere before. He remembered where: at school one
afternoon in April. Mr. Hammond’s wife and the kid had come to pick him up. The little girl’s name was
Sandy, or Steffi, or something like that.

   “You’re Mr. Hammond’s kid,” he said. “What’re you doin’ wanderin’ out here alone?”

    Her attention was still focused on the kitten. “Pretty,” she said. She’d reasoned it was the younger
form of the creature that waited not far away, just as the form she occupied was the young female form
of the human beings. She stroked its body with a gentle touch. “This kitten is a fragile construction.”

  “Huh?”

   “Fragile,” she repeated, looking up at him. “Is that not the correct term?”

   Cody didn’t reply for a few seconds. He couldn’t; his voice was lost. Mighty, mighty weird, he
thought. Warily, he replied, “Kittens are tougher than they look.”

   “So are daughters,” Daufin said, mostly to herself. She carefully leaned over and placed the kitten on
the ground in the exact spot she’d found it. Immediately the older quadruped picked it up by the scruff of
the neck and bounded away with it around the corner of the house.

    “Uh… what’s your name?” Cody’s heart had begun slamming again, and a trickle of sweat crept
down the middle of his back. Already wet rings were coming up under his arms, and the night’s heat was
stifling. “It’s Sandy, isn’t it?”

  “Daufin.” She stared steadily at him.

   “I think I’m about ready for a rubber room.” He pushed a hand through his tangled hair. Maybe he’d
suffered a worse punch than he’d thought, and his brains had been knocked loose. “You are Mr.
Hammond’s little girl, aren’t you?”

   She pondered a correct response to his question. This one had strange discolorations on his cliff of
features, and she could see that bewilderment had taken the place of anger. She knew he would think she
was as alien as she thought him to be. What was that strange extension dangling from the hearing cup
called an “ear”? Why was one visual orb smaller than the other? And what was the now-silent monster
that had roared down on her through the murk? Puzzles, puzzles. Still, she felt no terror in him, as there
had been in those others when she’d fled the destroyed abode of ritual. “I have chosen to…” What
would the proper translation be? “To clothe myself in this daughter.” She lifted her hands, as if she were
showing off a new and wonderful dress.

   “Clothe yourself. Uh-huh.” Cody nodded, one eye large and the swollen eye twitching. “Man, you’ve
looped the loop for damn sure!” he told himself. This looked like Mr. Hammond’s kid standing before
him, but she sure didn’t use a kid’s words. Except maybe if she was out of her mind, which he wasn’t
doubting. One of them had to be. “You ought to be at home,” he said. “You shouldn’t be walkin’ around
by yourself, not with that thing sittin’ over there.”

   “Yes. The big booger,” she said.

   “Right.” Another slow nod. “You want me to take you home?”

   “Oh!” It had been a quick intake of breath. “Oh, if you could,” she whispered, and she looked up at
the gridded sky. The darkness claimed all reference points.

   “You live on Celeste Street,” Cody reminded her. He pointed toward the vet’s office, just a couple of
blocks away. “Over there.”

    “My home. My home.” Daufin reached toward the sky, her hands open. “My home is very far from
here, and I can’t see the way.” Her host body trembled, and she felt a heat behind her own cliff of
features. It was more than the increase in the rush of that vital fluid through the miraculous network of
arteries, more than the muscle pump’s brain-timed beating. It was deeper, a yearning that burned at the
center of her being. Within it, her memories of home began to unfold. They came to her in her own
language of chimes, but they were synthesized through the human brain and left her tongue in human
speech. “I see the tides. I feel them: rising, falling. I feel life in the tides. I feel whole.” Cody saw her body
begin to undulate slightly, as if in rhythm with the currents of a spectral ocean. “There are great cities, and
groves of peace. The tides move over mountains, through valleys and gardens where every labor is love.
I feel them; they touch me, even here. They call me home.” The movement of her body abruptly stopped.
She stared at her hands, at the frightening appendages of alien flesh, and the memories fled before the
horror of reality.

    “No,” she said. “No. That’s how my world was. No more. Now the tides carry pain, and the gardens
lie in ruins. There is no more singing. There is no more peace, and my world suffers in the shadow of
hate. That shadow.” She reached toward the pyramid, and Cody saw her fingers clench into a claw, her
hand trembling. She closed her eyes, unable to endure the visions behind them. When they opened again,
they were blurred and burning. There was a wetness around them, and Daufin put a hand to her cheek to
investigate this new malfunction. She brought her hand away, the fingers glistening and a single unbroken
drop of liquid suspended on the tip of the longest digit.

   Another drop ran down her cliff of features and into the corner of her mouth. In it she could taste the
tides of her world.

   “You won’t win,” she whispered, staring fixedly at the pyramid. Cody felt something inside him shrink
back; her eyes were blazing with a power that made him fear he might explode into flame if they were
aimed at him. “I won’t let you win.”

   Cody hadn’t moved. At first he’d been sure either he or the little girl had leapt headlong into the
Great Fried Empty, but now… now he wasn’t sure. The black pyramid must have a pilot or crew of
some kind. Maybe this kid was one of them, and she’d made herself—itself—resemble Mr. Hammond’s
daughter. On this sweltering, crazy night it seemed that all things were possible. And so he blurted out a
question that on any other night of his life would have sealed his permanent residence in the Great Fried
Empty: “You’re not… from around here, are you? I mean… not… like… from this planet?”

  She blinked away the last of the searing wet, and her head swiveled toward him with smooth grace.
“No,” she said, “I’m not.”

   “Wow.” There was a knot in his throat the size of a basketball. He didn’t know what else to say. It
made more sense now that she was wandering around in the dark and hadn’t known what a kitten was;
but why would the same creature who was so gentle with a kitten destroy the helicopter? And if this was
an alien from the pyramid, what was the thing burrowing under the streets? “Is that yours?” He pointed at
the pyramid.

   “No. It belongs to… Stinger.”

   He repeated the name. “Is that… like… the captain or somebody?”

   She didn’t understand what he meant. She said, “Stinger is…” There was a hesitation as her memory
scanned the volumes of the Britannica and the dictionary. After a few seconds, she found a phrase that
was accurate in Earth language: “A bounty hunter,” she said.
   “What’s he hunting?”

   “Me.”

   This was too much for Cody to comprehend all at one time. Meeting a little girl from outer space in
the middle of Brazos Street was weird enough, but a galactic bounty hunter in a black pyramid was one
brainblaster too many. He caught movement from the corner of his eye, looked over, and saw two cats
nosing around the wilted shrubs in Mrs. Stellenberg’s yard. Another cat was standing on the porch steps,
wailing forlornly. Kittens scampered from the brush and chased each other’s tails. It was after one
o’clock in the morning; why were Mrs. Stellenberg’s cats out?

  He walked to the Honda, angling the headlight so it shone at the Cat Lady’s house. The front door
was wide open. The cat on the steps arched its back, spitting in the headlight’s glare.

   “Mrs. Stellenberg!” Cody called. “You all right?”

   Coils of smoke meandered past the light. “Mrs. Stellenberg!” he tried again, and again there was no
reply.

   Cody waited. The open door both beckoned and repelled him. What if she’d fallen in the dark and
knocked herself out? What if she’d broken a hip, or even her neck? He was no saint, but he couldn’t
pretend he didn’t care. He walked to the foot of the steps. “Mrs. Stellenberg! It’s Cody Lockett!”

   No answer. The cat on the steps gave a nervous yowl and shot past Cody’s feet, heading for the
brush.

   He started up. He had taken two of the steps when he felt a quick tug at his elbow.

    “Careful, Cody Lockett,” Daufin warned, standing right beside him. Stinger had passed this way and
its reek lingered in the air.

   “Yeah.” She didn’t have to tell him twice. He continued up the steps and paused at the doorway’s
dark rectangle. “Mrs. Stellenberg?” he called into the house. “Are you okay?”

   Nothing but silence. If the Cat Lady was in there, she couldn’t answer. Cody took a deep breath and
stepped over the threshold.

   His foot never found the floor. He was tumbling forward, falling through darkness, and Daufin’s
restraining hand was a half second too late. Cody’s mouth opened in a cry of terror. It came to him that
the front room of the Cat Lady’s house had no floor, and he was going to keep falling until he crashed
through the roof of hell.

   Something whammed underneath his right arm, knocking the wind out of him, and he had the sense to
grab hold of it before he slid off. He gripped both hands to a swaying thing that felt like a horizontal length
of pipe. Dirt and stones cascaded into the darkness beneath him. He didn’t hear them hit bottom. Then
the pipe’s swaying stopped, and he was left dangling in midair.

   His lungs heaved for breath, and his brain felt like a hot pulse of overloaded circuits. He locked his
fingers around the pipe, kicked out, could find nothing there. The pipe began swaying again so he ceased
his struggling.

   “Cody Lockett! Are you alive?” Daufin’s voice came from above.

   “Yeah,” he rasped. He knew she hadn’t heard him, so he tried again, louder: “Yeah! I guess… I
wasn’t careful enough, huh?”

   “Can you”—her memory banks raced for the terminology, and she leaned over the gaping hole but
couldn’t see him—“climb out?”

   “Don’t think so. Got hold of a pipe.” He kicked out again, still could find no walls. The pipe made an
ominous, stressed creaking, and more gobbets of dirt hissed down. “I don’t know what’s under me!”
The first bite of panic sank deep. His hands were slick with sweat. He tried to pull himself up, to swing a
leg onto the pipe for support, but his bruised ribs daggered him with pain. He couldn’t get his leg up, and
after three futile attempts he stopped trying and concentrated on conserving his strength. “I can’t get out!”
he shouted.

   Daufin measured the sound of his voice at being, in Earth distance, approximately thirteen-point-six
feet down, though the echoes gave a distortion of up to three inches more or less. She hung in the
doorframe and looked around the floorless room, searching for anything she might use to reach him. The
only things left were a few pictures hanging on the cracked walls.

   “Listen to me!” Cody called. “You’ve got to find somebody to help! Understand?”

   “Yes!” The knot of muscle in her chest labored furiously. She saw the pattern now: Stinger was
searching for her by invading these human abodes and seizing whoever it found within. “I’ll find help!”
She turned from the doorway and ran down the steps. Then she was on the street, running toward the
center of town, fighting the planet’s leaden gravity and her own clumsy appendages.

   Cody squeezed his eyes shut to keep out the beads of sweat. If he let his fingers relax just a fraction,
he would slide off the pipe and plummet down God only knew how far. He didn’t know how long he
could hold on. “Hurry!” he called up, but Daufin had gone. He hung in darkness, waiting.



                                                 36
                                          Mouth of the South


“Mother!” Noah Twilley shouted as he came in the front door. “We’re going to the clinic!” He had left an
oil lamp burning on a table in the foyer, and now he picked it up and headed toward the staircase,
“Mother?” he called again. Ruth Twilley had remained in her white bedroom, the bedcovers pulled up to
her chin while he’d gone with Tom Hammond to the clinic. He reached the stairs and started up.

   They ended after six risers. Noah stood gripping the broken banister and peering into a dark chasm
that had taken down the rest of the staircase. Below, in the depths of the hole, was a little flicker of fire.
A broken lamp, Noah realized. Puddle of oil still burning.

   “Mother?” he called; his voice cracked. His light ran along fissures in the walls. Ruth Twilley, the
Mouth of the South, was silent. The ruined staircase swayed and moaned under Noah’s weight, and he
slowly retreated to the bottom of the steps.

   Stood there, numbed and shaking. “Mother, where are you?” It came out like the wail of an
abandoned child.

   The lamplight gleamed off something on the floor. Footprints. Slimy footprints, coming down the stairs
from that awful hole. Smears and splatters of a gray, snotlike substance trailed along the steps and
through the hallway toward the rear of the house. Somebody needs a Kleenex, Noah thought. Oh,
Mother’s going to blow a gasket about this mess! She was upstairs in bed, with the sheet pulled to her
chin. Wasn’t she?

   He followed the trail of slime drips into the kitchen. The floor was warped and crooked, as if
something huge had destroyed the very foundations of the house. He shone the lamp around, and there
she was. Standing in the corner by the refrigerator, her white silk gown wet and gleaming, strands of
slime caught in her red hair and her face a pale gray mask.

   “Who’s the guardian?” she asked, and her eyes had no bottom.

   He couldn’t answer. He took a step back and hit the counter.

   “The little girl. Explain.” Ruth Twilley drifted forward, the glint of silver needles between her fleshy
scarlet lips.

  “Mother. I… don’t…” His hand spasmed and opened, and the oil lamp fell to the floor at his feet.
The glass broke, and streamers of fire snaked across the linoleum.

   She had almost reached him. “Who’s the guardian?” she repeated, walking through the fire.

   It was not his mother. He knew there was a monster behind Ruth Twilley’s slick face and it was
almost upon him. One arm came up, and a hand with metallic, saw-blade fingernails reached toward him.
He watched it coming like the head of a sidewinder, and he pressed back against the counter but there
was nowhere to go.

   His arm brushed something that clattered on the Formica. He knew what it was, because he’d left it
out to spray in the corners. You never knew what might creep in from the desert, after the lights were
out.

   She was a step away, and her face pressed toward his. A little thick rivulet of slime oozed from her
chin.

   Noah’s hand closed around the can of Raid on the countertop, and as he picked it up he flicked the
cap off and thrust the nozzle at her eyes. His index finger jabbed down on the spigot.

    White bug-killing foam jetted out and covered the Ruth Twilley face like a grotesque beauty mask. It
filled her eyes, shot up her nostrils, ran through the rows of needle teeth. She staggered back, whether
hurt or just blinded he didn’t know, and one of her hands swung at Noah’s head; he lifted his arm to
ward it off, was struck on the shoulder as if by a brick wrapped up in barbed wire. The shock of pain
knocked the Raid can from his fingers, and as he was thrown against the kitchen wall he felt warm blood
running down his hand.

   She whirled like a windup toy gone berserk, crashing over the kitchen table and chairs, caroming off
the refrigerator, her serrated nails digging at her own face and eyes. Noah saw gobbets of gray flesh fly,
and he realized she was trying to strip the skin to the bone. She made a roaring sound that became the
scream he had heard every day of his life, four or five times a day, like a regal command issued from the
white bedroom: “Noooaaahhhhh!”

   Whether the thing in his mother’s skin knew that was his name or not didn’t matter. In that sound
Noah Twilley heard the slam of a jail cell’s door, forever locking him to a town he hated, in a job he
hated, living in a hated house with a crazy woman who screamed for attention between soap operas and
“Wheel of Fortune.” He smelled his own blood, felt it crawling over his hand and heard it pattering to the
floor, and as he watched the red-haired monster crashing around the kitchen he lost his mind as fast as a
fingersnap.

   “I’m here, Mother,” he said, very calmly. His eyeglasses hung by one ear, and blood flecked the
lenses. “Right here.” He walked four steps to a drawer as the creature continued to flail its face away; he
opened the drawer and pulled out a long butcher knife from amid the other sharp utensils. “Noah’s right
here,” he said, and he lifted the knife and went to her.

    He brought the knife down in the side of her throat. It slid into the false flesh about four inches before
it met resistance. He pulled it out, struck again, and one of her hands caught him across the chest and
hurled him off his feet against the counter. He sat up, his glasses gone but the bent-bladed knife still
clenched in his hand, blood rising through the rips in his chest. His lungs gurgled, and he coughed up
crimson. The monster’s hands were swiping through the air, seeking him, and Noah could see that she
had clawed her eyes and most of the facial flesh away. Metallic veins and raw red tissue jittered and
twitched in the craters. Chemicals burned her, he thought. Good old Raid, works on all kinds of insects.
He stood up, in no hurry, and walked toward her with the knife upraised and the merry shine of madness
in his eyes.

   And that was when the thing’s spine bowed out and there was a crackling sound of bones popping.
The back of her gown split open and from the dark, rising blister at the base of her backbone uncoiled a
scaly, muscular tail that ended in a ball of spikes.

   Noah stopped, staring in stupefied wonder as the burning oil flamed around his feet.

   The tail whipped to the left, smashing through a cupboard and sending pieces of crockery flying like
shrapnel. The monster was crouched over almost double, the network of muscles and connective tissues
damp with oozing lubricants at the base of the tail. The ball of spikes made a tight circle, bashed a rain of
plaster from the ceiling, and whirled past Noah’s face with a deadly hiss.

   “My God,” he whispered, and dropped the knife.

   Her eyeless face angled toward the noise. The half-human, half-insect body scuttled at him. The hands
caught his sides, saw-blade nails winnowing into the flesh. The tail reared back, curving into a stately arc.
Noah stared at it, realized that he was seeing the shape of his death. He thought of the scorpions in his
collection, pierced with pins. Revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord, he thought. He gave a strangled laugh.

   The tail jerked forward with the velocity of an industrial piston, and the ball of spikes smashed Noah
Twilley’s skull into a thousand fragments. Then the tail began whipping back and forth in quick, savage
arcs, and in another moment the quivering mass gripped between alien hands no longer resembled
anything human. The tail kept slashing away pieces until all movement had ceased, and then the hands
hurled what was left against the wall like a sack of garbage.

   The blind thing flailed its way out of the kitchen, following the odor of its spoor, returned to the
broken staircase, and dropped into darkness.



                                                 37
                                            Bob Wire Club


“Set ’em up again, Jacky!” Curt Lockett banged his fist on the rough-topped bar. The bartender, a
stocky gray-bearded man named Jack Blair, looked at him from down the bar where he was talking to
Harlan Nugent and Pete Griffin. The light of kerosene lanterns hung in Jack’s round eyeglasses, and
above the lenses his brows were as shaggy as caterpillars.

   “Almost a half bottle gone, Curt,” Jack said in a voice like a bulldozer’s growl. “Maybe you ought to
pack up your tent.”

   “Hell, I wish I could!” Curt replied. “Wish I could pack up and light out of this shithole and by God I
wouldn’t never look back!” He pounded the bar again. “Come on, Jacky! Don’t cut your ole buddy off
yet!”

   Jack glared at him for a few seconds. He knew how Curt acted with more than a half bottle lighting
his wick. Over at a table, Hal McCutchins and Burl Keene were smoking cigarettes and talking, and
others had come and gone. The one thing everybody in the Bob Wire Club had in common was that they
had nowhere else in particular to go, no wives waiting for them, nothing to do but kill some time drinking
at one-fifteen in the morning. Jack didn’t care much for Curt Lockett, but the man was a steady
customer. He came down the bar, opened the half-drained bottle of Kentucky Gent—the cheapest
brand in the house—and poured him another shotglass full. When Jack started to draw it away, Curt
gripped the bottle’s neck in a lockhold.

  “Mighty thirsty,” Curt said. “Mighty, mighty thirsty.”

   “Keep the fucker, then,” Jack said, giving in to the inevitable.

   “Yessir, I seen it!” Pete Griffin went on with what he’d been saying. He was a leathery cowboy with
blue eyes sunken in a wrinkled, sunbaked face. “Damn thing’s blockin’ the highway ‘bout five miles
north.” He swigged from his lukewarm bottle of Lone Star beer. “I was about to hit the pedal and try to
tear ol’ Betsy right through it, and then I seen somethin’ else.” He paused for another drink. Ol’ Betsy
was his rust-eaten red pickup truck, parked in the sandy lot out front.

   “What’d you see?” Jack prodded.

    “Dead things,” Pete said. “I got out and took me a closer look. There was burned-up rabbits and a
couple of dead dogs lyin’ right where the thing went into the ground. You can see through it, and it don’t
look as sturdy as a spiderweb, but… well, I seen somethin’ on the other side too. Looked to have been
a truck, maybe. It was still smokin’. So I got in ol’ Betsy and decided to mosey back thisaway.”

   “And I’m sayin’ ain’t such a thing possible,” Harlan contended, his voice slurred from four
boilermakers. “Cain’t such a thing be solid!”

   “It is, by God! Hell, my eyes ain’t gone yet! That thing’s solid as a stone wall and it burned them
animals up too!”

  Curt laughed harshly. “Griffin, you’re crazy as a three-legged toadfrog. You cain’t see through
anythin’ solid. I’m dumb as a board, and even I know that!”

  “You drive on up there and try to get through it, then!” Pete’s face bristled with indignant anger. “I’ll
come along behind and sweep up your ashes—not that that boy of yours would want ’em!”

  “Yeah!” Harlan gave a dry chuckle. “We’ll put them ashes in a whiskey bottle for you, Curt. That
way you can rest in peace.”

  “Rest pickled is more like it,” Jack said. “Curt, why don’t you go on home? Don’t you care about
your boy?”
  “Cody can take care of himself. Always has before.” Curt swigged down the whiskey. He was feeling
okay now. His nerves had steadied, but he was sweating too much to get drunk. The Bob Wire Club
was stiflingly hot without power to run the fans, and Curt’s shirt was plastered to his skin. “He don’t need
me, and I sure as hell don’t need him.”

   “If I had a family, I’d sure be with ’em at a time like this.” Out of habit, Jack took a rag and cleaned
the bartop. He lived alone in a trailer behind the Bob Wire Club, and he’d kept the place open after the
electricity had gone out because he couldn’t have slept anyway. “Seems only right a father ought to be
with his boy.”

   “Yeah, and a wife ought to be with her husband too!” Curt snapped. It had come out of him before
he’d had time to check it. The others stared at him, and he shrugged and sipped from the bottle. “Just
forget it,” he said. “Cody ain’t a kid no more.”

   “Well, still don’t seem right,” Jack continued, following the swirls of his rag. “Not with that damn
bastard sittin’ across the river and all hell breakin’ loose.”

   “I hear there’s an air-force colonel in town,” Hal McCutchins said. “He was in the chopper that went
down, but he got out okay. Sumbitch flew out of that pyramid and knocked it down like it was made out
of paper!”

  “Thing’s a spaceship.” Burl Keene, his bulging belly quivering against the table’s edge, reached for a
handful of peanuts from a bowl. “That’s the talk. Thing’s come from Mars.”

   “Ain’t nobody on Mars.” Jack stopped cleaning. “The scientists proved that. No, that thing’s come
from somewhere a long ways off.”

    “Scientists don’t know nothin’,” Burl countered, chomping on peanuts. “Hell, they don’t even believe
there was a Garden of Eden!”

   “Mars is nothin’ but rocks! They took pictures on Mars and that’s all you can see!”

   Curt scowled and tipped the bottle to his mouth again. Whether the black pyramid had brought
invaders from Mars or cat people from Pluto didn’t matter much to him; as long as they left him alone, he
didn’t care. He listened as Jack and Burl went on about Mars, but his mind was on Cody. Maybe he
ought to find out if the boy was all right. Maybe he was a fool for sitting here thinking that Cody could
handle himself in every kind of jam. No, he decided in the next second, Cody was better off on his own.
The boy was a damn idjit sometimes, but he was tough as nails and he could make do. Besides, he was
probably up at the apartments with that gang of his. They all hung thick as thieves and took care of each
other, so what was there to worry about?

   Besides, rough treatment was good for Cody. That made a boy into a man. It was the way Curt’s
father had raised him, bullying and beating. Cody would be stronger for it.

   Yeah, Curt thought. His knuckles bleached around the bottle’s neck. Strong, just like his old man.

   He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to Cody without blowing his top. Maybe it was
because he didn’t know how to, he thought. But the kid was so headstrong and wild, nobody could get
through to him. Cody walked his own path, right or wrong. But sometimes Curt thought he saw Treasure
in Cody’s face, clear as day, and his heart ached as if it had been kicked.

   There was no use in thinking these thoughts. Nothing good came out of them, and they made Curt’s
head hurt. He looked into the amber bottle, at the liquid that lay within, and he smiled as if seeing an old
friend. But there was a sadness in his smile, because full bottles always ran empty.

   “Maybe they’ve got caves,” Burl Keene was saying. “Under Mars. Maybe they just went into their
caves when the pictures got took.”

   Curt was about to tell him to stop shoveling the horseshit when he heard the bottles clink together on
the shelves behind the bar.

   It was not a loud sound, and neither Jack nor Burl stopped their jabbering. But Curt had heard it
clearly enough, and in another few seconds he heard them clink again. He set his own bottle on the bar
and saw a tremor on the whiskey’s surface. “Jack?” he said. Blair paid no attention. “Hey, Jack!” Curt
said, louder.

   Jack looked at him, fed up with Curt Lockett. “What is it?”

   “I think we’re havin’ a—”

   The Bob Wire Club’s floor suddenly buckled upward, timbers squealing as they snapped. The two
pool tables jumped a foot in the air, and billiard balls were flung out of their racks. Bottles and glasses
crashed down behind the bar. Jack was knocked off his feet, and Curt’s barstool went over. He landed
on his back on the floor, and under him he could feel the boards pitching and heaving like a bronco’s
shoulder blades.

   The floor’s motion eased, then stopped. Curt sat up, stunned, and in the lamplight saw a horrible
thing: the last of the Kentucky Gent spilling from the overturned bottle.

  Harlan and Pete were on the floor too, and Burl was coughing up peanuts. Harlan got to his knees
and shouted, “What hit us?”

   There was a bang like a sledgehammer on wood. Curt heard the squall of nails popping loose. “Over
there!” He pointed, and all of them saw it: about ten feet away, a board was being knocked upward from
the floor. The second blow sent it flying up to hit the ceiling, and Curt caught sight of a slim human hand
and arm reaching through the cavity. Another timber was knocked loose, then the fingers of that hand
gripped the edge of a third board and wrenched it down. Now there was a gap large enough for a
person to crawl through, and about three seconds later a figure began to emerge from the floor.

   “Holy Jesus and Mary,” Jack whispered, standing up behind the bar with sawdust in his beard.

   The figure got its head and shoulders through, then worked its hips free. A long pair of bare legs
pulled out, and the figure rose to its feet.

   It was a slender and pretty blond girl, maybe sixteen years old, wearing nothing but a lacy bra and a
pair of pink panties with “Friday” stitched across the front. She stretched to her full height, her ribs
showing under her pale skin and her hair shining wetly in the lamplight. Her face was as calm as if she
came up through barroom floors every night of her life, and her gaze went from one man to the next with
cold attention.

   “I’m dead,” Burl gasped. “I’ve gotta be dead.”

   Curt tried to stand up, but his legs weren’t ready. He knew who she was: her name was Laurie
Rainey, and she worked afternoons at the Paperback Kastle near the bakery and came in sometimes for
grape jelly doughnuts. She was a pretty thing, and he liked to watch her chew. He tried to stand again,
and this time he made it all the way up.
   She spoke. “Ya’ll are gonna tell me about the little girl,” she said, in a thick whangy Texas accent with
a rattling metallic undertone. Her skin gleamed, as if she were coated with grease. “Ya’ll are gonna tell
me right now.”

   None of the men spoke, and no one moved. Laurie Rainey looked around, her head slowly racheting
as if her neck and spine were connected by gear wheels.

  “The little girl,” Jack repeated dumbly. “What little girl?”

    “The one who’s the guardian.” Her eyes found him, and Jack had the sensation of peering into a
snakepit. There were things slithering around in there that he would not care to know. “Ya’ll are gonna
tell me, or I’m done bein’ nice.”

   “Laurie…” Curt’s mind stuttered like a blown-out engine. “What were you doin’ under the floor?”

   “Laurie.” The girl’s head notched toward him. “Is that the guardian’s name?”

   “No. It’s your name. Christ, don’t you know your own name?”

    The girl didn’t reply. She blinked slowly, processing the information, and her mouth tightened into an
angry line. “What we have here,” she said, “is a failure to communicate.” She turned to her left, walked
about three strides to the nearest pool table, and placed her hands under its edge. With a quick, blurred
motion, she flipped her hands forward and the pool table upended as if it had the weight of a corn husk.
It came off the floor and crashed through the Bob Wire Club’s front window into the parking lot,
throwing glass all over Curt’s Buick and Pete Griffin’s pickup truck.

   She strode purposefully to the second pool table, balled up her right fist, and smashed it through the
green felt covering. Then she picked up one end of the table and flipped it across the barroom into a
couple of pinball machines. All the men could do was gawk, openmouthed, and Jack Blair almost fainted
because he knew it took three men to lift those pool tables.

  The girl’s head racheted, surveying the destruction. There was no damage to her hand, and she
wasn’t even breathing hard. She turned toward the men. “Now we’ll have us a nice little talk,” she said.

    Burl Keene yelped like a whipped dog and scrambled for the door, but he was way too slow. The girl
leapt forward and was on him even as he reached for the knob. She caught his wrist and twisted it
sharply. Bones popped, and their jagged edges ripped through the meat at Burl’s elbow. He screamed,
still thrashing to get out the door, and she wrenched at his broken arm and chopped a blow at his face
with the edge of her free hand. Burl’s nose exploded, and his teeth went down his throat. He fell to his
knees, blood streaming down his mangled face.

   Jack reached beside the cash register and pulled his shotgun from its socket. The girl was turning
toward him as he cocked the gun and lifted it. He didn’t know what kind of monster she was, but he
didn’t plan on sharing Burl’s fate. He squeezed the trigger.

   The shotgun boomed and bucked. A fist-sized hole appeared in the girl’s belly, just above the panty
line, and bits of flesh and gray tissue exploded from her back. She was knocked off her feet, her body
slamming against the wall. She went down, trailing gray slime.

   “God A’mighty!” Curt shouted in the silence after the blast. “You done killed her!”

   Hal McCutchins picked up a cue stick and prodded the twitching body. Something writhed in the
belly wound like a mass of knotted-up worms. “Lord,” he said in a choked voice. “You blew the hell out
of—”
   She sat up.

   Before Hal could jump back, the girl grabbed the cue stick and pulled it from his hands so fast his
palms were scorched. She hit him across the knees with the heavy end of it, and as his kneecaps
shattered Hal fell on his face.

  She stood up, her belly oozing and a malignant grin stretching her mouth. Red lamplight glinted off a
mouthful of needles. “Ya’ll want to play rough?” the rattling voice asked. “Okey-dokey.”

  She slammed the stick’s blunt end down on Hal McCutchins’s head. The stick snapped in two, and
Hal’s skull broke open like a blister. His legs kicked in a dance of death, his brains exposed to the light.

    “Shoot it!” Curt screamed, but Jack’s finger was already pulling the trigger again. The creature was hit
in the side, spun around, and flung backward. A gray mist hung in the air, and Curt screeched because
there was sticky wet matter on his shirt and arms. The creature fell over a table but righted herself and
did not go to the floor. In the wound her ribs looked to be fashioned from blue-tinged metal, but a thorny
coil of red intestines protruded from the hole. She advanced toward the bar with the splintered piece of
cue stick in her hand.

  Jack fumbled to shove another shell into the breech. Curt scrabbled on his hands and knees for cover
under a table, and Harlan and Pete had mashed themselves against a wall like bugs trapped to a screen.

    Jack cocked the shotgun and lifted it to fire. As he did, the creature hurled the cue stick like a javelin.
Its sharp end penetrated Jack’s throat and emerged from the back of his neck in a bloody spray, and
Jack’s finger twitched on the trigger. The buckshot tore the right side of the monster’s face off, peeled
away gray tissue and red muscle right down to the blue metallic cheek and jawbone. Her eye on that side
rolled back to show the white. Jack clawed at his throat, strangling, and fell behind the bar.

   “Get away! Get away!” Pete was shouting hysterically, but Harlan picked up a chair and flung it at the
creature. The thing shrugged off the object and charged at him, gripping both hands around his neck and
picking him up off the floor. She twisted his head as easily as a chicken’s, and Harlan’s face turned blue
just before his neck snapped.

   Pete fell to his knees, his hands upraised for mercy. “Please… oh God, don’t kill me!” he begged.
“Please don’t kill me!”

   She tossed Harlan Nugent aside like an old sack and gazed down into Pete’s eyes. She smiled, fluid
running from the wound in her face, and then she gripped Pete’s wrists, put her foot against his chest, and
yanked.

   Both arms ripped out of their sockets. The jittering torso collapsed, Pete’s mouth still working but
only a whisper of shock coming out.

   Under the table, Curt tasted blood. He’d bitten his tongue to keep from screaming, and now he felt a
darkness pulling at his mind like a deep, beckoning current. He watched as the creature held Pete
Griffin’s disembodied arms before her, as if studying the anatomy. Pete’s fingers still clenched and
relaxed, and blood pattered to the boards like a rainstorm.

   I’m next, Curt thought. God help me, I’m next.

   He had two choices: stay here or make a run for it. It wasn’t much of a choice. He thrust his hand into
his pocket and pulled out his car keys. They jingled, and he saw the monster’s head rotate around on its
neck at an impossible angle so that the face was where the back of the head ought to be. The single,
inflamed eye found him.

   Curt shot out from under the table and raced for the broken window. He heard two thumps as she
dropped Pete’s arms, then the crash of a table going over. The thing was leaping after him. He jumped
through the window like diving into a hoop, hit the ground on his hands and knees, and crawled madly
toward the Buick. A hand caught the back of his shirt, and he knew she was right there with him.

  He didn’t think. He just did. His left hand gripped sand, and he twisted around and flung it into Laurie
Rainey’s savage, ruined face.

   Her eye blinded, she tore the shirt off his back and swiped at him with her other hand. He ducked,
saw the glint of little saw blades as her fingers flashed past his face. Curt kicked out at her, hit her in the
breastbone, and pulled his leg back before she could grab it. Then he was up and running, and he
reached his car and slid behind the wheel, his fingers jamming the key home.

   The engine made that knocking noise like it did every time it didn’t want to start, only this time it
sounded like a fist on a coffin’s lid. Curt roared, “Start, damn you!” and sank his foot to the floorboard.
The tailpipe belched dark smoke, the engine’s muttering turned into a growl, and the Buick jerked in
reverse. But not fast enough: Curt saw the creature racing after him, coming like an Olympic sprinter
across the Bob Wire Club’s lot. He battled the wheel as the tires hit Highway 67’s pavement, trying to
get the car turned in the direction of Inferno. But the monster was almost to the car, and he forced the
gearshift into first and shot forward to run her over. She jumped just before the Buick hit her, grabbing
hold of the roof’s edge and scuttling up onto it on her belly.

   He swerved the car, trying to throw her off. She held on, and Curt laid on the accelerator. He turned
on the headlights; in the green glow of the dashboard the speedometer needle edged past forty. He
realized he was going north instead of south but he was too scared to do anything but keep his foot on
the pedal. At fifty the vibration of the bald tires all but jerked the wheel out of his hands, and at sixty the
old engine was wheezing at the gaskets.

   Something slammed down over his head and a blister of metal bloomed in the roof. Her fist, he
thought. She was trying to beat through the roof. Another slam, and a second blister grew beside the first.
Her hand crept into the car, fingers wrenching at the roof’s joints. Screws popped loose. There was a
shriek of rusted metal; she was bending the roof back like the lid of a sardine can. A crack zigzagged
across the windshield.

   Screaming at its limits, the engine hit seventy miles an hour and rocketed Curt along Highway 67.



                                                 38
                                        The Streets of Inferno


In the seven minutes since Daufin had left Cody Lockett, she’d seen no other humans on the streets of
Inferno. She had gone back to the house of Tom, Jessie, and Ray, and though the doorway was
unlocked, the abode was empty of life. She tried the doors of two other abodes, found the door to the
first sealed and the second house also empty. The murk was getting thicker, and Daufin found that human
eyes had a radically limited field of vision. The brown haze made her host eyes sting and water, and she
could see less than forty feet in all directions as she continued along Celeste Street in search of help.

   Two lights were coming through the smoke. Daufin stopped, waiting for them to get closer. She could
hear an engine: the crude, combustion-powered conveyance called a car. But the car slowed and turned
to the right before it reached her, and she saw the red smears of its taillights drawing rapidly away. She
ran after it, crossing the sandy plot of earth where she’d hidden under the protective shell and met the
Sarge Dennison creature. Another set of headlights passed on Celeste Street, going east, but the vehicle
was moving too fast for Daufin to catch and by that time she’d reached Cobre Road. She kept running in
the direction of the first car she’d seen and in another moment she saw the red points of the taillights
again, just up the street. The car wasn’t moving, but the engine still rumbled. She approached it, saw that
the vehicle’s doors were open but no one was in sight. A little rectangle fixed to the back of the car had
letters on it: CADE-I. It was parked in front of a structure with shattered light apertures—“windows,”
she knew they were termed—and the doorway hung open as well. A square with writing above the
doorway identified the structure as INFERNO HARDWARE.

    “Place has been ripped off,” Rick said to Zarra as they stood at the rear of the store. He’d found a
flashlight and batteries, and he shone its beam into the broken glass counter where the pistols had been
locked up. Out of an assortment of eight guns on display, not one remained. “Somebody cleaned Mr.
Luttrell out.” He pointed the light at the racks where six rifles had been; they were gone, hacked right out
of their locks by an ax or machete. Boxes of ammunition had been stolen from the storage shelves, and
only a few cartridges gleamed in the light.

   “So much for findin’ a piece, man,” Zarra said. “Let’s get our butts across the bridge.”

   “Hold on. Mr. Luttrell keeps a pistol in his office.” Rick started back, through a swinging door into the
storeroom, and Zarra followed the light. The office was locked, but Rick bashed open the door with two
kicks and went to the manager’s paper-cluttered desk. The drawers were locked too. He went out to
the storeroom, found a box of screwdrivers, and returned to the job at hand. He and Zarra levered the
drawers open with screwdrivers, and in the bottom drawer, under a pile of dog-eared Playboy
magazines, was a loaded .38 pistol and an extra box of bullets. At the clinic Rick and Zarra had listened
to Colonel Rhodes’s story about the two spaceships and the creatures called Daufin and Stinger. Rick
could still feel the slick scales of that thing’s tail around his throat, and damned if he was going to go back
to Bordertown without a gun. The Fang of Jesus paled before Smith & Wesson firepower.

   “Let’s go, man!” Zarra urged nervously. “You got what you came for!”

   “Right.” Rick left the office with Zarra right behind him. They went through the storeroom door again,
and suddenly from the front of the store there was a crash and clatter that almost made their hearts seize
up. Zarra gave a little moan of terror, and Rick snapped the .38’s safety off and cocked it. He probed
around with the light, following the beam with the gun barrel.

   He couldn’t see anyone. Somebody in here after guns, just like us, he thought. He hoped. “Who’s
there?” he said.

  Something moved to his left. He swung the light in that direction, toward shelves where coils of rope
and wire were kept. “I’ve got a gun!” he warned. “I’ll shoot your damned—” He stopped speaking
when the light found her.

   She was standing there holding a coil of rope between both hands. A bundle of copper wire had fallen
off the shelf, upsetting a display of jars of nails. She was wearing just what Colonel Rhodes had said: a
dusty Jetsons T-shirt and blue jeans, and her face was that of Mr. Hammond’s child. Except behind that
face, according to Rhodes, was an alien called Daufin and this was the little girl the thing in Cade’s
autoyard was looking for. “Don’t move.” His throat clogged up. His heart was beating so hard he could
hear the blood roaring in his ears. “I’ve got a gun,” he repeated, and his gunhand trembled.
   “Cody Lockett needs help,” Daufin said calmly, squinting into the harsh light. Her memory banks
found the term gun and identified it as a primitive percussion-cap weapon. She could tell from the
human’s voice that he was terrified, so she stood very still.

   “It’s her,” Zarra whispered. His legs were about to fold up. “Oh Christ, it’s her!”

   “What are you doing in here?” Rick asked, and kept his finger on the trigger.

  “I saw your vehicle. I followed you,” Daufin explained. “Cody Lockett is in need of help. Will you
come with me?”

   It took a few seconds for him to register what she’d said. “What’s happened to him?”

   “He fell. To below.”

   “Below where?”

  She remembered the name Cody Lockett had called into the house, and pronounced it with difficulty:
“Mrs. Stell-en-berg’s abode. I’ll guide you there.”

   “No way!” Zarra said. “We’re goin’ back to Bordertown! Right, Rick?”

   The other boy didn’t answer. He wasn’t exactly sure where Lockett was, but the creature seemed to
be saying that he’d fallen under a house. “Do you know how far down he is?”

   “Thirteen-point-six Earth feet. An approximate calculation, plus or minus three inches.”

   “Oh.”

   “By visuals I calculate this tether to be fifteen Earth feet in length.” She struggled to lift up the heavy
coil of rope she’d dragged off a shelf. The muscles of the daughter’s arms strained with the weight. “Will
you help me?”

   “Forget Lockett, man!” Zarra objected. “Let’s get back to our own people!”

   Daufin didn’t understand the tone of refusal. “Is Cody Lockett not one of your own?”

   “No,” Rick said. “He’s a ’Gade, and we’re Rattler—” He stopped, realizing how dumb that must
sound to somebody from another planet. “He’s different,”

   “Cody Lockett is a human being. You are human beings. What is the difference?”

   “Our kind lives across the river,” Zarra said. “That’s where we’re goin’.” He walked on along the
aisle toward the door, paused in the doorway when he saw Rick wasn’t following. “Come on, man!”

   Rick kept the flashlight on the little girl’s face. She stared fixedly at him, waiting for his response.
Cody Lockett was nothing to him, but still… it seemed like they were all in this together, and the violet
skygrid had caged both Renegades and Rattlers alike.

   “Please,” Daufin implored.

  He sighed and lowered the .38. “You go on back to the church,” he told Zarra. “Tell Paloma I’m
okay.”

   “You’re off your bird! Lockett wouldn’t do shit for you!”
   “Maybe he wouldn’t, but I’m not Lockett. Go ahead, take the car. I’ll come when I can.”

  Zarra started to protest again, but he knew that once Rick’s mind was made up, he couldn’t be
swayed. “Damn stupid!” he muttered, then, in a louder voice: “You watch your ass. Got it?”

   “Got it,” Rick answered, and Zarra went out to Cade’s Mercedes, got in, and wheeled it toward the
bridge.

  “Okay,” Rick said to Daufin when the Mercedes was gone and it was too late for second thoughts.
“Take me to him.”



                                                   39
                                               Highway 67


The creature’s fist banged down like an anvil on the top of Curt Lockett’s Buick. The metal dented in
over his skull, and now the underside of the roof was as crumpled as a crushed beer can. The car was
shuddering, just on the edge of going out of control, and the speedometer needle trembled on the wild
side of seventy.

    Curt screamed, “Get off!” and jerked the car to right and left. The Buick roared around a curve,
slipped off the road, and threw up a boil of dust and stones. When he got the tires back on the pavement,
he saw a shape before him in the headlights: a pickup truck going about twenty miles an hour, its bed
loaded down with a mattress and junk furniture and a little dark-haired Mexican child sitting atop a stack
of crates. The child’s eyes had widened with terror, and as Curt fought the wheel the Buick grazed past
the pickup and left it in a swirl of dust.

   The road wound between red boulders the size of houses. Over the engine’s shriek Curt heard the
squeal of the roof peeling back; the metal-nailed fingers were at work, gripped along the top of the
passenger door. More screws popped out, and she kept battering the roof in with her other fist. He
jerked the car violently left and right again, but the monster held on as tight as a tick.

   The roof broke loose from the rim of the windshield. Cracks jigsawed across the glass. Her hand
folded around the rusted metal at the top of the driver’s door, and Curt beat at the fingers with his fist.
She reached in, groping for him, and almost snagged his hair before he could slide across the seat. The
car slewed to the right, left the road, and bounced over ruts that whammed Curt’s skull against the roof
dents. And suddenly the creature lost her grip, slid backward over the roof with a skreek of metal nails
and down the rear windshield. She tried to catch hold, found nothing to grip. In the rearview mirror, Curt
saw her slide over the fishtailing trunk, saw her half-mangled, half-beautiful face glisten in the red glare of
the taillights. Her face disappeared over the trunk’s bulbous slope, and Curt whooped with joy.

  “To hell with you!” he shouted hoarsely as he veered the car back up on the road. “Teach you to
mess with a cowboy!”

   Highway 67 straightened out to meet more desert. In the distance, maybe two miles ahead, the purple
grid plunged into the earth all along the horizon. It blocked the road, but beyond it was a sea of flashing
blue-and-red lights: state trooper cars.

   Cain’t such a thing be solid, he remembered Harlan saying. Ain’t such a thing possible.
   Curt glanced at the speedometer. Seventy-five. I can bust through it, he told himself. Bust right
through like it’s made out of glass. And if I can’t… well, I won’t never know it, will I?

   His hands clenched the wheel to hold the jittering tires steady. Curt kept the pedal flat, and he could
feel the engine’s heat bleeding through the firewall on his legs.

   And then there was a hollow boom like a bomb going off and steam shot from under the hood. Black
smoke burst from the tailpipe. The Buick hitched, and metal clanged like Chinese gongs in the engine.
That did her, Curt thought. Somethin’ busted bad. Instantly the speedometer began falling: through
seventy… sixty-five… sixty…

   But the grid was looming up fast. I can make it, he reasoned. Sure thing. I can bust right through that
sonofabitch, because can’t such a thing be solid…

   I’m leavin’ my boy behind.

   The realization of it knocked him breathless. I’m hightailin’ like a yellow-assed coward, and I’m
leavin’ my son back there.

   My son.

   The speedometer had fallen to fifty. The grid was less than a half mile away. I can still make it, he
thought.

   But his left foot poised over the brake. Hesitated, as the yards swept past.

   Damn kid can’t take care of himself, Curt thought. Everybody knows that.

   He jammed his foot down. The brake pedal popped, went loose, and sparks jumped from the brake
shoes. The inside of the car was full of scorch smell, and the brakes were gone.

   The grid grew in the windshield, and beyond them the flashing sea of lights.

   He wrenched up the parking brake and fought the gearshift from fourth into second; there was a deep
grinding and machine-gun chatter as the gears were stripped. The car jolted, kept going at forty miles an
hour the last two hundred yards. He twisted the wheel, but the slick tires had their own mind and even as
they started to turn he knew the grid was going to take him.

   A hand and arm suddenly reached through the open window of the passenger door. The creature’s
head and shoulders pulled through, and Curt realized the thing had been hanging on to the Buick’s side
like a leech. The good eye fixed on him with cold rage, the hand straining toward his face.

   He screamed, lost the wheel. The Buick angled off the road, heading for the grid fifty yards away. He
had time to see that the speedometer needle hung at just over thirty miles an hour, and then the creature
with blond hair had pulled half her body into the car.

   There was only one way out. Curt wrenched upward on the door’s handle and jumped. He landed in
yielding sand, but the impact was rough enough to send constellations reeling through his brain. The wind
bellowed out of his lungs, but he had enough sense left to roll away from the car and keep on rolling.

   The Buick traveled another fifteen feet and hit the grid. Where the car impacted, the violet weave
pulsed a fierce incandescent red, like the eye of a stove. The hood caved inward, the engine block
bursting through the rusty firewall like a red-hot fist. Daggers of metal flew into the creature with Laurie
Rainey’s face, and she was caught under the dashboard as it folded upon her.
   The car bounced back, the crumpled hood glowing scarlet as if it had absorbed heat from the grid.
The tires were melting, black smoke belched as oil caught fire, and with an orange flash and an
ear-cracking explosion, the Buick tore apart at its seams and debris spun into the air. All of it had taken
about three seconds from contact to blast.

  Pieces of the car banged down around Curt, who lay on his belly puking up Kentucky Gent. The
smell sickened him further, and he kept heaving until there was nothing left but air.

    He sat up on his knees. The way his nose was bleeding, it was broken for sure. Not a lot of pain,
though. He figured that would come later. He looked at his left arm—the side he’d landed on—and saw
tatters of skin hanging down. From the shoulder to the elbow was a red mass of friction burns, and the
flesh over his ribs on that side was scorched raw too. Blood tainted his mouth, and he spat out a tooth
and stared at what used to be his car.

   The remains of the Buick were on fire, but what was left looked like black twists of melting licorice.
Fearsome heat lapped at Curt’s face. The grid’s red glow was fading, returning to cool violet. Another
blast leapt up from the Buick’s chassis, throwing molten metal like a spray of silver dollars.

   Curt stood up. His legs were a little wobbly, but otherwise all right. His tongue found another tooth
hanging by a strand of flesh on the left side of his jaw, and he reached in and jerked the bit of broken
enamel out.

   Something emerged, running, from the Buick’s wreckage.

   It was coming right at Curt, but he was too shocked to move.

   The thing was charred ebony, humpbacked and twisted. It looked to be a headless, burned-up body
with one remaining arm writhing at its side like an injured snake—and at the base of its spine was another
burned thing, about five feet long, that whipped wildly back and forth.

   Still Curt didn’t move. He knew he ought to, but his brain couldn’t get the order through to his legs.

   The horror lurched past about ten feet in front of Curt. He could smell a sickly-sweet reek that might
have been burning plastic, and he heard a high, terrible hissing noise. The thing stumbled, went on six
more strides, then fell to its knees in the loose sand and began to frantically dig with its remaining hand.
Sand flew; it shoved its headless neck and shoulders into the burrow, its feet kicking up spirals of sand.
In another few seconds the creature had gotten in up to its waist and then it began to shudder
uncontrollably. Its legs twitched, burned pads of its feet pushing with feeble effort.

   And finally it lay still, all of it hidden beneath the sand except for the blackened legs.

   Whatever it was, Curt wouldn’t have gone a step closer to it for a million dollars and a truckload of
Kentucky Gent; in fact, whiskey was the last thing he wanted right now. A sip of water to cleanse the
foulness from his mouth was what he craved. He backed away from the charred creature; it did not move
again, did not rise from the sand, and he prayed to God that it was dead.

   Curt turned, everything hazy and dreamlike, toward the grid.

   Beyond it were not only state trooper cars, but several dark blue cars, unmarked vans, and a couple
of white panel trucks. And a lot of people over there too: men in trooper uniforms and men in dark blue
uniforms and caps. Government men, Curt reckoned. Looked like air-force blue.

   He walked nearer the grid to get a better look. The grid made a faint humming noise that pricked pain
in his eardrums, and the air smelled of lightning storms. A helicopter was landing beyond the cars; Curt
could see the rotors whirling around but could hear no engine sound. Over on the right were two large
trailers and more trucks. Off in the distance along Highway 67 were a lot of headlights. Roadblock up
ahead, he figured. He blew blood and snot from his nose, wiped his nostrils with his skinned forearm, and
saw the excitement on the grid’s other side.

   A group of eight or nine men had gathered, and several of them were motioning for Curt to come
closer. They seemed to be shouting, from the strained expressions on their faces, but Curt couldn’t hear a
word.

   He approached to within six feet of the grid and stopped. On the ground just to his left was what
looked like half of a burned-up coyote.

   A man in khaki trousers and a sweat-stained gray knit shirt waved for his attention. The man cupped
his hands around his mouth and began obviously shouting. Curt shook his head and pointed at his ears.
There was a hurried conference among some of the men, then one of them sprinted off toward a panel
truck.

   Another man, wearing an air-force uniform and visored cap, came through the group and stood
staring at Curt with dark, deep-set eyes in a hawk-nosed face. Curt could see the name tag on his jacket:
“Col. Buckner.” Curt didn’t know what to do, so he gave the officer a jaunty little salute, and Buckner
nodded grimly.

   The one who’d gone to the panel truck returned with a clipboard and black marker. Buckner took it
from him and scribbled something, then held it up for Curt to see: IS COLONEL RHODES ALIVE?

    Curt remembered what he’d heard about an air-force officer at the Bob Wire Club, and he shouted,
“I think so!” but realized they couldn’t hear him either. He nodded in reply. Buckner ripped off the
clipboard’s first sheet of paper and wrote another question: CAN YOU FIND RHODES AND BRING
HIM HERE?

   Curt mouthed How? and motioned toward the Buick’s wreckage. The man in the khaki trousers
pointed to something beyond Curt, and he turned to look.

   The pickup truck full of furniture was just groaning to a stop. Its driver, a heavyset Hispanic man, got
out and gaped at the grid. On the passenger side was a woman holding a baby, and the little boy in the
truck’s bed climbed up on top to get a better view. The man came forward, babbling rapidly in Spanish.

   “Forget it, amigo,” Curt said, getting the gist of what the man meant. “There’s no way out.” He
turned back to the officers. Buckner had written a statement on the clipboard: VITAL TO FIND
RHODES. WE MUST KNOW SITUATION.

   “The situation is real shitty,” Curt answered, and gave a hollow laugh.

   “We tryin’ to get out!” the pickup’s driver said, his voice on the edge of panic. “My wife and
childrens! We gotta get out!”

  “Not by this road.” Curt scanned east and west. The grid was unbroken in both directions. “Might as
well head back to town.”

   “No! We gotta get out!”

   “That used to be my car.” Curt jerked a thumb toward the flaming ruin. “It hit this damned cage.” He
bent down, picked up a fist-sized rock, and tossed it into the grid. There was a quick popping noise and
the stone exploded into fiery particles. “I don’t think you want your family endin’ up in a grease spot, do
you?”

   The man hesitated, his seamed face stricken. Looked at his wife and son, then back at the grid. “No,”
he said at last. “I don’ want that.”

   Curt glanced at the air-force officers. Buckner was still holding up the clipboard, and Curt made an
okay sign with his hand. “I’d appreciate a ride to town,” he told the Mexican. “Ain’t nobody gettin’ out
by this road tonight.”

   “Sí.” The man stood for a moment, not knowing what to do, then went to tell his wife they would not
be going to Odessa after all.

   Curt walked to where the burned creature lay in the sand. It still wasn’t moving. He gathered bloody
saliva in his mouth and spat it out. The spit sizzled when it hit the thing’s leg. Curt retreated to the pickup
and climbed into the truck’s bed, wedging himself between the crates and a cane table. The little boy,
dark eyes as big as walnuts, sat cross-legged on the other side and regarded him studiously. Four
chickens in a cage cackled and fretted, and the truck vibrated on the verge of breakdown as the Mexican
reversed it away from the grid. He cranked the wheel around, turned the truck, and headed for Inferno.
Curt watched the rotating trooper lights until the road curved and they were lost to sight, and then he
rested his chin on his skinned knees and tried to keep his mind from going back to the Bob Wire Club,
where five men lay mutilated. It was an impossible task. A fit of shivering hit him, and tears came to his
eyes. He felt himself cracking to pieces. Got to find Cody, he thought. Got to find my boy.

   Something tugged at the cuff of his trousers. The little boy had slid forward, and he said, “Be okay,
mister. Be okay.” The child reached into a pocket of his dirty blue jeans and brought out a half-gone
pack of peppermint Life-Savers. He offered the next ring of candy to Curt, and Curt saw a tie rack in his
son’s hand and his heart almost broke.

   He lowered his head, and the child removed a Life-Saver and laid it beside the man.



                                                  40
                                                The Hole


Cody’s arms had gone dead. All the blood had run out of them, and his legs felt like they each were
hundred-pound sacks of concrete. Maybe it had been ten minutes since Daufin had gone, at the most
fifteen, but his strength was giving out fast. All he could do was hang, as sweat slipped down his face and
his hands cramped into claws around the pipe.

   “Help me, somebody!” he shouted, and instantly regretted it. The pipe swayed again, and a rush of
dirt cascaded into the hole. She left me, he thought. She’s not comin’ back. Hell, she probably didn’t
even understand I was in trouble! No, no, he corrected himself as the panic gnawed his guts again. She
went to get help. Sure. She’ll be back. He had no choice but to hold on, as the chill of shocked nerves
and blood-drained muscles began to spread through his shoulders.

   And then he heard something that made the hairs stir at the nape of his neck.

    It was a quiet sound, and at first he thought it must be dirt falling to the bottom—but the longer he
listened the more he was sure it was not. This was a furtive, scuttling sound, a moist sound.
   Cody held his breath. It was the noise of something moving in the darkness below.

   “Lockett! You down there?”

  The shout had almost jolted Cody’s fingers loose. He peered up, could make out someone leaning
over the hole. “Yeah! I’m here!” A flashlight came on, the beam probing down.

   “Man, you got yourself in a deep hole this time, didn’t you?”

    The voice had a Mexican accent. He knew that voice, heard its taunts in his sleep. But he said, “Who
is that?”

  “Rick Jurado, su buen amigo,” came the sarcastic reply. Your good friend. “We’ve got a rope.
Hang on.”

   “Who’s up there with you?”

   “Your other good friend,” Rick told him, and Cody knew who he meant.

   Rick laid the .38 down on the porch. Daufin reached for it, out of curiosity, but Rick said, “Better
leave that alone. Thing’ll blow a hole right through you,” and she nodded and pulled her arm back. He
looked for a place to anchor the rope, had to settle for the white wrought-iron railing that went around
the porch.

  “The tether is not going to be long enough,” Daufin said as she visually measured the distance from
where Rick was knotting the rope to the doorway and the hole. “There will be a shortage of three feet.”

   “Can’t help that. We’ll have to do with what we’ve got.” He uncoiled the rope and went back to the
doorway, standing on the threshold. “Rope’s coming down!” he called, and dropped it in. He aimed the
flashlight down, and saw that Daufin was right: the rope’s end dangled three feet above the pipe where
Lockett’s fingers gripped.

   Cody looked up at the rope, and three feet had never seemed so far. He tried to hoist himself up on
the pipe, but again pain shot through his bruised ribs and the pipe swayed and creaked. “I can’t make it!”
he shouted. He let himself hang once more, and his arms felt as if they were about to tear loose from the
sockets. By the flashlight’s beam, he saw rivulets of gray ooze sliding down the hole’s walls and dripping
into the darkness below.

   Rick knew what had to be done. He said quietly, “Damn it to hell,” and then he gave the light to
Daufin. “Hold this. Keep it aimed at him. Understand?” She nodded, and Rick gripped the rope, eased
himself over the side, and started down.

   He hung a few inches over the pipe, unwilling to put his weight on it. The way that thing shimmied, he
figured a few more pounds of pressure might snap it loose from the walls. “Lockett!” he said. “This is as
close as I can get! You’ll have to reach up and grab my legs!”

  “No way, man. I’m tired. Can’t do it.” It was all he could do to hang on without moving. Any more
swaying and his slippery palms might betray him, or the pipe might break. “Oh Jesus, my arms…”

   “Don’t give me that jive! Just reach up and grab my legs!”

   The soles of Rick’s shoes were about five inches above Cody’s grip on the pipe. Cody knew the only
way out of here was to do as the Rattler said, but his strength was draining fast and the effort seemed
enormous. The muscles of his shoulders were cold chunks of agony, a stabbing pain spreading across his
rib cage. Reach up, he told himself. Just reach up. One hand at a time. He started to, but his willpower
collapsed like wet cardboard. His fingers clenched harder, and just that little movement made the pipe
moan and tremble. His guts clutched and writhed. I’m scared shitless, he thought, and he said, “I can’t do
it.”

  Rick’s biceps bulged, his arms ready for the shock of Lockett’s weight. “Come on, tough gringo!” he
mocked. “You gonna start cryin’ for your mama?” Lockett didn’t reply. Rick sensed he had given up.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, fuckhead! Answer me!”

   A few seconds’ pause. Then: “Get bent.”

   “I’ll bend your redneck ass, you shitkicker! Maybe I ought to leave you down here and forget it,
huh?”

   “Maybe you ought to.” Cody heard it again: a scuttling from below. His heart was racing as he tried to
get his muscles revved up for another effort, but his mind told him the pipe would collapse if he moved.

   “Man, my sister’s got more guts than you! So does my grandmother!” Taunting might get him mad
enough to reach up, Rick figured. “If I’d known you were such a pussy, I would’ve whipped your tail a
long time ago!”

   “Shut up,” Cody croaked.

  He’s almost through, Rick thought. He said the first thing that came to him: “I told my sister you
weren’t worth lizard crap.”

   “Huh? What about your sister?”

  That had perked him up. “Yeah, Miranda was askin’ me all about you. Who you were and everythin’.
She thought you were okay. Just okay.”

   “She said that?”

   “Yeah.” He figured it was a necessary lie. “Don’t let it go to your head, man. She needs glasses.”

   “She’s pretty,” Cody said. “A smash fox.”

  Any other time, that remark would have called for a punch to the teeth. Now, though, Rick saw it as a
way to get Cody off that pipe. “You like my sister, huh?”

   “Yeah. I guess I do.”

   “You want to see her again, you’ve gotta get out of here. Only way to do that is reach up.”

   “I can’t, man. I’m done.”

  “What I’m gonna do,” Rick said, “is let myself down a little more. I’m gonna put my feet on that pipe,
and I figure it’ll probably break in two. Either you go down or you grab hold. Understand?”

   “No. Wait, man. I’m not ready.”

   “Yeah you are,” Rick told him, and he lowered himself another hand grip down the rope and placed
his right foot on the pipe first.

   There was a squall of stressed metal. The pipe shook violently and began to bend inward, and Rick
shouted, “Grab hold!”

  Cody’s face sparkled with sweat in the flashlight’s beam. He gritted his teeth, felt the swaying pipe
about to collapse. It was now or never. His fingers wouldn’t open. A bead of sweat dropped into his eye
and seared it shut.

   Rick placed his left foot on the pipe and let his weight settle. “Do it!” he urged as the pipe began to rip
loose from the wall and dirt and rocks streamed down.

   “You sonofabitch!” Cody shouted, and the fingers of his right hand let go. His shoulder muscles
screamed as he dangled by one arm, his right hand reaching up for Rick Jurado’s ankle. He gripped it,
clenched his fingers tight—and suddenly the pipe buckled, ripped loose in a shower of dirt, and fell.

   Rick’s hands scorched along the rope to the bitter end before they locked shut. Now all the pressure
was on Rick’s arms and shoulders as Cody held on by one ankle and tried to snag the other. They swung
between the slimy walls, and there was a muffled crash as the pipe hit bottom another fifteen feet below.

   Cody caught Rick’s left leg. Pulled himself up to the other boy’s waist. Rick heard the rope groan
with their weight, and if that railing up there gave way, they were both in for a long fall. He hauled them
up a couple of feet, the muscles and veins standing out in his arms and the blood roaring in his head, and
then Cody grabbed hold of the rope’s end and took some of his weight off Rick.

   “Come up!” Daufin called. “Come up!”

   Rick started climbing, hand over hand, his shoes slipping off the oozing wall. Cody tried to follow, got
about four feet nearer the top before his arms gave out. He hung while Rick clambered up and hauled
himself through the doorway.

   “Pull him up!” Daufin said, and she made an effort at reeling the rope up with her free hand while the
other fixed Cody in the flashlight’s beam. “Hurry!” The urgency in her voice roused Rick off his belly and
made him look over the hole’s edge.

   Something was coming up the wall about six feet below Cody. It was a human figure with white hair,
but its face was averted from the light. Its hands were plunged into the slime and dirt, and the thing was
pulling itself smoothly up like a mountaineer.

   Cody hadn’t seen it. He squinted in the dusty beam. “Come on, man! Help me up!”

  Rick placed his feet against the doorframe, grasped the rope with both hands, and started pulling. His
own strength was almost gone, and Lockett felt like dead weight.

   Cody came up another fourteen inches and tried to find traction against the wall, but the slime was too
thick.

   A hand closed around his left ankle, and he looked down into the Cat Lady’s grinning face.

   Except now she had a mouthful of silver needles, and her skin was a mottled grayish yellow like a
dead snake that had begun to rot in the sun. She was trying to keep Cody between herself and the light,
her belly pressed against the wall. Her eyes were full of cold fire.

   She spoke, in a voice like a rush of steam through a ruptured pipe: “Sloowww dowwwnnn, youuu
gerrrmmmm…”

   He was frozen for about three seconds, and in that space of time he knew the meaning of terror. She
was pulling him toward her, the cold fingers drawing tighter, her free hand clawed into the ooze and dirt.
Rick’s frantic tug on the rope thawed his senses, and he acted on instinct: he kicked her in the face with
his right foot. It was like kicking a brick but a spray of broken needles flew from the mouth and her nose
burst like a snail.

   He jerked his ankle free, felt a blaze of pain as her nails scraped through the boot to flesh, and then he
was climbing that rope hand over hand like a born monkey. Rick reeled him up, and Cody came out of
the hole so fast he barreled into Daufin and knocked her flat. The flashlight rolled across the porch.

   Cody scurried away from the hole on his hands and knees, and Rick let go of the rope and pushed
himself back from the doorway. He could hear the wet squishing of the white-haired thing coming up.
“The light!” he shouted. “Get the light!”

   Daufin, her head ringing, saw the flashlight lying on the edge of the porch. She crawled after it.

   A hand and arm emerged from the hole. Metallic nails dug into the wooden doorframe, and the
monster began to pull itself out. The other hand flailed up, reaching for Rick’s legs, and he kicked
frantically at it.

   Daufin picked up the flashlight and aimed it at the doorway. The beam hit the creature’s wrinkled,
glistening face, and it gave a gurgling cry of what might have been mingled rage and pain and threw a
hand up over its eyes. But it was almost free of the hole now, and with a muscular lurch the body flopped
out onto the porch and squirmed toward Rick.

   It was almost upon him when Cody stepped forward and thrust his hand into the Cat Lady’s face.
The hand had an extra finger of metal: the barrel of the .38 he’d picked up from the porch. He fired,
point-blank, and part of Mrs. Stellenberg’s jaw caved in. The second bullet plowed into an eye, the third
shell took away a hunk of white hair and flesh and exposed not bone but a knotty, grayish-blue metallic
surface that writhed like a bagful of snakes.

   The mouth stretched open; the sinewy neck elongated and the head came up to snap at Cody’s
gunhand. He fired into the mouth, showering silver needles and punching a hole that splattered gray liquid
from the back of the head. A hand flashed at him, narrowly missed his knees as he retreated. Rick got his
legs out of the monster’s reach, rolling away to the porch’s edge. Daufin stood where she was beside
Cody, holding the light steady with both hands.

   The Cat Lady’s body shivered. The arms and legs began to lengthen with brittle cracking sounds.
Dark, scaly pigment rose through the yellowish skin. The spine bowed, humped up, and the flesh split
along the backbone. Daufin grasped Cody’s arm and pulled him back as the thing’s tail uncoiled and
hammered upward into the porch’s ceiling. Now the Cat Lady’s limbs were muscular, insectile stalks
streaked with bands of leathery scales, and the grotesque body lifted off its belly and shambled forward,
leaving a trail of slime.

   Cody extended the pistol and fired twice. One bullet hit the center of the thing’s face and caved it in,
rocking the head back. The second knocked out more needles and broke the lower jaw loose from its
hinges. And then Cody squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

    The thing flailed at the flashlight’s beam, fingers trying to grip hold of it as if it were solid. The tail
thrashed out, the bony spikes whipping back and forth through the light in a vicious frenzy. The single eye
in the ruined, dripping face twitched in its socket. Rick had already jumped over the porch railing, and
Daufin and Cody backed down the steps away from the tail.

   The creature made a high, hissing sound that was a weird combination of human shriek and insectile
droning, and then the body retreated to the doorway and scuttled into the hole. The darkness took it. A
long way down there was the solid thump of the body hitting, then a skittering noise like a crab
burrowing back to its nest.

   “Gone,” Daufin said. Her throat had constricted. “Stinger is gone.”

   “Jesus,” Cody rasped. Oily sweat was leaking down his face, and he felt close to a faint. “That was
Stinger?”

   “Stinger’s creation. All the creations are Stinger.”

   Rick walked away and bent over the gutter. His stomach seethed, but nothing would come up. Cody
said, “You all right?”

   Rick spat out saliva that tasted like battery acid. “Oh yeah,” he managed. “I see freaks like that every
day, man. Don’t you?” He straightened up, drew in air that reeked of burning rubber, and held out his
hand toward Cody. “The gun. Give it here.”

   Cody gave it to him, and Rick broke open the extra box of bullets in his pocket and reloaded the
chambers. Daufin aimed the flashlight at her face and looked into the light until her eyes were dazzled,
then she waved her hand through the beam. “It’s a flashlight,” Cody told her. “Works on a battery, like
my motor’s headlamp.”

   “I understand the principle. A portable power source, yes?”

   “That’s right.”

   She nodded and returned her attention to the light. She was used to the harsh illumination by now, but
when she’d first seen it—in the house of Jessie, Tom, and Ray—the light had had a startlingly ugly
underglow that lit the human faces in nightmare colors. This hard incandescence was very much different
from the soft light in the abode of ritual. She placed her fingers close to the bulb and could feel a prickly
heat sliding into her skin—a sensation the human beings probably paid little attention to. “This drove
Stinger away,” she said. “Not the percussion-cap weapon.”

   “What?” Cody asked.

   “This power source drove Stinger away,” she repeated. “The flashlight.”

   “It’s just a light, that’s all.” Rick pushed the last bullet in and snapped the cylinder shut. “It can’t hurt
anybody.”

   “Can’t hurt a human, maybe not. I know this power source is designed to aid human visual
perception, but it blinded Stinger. Maybe gave physical pain too. I saw the reaction.”

  “Only thing it was reactin’ to was bullets,” Cody told her. “Pump enough shells into its damned head,
and it’ll sure as hell react!” He kept watch on the doorway, where a pool of slime shimmered on the
porch’s boards.

   Daufin didn’t answer. There was something in the light that hurt Stinger, something that didn’t affect
humans. Maybe it was the heat, or the composition of the light itself, something in the physical and
microscopic disturbance of matter along the illuminating beam. The humans might not realize it, but this
light was a weapon much more powerful than the flimsy percussion-cap noisemaker.

   “What did you mean, ‘Stinger’s creation’?” Rick asked the little girl. The street inflections had
dropped from his accent. “Was it Stinger or wasn’t it?”

   “It was… and was not,” she answered. “It was created and is controlled by Stinger, but Stinger
remains underground.”

   “You mean Stinger built that thing and made it look like Mrs. Stellenberg?” Cody asked.

   “Yes. What you saw was a living mechanism. Stinger will construct what is needed.”

   “Needed for what?” Rick clicked on the .38’s safety and eased the pistol into his waistband.

  “Needed to find me,” Daufin said. “Stinger will use whatever raw materials are available for the
constructions. Stinger’s digging underneath the streets, coming up into the abodes, and gathering raw
materials.”

   “Human bodies,” Rick said.

    “Correct. When Stinger seizes the necessary raw material, sensory signals are returned through
organic filaments that connect Stinger with machines on the interstellar vehicle.” She motioned through the
haze toward the pyramid. “The machines were built by Stinger’s masters, and they translate the signals
into physical reality.” She realized from their blank stares that they weren’t comprehending, so she made
a fast mental scan through the Britannica’s pages again. “Like a baseball game on teeah-veeah,” she
said. “The pictures are taken apart at their source, and put back together again at their destination. Only,
in this case, Stinger has a choice of how to recombine the signals, to make creations that are stronger and
faster than the originals.”

   “Yeah,” Cody said, beginning to understand. “Uglier too.”

    “The creations are powered by Stinger’s lifeforce,” she went on. “In essence, they are Stinger,
because they think with the same brain. Like a hundred teeah-veeah sets in a hundred different rooms, all
tuned to the same baseball game. Stinger remains physically underground, but the creations allow
Stinger’s sight and brain to be in many places at the same time.”

   “You never told me why it’s after you,” Cody prodded.

   “I escaped from a prison world,” she said. “I entered the body of a guard and stole a garbage scow.
That’s what they construct there. Stinger’s masters want me returned to”—here she encountered another
difficulty of translation—“Rock Seven,” was the best she could do.

   “Sounds like a radio station,” Rick said.

   “Rock Seven is an approximate name. It does not translate. Nothing can live there outside the
prison.” A grim smile crept across her mouth, and the eyes in the child’s face looked very old. “It’s a
caldron of murderers, the diseased, plunderers, and pirates—and even criminals like me.”

   Cody wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask: “What crime did you do?”

   “I sang. Stinger’s masters decreed that to be against the law on my world.”

   “You sang? Is that all? What’s so bad about that?”

   “It was the song.” Now Daufin’s eyes had a glint of steel in them. “The song stirred destruction. It
was an old song, one almost forgotten. But I knew it, and I had to sing it. If I didn’t, all my tribe would
die.” Her eyes narrowed, and the flesh seemed to tighten across the facial bones. For an instant Cody
and Rick thought they could see another face behind Stevie Hammond’s; this one was leather tough,
frightening in its intensity. It was the face of a warrior, not a child. “I’ll get home,” she vowed quietly. “I’m
not a savior, and I never asked to be. But I’ll get home or I’ll die trying, and Rock Seven will never hold
me. Never.” She sensed a cold pulse of power sweep slowly past her, and she turned toward the
pyramid. Cody and Rick had felt it too, but to them it was just a little cool breath of air. Her heartbeat
thudded faster, because she knew what it was, and what it searched for.

   “It ends here,” Daufin said. “Right here. I’ve escaped from Rock Seven twice before. Twice before
they sent Stingers after me and took me back. They kept me alive because they wanted to ‘study’ me.”
She smiled bitterly, and there was rage in it too. “An indignity—a needle to watch your bowels move, a
chemical to malform your dreams. Nothing is sacred, nothing is private. Your life is measured in reactions
to pain, freezing, and burning.” Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “You are twisted until the screams
run out. And all that time of ‘studying’ you know your world is being eaten away to the heart.” Her voice
cracked, and for a few seconds she trembled but could not speak. Then: “When they’re done, they’ll
search for new worlds to ravage. One of them might be Earth.” She glanced at Cody and Rick, then
back through the murk at Stinger’s ship. “It ends here, with my death or Stinger’s.”

   “What do you mean, ‘one of them might be Earth’?” Cody asked.

   She drew in a long breath, and had to tell the humans what she knew to be true. “Stinger is not only a
bounty hunter of escaped criminals. Stinger hunts planets for bounty as well. When Stinger returns to
Rock Seven, a report will be given on this planet’s inhabitants, technological levels, and defense systems.
According to that report, Earth may be added to the list of planets scheduled for invasion by”—a
translation problem—“the House of Fists. Stinger’s masters. I don’t think it will be very long before they
send the first fleet.”

   “Christ!” Cody said. “What do we have that they want?”

   “Life,” Daufin answered bluntly. “All life but their own is repugnant to the House of Fists. They can’t
stand knowing that somewhere a life form flourishes without their permission. They will come here, take
prisoners for study, gather whatever minerals might strike their interest, and either introduce a disease into
the ecosystem or conduct mass executions. That is their pleasure and purpose of existence.”

    “Sounds like real party-down dudes.” Rick looked around, his hand on the .38’s grip. The smoke
had closed in, and he could see no cars nor people anywhere. “Lockett, you’d better get her off the
street. You don’t want any more surprises popping up.”

   “Right. But if that damned thing can bust up through the ground, where can I take her that’s safe?”

   “What is that?” Daufin pointed, and Cody and Rick saw the faint glow of the apartment building’s
lights through the haze.

  “The ’Gade fortress. It’s built pretty tough,” Cody said. “About the only place around here that’s
worth a damn.”

   “Stinger won’t like those lights,” Daufin told them. “I think that’s a safe structure.” If any Earth
structure was really safe, she thought.

   Rick said, “I’m heading back across the river. A lot of people over there are holed up in the church.”
He looked at Daufin again; the defiant face-behind-the-face had gone away, and she looked like an
ordinary little girl again. “Colonel Rhodes and the sheriff are looking for you. They were over at the clinic
about twenty minutes ago, but I heard them say they were going to the Creech house. Know where that
is?” he asked Cody.
   “Yeah. Dodge Creech’s house. It’s not too far from here.” Without any weapons, though, he didn’t
care to go cruising the streets with her. There was no telling what might slither out of one of the dark
houses. “I’m gonna get her up to the fort first. Then I’ll hunt Vance down.”

   “Okay. You two watch your backs.”

   Rick started to stride away, but Cody called, “Hey! Hold on!” and Rick paused. “You didn’t have to
come down in that hole,” Cody said. This was one of the strangest moments of his life, standing on
Renegade territory after dark with the leader of the Rattlers about eight feet away and a creature from
another world beside him. He felt a drifty, dreaming sensation, and if there wasn’t a puddle of slime on
the Cat Lady’s porch and blood squishing in his boot from his clawed ankle, he might not believe it had
ever happened. “I appreciate it.”

   Thanks from a ’Gade—especially from Cody Lockett—was in its own way even more bizarre than
the circumstances. Rick shrugged. “Wasn’t a big thing.” His rope-scorched hands would tell him later
that it had been.

   “I think it was. Hey, did you mean what you said about your sister?”

  “No,” Rick said firmly. A spark of the old anger resurfaced. “You get Miranda out of your head.
Understand?”

   “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” Back to business, Cody thought.

   “You will. Shitkicker.” They locked stares for a few seconds, like two bulldogs that refused to give
an inch of ground, and then Rick backed away into the cracked street. He turned abruptly, disdainfully,
and walked into the haze.

  “I won’t. Spitball,” Cody said quietly. Then he glanced at Daufin. “Bet they don’t have motorcycles
where you come from, huh?”

   “Undoubtedly,” she answered.

   “Then you can tell your people all about ’em, ’cause that’s what you’re about to ride on.” He went to
the Honda, got on, and kickstarted the engine. “Climb on behind me and hold tight.” She did, nervous
about the machine’s vibration and the noise, and Cody wheeled the cycle away from the Cat Lady’s
house and sped toward Travis Street.



                                               41
                                      Blue-eyed and Smiling


“Maybe it didn’t mean this place,” Vance whispered shakily. “Maybe it meant somewhere else.”

   “No, I don’t think so.” Rhodes spoke in a normal voice. There was no need for whispering, because
Stinger had to know they were waiting in Creech’s den. He aimed his flashlight at the hole in the floor.
There was no movement, no sign of life—in whatever form—down in the darkness. “What time is it?” he
asked Tom.

   “Almost twenty till two,” Tom answered, checking his watch in the beam of his own flashlight. Jessie
stood beside him, her hair in sweat-damp curls and a fine layer of dust on her face. Rhodes had asked
them to come, to see what they were dealing with, but he’d warned them not to say anything about
Daufin. David Gunniston stood on the other side of the colonel, the younger man’s face still ashen with
shock but his eyes alert and his hand on the butt of the .45 he’d taken from Vance’s gun cabinet. Vance
had a Winchester repeating rifle, and Rhodes held the shotgun loaded with tear-gas shells at his side.

   “Bastard’s making us wait,” Rhodes said. They’d been here for almost thirty minutes, long enough to
drink the thermos of cold coffee they’d gotten from Sue Mullinax at the Brandin’ Iron. “Trying to make
us sweat a little.”

  “It’s doing a damned good job,” Jessie said as she wiped her face with her forearm. “One thing I
want to know: if Stinger’s somehow making… what did you call them?”

   “Replicants.”

   “If Stinger’s making replicants, what’s happening to the real people?”

   “Killed, most likely. Maybe stored like lab specimens. I don’t know.” He glanced at her and managed
a faint smile. “We’ll have to ask when it shows up.”

   “If it shows up.” Vance had backed away from the hole, and stood pressed against the wall. His shirt
stuck to him like glue-dipped wallpaper, and sweat dripped from his chin. “Listen… if it looks like
Dodge, I’m gonna have to be excused. I don’t think I can take that again.”

   “Just don’t start blasting with that rifle. I’m not sure it’d do much good anyway.” Rhodes kept rubbing
the hand-shaped bruise on his arm.

   Vance snorted. “Mister, it’d do me a hell of a lot of good!”

   “Colonel?” Gunniston bent down at the rim of the hole. “Listen!”

   They all heard it: a thick, wet sound, like boots slogging in a swamp. Something moving through the
slime-walled tunnel, Rhodes knew. Coming closer. “Get back,” he told Gunny, and the younger man
scrabbled away from the edge. Vance cocked the Winchester, and Rhodes darted a warning glance at
him.

   The sounds stopped. Silence fell.

   Rhodes and Tom kept their lights aimed at the hole. From below, a man’s voice drifted up: “Put your
lights out, folks. I’m picking up some real bad vibes.”

   It was a mellow, laid-back voice. No one recognized it but Vance, who had heard it often enough.
His face bleached fishbelly gray, and his body mashed harder against the wall.

   “Do it,” Rhodes said. He turned off his flashlight, and so did Tom. Now the only illumination in the
room was the dusty yellow glow of the remaining oil-burning lanterns. “All right. You can come up now.”

   “Oh no. Not yet, pardner. Throw them down to me.”

   It can’t stand electric light, Rhodes thought. No, more than that: it’s afraid of electric light. He tossed
his flashlight into the hole and nodded for Gunniston and Tom to do the same. A moment later there came
the snapping sounds of the flashlights being broken apart.

   “That’s it. You can come up,” Rhodes said.

   “I can come up anywhere and anytime I fucking please,” the voice replied. “Haven’t you figured that
out by now?” There was a pause. “If you have any more of these up there, you’ll be very sorry.”

   “Those are all we brought.”

   “They’re little pieces of nothing anyway, aren’t they? I can break them with my breath.” The voice
was jaunty, confident now that the flashlights were destroyed. A quiet thud and a scuttling noise
followed. Rhodes figured the thing had just leapt up and pulled itself into the basement. Then another
thud, and one hand caught the edge of the hole. Saw-blade fingernails gouged into the broken wood,
and the creature’s head rose into view.

   Jessie gripped Tom’s hand with a strength that popped his knuckles. Vance gave a feeble moan.

   It was Mack Cade’s face, blue-eyed and smiling like a choirboy. He was hatless, his thin blond hair
plastered to his skull. His tan had faded to a sickly yellow hue. He pulled himself up with one-armed
ease, got his knees on the hole’s edge, and stood up.

  Vance almost passed out, and the only reason he did not was the knowledge that he would be
unconscious on the floor with that god-awful thing standing ten feet away.

   “Oh… Jesus,” Gunniston whispered.

   “Everybody stay where you are,” Rhodes said, as calmly as he could. He swallowed; his insides had
given a savage twist. “Just take it easy.”

   “Yeah,” the creature with Mack Cade’s smile said. “Hang loose.”

   In the lamplight, they all could see it much too clearly. Mack Cade had a left arm, but his right one
was squashed and melted into something that had grown from his chest. It was a black-streaked lump of
meat with a flat, almost reptilian head on a squat and muscular neck. In that head were slanted amber
eyes, and two stubby, deformed legs dangled from the bony wedges of its shoulders.

   Jessie knew what it was: a dog. One of Cade’s Dobermans, implanted in the thing’s chest like a
bizarre Siamese twin.

   The gold chains around Cade’s neck were now part of his flesh too, braided in and out of his skin.
The cold blue eyes moved slowly from one figure to the next. The dog’s head, splotched with patterns of
human flesh and Doberman hide, writhed as if in profound agony, and around the lump of its body the
folds of Cade’s wine-red shirt crackled like waxy paper. “Wow,” the Cade mouth said, and lamplight
sparked off the close-packed rows of needle teeth. “You came to party, didn’t you, Ed Vance?” The
thing’s gaze speared him. “I thought you were the head honcho.”

   Vance couldn’t speak. Rhodes took a deep breath and said, “He’s not. I am.”

   “Yeah?” The eyes fixed on him. The dog’s mouth stretched open and showed more silver needles.
On each paw were two serrated metal hooks. The creature took two strides toward Rhodes, and the
colonel felt panic rise up like a scream but he locked his knees and did not retreat.

   Stinger stopped about three feet away. The eyes narrowed. “You. I know you, don’t I?” The
squashed Doberman’s head made a low groan, and the jaws snapped wantonly. “You’re Colonel Matt
Rhodes United States Air Force. Right?”

   “Yes.”

   “I remember you. We met before, down there.” A jerk of the head toward the hole. Still smiling,
Stinger lifted its left arm and extended the index finger. The arm glided forward, and the metal nail
pressed against Rhodes’s cheek. “You hurt me,” Stinger said.

   There was a quiet click as Gunniston eased back the .45’s hammer.

   “Hold your fire.” The saw-blade edge had cut his cheek, and a drop of blood coursed slowly down
to his jawline. He met Stinger’s intense stare without flinching. The thing was talking about the old woman
down in the tunnel. Wherever the true Stinger was—most likely in the pyramid—it must have a direct
sensory bond with the replicants, including reaction to pain. “We came here in good faith,” Rhodes said.
“What do you want?”

   “I want to deal.”

   Rhodes knew what Stinger meant, but he wanted it spelled out. “Deal for what?”

  “The superfine, high-quality, grade-double-A package you’ve got stashed somewhere in this joint.”
The fingernail withdrew, taking a smear of human blood with it. “You know: the guardian. The little girl.”

   Jessie’s heart kicked. Vance shivered; the thing had Cade’s slick salesman’s drawl down to
perfection.

   “What little girl?” The drop of blood fell from Rhodes’s chin and hit the green scrub shirt with a soft
plop.

    “Don’t shit me, amigo.” The dog’s head growled hoarsely, its neck straining. “I’ve been… like…
asking around, if you get my drift. Kicking back, seeing the sights. You’ve got a real trippy world here,
dude. But I know the guardian’s a little girl, and I know she’s somewhere close. I want her, and I mean
to take her. So do we deal or not?”

  Rhodes knew dangerous ground lay ahead. He said, carefully, “Maybe we know who you’re talking
about and maybe we don’t. If we do, what do we get from the deal?”

   “You get to keep your asses,” Stinger said, the eyes bright—almost merry—with the prospect of
violence. “That clear enough?”

   “You’ve already killed quite a few people. That’s not good business.”

   “Sure it is. My business is squashing bugs.”

   “A professional killer?” Rhodes’s throat felt dry enough to crack. “Is that what you are?”

   “Man, you people are dense! Ugly too.” Stinger looked down at the twitching mass hanging from its
chest. “What is this shit?”

   “I’d like to know where you came from,” Rhodes pressed on. “What planet?”

  Stinger hesitated, the head cocked over to one side. “The planet Moondoggie, in the constellation
Beach Blanket Bingo,” the thing said, and cackled. “What the fuck does it matter? You wouldn’t know
where it is, anyway. Face it, man: I’m not leaving without the guardian, so you might as well hand her
over and let’s be done with it.”

    Jessie could stand being silent no longer. It was the wrong, stupid thing to do, and she knew that, but
it burst out of her anyway: “No! We’re not giving her up to you!”

   Rhodes twisted around and his stare burned holes through her. She got control of herself again, but
the damage was done. The counterfeit Mack Cade face watched her impassively, while the dog’s jaws
snapped at the air as if ripping off hunks of fresh meat. Stinger said quietly, “Now we’ve got it clear who
we’re talking about, so we can quit dicking around. First off, I know my bounty’s here. I tracked her
ship to this world, and my sensors are picking up the pod’s energy. Exactly where it is, I’m not sure—but
I’m narrowing it down, and I know she won’t be too far from it.” A metallic smile flashed. “Technology’s
a great thing, huh?”

   “What do you mean, your ‘bounty’?” Rhodes asked. “Are you being paid for this?”

   “ ‘Paid’ is a relative term, man. I’m being rewarded for carrying out a mission.”

   “To find her and kill her?”

   “To find her and take her where she belongs. She—” Stinger stopped, a grimace of annoyance
rumpling the face. “You don’t know a damned thing, do you? This is like trying to talk to my asshole and
expecting it to”—there was a pause and a slow blink, and Rhodes could almost see the thing searching at
mind-boggling speed through the man’s language center for the correct analogy—“sing like Aretha
Franklin. Man, this is primitive shit!”

   “Sorry we’re so uncivilized,” Rhodes said, “but we’re not invading other worlds trying to kidnap
children, either.”

   “‘Invading,’” Stinger repeated after a few seconds of reflection. The eyelids had slid down to half
mast. “There’s another relative term. Listen, I couldn’t care less about this dump. I’m just passing
through. As soon as I get my prisoner, I’m history.”

   “What makes her so important?” Tom spoke up, and the creature’s head twisted toward him.

   “I see the problem around here,” Stinger announced. “Too many chiefs and not enough ensigns…
engines… Indians,” the thing corrected itself. “You ought to know ‘she’ isn’t what you’d call female. And
she’s not male, either. Where she comes from, that doesn’t matter. All the screwing on her world’s done
by the tides or something. ‘She’ could just as easily take a man to be a guardian; the guardian’s a shell
for her to walk around in. But since I don’t find any description of the creature in your lingo, I guess it’s
okay to call it a ‘she.’” Stinger sneered the word. “And for her to take a little girl as a guardian is a real
laugh, because she’s as old as dirt. But she’s smart, I’ll give her that much, and she’s sure run me a
chase.” The thing’s gaze slid back to Rhodes. “It’s over now: where is she?”

   “I never said we knew who you’re talking about.”

   Silence stretched, and the replicant’s gray lips twitched like cankerworms. “What you can’t seem to
figure out is that I’m on the side of law and order. My assignment is to find the criminal and return her to
a maximum-security penal world—from which she escaped. She got into a guard and stole a garbage
scow. I figure the ship went haywire, sailed off course, and got sucked into the gravity field here. She
must’ve jettisoned her guardian and gotten back into her pod before the crash; she ejected, and that’s the
story.”

   “Not all of it,” Rhodes said. He kept a poker face. “Why is she a criminal?”

   “After her planet was liberated, she decided to disobey the new prime directives. She started urging
her kind to resistance, violence, and sabotage. She’s nothing but a wild animal.”

   “ ‘Liberated’?” Jessie didn’t like the sound of that. “Liberated from what?”

   “From waste and stupidity. See, there’s a natural chemical on her world that’s poisonous as all hell
anywhere else. What you folks don’t know is that all kinds of little wars are going on out there—alliances
breaking up, new ones forming, one group deciding it wants a planetary system and another kicking sand
about it. Goes on all the time.” The thing’s shoulders shrugged. “Well, suppose some up-and-comer
decides to get hold of the poison and start spreading it around. I’m telling you, the shit is deadly. That
stuff gets out in space, and it might even drift this way. It cuts right through body armor and dissolves the
bones and guts into mush. That’s why we liberated the planet—so we can keep that shit from getting into
the arsenals of fruitcakes. Everything was going fine until ‘she’ started raising hell. Made herself out to be
a ‘revolutionary’ and all that crap.” The head shook back and forth, the face puckered with a scowl.
“She’s trying to get back so she can stir up more trouble—maybe sell that poison to the highest bidder.”

   Rhodes didn’t know whether to buy the story or not. “Why didn’t you tell us this before now?”

   “Because I didn’t know anything about you. As far as I knew, you were helping her. Everybody
seemed like they’d rather fight than talk like sensible folks.” Stinger’s eyes bored into Rhodes’s. “I’m a
forgiving kind of dude. Let’s be friends. Okay?”

   Just like Mack Cade would’ve done it, Vance thought. Sucker ’em in with a glad hand and squash
’em with a fist. He found his voice, and he said, “Colonel? I inkthay it ielays.”

  Rhodes saw Stinger blink with incomprehension, saw the gears of language start turning behind the
manufactured face; they slipped on the grease of pig Latin. I think it lies, Vance had said.

   “Explain,” Stinger demanded, the metallic voice all business again.

   “We’ve got to talk about this. The others and myself.”

   “Nothing to talk about, man. Either we deal or not.”

   “We need some time.”

    Stinger didn’t move, but the dog’s head thrashed angrily. Seven or eight seconds crept past. Rhodes
felt sweat trickling from his armpits. “You dudes are playing games with my brain,” the creature said.
“Trying to fuck me up.” It advanced on Rhodes, and was right there in his face before he could back
away. Gunniston lifted the .45 and aimed it at the monster’s head, and Vance hefted the rifle up and put
his finger on the trigger.

   “You listen,” Stinger hissed. The thing was breathing—its imitation lungs doing the job of the originals.
The breath was a faint rumbling, like the noise of a blast furnace going at full burn miles distant, and the
air from Stinger’s mouth washed into Rhodes’s face and reeked of hot plastic and metal. The dog’s teeth
snagged Rhodes’s shirt. “Playtime’s over. I want the guardian and the pod.”

   “We need… more time,” Rhodes said. If he retreated one step or otherwise flinched, he knew those
saw-blade nails would be on his throat. “We’ll have to find her.”

   “I tried to be friendly, didn’t I?” The index finger rose up and glided across his chin. “You know, I
create things. Out in my ship. I’ve got a workshop in there. Just give me the flesh, and I can create…
wonders.” The smile came up again, and the needle teeth glittered inches away from the colonel’s face.

   “I’ve seen one of your creations. The flying thing.”

   “Pretty, huh? If you’d like to see my workshop, I could snatch you under my arm and take you there
right now. I could make you over, better than you are. A lot stronger… and a lot meaner too.”

   “I’m already mean enough.”
   Stinger cackled; there was a sound like grind wheels turning in its throat. “Maybe you are, at that,” the
creature agreed, and lifted its left wrist. Embedded in the flesh was the diamond-studded face of a Rolex
watch with a tiny inset second hand. “I figure this is a tool to mark the passage of time. I’ve been
watching it work. What’s the time right now?”

   Rhodes was silent. Stinger waited. “Three minutes before two,” the colonel said.

   “Good boy. When that long spear rotates again, I’ll be back here. If you don’t have the guardian and
the pod, I’m going to create a real special bug squasher.”

   “That’s only one hour! We can’t find her in that short a time!”

   “It’s all you’ve got. You understand, Colonel Matt Rhodes United States Air Force?”

   “Yes,” he answered, and felt doom settle on his shoulders like a cold shroud.

  “One hour,” Stinger said. The thing’s head turned, and Stinger stared at Gunniston and the .45 the
man aimed. “Would you like to eat that?”

   Gunniston’s hand shook. Slowly he lowered the pistol.

  “I think we understand each other now.” Stinger walked to the edge of the hole and hesitated with
one foot over empty space. The dog’s eyes shone red in the lamplight. “One hour,” the voice
emphasized. “Think on these things.”

    The replicant dropped into darkness. They heard it hit bottom, followed by the smack of its boots as
it raced away through the tunnel’s ooze. The noise faded, and Stinger was gone.



                                                 42
                                            The Fortress


No one spoke for a long moment. Smoke drifted through the light. Then Vance jabbered, “I was ready
to shoot the bastard! I was just waitin’ for the word, and I could’ve blown its head off!”

   “Right,” Rhodes said. He wiped the creeping line of blood from his cheek, his eyes hollowed out and
scared. “And gotten yourself and the rest of us torn to pieces too. Tom, what time is it?”

  “One minute till two.”

   “Which means we’ve got fifty-eight minutes to find Daufin and her pod. We’re going to have to split
up and start searching.”

   “Hold on!” Jessie said. “What are you saying? That we’re going to give Daufin up?”

   “That’s right. Have you got a better idea?”

  “We’re talking about my little girl.”

  “We’re talking about an alien,” Rhodes reminded her. His insides were still quaking. The smell of hot
metal remained in his nostrils. “No matter what it looks like. We’ve gotten into something here that I think
we’d better get our asses out of real fast.”
   “I’m not handing my little girl over to that sonofabitch!” Jessie vowed. Tom started to touch her
shoulder to calm her, but she pulled away. “Do you hear me? I’m not doing it!”

   “Jessie, it’s either Daufin or a lot of people—your friends—who die. I’m not doubting for one second
that Stinger could lay waste to this whole town. Right now I don’t care why Stinger wants Daufin, or
what she’s done; I just want to find her and save some people’s lives, if I can.”

   “What about Stevie’s life?” Tears scorched Jessie’s eyes. Her heart was pounding wildly, and she
couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. “My God, we’ll be throwing my daughter’s life away!”

    “Not if we can find Daufin and get her to go back into her pod. Maybe that’ll release Stevie.” He
couldn’t stand this house any longer; the walls were closing in on him. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any
choice. Sheriff, I say we go get your deputy and break into teams for a house-to-house search. Go up
and down the streets and pick up some volunteers, if we can find any.” He knew that a street search in all
this smoke and dust was going to be almost impossible, but there was no other way. “Maybe somebody
at the clinic’s seen her, or she might’ve gone across the bridge into Bordertown. Tom, will you and Jessie
go check your house and start searching east along Celeste Street from there?”

   Tom stared at the floor. He felt Jessie watching him. “Yes,” he said. “We will.”

   “Thank you. We need to meet somewhere in thirty minutes and map out where we’ve been. How
about the Brandin’ Iron?”

   “Fine,” Tom said.

    “All right. Let’s get started.” Without waiting for the others, he left the house and went out to the
patrol car, parked in front of the Hammonds’ Civic at the curb. Vance and Gunniston followed, then
Jessie and Tom. Vance said, “Better take this,” and gave Tom the Winchester. “I’ll pick up the other rifle
at the office. You two be careful, hear?”

   “We will be,” Tom told him, and Vance got behind the wheel, pulled the car away from the curb, and
drove back toward the center of town.

   Jessie watched the car’s lights move away and be swallowed by the murk. She felt faint and she
stumbled, but Tom caught her and she held on to him. Tears tracked through the dust on her cheeks. “I
can’t do it,” she said weakly. “Oh Jesus, I can’t give her up.”

  “We have to. Listen to me.” He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head. “I want more than
anything in the world to have Stevie back, just like you do. But if Stevie’s gone—”

   “She’s not! Daufin said she was safe!”

   “If she’s gone,” Tom continued, “our world’s not going to end. We have Ray, and we have each
other. But if we don’t find Daufin and turn her over to that thing, a lot of people are going to die.” Jessie
was almost blinded by tears now, and she put her hands to her face. “We have to,” he repeated, and he
opened the door for her and then went around to the driver’s side. Jessie was about to slide in when she
heard the muttering of an engine, coming closer. A single headlight showed brownish yellow through the
smoke. Somebody on a motorcycle, she realized.

   Tom hesitated, gripping the door handle, as Cody Lockett stopped beside the car. Cody pushed his
goggles back up on his forehead. Attached to the handlebars with a strip of electrical tape was a
sawed-off baseball bat with nails protruding from it: a weapon from the ’Gade arsenal. “I’m lookin’ for
Vance and Colonel Rhodes,” Cody said. “They’re supposed to be here.”
  “You just missed them. They’re on their way to the sheriff’s office.” Tom opened the door and put the
Winchester into the backseat. “Who told you they were here?”

   “I… uh… ran into Rick Jurado. Listen…” He glanced at Jessie, could see from her red and puffy
eyes that she’d been crying. He didn’t know exactly how to say this, so he just plowed on ahead. “I
found your little girl.”

   Tom was speechless. Jessie choked back a sob and said, “Where is she?”

   “Up at the fort. The apartments, I mean. There’s a whole lot of people up there, so she’s okay.”
Cody would never forget the faces of Tank, Nasty, and Bobby Clay Clemmons when he’d told them that
the little girl wasn’t what she appeared to be. They hadn’t believed him until she’d started to talk, and
then their jaws had fallen to the floor. Along with most of the Renegades, there were about two hundred
or more people in the building who’d been drawn by the electric lights. Cody had gotten the creature
settled in, poured warm beer over the two gashes on his ankle, and taped a cloth around it, then come
hunting for Vance and the colonel. “Uh… there’s somethin’ else you ought to know,” he said. “I mean…
she looks like your little girl and all, but… she’s not.”

   “We know that,” Tom replied.

   “You do? Man, I thought I was goin’ off the deep end when she told me who she was!”

  “Same here.” He glanced at Jessie, and saw she knew what he was about to say. “We have to tell
Rhodes. We can catch him before he leaves the sheriff’s office.”

  “Tom… please. Wait,” Jessie said. “Why don’t we talk to her first? Try to make her understand that
we’ve got to get Stevie back?”

   Tom looked at his wristwatch. It was four minutes after two, and he’d never thought a second hand
could move so fast. “We’ve got less than thirty minutes before we’re supposed to meet at the Brandin’
Iron.”

   “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 accordians. 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.

   Tyler struggled up, the rope entwined around his hands and his shoulder muscles popping. He planted
his boots and fought it, his fingers turning blue, but he was being pulled steadily toward the stall. Now
only Sweetpea’s muzzle was still visible, and the sand was starting to slide over it.

   “No!” Tyler yelled, and heaved backward on the rope so hard the raw flesh of his fingers split open
like blood-gorged sausages. The sand eddied around like a whirlpool, there was a last feeble thrashing,
and Sweetpea was gone.

   But the rope continued to be drawn downward by a tremendous strength. Bess grabbed her
husband’s waist, and they went to the floor again. “Let go!” Bess screamed, and Tyler opened his
bloody fingers but the rope was tangled around his hands.

  Bess held on, splinters piercing her arms and legs. Tyler was trying to shake the rope loose, and they
were almost pulled under the railing into Sweetpea’s stall before he felt the tension go slack.

  Tyler lay on his belly, tears of pain crawling down his cheeks. Bess rolled over on her side, softly
moaning.

   He sat up, forced his hands to close around the rope and started pulling it from the depths. “Bess,
bring the light,” he told her, and she silently went to get it.

   The rope came up, foot after foot. Bess retrieved the flashlight. Its bulb had dimmed, in need of a
fresh battery. She pointed it toward the empty stall.

   Tyler walked into the stall, continuing to draw the rope up. It was wet, and glistened in the murky
light. Everything was dreamlike to him, this couldn’t possibly be real, and in a minute or so he would
awaken to Bess’s call that breakfast was on the table. He sank to his knees beside the broken
floorboards and watched the rope slither from the sand.

   Its other end emerged. Tyler picked it up. Held it toward the light. Strands of thick gray ooze dripped
from the ragged edge.

   “Looks like… it’s been sawed clean through,” he said.

   And a shape came corkscrewing up in a whirl of sand, so fast Tyler had no time to react.

   A pair of jaws opened. Silver-blue needles snapped shut on Tyler’s throat.

   The flat, reptilian head flailed viciously from side to side, the needle teeth ripping through tissue and
arteries. Tyler’s mouth filled with blood. He realized that the rope had not been sawed; it had been
chewed.

   That was his last thought, because with the next savage twist the creature broke his neck. It kept
twisting, and Tyler’s head with its bulging, sightless eyes began to crack from the spinal column.

   Bess screamed, dropped the flashlight as her hands pressed to her mouth. She saw what the creature
was: a large dog—a Doberman concocted from a madman’s nightmare. Instead of hair, its hide was
covered with leathery, interlocking scales, and beneath it the knots of muscle bunched and rippled.

    Its amber eyes found her. The thing gave Tyler’s neck one last ferocious shake and began to stretch
its jaws impossibly wide, like the unhinging jaws of a snake. It flung the dead man aside.

  Bess backpedaled, tripped, and fell on her tailbone. The monster scrabbled up over the top board of
Sweetpea’s stall, dropped to the floor, and advanced on her, its mouth trailing Tyler’s blood.

    The Winchester had tripped her up. Her legs were lying across it. She swung the rifle up and started
shooting at the approaching shape. One bullet furrowed across its skull, a second entered its shoulder, a
third slammed into its ribs. But then it was upon her, and its mouthful of needles clamped shut on her
face.

   She kept fighting. Her finger continued to spasm on the Winchester’s trigger, sending bullets through
the walls while the other fist beat at the thing’s scaly hide. She was a Texas woman, and she didn’t give
up easily.

   The issue was settled in another five seconds. Bess’s skull broke with a noise like that of a clay jar
cracking, and rows of needle teeth sawed into her brain.

   Blood ran through the hay. The monster released the crushed mass and turned upon the flashlight,
tearing it to pieces with teeth and metal-nailed claws. Then it crouched in the darkness, belly to the floor,
and listened eagerly for the sounds of any other humans nearby; there were none, and the thing gave a
low grunt of what might have been disappointment. It climbed back into Sweetpea’s stall and began to
dig down through the sand where the horse had gone. The monster’s front and hind legs moved in a blur
of synchronized power, and in another moment it had burrowed into the earth and the sand shifted over it
like a whisper.



                                               44
                                      Through the Inner Eye


“Don’t be afraid,” Daufin said. “Seal your external visualizers.”

   “Huh?” Tom asked.

   “Close your eyes.”

   He did. And promptly opened them again. “Is this… going to hurt?”

   “Only me, because I’ll see my home again.”

   “What are you going to do?” Jessie’s arm was tight, ready to pull away.

  “I’m going to take you on a journey, backward through the inner eye. I want to answer your
questions about why I’m called a criminal. These things can’t be told; they must be experienced.”

  “Wow!” Nasty stepped forward, the light sparkling off the bits of golden glitter in her Mohawk. “Can
I… like… go with you?”
   “I’m sorry, no,” Daufin said. “There’s only room for two.” She caught Nasty’s wistful expression.
“Maybe some other time. Close your eyes,” she repeated to Tom and Jessie, and they did. Cody came
closer to watch, and his heart was beating hard but he didn’t have a clue as to what was about to
happen.

   Daufin’s eyes shut. She waited, as the energy cells of her memory began to charge like complex
batteries.

   Jessie feared that Stevie’s body temperature was getting too high, and that the heat would damage her
brain and organs. But Daufin had said that Stevie was safe, and she had to trust this creature or she
would lose her mind. Still, the hand she held continued to heat up; Stevie’s body could tolerate such a
fever for more than a few minutes without breaking down.

   Tom said, “I feel like we’re getting ready to go play hide-and-see… damn!” He jumped, because
what had seemed like a thunderbolt had snapped along his spine. He opened his eyes but the light was a
brutal shock, with a hard yellow-green underglow, and he shut them again.

   “Tom? What is it?” Jessie asked. To him her voice was a slow, underwater slur, and he thought, My
brain’s getting scrambled.

   “Silence,” Daufin whispered, and in her voice chimes echoed.

    Jessie kept her eyes closed, waiting for she didn’t know what. Though the hand she held seethed with
heat, cold currents were beginning to run through her arm and up her shoulder; an electrical power being
generated within Stevie’s body, steadily gaining strength and entering Jessie through the connection of
flesh.

    The cold pulse had entered Tom’s bones too, and he shivered. He thought he could no longer feel the
floor beneath his feet; he seemed to be drifting, his body slowly skewing to right and left, held only by
Daufin’s grip. “What’s happen—” He stopped speaking, because the harshness of his own voice, the
alien quality of it, terrified him.

   Jessie had heard a hoarse grunt that may have been the semblance of a human voice. The cold had
enfolded her, from scalp to toes, like a breeze from the Ice House on a blistering July day. Another
sensation was coming upon her: movement at a tremendous speed. She thought that if she could force her
eyelids up, she might see the atoms in the wall in motion like patterns of static on a television screen and
her own body moving so fast it found an opening between them and slipped through. There was no
panic, only exhilaration. It was what she thought a night sky-dive might be like, freefalling through
darkness except there was no up or down—just out, beyond what she knew of life.

   Something glinted on her left, on her right, above and below. Blurred points and clusters of light
passing at incredible velocity. But her eyes were still closed—or at least she sensed they were. Stars, she
realized. My God… I’m in the middle of a universe!

   Tom had seen them too. Constellations wheeled across the heavens, ringed worlds luminous with
distant sunlight, gas clouds rippling like the wings of manta rays.

   And then they were almost upon it: a world as white as a pearl, surrounded by six white moons that
crossed each other’s orbit with unerring precision. The planet loomed before them, citadels of clouds
covering its surface and in their midst storms spinning with silent ferocity.

   Too fast! Jessie thought as the clouds came up at her. Too fast! We’re going to—
   They pierced the clouds, descending through whirlwinds. A smell of ammonia filled Jessie’s nostrils.
There was another breath-stealing shock of cold, followed by utter darkness. They were still traveling at
high speed, slanting downward. Warmth touched Tom and Jessie, chasing away the cold. The darkness
lightened to royal blue, then a rich, aquatic blue-green. Silken liquid pressed at Tom’s face, and
claustrophobia gripped him. We’re going to drown! he thought, and tried to pull free from Daufin’s hand
but her grip strengthened, would not release him. He wanted to thrash loose and get to the surface, but
he realized he was still breathing just fine. We’re not really in an alien ocean, he told himself as they
continued down. This is a dream… we’re still standing in the apartment building, back in Inferno…

   With an effort, he twisted his head to look at Daufin for reassurance.

   He was no longer holding the hand of a little girl.

   The hand was ghostly gray, as transparent as mist, with two slender fingers and a short, flattened
thumb. It was a small thing that looked as fragile as blown glass, and attached to that hand was a stalk
that trailed four or five feet to Daufin’s real form.

    Beside Tom in the gliding aquamarine was a body shaped like a torpedo, perhaps eight feet in length
and full of iridescence like trapped stars. More stalks—tough, tentaclelike arms—drifted with the motion
of the liquid around them, each with a similar two-fingered, single-thumbed hand. The body ended in a
thick flat paddle of muscle that effortlessly propelled them onward, and attached to a protrusion just short
of the tail was a silver filament that linked the body with its small black sphere.

   Electrical energy sparked through Daufin’s translucent flesh. Organs were visible in there, anchored
by a simple framework of gray cartilage. Tom looked at where he thought Daufin’s head should be, and
saw a curved knob with a sickle-shaped mouth and a trunklike appendage about two feet long. He could
see one of the eyes: a yellow orb the size of a baseball, with a vertical green pupil. The eye cocked in his
direction. There was peace in its gaze, a languid power. The head nodded, and Tom inhaled sharply at
the sign of recognition; air filled his lungs instead of liquid. The ghostly, electric-charged fingers squeezed
his hand, and another arm drifted up and touched Tom’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort.

    Daufin took them deeper. Warm currents slid around their bodies and the light was growing stronger,
as if this planet’s sun lay at its center.

   Rising up from the depths like flickers of moving neon were more of Daufin’s tribe. Jessie recoiled,
felt Daufin’s strong grip, and then she looked and saw Daufin as Tom had. Her first impulse was to pull
away from the spindly hand, but she checked it. Of course Daufin was a different form; what else could
she have expected? Daufin was a creature designed for an oceanic world, even though the “ocean” might
be composed of ammonia and nitrogen.

   The other creatures propelled themselves in joyous spirals, leaving phosphorescent wakes and their
pods weaving at the ends of the tethers. They were oblivious to the human presence, but both Tom and
Jessie knew that this was Daufin’s memory—her inner eye—and they were only visitors here, the alien
ghosts of the future. Hundreds of the creatures made a formation around Daufin, sailing with the precise
movements of birds through untroubled air, and Jessie realized Daufin must be a leader of some kind to
merit such an escort.

   Now the impressions of Daufin’s world, filtered through her inner eye, came in rapid succession to
Jessie and Tom: shimmering outlines of Everest-sized mountains and deep valleys between them, huge
orchards where rows of kelplike vegetation were tended, crevasses showing cracks of fierce white
glare—a glimpse into the immense power source that lay at the heart of this world. The vermiform towers
of a city—sloping, curved, and ridged shapes that resembled the intricacies of seashells—stood beyond
the mountains, and thousands of Daufin’s tribe moved in currents above their walls.

    Time shifted, or Daufin’s memory skipped tracks. In a valley below was a miles-long chasm of white
fire that shot up whiplashes of electricity. The tides had changed too; they were no longer gentle, but
swirled with restless energy. Daufin began to roll over and over, still gripping Tom and Jessie, and
underneath what might have been the throat a series of small gill-like flaps vibrated; from them issued a
compelling chiming sound.

    In response came Daufin’s tribe, struggling against the currents. They rolled like Daufin, and from the
underside of their bodies emerged round pink nipples. Other shapes, also summoned by Daufin’s song,
rose from the valley’s chasm; they were disk-shaped creatures, blue electrical impulses sparkling around
their rims and at their centers a knot of pulsing fire. As Daufin’s song continued, the new creatures began
to attach themselves to the pink underbelly nipples. Dark fluids jetted, shimmering with iridescence.
Wheels of creatures danced, rose, and fell in the turbulence. Three of them fixed to nipples on Daufin’s
belly, spasmed, and spun away like dead leaves. It was a mass mating ritual, Jessie realized; a ballet of
life and death.

   Another blink of time. Something was approaching from beyond. Something alien, and horribly cold.

   It arrowed through the sea with a chatter of circuits, expelled a black harpoon, and sped downward
into the valley of fire. More came, following the first. The new arrivals were connected to long clear
hoses that snaked up to the surface. Machinery began to grind and pumps hissed, and through the hoses
were drawn hundreds of the disk-shaped creatures that lived at the center of Daufin’s world.

   Down came more dark spears, more greedy hoses. The brutal harvest continued, suctioning up
seed-giving creatures older than time itself, that were a vital part of the planet’s power source. When the
wild currents called Daufin and she sang again, there weren’t enough seed-givers to impregnate even half
the tribe; they were being harvested faster than the unknown creation processes of the planet could
produce them.

    Daufin’s inner eye revealed the first stirrings of fear, and with them the knowledge of balances in
decay. And now a clear sign of crisis: the planet’s central fires dimming, the great engine of light and
warmth wearing itself out as it tried to manufacture more seed-givers to replace those being lost. Tom
and Jessie saw the image of a peace mission—four of Daufin’s tribe swimming the long distance to the
surface, to communicate to the aliens above why the harvesting must stop. Time passed, and they did not
return.

   Death had come. Daufin swam with her new calf amid the forest of hoses; her study of mathematics,
used in the building of the tribe’s cities, would allow her to calculate the time remaining from the number
of seed-givers being suctioned up a single hose, but that was a statistic she didn’t wish to know. The
orchards, the city, the entire tribe—all had been sentenced to death by a cold executioner. The calf
played innocently between the hoses, unaware of the terrible reality—and the sight of that blind
innocence amid the carnage cracked something within Daufin, made her thrash and wail with anguish.
Aggression was evil, buried in the long-ago legends of a war that had evolved the tether and sphere as
part of the tribe’s natural defenses, but a chasm of fire had opened within Daufin and wild tides
summoned her. Her wail became a song of rage, like the urgent tolling of alarm bells—and then her body
hurtled forward, and her fingers gripped the nearest hose. Too strong to tear, which further enraged her.
The sickle-slash mouth opened, and the flat teeth of a vegetarian clamped on the hose and ground into it.
A shock of agony and shame coursed through her, but the song of rage powered her on; the hose ripped,
and seed-givers spilled out, whirled around her, began to drift downward again into the valley. The next
hose was easier, and the one after that easier still. A storm of seed-givers flowed from the tears.
   And through that storm Daufin saw two of the tribe, hovering, watching with a mixture of horror and
reawakened purpose. They hesitated, on the verge of sacrilege, and as Daufin’s song rose in intensity
they propelled themselves forward and joined her task.

   A dark cloud approached from the city. Adrift in the inner eye, Tom and Jessie saw it just as Daufin
had: thousands of the tribe, responding to this almost-forgotten song. Many saw the violence and stayed
back, unable to give themselves to aggression, but many more attacked the hoses in a frenzy. A timeshift:
more machines and hoses streaked down from the surface, harpooning into the planet’s heart, but
swarms of Daufin’s tribe followed as she sang—a turbulence of rage as raw as a scream.

   Finally, the battleground lay silent, and broken hoses drifted in the current.

    But the peace was short, the nightmare just beginning. A blink of the inner eye, and Tom and Jessie
felt a vibration in their bones. From the surface’s darkness descended four rotating metallic spheres; they
roamed over the city, issuing sonic blasts like Earth thunder magnified a millionfold. The walls and towers
shivered and cracked, shock waves destroyed the towers, the city crumpled, and the bodies of dead and
wounded spun in the debris. Daufin’s calf was torn away from her; she reached for it, missed, saw the
calf instinctively withdraw into its lifepod in a shimmer of contracting organs and flesh. The pod sailed
away, mingling with hundreds of others buffeted in the savage tides. A piece of jagged wall flew out of
the murk at Daufin. There was a crackling of energy, a shrinking of flesh and internals, the skin turned to
smoke, the organs merged into a small ball of electrical impulses, and in the next instant there was nothing
but the black sphere, hitting the fragment of wall and ricocheting away.

   A current took them—Daufin, Tom, and Jessie, bodiless and floating in an armored shell—and the
darkness closed in. There was a rapid ascent, as if they were being hurled upward in an Earth tornado.
Something glimmered ahead: a blue webbing—a net, full of entrapped creatures from the upper regions,
things that resembled fluorescent starfish, flat gasping membranes, and aquatics with eyes like golden
lamps. The sphere hit it, was enfolded in the webbing. And hung there, along with the other helpless life.
A thudding of machinery came from above. The net was being hauled up. The sphere broke the surface
like a sheet of black glass, and in that realm between the ocean and the low white clouds spidery
structures squatted like malignant growths. Nightmarish figures stood on them, watching the net come up.
One of them reached out a talon, and gripped the pod.

   Daufin’s inner eye cringed. The power of memory was not strong enough to hold her, and she fled.

   Stars swept past Jessie and Tom—an outward journey, away from Daufin’s world. Each had
glimpses of hallucinatory scenes: massive, scuttling creatures with voices like doomsday trumpets; space
machines bristling with weapons; a gargantuan pyramid with mottled yellow skin and two scarlet suns
beating down on a tortured landscape; a floating cage and amber needles that punctured the pupils of
Daufin’s eyes.

   She moaned, and her hands opened.

   Tom and Jessie were grasped by an abrupt deceleration, as if they were aboard a high-speed elevator
shrieking to the bottom of a mile-long shaft. Their insides seemed to squeeze with compression, their
bones bending under gravity’s iron weight. And then the stop came: a whisper instead of a crash.

   Tom lifted his eyelids. Three monsters with bony limbs and grotesque fleshy heads were standing
before him. One of them opened a cavity full of blunt little nubs and grunted, “Yu-hoke, Mstyr Hamynd?”

   Jessie heard the guttural growl, and her eyes opened too. She was supported on unsteady stalks, the
light was glary and hostile; she was about to topple, and as she cried out the sound daggered her brain.
One of the aliens, a thing with a horrid angular face topped with coiled pale sprigs and a totem of some
kind dangling from a flap on the side of its head, moved forward and caught her with snaky arms.

  She blinked, momentarily stunned. But the creature’s face was changing, becoming less monstrous.
Features—hair, ears, and arms—became familiar again, and then she could recognize Cody Lockett.
Relief rushed through her, and her knees sagged.

   “I’ve got you,” Cody said. This time she could understand the words.

   Tom wavered on his feet, his palms pressed to his eye sockets. “You okay, Mr. Hammond?” Tank
asked again. Tom’s brain ached as if deeply bruised. He managed to nod. “If you’re gonna puke, you’d
better do it out the window,” the boy advised.

  Tom lowered his hands. He squinted in the light and looked at the three Renegades; their faces were
human again—or, in Tank’s case, nearly so.

   “I can stand by myself,” Jessie said, and when Cody let her go, she sank wearily to her knees. She
didn’t know if all of herself had returned from the void yet, and maybe it never would. Cody offered to
help her up, but she waved him off. “I’m all right. Just leave me alone for a minute.” She looked to her
side, into the face of her little girl.

   Tears had streamed down the cheeks. The eyes were tormented. “Now you know me,” Daufin said.

   Tom lifted his left wrist, had a few seconds of difficulty in deciphering the numerals, as if he’d never
seen such symbols before. It was two-nineteen. Their “journey” had taken less than three minutes.

   “You two look sick!” Nasty observed. “What happened?”

    “We got an education.” Jessie tried to rise, but still wasn’t ready. “The chemical,” she said to Daufin.
“It’s reproductive fluid, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Daufin’s gaze was impassive, and a final tear trickled slowly down her left cheek. “What the
House of Fists calls ‘poison’ is the same chemical that gives my tribe life.”

   Jessie remembered the jetting of dark fluid during the mating ritual. The same chemical vital to the
reproduction process on Daufin’s world was a weapon of destruction for the House of Fists.

    “I have to get home,” Daufin said firmly. “I don’t know how many are still alive. I don’t know if my
own child still is. But I led them. Without me, they won’t fight. They’ll slip back into the dream of peace.”
She drew a long breath, and for a few seconds she allowed herself to feel the caress of the tides again,
rising and falling. “It was a dream that lasted too long,” she said, “but it was a wonderful dream.”

   “Even if you could get home, how would you fight them? They’d just keep coming, wouldn’t they?”

   “Yes, they would, but our world is a long way from theirs. We have to stop them from building a
permanent base, and destroy everything of theirs we can. Their treasury isn’t bottomless; they spend all
they have on weapons. So there has to be a breaking point beyond which they can’t go.”

  “That sounds like wishful thinking,” Tom said.

   “It is, unless I can get home to act on it. We know the planet. They don’t. We can strike and hide in
places they can’t reach.” Her eyes shone with a glint of steel again. “The House of Fists has been
studying me to find out why my body resists the ‘poison.’ I’ve escaped Rock Seven before. This time
they’ll kill me. I can’t give myself to Stinger—not yet. Do you understand that?”
  “We do. Colonel Rhodes might not.” Another glance at the wristwatch. “Jessie, he’s going to be
waiting for us by now at the Brandin’ Iron.”

  “Listen, I don’t get all this,” Cody said, “but I believe one thing for sure: if we let Stinger take Daufin
and leave here, that won’t be the end of it. Like she said, he’ll send those House of Fist sumbitches after
us—and that won’t be just Inferno in deep shit, man! That’ll be the whole world!”

   “Maybe so, but we’ve still got to let Rhodes know we’ve found her.”

   “Tom’s right,” Jessie agreed. She stood up, still felt light-headed and stretched, and she had to lean
against the table for support. “We’ll go get the colonel and bring him back here,” she said to Daufin. “He
can help us figure out what to do.”

    “You two better stay here with her.” Cody fished the Honda’s keys out of his pocket. “I’ll go down
to the Brandin’ Iron and get him.”

   “Yeah, and I’ve gotta go find my folks,” Tank said. His camouflage-painted pickup truck, one
headlight and the radiator grille smashed from its rude entry into the Warp Room, was in the parking lot.
“I ain’t seen ’em since I left the clinic.”

   “Just stay in here and hang tight,” Cody told Tom and Jessie. He left the apartment, and Nasty
followed Tank to the door. She paused, looked at Daufin with something like admiration, and said, “Bi
zarre!” Then she strode after Tank, and the door closed behind her.



                                                   45
                                             Spit ’n Gristle


Vance parked the patrol car in front of the Brandin’ Iron, peeled his sweat-sopped shirt off the seat
back, and walked in. The plate-glass window had been shattered, but a sheet had been nailed up over it
to keep most of the smoke out. A few kerosene lamps cast a fitful glow, and the place was empty except
for a back booth where three old-timers sat talking quietly. Vance avoided their stares and bellied up to
the counter. Sue Mullinax, still wearing her gold-colored waitress uniform and her heavy makeup still
more or less where it ought to be, came down the counter with a cup about a quarter full of cold coffee.
“This is the last of the Java,” she said as she gave it to him, and he nodded and swigged it down.

   He angled his wrist toward a nearby lamp and checked the time. Twenty-three minutes after two. The
Hammonds were late, and so were Rhodes and Gunniston. Didn’t matter much, he thought. Nobody was
going to find that little critter, at least not in the time they had left. You couldn’t see a thing for all that
smoke out there. He and Danny had checked houses all along Aurora, Bowden, and about a third of
Oakley Street. Nobody had seen the little girl, and several of the houses had no floors, just holes into
darkness. Danny had started going to pieces again, and Vance had to take him back to the office. Inferno
had always seemed like such a small place, but now the streets had elongated and the houses had
become shadow mansions, and with all this smoke and dust there was just no damned way to find
somebody who didn’t want to be found.

   “Rough night,” Sue said.

   “Better believe it. Cecil gone home?”
   “Yeah, he lit out awhile back.”

   “Why don’t you shut down and head out too? Not much use stayin’ open, is there?”

   “I like to have somethin’ to do,” she said. “Better stay here than go to a dark house.”

   “Reckon so.” The low light was flattering to her. He thought that if she didn’t wear enough makeup to
pave a road, she’d be real pretty. ’Course, Whale Tail was as chunky as a fire plug, but who was he to
consider size with all the spare tires he was trucking around? Maybe she did wear a mattress on her
back, but maybe there was a reason for that too. “How come you never left Inferno?” he decided to ask,
to keep his mind off the inexorable tick of time. “Seems like you were real smart in high school and all.”

   “I don’t know.” She shrugged her fleshy shoulders. “Nothin’ ever came along, I reckon.”

   “Hell, you can’t wait for things to come along! You gotta go after ’em! Seems like you could’ve
found yourself a good job somewhere, got yourself hitched up, maybe have a houseful of kids by now.”
He upturned the cup and caught the last bitter drop of coffee.

   “Just never happened. Anyways”—she smiled faintly, a sad smile—“the men I’ve been seein’ don’t
exactly want to get married and have kids. Well, I probably wouldn’t have been too good at that, either.”

  “You’re still just a kid yourself! What are you, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?” He saw her grimace.
“That’s not old! Hell, you’ve still got”—his voice faltered, but he kept going—“plenty of time yet.”

  She didn’t answer. Vance looked at his watch again. Another minute had gone. “Danny’s sweet on
you,” he told her. “You know that, don’t you?”

   “I like Danny. Oh, I don’t mean for marryin’. Not even for… y’know.” A blush rose in her round
cheeks.

   “I thought you and Danny were… uh… real close.”

   “We are. Friends, I mean. Danny’s a gentleman,” she said with dignity. “He comes over to my place,
and we talk. That’s all. It’s rare to find a man to talk to. Seems like men and women have a hard time
just talkin’, don’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He felt a pang of shame for making fun of her, and it occurred to him that maybe
Danny was more of a man than he’d thought.

     She nodded. Her head turned toward the doorway. Vance saw her eyes; they seemed to be fixed on
a great distance. “Maybe I could’ve gone,” she said. “I was the best in my typin’ class. Reckon I
could’ve been a secretary. But I didn’t want to leave. I mean… Inferno ain’t the best place in the world,
but it’s my home. That makes it special, no matter how much it’s broke down. I’ve got real good
memories of Inferno… like when I was head cheerleader at the high school, and one night we were
playin’ the Cedartown Cavaliers.” Her eyes shone with the blaze of ten years past. “It was rainin’ that
night, just pourin’ down, but me and my girls were out there. And right when Gary Pardee threw that
forty-yard touchdown the girls lifted me up and I did a monkey flip and everybody on that field let out a
holler like I hadn’t never heard before. Ain’t heard one like it since, either. Folks came up to me later and
said it was amazin’, how I could do a monkey flip in all that rain without breakin’ my neck, and they said
I came down light as an angel’s feather.” She blinked; just like that, the spell broke. “Well,” she said,
“I’m somebody here, and out there…” She motioned toward the rest of the world. “I wouldn’t be
nobody.” Her eyes found his, and looked deep. “This is my home. Yours too. We’ve gotta fight to keep
it.”
   The taste of ashes was in Vance’s mouth. “We will,” he said, but the words had a hollow ring.

   Headlights shone through the sheeted window. A car pulled up beside Vance’s. The headlights were
cut, and then a solitary figure approached the door. Not Rhodes or Gunniston, Vance knew. They’d
gone off on foot. Celeste Preston sauntered in as if she owned every crack in the tiles, sat down at the far
end of the counter, and said, “Gimme a beer and an egg.”

   “Yes ma’am.” Sue got a lukewarm Lone Star out of the cooler and went to the refrigerator for the
egg.

    Celeste’s gaze wandered down the counter. She nodded at Vance. “Kinda past your bedtime, ain’t
it?”

   “Kinda.” He was too tired to trade punches with her. “I wouldn’t sleep very good, anyways.”

   “Me neither.” She took the egg Sue gave her, broke its shell against the counter’s edge, and
swallowed the yolk whole, then chased it down with a chug-a-lug of beer. “I gave blood a couple of
hours ago,” she explained, and wiped a yellow strand off her mouth with the back of her hand. “Wint
used to say a raw egg and beer was the quickest way to get your vitamins.”

   “Quickest way to puke too,” Vance said.

   She swigged down more beer, and Sue went to check on the old-timers at the back. “How come
you’re not out protectin’ the town, Vance? Maybe drag that sonofabitch outta his spaceship and sit on
him till he calls uncle?”

   Vance took his pack of Camels from his breast pocket and lit a cigarette, mulling her questions over.
He snorted smoke, looked at her, and said, “And why don’t you crawl up your ass and pull the hole in
after you?” She just stared at him, her eyes like bits of cold flint and the beer bottle short of her lips.
“You’re an almighty high bitch to be sittin’ in here tellin’ me what I oughta do. You don’t think I give a
shit about this town, do you? Well, maybe I screwed up some—screwed up a lot—but I’ve always
done what I thought was best. Even when I was takin’ money from Cade. Shit, what else was gonna
keep Inferno alive but that little bastard’s business?” He felt blood ballooning his. face, and his heart was
pounding. “My wife hated every inch of this town and ran off with a truck driver, but I stayed. I’ve got
two sons that went with her, and they only know enough about me to cuss me over the telephone, but I
stayed. Every day I eat dust and get cursed in two languages, but I stayed. I’ve paid my dues, lady!” He
jabbed the cigarette at her. “So don’t you sit there in your joggin’ suit and your diamond rings on your
fingers and say I don’t care about this town!” And then he said something he’d always known, but never
dared to admit: “It’s all I’ve got!”

  Celeste stayed motionless for a moment. She sipped from the Lone Star and set the bottle softly
down on the counter. Lifted her fingers to display the rings. “They’re fake,” she said. “Sold the real
ones.” A brittle smile played across her mouth. “I reckon I deserved that, Ed. Spit ’n gristle’s what
we’ve been needin’ around this cemetery. How about sharin’ your smokes?” She picked up her beer
and slid over the seats, sitting down with two between them.

   Ed, he thought. That was the first time she’d ever used his first name. He skidded his pack of Camels
and his lighter toward her, and she scooped them up. She lit a cigarette and inhaled with pure pleasure.
“Figure if I’m gonna die, I might as well go happy,” she said.

   “We’re not gonna die. We’ll get out of this.”

   “Ed, I like you better when you tell the truth.” She spun the pack and lighter back to him. “Our hides
are worth about as much as Kotex in a men’s prison, and you know it.”

  They heard the growl of an engine outside. Cody Lockett came in through the smoke and lifted his
goggles. “I’m lookin’ for Colonel Rhodes,” he said to the sheriff. “He’s supposed to be here.”

  “Yeah, I’m waitin’ for him too. He’s about ten minutes late.” He didn’t care for another glance at his
watch. “What do you want him for?”

   “The little girl’s up at the ’Gade fort. You know who I mean: Daufin.”

   Vance almost came up off his seat. “Right now? She’s there right now?”

   “Yeah, Mr. Hammond and his wife are with her. So where’s the colonel?”

   “He and Captain Gunniston were goin’ across the bridge into Bordertown. I guess they’re still over
there.”

   “Okay. I’ll go hunt ’em. If they show up here, you tell ’em the news.” He put the goggles back over
his eyes and sprinted out to the Honda, got on, pumped the kickstarter, and headed east on Celeste
Street. Two things hit him: he’d just given an order to the sheriff—and been obeyed—and that was
Celeste Preston herself sitting in there. He turned onto the bridge and throttled up, the engine making a
choked roar in the dirty air.

    He was halfway across when two headlights stabbed through the haze. A car was racing over from
Bordertown, straddling the center line. Cody and the car’s driver hit their brakes at the same time, and
both vehicles swerved with a scream of tires and stopped almost abreast of each other. The car’s engine
rattled and died.

   Cody saw it was Mack Cade’s silver Mercedes. There were two men in it, the driver a
rugged-looking dude with close-cropped dark hair and a streak of dried blood on his face. “You Colonel
Rhodes?” Cody asked, and the man nodded. “Mr. Hammond and his wife sent me. Their little girl’s up at
the apartment building.” He motioned to it, but its lights couldn’t be seen from this distance. “At the end
of Travis Street.”

   “We already know.” Rhodes started the engine again. “A boy at the church told us.” He and
Gunniston had gone into the Catholic church on First Street and asked Father LaPrado if they could
address from the podium the people who’d come in for shelter. Along with the information, Rick Jurado
had given them the keys to the Mercedes. “We haven’t got much time,” Rhodes said, and he backed the
car up, straightened it out, and sped away.

   Cody knew who he’d found out from. Jurado was the only one who could’ve told him. He started to
turn his bike around, but he realized he was only about thirty yards from Bordertown. The church was
maybe another fifty or sixty yards along First Street. If Jurado was there, his sister would be too. He
decided he might maybe even go in if he felt like it. What were the Rattlers going to do, jump him right in
church? It would be worth seeing the shock on Jurado’s face—and, besides, he wouldn’t mind another
look at Miranda.

  Everything was going to hell anyway, and this seemed like the right time to dare fate. He gunned the
engine and headed south, and in another few seconds the tires bit Bordertown pavement.



                                                    46
                                            Time Ticking


A figure walked through the haze, favoring a right leg that folded up at the knee joint. “Come on,
Scooter!” he said, and paused for the dog to catch up. Then he walked on, up to the front door of the
Hammond house on Celeste Street. He knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again. “Nobody
here!” he told Scooter. “Do we go home or set up camp?”

   Scooter was undecided too. “She might show up,” Sarge said. “This is where she lives.” He tried the
doorknob; it turned, and the door opened. “Anybody home?” he called, but there was no answer from
within. Scooter sniffed around the doorframe and took the first step inside the house. “Don’t you go in
there! We ain’t been invited!” Sarge protested. Scooter had his own mind, though, and the dog trotted
on in as fancy as you please.

  But the decision was made. They would wait here for either the little girl or the Hammonds. Sarge
walked in, shut the door, and found his way into a room where a lot of books lay on the floor. He wasn’t
much for reading, but he remembered a book his mother used to read to him: something about a little girl
who went down a hole after a rabbit. His bad knee bumped a chair, and he let himself spill into it.

   Scooter crawled up into his lap, and the both of them sat together in the dark.



    About a quarter mile from the Hammond house, Curt Lockett entered his own front door. The raw
left side of his face was covered with gauze, and adhesive strips held a pad of iodine-smeared cotton to
the flayed skin over his ribs. He’d passed out in the back of the pickup truck and awakened as he was
being carried over the Mexican’s shoulder like a grain sack into the clinic. A nurse had given him a
couple of painkilling shots and tended to his wounds, all the time while he was babbling like a crazy fool
about the massacre at the Bob Wire Club. The nurse had called Early McNeil in to listen, and Curt had
told him about the trooper cars and the air-force men out on Highway 67. McNeil had promised to let
the colonel know and wanted to put Curt in a room, but Curt couldn’t stand that. The reek of disinfectant
and alcohol was too much like Kentucky Gent; it reminded him of Hal McCutchins’s brains gleaming in
the lamplight and made him sick to his stomach.

   He’d already seen that Cody’s motorcycle wasn’t here. The boy was probably up at the apartment
building, like he figured. Darkness used to be no problem for him, but he had trouble going through the
front room while visions of a charred black thing with a whipping tail dug into his brain. But he made the
kitchen, fumbled in a drawer for candles and matches. He found a single stubby candle and a matchbook
and lit the wick. The flame grew, and he saw that the matchbook advertised the Bob Wire Club.

   There was evidence that Cody had been here: a candle was stuck to a saucer on the countertop. Curt
opened the refrigerator, got out a bottle of grape juice—just a few swigs left in it—and finished it. The
coppery taste of blood was still in his mouth, and two empty sockets where teeth had been pounded with
his heartbeat.

   He relit the candle in the saucer and took it with him to the bedroom. His best shirt, the red cowboy
number, was lying on the floor and he gingerly shrugged into it. He sat on the bed, sweat crawling down
his face in the rank heat.

   He noticed that the little picture of Treasure on the bedside table had fallen over. He picked it up,
stared at her face in the low yellow light. Long time gone, he thought. Long time.
   The bed pulled at him. It wanted him to crawl into the damp sheets, hold Treasure’s picture to his
chest, curl up, and sleep. Because sleep was next to death, and he realized that was what he’d been
waiting for. Treasure was in a place beyond his reach, and she still had golden hair and a smile like
sunshine and she would be forever young while he just wore out a little more every day.

    But by the candlelight he saw something in the picture that hadn’t been evident to him before:
Treasure’s face had Cody in it. The thick, curly hair was the same as Cody’s, yes, but there were other
things too—the sharp jawline, the full eyebrows, the angular shape of the face. And the eyes too: even
smiling, there was steel in Treasure’s eyes, just like there was in Cody’s. Treasure had to be mighty
strong to put up with me, Curt thought. Mighty strong.

   Cody was in Treasure. Right there he was, right in the picture. He’d been there all along, but Curt had
never seen it until this moment.

  And Treasure was in Cody too. It was as clear as a shaft of sunlight breaking through storm clouds,
and darkness began to unlock in Curt’s mind.

   His hand pressed to his mouth. He felt as stunned as if he’d just taken a punch in the teeth. Treasure
was in Cody. She had left him part of herself, and he’d tossed the gift aside like a snotty rag. “Oh Lord,”
he whispered. “Oh my Lord.” He looked at the splintered tie rack that hung on the wall, and a moan
ached for release.

   He had to find Cody. Had to make the boy understand that his eyes had been blind and his heart sick.
That wouldn’t make up for things, and there was a lot of dirty water under the bridge—but it had to start
somewhere, didn’t it? He carefully removed the picture of Treasure, because he wanted Cody to see
himself in her, and he gently folded it and put it in his back pocket.

   His boots clumped across the crooked boards with the noise of someone who has found a
destination. The screen door slammed at his back, and he walked to Sombra Street and turned north
where it met Travis.



   At the Inferno Clinic, Ray Hammond finished putting on his clothes, blood-splattered shirt and all, and
left his room. His glasses were gone and everything was blurry around the edges, but he could see well
enough to walk without bumping into walls. He had almost made it to the nurses’ station when a
nurse—Mrs. Bonner, he thought it was—suddenly came out of a door on his right and said, “Where do
you think you’re going, young man?”

   “Home.” His tongue was still swollen and the hinges of his jaw ached when he talked.

   “Not until Dr. McNeil gives you the okay.”

   She had that rough authority in her voice, like Cross Eyes Geppardo. “I’m giving myself the okay. I
can’t sleep, and I’m not going to lie in there and stare at the ceiling.”

   “Come on.” She took his arm. “You’re going back to bed.”

   Somebody else trying to get me out of the way, he thought, and a flash of anger lit him up inside. “I
said I’m going home.” Ray jerked his arm free. “And I didn’t say you could touch me, either.” Even
without his glasses he could see her mouth purse with indignation. “Maybe I’m a kid, but I’ve got rights.
Like going to my own house if I want to. Thanks for patching me up, and adios.” He walked past her,
limping a little bit. He expected her hand to grasp his shoulder, but he was three strides away before he
heard her start calling for Dr. McNeil. He went past the front desk, said good night to Mrs. Santos, and
kept on going out the door. Dr. McNeil didn’t come after him. He figured the doc had more important
things to do than chase him down. He could barely see ten feet ahead for all the haze and his own bad
eyes, and the air smelled like a chem lab stinkbomb, but he kept on trudging along Celeste Street, his
sneakers crunching on bits of glass from the shattered windows.



    As Ray was starting home, Cody Lockett pulled his motorcycle to the steps of Bordertown’s
Catholic church. He lifted his goggles and sat for a moment with the engine popping under him.
Candlelight shone through the church’s stained-glass windows, and he could see people moving around
in there. On any other night, his ass would be grass for being over here, but tonight the rules had
changed. He cut the engine and headlight and got off, and that was when he saw the figure standing in a
yard just across First Street, less than fifteen feet away. His hand settled on the nail-studded bat taped to
the handlebar.

   Cody couldn’t make out the face, but he could see that the black hair hung over the figure’s shoulders
in oily ringlets. “Crowfield?” he said. Louder: “That you, Crowfield?”

   Sonny Crowfield didn’t move. Maybe there was a smile on his face, or maybe it was more of a leer.
His eyes gleamed wetly in the church’s candlelight.

  “Better get off the street, man!” Cody told him. Still Crowfield didn’t respond. “You gone deaf or
somethi—”

   A hand closed on his arm. He hollered, “Shit!” and whirled around.

  Zarra Alhambra stood on the steps. “What’re you doin’ over here, Lockett? You gone crazy?” Rick
had put him on guard at the door, and he’d heard Lockett’s motorcycle and then the boy talking to
somebody.

  Cody pulled his arm free. “I came over to see Jurado.” He didn’t say which one. “I was tryin’ to tell
Crowfield he’d better find some cover.” He motioned across the street.

   Zarra looked in that direction. “Crowfield? Where?”

  “Right there, man!” He pointed—and realized his finger was aimed at empty space. The figure was
gone. “He was standin’ over there, in that yard,” Cody said. He looked up and down the street, but the
smoke had taken Sonny Crowfield. “I swear it was him! I mean… it looked like him.”

  The same thought hit both of them. Zarra retreated a couple of steps, his eyes wide and darting.
“Come on,” he said, and Cody quickly followed him into the church.

    The sanctuary was packed full of people, sitting on the pews and in the aisles. Father LaPrado and six
or seven volunteers were trying to keep everyone calm, but the babble of frightened voices and the wail
of babies was like the din of a madhouse. Cody figured there were at least two hundred Bordertown
residents inside the sanctuary, probably more in other parts of the church. At the altar a table had been
set up with paper cups and bottled water, sandwiches, doughnuts, and other food from the church’s
kitchen. Dozens of candles cast a tawny glow, and a few people had brought kerosene lamps and
flashlights.

   Cody was about four strides through the doorway when someone planted a palm against his bruised
breastbone and shoved him backward. Len Redfeather, an Apache kid almost as big as Tank, snarled,
“Get your ass out, man! Now!”

   Somebody else was beside Cody, shoving him too, and at the sign of a ruckus three more
Rattlesnakes pushed their way to the back of the church like a human wedge. Redfeather’s next thrust
slammed Cody up against the wall. “Fight! Fight!” Pequin started yelling, jumping up and down with
excitement. “Hey, I don’t want any trouble!” Cody protested, but Redfeather kept shoving him, banging
his back up against the cracked plaster.

   “Stop that! There’ll be no fighting in here!” Father LaPrado was coming up the aisle as fast as he
could, and Xavier Mendoza stood up from his seat beside his wife and uncle and tried to get to Cody’s
defense.

   Now there were Rattlesnake faces all around Cody, taunting and shouting. Redfeather’s hand gripped
the front of Cody’s T-shirt, started to rip it off him, and Cody whacked his arm into the Apache’s elbow
and knocked the hand away. “No fighting in my church!” the priest was hollering, but the knot of
Rattlesnakes had closed around Cody, and neither LaPrado nor Mendoza could break through.
Redfeather grabbed Cody’s shirt again, and Cody saw the boy’s battle-scarred fist rise up and he knew
the punch was going to pop his lights out. He tensed, just about to block the blow and drive a knee into
Redfeather’s groin.

   “Stop.”

    It was not a shout, but the command was spoken with absolute authority. Redfeather’s fist paused at
its apex, and his rage-dark eyes flickered to his left. Rick Jurado pushed past Pequin and Diego
Montana, stared intensely at Cody for a few seconds. “Let him go,” Rick said.

  Redfeather gave Cody one more hard shove for good measure, then released his handful of T-shirt
and uncocked his fist.

  Rick stood right in front of Cody, not allowing him any room to move. “Man, you’ve gone around the
bend for sure. What’re you doin’ over here?”

   Cody tried to look around the sanctuary, but he couldn’t see Miranda amid all the people and Rick
shifted to block his view. “I thought I’d come say thanks for savin’ my skin. No law against that, is
there?”

   “Okay. Thanks accepted. Now get out.”

   “Rick, he says he saw Sonny Crowfield outside, standin’ across the street.” Zarra pushed his way
next to Rick. “I didn’t see him, but I thought… you know… that it might not be Sonny anymore.”

   “Right,” Cody said. “It might be one of those things, like the Cat Lady. He was across from the
church; maybe he was watchin’ the place.”

  Rick didn’t like that possibility. “Anybody seen Sonny Crowfield?” he asked the others.

  “Yeah!” Pequin spoke up. “I saw him about an hour ago, man. He said he was headin’ home.”

   Rick thought for a moment. Crowfield lived in a shack down at the end of Third Street; he wasn’t
among Rick’s favorite people, but he was a Rattler and that made him a brother too. All the other
Rattlers were accounted for, except the five who were laid up at the clinic. Rick’s Camaro was still
parked in front of his house on Second Street. “Your motor outside?” he asked Cody.

  “Yeah. Why?”
   “You and me are gonna take a ride over to Crowfield’s house and check it out.”

  “No way! I was just leavin’.” Party time was over, and Cody edged toward the door, but a crush of
Rattler bodies hemmed him in.

   “You came in here to show how brave you are, didn’t you?” Rick asked. “Maybe another reason,
too.” He’d seen Cody rubbernecking around, and he knew who the boy was searching for. Miranda sat
with Paloma in a pew about halfway along the center aisle. “You owe me. I’m collecting, right now.” He
pulled the reloaded .38 out of his waistband and spun the cylinder a few inches in front of Cody’s face.
“You up to it, macho man?”

   Cody saw the haughty defiance in Rick’s eyes, and he smiled grimly. “Have I got a choice?”

  “Stand back,” Rick told the others. “Let him go if he wants to.” They moved away, and a path was
open to the door.

   Cody didn’t give a kick about Sonny Crowfield. He didn’t care for another meeting with Stinger,
either. He started to head for the door—but suddenly there she was, standing just behind her brother.
Sweat sparkled on her face, her hair lay in damp curls, and dark hollows had gathered under her eyes,
but she was still a smash fox. He nodded at her, but she didn’t respond. Rick saw the nod and turned.
Miranda said, “Paloma’s afraid. She wants to know what’s going on.”

   “We’re about to throw some garbage out on the street,” he answered. “It’s okay.”

   Her gaze returned to Cody. He was about the most bedraggled and beat-up thing she’d ever seen.
“Hi,” he said. “Remember me?” And then Rick pressed the pistol’s barrel up against Cody’s cheek and
leaned forward. “You don’t talk to my sister,” Rick warned, his eyes boring into Cody’s. “Not one
word. You hear me?”

   Cody ignored him. “Your brother and I are gonna go for a little spin on my motor.” The gun barrel
pressed harder, but Cody just grinned. What was Jurado going to do, shoot him right here in front of the
priest, his sister, God, and everybody? “We won’t be too long.”

   “Leave him alone, Rick,” Miranda said. “Put the gun down.”

    Never in Rick’s wildest nightmares had he ever envisioned anything like this: Cody Lockett not only
on Rattler turf, but in the church! And talking to Miranda like he actually knew her! His guts writhed with
fire and fury, and it was all he could do not to smash his fist into Lockett’s grinning face.

   “Rick!” Now it was the snap of Mendoza’s voice as he pushed people out of his way and came
forward. “Cody’s all right! Leave him alone!”

   “It’s okay,” Cody said. “We’re on our way out.” He reached up, grasped Jurado’s gunhand, and
eased it aside. Then, with a last lingering glance and a smile at Miranda, he walked through the
Rattlesnakes and paused at the door. “You comin’, or not?” he asked.

   “I am,” Rick said. Cody slid the goggles over his eyes and went down the steps to the motorcycle.

   In another few seconds Rick followed, the .38 in his waistband again. Cody got on the Honda and
started the engine, and Rick straddled the passenger seat behind him. Over the motor’s snarl, Rick said,
“When we get out of this, I’m gonna beat you so bad you’ll wish I’d left you down in that ho—”

   Cody throttled up, the engine screamed, and the front tire reared up off the pavement, and Rick held
on for dear life as the machine shot forward.
                                                       47
                                                   Firepower


“We’ve got seven minutes,” Tom said in answer to the colonel’s question about how much time remained
before Stinger’s deadline.

     Rhodes returned his attention to Daufin. “You know Stinger can destroy this town. You know he’ll do
it if we don’t give you over.”

   “If we do give her up,” Jessie said, “it’s not just our child’s body we’re talking about. If Stinger gets
back to his masters and tells them about us, they’ll come here with an invasion fleet.”

   “I can’t think about that right now!” Rhodes ran his forearm across his face. The apartment was thick
with heat, and smoke was creeping in through the cracked-open window. “All I know is, Stinger wants
Daufin. If we don’t hand her over in less than seven minutes, a lot of people are going to die!”

      “And more people are going to die if we do!” She caught the faintest breeze, and offered her throat to
it.

   Daufin was staring out the window into the haze. There: she felt it again. A cold current of power. She
knew what it was: a seeker beam from Stinger’s ship, probing for the lifepod. It had passed on now,
continuing its slow rotation across Inferno. Daufin’s host skin prickled in its wake. The pod had its own
natural defense system that would deflect the beam for a short time, but Daufin had learned enough about
Stinger’s technology to know that sooner or later the seeker would pinpoint its target.

      “What’s Stinger going to make? Do you know?” Rhodes asked her.

   She shook her head. Death and destruction crowded into her brain; she saw this lifepod called
Inferno ablaze and crushed—if not by Stinger, then by the House of Fists. She glimpsed a fragment of the
force field, glowing through the clouds of smoke, then her view was obscured again. She knew that many
innocents were about to die, and too many had already perished because of her. The old rage seethed
inside her. She saw the towers of her city crack and fall, saw mangled bodies spinning in the debris. The
same brutality was about to happen here. “I must exit this world,” Daufin said. “I’ve got to get home.”

      “There’s no way!” Rhodes countered. “We told you: Earth doesn’t have interstellar vehicles!”

   “You’re incorrect.” Daufin’s voice was quiet, and she continued to stare to the southwest, in the
direction of Mack Cade’s autoyard.

      “Do you know something I don’t?”

      “There is an interstellar vehicle on Earth.” Her eyes shone as if brilliant with fever. “Stinger’s ship.”

      “What good will that do you?”

      “I’m going to take Stinger’s ship,” she answered. “That’s how I’m going to get home.”



      As the voice of a warrior came from a little girl’s throat, Cody guided the motorcycle to the curb
where Rick directed him. Sonny Crowfield lived alone in a gray clapboard shack on the edge of Cade’s
autoyard, and Cody drove up onto a trash-strewn yard and stopped with the headlight aimed at the
closed front door. The house’s porch sagged, the windows were broken out, and the place appeared
deserted—but then again, so did the other houses on Third Street. Cody cut the engine but left the
headlight burning. Rick got off, withdrew the .38, and walked to the bottom of the porch’s three
cinder-block steps before he realized Cody wasn’t with him.

   “I said I’d come with you,” Cody told him. “I didn’t say I’d go in.”

  “Muchas gracias.” Rick snapped the pistol’s safety off and started up the steps. He rapped on the
door with the barrel. “Hey, Crowfield! It’s Rick Jurado!”

   No one came to the door. Cody shifted uneasily in his seat and glanced around. The pyramid stood to
his right; he could see its vague, violet-washed outline through the murk.

   “Answer up, Sonny!” Rick called. He knocked with his fist—and suddenly the door fell in with a
scream of splintered wood and hung by one hinge. Rick jumped back, and Cody’s hand leapt to the
baseball bat.

   “I don’t think he’s home,” Cody said.

   Rick peered inside, could see nothing. “You got a light?”

   “Forget it, man! Crowfield’s gone!”

   “You got a light or not?” Rick asked, and waited. Cody snorted and dug his Zippo lighter out of his
pocket. He flipped it to Rick, and the other boy caught it. Rick popped the flame up and started to cross
the threshold.

   “Watch your step!” Cody warned. “I don’t want to be pullin’ you up on a rope!”

   “Front room’s got a floor,” Rick said, and he went in.

   The house had a cemetery smell. The lighter’s flame told Rick why: skeletons hung on the cracked
walls. The bones had belonged to vultures, armadillos, coyotes, and snakes, and they were all over the
place. He followed the flame through the front room into a hallway where bat and owl skeletons dangled
on wires. He’d heard about Crowfield’s “collection” from Pequin, but he’d never been here before and
he was glad he hadn’t. He came to another room off the corridor and thrust the lighter into the doorway.

   “Shit,” he whispered. Most of the room’s floor had collapsed into darkness.

   He walked carefully to the edge of the broken floorboards and looked down. He couldn’t see a
bottom, but the light glinted off something lying a few feet to his left, up against the wall’s baseboard. He
reached for it, and found a copper-jacketed bullet in his hand. And there were more of them: nine or ten
bullets, lying on the other side of the hole. If Crowfield had bullets, there must be a gun around here, Rick
thought. There was a closet within reach, and he opened it.

   The lighter was beginning to scorch his hand, but the flame revealed another of Crowfield’s
collections: inside the closet, amid half-assembled skeletons and plastic bags full of assorted bones, were
two rifles, four boxes of ammunition, a rusty .45 pistol, a case of empty Coke bottles, and two red tin
cans. Rick caught the reek of gasoline. Sonofabitch had an arsenal, he realized. There were other items
too: a bayonet, a couple of hunting knives, some of those morningstar blades that karate fighters threw,
and a camouflage tarpaulin. Rick moved the tarp aside, and underneath was a small wooden box. He
bent down. In faded red letters on the box was written DANGER! HIGH EXPLOSIVES! PROPERTY
OF PRESTON COPPER MINING COMPANY.

   He lifted the lid—and instantly pulled the lighter’s flame back.

   Nestled in waxed paper inside were five mustard-yellow sticks, each about nine inches long. The
dynamite sticks had fuses of varying lengths, the longest maybe twelve inches and the shortest four
inches. A couple of the sticks were scorched like hot dogs that had cooked too long on a grill, and Rick
figured they were duds that had failed to ignite the first time around. How they’d ended up here he didn’t
know, but it was obvious that Sonny Crowfield had been getting ready to wage war—maybe on the
Renegades, or maybe to take over the Rattlesnakes. He looked again at the Coke bottles and the
gasoline tins. Easy to make a firebomb that way, he thought. Easy to set fire to a house or two and let the
’Gades take the blame, try to stir up a war so all this firepower could be useful.

  “Sonofabitch,” Rick said. He let the lid drop back and stood up. A little plastic bag fell open, and rat
bones spilled out.

  Outside, Cody felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle—and just that quick he knew someone
was behind him. He looked over his shoulder.

    Sonny Crowfield was standing at the curb, eyes like dead black stones, mouth a thin gray gash, and
the face damp and pallid. “I know you.” The voice sounded like a warped, slowed-down recording of
the real Crowfield. “You gave me some pain, man.” The figure took a step forward. Its grin widened,
and now Cody could see the rows of needle teeth. “I want to show you somethin’ real pretty. You’ll like
it.” The metal-nailed hand reached out.

   Cody stomped down on the kickstarter. The engine rattled, backfired, but wouldn’t catch.

   The hand glided toward him. “Come on, man. Let me show you what I’ve made.”

   Another stomp, with all of Cody’s strength behind it. The engine coughed and fired, and as the fingers
started to clench into his shoulder Cody twisted the throttle and shot the motorcycle up the cinder-block
steps and through the doorway into Crowfield’s house.

  The headlamp splayed onto Rick, who was just coming out of the corridor. He threw himself against a
wall and a coyote skeleton fell off its hooks and crumpled to the floor. He shouted, “What the hell are
you doing?” as Cody stopped the cycle just short of a collision.

   “Get on!” Cody shouted right back. “Hurry!”

   “Get on! Why?” He thought Cody had tumbled into the Great Fried Empty—and then a figure with
long black hair filled up the doorway.

   “Time’s up,” Stinger said, in its manufactured Sonny Crowfield voice.

   Rick lifted the .38 and fired twice, the gunshots deafening. Both bullets hit the creature’s chest, and it
grunted and stumbled back a step, then righted itself and stormed across the threshold again.

   “Get on!” Cody demanded, and Rick planted himself on the passenger seat. Cody guided the cycle
into the corridor and powered up. Skeletons of flying things swung on wires over their heads. The Honda
emerged from the corridor into a boxy kitchen, and Cody skidded it to a stop over the dirty yellow
linoleum. He twisted the handlebars, seeking a way out with the headlight. “Where’s the back door?” he
yelled, but both of them saw that there was none, and the kitchen’s single window was boarded up.

   “Time’s up! They didn’t do what I told ’em!” Stinger raged, in the darkness between the kitchen and
the house’s only door. “Gonna smash some bugs!” There was the noise of combat boots clumping
through the corridor. “I’ll show you what I’ve made! It’s gonna be here real soon!”

   Cody switched off the headlight, and now the darkness was complete.

    “Are you crazy? Keep the light on!” Rick protested, but Cody was already turning the motorcycle in
a tight circle so that they were aimed into the corridor.

   “Hang on,” Cody told him. He revved the engine, and it responded with a throaty roar. “I want to be
on him before the bastard knows what’s hit him. If you fall off, you’re dead meat. Got it?”

   “Got it.” Rick clamped one arm around Cody’s waist and kept his finger on the .38’s trigger.

   The clump of boots was about halfway along the corridor. There were little rattling sounds: the thing’s
head and shoulders brushing skeletons.

   Three more steps, Cody thought. Got to hit that thing and keep on going. His palms were wet, and his
heart was slamming like a Beastie Boys drumbeat. One more step.

   It came. The monster was almost in the kitchen. Cody revved the engine until it shrieked and released
the brakes.

   The rear tire spun on the linoleum, and there was the smell of scorched plastic. But in the next instant
the motorcycle reared up and shot forward on its back tire. Rick hung on, and Cody hit the headlight
switch.

   Stinger was right there, framed in the corridor. The wet gray face convulsed as the light fell upon it,
and both Rick and Cody saw the eyeballs smoke and retreat into their sockets. There was a roar of pain
that shook the walls, and Stinger’s hands rose up to shield the eyes; its body was already starting to curl
up, the spinal cord bulging with the pressure of the spiked tail beneath it.

   The front tire hit the thing’s face and the machine kept going over Stinger’s body as if trying to claw its
way out. Stinger went down to the floor. The motorcycle shuddered, careened to the side, and
ricocheted off the wall, and the headlight’s bulb blew out. Rick was lifted off his seat and almost lost hold
of Cody, and something that no longer had a human shape was flailing wildly underneath the motorcycle.

    But then they had broken clear of it and Cody powered the Honda through the doorway and down
the porch steps. They went across the yard in a spray of sand as Cody fought to turn the machine—and
in front of them they saw the pavement of Third Street at the edge of Cade’s autoyard start to crack
apart and buckle upward. A shape was struggling up from the street. Cody got the cycle under control
and skidded to a stop about ten feet from the emerging creation.

  “Here it comes!” a hunchbacked thing with a weaving tail rasped as it slithered down the steps of
Crowfield’s house. “Gonna smash alllll the little bugs!”

   “Go!” Rick shouted. Cody didn’t have to be told twice. He couldn’t tell what was digging itself out of
the ground, but he didn’t care for a closer look. He laid on the throttle and the motorcycle arrowed east.
Behind them, Third Street broke open and Stinger’s new creation began to crawl free.



                                                  48
                                             Nasty’s Hero
Walking east on Celeste Street, Ray saw his shadow thrown before him by a single headlight, and he
turned to wave down a ride. It was Tank’s one-eyed truck, and it slowed to a stop in front of him.

    Tank was at the wheel, his face daubed green by the instrument panel, and Ray could make out Nasty
sitting on the passenger side. Tank leaned his helmeted head through the window. “You goin’ up to the
fort?”

   “No. Home.”

   “Your folks are at the fort. So’s most everybody else. Your sister too.”

   “Stevie? They found her?”

   “Not exactly Stevie,” Nasty told him. “Come on, we’re headed up there.” She opened the door for
him, and he slid in beside her. Tank put the gearshift into first and started forward, turning left onto Travis
Street. The tires bounced roughly over fissures in the pavement. Tank stared grimly ahead, trying to see
through the smoke by the remaining light. He and Nasty had gone to his parents’ house on Circle Back
Street and found the place leaning on its foundations, a hole in the den floor big enough to drive a tractor
through. Of his mother and father there was no sign, but some kind of slimy stuff was streaked on the
walls and carpet.

   “They’re probably all right,” Nasty repeated for the third or fourth time. “They probably went to a
neighbor’s house.”

    Tank grunted. They’d checked the other four houses on Circle Back Street; there’d been no answer
at three of them, and at the fourth old man Shipley had come to the door with a shotgun. “Maybe they
did,” he said, but he didn’t believe they’d gotten out of the house alive.

   Ray shifted his position. The warmth of Nasty’s thigh was burning into his leg. This would be one hell
of a time to get a hard-on, and of course as soon as he thought about it the miraculous, unstoppable
process began. Nasty looked at him, her face just a few inches away, and he thought, She can read my
mind. Maybe it was because they were touching, and if he pulled away, she wouldn’t know what he was
thinking, but there was no room to maneuver in the cramped, greasy-smelling truck cab.

   “You look different without your glasses,” she decided.

   He shrugged. Couldn’t help but notice how her breasts thrust against the thin cotton of her
sweat-damp T-shirt. He could see the nipples, which didn’t help his condition any. “Not so different,” he
said.

   “Yeah you do. Older.”

   “Maybe I just feel older.”

  “Hell, we all do,” Tank said. “I feel like I’m ninety fuckin’ years ol—” He felt the truck shudder. The
wheel trembled in his hands. He leaned forward, had seen something out in the haze, wasn’t sure what it
had been but his heart was jammed in his throat.

   “What is it?” Nasty asked him, her voice rising with alarm.

   He shook his head and started to plant his foot on the brake pedal.
   And that was when he saw the concrete of Travis Street buckle upward about fifteen feet in front of
the pickup truck and rise like a gray wave. Something huge was moving just under the surface, as if
swimming through Texas earth, and its motion lifted Tank’s truck on the crest of the land wave, raised it
amid chunks of broken and grinding pavement.

    Nasty screamed and gripped the dashboard, and Ray had his fingers on the door handle. As the truck
angled sharply downward and slid off the concrete swell toward a sea of cracks, something rose up from
a fissure and into the headlight’s beam: a snaky coil as wide as the truck, covered with mottled
greenish-gray scales.

    Then the coil went down as the creature dove deeper, spewing up a spray of red dirt and sand like
the spume of a whale. The pickup truck turned sideways, and the wheel spun out of Tank’s grip. The
concrete was still in motion under the tires, splitting and separating, and as Tank threw his door open and
started to jump the truck hit a jagged edge of pavement, heeled to the left, and crashed down on top of
him. He made no sound of pain, but Ray heard the crack of his helmet breaking. The truck’s weight
continued to slide forward as the pavement settled, smearing Tank’s body beneath it. And then the hood
slid into a fissure that slammed down on it like a shark’s jaws. Metal groaned and crumpled, sparks shot
off the edges, and flames began to lick around the hood.

   It had only taken five or six seconds. Ray blinked, smelled burning oil and paint, and heard Nasty’s
wounded moaning. She was lying underneath him, half on and half off the seat. The earth was still
trembling in the wake of the monster’s passage, and metal shrieked as the truck sank deeper into the
chasm. Something popped in the engine—a surprisingly gentle sound—and red tendrils of flame gnawed
toward the shattered windshield. He felt the fearsome heat on his face, and he knew then that if they sat
there much longer they were going to be fried. The truck sank down another three or four inches. He
pulled himself up toward the passenger door and forced it open with the strength of the doomed, then he
hung to the doorframe and reached down to Nasty. “Take my hand! Come on!”

   She looked up at him, and he could see the blood crawling out of her nostrils. He figured she must
have banged her head against the dashboard when the truck had turned over. She was embracing the
steering wheel with both arms. The truck lurched and slid down another couple of inches, and now the
heat was getting savage. Ray shouted, “Grab my hand!”

   Nasty unhooked the fingers of her right hand from the wheel, wiped her nose, and stared at the blood.
She made a half giggle, half moan, and Ray strained down and grasped her wrist. He tugged mightily at
her. “We’ve got to get out!”

   It took her a few precious seconds to register that fire was coming through the windshield and that
Ray was trying to help her. She released her hold on the wheel and pushed herself up, pain thrumming
through her skull from the knock she’d taken to her forehead. Ray pulled her out of the pickup’s battered
cab, and they fell together to the broken concrete. Her body went limp, but Ray got to his feet and
started hauling her up. “Come on!” he said. “We can’t stay here!”

   “Tank,” she said, her voice slow and slurred. “Where’s Tank? He was right here just a minute ago.”

   “Tank’s gone. Come on! Up!” He got her to her feet, and though she was several inches taller, she
leaned against his shoulder. He looked around, his eyes stinging from the smoke, and saw that Travis
Street—at least the small section he could see of it—had become a ridged and gullied battlefield.
Whatever that thing was, it had folded the concrete back and split it to pieces like a bone-dry riverbed.

   Flames bellowed around the truck. Ray didn’t like the idea of staying so close to it; the thing might
blow up or whatever had passed under the street might be drawn to the light. In any case, he craved
some shelter. He pulled Nasty with him across the street, mindful of the cracks around them, the largest
about three or four feet wide. “Where’d Tank go?” she asked. “He was drivin’, wasn’t he?”

   “Yeah. He went on ahead,” was all he could think to say. The outline of a house came out of the
murk, and Ray guided Nasty toward it. How far they were from the fort he didn’t know, but he wasn’t
sure they’d passed the intersection of Sombra and Travis, and that was a good hundred yards from the
apartment building’s parking lot. Just short of the house’s porch steps, Ray felt the earth tremble: the
creature passing somewhere close by. From the next street over came the splintering crash of a house
being lifted off its foundations.

   They went up the steps. The front door was locked, but the nearest window was glassless and Ray
reached into it, snapped the jamb’s lock off, and pushed the window up. He slid in first, then helped
Nasty through. She stumbled, her strength used up, pitched forward, and they both fell to the hardwood
floor.

   Her mouth was right up against his ear, and she was breathing hard. Any other time this would have
been a fantasy come true, he thought—but his mind couldn’t focus on sex at the moment, though her
body was molded into his and her breasts pressed against his chest. God had a mighty wicked sense of
humor, he decided.

   The house creaked at the joints. Under them the floor rolled like a slow wave, and cracks shot up the
walls. Along Travis Street the houses moaned as the creature tunneled beneath them, and Ray heard the
scream of timbers caving in as a structure collapsed two or three houses away.

   Nasty, tough as nails and swigger of tobacco spit, was shivering. Ray put his arms around her.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said. His voice didn’t quaver too much, which surprised him. “I’ll
protect you.”

   She lifted her head, looked at him face-to-face, and her eyes were scared and dazed but there was a
grim hint of a smile on her mouth. “My hero,” she said, and then she let her head rest on his shoulder and
they lay there in the dark as Inferno ripped apart at the seams.



   Across the bridge, Cody skidded the cycle to a stop in front of the Catholic church, and Rick jumped
off. He looked back along First Street, couldn’t see anything through the haze. But that thing would be
out of the ground by now, and probably heading this way. Zarra, Pequin, and Diego Montana had been
waiting at the door for Rick’s return, and now they came down the steps. Cody got off the Honda,
looked at the church, and knew those people jammed in there wouldn’t have a rat’s ass of a chance. If
electric light hurt Stinger—and the way the monster in Crowfield’s house had reacted showed that Daufin
was right—then there was only one safe place he could think of.

  “We’ve gotta move these people out before that thing gets here!” Cody said to Rick. “We’re not
gonna have much time!”

   “Move them! Where?”

   “Across the bridge. To the fort.” All of them gaped at him as if he’d gone totally off his bird. “Forget
that gang shit!” he said, and felt as if the words split an old skin that had been shriveling tighter and tighter
around him. He saw there were a lot of cars and pickups parked around the church, on both sides of the
street, and most of them were broken-down heaps, but they could each carry five or six people. The
pickup trucks could carry more. “We get ’em loaded and out as fast as we can!” he said. “The fort’s the
only place Stinger won’t try to dig into, because of the lights!”
  Rick wasn’t sure he believed that, but the apartment building was a lot sturdier than the church. He
made his decision fast. “Diego, where’s your car?” The boy pointed to a rusted brown Impala across the
way. “I want you to drive it up the street about fifty yards.” He motioned west. “Pequin, you go with him.
Keep your lights on, and if you see anything or anybody coming, you haul ass back.”

   Diego sprinted to the car, and Pequin started to protest, but he obeyed the order like a good soldier.

   “Zarra, you get the Rattlers together. Tell them where we’re going, and that we’ll need all the cars we
can find. I want every Rattler car loaded. Go!”

   Zarra ran up the steps into the church. Rick turned to Cody. “I want you to…” He hesitated, realizing
he was talking to the enemy just like he would a Rattler. “I’ll find Father LaPrado and start getting
everybody out,” he amended. “I could use another scout.”

   Cody nodded. “I reckon so. I could use that gun on your hip too.”

  Rick gave it to him, handle first, and Cody slid it into his waistband. “Four bullets left,” Rick said.
“Don’t pull a John Wayne if you see it coming. Just get back here in one piece.”

    “Man, you like givin’ orders, don’t you?” Cody stomped down on the kickstarter and the hot engine
fired. He offered a sly smile. “You just take care of your little sister. I’ll be back.” He turned the Honda
around in a tight circle and sped west on First Street, and Rick ran up the steps into the sanctuary.

   Diego Montana’s car was just creeping along, and Cody flashed by it about forty yards away from
the church; he veered into the center of the headlights’ beam but had to cut his speed to a glide as the
Impala stopped and he outran the lights. The violet-tinged gloom closed around him, and he pulled to the
curb to wait for his night vision to sharpen.

   At the church, Rick had convinced Father LaPrado that they had just a short time to evacuate almost
three hundred people. The problem was how to do it without creating a panic, but there was no time to
deliberate; Father LaPrado stood up before the congregation and explained in a voice as tough as
brine-dipped leather that they had to leave quickly and everything they’d brought—pillows, clothes,
food, possessions—would have to remain behind. They would clear the aisles first, then leave row by
row starting from the rear. Everyone who had a car or truck should go to it and wait for it to be filled
before driving off. They were heading across the bridge, he told them, to take shelter in the apartment
building at the end of Travis Street.

   The evacuation started, and cars carrying Bordertown residents began crossing the Snake River
Bridge.

   A hundred yards west, Cody wheeled the motorcycle into a dirt alley and drove through it onto
Second Street. He cut the engine and coasted, listening. Could hear the noise of cars hightailing toward
Inferno. Dark houses stood in the smoke, not a candle showing anywhere. Over toward Third Street a
couple of dogs were howling. He guided the Honda over the curb and in between two houses, and there
he stopped to listen again. His heartbeat drummed in his ears.

   He walked the motorcycle ahead, came out from between the houses—and froze when he saw a
formless thing standing about ten feet in front of him. It didn’t move, either. Cody was afraid to draw a
breath. Slowly he pulled the .38 out and his thumb found the safety catch. Clicked it off. He lifted the
gun, steadied his hand. The thing still didn’t budge. He took a step closer, his finger lodged on the trigger,
and that was when he realized he was aiming at a discarded washing machine standing in somebody’s
backyard.
   He almost laughed. Some John Wayne! He was glad none of the ’Gades were around to see this, or
his reputation would be lower than ant pee.

   He was about to put the .38 away when he heard a slow, scraping noise.

   He tensed, stood rigid and stock-still. The sound repeated—metal across concrete, he thought it
was—but where it was coming from he wasn’t sure. Was it ahead, on Third Street, or behind him on
Second? He bellied down in the dust and crawled back into the space between the houses, and he lay
there trying to pinpoint the sound’s direction. The haze was playing tricks with him. The scraping noise
was first ahead, then behind him. Was it moving toward him, or away: he couldn’t be sure, and not
knowing made his guts twist. Whatever it was, it sounded like something that was just learning how to
walk and dragging its feet—or claws. The good part was that it was moving slowly and clumsily; the bad
part was that it sounded heavy.

   He caught movement through the murk: a shape on Second Street, lumbering past Cody’s hiding
place. No damned washing machine this time. The sonofabitch was big and alive and it passed with a
noise like razor blades scraping a chalkboard. The haze swirled around it and spun in its wake, and then
whatever it was had gone on, striding inexorably toward the church.

   Cody gave it about ten more seconds, and then he scrambled up, got on the motorcycle, and started
the engine; it roared like hellfire in the narrow space, and Cody gunned it toward Third Street, saw
clothes flagging from a line, and ducked just in time to keep his head. He turned left on Third with a
shriek of tires and rocketed east all the way to Republica Road. Then straight to the intersection of First
Street again, where cars were turning toward the bridge. He took another left, deftly dodged a pickup
truck full of people, and wound his way through the refugees to the steps of the church.

   Inside, Mendoza was helping Paloma Jurado along the aisle. Over a hundred people had already
gone, and the cars had been leaving as fast as they could get packed. But only two cars and Mendoza’s
pickup truck were left, and it was clear a lot of people were going to have to make it on foot.

   “Take my grandmother with you,” Rick told him. He looked around, saw twenty more elderly people
who couldn’t make it over without a ride. His Camaro was still parked in front of his house on Second
Street, and there wasn’t time to go after it. “You go with them,” he said to Miranda, and motioned
toward Mendoza.

   She’d already grasped the situation. “There’s not enough room left for me.”

   “You can make room! Go!”

   “What about you?”

   “I’ll find a way. Go on, take care of Paloma!”

   She was about to follow Mendoza and her grandmother to the door when Cody Lockett came along
the aisle. He glanced quickly at her, his face gray with dust except for the area around his eyes where the
goggles had rested, then directed his attention to Rick. She saw that his swagger and cockiness had
dissolved. “It’s headed this way,” he said. “I saw it on Second Street. I couldn’t tell much about it, but
the thing’s huge.”

   Rick saw Mendoza guiding Paloma out the door, with a few other old people in tow. It wouldn’t take
but a couple of minutes for Mendoza’s truck to fill up. “I said go!” he snapped at Miranda.

   “I’m staying with you,” she said.
   “The hell you are! Come on!” He grasped her arm, and she just as stubbornly pulled away.

   “There you go, spoutin’ out orders again,” Cody said.

   “You shut up!” Rick looked around, trying to find a Rattler to help him, but the rest of them had
already gone; Father LaPrado was herding the remaining thirty or so people out. A car horn began
blaring in the distance, getting louder, and Rick knew what that meant: Diego and Pequin had seen
something and were racing back. He pushed his way through the door and out to the steps, with Cody
and Miranda following.

    The Impala had pulled up to the curb, and already people were jamming into it. Others had decided
to run, and they were heading north toward the riverbank. Pequin got out of the car just as Rick reached
the street. “We saw somethin’, man!” Pequin pointed west, and his hand trembled. “Out there, maybe
thirty or forty yards!”

   “What’d it look like?” Cody asked him.

   Pequin shook his head. “I don’t know, man. We just saw somethin’ movin’ out there, and we hauled
ass back! It’s comin’ this way!”

   “Rick, I’m ready to go!” Mendoza was behind the wheel of his pickup, with Paloma and his wife in
the cab beside him. Eight others were loaded into the truck bed. “Bring your sister!”

   “When you go, I go,” she told Rick before he could speak. He glanced into the haze to the west, then
back to Mendoza. Time was ticking past, and the creature was getting closer. “Take off!” he said. “I’ll
bring Miranda over myself!” Mendoza nodded, waved a hand, and drove toward the bridge. Diego’s car
was jammed so full it was dragging the pavement, and the last car was loaded down too. More than
eighty people were going north on foot. Diego put the Impala into reverse and it shot backward, throwing
sparks off its hanging tailpipe. “Wait for me, you bastard!” Pequin shouted, running after him.

  “Hey, Jurado,” Cody said quietly, “I think we’ve got company.”

   The haze swirled before the thing’s approach. They could hear the scrape of metal on concrete. The
last car, carrying seven or eight people and a couple hanging to the doors, backfired and sped away.

  The shape came out of the smoke and lurched into the candlelight that streamed from the church’s
windows.



                                               49
                                       Stinger’s New Toy


Rick laughed. He couldn’t help it. All that hurrying to get people evacuated, and what had emerged from
the murk was a horse. A palomino, broad-shouldered and muscular, but just a damned horse. It took
another clumsy step forward and stopped, tottering as if it had been sipping from a trough laced with
whiskey.

   “It’s a drunk horse!” Rick said. “We were scared shitless of a drunk horse!” The thing must’ve gotten
away from somebody’s farm or ranch, he figured. Surely this wasn’t what had come out of that hole in
the street. At least now he and Miranda had a ride across the bridge. The horse was just standing there,
staring at them, and Rick thought it might be in shock or something. He started toward it, his hand
offered. “Easy, boy, Take it ea—”

   “Don’t!” Cody gripped his arm. Rick stopped, less than ten feet from the horse.

   The animal’s nostrils flared. Its head strained backward, showing the cords of muscle in its throat, and
from the mouth came a noise that mingled a horse’s shrill whinny and the hiss of a steam engine.

   Rick saw what Cody had seen: the horse had silver talons—the claws of a lizard—instead of hooves.

   His legs were locked. The creature’s deep-socketed eyes ticked from Cody to Rick and back
again—and then its mouth stretched open, the rows of needles sparkling in the low light, and its spine
began to lengthen with the cracking sounds of bones breaking and re-forming.

   Cody stepped back and bumped into Miranda. She clutched at his shoulder, and behind her the last
dozen people to emerge from the church saw the thing in the street and scattered. But the final person to
come out stood in the doorway, his backbone straight as an iron bar; he drew a deep breath and started
purposefully down the steps.

   The creature’s body continued to lengthen, muscles thickening into brutal knots under the rippling
flesh. Dark pigment threaded through the golden skin, and the bones of its skull popped like gunshots and
began to change shape.

   Rick retreated to the curb. His heart was beating wildly, but he couldn’t run. Not yet. What was being
born in front of him held him like a hallucination, a fascinating fever dream. The head was flattening, the
lower jaw unhinging and sliding forward as gray drool dripped from the corners of the mouth. The spine
bowed upward, the entire body hunched, and with a sound of splitting flesh, a thick, segmented black tail
uncoiled from the base of the vertebrae. A wicked cluster of metallic spikes, each one almost six inches
long, pushed out of the black wrecking ball at the end of the tail.

   The monster had doubled its length, the legs splaying out like those of a crab. And now spinier legs,
each with three silver talons, were bursting through the skin of its sides. The body settled, its belly grazing
the pavement. The flesh was splitting open, revealing a hide of interlocked black scales like the surface of
the pyramid, and the thing thrashed as if trying to escape a cocoon. Flakes of golden skin flew like dead
leaves.

   Cody had the .38 in his hand. His motorcycle was just beside him, and he knew he should get on and
go like a bat out of hell, but the spectacle of transformation held him fast. The creature’s elongated,
knotty skull was now somewhere between that of a horse’s and an insect’s, the neck squat and powerful,
muscles bunching and writhing as the body threw off pieces of dead flesh. It hit him that this was unlike
anything he’d ever seen in any sci-fi or Mexican horror flick for one simple and terrible reason: this thing
seethed with life. As the old skin ripped away, the creature’s movements were no longer clumsy but
quick and precise, like those of a scorpion scuttling from the wet dark under a rock. The flesh of its head
burst open like a strange fruit and dangled in tatters. Beneath it was a nightmare visage of bone ridges
and black scales. The convex eyes of a horse had been sucked inward, and now amber eyes with
vertical black pupils gleamed in the armored overhang of the brow. Two more alien eyes emerged from
the holes where the horse’s nostrils had been, and diamond-shaped vents along the sides of its body
gasped and exhaled with a bellows’ whoosh.

    The monster shrugged off the last scraps of horseflesh. Its narrow body was now almost fifteen feet
long, each of its eight legs six feet in length and the ball of spikes quivering another twenty feet in the air.
The two sets of eyes moved independently of each other, and as the thing’s head turned to follow the
flight of a Bordertown resident across First Street toward the river, Rick saw a third set of eye sockets
just above the base of the skull.

    “Get back,” Cody said to Miranda. Said it calmly, as if he saw creatures like this every day of his life.
He felt icy inside, and he knew that either he was about to die or he was not. A simple dare of fate. He
lifted the .38 and started to squeeze off the four bullets.

   But someone walked into the pistol’s path. Someone wearing black, and holding up with both hands a
staff with a gilt crucifix atop it. Father LaPrado walked past Rick. Rick was too stunned to stop the priest
but he’d gotten a look at LaPrado’s ashen face and he knew the Great Fried Empty had just swallowed
him.

    Father LaPrado began shouting in Spanish: “Almighty God casts you out! Almighty God and the Holy
Spirit sends you back to the pit of hell!” He kept going, and Rick took two steps after him, but the
quadruple eyes on the creature’s skull locked on LaPrado and it rustled forward like a black, breathing
locomotive. LaPrado lifted the staff in demented defiance. “I command you in the name of God to return
to the pit!” he shouted. Rick reached for him, about to snag his coat. “I command you! I command—”

   There was a banshee shriek. Something whipped past only inches in front of Rick, and the wind of its
passage whistled around his ears. His hand had blood all over it, and suddenly Father LaPrado was
gone. Just gone.

   Blood on my shirt, Rick realized. The unreality of a dream cloaked him. He smelled musty copper.

   Drops of crimson began to shower down on him. And other things and parts of things. A shoe hit the
pavement to his left. An arm plopped down on the right, six or seven feet away. The remains of Father
LaPrado’s body, hurled high and torn to shreds by the ball of spikes, fell to the earth around him. The
last thing down was the staff, snapped in two.

   The monster’s tail, dripping with blood and bits of flesh, lifted up into the air again. Cody saw the
thing quiver, about to strike. Rick just stood there, paralyzed. There was no time to weigh the past
against the present: Cody started running toward him, got off two shots, and saw a pair of the amber
eyes fix on him. The tail hesitated for a vital three seconds, the creature choosing between double targets,
then whipped in a vicious sideswipe, the air shrieking around the bony spikes.

  Cody hit Rick with a bodyblock and knocked him sprawling over the curb, heard the ball of spikes
coming, and flattened himself against the bloody pavement.

    It passed less than a foot over him, came back again in a savage blur, but Cody was already twisting
away like a worm on a hot plate and the tail struck sparks off the street. The tail was retracted for
another slash, and Cody saw Rick sit up, the boy’s face splattered with LaPrado’s blood. “Run!” Cody
shouted. “I’ll get Miranda across!” Still Rick didn’t respond, but Cody couldn’t help him anymore.
Miranda was crouched down on the church steps, calling for her brother. Cody got up, took aim at one
of the thing’s eyes, and fired the last two bullets. The second shot gouted gray fluid from the top of the
skull, and the creature made a sharp hissing noise and scuttled backward.

   Cody sprinted back across the street, zigzagging to throw off the thing’s aim. He dropped the pistol,
leapt onto the motorcycle’s seat. The key was already in the ignition, and Cody yelled “Get on!” to
Miranda as he stomped on the starter. The engine racketed, popped, would not catch. The creature
started striding forward again, getting within striking range. Cody came down on the starter a second
time; the engine backfired, caught and faded, fired up again with a throaty growl. The back of his neck
prickled. He sensed the tail curling up into the air. Cody looked over his shoulder, saw the monster’s
black head with its underslung jaws full of needles thrusting toward him. And then a figure ran from the
right, shouting and waving its arms, and one set of eyes darted at Rick. A foreleg lifted, the silver claws
slashing so fast Rick hardly saw it coming. He flung himself backward, the talons streaking past his face.

  But Miranda was on the motorcycle, clinging tight to Cody’s waist. She screamed “Run!” to Rick,
and Cody throttled up. The machine shot away from the curb and sped toward Republica Road.

   Rick scrambled on his hands and knees up over the curb. He heard the slithering of the thing coming
after him, the scrape of the talons on the concrete. He got to his feet and ran north, across a yard and in
between two houses. And in that narrow space he stepped on a loose stone and his left foot slid, the
ankle twisting with a pain that jabbed all the way to his hipbone. He cried out and fell on his face in the
sand and weeds, clutching at his ankle.

    The houses on either side of him shuddered and moaned. Boards cracked, plaster dust puffing from
the walls. Rick looked back, and saw the dark shape trying to squeeze its body into the space after him,
its strength breaking the houses off their foundations.

   Eighty yards away, Cody and Miranda were almost across the bridge when something—a human
figure—rose up from the smoke directly in front of them. Cody instinctively hit the brakes, started to
swerve the machine aside, but there wasn’t enough time. The motorcycle smacked into whoever it was,
skidded out of control, and flung both of them off. It crashed into the side of the bridge, the frame
bending with a low moan like guitar strings breaking and the front tire flying up into the air. Cody landed
on his right side and slid in a fury of friction burns.

   He lay curled up and gasping for breath. Fate bit my ass this time, he thought. No, no; must’ve been
the Mumbler, he decided. Old fuckin’ Mumbler just crawled up on the bridge and gave us a whack.

   Miranda. What had happened to Miranda?

    He tried to sit up. Not enough strength yet. There was an awful pain in his left arm, and he thought it
might be broken. But he could move the fingers, so that was a good sign. His ribs felt like splintered
razors; one or two of them were snapped, for damn sure. He wanted to sleep, just close his eyes and let
it all go, but Miranda was somewhere nearby—and so was whatever they’d crashed into. Some
protector I turned out to be, he thought. Not worth a damn. Maybe the old man was right after all.

   He smelled gasoline. Motor’s tank ruptured. And about two seconds later there was a whump! of fire
and orange light flickered. Pieces of the Honda clattered down around him and into the Snake River’s
gulley. He got up on his knees, his lungs hitching. Miranda lay on her back about six feet away, her arms
and legs splayed like those of a broken doll. He crawled to her. Saw blood on her mouth from a split
lower lip and a blue bruise on the side of her face. But she was breathing, and when he spoke her name
her eyelids fluttered. He tried to cradle her head, but his fingers found a lump on her skull and he thought
he’d better not move her.

   Cody heard footsteps—two boots: one clacking, one sliding.

    He saw someone lurching toward them from the Bordertown side. Rivulets of gasoline had run from
the smashed motorcycle, and the figure kept coming through the fire. It was hunchbacked, with a spiked
tail, and as it got nearer Cody could see a grin of needles.

   Half of Sonny Crowfield’s head had caved in. Something that shone like gray pus had leaked through
the empty left eye socket, and the imprint of a motorcycle tire lay across the cheek like a crimson tattoo.
The body jittered, one leg dragging.

    It came on across the streams of flame, the cuffs of its jeans smoking and catching fire. The grin never
faltered.
    Cody crouched over Miranda. He looked for the nail-studded baseball bat but it was gone. The
clacking boot and dragging boot closed in, the hunchbacked body and tail of spikes silhouetted by fire.
Cody started to rise; he was dead meat now, and he knew it, but maybe he could get his fingers in that
remaining eye and jerk it off its strings. Pain shot through his ribs, stole his breath, and hobbled him. He
fell back to his side, wheezing for air.

   Stinger reached Miranda. Stood over her, staring down. Then a metal-nailed hand slid over her face.

   Cody was all used up. There was nothing more. Tears were in his eyes, and he knew Miranda’s head
was about to be crushed and there was only one chance to save her life. The words were out of him
before he could think twice: “I know who you’re lookin’ for.”

   The dripping head lifted. The hand remained clasped to Miranda’s face. She moaned, still mercifully
unconscious, and Stinger gripped her hair with the other hand. “The guardian.” The voice was a gurgle of
fluids. “Where is she?”

   “I… can’t…” Cody felt close to a faint. He didn’t want to tell, and tears burned his eyes but he saw
the fingers tighten on Miranda’s face.

   “You’ll tell me,” Stinger said, “or I’ll tear this bug’s head off.”



   Lying between the two houses on First Street, Rick hugged the ground and started crawling. The
monster couldn’t get its body into the space, and neither would the arm reach Rick. He heard a crash
that seemed to shake the earth. Timbers flew around him, and he realized the thing was beating the two
houses to pieces with its tail. He struggled up, hobbling on his good leg, as roof shingles and shards of
wood exploded like bomb blasts. Ahead was a chest-high chainlink fence and on the other side the
river’s gulley. He saw fire on the bridge but he had no time to concern himself with what was burning; he
clambered over the fence, slid down a slope of red dirt, and lay in the muddy trickle of water. From
Bordertown he could hear the crash and shatter of the houses coming apart. In another couple of minutes
the creature was going to break through and come across the river. He roused himself, shunting aside the
pain in his swollen ankle, and started climbing up the opposite slope toward the rear of the buildings on
Cobre Road.



   On the bridge barely fifty yards from Rick, Cody Lockett knew his luck—and possibly Daufin’s
too—had finally run out. Stinger would destroy the town and everyone in it, starting with Miranda. But
the fort was protected from Stinger not only by its foundation of bedrock and its armored windows, but
by its electric light. Even if he knew where Daufin was, there was still no way he could get to her. Cody
sat up, his brain doing a slow roll, and smiled grimly. “She’s up there,” he said, and pointed to the faint
smudge of light. He saw an expression of dismay flicker across the ruined face. “Pretty, huh? Better wear
your sunglasses, fuckhead.”

   Stinger released Miranda. Both hands gripped Cody’s throat, and the tail thrashed above the boy’s
head. “I won’t need sunglasses,” the gurgling voice replied. The face pressed toward Cody’s. “I’m gonna
earn my bounty by scoopin’ up some live bugs to take on a little trip. I’m real close to findin’ her pod
too. If she doesn’t want to go, that’s fine: she can rot in this shithole. Comprende?”

   Cody didn’t answer. The thing’s breath smelled like burned plastic. And then it let go of his throat, put
an arm around his waist, and lifted him off the concrete as easily as if he were a child. The pain in his rib
cage savaged him, brought cold sweat to his pores. Stinger lifted Miranda with the other arm. Cody tried
to thrash loose, but the pain and effort were too much. He passed out, his hands and legs dangling.

   Stinger tucked the bodies to his sides and continued walking across the bridge toward Inferno,
dragging the malfunctioning leg. He entered a sky-blue house near the intersection of Republica and
Cobre roads. The living room had no floor, and Stinger dropped into darkness with his cargo of bugs.



                                                   50
                                              High Ground


Ed Vance and Celeste Preston were sharing a third bottle of Lone Star at the Brandin’ Iron and waiting
for the end of the world when they heard the shriek of tires turning onto Travis Street. Several times in
the past fifteen minutes the Brandin’ Iron’s floor had shuddered, and a stack of plates had crashed down
in the kitchen with a noise that had almost shot Sue Mullinax out of her sneakers. The old-timers who’d
been sitting at the back had fled, but Vance didn’t budge off his seat because he knew there was
nowhere to run to.

   Now, though, it sounded like a lot of cars were heading north up Travis. Sounded like some of them
were banging into each other, they were in such a hurry. Vance got off the counter stool and went out to
the street. He could see the headlights and taillights of vehicles roaring along Celeste Street, turning onto
Travis, some running up over yards and adding more dust to the thick air. Looked like a mass exodus,
but where the hell were they going? He could barely make out the glow of the ’Gade fort, and he figured
that was drawing all the cars. They were racing like the devil himself was snapping at their fenders.

   He realized Celeste had followed him out. “I’d better get up there and find out what’s goin’ on,” he
told her. “Seems that’d be a safe place for you too.”

   “I’m gettin’ my ass out of here.” She still had hold of the Lone Star bottle, about three swigs left in it,
and she dug into her jumpsuit pocket for her Cadillac keys. “Best thing about that big ole house is, it’s
got one hell of a strong basement.” She started around to the driver’s side, but paused before she slid
under the wheel. “Hey, Vance!” she called. “Basement’s got a lot of room. Even enough for a fat
sumbitch like you.”

  It was a tempting offer. Maybe it was the beer sloshing in his belly, or maybe the fact that the light
wasn’t worth a damn, but Vance thought at that instant that Celeste Preston was… well… almost pretty.

   He wanted to go. Wanted to real bad. But this time the monsters of Cortez Park would not win. He
said, “I reckon I’ll stick here.”

   “Suit yourself, but I think you’ve seen High Noon too many times.”

   “Maybe so.” He opened the patrol-car door. “You take care.”

   “Believe it, pardner.” Celeste got into the Cadillac and plugged the key into the ignition.

    Vance heard a sound like clay plates cracking. Celeste Street seemed to roll like a slow wave,
fissures snaking across the concrete. Sections of the street collapsed, and human figures began to crawl
out of the holes. Vance made a choking sound.

   Something burst up out of the street next to Celeste’s Cadillac. She looked into the seamed face of a
heavy-set Mexican woman, and the woman’s hand darted in through the open window and closed on
Celeste’s wrist. Celeste stared dumbly at the brown hand, at the saw-blade-edged fingernails digging into
her flesh. She had a split second choice of whether to scream or act.

    She picked up the beer bottle beside her on the seat and smashed it into the creature’s face. Gray
fluid splattered from the slashed cheek. Then she let the scream go, and as she jerked loose, ribbons of
flesh flayed off her arm. The thing reached for her again, but Celeste was already squirming out the
passenger door. The claws ripped across the back of the driver’s seat.

   Celeste tumbled to the curb. The creature hopped nimbly up onto the hood, was about to leap at
her—and then Vance shot it point-blank in the head with the Winchester rifle he’d pulled out of the patrol
car.

   The bullet went through its skull and shattered the windshield; now Vance had the creature’s full
attention. He put the next bullet between its eyes, the third one knocking its lower jaw out of joint and
fountaining broken needles into the air. It made a shrieking noise and jumped off the hood, its spine
bowing and the scorpion tail bursting loose. Its arms and legs elongated, mottled with black scales, and
before Vance could fire again the thing scrabbled off and dropped into a hole in the street.

    Another hunched and misshapen replicant, its spiked tail weaving like a cobra’s head, rushed out of
the smoke at Vance. He had time to see it wore the ooze-wet face of Gil Lockridge and then he started
shooting. A bullet ricocheted off the pavement, but the next thunked into the body, staggering the
creature, and Vance shot it in the forehead. The tail crashed against the front of Celeste’s Cadillac,
caving in the radiator grille, but it backed off and retreated.

   An acidic, sickly-sweet smell was in the air. Vance saw other figures scuttling in the haze, and he ran
the four strides to the patrol car, popped out the spent clip of bullets, and shoved a fresh one in. He had
two more, each holding six cartridges, and those he jammed into his pocket. A third figure lurched
toward him. Vance fired twice at it, didn’t know if he did any damage or not but the thing—a scorpion’s
body with the dark-haired head of a man—hissed and darted away. “Come on!” Vance shouted, his
gaze sliding from side to side and his heart slamming. “This is Texas, you sonsofbitches! We’ll kick your
asses!”

  But no more of the things rushed him. There were others out there, maybe five or six of them,
emerging from the holes like scorpions stirred up from a nest. They were racing toward Travis Street.

   Oh Jesus, Vance thought. Stinger’s found out where Daufin is.

   There was a crashing sound and the thud of falling bricks. Vance looked to his right, saw the smoke
and dust swirling around a shape as long as a train’s engine moving along Celeste Street. He caught a
glimpse of a massive spiked tail, and then it slashed from one side to another and the storefronts
exploded as if hit by a demolition ball. The thing’s tail swept aside the chainlink fence that surrounded
Mack Cade’s used-car lot, hit a car, and knocked it onto its side. Then the thing was clambering through
the cars like a roach over food crumbs, and as the tail kept smashing cars Vance saw sparks fly. A
pickup truck upended and slid into the street. The creature got amid the cars and madly flailed left and
right, and there was a hollow boom of gasoline going up, followed by a leap of red flame that let Vance
and Celeste see the black, eight-legged body and the narrow head that was a bizarre combination of
horse and scorpion. The thing flung cars in all directions, more fires started up and fed on the ruptured
gas tanks, and then it continued its progress through the heart of Inferno.

  Vance grasped Celeste’s bleeding arm and pulled her up. Sue Mullinax was standing in the cafe’s
doorway, her freckled face milky white as she watched the monster coming. Vance saw that it would be
on them in seconds, and its tail was battering everything on both sides of the street. “Get inside!” he
yelled at her. She backed into the cafe, and Vance pulled Celeste with him through the door. Sue
scrambled over the counter, huddling down beside the refrigerator. Vance heard stones crash into the
street: a wall toppling. He dropped the rifle, hefted Celeste Preston and shoved her over the counter, and
he was climbing over too when the entire front wall of the Brandin’ Iron imploded in a storm of white
stones and mortar. The patrol car slewed in, smashing chairs and tables out of its path. Three fist-sized
pieces of rock slammed into Vance’s shoulder and side and knocked him over the counter like a bowling
pin.

   The roof sagged, the air white with rock dust. Pools of fire burned around the broken oil lamps. The
Brandin’ Iron’s front wall was a gaping cavity. Outside, the creature veered to the right, its tail whipping
through the front of the House of Beauty, and then it crawled north along the buckled wreckage of Travis
Street. In its wake, five more of the smaller things came up out of holes and followed like scavengers
after a shark.

     In the Hammonds’ house, Scooter was barking fit to bust. Sarge lay on the den floor, his hands
covering his head and his body trembling violently. About a minute before, something had hit the wall that
faced Celeste Street and the entire house had jumped off its foundations in a shatter of glass and breaking
stone. Sarge sat up, his nostrils stung by dust and his eyes wide and glassy with the memories of incoming
artillery rounds. Scooter was right beside him, still barking furiously. “Hush,” Sarge said; his voice was a
husky rasp. “Hush, Scooter,” he said, and his best friend obeyed.

    Sarge stood up. The floor had been knocked crooked. He’d gone into the kitchen ten minutes before
to raid the refrigerator and had found a pack of wooden Fire Chief matches, and now he struck one of
them and followed its light to the front door.

   There was no front door. Most of the wall was gone too. Antitank gun, Sarge thought. Blew a hole
clean into the house. He could see the red leap of fires in the direction of Cade’s used-car lot. And
something else out there, gliding through the smoke and flames. Tiger tank, he thought. No, no. Two or
three Tigers. Maybe more. But he couldn’t hear the clank of treads, and the thing didn’t lumber like a
machine. It had the fluid, terrifying power of life.

   Celeste Street had broken open. Sarge could see other shapes—human-sized, but hunchbacked
things that moved with the quick purpose of ants swarming toward a meal.

   The match burned his fingers. He shook it out and let it drop, and he retreated from the collapsed
wall. Struck another match, because the darkness had claws. Scooter circled his legs, whining nervously.
The house was no longer safe; it was laid open like a wound, and at any moment those things in the street
might scurry in. Sarge dared not leave the house, but he knew he and Scooter couldn’t stand out in the
open like shell-shocked fools, either. He backed out of the den and into a hallway. There was a door on
his left; he opened it, faced a closet full of boxes, a vacuum cleaner, other odds and ends. It was too
narrow for both himself and Scooter. The match went out, and he struck a third one. Panic was eating
into him. He remembered a captain’s face, the man saying, Always take the high ground. He looked
up, lifted the match, and found what he was seeking.

   At the hallway’s ceiling there was a little recessed square and a cord hanging down about six inches.
Sarge reached up, grasped the cord, and pulled it. The square opened, and a folding metal stairway
came down. Just as in his own house, there was a small attic. The high ground, Sarge thought. “Go on,
Scooter!” he said, and the dog scampered up the steps. Sarge followed. The space was a little larger
than the attic in his house, but still there was just enough room to lie flat on his belly. He got himself turned
around, pulled the steps back up, and the attic door clicked shut.
   The match died. He lay for a moment in the dark. The attic smelled of dust and smoke, but he could
breathe all right. Scooter nudged up against him. “Ain’t nobody can find us here,” Sarge whispered.
“Nobody.” He scraped another match along the Fire Chief box and held it up to see what was around
them.

    He was lying on a mat of pink insulation, and the storage space was jammed with cardboard boxes.
A broken lamp leaned against the eaves, and what appeared to be sleeping bags were rolled up within
Sarge’s reach. The insulation was already itching his skin. He grasped one of the sleeping bags and pulled
it toward him to lie on. He got it spread out, but there was something lumpy in it. Something round, like a
baseball.

   He reached into it, and his hand found a cool sphere.

   The match went out.



                                                 51
                                        Scuttle and Scrape


Daufin had seen the red burst of explosions from the center of Inferno, and she knew the time had come.

   Cars and pickup trucks had careened into the parking lot, people rushing to the safety of the
apartment building, and Gunniston had gone to find out what was happening. Jessie, Tom, and Rhodes
remained with Daufin, watching as the alien paced back and forth at the window like a desperate animal
in a narrowing cage.

   “I want my daughter back,” Jessie said. “Where is she?”

   “Safe. In my pod.”

   Jessie stepped forward and dared to grasp Daufin’s shoulder. The alien stopped her pacing and
looked up at the woman’s face. “I asked you where she is. You’re going to tell me.”

   Daufin glanced at the others. They were waiting for her to speak, and Daufin knew it was time for that
too. “My pod is in your house. I put it through the upper hatch.”

   “Upper hatch?” Tom asked. “We don’t even have an upstairs!”

   “Incorrect. I put my pod through the upper hatch of your house.”

   “We looked through every inch of that place!” Rhodes told her. “The sphere’s not there!”

   But Jessie searched the child’s face, and she remembered the flecks of pink insulation in the auburn
hair. “We looked everywhere we thought you could reach. But we didn’t check the attic, did we?”

   “The attic? That’s crazy!” Rhodes said. “She couldn’t even walk when we found her! How could
she have gotten into the attic?”

   Jessie knew. “You’d already learned how to walk by the time we’d gotten there, hadn’t you?”

   “Yes. I did the teeah-veeah thing.” She saw they didn’t comprehend. “I playacted,” she explained,
“because I didn’t want you to look through the upper hatch.”

   “You couldn’t have reached the trapdoor by yourself,” Jessie said. “What did you stand on?”

   “A bodily-support instrument.” She realized that hadn’t translated as she’d intended. “A chair. I made
sure it was back in place, exactly where it had been.”

   Jessie recalled the little girl pulling the chair to the window and standing up on it to press her hands
against the glass. It had never occurred to her that Daufin could have used a chair once before, to reach
the trapdoor’s cord. She looked out at the fires and saw they were on Celeste Street, very close to their
own house. “How do you know Stevie’s safe?”

   “My pod is… how do you say… in-de-struc-ti-ble. Nothing can break it open, not even Stinger’s
technology.” Daufin had felt the chill sweep of the seeker beam two minutes before, and she calculated
that it made a complete rotation once every four hundred and eighty Earth seconds. “What is the time,
please?” she asked Tom.

  “Eighteen minutes after three.”

   She nodded. The seeker beam should return in approximately three hundred and sixty seconds. She
began a mental countdown, using the rigid Earth mathematics. “Stinger’s searching for my pod with a
beam of energy from his ship,” she said. “The beam’s been activated since Stinger landed. It’s powered
by a machine that’s calculated the measurements and density of my pod, but the pod has a protective
mechanism that deflects the beam.”

   “So Stinger won’t be able to find it?” Jessie asked.

   “Stinger hasn’t found it yet. The beam’s still activated.” She watched the dance of the fires, and she
knew she had to tell them the rest of it. “The beam’s very strong. The longer I’m out of the pod, the
weaker the defense mechanism becomes.” She met Jessie’s gaze. “I never thought I’d be out of it this
long.”

   “You mean Stinger’s got a good chance of finding out it’s in our attic,” Tom said.

   “I can calculate the odds, if you like.”

   “No.” Jessie didn’t care to hear them because they’d be in Stinger’s favor, like everything else
seemed to be.

    Rhodes walked to the window to get a breath of air. The last few cars were barreling into the parking
lot. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what those people were running from. He turned toward Daufin.
“You said you could get away in Stinger’s ship. How is that possible?”

   “I’ve escaped from Rock Seven twice before. I was hunted and taken back by Stinger both times. I
know the ship’s systems, and the machines that operate the controls. And I know how to use the star
corridor to get home.”

   “If you got inside, you could find a way to shut off the force field?”

  “Yes. The force field comes from the auxiliary power supply. That power is rerouted to start the…”
There were no Earth words to describe the pyramid’s flight system. “The main engines,” was the best she
could do.

   “So the force field has to be shut down before the engines can start? How long does that take?”
    “A variable amount of time, depending on how much power’s been drained. I’d calculate roughly
fifteen to twenty of your minutes.”

    He grunted, trying to clear his mind enough to think. “Sun’ll be coming up in about an hour and a half.
There’re probably several hundred state troopers, air-force people, and reporters around the force
field’s perimeter by now.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “I’ll bet old Buckner’s in charge. Bet that
bastard’s going crazy trying to keep the news hounds from taking pictures. What the hell: this’ll be all
over the newspapers and TV within twelve hours and there’s not a damned thing anybody can do about
it.” The smile faded. “If the force field was down, we’d have a chance to get out of here with our skins
still on.” He lifted his arm and looked at the bruise in the shape of a hand imprinted around it. “Most of
us, I mean. I want you to think hard: is there any way to get into that ship?”

   “Yes,” she answered promptly. “Through Stinger’s tunnels.”

  “I mean another way.” The mention of those tunnels had sent a dagger of fear into Rhodes’s heart.
“How about the portal the flying thing came out of? Are there other passages into the ship?”

   “No. Only the tunnels.”

  The breath hissed from between his teeth like air from a pierced tire, and his hope deflated with it.
There was no way on God’s green earth he could go back into those tunnels.

  Gunniston returned from the corridor, and with him was Zarra Alhambra. “Tell them what you told
me,” he urged.

    “Somethin’ came up out of the street over in Bordertown,” Zarra said to the colonel. “All of us were
in the church. Cody Lockett and Rick saw it, and we cleared everybody out of the church and herded
’em over here. That’s all I know, man.”

   “Where’re Cody and Rick now?” Tom asked.

   “I don’t know. Everythin’ was happenin’ so fast. I guess they’re on the way here.”

   Daufin felt the seeker beam rotate past, its chill prickling her skin. Her calculation had been off by four
seconds.

   The door opened again. It was Bobby Clay Clemmons, who’d been up on the roof keeping watch
with Mike Frackner and a couple of other ’Gades. He glanced quickly at the Rattlers; any other time he
would have attacked them in a blind rage for intruding on ’Gade territory, but all that was forgotten.
“Hey, Colonel!” he said. “Somethin’s movin’ around down there!” He strode to the window, and
Rhodes went with him.

   Two of the cars down in the maze of vehicles still had their headlights on. At first Rhodes couldn’t see
much through the smoke and dust—and then he caught sight of a shape moving quickly over on the right,
and another one on the left. A third shape, running low to the ground, skittered under a car and stayed
there. And now more of them were coming along Travis Street. He heard the scuttle and scrape of claws
as the things climbed up over the cars. He shuddered; he was reminded of walking into the kitchen of the
farmhouse he’d grown up in, switching on the lights, and seeing a dozen roaches scurry off a platter of
birthday cake.

   Dark, scaly backs darted through the headlight beams. A spiked tail swung, and one of the lights
smashed out. Another tail rose up, quivered with tension, and broke out first one headlight and then a
second. The fourth and last headlight was smashed. Down in the murk, the things began to swarm toward
the apartment building, their tails beating haphazardly at the sides of the cars, but they stopped at the
edge of the parking lot.

  “Stinger’s afraid of the electric light.” Daufin was standing beside Rhodes, peering over the
windowsill. “It hurts him.”

   “Maybe it hurts Stinger, but maybe it doesn’t hurt all those things.”

   “All are Stinger,” she said. Her eyes followed the twitching of the spiked tails. Their hammering was
becoming a regular rhythm now, like a brutal taunt. “He won’t get in here while these lights are on.”

  Tom had already picked up his rifle from the table. Beside it was the tear-gas shotgun that Rhodes
had brought in, and Gunniston still had his .45 automatic. Rhodes looked at Bobby Clay Clemmons.
“Have you got any weapons here?”

  “Arsenal’s this way.” Bobby Clay led him into the next room and switched on the battery lamp
mounted to the wall. Its light revealed racks where a variety of objects hung: sawed-off baseball bats, a
couple of pellet rifles, and two pairs of brass knuckles. “This all you’ve got?”

    “That’s about it.” The boy shrugged. “We never… like… wanted to kill anybody, man. Few other
things in here.” He walked to a green footlocker and opened it. Inside were tools—a hammer, two or
three screwdrivers, assorted jars of nails, and other junk. There were only two items that Rhodes thought
might be of use: a battery-powered bull’s-eye lantern and a flashlight. He pulled them out and turned
them on to check the batteries. The lantern was strong enough, but the flashlight was almost dead. He
took the lantern back to the other room, just in case—God forbid—something should happen to the wall
lights.

   The crashing of spikes against metal was steady and insistent. The noise got to Tom; he crossed the
room, slid the rifle’s barrel through the window, and fired at one of the dark shapes. The slug, if it hit, did
not stop the rhythmic pounding.

   “Save your bullets!” Rhodes told him. “Stinger’s trying to psych us out.” He heard more gunshots,
from other windows. Bullets scratched sparks off the concrete, but the noises went on. It sounded like
the tramping of an army over broken glass.

   Tom was about to pull the rifle barrel back in when he saw something else out there. It was a large
shape, coming steadily across the parking lot toward them, but he couldn’t make out anything else.
“Rhodes!” he said. “Look at—”

   There was the sound of metal crumpling. And in the next second what might have been a car door
crashed against the side of the building. Glass shattered in a window three or four away from the one
where Tom stood. A fusillade of gunfire erupted. Rhodes came to the window, could only see the vague
outline of something huge out there—and then the mashed bulk of a red Mustang hit the wall about ten
feet away and slid down with a shriek of metal. Whatever it was, the bastard was strong enough to hurl a
car twenty or thirty feet. “Get down, everybody!” he said, ducking below the window. The others got
down too, and before she could think about what she was doing, Jessie grasped her little girl’s body and
pulled her close.

    “Gunny!” Rhodes said. “Go down the hall and keep everybody away from the windows!” The other
man hurried out. Rhodes peered up over the sill. The shape was moving closer, but not yet in the wash of
the building’s lights. Another piece of metal—a hood, he thought it might be—sailed out and bounced off
one of the first-floor windows, but the crash and echo sounded like the place was coming to pieces. A
tire followed within seconds, shattering the window two apartments to the left. Someone cried out in pain
as flying glass hit them, and Daufin broke free from Jessie’s grip.

   She rushed to the window before anyone could stop her, and she grabbed the rifle out of Tom’s
hands and struggled to balance it on the sill. Even as Rhodes was reaching for her, she lodged two fingers
on the trigger and squeezed. The recoil threw her backward, skidding her across the floor, but instantly
she was up again and trying to drag the rifle with her. Her eyes were wild, wet with rage and frustration.
Tom clutched the rifle before Daufin could get it up on the sill, and as he pulled her away from the
window the wall exploded inward over their heads.

    Rhodes saw the thing’s tail burst through in a shower of rubble and dust. Stones clattered down
around Jessie, Zarra, and Bobby Clay, and Tom protected Daufin with his body. The tail darted out
again, leaving a hole as big around as a washtub. Rhodes looked out the window, got a nerve-shredding
glimpse of the creature’s head as it scuttled back from the light’s edge. As it retreated, it slashed out with
its tail again and the spikes shrieked past the wall.

   Daufin squirmed away from Tom, her skin radiating little shocks like an electric eel, and leapt up onto
the windowsill. Rhodes thought she was going to jump through, and he dared to grab her arms. A shock
coursed through him, rattling his teeth, but he hung on. “No!” he shouted, trying to hold her back as she
thrashed like an animal.

   Her attention was only on one thing: getting out of this box and leading Stinger away from the humans
trapped here. But suddenly she saw the huge shape coming through the smoke; the white light washed
onto its head, glinting off the needle teeth in its thick, elongated jaws. Two of the eyes ticked toward her,
while two aimed at another window, and for a second she thought she could see her face reflected on the
thin black pupils. Whether those eyes knew her or not, she didn’t know: they were as cold and impassive
as the icy vaults of deep space. Stinger kept scurrying forward, the tail rising up behind it like a deadly
question mark. The full glare of the electric light fell onto its head. There was a sizzling sound that made
Rhodes think of bacon on a grill; he saw the creature’s eyes blistering and oozing where the light touched
them. The tail whipped forward, and Rhodes yanked Daufin out of the window and to the floor. The
spikes crashed into the wall of the apartment next door. There was a cacophony of screams, and the
entire second level shook.

   Brick dust filled the room. Rhodes sat up, peered out, but the thing had retreated from the light. In the
parking lot the tails of the other Stingers kept up their steady, martial drumbeat. Daufin was lying on her
side, breathing heavily, knowing that Stinger was trying to smash out the lights. Then something hit her
like a physical blow: the seeker beam had been due to pass twelve seconds ago. Her mental countdown
was still progressing. Where was the seeker beam? If it had been turned off…

   She didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

   “Hang on,” Rhodes said tersely. “It’s coming back.” He reached for Tom’s rifle.



   In the close darkness of the Hammonds’ attic, Scooter began growling. Sarge lit another match and
held it to the ebony sphere in his hand. Couldn’t see anything in it, but when he shook it he thought he
could hear the quiet slosh of liquid. Thing was as cool as if it had just come out of a refrigerator. He
pressed it against his cheeks and forehead like a piece of ice. Scooter got up off the sleeping bag and
gave a nervous yip, and Sarge said, “Don’t you fret, now. Ol’ Sarge’ll take care of—”

   The house trembled, and from downstairs came the scream of splitting wood.

   “—you,” he finished thickly.
   There was a crash of furniture either falling or being thrown over, then silence. Scooter whined and
pressed against Sarge’s side, and Sarge put his arm around his best friend. The match went out, but he
didn’t try to light another because the scrape on the box would be too loud.

   The silence stretched. Then came the sound of footsteps, entering the hallway. They stopped just
below the attic’s hatch.

   The hatch was jerked open, and the steps unfolded.

   Sarge crawled away from it, his hand clenching the black sphere.

   “Come down,” a man’s voice said. “Bring the pod with you.”

   Sarge didn’t move. Scooter growled softly.

  “If you have a light, I want you to throw it down to me.” An impatient pause. “You don’t want to get
me super pissed, do you?”

    The voice had a Texan accent, but there was something wrong with it. Around the words was a
rattling, as if whoever was speaking had a nest of snakes in his throat. And now there was another noise
too: a low moan that sounded like a dog in agony.

  Sarge tossed the box of matches down the hatch. A hand caught and crumpled it. “Now you and the
pod.”

  He didn’t know what the man meant about a “pod,” but he whispered shakily to Scooter, “We’re
gonna have to go down there. Ain’t no way around it.” He slid toward the hatch, and Scooter followed.

    A man-sized shape stood in the hallway. As Sarge reached the bottom of the steps, a hand grabbed
the sphere away from him so fast it was only seconds later that Sarge felt pain and the welling of blood
from his fingers. Fella’s got sharp nails, he thought. Scratched the fool out of me. He could see the man
lift the sphere up before his face. There was something writhing at the man’s chest, where nothing ought
to be but skin and shirt.

   The man whispered, “I’ve got you.” And the way he said that made the flesh crawl at the back of
Sarge’s neck.

   The hand placed the sphere down in that writhing mass on his chest. Sarge heard the click of fangs as
the sphere was accepted.

    And then the man’s arm—as damp and slimy as a centipede’s belly—hooked around Sarge and lifted
him off the floor, squeezing the breath out of him. Sarge was too stunned to fight back, and before he
knew what was happening the man was striding toward a gaping hole in the den’s floor. Sarge tried to
call for Scooter, couldn’t summon up his voice, and then the man had walked into the hole and they were
falling. Sarge wet his pants.

   The man’s legs hit bottom like shock absorbers, but the impact traveled through Sarge’s body and
made his head feel like a sack of shattered glass. Sarge gave a muffled groan. The man began running
through the winding dark, boots making a shuckshuckshuck noise in the ooze, and carried Sarge away.



                                                 52
                                              The Trade
The creature’s tail slammed through the wall into the room where Curt Lockett and four other people
hugged the floor. Bricks flew, and one of them hit the battery lamp that hung on the wall near the door
and broke it to pieces. The light went out. Curt heard the boom of a shotgun from the next room. The tail
thrashed over his head and exited in a boil of dust, and Curt crabbed out of the room into the corridor as
fast as he could move.

   The hall was packed full. Dozens of Inferno and Bordertown people crouched close to each other in
the sharp glare of the lights, so tight they looked like they were melded together. Dust was billowing
through the corridor, babies were crying and so were a few full-grown men. Curt felt pretty near tears
himself. He’d come here hunting Cody, but one of the Renegades had told him that Cody was gone. So
Curt had stayed to wait for him, and then all hell had broken loose. He crawled away from the door,
getting another wall in between himself and that big sonofabitch with the spiked tail. Somebody was
babbling in Mexican right next to his ear, but the bodies shifted to give him shelter.

   The floor heaved. More bricks caved in, and screams swelled. An old woman was sobbing next to
him, and suddenly her hands were on his arm, moving along the forearm until they locked with his fingers.
He looked into her wrinkled face and saw that her eyes were clouded with cataracts. She kept rocking
back and forth, and the man beside her put his arm around her shoulders.

   Curt and Xavier Mendoza stared at each other. “Where’s Cody?” Mendoza asked.

   “Still out there somewhere.”

  The old woman began speaking frantically in Spanish, and Mendoza tried to comfort her as best he
could. Paloma Jurado was desperate to find out what had happened to Rick and Miranda, but as far as
Mendoza knew they hadn’t gotten to the building yet.

   Curt saw the fat bulk of Stan Frazier squeezed up against the wall not far away. The man was
sweating buckets, and he had a shiny hogleg Colt pistol clamped in his hands. When the building shook
again, Curt pulled his hand free and crawled to his neighbor. “Hey, Frazier! You usin’ that?”

    Frazier made a little gasping noise, his tongue lolling around in a shocked white face. Curt said, “Don’t
mind if I do,” and worked the gun out of the sausagey fingers. Then he crawled back on his belly into the
room he’d just vacated, where there were two holes in the walls the size of truck wheels. He crouched at
the shattered window, pulled the Colt’s hammer back, and waited for that battering ram on legs to come
out of the smoke again. He would’ve given his left nut for one sip of Kentucky Gent, but there was no
time to let the craving take him because the smoke parted and there was the creature’s shape again,
skittering forward. The tail whipped out, hit the wall somewhere to Curt’s right, and hurled a storm of
bricks. Curt started firing, heard two of the bullets ricochet off body armor but two more made a
satisfying splat as if they’d hit softer tissue. The tail swung in his direction, passed the window, and
crashed into the wall of the room next to him. The floor shuddered as if a bomb had gone off. Curt fired
the last two shots and saw gray fluid spray from a foreleg—then the thing had withdrawn into the murk
again and there was a crunching noise as it backed over cars.

   “Here.”

    Curt looked around. Mendoza had left Paloma Jurado with his wife and uncle and crawled into the
room. He offered his palm, and in it were four more bullets. “He had these in his pocket,” Mendoza said.
“I thought you might need them.”

   “I reckon so.” Curt hastily dumped the empty cartridges and reloaded. His hands were shaking.
“Bitch of a night, huh?”

   Mendoza grunted, allowed himself a grim smile. “Sí. You look like somebody stepped on you.”

  “Feel like it too.” A bead of sweat swung from the tip of Curt’s nose. “Got in a little scrape up on
Highway Sixty-seven awhile back. You don’t have a cigarette on you, do you?”

   “No, sorry.”

    “Gotta be some smokes around here somewhere.” He clicked the cylinder back in true and lined up
a bullet under the hammer. “You seen my boy tonight?”

   “He was over in Bordertown about twenty minutes ago. That was the last I saw of him.”

   “He’ll be all right. Cody’s tough. Like his old man.” Curt laughed harshly. Mendoza began to crawl
back to his family, but Curt said, “Hold on. I want to say somethin’ to you, and I reckon this is the time
to do it. Cody seems to think you’re okay. He’s a damn fool about a lot of things, but judgin’ people
ain’t one of ’em. You must’ve given him a pretty fair deal. Guess I appreciate that.”

   “He’s a good boy,” Mendoza said. He found it hard to look into Curt’s watery, sick-dog eyes. “He’s
going to be a better man.”

   “Better than me, you mean.”

   This time Mendoza met Curt’s gaze. “Sí,” he answered. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Ain’t no skin off my ass what you think of me. You’ve been decent to my boy, and I said thanks.
That’s it.” He turned his back on Mendoza.

   The other man had a hard knot of anger in his stomach. He didn’t know what gave Curt the right to
call Cody his “boy.” From what he’d seen, Curt only had use for Cody to clean up the house or bring
money and cigarettes home to him. Well, a dog couldn’t change his smell. Mendoza said, “You’re
welcome,” through gritted teeth and returned to his wife and uncle.

    One thing that old wetback forgot to say, Curt thought. Cody’ll be a better man if he’s still alive. No
telling what was roaming around out there in the dust and smoke, and where Cody might be. Why that
damn kid went over to Bordertown I’ll never figure out, he told himself. But one thing I know for sure: I’ll
kick his butt till it sings Dix—

   No. No you won’t.

   Curt leaned his chin against his gunhand. Those long-tailed bastards out there were still playing a tune
on metal, like they knew they were taunting everybody in the building. He started to squeeze off a bullet
and then figured he’d better save them. It was a damned funny thing: his head was clear, and he felt all
right. His raw flesh was still leaking and hurting like hell, but he could stand the pain. He wasn’t
scared—at least, not petrified. Maybe it was because Treasure was with him. If the boy showed up—
when he showed up—Curt was going to… well, he didn’t exactly know what he would do, but it
wouldn’t be violent. Maybe he’d tell the boy how nice that tie rack looked on the wall, and how he
hoped the boy would do more work like that. Say it and mean it. Maybe try to lay off the juice too; that
wouldn’t be too hard, considering that for the rest of his life he would hear bones crack when he had a
whiff of whiskey. But there was a long way to go, a lot of bad things in between him and Cody. They
would have to be shoveled aside, one by one. And that, he figured, was how everything on God’s earth
got done.
   Someone touched his shoulder, and he spun around and put the pistol’s barrel into a young man’s
face. “What the hell you doin’, sneakin’ up like that?”

   “Colonel Rhodes says he wants everybody away from the windows,” Gunniston told him, and eased
the pistol aside.

   “Too late in here, fella. Window’s done busted.”

  “Better clear out and stay in the hallway, though.” Gunniston started to crawl out and head for the
next room down.

  “Hey!” The name had just clicked through to Curt. “Who’d you say? Colonel Rhodes?” When
Gunniston nodded, Curt said, “I’ve got a message for him. Where is he?”

   “Six doors up the hall,” Gunniston said, and moved on.

    Curt crawled out, past Stan Frazier, stood up, and made his way through the corridor without
stepping on more than seven or eight people. He counted off five apartments and at the sixth, the door
that had HQ and KNOCK FIRST spray-painted on it in red, he went in without knocking. Inside,
crouched on the floor, were two boys Curt recognized as friends of Cody’s, the lady vet and her
husband and little girl, and a man with a black crewcut who was on his knees at the window. The man
had a rifle, and he’d swung it up at Curt just as the door had opened.

   Curt lifted his hands. “You Colonel Rhodes?”

   “That’s right. Put your gun on the table.”

   Curt did. Rhodes looked like a man you didn’t argue with. His eyes were sunken in dark hollows, and
his face was puffy and speckled with glass cuts. “I’m Curt Lockett. Can I put my hands down?” Rhodes
nodded and lowered the rifle, and Curt eased his arms to his sides. “I was up on Highway Sixty-seven,
right at the edge of where that purple cage comes down. There’s a whole bunch of trooper cars and
people on the other side of it. Lot of government brass too. You know a Colonel Buckner?”

   “Yes.”

   “He’s up there with ’em. He was writin’ on a pad and showin’ it to me, ’cause I could see ’em but I
couldn’t hear ’em. Anyway, he wanted to make sure you were okay and find out what was goin’ on. I
was supposed to take you the message.”

   “Thanks. I guess it’s a little late.”

   “Yeah.” Curt looked at the battered wall. “I guess it is.” His gaze went to the little girl. She was
trembling, and he knelt down beside her. “Don’t fret none, little darlin’. We’re gonna get out of this, sure
as—”

   “Thank you for your concern,” she said, and her ancient, white-hot eyes went through him like lasers
through tissue paper, “but I am not a little darling.”

   Curt’s smile hung by a lip. “Oh,” he said—or thought he did—and stood up.

   “Colonel, listen!” Tom said. The rhythmic beating of the creatures’ tails on metal was slowing. The
noise stopped. He peered out the window, could see the smaller shapes moving away amid the cars. The
larger one had drawn back into the murk and disappeared. “They’re leaving!”
  Rhodes looked out, verified that the creatures were indeed retreating. “What’s going on?” he asked
Daufin. “Is this some kind of trick?”

    “I don’t know.” She came forward to see. The seeker beam still hadn’t returned, and that could mean
only one thing: her pod had been found. But maybe not; maybe the beam had malfunctioned, or maybe
its power drain was too severe. She knew she was, as these humans might say, grasping at cylindrical
drinking tubes.

   Tom and Rhodes watched the creatures moving away until the haze swallowed them. Fires still
burned on Celeste Street, and from off in the distance there was a crash of timbers exploding into the air:
maybe the monster’s wrecking-ball tail knocking a house to fragments. A silence fell, except for the noise
of crying babies and adult sobbing.

   “Those sonsofbitches gonna come back?” Curt asked.

   “I’m not sure,” Rhodes answered. “Looks like they might be calling it quits.”

  Daufin strung the meaning of that term together in about three seconds. “Incorrect,” she said. “Stinger
does not call it quits.”

   “You sure talk funny for a little girl,” Curt told her. “No disrespect meant,” he said to Jessie. And then
he remembered something he wished he could forget: Laurey Rainey rising out of the Bob Wire Club’s
floor, and her rattling voice saying Ya’ll are gonna tell me about the little girl. The one who’s the
guardian. Whatever was going on here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know about it. “Anybody got a
cigarette and a match?” Bobby Clay Clemmons gave him the last six Luckies in the pack and a little
plastic Bic lighter. Curt lit up and inhaled down to the depths of his lungs.

   “Daufin? I know you’re in there!”

   The voice came from the parking lot. The heart hammered in Daufin’s chest, and she wavered on her
feet: but she knew it had only been a matter of time, and now the time had come.

   “Daufin? That’s what they call you, isn’t it? Come on, answer me!”

   Tom and Jessie recognized Mack Cade’s voice. Rhodes thought he could make out a figure standing
atop a car just beyond the edge of the light, but he wasn’t sure. The voice might be coming from
anywhere.

   “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be! My time is money!”

   Curt sat on the floor, the cigarette clenched in a corner of his mouth and his eyes narrowed behind a
screen of smoke. He watched the little girl that he knew was no longer truly human. Tom started to pull
her away from the window, but she said, “No,” and he let her alone.

   “You want me to stomp a few more bugs in the dirt, I will!” Stinger promised. “It’s up to you!”

   The chase was over. Daufin knew it, and all her hiding was done. “I’m here!” she called back, and
her voice drifted through the smoke to the figure she could just barely see.

   “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? You gave me a good run, I’ll say that for you. Gave me the slip in
that asteroid field, but you knew I’d find you. A garbage scow’s not built for speed.”

   “They’re not built for reliability, either,” she said.
   “No, I guess not. You want to come on now? It’ll take awhile for my engines to warm up.”

  Daufin hesitated. She could feel the walls of Rock Seven closing around her, and a torture of needles
and probes awaited.

  “I don’t really need you anymore,” Stinger said. “I’ve got your pod. That’s enough to secure my
bounty. When I take off, there’s no way for you to get back to your planet. But I thought maybe—just
maybe—you might like to trade.”

   “Trade for what?”

  “I’ve got three live bugs in my ship. Their names are Sarge Dennison, Miranda Jurado, and Cody
Lockett.”

   Curt sat very still. He stared straight ahead, and wisps of smoke curled from his nostrils. Belly-down
on the floor, Zarra whispered, “Madre de Dios.”

    Daufin looked at Tom and Jessie, and they saw Stevie’s features pinched with agony. Jessie felt faint;
if Stinger had the pod, he had Stevie too. She lowered her head, tears beginning to creep down her
cheeks.

   “I’m waiting,” Stinger prompted.

   Daufin drew a deep breath. Another Earth phrase, one taught her by Tank and Nasty, came to mind:
up shit creek. The humans had done all they could for her; now she would have to do all she could for
them. “Let them go and I’ll come to you,” she said.

    “Right!” Stinger laughed dryly. “I didn’t get to be this old by being stupid. You come to me first, then
I let them go.”

   She knew Stinger would never set them free. They would bring him a bonus from the House of Fists.
“I need time to think.”

  “You have no more time!” It was an angry shout. “Either you come out right now or I take your pod
and the three bugs! Understand?”

  Curt smiled grimly, but his eyes were glazed. “Goddamned Mexican standoff,” he muttered, with no
apologies to Zarra.

   “Yes,” Daufin answered. Her voice cracked. “I understand.”

  “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere, right? Lot of bad vibes in this dump, Daufin. At least you
could’ve crashed on a planet that smells better.”

   Rhodes eased the rifle’s barrel out the window, but Daufin said quietly, “Don’t,” and he took his
finger off the trigger. Daufin raised her voice: “Take them. I’m not coming.”

  There was a shocked silence. Jessie pulled her knees up to her chin and began to rock like a child.
Curt watched the cigarette smoke drift toward the ceiling.

   “I don’t think I heard you,” Stinger replied.

   “Yes you did. Take them. My pod and the three humans. I’d rather die here than live in a prison.”
She felt the blood rushing into her face. With it came a torrent of rage, and she leaned precariously out
the window and shouted, “Go on and take them!”
   “Well, well,” Stinger said. “I misjudged you, didn’t I? You sure that’s how you want to play it out?”

   “I’m sure.”

  “So be it. I hope you like this place, Daufin; you’re going to be here for a mighty long time. I’ll think
about you when I jingle my change.” The figure, which had been shielding its eyes with its single arm, got
down off the car and strode away.

   As Stinger left the parking lot, another figure rose up from between two cars over on the far left,
almost to the red boulders that ended Oakley Street, and hobbled toward the fortress.

   “Stevie… oh my God… Stevie,” Jessie moaned, her hands cupped to her mouth.

   There was stark terror in the woman’s voice: an emotion that translated in any language. Daufin
pivoted from the window, walked to Jessie, and knelt down in front of her. “Listen to me!” Daufin said
urgently. Looked at the others, her eyes blazing. “All of you listen! Stinger would never let them go!
They’re worth more of a bounty to him!”

   “So that’s it.” Rhodes let the rifle rest at his side. He felt a hundred years old. “Stinger’s won.”



                                                  53
                                                One Way


“No!” Daufin said fiercely. “Stinger has not won!” She peered into Jessie’s eyes. “I won’t let Stinger
win. Not now. Not ever.” Jessie didn’t speak, but she wanted desperately to believe.

   Daufin stood up. “The process of systems checks will have already begun, all regulated by machines.
There’ll be other duties, like the freezing of sleep tubes for his prisoners. Stinger will be busy monitoring
the machines; the procedure should take between twenty to thirty Earth minutes. When the force field is
turned off, the engines will start to energize. I calculate another fifteen to twenty minutes for the power
system to reach lift-off capacity. So: I have roughly thirty-five to fifty minutes to breach Stinger’s ship,
find the prisoners, and get them out.”

   Rhodes stared at her with utter disbelief. “No way.”

  “One way: through the tunnels. I’ve got to find the entrance nearest Stinger’s ship. I presume that
would be somewhere across the bridge.”

   With an effort, Jessie spoke. “Even… if you could get them out… what about Stevie? How are we
going to get Stevie back?”

   “Find the pod. Take it from Stinger. As I’ve said, I’ve been aboard a Stinger’s ship twice before, and
I know how the systems work. I can enter the navigational quadrants for my world into the guidance
mechanism, put everything on automatic, place my pod in a sleep tube, and meld into it before the
freezing process is finished. When I enter the pod, Stevie will be freed.”

   “But still in the pyramid,” Tom said. “And how are you going to find the pod and those three people
inside that thing? It must be huge!”

   “I know from experience where the prisoners are being held: level three, where the cages are. The
pod will be close to Stinger.”

   “So you find Stinger and you find the pod, is that what you mean?” Rhodes asked. He raised his
eyebrows. “Have you considered that Stinger wants you to come after them?”

   “Yes. I won’t disappoint.”

   “That’s crazy!” Rhodes insisted. “Maybe you’re some kind of firebrand on your world, but on this
one you’re just a little girl! First thing, you’d have to get through the tunnels—and my guess is that
Stinger’s got replicants in there waiting for you; and secondly, you’d have to kill Stinger to take the ship.
How are you going to do that?”

   “I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve never seen a Stinger killed before.”

   “Great!” Rhodes frowned and shook his head. “We don’t have a chance, folks.”

   “I didn’t say that Stinger couldn’t be killed,” Daufin continued, and the strength of her voice
revitalized Jessie’s waning hope. “Stinger must have a vulnerable spot, just like every other creature. If
Stinger were invulnerable, there’d be no need for the replicants.”

   “A vulnerable spot,” Rhodes repeated quietly. “Right. Well, I wouldn’t go down into those tunnels
without a grenade launcher and a few dozen napalm bombs. It’d be suicide.”

  “I’m willing to risk it.” Tom grasped the rifle and retrieved it from the other man. His face was pale
and sweating, his lips a tight gray line. “I’m going with Daufin.”

   “And get yourself killed? Forget it!”

  Jessie reached up and took Daufin’s hand. Little waves of static electricity flowed between them.
“Tell me the truth: can we get Stevie out of there?”

   “We can try. I want to go home as badly as you want Stevie. If my tribe doesn’t fight, they’ll die. If
the House of Fists returns here, your Earth will die. Neither of us has a choice.”

   Jessie nodded, and looked at Tom. “I’m going too.” She stood up.

   Before Tom or Rhodes could respond, the door opened and Gunniston came in. With him this time
were Rick Jurado and Pequin. Rick’s face was streaked with dust and grime and his swollen ankle was
bound up as tight as he could stand with a strip of sheet from the Smart Dollar. He had come out amid
the houses at the end of Oakley Street in time to hear Stinger’s message, had checked with Mendoza
and his grandmother, and then snagged Gunniston and Pequin. He nodded a greeting at Zarra, relieved to
see his friend was still alive, then directed his attention to the colonel. Underneath the dust, Rick’s skin
had bleached a couple of shades but his eyes were hard and determined. “That thing’s got my sister!
What are we going to do about it, man?”

   “Nothing,” Rhodes said. “I’m sorry, but there’s no—”

   “Yes there is!” Rick had shouted it. “I’m not letting that bastard take Miranda!”

   “We’re going into the ship and get them back,” Jessie told him. “Tom, Daufin, and me.”

   “Dream on.” Rhodes wiped sweat out of his eyes. “You go into those tunnels, there’s no way
anybody’s coming back again. Hell, even if you did get to the ship, what would you use for weapons?
Maybe you could round up a few more guns, okay, but I don’t think bullets are going to do Stinger much
harm.”

   “We need electric lights.” Daufin was aware of time ticking away. “Strong ones.”

   Tom said, “We could take some of the lamps off the walls and figure a way to carry them. Maybe
wire three or four of them together. Plus we’ve got that.” He motioned at the bull’s-eye lantern.

   “We’ve got a whole lot more.” Rick turned to Pequin. “You hung around with Sonny Crowfield,
didn’t you? Did you know about the arsenal?”

   “What arsenal?”

   “Don’t play dumb, man! I found all those guns and shit in Crowfield’s closet! What was he about to
try?”

   Pequin started to deny it again, but he knew Rick would see the lie. “Sonny… was gonna start a war
with the ’Gades. Gonna make it look like the ’Gades were burnin’ down houses in Bordertown.”

   “But they weren’t?”

   “No. I was with him when he set the fires.” Pequin shrugged. “We wanted some action, that’s all.”

   “I want to know about the dynamite.”

    Pequin stared at the floor. He could smell the blood that was spattered over the front of Rick’s shirt.
“Sonny, me and Paco LeGrande went over the fence into the mine, couple of months ago. Just screwin’
around. We found the shed where they used to keep the dynamite. We thought the place was just full of
empty boxes at first, but Paco stepped on a loose board and his foot went through. We found the sticks
in the dirt underneath, so we put ’em in a box and brought ’em out.”

   “To do what? Blow up somebody’s house over here?”

   “No.” Pequin smiled sheepishly, showing his silver tooth. “To blow this place up, when the war
started.”

  “There are five sticks of dynamite—with caps and fuses—in Sonny Crowfield’s house over in
Bordertown,” Rick said to Colonel Rhodes. “And more guns and ammo too. Sonny’s one of those things
now: there’s a hole in the floor, and how far down it goes I don’t know.”

   “Where is this house?” Daufin asked.

   “On Third Street.” Like she would really know where that was, he thought. “Right next to where the
spaceship’s sitting.”

  “That would be the nearest way into the ship, with the least distance of tunnel to go through,” she said.
“Dy-na-mite.” Her memory found the definition: an explosive compound usually formed into a cylinder
and detonated by lighting a fuse. “What does it look like?”

   “Like a ticket to hell, if you ain’t careful,” Curt replied. He drew on his cigarette and held it up.
“Kinda like that, only bigger. Meaner too.” He crushed the butt out on the floor. “You got capped and
fused dynamite lyin’ around untended for God knows how long, you’re askin’ to get blown to
smithereens.”

   “Some of the sticks looked burned,” Rick said. “Like they’d been lit before but hadn’t gone off.”
   “Duds. A dud sometimes don’t stay a dud, though. You can’t tell about dynamite—especially not that
cheap shit ol’ man Preston shipped in. That stuff might go if you looked at it cross-eyed, or then again
you might burn it with a flamethrower and it’d just sit there and sputter.”

   Daufin didn’t follow most of what the man had said, but she knew even a crude explosive might be
useful. “We’ll need rope,” she said to Rick.

   “We can get plenty of that at the hardware store. And there’s wire to tie the lamps together too.”

    “Then that’s where we should go first.” Tom moved to the wall and lifted one of the battery lamps off
its hook. “Get ourselves organized and go from there.”

   “You mean get yourselves screwed up and slaughtered!” The power of Rhodes’s shout silenced
everyone. “My God, you’re going at this thing like scouts on a field trip!” He advanced on Tom
Hammond and gripped the rifle. “What are you going to do when something with metal claws comes out
of the ground and grabs your gun? Or your throat? You’ll wind up either getting slashed to pieces or
blowing everybody else up! Will that get Stevie back for you?” He glared at Daufin. “Will that get you
home?”

   “Man, if you haven’t got any balls just stay here!” Rick told him.

   “You’ll be the first to get your balls torn off,” Rhodes said. He held Rick’s stare for a couple of
seconds, and then he pulled at the rifle. Tom resisted him. The colonel’s face was gray, his eyes
deep-sunken, but there was still a lot of strength in his grip and some of his fire had returned. “First,” he
said, “you need a leader.”

   “I can lead them,” Daufin asserted.

    “Not in the body of a little girl, you can’t. Not in a body you don’t own. Maybe you know a hell of a
lot I don’t, but flesh is flesh and if it gets flayed off there’ll be nothing for Stevie to come back to.” He
pulled harder at the rifle. “Give it to me. With the lights and the dynamite, we might have a chance. Might
, I said.” Fear of those tunnels and the things that would be waiting in them clawed at his stomach, but
Daufin was right: they had to try. “I’ll lead you.”

   Gunniston said instantly, “I’m going too, sir.”

   “Negative. If I don’t come out, you’ll be needed to brief Colonel Buckner. You’re staying here.” The
other man started to protest. “That’s an order,” Rhodes emphasized, and Gunniston remained silent.

   Tom gave up the rifle. “All right.” Rhodes looked around at the others. “If Daufin’s right about the
time factor, we’ve got to get moving. Who else is going besides Jessie and Rick?”

  Bobby Clay Clemmons backed against the wall. Zarra started to speak, but Rick cut him short:
“You’re staying. You take care of Paloma, understand?” He waited until Zarra nodded.

   “Mr. Lockett?” Rhodes asked. On the floor, Curt had taken a picture out of his pants pocket,
unfolded it, and now stared fixedly at the girl’s face. He didn’t answer Rhodes, and a shadow lay across
his eyes.

   “That’s it, then. We need to round up some more lamps and flashlights. Let’s get to it,” he said,
before good sense could overrule his decision.

   Curt stayed where he was as the others left. Rick paused to untie the strip of sheet, draw it as tightly
as he could bear, and then knot it again. The pain was a deep, pulsing ache but no bones had been
broken. He said, “You’re Cody Lockett’s father?”

   “Yeah.” Curt refolded the photograph and put it away. “Cody’s my son.”

   “We’ll get him out of there. Him and my sister both.” Rick saw the hogleg Colt on the table and
picked it up. “This yours?”

   “Yes.”

   “Mind if I take it?”

   Curt said, “Lordy, Lordy, Lordy,” and fresh sweat sparkled on his face. He closed his eyes for a few
seconds; when he opened them, the same old world was still there, and he thought he could feel it
spinning on its axis like a runaway carnival ride. He had a thirst like a chunk of sun lodged down his
throat. He stood up, a sneer warping his mouth. “The day I let a wetback kid do my job is the day I’m
not fit to be pissed on,” he said, and his hand closed around the Colt.



                                                    54
                                                 The Cage


Cody heard Miranda moan. She was coming to, and Cody crawled across the leathery floor to her.

   “My head… my head,” she whispered, pressing her hand against the blue bruise and knot on her
forehead above her left eye. Her eyelids fluttered, and she tried to open them but they were just too
heavy.

   “She gonna be all right?”

    Cody glanced over at Sarge, who sat about five feet away with his arms locked around his knees.
Sarge’s face had taken on a chalky cast in the violet glow of the cage’s bars. “I don’t know,” Cody said.
“She took a pretty hard knock.” She was still moaning, her voice softer as she drifted off again. Cody
had spat up a little blood, and he was breathing in gasps around the pain of a broken rib, but otherwise
he was okay. He was more mad than scared, and his muscles were pumped full of adrenaline. Miranda
lay still again. Cody checked her pulse for the sixth or seventh time; it felt a little slow to him, but at least
it was strong. She was a lot tougher than she looked.

   Cody stood up, holding his side, and made another circle of their cage. It was a cone about fifteen
feet around, with bars of purple light. He’d already tested the bars by kicking at them, and the sole of his
boot had been burned almost clean through, fiery speckles of melting rubber shearing off and those bits
exploding again as they went into the bars. What those beams would do to flesh he didn’t want to know.
The entire cage was suspended about three feet off the floor, which was made of interlocked black
scales.

   He didn’t know what he’d expected the inside of the spaceship to look like—maybe full of high-tech,
polished chrome gizmos that whirred with mysterious purpose; but this place smelled like an overflowed
cesspool and puddles of ooze shimmered on the floor. Pipes that looked as if they were made of
diseased dinosaur bones hung from the ceiling and snaked along the walls, and from them came a rushing,
thrumming sound of something liquid passing through. The musty air was so cold and damp that Cody
could see his breath, but the chill had sharpened his senses. The impression he got of the spaceship was
that it was not a marvel of alien technology, but rather the inside of a medieval castle that lacked heat,
electricity, and sanitation. Slime festooned the bony pipes, and when it dripped, it made slithering sounds
on the floor. One thing he thought he’d seen but couldn’t be sure of: not only were the floor’s scales
absorbing the ooze, but every so often they seemed to swell an inch or two upward and deflate again, as
if they were alive and breathing.

   Cody stopped his circling. He stood close to the bars but could feel no sensation of heat; the beams
burned with a cold fire. On the chamber’s floor was a small black pyramid about the size of a shoebox.
He’d seen Stinger’s boot touch that pyramid when his head was dangling down and the thing’s arm was
about to crush him. The pyramid had glowed from within with dim violet light. There’d been a droning
noise, and the next thing he knew he and Miranda were being dumped onto a black dish that turned out
to be the cage’s floor. As the cage’s bars had illuminated, the cage itself had ascended.

   Later—and how much later Cody didn’t know because his brain was still jammed up—a creature
with Mack Cade’s face and the head and shoulders of a dog growing from its chest had entered the
chamber carrying another body. Cody had watched as the creature’s boot had touched the pyramid. The
violet light had come on, the cage had begun to settle, and when it reached the floor the beams had
extinguished. Then Sarge Dennison had been added to the cage, the creature had touched the pyramid
once more, and the bars had flickered to life. Again the cage rose off the floor, and Stinger had looked at
Sarge and asked his name, just as he’d asked Cody what the girl’s name was. It had taken Sarge a few
seconds to even understand what the question was, but finally he’d stuttered his name out and Stinger
had left—but not before Cody had seen the black sphere gripped between the dog’s jaws.

    He stared at the small pyramid, now dark. An on-off switch, Cody assumed. Touching it would lower
the cage and turn off the bars. But it was three feet below them and at least another three feet beyond the
cage’s edge. Way too far to reach, even if he could get his arm between the bars without burning it off up
to the elbow. Still… that was the only way out he could see, and he didn’t know what Stinger had
planned for them but he figured it wouldn’t be pleasant.

   He dug into his pocket and came up with a dime, four pennies, and his lighter. How much pressure
was needed to trip the switch? The weight of the lighter hitting it might be enough—but he quickly
dismissed that idea, because if the lighter was punctured, the fluid would explode all over the cage. He
put the lighter back in his pocket, lay down on his stomach, and stretched his flattened hand toward the
bars edge-on while his thumb trapped the coins. The space between the bars was wide enough to accept
his hand, and he kept gliding his wrist through, grateful for his slim build. The pain in his ribs flared up
again; when he gasped for breath, the movement made his arm drift a fraction to the right.

   The hair on his forearm crisped, burning away with faint crackling noises. Cody held himself as still as
he could, but the effort was making his arm shake. Now his palm was sweating. He tried to get the coins
in position to flick them at the small pyramid, and he promptly lost the dime and one of the pennies, which
fell straight down to the floor. His hand was cramping, and he had no time to aim: he flung both coins out
with a snap of his wrist, saw one hit beyond the pyramid and the other to the left.

   “Shit!” he said, and pulled his arm and hand back through the bars. All the hair up to the middle of his
forearm had been burned away, but his skin was untouched. Another fraction of an inch, though, and the
cage would smell of burned meat. His arm was trembling right down into the shoulder socket, and he saw
that tripping that switch was pretty much hopeless. He crawled away from the edge and sat back on his
haunches, rubbing his shoulder. He looked up; overhead eight feet or so the violet beams merged
together at the top of the cage, and the mechanism that hoisted the cage was somewhere above that. His
gaze returned to the small pyramid on the floor. “Got to be some way to reach it,” he said.

   “Reach what?” Sarge asked.
   “That thing there.” Cody pointed down to it, and Sarge saw what he meant and nodded. “I think it
controls the cage. If I could trigger it with somethin’ I might be able to—”

   “Cody?” Miranda’s voice was a pained whisper. She was trying to sit up, her eyes wide and
bloodshot. “Cody?”

   He got to her side. “Take it easy. Come on, just lie still.”

  “What happened? Where are we?” She looked around, saw the violet bars that circled them.
“Rick… where’s Rick?”

   “Rick’s okay,” he lied. She blinked up at him. “He made it over the bridge.”

   “We… hit something, didn’t we? Oh… my head…” Her hand found the bruise and knot. She
winced, fresh tears trickling from the corners of her eyes. Her memory was hazy; she remembered a
figure in front of them on the bridge, a jarring collision, and a sensation of falling. Mercifully there was
nothing after that. “Are you all right?”

   “I’ve been better.” Cody smoothed the damp curls away from her forehead. Concussion, he figured.
“Can you feel this?” He rubbed her hands, and she said, “Yes.” Then her ankles. “Yes,” Miranda
responded, and Cody relaxed some. She had friction burns on her arms and a split and swollen lower lip,
but he figured it could’ve been a lot worse: a broken back, broken arms or legs—and surely a broken
neck if Stinger hadn’t been stopped.

   “We hit… the Mumbler, didn’t we?” she asked.

   Cody smiled faintly. “We sure did. Knocked him on his ass too.”

   “I… thought you said you could drive that motor.”

   “I think I did a pretty good job. We’re not dead, are we?”

    “I’m not sure yet.” Now it was her turn to offer him the hint of a tough smile, though her eyes were
still vague. “I think I should’ve stayed in Fort Worth.”

   “Yeah, but then you would never have met me.”

   “Bit shit,” she said, and he knew she was going to be okay. The strength was coming back into her
voice.

   He decided Miranda wasn’t going to pass out again, and he had to tell her what had happened and
where they were. “We’re inside the spaceship,” he said. “In what looks like a dungeon, I think. Anyway,
we’re hangin’ in Stinger’s idea of a jail cell.” He waited for her response, but there was none. “Stinger
could’ve killed us. He didn’t. He wants us alive, which is just fine with me.”

  “Me too,” Sarge said, and Miranda lifted her head to see who’d spoken. “I’m Sarge,” he told her.
“This is Scooter right over here.” He gestured into the empty space.

  “Scooter’s his dog,” Cody quickly explained. “Um… Sarge doesn’t go anywhere without Scooter, if
you get my drift.”

  Miranda eased herself into a sitting position. Her head still pounded, but at least she could see straight
now. She wasn’t sure who was crazy and who wasn’t, but then Sarge started rubbing an invisible dog
and said, “Don’t you worry none, Scooter. I’ll take care of you,” and she realized Sarge lived in a
permanent twilight zone.

   “Sorry I got you into this,” Cody said to her. “You ought to be more particular who you ride with.”

   “Next time I will be.” She tried to stand, but she felt so weak she had to rest her head against her
knees. “What’s that thing keeping us for?”

    “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to guess, either.” Cody thought that the noise of fluid rushing through
the pipes had gotten louder. There was another sound too: a distant reverberation, like a muffled bass
drum or a heartbeat. Whole damn ship’s alive, he thought. “We’ve got to get out of here.” He crawled
over to the cage’s edge, just short of the light bars, and stared down at the small pyramid again. Got to
trip that switch, he knew. But how? “Don’t happen to have a slingshot on you, do you?” he asked half
jokingly, and of course she shook her head no. He lay on his belly, his chin resting on his hands, and just
looked at the pyramid. His belt buckle was jabbing his stomach, and he shifted his position.

   Belt buckle, he thought.

   He abruptly sat up, unbuckled the belt, and reeled it out of the loops.

   Sarge said, “Hey, don’t do that in front of a lady!”

   “How far would you say that thing is?” he asked Miranda, and pointed at the pyramid.

   “I don’t know. Seven feet, maybe.”

   “I peg it closer to six and a half. I wear a twenty-eight-inch belt, and…” He looked at Sarge, saw the
scuffed black belt in the man’s dungarees. “Sarge, hand me your belt.”

   “My belt? Boy, what’s wrong with you?”

   “Take it off, Sarge! Come on, hurry!”

   Sarge did, reluctantly, and handed it to Cody. “What size is this?” Cody asked. Sarge shrugged. “The
church ladies buy all that stuff for me. I don’t keep up with it.”

   “Looks a good forty inches.” Cody was already knotting the two belts together so the buckles were
on opposite ends. “Maybe we’ve got us a long enough reach here. We’ll find out.” He gave the knot a
tug to make sure it wouldn’t come apart.

   “What’re you going to do?” Miranda asked.

   “I’m pretty sure that thing down there is the control box for this cage. I think that if I trip it, it’ll lower
the cage. So I might be able to get us out of here.”

   “Don’t mind him,” Sarge whispered to Scooter. “He’s crazy, that’s all.”

    “Listen to me, both of you.” The urgency in Cody’s voice stopped Sarge’s whispering. “I’m gonna
slide my arm out through the bars as far as I can. If I can’t keep steady, they’ll burn my arm up real
quick. Sarge, I want you to hold my legs. If my arm catches fire, I want you to pull me back as fast as
you can. Got it?”

   “Me? Why me?”

   “Because you’re a lot stronger than Miranda, and because she’s gonna be keepin’ an eye out if
Stinger comes back. Okay?”
   “Okay,” Sarge answered, in a small voice.

   Cody pushed the belt ahead of him between the bars, and the buckle on the other end went over the
edge. Then Sarge grasped Cody’s ankles as Cody slid forward with his face only inches from the beams.
Slowly he eased his hand through, then his wrist, then up to the forearm where the hairs had been burned
away. The buckle was lying on the floor just underneath the cage; now the trick was flicking his wrist to
snap the buckle against the control box.

    His face was right up on the beams, and he could hear their deadly hum. Now was the time to try it if
he ever was. He snapped his wrist upward. The belt buckle scraped along the floor, stopped two or
three inches short of the pyramid. He drew it back and flicked it forward again; once more, the buckle
fell short.

   Cody strained his arm another quarter inch between the bars. There was about enough room for a
toothpick to fit in between them and his skin. A few hairs sparked and crisped away, in pinpoint flames.
His heartbeat was making his body tremble. Steady… steady, he told himself. He flicked the belt
forward. Still too short. A drop of sweat rolled into his right eye and blinded him, and his first impulse
was to wipe it out, but if he moved without thinking, either his face or his arm would go into the bars. He
said, “Sarge, pull me back. Slow.”

   Sarge hauled him away from the edge, and Cody kept his arm rigid until the fingers had cleared. Then
he rubbed his eye with his other hand, got on his knees, and pulled the belt up. “It’s not long enough,” he
said. “We need another couple of inches.” But he knew there was nothing else to be used, and he was
about to toss the knotted belts aside in frustration when Miranda said, “Your earring.”

    Cody’s hand went to his earlobe. The skull earring hung down a little more than two inches. He took
it off, knotted the small chain to one of the buckles so the silver skull had as much play as possible, then
gripped the other buckle and said, “Sarge, let’s try it again.”

   Working slowly and carefully, Cody dropped the buckle with the tiny skull dangling from it over the
cage’s edge and let its weight pull the rest of the belt down. Then he slid forward, Sarge grasping his
ankles again, and negotiated his hand, wrist, and forearm between the violet bars. When he was set and
ready, he snapped his wrist upward. This time he thought the extension would reach; again it just barely
fell short of contact. He had to push another quarter inch of skin through.

    He started sliding his arm forward, millimeter by millimeter. Beads of sweat were heavy in his
eyebrows, and one of them popped and sizzled as it touched a beam. A little more, he thought. Just a
little more. The hairs on his arm were afire. A little more. Now he could see no room between his skin
and the bars. A fraction more, that’s all…

   There was a soft whuff as a lock of his hair grazed the bar before his face and caught fire. The flames
crawled toward his scalp. Miranda cried out, “Pull him back!” He felt Sarge’s hands tighten on his
ankles, and at the same time Cody flicked the belt with a quick jerk of his wrist.

   He heard it: the metallic, almost musical tring of the silver skull hitting the control box. But whether
that was contact enough to trip the switch he didn’t know, and in the next second Sarge was hauling him
away from the bars and Miranda was plucking away burning hair. The muscles in his forearm cramped
rigid, and as the belt came up over the edge it wandered into one of the bars and was sliced in two as
cleanly as by a white-hot blade. He lay on his back, rubbing the cramp out of his arm, the buckle still
clenched in his hand.

   And then he realized, with a start, that the cage was descending.
   He sat up, a stubble of burned hair still smoking above his left eye. The pyramid glowed violet. The
cage settled gently to the floor, and the circle of bars went dark.



                                                   55
                                            Stinger’s Realm


Matt Rhodes was the first down the rope into the hole beneath Sonny Crowfield’s house. The bull’s-eye
lantern was tied to his waist and a fully loaded automatic rifle from Crowfield’s arsenal was strapped
around his shoulder. As soon as his shoes squished into the ooze at the bottom, he took the lantern off
and aimed it into the tunnel ahead. Nothing moved in there but the slow dripping of gray slime. He looked
up, saw Rick Jurado’s light about twenty feet above. He pulled on the rope, and Rick started down.

    Rick had the second of Crowfield’s rifles, as well as one of the flashlights they’d gotten from people
at the fortress. When Rick made it down, the rope was hauled up and a few seconds later came down
again tied around the device Daufin had suggested they make: four of the bright battery lamps wired
together and with a wire handle like a basket of light. It illuminated the tunnel with a powerful white glare,
and Rhodes breathed a lot easier when it reached the bottom.

   Jessie climbed down next, carrying a flashlight and the Winchester strapped to her shoulder. Tom
followed, with Daufin clinging around his neck. The last down was Curt Lockett. Hanging at his chest
was a hiker’s backpack, brought from the hardware store, that held the five sticks of dynamite and the
hogleg Colt.

   Tom set Daufin down. The tunnel that stretched before them was about seven feet in height and
another six or seven feet wide. In the muck around them were pieces of the house’s floor, a mattress,
and a broken-up bed. Crowfield was probably lying in it when the floor split open, Rick figured. He
unstrapped the rifle, propped its stock against his hip, and kept the flashlight’s beam pointed ahead.
Rhodes gave his lantern to Tom and took the bundle of battery lamps. “Okay,” Rhodes said quietly, his
voice echoing. “I’ll go first. Daufin behind me. Then Jessie, Tom, Lockett, and Rick brings up the rear.
Lockett, I don’t want you throwing those sticks without my order. Got it?”

   A flame flared. Curt lit a Lucky with the Bic lighter. “Got it, boss man.”

    “Rick, make sure you watch our backs. And everybody keep as quiet as you can: we want to be able
to hear anything digging.” He swallowed thickly. The air was wet and heavy down here, and the
rotten-peaches odor of the gray ooze stung his nostrils. The slime hung from the ceiling and sides of the
tunnel like grotesque stalactites, pools of it shimmering an iridescent silver on the floor. “What’s this wet
shit all over the place?” Curt asked. It was about two inches deep underfoot, as slick as engine grease.

   “Stinger digs these tunnels,” Daufin answered. “It sprays them with lubricant so it can move faster.”

   “Lubricant!” Curt grunted. Little ants of fear were running figure eights in his belly. “Stuff looks like
snot!”

   “One thing I want to know,” Rhodes said. “Does the power source that runs the replicants come from
Stinger or the ship?”

   “From Stinger.” Daufin peered down the tunnel ahead, alert for any sign of movement. “The replicants
are expendable, meant to be discarded after their use is finished.”
   The replication process must be incredibly fast, Jessie thought. The creation of living tissue bonded
with metallic fibers, the inner organs, synthetic bones—all of it was too much for an earthbound mind to
comprehend. Her own questions about what Stinger looked like, and how it created the replicants from
human bodies, would have to wait. It was time to go.

   “Everybody ready?” Rhodes waited for them all to reply, and then he started into the tunnel, careful of
his footing in the slime and trying very hard not to think about the size of the monster that had drilled
through the Texas dirt.

    Rick shone the light behind them. All clear. Before leaving the ’Gade fort, he’d knelt down beside
Paloma and held her hands between his. Had told her what he had to do, and why. She’d listened
silently, her head bowed. Then she’d asked him to pray with her, and he’d rested his cheek against her
forehead as she begged God’s mercy on her grandson and granddaughter. She’d kissed his hand and
looked at him with those sightless eyes that had always seen to his soul. “Dios anda con los bravos,”
she’d whispered, and let him go.

   He hoped she was right, and that God did indeed walk with the brave. Or at least watch over the
desperate.

   Since leaving the apartment building, they’d seen neither the creature that had grown out of the horse
nor any of the human-sized Stingers. They’d found two fifteen-foot lengths of rope at the hardware store
and had come across the bridge, where Rick’s heart had sunk when he’d seen the battered remains of
Cody Lockett’s motorcycle still burning. He didn’t know if Cody’s old man recognized the machine too,
but Curt Lockett hadn’t made a sound.

   The tunnel veered to the right. The lamps revealed an intersection of three passages, all going in
different directions. Rhodes chose the center of the tunnels, which continued in what he thought was the
way to the black pyramid, and Daufin nodded when he looked at her for reassurance. They went into it,
their lights glinting off the wet walls. In another moment they could hear a steady pounding ahead, like the
beating of a huge heart.

   “Stinger’s ship,” Daufin whispered. “The systems are charging.”

   Rick kept his flashlight aimed behind them. And it happened so fast he had no time to cry out: a
hunchbacked figure scurried into the beam about twenty feet away, lifted its hands before its face, and
quickly retreated to the darkness.

  Rick stopped. His knees were rubbery. He’d seen the weaving tail, and the thing had resembled a
mottled eight-legged scorpion with a human head. “Colonel?” He said it louder: “Colonel?”

   The others had gone on a few paces, but now Rhodes halted and looked back. “What’s wrong?”

   “It knows we’re here,” Rick answered.

   From in front of them came a woman’s Texan drawl: “I wouldn’t come any closer if I were ya’ll.”

    Rhodes swung around and held the lamps up. Twelve or fifteen feet ahead, the tunnel wound to the
left and he knew the creature must be standing around that turn.

   “You bugs sure like to live dangerous,” Stinger said. “Is the guardian with you?”

   Daufin took a step forward. “I’m here,” she said defiantly. “I want the three humans set free.”

   There was a cold little laugh. “Lordy Mercy, was that an order? Honeychild, you’re in my world now.
You want to come on and give yourself up, I might think about lettin’ the bugs go.”

   “Either you set them free,” Daufin said, “or we will.”

   That brought another giggle. “Look behind you, honeychild. You can’t see me, but I’m there. I’m in
the walls. I’m up over you and down underneath. I’m everywhere.” Anger was creeping in. “I’ve got
your pod now, honeychild. That’ll be good enough for my bounty. Plus I’ve found a whole world full of
bugs that can’t fight worth a damn, and I ought to thank you for leadin’ me here.”

   “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going anywhere.”

   “No? Who’s gonna stop me?”

   “I am.”

   There was silence. Daufin knew Stinger would not rush forward into the glare. And then Stinger
hissed: “Come on, then. I’m waitin’ for you. Come on, let’s see what color your guts are!”

    “Get down,” Curt said quietly, and he touched the fuse of the dynamite stick he was holding to the red
tip of his cigarette. The fuse smoked and sparked, began to burn, and Rhodes shouted, “I told you not
to—”

   “Fuck it,” Curt said, and hurled the stick toward the bend in the tunnel.

   Rhodes grabbed Daufin and threw both himself and her into the muck. The others hit the ground and
two seconds later there was a blast like a dozen shotguns going off. The tunnel’s floor shook, chunks of
dirt flying through the air and showering down. Rhodes sat up, his ears ringing. Daufin struggled out from
underneath him and got to her knees. She looked back in amazement at Curt, who was already on his
feet and taking another puff from his bent cigarette. “That’s what dynamite is,” he said.

   Stinger’s voice did not return. But from around the bend there was a terrible gasping sound, like air
being drawn into diseased lungs. Rhodes stood up, cocked his rifle, and held it as steady as he could,
then began walking forward. He crouched and rounded the bend, ready to open fire.

   Something was on the tunnel floor, trying to crawl away through the ooze. It had one arm, the other a
blackened mass lying several feet away, and its head was a misshapen lump. In the torn face, the mouth
full of broken needles gasped like the gill of a bizarre fish, and the single remaining eye flinched in the
light. The spiked tail had risen from its backbone and thrashed weakly from side to side. The thing’s hand
started clawing frantically at the dirt, trying to dig itself in.

   Rhodes held the bundle of lamps closer to its face, avoiding the twitching tail. The awful ruined mouth
stretched open, spilling gray fluid, and the eye began to smoke and burn in its socket. A charred, acrid
chemical odor hung in the air. The eye popped open, melted in a rivulet of ooze, and the body shuddered
and lay still. The tail thrashed once more before it fell like a dead flower.

   Electric light burns out the thing’s eyes, Rhodes thought. And once they were blinded, Stinger had no
more use for the replicants—which were, in essence, walking and talking cameras—so the power source
that animated them was simply turned off. But if all the replicants were in some strange way part of
Stinger—powered perhaps by Stinger’s brainwaves—then it was likely Stinger could feel pain: the
impact of a bullet, or the blast of dynamite. You hurt me, he remembered the creature saying to him in
Dodge Creech’s house. All the replicants were Stinger, and Stinger was vulnerable to pain through them.

   Rhodes led the others past the burned shape on the ground, his pace faster. Daufin glanced only
incuriously at the thing, but Jessie didn’t let herself look at it. Curt tapped his ashes onto the mangled
head, though he moved past as rapidly as everyone else.

    And they were about ten feet past the dead replicant when dirt exploded from the tunnel wall to
Rhodes’s right. A hunchbacked shape lunged for the lamps, its tail breaking loose from the dirt and
slamming into the ceiling. Rhodes twisted toward it, but the thing was on top of him before he could fire.
He heard gunshots: Rick and Tom’s rifles firing almost point-blank, and then his shoulder was hit by what
felt like a runaway power saw and he was lifted off his feet. He was knocked against the other wall with
a force that almost broke his back. Jessie screamed, and then there was more gunfire and Rhodes’s
knees were sagging, warm wetness spilling along his arm. He went down.

   Rick saw the thing’s face: dark eyes and gray hair—the face of Mr. Diaz, who owned the shoe repair
shop on Second Street, on a scorpion’s body. He thrust his rifle’s barrel into that face and blew its lower
jaw away. The creature reeled backward, one arm rising to shield its eyes from the light. Curt fired one
of his four bullets, shot a chunk out of its head, and dark wormy things boiled from the wound. Its tail
swung, narrowly missing Tom’s head. Then the replicant turned and dove into the hole it had emerged
from, scurrying back into the dirt and disappearing within seconds.

  Gunsmoke drifted through the tunnel. Jessie was already on her knees beside the colonel, and she
could see the glint of bone down in the wound on his shoulder. There was a lot of blood. Rhodes’s face
was ashen. He was still gripping his rifle and the lamps’ handle in white-knuckled hands.

   “Bastard clawed me,” Rhodes said. “Trying to break out the lights.”

  “Don’t talk.” Jessie tore the shirt away from the ripped flesh. The wound was deep and nasty; slashed
muscle tissue clenched and relaxed.

   Cold sweat had welled up on Rhodes’s face. He smiled faintly at Jessie’s frown of concern. “Lady,
talking’s about all I can do right now. I’m a mess, huh?”

   She looked up at Tom. “We’ve got to get him out.”

   “No! By the time you do… Stinger will have taken off.” Rhodes’s arm was, thankfully, still numb. He
clasped his hand over the wound and gripped tightly, as if to hold back the pain before it hit. “Listen to
me. If you want to get Stevie back… and the others too… you’ve got to do it for yourselves. I’ve gone
as far as I can go.” He found Daufin, who was standing next to Rick and watching him intently. “Daufin…
you said you could lead them. Here’s your chance.”

   “How bad’s he hurt?” Daufin asked Jessie.

   “No major artery’s cut. Mostly muscle damage. It’s the shock I’m worried about; he’s already
suffered too many traumas tonight.”

   “So who hasn’t?” Rhodes was getting cold, and he felt unconsciousness pulling at him. “Leave me
here and go! We’ve come this far, dammit! Go!”

   “He’s right,” Rick said. “We’ve got to go on.”

  “I’m gettin’ my boy out of there, by God,” Curt vowed, though his stomach fluttered with fear. “No
matter what.”

   “We have to go,” Daufin agreed. The rhythmic pounding of the ship’s systems drawing power from
the reserves was getting louder. She knelt down beside Colonel Rhodes. “Stinger may come for you.
You know that, don’t you?”
  “Yep. Here.” He pushed the lamps toward her. “Somebody give me a flashlight.” Tom did, and
Rhodes propped the rifle up beside him with a bloody finger on the trigger.

   “And dynamite too,” Daufin suggested. Curt gave him a stick, lit a cigarette for him, and put it
between the colonel’s gray lips.

    “Thanks. Now I’m loaded for bear.” Rhodes looked into Daufin’s face. He no longer saw a little girl.
A being impassioned and proud was kneeling next to him, and she had ancient eyes that had endured a
world of pain but still had the shine of courage. “You’re okay,” he told her, in a weakening voice. “I hope
you get back to your…” How had she put it? “Your tribe,” he remembered. “I hope you teach them that
life is worth fighting for.”

   “I will.” She gently laid her hand against his grizzled cheek, and he could feel the tingle of electricity in
her fingers. “You’re not going to die.” It was a command.

   “I always planned on dying in South Dakota, anyway. In bed, when I’m a hundred and one.” The
pain was beginning to take him, but he didn’t let his face show it. “You’d better go.”

   “We’ll be back for you,” Rick said.

   “You sure as hell better be.” He put the stick of dynamite across his chest, just in case.

   Daufin gave Jessie the lamps and then started along the tunnel at a brisk pace. Jessie and the others
followed. The metallic boom of the ship’s pulse told Daufin that the systems were rapidly energizing. The
tunnel wound to the left just ahead. They had to be almost under the ship by now, and soon they’d see
the opening into it. The question was: would Stinger try to stop them from getting inside, or let them enter
the ship?

  As her eyes darted from side to side and she listened for the scurrying of claws digging in the dirt,
Daufin knew Stinger was right: this warren of tunnels was his world, and he was everywhere.

   Her legs moving like little pistons, the alien warrior in the body of a child advanced deeper into
Stinger’s realm.



                                                  56
                                             The Chopshop


“Hold it,” Cody whispered. Behind him, Miranda and Sarge stopped. “I see a light ahead.”

   To call it a light was for want of a better term: it was more of a luminous violet mist, hanging at the far
end of the passage they’d been following for the last ten minutes. Cody figured it as being about forty feet
away, though distance had become unreal. They’d been in the dark since leaving the chamber where
they’d been caged, and they’d been feeling their way along a passage with walls and floor that felt like
soggy leather. Cody thought they were gradually descending, going around in slow spirals. They’d seen
no other openings, no other lights.

   Cody held Miranda’s hand, and cautiously led her forward. She had hold of Sarge’s hand, pulling him
along. They walked through two or three inches of a thick sludge that lay at the bottom of the corridor
and dripped from above, and then they reached the luminous mist. By it they could see that the corridor
wound to the right. Ahead was a circular portal into what looked like a large chamber, lit in a sickly violet
glow.

   “Come on, Scooter!” Sarge whispered over his shoulder. “You gotta keep up!”

   They emerged from the corridor. Cody stopped, stunned by the sight.

   Above them, perhaps a hundred feet in the air, was a huge ball of purple mist, radiating light like an
otherwordly sun. Other portals and platforms advanced up the inner walls of the ship right up to its
distant apex. It made Cody think of what the inside of an antbed must look like, but he could see no
other sign of life. About sixty feet above hung another black pyramid, the size of a tractor-trailer truck,
connected to the walls by two massive metal arms. A network of thousands of silver cables ran from the
pyramid into the walls, but Cody was most astounded by what stood before them.

   Across an area fifty yards wide and the same distance in length were hundreds of
structures—spheres, octagons, bulky slabs, and some as graceful and puzzling as abstract sculptures. All
of them were as black as ebony, and appeared to be covered with scales. They were arranged in long
rows, connected by silver-blue rods; some of the structures were twenty or thirty feet tall.

   “What are they?” Miranda asked fearfully.

   “Machines, I think.” Cody had thought at first that this must be the ship’s engine room, but the
rhythmic pulse was not coming from here but from a level below. One black wall was covered with
thousands of dimly glowing, violet geometric shapes. Probably Stinger’s language, Cody guessed. On
another wall were rows of triangular screens, displaying what looked like X-ray images of human
skeletons, skulls and organs from varying angles. A different set of images appeared every two or three
seconds, like a visual encyclopedia of human anatomy.

   “Good God A’mighty!” Sarge stared upward. “Got a fake sun in here!” But the ball of mist gave off a
cold light, and the sight of it made his head throb.

   “There’s got to be a way out.” Cody held Miranda’s hand and started across the chamber’s black,
leathery floor. Pools of slime lay everywhere, as if a huge snail had recently crawled through. Cody
reasoned that there had to be another portal, maybe on the opposite side of the ship.

    They went between the rows of machines. Cody heard a slow whooshing, and he realized with a
prickle of flesh at the back of his neck that some of the machines were breathing. But they couldn’t be
alive; they couldn’t be! Still, their scaled surfaces expanded and contracted, each with a slightly different
rhythm. Cody thought Miranda’s grip was going to break his hand.

   Hanging from one of the structures, a large slab studded with needles like an alien sewing machine,
were scraps of what might have been human flesh—or a good imitation of it. Another structure held a
huge spindle with a coil of finely meshed wires that fed into the next machine, and there was a chute with
scraps of cloth, hair, and what might have been bones lying on it like discarded bits of trash. These were
the machines that made Stinger’s replicants, Cody realized. The chamber was a chopshop, eerily similar
to Mack Cade’s.

   Beyond the machines was another portal. Cody walked toward it, but suddenly stopped.

   “What is it?” Miranda asked, almost bumping into him.

   “Look at those.” He pointed. On the chamber floor, trailing into the passage before them, were thirty
or more cords of what looked like stretched red muscle. Cody looked back to see what they were
connected to; the fleshy fibers ran along the floor and into the largest of the breathing black machines. His
next question was: what were those attached to on the other end?

   They had no choice but to enter the passageway. “Let’s go,” Cody said, more to get himself moving
than for any other reason. He took three steps onto the sludgy surface—and then he heard a high whining
noise like the line on a fishing rod being rapidly reeled up.

   The cords on the floor were vibrating. They were being pulled into the breathing machine, and Cody
knew that something was coming through the passage ahead. He heard the noise of movement, the
scuttling of claws against the passage surface. What sounded like an army of Stingers on the march.

   “Back!” he told Miranda and Sarge. “Get back! Hurry!” The noise of something massive was almost
upon them. Cody guided them behind cover of a structure that resembled a gigantic blacksmith’s anvil,
and then he crouched down and watched the portal, his spine crawling as the cords continued to reel into
the depths of the breathing machine.

   And there it was, sliding through the opening into the chamber, its mottled flesh wet and gleaming
under the violet sun. What had sounded like an army was only one creature, but the sight of such an
ungodly thing speared terror through Cody. He felt as if his insides were shriveling, and he knew what he
was looking at—not one of the replicants this time, but the thing that had crossed the void of space
hunting Daufin, that had landed the spaceship here, dug tunnels under Inferno, and burst through the
floors of houses in search of human bodies. There it was, twenty feet away from him.



   In the tunnel outside the ship, Daufin was still advancing like a small juggernaut. Behind her, Jessie and
the others were having trouble keeping pace. Curt slipped in the slime, got up cursing and slinging the
stuff off himself. Daufin listened to the pulse of the ship’s systems. She didn’t know if the force field had
been turned off yet, but when it was a huge amount of energy would be shifted to the engines.

   At the rear of the group, Rick took four more strides and two hands burst from the dirt at his feet.

   One of them locked around his swollen ankle, the claws piercing his skin. He cried out “Jesus!,”
pointed his rifle at the thing’s head, and started shooting. Pieces of flesh flew off the face. “Back here!”
Curt hollered. He put the Colt’s barrel against the thing’s dark-haired skull and pulled the trigger. The
head broke open, spewing its insides. But the thing was still fighting its way out of the ground, one hand
gripping Rick’s ankle and the other flailing at Curt’s legs. Curt jumped like he was barefoot on a hot
griddle. Rick fell, aimed his light into the thing’s face, and saw the eyes sucked back into hoods of flesh.
They smoked and burst, the face contorting with either pain or rage. The claws released him, and the
creature thrashed itself down into the ground again and disappeared.

   “Everyone all right?” Daufin had stopped fifteen feet ahead. Jessie shone the lamps back to illuminate
the others.

   Curt was helping Rick up, both of them trembling. “Can you walk?” Curt asked. Rick tried weight on
his ankle. Actually, the claw slashes had relieved some of the pressure, but his ankle was bleeding. He
nodded. “Yeah, I can make it.”

  “Hold it.” Tom had seen something, and he pointed his light along the tunnel in the direction they’d
come. His eyes widened behind his glasses. “Oh my God,” he said.

   Four human scorpions were scuttling toward them, their spiked tails thrashing. The light hit them and
they flinched, shielded their eyes, but kept coming.
   Tom lifted his rifle and started to fire. Curt said, “Don’t waste the bullets, man.” He flicked his lighter,
touched the flame to one of the dynamite fuses. It sparked and flared. “Everybody kiss the ground!” As
the fuse was gnawed away, he flung the stick at the things and dove onto his face.

   The seconds ticked past. No explosion.

  “Christ!” Curt looked up. The creatures were right on the dynamite. Still no blast. “Must’ve been a
damned du—”

   It exploded. The four bodies were thrown against the tunnel’s sides in the thunderclap glare of the
concussion, and the shock wave passed Curt and the others like a searing desert wind. Daufin was on
her belly too, the blast’s breeze ruffling her hair.

   Jessie held up the lamps and saw two of the figures digging themselves into the walls. A third was
lying there twitching, and a fourth did not move at all.

   “Bingo,” Curt said.

   Daufin stood up.

   And that was when the figure that had rushed along the tunnel behind her seized her by the back of
the neck and lifted her off her feet. Two of its claws sliced into the skin, bringing a cry of pain from her.
She was held at arm’s length, her legs dangling.

   “It’s over,” Stinger whispered, in the voice of Mack Cade.

   Jessie had heard Daufin’s cry, and she started to turn around and shine the light ahead. But Mack
Cade’s voice was a harsh command: “Throw your weapons away! All of them! If you don’t, I’ll break
her neck!”

   Jessie hesitated. Glanced at Tom. He stared at her, gripping the rifle to his chest.

   “Throw your weapons away,” Stinger repeated. The replicant held the child between itself and the
lights. The dog’s head writhed in its chest. “Throw them down the passage as far as you can. Do it!”

   “Oh, Jesus!” Curt fell to his knees in the muck, rocking back and forth. “Don’t kill me! Please… I’m
beggin’ you!” His eyes were wild with terror. “Please don’t kill me!”

   “There’s bug bravery!” Stinger shook Daufin, and droplets of blood fell from the cuts on the back of
her neck. “Look at them! There’re your protectors!”

  Curt was still rocking back and forth, making sobbing sounds. “Get up,” Rick said. “Come on, man.
Don’t let this piece of shit see you beg.”

   “I don’t wanna die… I don’t wanna die…”

  “We’re all going on a nice long trip,” Stinger said. “I won’t kill you if you do what I say. Throw your
weapons down the passage. Now.”

   Tom drew a deep breath, his head bowed, and tossed the rifle away. He winced when it splatted into
the ooze. Curt threw the hogleg Colt down the tunnel. Rick’s rifle went next. “The lights too!” Stinger
shouted. “I’m not a fool!”

  Curt’s light went first. Then Rick’s, and Tom’s lantern. Jessie threw the wired-together lamps away,
and it landed near the blown-up scorpion creature.
   “You have something else,” Stinger said quietly. “The weapon that shouts and burns. What’s it
called?”

   “Dynamite,” Jessie told him, one hand pressed to her face.

  “Dy-na-mite. Dynamite. Where is it?”

   No one spoke. Curt was still huddled over, but making no sound.

   “Where?” Stinger demanded, and shook Daufin so hard it brought a grunt of pain from her.

  “Give it to him, Curt,” Tom said.

   Curt straightened up, slowly took the knapsack off. “The dynamite’s in here,” he said, and tossed it
toward Stinger. It landed at Jessie’s feet.

   “Take the dynamite out and let me see,” Stinger said.

   Jessie picked up the knapsack and reached in. Her hand found not the last two sticks of dynamite,
but a pack of Lucky cigarettes.

   “Let me see!” Stinger demanded.

   “Go on.” Curt’s voice had a nervous edge. “Let him see what he wants to.”

  “But… this isn’t—”

   “Show him,” Curt interrupted.

   And then she understood, or at least thought she did. She brought out the pack of cigarettes and held
them in her palm. Stinger’s eyes watched her over Daufin’s shoulder. “Here it is,” Jessie said. Her throat
was dust dry. “Dynamite. See?”

   Stinger made no sound. The blue Mack Cade eyes stared at the pack of Luckies in Jessie’s palm.
Blinked. Then once more. Processing information, Jessie thought. Maybe searching through the language
centers of all the brains it had already stolen. Would it know what dynamite was, and what the explosive
looked like? A hissing sound came from Stinger’s throat. “That’s a package,” Stinger suddenly said.
“Open it and show me the dynamite.”

   Jessie’s hands were trembling. She tore the pack open, and held up the remaining three cigarettes so
he could see them.

   There was a long moment in which she thought she would scream. If Stinger had any information on
dynamite, it might be the same definition Daufin knew: an explosive compound usually formed into a
cylinder and detonated by lighting a fuse. The cigarettes were cylinders, and how would Stinger know
any differently? She could almost see the gears turning rapidly behind the creature’s counterfeit face.

   Stinger said, “Put the dynamite down. Step on it until it’s dead.”

   Jessie dropped the cigarettes and pressed them deep into the slime.

   A quick smile flickered across the thing’s mouth, and Stinger lowered Daufin but kept his hand
clenched on her neck. “Now I feel better! Good vibes again, ya’ll! Everyone walk in front of me. Go!”

   Jessie let out the breath she’d been holding. Curt Lockett had gambled on the fact that Stinger had
never seen dynamite before. But where were the last two sticks?

   Curt stood up. His red cowboy shirt had been buttoned almost to the throat. He followed Rick along
the tunnel, his arms close to his sides and his back slightly stooped like a dog afraid of being beaten.

    Stinger shoved Daufin into the muck. Hauled her up again, shoved her roughly forward. She’d already
seen what was clamped between the dog’s jaws: her lifepod. Stinger grabbed a handful of her hair. “I
knew the bugs would draw you out. Oh, we’re going to have a nice long trip together. You, me, and the
bugs. Think on these things.” He shoved her again, and followed the others into the dark with his spiked
tail thrashing.



                                                  57
                                           Stinger Revealed


Cody looked upon Stinger in the dank light of a violet sun, and the world seemed to freeze on its axis.

    Stinger—the bounty hunter from a distant planet—was a snaky length of mottled dark and light flesh.
Its body shone with slime, and it moved on hundreds of small silver-clawed legs, propelling the bulk
forward with wavelike undulations. Like a fat, oily centipede, Cody thought; but it had two large hinged
and clawed forelegs that looked like the shovels of a living bulldozer. It was those forelegs that had dug
the tunnels and smashed through the floors of houses.

   Its head was a duplicate of the thing that had burst out of the horse—thick, elongated jaws and four
amber eyes with thin black pupils in a flattened, almost reptilian skull. Except the jaws did not hold needle
teeth. The mouth was a large, wet gray suction cup, like the underside of a leech.

    Stinger’s body continued to glide into the chamber. Cords of elastic red muscle emerged from its
sides and connected it to the breathing machine, which Cody figured must reel the cords in and out
automatically; but it was clear that Stinger was tethered to the machine, and might even be part machine
itself.

    But the worst was that in some places Stinger’s flesh was almost transparent, and Cody could see
what was in there: corpses, drifting as if in a macabre ballet. What looked like hundreds of ropy filaments
had wrapped around the corpses and seemed to be feeding them into the organs. A horse floated in
there, drifting as if on an obscene tide. Flashes of what might have been electricity jumped along the
filaments, illuminating the dead in that corpse-swollen body as if by strobe lights. A woman’s pickled face
pressed up against the scaly flesh, red hair floating, and then she tumbled backward in terrible slow
motion. More bodies moved in Stinger’s internal currents, and there were other faces Cody recognized
and wished he did not. He pressed a hand against his mouth, fighting on the edge of the Great Fried
Empty.

   It knows my name, he thought, and that almost sent him over.

   Finally, Stinger’s tail slid through the portal. It had a wrecking ball of spikes, just as the horse
creature’s tail had. The tail twitched with horrible life, and the hundreds of legs carried Stinger’s bloated,
twenty-foot-long body across the floor with a noise like sliding razor blades.

   Cody couldn’t move. The portal was clear now, though slimed with Stinger’s ooze, and they might be
able to make it. But what if they couldn’t? The breathing machine was reeling fleshy cords out again as
Stinger slithered toward the far side of the chamber. Cody looked over his shoulder at Miranda and
Sarge; both of them were pressed against their shelter, and Sarge’s eyes had bulged with terror. He
motioned for them to stay where they were, then crawled out of cover on his stomach to see where
Stinger had gone.

   The thing had reached the wall of geometric symbols. It reared up, eight feet of its body leaving the
floor, and the legs on its lower length pushed it onward. The flesh of its belly was smooth and white, like
the flesh of a maggot. It looked vulnerable in comparison to the scaly upper body, Cody thought. Like
you could punch a hole in it with a good shotgun blast.

   But he had no shotgun, and all he could do was watch while the thing’s small claws began to touch the
symbols with blurred speed, each one moving independently. As the symbols were activated, their violet
glow went out. Stinger’s head lifted, the eyes peering up, and Cody looked up too. Far above, the
spinning cyclone of the force field at the ship’s apex had begun to slow its revolutions. As Stinger
manipulated another series of symbols, the cyclone of light slowed… slowed… and extinguished.

   The force field had been turned off. Instantly, the suspended violet sun brightened.

   There was a bass grinding of machinery. The two metal arms were lowering the small pyramid to the
floor. As it came down it opened, and within was a compartment that looked like a control center, full of
rows of metallic levers. The pyramid settled to the floor with a slight jarring thump.

  Stinger continued to touch the symbols, all its attention focused on the work. Mechanisms whined and
whirred in the walls, and the entire ship vibrated with a pulse of power.

   Cody crawled back to Miranda and Sarge. “We’ve got to get out now!” he whispered urgently. “I’m
going first. I want you right behind me. Understand?”

   “Yes.” Miranda’s face was still chalky, but her eyes were clear.

   Sarge nodded. “We can’t forget Scooter! Got to bring Scooter with us!”

  “Right.” Cody peered out again, marking Stinger’s position, then at the portal. The time to go was
now. He tensed, about to leap up and run like hell.

  Before he could, Jessie Hammond staggered through the portal. This new shock froze Cody where he
was. She was followed by Tom Hammond, Rick Jurado, and…

   “Oh, Christ,” Cody breathed.

   His old man came in, stoop-shouldered. Right behind him was Daufin, her spine rigid and head
uplifted defiantly… and then the spike-tailed nightmare that looked like Mack Cade with one arm and a
dog’s head growing from its chest. Miranda leaned forward, saw Rick and started to shout, but Cody
pressed his hand over her mouth and pulled her back behind the machinery.

   Rick’s stomach lurched. He’d seen the thing standing at the wall, and he felt the blood drain out of his
face. Jessie glanced quickly back at Curt; beads of sweat glittered on his cheeks and forehead. Tom
took Jessie’s hand, and Daufin turned to the one-armed replicant.

   “You have me now,” she said. “And my pod. Let the humans go.”

   “Prisoners have no right to demand.” The replicant’s eyes were supremely confident and
contemptuous. “The bugs wanted to help you so much, they can go to prison with you.” Daufin knew it
spoke with Stinger’s thoughts, but Stinger was busy with the lift-off preparations and didn’t turn away
from the programming console. Evidently Stinger thought so little of her and the humans that it saw no
need for more replicants to guard them.

   “Where’s my sister?” Rick forced himself to look into the creature’s face. “What’ve you done to
her?”

  “Liberated her. And the two others, just as I’ve liberated all of you. From now on, there will be no
more waste in your lives. Where you’re going, every moment will be productive.” The gaze slid to
Daufin. “Isn’t that right?”

   She didn’t answer. She knew what lay ahead of them: a torture of “tests” and, finally, dissection.

   “You’re going through there.” The single claw motioned toward the portal on the chamber’s other
side. “Move.” He reached out to shove Jessie.

   Rick knew they were dead. All of them. Miranda too. There was nothing left for him to lose, and he’d
rather die on Earth than in outer space or some prison world beyond the stars. His decision was made in
an instant, and it freed him from the terror that had locked around him. He drove his hand into his pocket.
His fingers closed on the object there, and he wrenched it out.

   His other hand seized the creature’s wrist.

   The Mack Cade face twisted toward him, mouth opening in a gasp of indignation.

   At Rick’s side, the honed blade of the Fang of Jesus clicked out. “Eat this,” Rick said.

   He’d always been fast. Fast enough to grab the knife from under a sidewinder’s snout. And now he
brought the Fang of Jesus up in a blur of motion and drove the blade into the replicant’s left eye with all
his strength behind it.

   It went in up to the hilt. Gray fluid spurted from the wound over Rick’s hand. The creature gave a
grunt of surprise and the body staggered back, tail writhing, but Rick dared not let either the wrist or his
knife go.

   Across the chamber, Stinger’s head turned, its claws still darting over the geometric symbols. It made
a wet, enraged hissing sound, and its brainwaves directed the Mack Cade replicant like a master
puppeteer.

    Rick pulled the knife out, struck for the other eye. The thing’s head jerked to one side and the blade
ripped across the cheek. The dog’s jaws opened wide, dropping the pod to the floor, and its needle
teeth snapped at Rick’s ribs. They caught a mouthful of shirt and tore the cloth away. Rick held on to the
replicant’s flailing arm with grim determination and kept knifing at the thing’s face, cutting away chunks of
false flesh.

   The dog’s neck strained, its teeth about to pierce the skin on Rick’s side.

    Tom lunged forward, latching his hands around the dog’s throat. The neck had tremendous strength in
it and the head thrashed, its jaws snapping at Tom’s face. Tom hung on, even when its stubby forelegs
came up and the two hooked claws raked bloody ribbons out of his arms.

   The three figures staggered across the chamber. Daufin saw the pod bounce twice and roll in
Stinger’s direction. She ran after it, scurrying over the tendrils that delivered Stinger’s encoding signals to
the replicating machines, leapt onto the pod, and snatched it up.
   Stinger was lowering itself from the programming console. One pair of its eyes still monitored the
combatants, but the other pair was aimed at Daufin. Explosions of electricity flared inside the monster,
and with a noise like a steam engine building power, the corpse-swollen body began to undulate toward
her.

   The replicant’s spiked tail rose up over Rick’s head, about to smash his skull.

   But Cody had already shot from his hiding place and was sprinting forward. He reached up, grabbing
the tail just below the ball of spikes. Its power lifted him off the floor, but Cody’s weight stopped the
blow before it fell. The replicant roared with anger, trying to shake Cody off.

   The others saw Cody grappling with the tail, but there was no time to find out where he’d come from.
Everything was happening too fast: the replicant’s claw was flailing Rick from side to side as he kept
stabbing right down to the metallic skull. Tom’s arms were streaked with blood, savage pain thrumming
through him, and he could only hold the dog’s head a few seconds longer.

   Jessie had run to Daufin’s side. She picked her up, holding her protectively, as a mother would any
child. Stinger was coming at them, gathering speed, the silver claws skittering across the floor.

    Someone shoved her aside. Curt Lockett touched the lighter’s flame to the first of the two dynamite
sticks he’d taken from the knapsack and clasped under his arms. His face was bleached, a pulse beating
rapidly at his temple. He saw his own death coming at him, and his legs shook but he stood facing the
onrushing beast as the dynamite’s fuse sparked and caught.

   He hurled the stick. It fell short, but Stinger went over it like an oozing train.

   There was no blast. Fuse got crushed, Curt thought. “Get back!” he shouted to Jessie. “Move your
ass, la—”

    His voice was drowned out by a hollow whuuummmp! like a huge shotgun going off in a mass of wet
pillows. Stinger shuddered, its tail slamming against the wall. At the same instant, the mouth in Mack
Cade’s knife-slashed face bellowed with pain, and the dog’s head howled. The Fang of Jesus slammed
into the mouth and sent needles flying.

    Some of Stinger’s claws had crisped, and yellow flames gnawed at the underbelly flesh. A pool of
liquid was spreading across the floor, and as Stinger writhed and rose up like a quaking mountain Curt
saw a three-foot-long gash with charred edges on the soft white flesh. Inside, electricity sputtered along
the veins and organs.

   But Stinger kept coming, trailing slime and some of its guts behind it. Curt retreated, pulling out the
last stick of dynamite. Jessie still clutched Daufin, and was backing away too. Curt flicked the lighter,
touched the fuse to the flame with shaking hands.

   “Hold it! Hold it!” Rick shouted to Tom, but the man’s arms were scored with gashes and the dog’s
head got away from him. As Rick dodged the snapping jaws, the replicant flung him aside. It strode
toward Curt, Cody straining against its tail. The dynamite’s fuse was smoking, and Curt cocked his arm
back to throw it.

   “Dad!” Cody screamed. “Watch out!”

   Curt whirled around. The replicant was upon him, its face hanging in tatters and the single eye glinting
with fury.

   The thing’s claw flashed out in a vicious arc. Shreds of Curt’s red cowboy shirt and pieces of flesh
flew into the air, followed by streamers of blood. The dynamite’s fuse popped a flame, but Curt’s hand
lost it and the stick fell to the floor. The replicant kept slashing at the ruins of his chest, and Curt tried to
fight it off as blood clogged his lungs and welled up into his mouth.

   Cody frantically jerked back on the tail, his own injured ribs driving agony through him. He hauled the
monster back a few feet from his father. Curt went down, and the replicant’s tail threw Cody from side
to side but he gripped tight and held on.

   Stinger loomed over them, the undulations of its body opening wider the charred and torn bellyflesh.

   Cody saw the dynamite, its fuse sizzling down toward the cap. It lay less than ten feet from him, but
he dared not let go of the spiked tail.

   Daufin struggled loose from Jessie’s grip; she hit the floor running and picked up the dynamite stick. A
pair of Stinger’s eyes twitched toward her, and almost simultaneously the replicant turned away from
Curt Lockett and rushed at her. No! Cody thought. Can’t let it get her! He dragged against the tail, his
teeth clenched and tears of pain in his eyes; the replicant’s aim was jarred, and the metal-nailed hand
whipped past Daufin’s head.

   Daufin stood her ground as Stinger began to rear up before her.

   She had a quick mental image: the pitcher in that mathematical game of safes and outs called baseball.
Saw the pitcher’s arm cocking back, then flashing forward again in a miracle of moving muscles, bones,
and sinews. She cocked her own arm back in imitation of that pitcher, and with a split-second calculation
of angles and velocities she threw the sizzling stick of dynamite.

   It flew across the twelve feet between her and Stinger, and landed in the wound on Stinger’s soft
belly, exactly where she’d aimed. She dropped to her knees as the replicant’s claw flailed where her
head had been a second before and Cody strained to hold the thing back.

   A heartbeat passed, as long to Daufin as an agonizing eternity.

   Stinger’s flesh quivered, its body contorting like a question mark; there was a hollow boom that made
Jessie think of thunder caught in a bucket. Two things happened at once: a shower of sparks seemed to
jump from Stinger’s organs, and the monster’s flesh swelled and stretched like a grotesque sausage about
to burst apart. The tear at its belly split wider, rimmed with yellow flames, and as Stinger thrashed wildly,
burning coils of intestines spilled out. Flares of electricity exploded within the body, as if the double blasts
had set off an internal chain reaction.

   The replicant with the ruined face of Mack Cade made a strangling, moaning sound and lurched to
right and left, the claw swiping at empty air as Daufin scrambled beyond its reach. The dog’s howling
was hoarse and full of pain, its teeth gnashing so hard the needles were shearing off. Jessie bent down
and pulled Daufin close to her, their hearts pounding in unison.

   Stinger’s head reeled; it began backing away, its sucker mouth oozing drool, and beneath its body
was a spreading circle of ripped organs, things that looked like dark red matter with needle-teethed
mouths. The organs themselves gasped and twitched like misshapen fish as they came out, and when
Earth air hit them, they ignited with yellow flames and shriveled into leathery ashes. Stinger stretched
upward, as if reaching for the violet sun. Something exploded with white fire inside it. The split widened
further, more tides of thick inner matter streaming out. The upper portion of Stinger’s body crashed to
the floor.

   The replicant toppled to its knees.
   Cody let go of the tail, his arms bruised at their sockets, and got away from it; he slipped in his
father’s blood, and crawled to where Curt lay.

   Stinger’s body began to collapse like a torn-open gasbag. The tail kept hammering at the wall and
floor, but it was getting weaker.

   The replicant fell forward, and Mack Cade’s face banged down.

   “You’rrrre out,” Jessie heard Daufin whisper.

   Rick was trying to stand up, fighting the weight of shock. And then Miranda was beside him and he
didn’t know if he was dead or crazy or dreaming, but she put her arms around him and those were real
enough. He laid his head against her shoulder.

   Sarge Dennison had come out from hiding. He stood watching the creature slowly implode. Brackish
tides rolled across the floor, and in it were what had once been human bodies. He reached down;
Scooter licked his hand. “Good boy,” he said.

   Bursts of fire rippled through Stinger’s gutted hulk. The tail was still feebly twitching, and some of the
claws were still trying to crawl. One pair of eyes had rolled back into the head. The body kept
shuddering, the sucker mouth rasping like an engine dying down.

   “Lordy, Lordy,” Curt managed to say. “What the hell did I do?”

   “Don’t talk. We’re gonna get you out.” Cody had pulled his father’s shoulders off the floor, and
Curt’s head rested on Cody’s leg. Where Curt’s chest had been was a heaving mass of tissue. Cody
thought he could see the heart laboring in there. He wiped a trickle of blood from his father’s lips.

   Curt swallowed. Too much blood, he thought. Could hardly draw a breath for it. He looked up into
his son’s face, and he thought he saw… no, couldn’t be. He’d taught his son that a real man never cries.
“I hurt a little bit,” he said. “Ain’t no big thing.”

   “Hush.” Cody’s voice broke. “Save it for later.”

   “I got… a picture in my back pocket.” He tried to shift, but his body was too heavy. “Can you get it
for me?”

  “Yes sir.” Cody reached into the pocket and found it, all folded up. He saw who the picture was of,
and his heart almost cracked. He gave it to Curt, who held it before his face with bloody fingers.

   “Treasure,” Curt said softly. “You sure did marry one hell of a fool.” He blinked, found Cody again.
“Your mama used to pack a lunch for me. She’d say, ‘Curt, you do me proud today,’ and I’d answer, ‘I
will, Treasure.’” His eyes closed. “Long time back. I used to be a carpenter… and… I took the jobs that
came along.”

   “Please… don’t talk,” Cody said.

  Curt’s eyes opened. They were glassy, and his breathing was forced. He gripped his hand around the
photograph. “I… did wrong with you,” he whispered. “Mighty wrong. Forgive me?”

   “Yes sir. I forgive you.”

  His other hand slid into Cody’s. “You be… a better man than me,” he said. Gave a grim little smile.
“Won’t be too hard, will it?”
   “I love you, Dad,” Cody said.

   “I…” Something broke inside him. Something heavy fell away, and at the same time he realized life
was short he felt light and free. “I… love you,” he answered, and he wished to God he’d had the courage
to say those simple words a long time ago. “Damn kid,” he added. His hand tightened around his son’s.

    Cody was blinded by tears. He wiped his eyes, but the tears returned. He looked at the
still-shuddering mass of Stinger, then back to Curt.

   The man’s eyes had closed. He might have been sleeping, any other time. But down in that morass of
ripped flesh and lungs Cody could no longer see the heart beating. The grip on Cody’s hand was
loosening. Cody held on, but he knew the man had gone—escaped, really, to a place that had no dead
ends but only new beginnings.

   Daufin was standing next to him. She was clutching the sphere, her face dark-hollowed and weary.
The strength in her host body was almost used up. “I owe him—and you—a debt I can never repay,”
she said. “He was a very brave human.”

   “He was my father,” Cody answered.

   Rick was on his feet. He limped with Miranda’s help over to the fallen replicant, placed one foot on
the thing’s shoulder, and shoved the body over onto its back. The dog’s head lolled, its eyes amber
blanks.

   But suddenly the body hitched. The single blue Mack Cade eye was still open, and it fixed on Rick
with utter loathing.

 The mouth stretched, and from between the needle teeth came a harsh, dying hiss: “You… bugsssss
…” The eye rolled back into the head, and the mouth gave a final rattling gasp.

  A death rattle came from Stinger’s husk. The tail rose up, the ball of spikes quivering, and crashed
down one last time as if in defiance.

   And then the carcass lay still.

    But the ship’s pulse was thunderous now, and the violet sun crackled with energy. Daufin turned
toward Jessie, who knelt at Tom’s side. The man’s arms had been flayed raw, and Jessie was tearing up
strips of his shirt to bind the slashes. “The time is short,” Daufin said. She scanned the programming
console, seeking to decipher a code in the geometric shapes. “The engines are about to reach their lift-off
threshold. If they go beyond that point, they might suffer damage.” She peered at the banks of levers
inside the smaller pyramid. “That’s the control center. I can delay lift-off long enough for you to leave the
tunnels—but there won’t be time to change the navigational coordinants and get to the sleep tubes.”

  “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 flow 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 accordian. 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, and 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 Wank, 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?”

   “Almost quarter till ten. I remember, ’cause I saw the clock just before it hit.” She pulled her dusty
hair back from her face, aware that the money stuffed in her blouse was going to make her appear even
heftier than she was. “I work at the Brandin’ Iron. That’s a cafe. Lord, I must look a mess!”

   “You look fine. Get me a pan shot and come back to her face.” The cameraman slowly swiveled,
filming the houses of Inferno. “Lady, this is about to be the most famous town in the country. Hell, in the
whole world!”
   “Am… I gonna be famous?” she asked.

  “You and everybody else. We’ve gotten a report that there might’ve been extraterrestrial contact.
Can you verify that?”

   She was aware of the importance of her answer. And just like that she saw her face and the faces of
other people from Inferno and Bordertown on the newscasts, the covers of magazines, newspapers, and
books, and she had a dizzy spell that was almost as heart-stopping as a monkey flip. She said, very
clearly, “Yes.” Said it again. “Yes. There were two creatures. Both different kinds. The sheriff—Sheriff
Ed Vance is his name—told me one was after the other. When that ship came down, the whole town
almost shook itself to—”

   “Cut!” the man in the cap said. He was looking over his shoulder, and he’d seen what was coming.
“Thanks, Mrs. Mullinax. Gotta go!” He and the cameraman began running up the ridge to the dune
buggy.

   She saw what had scared them: a jeep full of soldiers with MP on their helmets was turning onto
Bowden, its driver swinging around the cracks and craters. Some of the soldiers leapt out and sprinted
up the ridge after the two newsmen. “It’s Miss Mullinax!” she shouted. The dune buggy’s engine fired
before the soldiers could get there, and the vehicle sped away down the other side of the ridge.

   An unmarked dark blue car stopped at the north end of the Snake River Bridge. Two men in the
uniforms of air-force colonels and another man in civilian clothes got out. They strode briskly toward the
group of people who were coming from the south end of the fire-scarred bridge.

   “My God!” The hawk-nosed officer with “Buckner” on a security-clearance tag at his breast pocket
halted. He’d recognized one of the men approaching them, but if that was indeed Colonel Rhodes, Matt
had aged ten years in one night. “I think we’ve found him.” And another few steps closer brought an
“Affirmative. It’s Colonel Rhodes. Tell Central.”

   The other officer, a captain named Garcia, had a field telephone, and through it he said, “Able One to
Central, we’ve found Colonel Rhodes. Repeat: we’ve found the colonel. We need a medic evac truck,
on the double.”

  “Medic evac on the way, Able One,” the dispatcher answered, routing traffic from the Central
Command trailer parked in the Bob Wire Club’s lot.

   Rhodes was being helped along by Zarra Alhambra, and he saw Colonel Buckner of Special
Intelligence coming toward him. “Morning, Alan,” he said when the other man reached them. “You
missed some excitement last night.”

   Buckner nodded, his dark eyes humorless. “I suppose I did.” He looked at the ragtag bunch of
civilians. They appeared to have stumbled out of a battle zone: their clothes were covered with dust and
grime, their eyes weary hollows in bruised and blood-streaked faces. One of them, a wiry young man
with curly blond hair, was being supported between a Hispanic boy and girl, and all three of them had the
thousand-yard stare of shell-shock victims. Another older man had bloody strips of shirt around his arms,
and next to him was an ashen-faced woman holding a little girl who—amazingly—appeared to be asleep.
The other people were more or less just as dazed and battered. But Matt Rhodes had left Webb AFB
yesterday morning looking fairly young, and now dust lay in deep lines on his glass-cut face and much of
his hair had seemingly turned gray overnight. Coagulated blood had oozed through the fingers of the hand
clamped to his shoulder. He was smiling bravely, but his eyes were deep-socketed and there were things
behind them that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
   “This is Mr. Winslow. He’s a coordination specialist.” Buckner motioned to the civilian, a crewcut
blond man in a dark blue suit. Mr. Winslow wore sunglasses and had a face like a slab of stone, and
Rhodes caught a whiff of Washington. “Captain Gunniston’s already been taken to Debriefing,” Buckner
said. It was actually a large trailer parked near the Texaco station. “We’ll have a truck here for you in a
few minutes to take you to Medical.” He gazed around at the destruction. “Looks like this town took a
hell of a beating. Can you estimate the casualties?”

    “High,” Rhodes said. His arm was no longer hurting now; it was just heavy, like a sack of freshly
poured concrete. “But I think we came out on top.” How to explain to this man standing before them that
in the space of twenty-four hours—an iota of a second on the scale of the universe—the fate of two
civilizations had been fought for in the Texas dust?

  “Colonel Buckner?” Garcia said, the field phone’s receiver to his ear. “I’ve got Perimeter Control.
They’re reporting intruders getting through security—probably newsmen. Captain Ingalls says there’s no
way to stop them with all the open spaces out—”

  “Tell him to keep them out of here!” Buckner snapped. In his voice there was a hint of panic. “Jesus
Christ! Tell him to lock the bastards up if he has to!”

   “Might as well forget it,” Rhodes said calmly. “There’s no way to keep this secret.”

  Buckner gaped at him as if Rhodes had just asserted that the American flag’s colors were green, pink,
and purple, and Winslow’s reflective sunglasses held images of Rhodes’s face.

   The distant rumbling of the black pyramid suddenly stopped.

   Cody, Rick, Rhodes, and the others looked back at it. The object’s base had begun to glow a
blue-orange color. Waves of heat shimmered in the morning light.

   The bridge trembled. A vibration passed through the earth, and the upper three quarters of the
pyramid began to rise, leaving the heated base below. Thin jets of white flame shot around the pyramid’s
rim, and those flames roared through the tunnels on the Bordertown side and melted red dirt and sand
into clumps of ebony glass. Hot winds shrilled across the bridge.

   The pyramid slowly rose four hundred feet in the air and paused there, golden sunlight hitting its
black-scaled surface. The pyramid began a graceful rotation.

  “Captain Redding reports Alpha Strike’s Sidewinders are armed and ready,” Garcia relayed to
Buckner through the field phone.

   Sidewinder missiles, Rhodes knew. He looked up, saw the contrails of jets gathering into strike
formation. “Let it alone,” he said.

   Buckner grabbed the phone’s receiver. “This is Team Leader, Alpha Strike. Hold your positions. Fire
Sidewinders on my command, acknowledge?”

   “No!” Tom protested, pushing forward. “Let the ship go!”

   Whips of energy were flailing out from the pyramid’s sides. “Ready on my command,” Buckner
repeated.

   “Tell the fighters to disarm, Alan.” Rhodes clutched the man’s wrist. “I don’t care what your orders
are. Please let it go.” The other man pulled free, splotches of red surfacing on his cheeks.
   And now the pyramid’s sides were compressing, as loops of power crackled from it like lightning and
shot a hundred feet in all directions. The air fluttered with heat, making the pyramid shimmer like a
mirage. In another few seconds the spacecraft had tightened itself into a shape akin to that of a sharpened
spear.

   It began to ascend again, faster now, rapidly gaining speed. In the space of two heartbeats it was an
ebony streak moving upward into the blue.

   “Go,” Rick said. “Go!”

   The fighters were waiting, circling above.

   Buckner’s mouth started to open.

   Rhodes reached out, with deliberate strength, and jerked the phone’s cable out of its field pack.

   There was a sonic boom that knocked the first roving vultures out of the turbulent air and kicked up
dust over thirty miles of Texas desert. The spacecraft seemed to elongate, a dark blurred streak arcing
into the cloudless heavens like an arrow. It shot past the circling jets as if they were painted on the sky
and vanished in a violet shimmer.

   The wind blew across the bridge, ruffled clothes and hair and whistled over the remaining roofs of the
town.

  The ship and its pilot were gone. Far above, the jets were still going around and around like frustrated
mosquitoes deprived of a good arm to bite.

  “Sir?” Winslow’s voice was slow and thick. Rhodes thought they must breed these high-level
government security boys on farms somewhere. “I believe that was probably your last action as a
member of the United States Air Force.”

  “You can kiss my ass,” Rhodes said. To Buckner, “You too.” He gazed up. The fighters were coming
down. It was all over but the cleaning up.

   A truck with a Red Cross on it pulled to the north end of the bridge. Its rear panel opened up and a
ramp slid down. Inside were cots, oxygen masks and tanks, medical supplies and a couple of attendants.

   “Time to go.” Buckner motioned Rhodes on.

   The colonel took a few steps, Zarra helping him, but he stopped abruptly. The sun was a quarter up,
the sky was turning blue, and it was going to be another scorcher. He turned to the others, looked at the
faces of Cody, Rick, Miranda, Jessie, Tom, and the little girl. Even the sonic boom hadn’t awakened her,
and he figured they all would be sleeping like that pretty soon. Later there would be nightmares. But
everyone would deal with those as best they could, because human beings knew nothing if not how to
endure. We saved two worlds, Rhodes thought. Not a bad night’s work for bugs.

   He offered his face to the sun, and went on.

   Jessie felt Stevie’s heart beating, slowly and steadily, against her chest. She touched the child’s face,
ran her hand over the dusty auburn hair—and her fingers found two blood-clotted slashes under Stevie’s
hair, at the back of the neck. Stevie shifted her weight and made a pained face in her sleep. Jessie
removed her fingers.

   Someday the story would have to be told to her. Someday, but not this one.
   Jessie clasped Stevie with one arm and her other hand found Tom’s. They needed to get Ray at the
clinic, but Ray would be all right. He was a born survivor, Jessie knew. That trait must run in the family.
Tom and Jessie crossed the bridge, and Stevie dreamed of stars.

   Trucks and jeeps were all over Inferno now. Several helicopters warily circled the starship’s
remaining base section, which engineer crews in the days ahead would find impossible to cut apart or
otherwise move.

   A figure lingered on the bridge as the others went across. Cody stared at the wreckage of his
motorcycle, his hands hanging limply at his sides. The Honda—his old friend—was dead too, and it
seemed like the bridge was a hundred miles long.

  Rick glanced over his shoulder and stopped. “Take my sister with you,” he told Mendoza, and the
man helped Miranda to the truck. Then Rick limped back and stood waiting.

   Cody reached down, picked up a piece of scorched exhaust pipe. Let it clatter back to the pavement
like so much useless junk.

   “Heard you were good with tools,” Rick said.

   Cody didn’t answer. He sat down, his knees pulled up close to his chest.

   “You coming, or not?”

   Cody was silent. Then, after a long shudder of breath: “Not.”

   Rick limped a few paces closer. Cody averted his face. Rick started to speak, but it was just filling
space. He didn’t know what to say. Then something hit him, right out of the blue: “It’s the last day of
school. How about that? Think we graduated?”

   “Leave me alone. Go on.” He motioned toward the Inferno side.

   “No use sitting out here, Cody. Either you walk the distance or somebody’ll come get you.”

   “Let ’em come!” Cody shouted, and when he turned his face, Rick saw the tears running down his
cheeks. “My dad’s dead, don’t you get it?” The shout left his throat raw. His eyes was so full he couldn’t
see. “My dad’s dead,” he repeated in a quieter voice, as if grasping it fully for the first time. Everything
that had happened in Stinger’s spaceship was a jumbled blur, and it would take him a long time to sort it
out. But he remembered clearly enough his father lying in front of him, holding on to life long enough to
look at a faded picture. A hole yearned inside him, and never in his wildest dreams would he have
thought he might ever miss his father.

   “Yeah, he is dead,” Rick agreed. He came two more paces nearer. “He saved our tails, I’ll tell you
that. I mean… I didn’t know him too well, but… he sure came through for us. And for Daufin too.”

   “A hero,” Cody said. He laughed in spite of the tears, and he had to wipe his nose. “My dad’s a
hero! Think they’ll put that on his tombstone?” His crazy smile fractured, because he realized there
wasn’t a body to bury.

  “I think they might,” Rick told him.

   “Yeah. Maybe so.” Cody watched the sun coming up. It had been almost twenty-four hours since
he’d been sitting on the Rocking Chair, counting the dead ends; he felt older now, but not weaker. His
dad was dead, yes, and he would have to deal with that, but the world seemed different today; it seemed
larger, and offered second chances and new beginnings.

  “We did something real important last night,” Rick said. “Something that people might not ever
understand. But we’ll know it, and that may have to do.”

   “Yeah.” Cody nodded. “I reckon so. What do you think’s gonna happen to Inferno?”

   “I think it’ll be around for a while longer. Bordertown too. As soon as people find out what landed
here—well, you never know about tomorrow.” Rick stepped forward and offered his hand. “You want
to go across now?”

   Cody looked at the brown hand for a moment. The palm was rope-burned. He wiped his eyes and
snuffled his nose. If any of the ’Gades saw him like this, he’d…

   No, he thought. No ’Gades and no Rattlers. Not anymore. That was yesterday, and today began for
both of them from right here, at the middle of this bridge.

   Cody reached up and grasped the hand, and Rick helped him to his feet.

  The sunlight strengthened, chasing away the last shadows, and two men crossed the bridge together.



                                        About the Author


A modern master of horror, Robert R. McCammon is the author of seven previous novels, including The
New York Times bestseller Swan Song. His short stories have been adapted for television’s Darkroom
and Twilight Zone series. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, McCammon is currently at work on a new
collection of short fiction to be published soon by Pocket Books. “Horror writers,” says McCammon,
“are simply trying to make sense out of the chaos, and… ourselves as well. We have to go all the way in,
to conduct exploratory surgery. And some surgery is done with a laser, and some with a saw…”