Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03]

by Charles L. Grant

  * * * *

  2

  The automobile was Rick Hicaya’s pride and life. A blinding white convertible destined to attract all sorts of women to his side and to his bed, until, once in the passenger seat, they saw the glove on his hand and remembered too many eerie movies and begged off with headaches and appointments and get lost, you spic creep, I ain’t into that kinky stuff.

  He sat in it now, staring at the sun exploding off the hood, in the parking lot of the Boulder City hospital where, his local doctor had told him, they might be able to help if he was willing to spend the money. But after studying the charts and the histories and the hand itself, they told him birth defects like this didn’t lend, themselves to answers easy or otherwise . . . unless . . . unless . . . and after much consultation they had showed him a glossy book with a dark leather cover, and a locked glass cabinet, and in both he had seen the most frightening, horrifying, realistic prosthetics, and it hadn’t taken him long to grasp the implication of what they would not dare say aloud, and with a pained smile and a formal thank you, he had grabbed the glove and left and had been sitting in the convertible with the top down, for an hour. Ignoring the heat. Trembling with anger, fear, humiliation, back to anger.

  Tears of all sorts in his eyes, blinked away before they fell.

  Prayers hadn’t worked; healers hadn’t worked; doctors couldn’t work unless they maimed him; and a shrink in Arizona had told him that coming to terms with his disability was only the first step toward the healing.

  But it wouldn’t heal the hand.

  * * * *

  Don’t have to be that way, boy, you know it don’t have to be that way.

  I don’t believe in voodoo, old woman.

  Ain’t nothing voodoo about it.

  So...what? Potions? Spells? You got a direct line to God or something? You got some weird magic stuff from those swamps in Alabama or Mississippi or wherever the hell it is you come from? What are you talking about, huh? What are you bothering me for?

  You just think about it, boy, just take your time and think about it. Don’t have to be that way, you know. Don’t have to be that way.

  You’re nuts.

  Maybe, maybe not. But I’ll tell you something for free—you do not want to know where I come from, boy. No sir, you most certainly do not.

  * * * *

  He held the withered hand in front of his face, studying the way the glove made it seem as if it were whole. To him, anyway, if not to anyone else. Now the sons of bitches want to put something else in its place. Something plastic. With gears and wires that attached to his nerves and muscles. Like it was a puppet. Trapped in a glove.

  He looked at the hospital, and he looked at the glove, and he said, “Screw it,” and left the parking lot on a trail of acrid smoking rubber.

  Tonight he would talk to Eula, and maybe tomorrow he’d ask big Muriel to dance.

  * * * *

  3

  Stephanie pushed her cart up and down the grocery store aisles. She barely knew what she picked off the shelves because her eyes kept tearing up and she couldn’t read the labels. Cable couldn’t help her because he was sitting in the car.

  He always sat in the car.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t care if people stared at him; it didn’t matter that the only important thing was that she loved him so much sometimes that her chest hurt and she couldn’t breathe; it didn’t matter to her, but it mattered to him, and not two hours ago it must have mattered to some asshole at the Mirage, because a guest had complained late last night about the creepy ugly guy sweeping the rugs and how he was ruining folks’ vacations, and when Cable refused to wear something over his face, one of those masks or something, they had told him they really liked him and had no complaints about his work, but they had to let him go, you know how it is.

  Then, just before she came into the store, he had told her he was seriously thinking of moving them out of Las Vegas. No place in mind yet, just out of the city. He didn’t care about her career; he didn’t care when she tried to explain that she was close, this close, to getting a chance to sing in a lounge up the Strip. She might not make it, there were lots of people who didn’t, but she’d never know, would she, if she didn’t give it a try. He didn’t care. He just wanted out, and it was so damned unfair that she loved him and couldn’t leave him and didn’t want to miss what might be the only chance she’d ever have to prove she could do it, that she could sing with the best.

  It was so damned unfair.

  But damn it all to hell, she wasn’t going to let the dream get away.

  The tears dried.

  The clerk at the register rang the tally and took her check and she lugged the bags to the car and loaded them in the backseat and sat beside Cable, took a deep breath, and said, “You listen to me, you sorry son of a bitch that I love more than anything in the world, you are going to stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself and you are going to let me take my shot, you understand? And if you think otherwise, you’re twice as stupid as you look.”

  With his mouth half open he stared at her, swallowing.

  “So tonight,” she went on, “you and me are going to pay a visit up the street, and I don’t give a shit if you think she’s crazy, because I will not miss this chance, Cable. I swear to God, I will not miss it.”

  “You’re drunk,” he said.

  “Go to hell, and drive.”

  * * * *

  4

  Roger Freneau watched the last of his last morning class wander into the hallway, evidently unconcerned that finals and their future weren’t all that far away. He scanned the empty desks, turned and stared at John Locke’s name carefully printed on the blackboard, looked at the hallway again and said, “Tabula rasa, my ass, nothing sticks in their brains unless it’s blowtorched there.”

  He picked up his briefcase, checked the desks again on the off chance someone left something behind, and tested his feet with a single step. Winced. Wished fervently he could just sit down for the rest of the day. He had been walking on the sides of his feet since he’d left home, because he had been too drunk last night to pay attention to what he was doing and had cut up his soles walking over that glass Lil had shattered on his porch. They weren’t deep cuts, they were more like paper cuts—barely seen and stinging like all get-out. Plus, his legs ached too from walking funny like that.

  Misery; nothing but misery.

  All he wanted to do now was get to his car, get to the nearest bar, and spend his lunch hour numbing the pain. With any kind of luck, he wouldn’t be able to make his one class this afternoon.

  Trying to look as normal as possible, he stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed behind him. He hadn’t had a chance to take more than one breath before a tall, lanky, bearded man hurried up, clipboard in hand.

  “Rog, you got a minute?”

  “Sure, Alf, what’s up?”

  Alf Davis was department chairman, never without his suit and school tie, never without a cigar in his jacket pocket. His teeth were yellowed, his breath was garlic foul, and Roger pretended he liked him because it was this man who had fought to bring him to the faculty.

  Alf knew it too, and never let him forget it.

  “I want you to sign this petition,” Davis said, thrusting the clipboard into his free hand.

  Frowning, Roger tried to read the small print at the top, but Alf snatched his briefcase away and put a pen in that hand.

  “Just sign it, Freneau. I’ve got a million other people to see before the administration meeting this afternoon.”

  “But what. . . ?”

  “Sign, will you? I haven’t got all day.”

  Roger read it anyway. Read it again. “This,” he said, “is a petition to get rid of—”

  “The coach, that’s right,” Davis snapped. “Something has to be done, and no one else in this damn place seems to have the guts to do it.”

  Roger prodded at his ear as if he weren’t hearing properly. “Let me get this
straight—I haven’t been able to order an up-to-date text in two years, but you want me-”

  Davis glared him into silence. “Facts of life, Freneau. We don’t have a successful basketball team, we don’t get into the NCAA tournament next year, the alumni get pissy, they don’t donate, we lose money, we have to start cutting corners. You can philosophize all you want about the role of sports in academia, but this is the real world, and you will sign that petition.”

  “No,” he said, surprising himself “This is really dumb, Alf. Really dumb. Besides, I don’t know anything about sports, you know that.”

  Davis lifted his chin. “Freneau, maybe you’re not getting the message here.”

  Jesus, Roger thought; I don’t sign, I’m fired?

  “And what the hell is the matter with your feet?” the chairman continued. “You’re walking like a drunken sailor. Jesus Christ, Freneau, am I going to regret you for the rest of my life? Sign the petition.”

  Roger stood straight and welcomed the pain.

  He dropped the pen, took the clipboard in both hands, and as hard as he could brought it down on Davis’s head. The chairman staggered backward, screeching his pain like a child, covering his head with both hands even as the shock brought him hard to his knees.

  Roger saw the blood on the man’s forehead.

  He saw a dozen or more students gaping at him from a distance.

  Walking on his heels, he turned around and went back into the classroom, sat at his desk, and took off his shoes and socks. He estimated five or ten minutes before the police arrived, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to give his feet a break before they dumped him in a cell.

  Then, legs propped on the desk, toes wriggling gingerly, he slid open the bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of scotch, took a long drink, swished the liquor around in his mouth, and swallowed. Didn’t cough or choke. Took a second drink, and a third, figuring being a drunk wouldn’t excuse the assault, but it was a better excuse than hating basketball, by God.

  * * * *

  but you don’t have to be that way, poor child, don’t have to be that way at all.

  * * * *

  3

  1

  W

  ith slow studied movements, Trey folded his napkin and set it beside his plate.

  “Mr. Falkirk.”

  He looked out at the boulevard for a long careful moment before turning to Harp. “Who,” he said, “the hell are you?”

  Harp didn’t blink, didn’t twitch. Just a small sad smile. “A friend, my dear fellow. A friend.”

  Trey shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Friends don’t bother my neighbors with questions behind my back. Friends don’t follow me all over the place, bothering other people about me.”

  “I would have called, but evidently you don’t have a telephone.”

  “You seem to know everything else, why the hell didn’t you know that?”

  Harp dismissed the question with a bored gesture.

  “You a cop? A detective?”

  The smile, still sad, widened for just a second. “No, Mr. Falkirk, I’m neither of those:”

  “In that case,” said Trey as he slid out of the booth. “Thank you for the shirt. I’ll pay you back if I ever see you again. Which, I sure hope, I won’t.”

  “But Mr. Falkirk, please—”

  Trey cut him off him with a sharp wave and walked away. By the time he was on the sidewalk and had swung left he was marching, fuming, brushing past other pedestrians without a backward glance or pretense of apology. Glad for the heat that settled heavily on his shoulders. Glad for the smell of exhaust and hot tarmac.

  He saw nothing but the green hulk of the MGM Grand down the street, concentrating on it, excluding everything else. Not thinking at all. Moving on automatic as he pushed inside, made his way to the back and the monorail station, just outside.

  On good days he would talk back to the computerized voice that cautioned him to stay behind the iron-fence barrier until the next train arrived; on good days he would flirt a little with the attendants who worked the gates and once in a while flirted back; on good days he would eavesdrop on conversations, to see who was winning, who was sick and tired of all the heat, who was complaining just to complain.

  Today he said nothing, saw nothing, and when the train swept in, he took the first available seat in the nearest car, facing forward, scowling at the kids who piled in after him, followed by beleaguered parents with expressions of permanent apology, themselves on automatic with scolds and instructions.

  As the train pulled out, he wondered whose bright idea it had been to turn a gambling city into a family resort, whose dumb idea it had been to run a train between just two stations, whose idea it had been to have him followed.

  Watched.

  Examined.

  By the time the train pulled into the Bally’s station, his fuming had boiled over into outright temper, and as soon as he was inside, he stepped quickly out of the passenger flow and leaned against a featureless cream wall. Panting. Ordering himself to calm down, that the day would be a total bust if he let the old man get to him.

  It took almost ten minutes and the uneasy glances from a young and nervous security guard before he felt he could move without screaming, without striking out blindly. Then he hurried along a broad shopping concourse to the escalators that led up to the casino, and with a deliberate deep breath let the ritual take over.

  It didn’t work.

  An hour later he gave up, knowing that none of the machines would welcome either him or his money. It was his own fault. He had been wasting half his energy holding a short frayed rein on his temper, but it angered him anyway, and he stalked outside, muttering obscenities just loud enough to make others shy away.

  On the next corner he hesitated, then shrugged and went in the Barbary Coast, much smaller, much noisier, much gaudier, and the machines just as unresponsive.

  tell him, child, that the dragon is dying

  Outside again, tapping an impatient foot at the intersection traffic light, trotting across when the light turned green, swinging right and marching again up the long stretch of low wall and misted gardens that fronted Caesar’s Palace.

  Okay, jerk, he thought; this isn’t getting you anywhere. You keep this up you might as well go home and kick in a wall.

  It was tempting, and he realized that the pull he felt along the backs of his hands was the result of keeping them in fists. He snapped his fingers out, flexed mem, cracked a couple of knuckles, then shook them like a swimmer before launching into a dive.

  A man in a multicolored shepherd’s robe stood at the curb in the middle of the block, his long white hair tangled and dark with sweat, his deep-tanned face gleaming with sweat, while sweat dripped from the tip of his pointed chin. He wore a hand-made sandwich board on which had been printed in deep red letters, THE NUMBER OF THE DEAD IS NOW 168,215 AND THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST IS STILL 666.

  He carried no cup, made no pronouncements, quoted no Scripture.

  He simply stood there in the heat with a reminder of the Sickness for those who had come to the desert to forget.

  Despite his mood, Trey stopped and looked at him, waiting for the man’s gaze to meet his own. When it did, he nodded to the tally and said, “You print a new one every day?” making sure by his tone that the man understood he wasn’t mocking.

  “Twice a day,” was the answer, the voice coarse.

  “It must be a grim job.”

  “It’s the Millennium, my friend, the end of the world. I guess you could say that was pretty grim.”

  A glance up and down the street, but there was no sign of the old man in the stupid cowboy hat. “You need a donation or something?”

  “I manage. But thank you.”

  Trey turned to leave, suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty. He moved closer. “Take it. You’ll need a lot more paint.”

  The man accepted it without comment, just a grateful nod, and his gaze drifted, sending h
im back into whatever state he used to pass the time away.

  A second look at the number of the dead, and Trey moved on, no longer marching, hands in his pockets. Aware now of the sun, the sweat on his back and on the back of his neck beneath his hair.

  have you ever wondered why you don’t seem to be able to get hurt in Las Vegas?

  A twinge in his right shoulder reminded him of the nightstick a cop had used on him in St. Louis. Or maybe it was Austin. Or maybe—he grunted. What difference did it make where it happened? It hadn’t happened here.