The Border

by Robert McCammon

  But the dead man returned to life after a few seconds with a spitting of blood and a moan that seemed to emanate from the center of a tortured soul, and Dave McKane stood over him with fists clenched and shouted, “Stay down, you sonofabitch! Just stay down!” all the while wishing the bastard would at least try to get to his knees.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the major said. “You all right?” he asked the boy, who nodded. It was all Fleming could do not to ask Ethan where he had gone—or almost gone—but he didn’t want to know.

  Olivia pulled Ethan to her and hugged him. Then it came out of her. Everything…the loss of Vincent, the loss of her world, the tragedy and senselessness of this war, the hardship and struggle, the deaths of so many people she had known and cared for, and though she knew she hugged in her arms a boy who harbored a presence in him that was not of this earth, she didn’t care because she needed someone to love and protect, and just that fast she broke. She began to sob, to weep for the dead and for the living, for those who had long ago given up hope and for those who still hung on to what tomorrow might bring, for those who had lost everything and for those who had kept their families intact only by good luck or the determination of the damned. She wept for those who, like her, kept their loved ones alive by a treasured picture or a memory held like a candle on the darkest night or some kind of Magic Eight Ball to ease their loss. It seemed in that moment that she wept for the young students of Ethan Gaines High School, who had painted a mural upon a wall proclaiming the dream of the Family of Man that had been torn to pieces by the terrible, arrogant power of red and blue fire.

  And she wept also for the boy who knew no name but Ethan Gaines, who had once been alive and in the care of a mother who loved him, but was now embraced and guided by an alien force, raised from the dead to carry out a task only that force could understand. He could never go back to what he’d been, before. Never. And neither could anyone else, because even if the war was ended tomorrow…the world was not a computer, and it could not be rebooted.

  JayDee put an arm around her shoulders. He leaned his head against hers. He wished he could find something to say, but there were no words. He wished he could weep himself, could get rid of the pain of having to put those three poor souls out of their misery back at Panther Ridge. He looked at Dave, who was rubbing the knuckles of the fist that had almost knocked Jefferson Jericho out of this world.

  “We need to get Ethan to the White Mansion,” JayDee said. “The sooner the better, I think.”

  “Yeah,” Dave agreed. “How about it, Major? When can we leave?”

  “I told you we’d make some improvements to your bus. You’ll need ’em. If you’ll give me the rest of today and tonight, you can head off in the morning.”

  Ethan gently pulled away from Olivia. “That would be good,” he said. “Thank you.” He felt weary and a little lightheaded. The joints of his body ached. He knew he was paying a price for the force that was using him. He wondered when it would happen that the part of him that was still human would be completely gone, and the alien within him took total control. He figured he was halfway there already. Would he even know when it happened? Would it be like going to sleep, or dying, or would it be like being a bystander in his own supercharged body?

  He didn’t want to think about these things too much, because they scared him. “I think I need to get something to eat and then lie down and rest for awhile,” he said, running a hand across his forehead. “Someplace quiet.”

  “What about me?” asked the man on the floor. Still groggy, he crawled away to put more distance between himself and Dave McKane’s fist. His tongue found two loose teeth and tasted blood. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “We’ll find a place to lock you up nice and tight,” Fleming said. “If I’m understanding all this, you’ve been aiding and abetting the enemy. The Gorgons wanted the boy and they got you to help? Save your speech, I don’t care to hear it,” he said, before Kushman could speak again. “In my Army, that’s reason enough for an execution.”

  “Kill me? Just like that?”

  “Execute you,” said the major. “Just like that.”

  “Ethan, listen to me!” Jefferson Jericho started to struggle to his feet, but he saw that McKane wanted to hit him again so he stayed where he was. “I was forced to do this! I didn’t want to! Who would want to help the Gorgons or the Cyphers unless they had to?” He probed his teeth again; one was so loose it was just about to come out. “I can’t…I can’t explain it all to you, but they were protecting me and my people. They were keeping us out of the war. So…it was either find you and take you back—and I don’t know how they do that, that’s way beyond me—or lose our protection. Do you understand?”

  “Why’d they choose you?” Dave asked.

  “They chose me because they thought a real human could get to him easier. Just like Vope said, they want to study him. But they’re afraid of him, too.” Jefferson tensed, ready for pain to be delivered to him at any second for his failure and his betrayal, but no pain came. He realized he had truly been abandoned, She had turned Her back on him, and probably everybody in New Eden had been destroyed like ants beneath a crushing boot, the Ant Farm whirled away into space or some other dimension and burned into nothingness. “I thought…he must be a Cypher weapon or something, but…what he did out there…killing those soldiers…he can’t be one of them.”

  “Ethan is something different,” said Olivia, who had regained her composure. “Becoming something different,” she corrected herself.

  “A third kind of alien,” JayDee said, and surprised himself by voicing the thought. “He believes he can stop this war. I say, give him the chance.”

  “Right.” Jefferson nodded strenuously. “A chance. Yes. Absolutely. But…listen…nobody can stay here. Vope says they’ll be coming to burn this place to the ground. They can do it. They will do it.”

  “I’ll know when they’re coming,” said Ethan.

  “How will you know? ESP or something?”

  “You can call it that. I’ll just know when they get close enough.” Ethan turned his attention to the major. “If I’m gone, there’s no need for them to attack this place. They may do it just because they can, but like JayDee said…the sooner we get on the road, the better.”

  “Okay, but give us time to work tonight. If I were you I wouldn’t want to head off after dark, anyway. It’s too risky.”

  “It’s a risk to stay here,” Ethan said, but he knew that night travel was pushing even his powers of survival and certainly they didn’t want to run into any more armies of Gray Men.

  “I’m not staying here!” Jefferson Jericho stood up and staggered but held himself upright. “Hell, no! I didn’t ask for any of this! You want to lock me up with the Gorgons coming to kill everybody? And execute me, for trying to save the lives of my people? How was I supposed to know that the boy wasn’t a Cypher weapon? I didn’t know he was a human!” He glanced at Ethan and the boy’s silver eye, which sent a shiver up his spine. “If you can call that human!”

  “Before we go,” Dave said to Major Fleming, “I’d like the job of putting a bullet through this scumbag’s head.”

  “What do you mean, your people?” Olivia asked, disregarding Dave’s remark. “What people? And where?”

  “In Tennessee. I…had a housing development, near Nashville.” Jefferson decided not to reveal too much about himself, in case the Southern soldier’s mother had lost her bankroll betting on the book and DVD of God’s High Rollers’ System For Riches And Happiness, forty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents but for a few dollars more could be delivered overnight by Federal Express. “The whole development…everything…was scooped up by the Gorgons. Put somewhere so they could study us. I was taken by one of them…she looked like a woman, she could change her face and her shape…and she told me if I didn’t bring the boy back, our protection would be gone. That’s why I did it. For my people, like I said. And I swear to God I thought he was a Cyp
her weapon. I thought that’s why they wanted him.” He turned his agonized eyes upon Ethan and figured if he ever needed an iota of salesmanship he needed a ton of it now. First, the build-up: “I know you’ve got a fantastic power…I’ve never seen anything like that…what you did out there. You saved everybody.” He brought upon his face the expression of a desperate supplicant, which was closer to reality than he cared to admit. “Can you stop this war?”

  Ethan probed the man’s mind and found that, not surprisingly, the blue sphere was gone. His Gorgon keeper had left him to his own resources in penalty for failure. The silver hand of Ethan’s curiosity roamed through a landscape of scenes from the man’s past that in some places were hard to view; he found bits and scraps that told him the real name was Leon Kushman but the man went by another—Jefferson Jericho—and there were scenes of adoring crowds and stacks of money being counted and women, many women, who—

  Ethan had the complete picture of Jefferson Jericho in the time it took between the words Can and war. He saw the Gorgon creature in its many guises and knew all. He saw a rainbow through a window and knew the sudden elation of a car salesman with a grand idea to make himself rich. He saw Jericho’s wife—her name Ramona? No…Regina—with a pistol, and knew how close this man had come to paying for his many sins with a bullet to the head…but saved by the Gorgon ship blasting into view over the Tennessee pastures.

  “You were lucky that day she was going to shoot you,” Ethan said, and saw the blood drain from the man’s face. “Or maybe not, because here you are with us.”

  Jefferson touched his right temple, as if he could feel Ethan moving around in there but the silver hand had already gone. “You know what I’m telling you is true, don’t you?” He heard a little begging in his voice, but that was all right; the boy might respond to it.

  “That part is true. Some of the rest of it, not so much. And to answer your other question: I’ll know more about that when we get where we’re going, White Mansion Mountain in Utah.”

  “Are you done bulling the shit?” Dave asked, speaking to Jefferson. “Time you got locked up or put down with a bullet.” He looked again to the major. “I’ll do it, if nobody else will.”

  “This man has done some bad things,” Ethan agreed, “but he doesn’t deserve to be killed for this one. His real name is Jefferson Jericho, and he was a—”

  “God dog it!” said the Southern soldier. “I knew he was familiar! My momma watched him, nine o’clock every Sunday night, bought his book too! I should’ve known from his voice!”

  “A preacher, of a kind,” Ethan went on. “He sold dreams. Some turned out good and some went wrong. There’s no point in locking him up, either. His Gorgon protection is gone. He has nowhere left to go.”

  “That,” said Jefferson, “is unfortunately correct.” He maintained eye contact with the boy, as difficult as that was for him. “By this time, my people and my town are gone, too.” His tongue finally worked the loose tooth out and he spat it to the floor along with a spatter of blood. “You know what we called my town?”

  “New Eden,” Ethan said.

  “Why did I even have to ask?” Jefferson worked up a tight smile. “Well, the snake got in it.”

  “You mean another snake got in it?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I mean.” The preacherman should’ve felt trapped, backed into a corner, but instead he felt strangely free and strangely strong. With this boy able to read his mind, there was no longer any reason to pretend, to put on a show, to hide behind any façade. It was almost, in a way, a relief. “I didn’t ask to be here. So do whatever you want with me. Like you say, I have nowhere else to go. A rifle bullet now or blown to pieces by the Gorgons later…what’s the difference?”

  “None,” said Dave. “So I say the rifle bullet.”

  “You give up very easily,” Ethan said, “to be such a good talker.”

  “What?” This had come almost simultaneously from Dave and Jefferson.

  “Your skill is talking people into doing things. Sometimes things they don’t really want to do, but you make them believe. That’s what your life has been, hasn’t it?”

  “Some might say.”

  “I say, because I know.” Ethan was getting a feeling he couldn’t shake. It was true that the man was a user of other people, that he had crushed others down for his own needs and left many impoverished, but many enriched as well. He did have a gift of persuasion, though it was no match for the silver hand that uncovered all truths. He had talked his way onto the bus over Dave’s objections, and he had hidden a Gorgon and a Gorgon-engineered human under their noses, and he might have spirited Ethan away to the Gorgon realm if the alien presence hadn’t been so powerful. Ethan had no idea what was waiting at their destination, but this feeling he could not shake made him look at Dave and say in a voice that was direct and forceful and far older than the years he portrayed, “We might need this man.”

  “What?” Dave repeated. “Why in hell would we need him?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Ethan answered, “but I might not be enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Olivia asked, as puzzled as both Dave, JayDee, and even Jefferson Jericho.

  “For the task. What that is, I don’t know yet, but this man…” Ethan paused, trying to read this feeling but unable yet to decipher it. “He’s too valuable to leave behind. He’s seen a creature who might be the Gorgon queen…if she really is a female. He’s been favored by her,” he said. No need to go into the other details he had uncovered, he decided. “I believe he should go with us, no matter what else he’s done.”

  There was a moment of silence. Jefferson couldn’t decide if going to this mountain Ethan was talking about was any safer than staying here, but he did know one thing: as long as he was with this boy, he would be more protected than by the soldiers with all their useless guns. On the other hand, Ethan was a target for the Gorgons, and they weren’t giving up; they would find him, wherever he was. And out there were the Gray Men, too. Thousands of those things…

  Still…what was the tradeoff?

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” Jefferson said, speaking to Dave because the rock needed to be turned. It wouldn’t take much; the boy was in command here. He turned his focus on the woman. “Things about Vope and Ratcoff you’d probably want to know too. I can make myself useful, I promise you that.”

  Dave’s eyes were dark and dangerous. “You make a move toward Ethan again and I’ll kill you,” he said, “and that’s my promise to you, scumbag.”

  “Fair enough,” said the preacherman, with a slight bow of his head. Maybe it did register in him that he might still have a chance to seize Ethan and be transported to the Gorgon queen, might still have a chance to save his people and his town and himself, but he felt the boy’s eyes on him, imagined he felt the boy’s alien power taking his brain apart and examining those thoughts one by one to test their weight, and so he let them fly away.

  “I’ll know,” Ethan said. That was enough for Jefferson Jericho to hear.

  I’ll be a good boy, Jefferson thought, and Ethan answered, “I’ll count on that.”

  Major Fleming and the other soldiers had work to do. Dave vowed to keep himself between Ethan and Jefferson Jericho at all times. Olivia took JayDee’s hand and helped him to the service elevator. There were supplies to be gathered for the trip, and Hannah Grimes had to be approached about driving the bus because Dave didn’t think he could handle a rig that size, not on the roads they would face when they left I-70 in Utah. The interstate itself might be a cratered challenge; who knew what was out there, in those mountains that must be crossed?

  But something was out there that Ethan had to find. No one doubted it. They would be leaving as soon as the work was done on the bus, out into the world again, out into the war.

  Jefferson Jericho realized everything he had ever built was likely destroyed. Regina, also destroyed. Or maybe New Eden was returned to its original plot on the Earth and left for the rav
ages of the war or the Gray Men to tear it to pieces. Which did he think was the better fate? He didn’t want to think, but he figured he would never see the place again. He was throwing in his lot with this boy and the others, and maybe Dave McKane would kill him before they got to this mountain that seemed for some reason to be so special, or the Gorgon queen would transport him out of here and kill him in retribution, or something was waiting on the road that could overcome even the boy’s power and kill them all. But at least he was alive today. He was not going to be locked up or executed.

  The boy might have a use for him. That made him a little nervous, but for now Jefferson counted that as a victory. And for now, it was the best payoff a High Roller could hope for.

  TWENTY-TWO.

  ETHAN WAS PREPARED FOR WHAT AWAITED HIM IN THE MALL. A BOY with a silver eye who could blow apart Cypher spiders and soldiers by the power of a mind-weapon was going to find people cringing from him as if he carried a plague. They would be terrified of him, and who could blame them? He would be terrified of himself, if he wasn’t in this suit of skin. Dave went to find Hannah Grimes and took Jefferson Jericho with him. Ethan, Olivia, and JayDee went to the food court to get something to eat. The people who were already there left in a hurry, and that included a few nervous soldiers. The three survivors of Panther Ridge, alone in the food court, served themselves bowls of thin vegetable soup from a big metal pot and cups of water from plastic jugs and then sat down at one of the bright orange tables.

  They hadn’t been there very long when Olivia motioned to her right and said, “We have company.”

  Ethan saw Nikki approaching. She, at least, seemed to have no fear of him anymore. She came up to the table. For a moment she looked with true wonder into the silver eye that had no pupil and then she asked, “Does it hurt?”

  “No. It’s not any different from the other one.”

  “That is…so freaky,” she said, and she gave a quick little laugh that she tried to stop with a hand over her mouth, but too late. “I mean…it looks kind of cool. It doesn’t make you have…like…X-ray vision or something?”