The Border

by Robert McCammon

  “I want you to try,” Dave said to Ethan. “I’m telling you to try. Heal him. Don’t let him turn into one of those things.”

  Ethan didn’t know what to say to this, so suddenly the peacekeeper spoke.

  It was his voice, but different in its inflections and its knowledge, and Ethan was made an observer to the moment.

  “I’m not sure how you become infected with this, but the doctor is right. Once it…takes hold, let’s say…there’s no stopping it. Or healing that can be done.”

  “What…you can destroy life, but you can’t create it?” Dave was fully aware who he was speaking to now, and he gave the creature both barrels. “You’re in the body of a dead boy! You raised it up, didn’t you?”

  “He was almost dead,” said the peacekeeper. “His will to live, his youth, and strength of mind suited my purpose.”

  “Okay, whatever. Are you like a spirit or something? Is that it?”

  “I am an entity you wouldn’t comprehend. I needed flesh to work with, and I took the opportunity. I knew that our destination was close. More than that would be damaging to your mind to hear, because it’s beyond your limits.”

  “I’ll second that,” said JayDee. “I figure we’re not very intelligent as a species, compared to you.”

  “Olivia is also right,” came the reply. “I don’t know everything and I am not infallible. I know something of importance is on this mountain…in the mountain, actually, but I’m not sure what it is, and I’m not sure why it’s so vital. But it is, and that’s what I know.”

  “In the mountain?” Jefferson asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what I say. It’s something inside the mountain. It will only be revealed when we get there.” The peacekeeper turned one blue eye and one silver eye upon John Douglas, and said with a depth of sadness, “I’m sorry, JayDee. I can’t stop what’s going to happen to you.”

  The doctor nodded. Thunder rumbled so heavily the bus vibrated with the bass boom of it. Rain was still thrashing against the roof and the windows. JayDee knew from seeing the progress of this—and he was aware that Dave and Olivia also knew—that by tomorrow morning he would be in agonizing pain as the changes in his bones and bodily structure progressed. Then the changes would speed up, as if the humanity had been conquered and the disease was in a rush of victory to distort the body into an alien horror show. Two or three days at most, and those spent in increasing torment. JayDee recalled watching the transformation happen to the first person at Panther Ridge, the twelve-year-old girl whose father had shot her when she began to grow a second head. He was having none of that. It was time to take a walk in the rain.

  “Damn it,” he said quietly. He had been through so much—they all had, of course—and he felt cheated at this last moment, of not being able to witness what the White Mansion held for the peacekeeper. He could hang on, maybe, as he lost his human structure, but it seemed to him that now he ought to get off this bus and go find Deborah while he could still walk like a man. Limp like a man, that is.

  He said, “I’ll trade you the Beretta for one of those grenades in the bag.”

  “You don’t have to do anything right now,” Olivia said. “No, JayDee. Please. Not right now.”

  “Hush,” he told her, but gently. “I’m not sure there’s ever a good time for this. But…my God…I took the lives of those three people back at Panther Ridge because there was nothing else I could do for them. I made the decision for them…now I need to make it for myself.”

  “Please,” Olivia repeated, though she knew there was nothing else to say.

  “Christ on a cracker!” said Hannah. “Why don’t you at least wait until the rain stops, you old fool?”

  JayDee had to smile at that and give a crippled little laugh. He was aware of the pain beginning to lance through his nerves and muscles. He recalled that the little girl had been unable to stand up after the first day, but he’d wanted to observe what was happening to her in a safe place and her father had agreed. They’d chained her up in the Secure Room and he had made notes as the changes progressed. Which seemed terribly cruel and medieval both then and now, but it had been important to give him a reference as to how these fractures and rearrangements of bones and growth of new and strange flesh happened.

  He was aware also of fiery sensations and stitches of sharp pain on his back, on his left calf, and at the back of his left thigh. The gray tissue there was growing, leeching deep.

  “Let me have a grenade,” he said.

  “What if I say no?”

  “I’d answer that I’d do it with the gun, but you may need it and the grenade will do the job just fine. Also that…” He felt something close to breaking inside him—maybe his heart, but that had been broken so many times it must look like a specimen from Frankenstein’s lab. He had to wait a moment to compose himself with decorum. “Also,” he went on, “that I want to go out remembering all of you, and remembering who I am. I don’t know when my memory would start going, or what my thought processes would be. I don’t know what this does to the brain. It may be that when the changes really begin, the disease removes all thought but that of animal survival…so one of you would have to kill me, just as we’ve had to kill the others. Which one of you would do that very necessary job?”

  “If you say one word,” Dave told Jefferson, “I swear to God I will kill you and drag your body out on the road.”

  “I’m not saying anything! Did you hear me speak?”

  Dave ignored him. “I’ll do it when the time comes,” he told JayDee. “The time is not now.”

  “Maybe it would be tomorrow, then?” JayDee gave up a sad smile. In the lamplight, he thought his old skinny, wan and worn-out self must already appear to be a ghost. “After eight o’clock and before noon?” He nodded toward the peacekeeper. “He’ll get you where you’re going, God willing. I’m getting off the bus here.”

  “Jesus,” said Dave, but he could say nothing more.

  “Give me a grenade. Dave, do I have to say please?”

  Dave hesitated, but he knew the exchange had to be made. It was a mercy, really. The Beretta was given for the grenade. JayDee inspected it, making sure it was as simple a procedure as he hoped it would be. The rain was still falling hard; it was a hard rain everywhere these days.

  “I’ll walk with you,” Dave said.

  “No, you won’t. There’s no use in both of us getting out there.”

  “I will walk with you.”

  The peacekeeper had spoken in a voice that was decisive.

  “All right,” JayDee answered after a short pause of thought. Maybe it wouldn’t do to be jumped by anything out in the dark before he could pull that pin. “Just a little ways, though. No need to drag this out.”

  Olivia had begun to weep. She put her arms around John Douglas and he hugged her, and he told her to stop crying, but she couldn’t stop, and he told her that he was proud to have known her and proud to have known Dave and Hannah and Nikki too, and that she and Dave had been right about Ethan and good thing they hadn’t listened to his scientific objections, because all this was far beyond any science he’d ever learned in school. And now, if the alien within the body of Ethan could stop this war, it would be a second chance for Earth given from the stars or from a realm unknown to the human mind. So be it, said JayDee. He reached out to shake Dave’s hand, but Dave pulled him in and hugged him too, and Hannah and Nikki said their goodbyes, both tearfully, as Jefferson Jericho watched from his seat and figured one word from him would be his death sentence because the rock was ready to roll over him.

  Then the peacekeeper was there at JayDee’s side with a flashlight, and the boy who had been known as Ethan was looking out as if through a window edged with fog. He had had a moment of being afraid, as the alien took him over, but now…it was not fear he felt, but peace.

  He remembered his mother’s name. It was Nancy, otherwise known as Nan. And his own name?

  He had a memory of the science class at D
’Evelyn High School on that third day of April, just before a shaken Mrs. Bergeson from the office had come to Mr. Novotny’s room to tell him that the “kids,” as she put it, were going to be leaving school early. Something is happening, she’d told Mr. Novotny. It’s on all the news, everywhere. Something is happening, and the kids will be leaving school early.

  Which interrupted his demonstration of the Visible Man right as he was talking about the brain, and it pissed him off mightily but it scared him too, because Mrs. Bergeson’s voice was trembling, and she looked very afraid.

  “I’ll open the door myself,” JayDee told Hannah, and he did. Then he looked with watery eyes at the others and he said, “What we’ve been through…this is a walk in the park. Good luck and God bless and keep you.” He gave them a tough old smile. “You are all my heroes,” he said, and then he went down the steps on his rebar cane into the force of the driving downpour. The peacekeeper followed just behind him, directing the light so JayDee could see his way.

  Somewhere on their walk into the turbulent darkness on the strip of I-70 that no car had traveled in a very long time, the boy who had called himself Ethan Gaines went off upon his own journey. It was a journey, like the one JayDee was about to take, that no human expected to return from. It was a voyage into mystery, but the peacekeeper told Ethan he was going to be all right, and there was nothing for him to fear anymore, nothing at all.

  I thank you for your help, the entity told him. You are a creature of strength and honor. There is a place where heroes rest, after their battles are done. Both you and the doctor will find comfort and peace there. I promise you.

  I’m okay, said the boy. I’m a little afraid, but I’m okay.

  I am going to set you free now. What remains to be done, I have to do in full command of this form. Do you understand?

  I do. But…don’t I ever get to know about the White Mansion?

  You’ll know, the entity replied. Both of you will. Again…my promise.

  The boy started to reply, to say he knew the promise would be kept, but at the same time, he knew he didn’t have to say it…and then he went to sleep, just like in a warm bed on a cold winter’s night, and knowing that when he awakened there would be someone there to love you and say good morning to the bright new day.

  “I guess this is as far as I need to go,” said the doctor, loudly against the storm.

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could know what you really are. What you look like, inside there.”

  “You would be surprised,” said the entity.

  “Will we be okay?” JayDee asked, steadying himself as the rain beat down. “Will we survive this?”

  “That’s my hope,” was the answer.

  “Mine too,” said JayDee. “Protect them if you can.”

  “I can.”

  “Goodbye, then. Let me do this and get it over with before I drown.”

  The boy’s hand clutched JayDee’s arm for a moment as a reassurance.

  “You have earned my greatest respect,” said the peacekeeper. “Goodbye, my friend.” Then there was nothing else to be said, and he turned and walked away.

  JayDee stood strong, holding his balance against the forces that raged around him. He thought of Deborah, and their beautiful life together before all this had happened. He hoped that someway, somehow, they could pick up where they’d been interrupted.

  He dropped the rebar. It made a clanging noise against the concrete that sounded to him like a church bell in the town of his childhood.

  He held the grenade against his heart.

  He took in a last breath of rain-thick air, of the earth that he was leaving.

  The border, he thought. And was relieved, finally, to be about to cross another border to what he was certain beyond a doubt would be a better place than this.

  JayDee pulled the pin.

  TWENTY-FIVE.

  THEY HEARD THE EXPLOSION AND SAW THE FLASH ABOUT A HUNDRED yards away.

  Olivia had returned to her seat. She put her hands to her face and lowered her head, and she mourned John Douglas in agonized silence.

  Hannah opened the door. Dripping wet, the alien in the form of a boy came up the steps, his head also lowered. Hannah closed the door behind him. When the creature looked at her she saw, as Dave and Jefferson and Nikki did by the lamplight and the flashlight’s reflected glare, that both his eyes now glinted silver. The face of the earth boy was grim, something about it more gaunt yet more resolute.

  “I want to know this,” Dave said. “What do we call you?”

  The alien replied, “Ethan. What else?”

  “But you’re not him anymore, are you? Is he gone?”

  “Yes.”

  Olivia looked up then and saw his eyes, and she returned to her posture of silent bereavement. Ethan switched off the flashlight to save the batteries and started toward his seat.

  “Your chest,” Dave said, before Ethan could sit down. “Let’s see it.” He held a lamp up to take a look as Ethan lifted his t-shirt, and there against the dark-bruised flesh the upraised silver letters just above his heart were . It seemed to be finished, for no other letters were beginning to emerge from the depths. “What does that mean?” Dave asked.

  “My designation,” Ethan said. “I am a soldier.”

  “What are you? Like…special forces from outer space or something?” Jefferson asked, risking a fist to the teeth.

  “Something like that,” Ethan answered. He noted that the rain was beginning to ease up; he noted also a new sensation, which to him was the shimmer of an image in his mind. “We’re being followed.”

  “Yeah,” said Dave. “The Cyphers.”

  “Your name for them. Their species name is based on mathematics of a nature unknown to you. No…this is what you call the Gorgons.”

  “Following us?” That had set Jefferson’s heart pounding like a ten-ton drum. “How close are they?”

  “At a safe distance yet. It’s a warship. Its tracker is focused on the device implanted in the back of your neck, Mr. Jericho.”

  “Shit!” Dave exploded. He reached out to grab Jefferson’s shirt, but this time the preacherman got his hands up to ward off the punishment. Dave slapped them aside, bringing a cry of pain from Jefferson as two broken fingers took the impact. He took hold of the man’s bearded chin. “You didn’t tell us about that? Why not? Because you’re still spying for them?”

  “He’s no longer a spy,” Ethan said calmly. “The device was implanted when he was first taken. They were collecting humans as subjects for experiments.”

  “Yeah, I know all about those damned experiments.”

  “For whatever reason,” Ethan went on, “the Gorgon queen found our Jefferson very interesting.” He knew the reason; it had to do with a curiosity about human anatomy and he didn’t care to go there. “He was spared being turned into a weapon, but a control and monitoring device was implanted. It’s likely small, the size of a pinhead in your experience, but it is powerful. He had no idea how else it could be used, except for giving him pain when he was disobedient.”

  “Listen to him…listen to him,” Jefferson pleaded.

  “Can we find a knife somewhere and let me cut it out of the bastard?”

  “I don’t think you’d ever locate it. If you…got lucky, I think is the expression?—touching it would probably cause instant death for both of you.”

  “You sure we need him? I swear I’d as soon take him out and shoot him.”

  “Let him go, Dave,” Ethan said. “Whatever he was…he’s on our side now.”

  “I always was. I swear, I—”

  “Shut your hole,” Dave told him, and he was tempted to loosen the preacherman’s remaining teeth, but he released his grip and stepped back. “So what do we do?” he asked Ethan.

  “We go on when we can. I believe the Gorgons are curious about where we’re going. The queen probably would like to know, because she must understand we wouldn’t be out in the open unless it was vital. And we h
ave to find fuel soon, I think.” Ethan put his hand on Olivia’s shoulder, and when she looked into the strange silver eyes she saw not the coldness of space there, but the warmth of compassion. “I’m truly sorry about JayDee, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help. It was what he wanted and needed to do, whether we agreed with it or not. We have to go on as soon as we’re able.”

  “You mean when I can see shit through this glass,” said Hannah. At least she had two headlights now, though the right one burned dimmer than the left.

  “Yes, when you can see shit,” Ethan replied. He went along the aisle to the seat he’d left, but before he got there Nikki stood up. She was afraid of him now, really afraid, because she understood he was not the Ethan who had left the bus with John Douglas. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her—he saw that clearly—but still, there was the strangeness about him that she could not quite manage to handle anymore.

  There was a tear in her eye.

  “You took him away,” she said, “and you didn’t even let him say goodbye.”

  “It was time,” he explained in a quiet voice. He watched the tear roll down her cheek to her chin, and the beating heart within him that kept the blood flowing and all the systems in operation felt heavy with grief, that this girl had held onto the human Ethan as long as she could and now she knew she had to let go. She had lost so much already. The images in her mind were horrific and tragic. He touched there only briefly and lightly, and then drew away, because his duty was clear.

  “He understood that I’m ready,” said the new Ethan.

  “I don’t. I never will. It was cruel not to let him live.”

  How could he make her see that without his power, the human Ethan would’ve been dead long ago? That this thing of great cosmic importance—call it cruelty, yes—must be done to bring the end of a war, and for a race to survive?

  He couldn’t. “From this point on I’ve got to be in total charge of the body and mind. The reflexes, the nervous system…everything. I can’t share those with him, Nikki.”