The Border

by Robert McCammon

  “Don’t speak my name.” She recoiled from him, even standing still. “You creep me out.”

  There was no possible reply to that. It was the plain truth, plainly and truthfully spoken.

  “I’m going to sit over there,” Nikki told him, and she turned away with what might be a shudder and went to sit directly behind Dave.

  Ethan returned to his seat. Through his window, he saw that the rain was stopping. The storm had passed, but there would be others.

  Hannah started the engine, turned on the headlights, and tried the wiper. The motor still made an ugly sound, but the blade was keeping the glass inset clear. She doubted it was going to hold up very long scraping across all that metal. “I guess we can move on. Everybody ready?”

  No one answered.

  “Giddyup,” said Hannah, speaking to herself in a raspy whisper. At a slow crawl, she put distance between themselves and the body that lay over on the westbound lanes.

  They had to find a gas station, and soon. The good thing about the interstate was that, even crossing the Rockies, there were many exits and many gas stations with diesel for the long-haul truckers. It wasn’t but about another twenty minutes before the headlights made out an exit—an entrance ramp, really, since they were still traveling in the eastbound lanes—and when Hannah asked Dave if he wanted to try there he said, “Yeah, go ahead.”

  Hannah pulled the bus into a truck stop. There were still some abandoned rigs and cars in the lot, and who knew what had happened to their owners? It didn’t take long for Dave’s flashlight to find that both of the stop’s diesel tanks had already been uncapped and emptied, so Hannah went on down the road to a Shell station. Again, the diesel tank had been drained. Dave recovered his hose and came back into the bus, and told Hannah to drive on.

  On the other side of the interstate was a Phillips 66 station. Beyond it the headlights picked out the shapes of a few small houses in a little community, all dark. Ethan smelled the foul, sickly-sweet odors of rot and pestilence coming from one of the houses. It was something the others could not detect. “There are Gray Men here,” he said.

  “Don’t stop, for God’s sake!” said Jefferson, his eyes wide. “Let’s get the hell out!”

  “We’re needy, gents,” Hannah said. “Gas gauge is lookin’ sorrowful. What do you want to do, Dave?”

  “Damn,” he answered. Hannah had pulled the bus to a halt under the station’s roof that overhung the two diesel pumps. Dave felt the flesh at the back of his neck crawl; he had no doubt that if the alien said there were Gray Men here, it was a fact. “How many?”

  “I can’t tell. More than one, for sure.”

  “Jesus!” said the preacherman. “Why are we still here?”

  “Your call, Dave,” said Hannah. “We’re burnin’ fuel, just sittin’ still.”

  “We shouldn’t stay,” Nikki said. Her voice quavered. “Really. We need to get out.”

  “Olivia?” Dave prompted. “What do you think?”

  She shook her head, her face still drawn and downcast. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking so well right now, but if we’re stuck without gas further on…it’ll be bad.”

  “Right.” Dave was loading a fresh clip into his Uzi. His hand shook a little, but not too much. It had to be done. “I’m going to check first to see if the tank’s empty or not. Ethan, will you come with me? I may need some protection.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re crazy!” The shine of fear sweat was already on Jefferson’s face. “Those things will smell us! It’ll be like the dinner bell ringing!”

  “Just sit tight.” Dave slid the loaded Uzi into its holster. “Back in a minute.” Dave and Ethan took both flashlights out. Rainwater dripped from the roof, which slanted precariously to one side. It didn’t take but fifteen seconds for their lights to fall upon the yellow cap of the underground diesel tank. It was still in place and looked to have been undisturbed.

  “Cut the engine,” Dave told Hannah when he and Ethan returned to the bus. “Jericho, I need your help.”

  “Not me, I’m not getting out there! I’ve got two broken fingers, thanks to you!”

  “Listen up! The faster we get this done, the better! We don’t have to fill the tank. Just get us enough to make it further along. Come on now, put your balls on.”

  “No way!”

  “Hell, if he won’t help you I will!” Hannah got up from behind the wheel. She already had her hogleg Colt in hand. “What do you need me to do, Dave?”

  “I need you to stay right here and take a break. You’re the driver, not the mule. Jefferson, get your mule-ass off that seat!”

  “I’ll do what needs to be done,” said Ethan. He already knew. Dave needed somebody to cover him while he did the work of popping open the fill cap on the tank and using the hose and hand pump to bring fuel up into the containers. He just needed Jericho as the mule to help carry the stuff out there.

  “Here.” Dave loaded the Beretta and held it out to Jefferson. “Can you use one of these without shooting your pecker off?”

  “God forbid,” said the preacherman. He stood up, took the pistol with his left hand and hefted it to get used to the weight. “Yeah, I can handle this.” Then he aimed the gun directly at Dave’s chest. “You know, I don’t like being treated like dirt.”

  “Lower your weapon,” Ethan said, his voice quiet but sternly persuasive.

  “Can you stop a bullet from this distance?” Jefferson asked him. “I’d like to see that trick.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me.” Dave turned his flashlight right into Jefferson’s eyes. “Number one, Hannah would take you down in about half a second, because she’s already got her gun pointed at you. Number two, you don’t have a damned place to go and I really don’t think you want to stay here. And…number three, we’re the only friends you’ve got right now. So Mr. Jefferson Jericho the TV star, I’d say you ought to do as Ethan says. We’ve got to put gas in this bus, and we’ve got to do it fast. You’re wasting time. Now come on, let’s get the gear.” Dave started walking toward the rear of the bus.

  “Please,” said Olivia, who looked to Ethan to be in a state of numbed shock. “Just do what he asks, all right?”

  Jefferson hesitated for a few seconds. He glanced at Ethan and then lowered the pistol, which was aimed at empty air where Dave had been standing. “All right,” he told Olivia, in a voice that was partly forlorn and partly belligerent. “Because you asked me nicely.” He found the Beretta’s safety, thumbed it on and slid the gun into the waistband of his dirty and pee-stained jeans.

  They got the containers, the hose, and the hand pump out, and Dave used the prybar to crack open the tank’s fill cap. While Dave cranked up diesel into one of the containers, Jefferson nervously watched the darkness where the houses lay, and Ethan stood nearby, his senses probing for any movement beyond. He was satisfied he could protect everyone from the Gray Men if need be; the question for him was, what could this physical body withstand? The heartbeat was good and the lungs were working, everything was all right for the moment, but Ethan knew that this body was not built for the strain of such combat even though the energy was only mental until it left the body, and then became a physical force on its way to a target. “You see anything?” Jefferson asked, as Dave continued to draw the fuel up.

  “Nothing. Relax. I’ll let you know if something’s coming.”

  “Relax, he says. Right!” Jefferson had his pistol out and aimed toward the houses. “How’d you get here without a spaceship? Did you ride in on a beam of light or something?”

  “A close proximation,” Ethan answered. “There are dimensions you can’t comprehend and methods of traveling that are also beyond you.”

  “Forgive us for being so backward and stupid.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that you’re a very young civilization. You’re focused on issues that speak to your youth. You couldn’t be expected to understand these things for…oh…a few hundred more years.”
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br />   “If we last that long,” said Jefferson.

  “Yes,” Ethan agreed. “Very true.”

  “Jericho, help me get this gas in the tank!” Dave said, and the preacherman left Ethan’s side to oblige.

  Ethan scanned the darkness, left to right and back again. He could smell the foulness of the Gray Men, he knew they were in those houses, but how many, he couldn’t say.

  “Hold it steady, don’t spill it!” Dave told Jefferson.

  Suddenly Ethan felt them in a prickling of the boy’s flesh and maybe what was an electric charge up the spine.

  It was a strange movement in the dark. Low to the ground. Not moving as a human being would. He picked out three shapes, running fast toward them. There was a glint of wet eyes that his flashlight caught…again, low to the ground.

  They were very hungry.

  “They’re coming,” he said, facing the attack. “Three. Not human-sized, though.”

  “What are they?” Jefferson asked, and as he tried to turn around he caused fuel to be spilled from the container down the side of the bus.

  “Careful, damn it!” Dave said.

  The shapes were almost upon them, but they were avoiding the cone of Ethan’s light. They were circling around to attack from another angle.

  “They’re dogs,” said Ethan. “What used to be, I mean.”

  Jefferson tried to draw his gun. Dave commanded, “Keep your mind on this!”

  Ethan followed the arc of their movement. Three dogs, somebody’s pets. Two were faster than the third, which seemed to be heavier and bulkier, likely burdened under plate armor. Ethan imagined that over the span of two years, humans in that community might have become Gray Men too, and the animals had eaten them and probably any other dogs there. In a matter of time, they would probably turn on each other. Ethan jabbed his light in the direction from which they were coming, and they veered away from contact with it. Again the wet eyes glistened…five of them. The third creature had not yet caught up with the first two.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” Jefferson urged, but the fuel into the tank would not be hurried.

  “We need to draw up some more,” Dave said. “Ethan, you got an eye on those things?”

  “I’m watching them. Right now they’re afraid of the light.” Jefferson drew his pistol, thumbed the safety off and fired two shots in the direction Ethan’s flashlight was aimed. A bullet ricocheted off concrete but there were no animal cries of pain.

  “Let’s move, the faster the better,” Dave urged, and Ethan went with them back to the opening of the underground tank while more fuel was siphoned up.

  The things began to growl, out just beyond the edge of the light. They’d been joined now by the third dog. Ethan couldn’t see the bodies but he saw the shine of seven eyes. The growling was low and ragged, more like the sounds of cement mixers in action. Whatever kind of dogs they were, they were big.

  “Come on, man!” Jefferson said, but Dave was doing the best he could. Another five gallons in each of the two containers and then in the bus’s tank, and they’d be done.

  Hannah came off the bus with her hogleg. She saw what the situation was and positioned herself beside Ethan, aiming her Colt toward the ominous noise of mutated beasts ravenous for fresh meat.

  A shape ran through the light. It was gray and hairless and looked to have a row of spines protruding along its backbone. A second distorted and hairless gray shape came darting in, its teeth bared and drooling saliva. Its three eyes glinted red. Before Hannah could get off a shot, it turned back and sped away.

  “I think that thing had two mouths,” Hannah said, visibly shaken.

  “It did,” Ethan answered.

  “Hurry it up, gents,” Hannah advised quietly, as she held the Colt steady with both veiny hands.

  The creatures were coming in from another direction. Ethan swiveled around to use his light as a weapon, but something was there at the edge of illumination even as he aimed the flashlight. It was the third beast, what might have been an Alaskan Husky at one time, now gray and hairless and wrinkled, its back and sides covered with interlocking scales of plate armor. The creature’s face had distorted, the jaw underslung and showing rows of sharklike teeth, the eyes not exactly what they should have been, and an extra two legs growing from the armor of its left flank. As the thing rushed in toward Ethan and Hannah, its extra legs also moved as if in a dream of running.

  Hannah made a choking noise and fired twice, the Colt spitting flame. One bullet whined off the concrete and the second went to parts unknown, and the creature was right there upon them, its underslung jaw opening and the teeth sliding out to take hold of Hannah’s leg.

  Ethan thrust his right hand forward. All the alien had to do was visualize the force necessary, and it was delivered. There was a heated shimmer of air between his palm and the mutated dog, and in the next instant the beast was hurled backward head over scabrous tail and into the darkness again.

  “Thank you,” Hannah managed to say.

  “I think you should go back inside,” Ethan told her, and she went.

  As Dave was getting the second five-gallon container full, Jefferson poured gas from the first container into the bus’s tank. Some spilled, but not much; Jefferson was fixed on the task as single-mindedly as he could be with the monsters—silent now in their hunger—roaming the dark.

  Another one darted in, coming at Dave. This one was smaller but had the row of spines along its back. Its teeth snapped at the air in anticipation of a feast. Ethan extended his arm, saw the creature hurtling backward and it was done. He envisioned the beast blowing apart in midair; it was done so quickly, with a burst of energy from the alien’s reserve of power, that the animal likely had no time to register pain. The pieces fell upon the concrete beyond the pumps, and the other two creatures fought each other for the scraps.

  “Okay, last five gallons,” Dave said, bringing the container. “Jericho, get the gear and put it aboard.”

  There was no argument.

  The last of the gas went into the tank. Dave, Jefferson and Ethan went aboard the bus, the door was closed and the gear was stowed away at the back.

  “Let’s go,” Dave said. He pulled his Uzi from its holster and pointed it at Jefferson’s belly. “Hand the gun over.”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy.” He gave the Beretta up without complaint, and Dave took a seat beside Olivia. Ethan heard Nikki let out the breath she’d caught.

  Hannah had never been so glad to start an engine. The gas gauge did not show Full, but it was enough to make another hundred and forty miles, God willing.

  She switched on the headlights and started pulling out, back toward I-70. Before they could get out of the station one of the Gray Dogs—the largest one, Ethan figured—threw itself at the side of the bus in a frenzy. There was a whump that shook everyone, but then Hannah was picking up speed and they were on their way again.

  Jefferson Jericho came back along the aisle toward Ethan.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Dave stood up to block his way. “Get in your seat.”

  “I’d like to speak to Ethan.”

  “Get in your seat,” Dave repeated.

  “I’m not going to hurt—”

  “I won’t tell you again.” A hand went to the Uzi’s grip.

  “It’s all right,” Ethan spoke up. “He just wants to ask me a few questions.”

  “I don’t want him near you,” Dave said firmly.

  “I can ask you from here,” Jefferson decided. “But maybe you already know what I want to ask?”

  “I do.” It was simple now to read their minds, a matter of seconds. “Dave, he wants to know about my power. Where it comes from and how I control it. Jefferson has a keen interest in power.”

  “Damn straight I do,” Jefferson said. “And that’s exactly what I want to know. How do you do that?”

  “Directed energy,” Ethan answered. “I can modulate the intensity. The human hand is an efficient director of ene
rgy. It’s a good aiming device. Both hands, in fact. I am a being of what you would think of as concentrated energy. I can inhabit various forms as need be. If I give a desire enough focus, it’s done. The earthquake was difficult. The boy had to be convinced that he could do it, but I wasn’t ready yet to take full control of the organism. Neither was he ready. So I led him along as best I could, and as gently as I could.”

  “Organism,” Dave repeated, with a shade of bitterness. It was weird to be hearing these words come out of the mouth of what appeared to be a fifteen-year-old. “You make that sound so clinical. He was a human boy and a good person. He didn’t ask for this.”

  “Should I regret my choice?” Ethan asked, and let the question hang.

  “No,” Olivia replied. Her voice was still soft and sad. “It seems so unfair, after all he went through, to throw him aside.”

  “As I told Nikki, there’s no room for him here. He knew eventually I was going to have to take everything. He suited my purpose, and he did what I asked of him.”

  “Organism,” Dave said again, like something nasty was caught in his mouth. “We’re a hell of a lot more than bodies for the taking.”

  “I know you are, but sacrifice was required for the greater good. Surely you understand that.”

  Dave did, but damned if he was going to admit it. Anyway, he figured the alien already knew what he was thinking.

  “Yes,” said the peacekeeper.

  “Were you born? Created? How?” Jefferson had to ask.

  “Created, by a greater power. I know my duty and that I’m ancient in your measure of time, but more than that about myself I don’t know.”

  “And you’re alone out there?” Olivia asked. “For all that length of time?”

  Ethan didn’t reply for a moment. The silver eyes were downcast, the face solemn. “There are others like me, but distant. I receive information, process it, and send it on, and I know my duty,” he repeated.

  “Your power has to have a limit,” Jefferson said. “It can’t be infinite. Can it?”

  “Infinite is a matter of definition. Whatever power I have is more limited in this body than in my original form, but I need the body as a means of communication.”