The Monster Novels: Stinger, the Wolf's Hour, and Mine

by Robert R. McCammon

  The smell of grave dirt and mold was in the room. The living corpse stood up in front of Mary Terror. A few tendrils of long black hair hung from the shriveled skull, and Mary could see the almond-shaped eyes in a face as wrinkled as a dried apple. The mouth stretched open, a noise of whirring air came out that shaped words: “Hello, Mary.”

  She knew who this was, come to visit from the dead. “Hello, CinCin.”

  Cold fingers touched her shoulder. She looked to her left, and there stood another creature from the grave, wearing dirt-crusted African amulets. Akitta Washington had dissolved down to a skinny stick figure, and what remained of his once-ebony flesh was now a leprous gray. He held up two bony fingers. “Peace, sister.”

  “Peace, brother,” she answered, and returned the sign.

  A third figure was standing in a corner of the room, skeletal face cocked to one side. This person had been a petite woman in life, but in death she had bloated and burst and dark glistening things were leaking from the cavity where her insides used to be. “Mary,” she said in an ancient voice. “You bitch, you.”

  “Hi, Janette,” Mary replied. “You look like shit.”

  “Being dead doesn’t do a whole lot for your looks,” Janette agreed.

  “Listen up!” Akitta said, and he came around the chair to stand beside CinCin. His legs were gray toothpicks, and where his sexual organs had been, small white worms feasted. “You’re going there tomorrow. Going to be walking on a fine line, sister. You ever think that maybe the pigs planted that message in the Stone?”

  “I thought about it. The pigs didn’t know about the weeping lady. Nobody knew but us.”

  “Toombs knew,” Janette said. “Who’s to say he didn’t tell the pigs?”

  “Toombs wouldn’t talk. Never.”

  “Easy to say, hard to know.” CinCin spoke up now. “How can you be so sure it’s a message from Lord Jack? The pigs might be behind it, Mary. When you go there tomorrow, you could be walking into a trap.”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Mary said. “I’ve got my baby now, and I’m taking him to Jack! Everything’s going to be cool!”

  Akitta bent his dead face toward her, his eyes as white as river stones. “You’d better watch your back, sister. You don’t know for sure who sent that message. You sure as hell better watch your back.”

  “Yeah.” Janette walked across the room to straighten a crooked picture on the wall. She left a dark trail on the brown carpet. “Pigs might be watching you right now, Mary. They might be setting up shop for you. Do you think you’d like prison?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. I’d rather be dead than in the slammer.” She got the picture how she wanted it; Janette had always been tidy. “What are you going to do about the baby?”

  “I’m going to give him to Jack.”

  “No, no,” CinCin said. “What are you going to do about the baby if the pigs are waiting for you?”

  “They won’t be.”

  “Ah.” CinCin gave a ghastly smile. “But let’s say they will be, Mary. Let’s say you fucked up somewhere, and the pigs squeak out of the woodwork tomorrow. You’re going in loaded, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” She would be armed with the purse-size Magnum.

  “So if the pigs are there waiting for you, and there’s no way out, what are you going to do?”

  “I…don’t know…what—”

  “Sure you do,” Akitta said. “You’re not going to let the pigs take you alive, are you? They’d throw you in a deep hole, Mary. They’d take the baby from you and give him to some piece of shit who doesn’t deserve a child. You know her name: Laura.”

  “Yes. Laura.” Mary nodded. She’d seen the newscasts and read about it in the paper. A picture of the woman had been in Time last week, next to an old snapshot of herself taken on a day the Storm Fronters played Frisbee at Berkeley.

  “Drummer’s your baby now,” Janette said. “You’re not going to give him up, are you?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you going to do if the pigs are there?” CinCin repeated. “And there’s no way out?”

  “I’m…going to—”

  “Shoot the baby first,” CinCin told her. “Then take as many pigs with you as you can. Does that sound reasonable?”

  “Yes,” Mary agreed. “Reasonable.”

  “They’ve got all sorts of new weapons and shit now,” Akitta said. “You’ll have to kill the baby quick. No hesitation.”

  “No hesitation,” Mary echoed.

  “Then you can come join us.” When Janette grinned, her dried-up husk of a face cracked at the jaw hinges. “We get high and party.”

  “I’ve got to find Jack.” Mary could see her words in the air, they floated away from her, outlined in pale blue, like whorls of smoke. “Got to find Jack and give him our baby.”

  “We’ll be with you,” CinCin promised. “Brothers and sisters in spirit, like always.”

  “Like always,” Mary said.

  CinCin, Akitta, and Janette began to break apart. It was a silent breaking, a coming apart of the glue that held their bones together. Mary watched them fall to pieces with the same interest with which she might watch a mildly entertaining TV program. Out of their dissolving bodies came a gray mist shot through with streaks of blue, and this mist roiled toward Mary Terror. She felt it, cold on her lips and nostrils like San Francisco fog. It entered her through her nose and mouth, and froze her throat on its way down. She smelled a commingling of odors: strawberry incense, gravemold, and gunsmoke.

  The television screen had healed itself. Another movie was on, this one a black-and-white film. Plan Nine from Outer Space, Tor and Vampira. Mary Terror closed her eyes and saw the weeping lady in her mind, torch uplifted over the dirty harbor. The lady had been weeping for a long time, her feet trapped in the concrete of the Mindfuck State, but she had never shown her tears before. The Storm Front had planned to show her tears to the world on that July Fourth in 1972. They had planned to kidnap five executives from Manhattan-based corporations and hold the weeping lady by force until the pigs could arrange television cameras for a live hookup, a million dollars in cash, and a jet plane to take them to Canada. It had never happened. The first of July had happened, but not the Fourth.

  It was the eighteenth by now, Mary realized. Lord Jack would be waiting for her at two o’clock in the afternoon.

  But if he wasn’t there, what was she going to do?

  Mary smiled grimly in her purple haze. That was CinCin talking.

  But what ifthe pigs are there?

  Shoot the baby first. Then take as many pigs with you as you can.

  Reasonable.

  Mary opened her eyes and stood up on mile-long legs. She was a walking heartbeat, the roar of blood through her veins like the noise of the freight-hauling trucks. She went into the room where Drummer was sleeping, and she sat on the bed and looked at him. She watched a frown pass over his face: a storm in babyland. Drummer sucked busily on the pacifier, and peace came to his face again. Lately he’d been waking up at three or four in the morning wanting to be fed. Mary was getting efficient at feeding him and changing his diapers. Motherhood suited her, she’d decided.

  She could kill him if she had to. She knew she could. And then she would keep shooting until the pigs cut her down and she would join Drummer and her brothers and sisters in a place where the love generation had never died.

  Mary lay down on the bed beside Drummer, close enough to feel his heat. She loved him more than anything in the world, because he was hers.

  If they had to leave this world together, so be it.

  Karma. That was the way things worked.

  Mary drifted off to sleep, the acid slowing her pulse. Her last thought was of Lord Jack, bright with beauty in the winter sun, as he accepted the gift she had brought him.

  6

  A Real Popular Lady

  TEN HOURS BEFORE MARY TERROR’S CONVERSATION WITH THE dead, Laura rang the doorbell of a red brick
house four miles west of Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a sunny day, huge white clouds moving slowly across the sky, but the air was bitterly cold. Mark had his hands buried in his fleece-lined jacket, and puffs of breath plumed from his mouth. Laura and Mark had left Chattanooga on Friday morning, had driven to Dayton, Ohio, and spent Friday night there before continuing the rest of the way. They had driven through the sprawling University of Michigan, once a hotbed of student dissent in the late sixties and early seventies, and now better known for its Wolverines.

  The door opened. An elderly man with a pleasant, leathery face and sun freckles on his scalp peered out. “Yes?”

  “Hello.” Laura offered a tight smile. “We’re trying to find Diane Daniells. Do you know where she might be?”

  He took a long look at her, another long look at Mark, and then he squinted toward the other side of the road, up at the stone cottage surrounded by oaks and elms at the end of a long dirt driveway. “Diane’s not at home,” he told her.

  “We know. We were wondering if you had any idea where she is.” This house and the one belonging to Diane Daniells—once known as Bedelia Morse—were the only ones on this stretch of road.

  “Gone on a trip,” he said. “Not sure where.”

  “When did she leave?” Mark asked.

  “Oh, Thursday afternoon, I suppose it was. Said she was goin’ north, if that’s any help.”

  Laura had a knot in her throat, and she had to struggle to clear it. Being so close to where Bedelia Morse lived and being unable to find her was pure torture. “Did she say when she might be back?”

  “Weekend trip, she said. You folks friends of Diane’s?”

  “I’m an old friend,” Mark answered.

  “Well, I’m sorry you missed her. If it’s any help to you, I think she’s gone birdin’.”

  “Birding?” Laura asked.

  “Yep. Diane asked to borrow my binoculars. See, my wife and I are bird-watchers. We belong to the society.” He scratched his chin. “Diane’s a solitary kind of woman. Be a real good birder if she put her mind to it.”

  Laura nodded absently, turned, and looked at the stone cottage again. The mailbox had a peace sign painted on it. In front of the cottage stood an abstract clay sculpture, all sharp angles and edges.

  “Diane’s a real popular lady all of a sudden,” the old man said.

  “What?”

  “Real popular,” he repeated. “Diane usually don’t have no visitors. She comes over and plays chess with me sometimes. Beats my socks off, too. Other fella was askin’ about her yesterday.”

  “Other fellow?” Mark frowned. “Who?”

  “Friend of hers,” he said. “Fella with a bad throat. Had to plug a doohickey into his neck and talk through a speaker. Damnedest thing.”

  “Did Diane tell you who she might be going to visit?” Laura asked, getting the conversation back on track.

  “Nope. Just said she was goin’ away for the weekend. Headin’ north, she said.”

  It was obvious the man didn’t know anything else. “Thank you,” Laura said, and the old man wished them a good day and closed his door.

  On the walk back to Laura’s BMW, Mark kicked a pinecone and said, “Sounds weird.”

  “What does?”

  “About the guy with the bad throat. Sounds weird.”

  “Why? Maybe he’s one of her pottery students.”

  “Maybe.” Mark stood next to the car and listened to the wind roaming in the bare trees. “I’ve just got a funny feeling, that’s all.” He got into the car, and Laura slid behind the wheel. Their drive up from the South had been, for Laura, an education in radical philosophy and the teachings of Zen. Mark Treggs was a fount of knowledge about the militant struggles of the sixties, and they had gotten into a long discussion about the assassination of John F. Kennedy as the point when America had become poisoned. “So what do we do now?” he asked as Laura started the engine.

  “I’m going to wait for Bedelia Morse to come home,” she told him. “You’ve done your part. If you want, I’ll buy you a plane ticket back to Chattanooga.”

  Mark deliberated as they drove back toward Ann Arbor. “Didi won’t talk to you if I’m not there,” he said. “She won’t even let you in the door.” He swept his long hair back over his shoulders and watched the countryside pass. “No, I’d better stick around,” Mark decided. “I can get Rose to call in sick for me on Monday. No problem.”

  “I thought you’d be eager to get home.”

  “I am, but…I guess I’d like to see Didi. You know, for old times’ sake.”

  There was something Laura had been meaning to ask, and now seemed the time. “In your book you dedicated a line to Didi: ‘Keep the faith and love the one you’re with.’ Who were you talking about? Is she living with someone?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “Herself. I talked her out of slitting her wrists last summer.” He glanced quickly at Laura and then away. “Didi’s carrying a lot of heavy freight. She’s not the same person she used to be. I guess the past eats at her.”

  Laura looked at her hands on the steering wheel and realized something that almost startled her. She was wearing no fingernail polish, and her nails were dirty. Her shower this morning had been a speed drill. The diamond of her engagement ring—a link to Doug—looked dull. Before this ordeal she’d been meticulous about her manicures and her ring cleaning. Such things now seemed incredibly pointless.

  “A dude with a bad throat,” Mark said quietly. “Asking for Didi. I don’t know. That gives me the creeps.”

  “Why?”

  “If he was one of her students, wouldn’t he know she was going out of town for the weekend?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  He grunted. “Maybe you’re right. But it still sounds weird to me.”

  Laura said, “This okay?” and motioned to a Days Inn coming up on the left. Mark said it was fine with him, and she turned into the parking lot. The first thing she was going to do when she got to her room was call the FBI in Atlanta and check with Kastle, but she had no intention of betraying either Mark or Bedelia Morse. She knew she was going to be climbing the walls until she got a chance to talk to Didi face-to-face.

  As Laura and Mark were checking into the Days Inn, the tall, gaunt man who had parked his dark blue Buick on a dirt road a half mile from Bedelia Morse’s cottage walked back to his car through the woods, his boots crunching on dead leaves. He wore brown trousers and a gray parka with a hood: colors that helped camouflage him in the winter-gnawed forest. Around his neck was a Minolta camera with a zoom lens, and over his shoulder was a camouflage-mottled bag that held a small SuperSnooper listening dish, earphones, and a miniature tape recorder as well as a loaded .45 automatic. The man’s face was hidden by the hood, but his breathing rattled.

  When he reached his car, he unlocked the trunk and put the camera and shoulder bag into it, next to the black leather case that held a Valmet Hunter .308 rifle with a telescopic sight and a nine-round magazine.

  His own house was about fifteen miles northwest, in a town called Hell.

  He drove there, his black-gloved hands tight on the wheel and his grin demonic.

  7

  The Devil of All Pigs

  BEHIND MARY TERROR WAS New York City. Above her was the gray sky, armored in clouds. Beneath her was the deck of the boat, ferrying a group of tourists across the wind-whipped water to what lay before her: the weeping lady on Liberty Island.

  Mary stood within the glassed-in cabin, out of the wind, with Drummer in her arms. The weeping lady grew larger and larger, torch in one hand and book cradled against her breasts. The other passengers were mostly Japanese, and they took pictures like crazy. Mary rocked Drummer and cooed to him, and her heart slammed in her chest as the Circle Line boat neared its destination. In her large shoulder bag was her Magnum pistol, fully loaded. Mary licked her lips. She could see people walking around the base of the weeping lady, could see someone feeding sea gulls on the concrete dock where the b
oat would pull in. Mary looked at her wristwatch. It was about eight minutes before two o’clock. She realized how big Liberty Island was. Where was the contact supposed to be made? The message in the Stone hadn’t said. A little burst of panic threatened her composure; what if she couldn’t find Jack? What if he was waiting for her but she couldn’t find him? Steady, she told herself. Trust in karma, and keep an eye on your back.

  Drummer started to cry. “Shhh, shhh,” she said softly, and she fed him his pacifier. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her sleep had been uneasy, and filled with phantoms: pigs with rifles and shotguns, converging on her from all sides. She had taken stock of the tourists waiting for the boat as she’d bought her ticket: none of them smelled like pigs, and none of them wore shined shoes. But out here in the open she didn’t feel safe, and once she set foot on Liberty Island she would unzip her bag so she could get to her gun in a hurry.

  The boat began to slow, the weeping lady gargantuan before her. Then the boat’s crew threw out ropes, the craft sidled up against the dock, and a ramp was tied down. “Watch your step, watch your step!” one of the crewmen cautioned, and the tourists started getting off the boat with a chatter of excitement.

  It was time. Mary waited for everyone else to get off, and then she unzipped the carryall and took Drummer across the ramp onto the concrete of Liberty Island.

  Sea gulls screeched and spun in the eddies of cold air. Mary’s eyes darted right and left: an elderly couple walked together near the railing; a heavyset woman herded two children along; three teenage boys in leather jackets jostled each other, their voices raucous; a man in a gray jogging outfit was sitting on a bench, staring blankly toward the city; another man, this one wearing a beige overcoat, was tossing peanuts to the sea gulls. He was wearing shined wingtips, and Mary walked quickly away from him, the back of her neck prickling.