Bursts of fire rippled through Stinger’s gutted hulk. The tail was still feebly twitching, and some of the claws were still trying to crawl. One pair of eyes had rolled back into the head. The body kept shuddering, the sucker mouth rasping like an engine dying down.
“Lordy, Lordy,” Curt managed to say. “What the hell did I do?”
“Don’t talk. We’re gonna get you out.” Cody had pulled his father’s shoulders off the floor, and Curt’s head rested on Cody’s leg. Where Curt’s chest had been was a heaving mass of tissue. Cody thought he could see the heart laboring in there. He wiped a trickle of blood from his father’s lips.
Curt swallowed. Too much blood, he thought. Could hardly draw a breath for it. He looked up into his son’s face, and he thought he saw… no, couldn’t be. He’d taught his son that a real man never cries. “I hurt a little bit,” he said. “Ain’t no big thing.”
“Hush.” Cody’s voice broke. “Save it for later.”
“I got… a picture in my back pocket.” He tried to shift, but his body was too heavy. “Can you get it for me?”
“Yes sir.” Cody reached into the pocket and found it, all folded up. He saw who the picture was of, and his heart almost cracked. He gave it to Curt, who held it before his face with bloody fingers.
“Treasure,” Curt said softly. “You sure did marry one hell of a fool.” He blinked, found Cody again. “Your mama used to pack a lunch for me. She’d say, ‘Curt, you do me proud today,’ and I’d answer, ‘I will, Treasure.’” His eyes closed. “Long time back. I used to be a carpenter… and… I took the jobs that came along.”
“Please… don’t talk,” Cody said.
Curt’s eyes opened. They were glassy, and his breathing was forced. He gripped his hand around the photograph. “I… did wrong with you,” he whispered. “Mighty wrong. Forgive me?”
“Yes sir. I forgive you.”
His other hand slid into Cody’s. “You be… a better man than me,” he said. Gave a grim little smile. “Won’t be too hard, will it?”
“I love you, Dad,” Cody said.
“I…” Something broke inside him. Something heavy fell away, and at the same time he realized life was short he felt light and free. “I… love you,” he answered, and he wished to God he’d had the courage to say those simple words a long time ago. “Damn kid,” he added. His hand tightened around his son’s.
Cody was blinded by tears. He wiped his eyes, but the tears returned. He looked at the still-shuddering mass of Stinger, then back to Curt.
The man’s eyes had closed. He might have been sleeping, any other time. But down in that morass of ripped flesh and lungs Cody could no longer see the heart beating. The grip on Cody’s hand was loosening. Cody held on, but he knew the man had gone—escaped, really, to a place that had no dead ends but only new beginnings.
Daufin was standing next to him. She was clutching the sphere, her face dark-hollowed and weary. The strength in her host body was almost used up. “I owe him—and you—a debt I can never repay,” she said. “He was a very brave human.”
“He was my father,” Cody answered.
Rick was on his feet. He limped with Miranda’s help over to the fallen replicant, placed one foot on the thing’s shoulder, and shoved the body over onto its back. The dog’s head lolled, its eyes amber blanks.
But suddenly the body hitched. The single blue Mack Cade eye was still open, and it fixed on Rick with utter loathing.
The mouth stretched, and from between the needle teeth came a harsh, dying hiss: “You… bugsssss…” The eye rolled back into the head, and the mouth gave a final rattling gasp.
A death rattle came from Stinger’s husk. The tail rose up, the ball of spikes quivering, and crashed down one last time as if in defiance.
And then the carcass lay still.
But the ship’s pulse was thunderous now, and the violet sun crackled with energy. Daufin turned toward Jessie, who knelt at Tom’s side. The man’s arms had been flayed raw, and Jessie was tearing up strips of his shirt to bind the slashes. “The time is short,” Daufin said. She scanned the programming console, seeking to decipher a code in the geometric shapes. “The engines are about to reach their lift-off threshold. If they go beyond that point, they might suffer damage.” She peered at the banks of levers inside the smaller pyramid. “That’s the control center. I can delay lift-off long enough for you to leave the tunnels—but there won’t be time to change the navigational coordinants and get to the sleep tubes.”
“Try that in English,” Tom said.
“I can’t keep the ship on the ground much longer,” Daufin translated. “And I don’t have time to meld into my pod. I need another guardian.”
Jessie felt as if the breath had been punched out of her. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I need physical form to keep the ship from lifting off while you’re in the tunnels. The shock wave would kill you.”
“Please… give Stevie back to us.” Jessie stood up. “Please!”
“I want to.” The face was tormented, and the small hands clutched the black sphere to her chest. “I must have another guardian. Please understand: I’m trying to save all of you as well as myself.”
“No! You can’t have Stevie! I want my daughter back!”
“Uh… is ‘guardian’ kinda the same as ‘custodian’?”
Daufin looked to her right, and up at Sarge Dennison. “What’s a guardian do?” he asked cautiously.
“A guardian,” she answered, “protects my body and holds my mind. I wear a guardian like armor, and I respect and protect the guardian’s body and mind as well.”
“Sounds like a full-time job.”
“It is. A guardian knows peace, in a place beyond dreams. But there’ll never be any returning to Earth. Once this ship takes off—”
“The sky’s the limit,” Sarge said.
She nodded, watching him hopefully.
“And if you get another guardian, you… like… shed your skin? And the Hammonds get their real daughter back? Right?”
“Right.”
He paused, his face lined with thought. He looked at his hands for a few seconds. “Can we take Scooter?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t dream of not taking Scooter,” she said.
Sarge pursed his lips and hissed out air. “What’ll we do for food and water?”
“We won’t need them. I’ll be in a sleep tube, and you’ll be here.” She lifted the pod. “With Scooter, if that’s as you wish.”
He smiled wanly. “I’m… kinda scared.”
“So am I,” Daufin said. “Let’s be brave together.”
Sarge looked up at Tom and Jessie, then over at the others. Returned his gaze to the little girl’s intense and shining eyes. “All right,” he decided. “I’ll be your guardian.”
“Place your fingers against this,” Daufin told him, and he gingerly touched the sphere. “Don’t be afraid. Wait. Just wait.”
Blue threads began to creep across the black surface. “Hey!” Sarge’s voice was high and nervous. “Look at that!” The blue threads connected with each other, and floated like mist beneath their hands. Daufin closed her eyes, blocking out all externals and the insistent bellows’ boom of the ship. She concentrated solely on opening the vast reservoir of power that lay within the sphere, and she felt it react to her like the ocean tides of her world, flowing over and around her, drawing her deeper into their realm and away from the body of Stevie Hammond.
Blue sparks jumped around Daufin’s fingers. “Lord!” Sarge said. “What was—” They danced around his fingers too; he felt a faint tingling sensation that seemed to flow up and down his spine. “Lord!” was all he could say, and that in a stunned whisper.
And in the next instant currents of power snapped out of the sphere, coiled around Daufin’s hands and Sarge’s too. His eyes widened. The bright blue bands intertwined, braided around each other, and shot with an audible humming sound into the eyes of both Daufin and Sarge, into their n
ostrils and around their skulls. Daufin’s hair danced with sparks. Sarge’s mouth opened, and sparks were leaping off his fillings.
Tom and Jessie held on to each other, not daring to speak or move, and the others were silent.
The power surge snapped Sarge’s head back. His legs buckled, and he fell to the floor. Daufin went down two seconds later. The energy flow ceased, and the pod fell out of the child’s hands and rolled to Jessie’s feet.
Daufin sat up. Blinked at Tom and Jessie. Started to speak but nothing came out.
Sarge’s body trembled. He rolled over on his side, slowly got up on his knees.
Daufin rubbed her eyes. Sarge breathed deeply a few times, and then he spoke: “Take your daughter home, Tom and Jessie.”
“Mama?” Stevie said. “I’m… so sleepy.”
Jessie rushed to her daughter, picked her up, and hugged her, and Tom put his arms around both of them. “Why are you crying?” Stevie asked.
Sarge retrieved the sphere and stood up. His movements were quicker than before, and his eyes glinted with a fierce intelligence. “Your language… isn’t big enough to tell you how grateful I am,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought such pain to this world.” He looked down at Curt’s body, and placed his hand on Cody’s shoulder. “It wasn’t what I wanted.”
Cody nodded, but was unable to reply.
“We know,” Tom said. “I wish you could’ve seen a better part of our world.”
“I think I saw a fine part of it. What’s any world but its tribe? And the generations yet to be?” He reached out, gently touching Stevie’s auburn hair with Sarge’s work-gnarled fingers.
Stevie’s eyes and brain were fogged with the need for sleep. “Do I know who you are?”
“Nope. But someday—maybe—your parents might tell you.”
Stevie nestled her head against Jessie’s shoulder. She didn’t care where she was, or what was happening; her body was worn out. But she’d been having such a wonderful dream, of playing in the summer sun in a huge pasture with Sweetpea. Such a wonderful dream…
“The greatest gift is a second chance,” the alien said. “That’s what you’ve given my tribe. I wish there was something I could give in return—but all I can do is promise that on my world there’ll always be a song for Earth.” A smile touched the corners of Sarge’s mouth. “Who knows? Someday we might even learn to play baseball.”
Jessie grasped his hand. Words failed her, but she found some. “Thank you for giving Stevie back to us. Good luck to you—and you be careful, you hear?”
“I hear.” He looked at the others, nodded farewell at Cody and Rick, then back to Jessie and Tom. “Go home,” he told them. “You know the way. And so do I.”
He turned and strode across the floor. One leg folded up at the knee joint like an accordian. He entered the small pyramid, paused only briefly as he studied the instruments, then began to rapidly manipulate the levers.
Tom, Jessie, Cody, Rick, and Miranda left the chamber, with Stevie clinging to Jessie’s neck. They went the way they’d come in, through the passage that spiraled down to a wide black ramp in the tunnel below. The lights they’d thrown away were still burning in the distance.
And in the black sphere in the creature’s hand, Sarge Dennison stood at a crossroads. He was a young man, handsome and agile, with his whole life before him. For some reason, and this was unclear, he was wearing an olive-green uniform. He had a suitcase in his hand, and the day was sunny and there was a nice breeze and the dirt road went in two directions. The signpost had foreign words on it: the names of Belgian villages. From one direction he thought he heard the dark mutter of thunder, and clouds of dark smoke were rising from the ground. Something bad was happening over that way, he thought. Something real bad, that should not ever have to happen again.
A dog barked. He looked the other way, and there was Scooter. A mighty prancy thing, waiting for him. The dog’s tail wagged furiously. Sarge looked toward the clear horizon. He didn’t know what was over that way, beyond the green trees and the soft hills, but maybe it was worth a walk.
He had all the time in the world to get there.
“Hold on!” he called to Scooter. “I’m comin’!” He started walking, and it was funny but the suitcase hardly weighed a feather. He leaned down and picked up a stick, and he flung it high and far and watched Scooter kick up dust as the dog ran to fetch it. Scooter got the stick and brought it back. It seemed to Sarge that they could play this game all day.
He smiled, and passed on along a dirt road into the land of imagination.
* * *
58
Dawn
Rick started up the rope, and twenty feet had never looked so deep. He made it up about eight feet before his arms gave out. He fell back, exhausted.
A voice came from above: “Tie a loop in the rope and put your foot in it! We’ll haul you up!”
“Okay!” Tom shouted. “Hold on!” He got the loop tied, and Rick stepped into it. He was drawn steadily upward and a few seconds later was pulled onto the floor of Crowfield’s house. He saw a smear of red early-morning sun in the sky. The force field was gone and the desert breeze was drifting the smoke and dust away.
Xavier Mendoza, Bobby Clay Clemmons, Zarra, and Pequin had come from the fortress. They dropped the rope back down and this time reeled Miranda up.
When Rhodes came up, he almost kissed the floor but he was afraid that if he got down on it he’d never get back up. He lurched to the front door, holding his mangled shoulder, breathed deeply of fresh air, and looked out at the world.
Helicopters roared back and forth over Inferno and Bordertown, cautiously circling the black pyramid. Higher up were the contrails of jet fighters, their pilots awaiting orders. On Highway 67 were hundreds of headlights: a convoy of trucks, jeeps, vans, and trailers. Rhodes nodded. Now the shit was about to hit the fan. He could hear the noise of the pyramid: from here, it was a low-pitched rumble. Daufin—Sarge, now—was still holding the ship back, giving them time to get clear of the tunnels.
Ray Hammond heard the chatter of a ’copter overhead, and he opened his eyes. He was lying in a bathtub, Nasty’s Mohawked head against his shoulder. Red stripes of sunlight slanted through a broken window. They had hidden here since Tank’s truck had overturned, had heard the smashing of houses around them, but had stayed put. Climbing into the bathtub had been Ray’s idea.
He started to climb out, but Nasty murmured and clutched at his chest. She was still pretty much out of it, he knew, and she needed to be taken to Doc Early. He looked at her face and smoothed some of her wild hair down—and then the ruddy light showed him what the dark had kept secret: Nasty’s blouse had pulled open, and…
Oh my God! Ray thought. Oh my God there they are!
Both her breasts were exposed. There they were, nipples and everything, just inches away from his fingers.
He stared at them, mesmerized.
So close. So close. Crazy, he thought, how his mind could switch from almost getting killed to the idea of losing his virginity in a bathtub, but that was the Alien Sex Beam for you. Unpredictable.
Maybe just one touch, he decided. One quick touch, and she’d never know.
He moved his fingers toward them, and Nasty’s eyes opened. They were red and swollen. Her whole face was puffy and bruised looking, but he still thought she was pretty. And maybe never prettier, her face against his shoulder and so close to him. Her eyes struggled to focus. She said, “Ray?”
“The one and only.” He gave a nervous little laugh.
“Thought so.” She smiled sleepily. “You’re okay, kid. You’re gonna make some girl feel real special someday. Like she’s a lady.” Her eyes closed again, heavy-lidded, and her soft breath brushed his throat.
He looked at her breasts for a while longer, but his fingers crept no closer. There would be a time, he thought. But not now. Not today. That time was in the future. Maybe not with Nasty, but with some girl he didn’t even know yet. Maybe love would have s
omething to do with it too. And maybe thinking about things like this was what they called “growing up.”
“Thanks,” he said to her, but she didn’t answer. He gathered her blouse together and slipped a couple of buttons through their loops so when somebody found them she’d look like what she did to him: a sleeping Guinevere. And that was his chivalrous deed for the year, he decided. From here on out it was Wild Animal City. His body felt like a bag of knots, and he laid his head back and watched the red sun coming up.
Helicopters were flying over Celeste Street, their rotors stirring the haze away, as Ed Vance, Celeste Preston, and Sue Mullinax emerged from the Brandin’ Iron. They’d stayed behind the counter after the wall had crashed in, flat on their faces in the debris. There had been more sounds of destruction, and Vance had figured it was the end of the world until Celeste had given an ungodly shriek and they’d all heard the helicopters. Now they saw that the force field was gone, and as the wind of ’copter rotors swirled along the street Vance couldn’t help himself. He gave a whoop and hugged Celeste Preston, picking her up off her feet.
Something flapped past Vance’s face like a green bat. Then more of them, running before the wind. Sue shouted, “What is it?”
Celeste reached out and snagged a handful as they rushed past. She opened her hand, and was looking at eight one-hundred-dollar bills.
Money was flying all over Celeste Street. “My God!” Sue snatched up two handfuls and shoved them down her blouse, and now other people were out in the street, amid all the wreckage, picking up money too. “Where’s it comin’ from?”
Celeste struggled out of the sheriff’s bear hug and walked over sliding masses of money. Her yellow Cadillac had gone over on its side, two tires flat, and in the red light she could see the bills whirling up out of the car when the helicopters passed overhead. She reached the car on wobbly legs, and she said, “Shit.”
The hundred-dollar bills were coming from the ripped-open front seat, where the thing’s claws had slashed. Vance came toward her, his wet shirt stuffed with money. “Have you ever seen the like of this?” he hollered.
1988 - Stinger Page 52