Stinger

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Nope, never have.” Tyler was retired from a job with Texas Power, and wrote fairly successful western novels about a bounty hunter named Bart Justice. Bess was content to spend her time compiling sketches of desert flowers and plants, and both of them treated Sweetpea like an overgrown puppy.

  “Neither have I,” Jessie admitted. She saw Stevie coming closer. The little girl’s eyes were wide and entranced again, but Jessie had checked her over thoroughly at the house and found no injuries. “Stevie?” she said softly.

  The little girl was pulled by the wind-chimes noise. It was a lovely, soothing music, and she had to find out where it was coming from. She started to walk past her mother, but Jessie grasped her shoulder before she reached the truck. “Don’t get in that oil,” Jessie said tensely. “It’ll ruin your clothes.”

  Tyler had on dungarees and didn’t mind getting dirty. He was curious about what had put a hole that size through the pickup’s hood and engine, and he reached into the mess and started feeling around. “Watch out you don’t cut your hand, Ty!” Bess warned, but he grunted and kept on with what he was doing. “You got a flashlight, doc?” he asked.

  “Yes. Just a minute.” There was a pencil flashlight in her vet bag. “Stay out of Mr. Lucas’s way,” she told Stevie, who nodded vacantly. Jessie retrieved the bag from the truck’s interior, found the little flashlight, and gave it to Tyler. He flicked it on, aiming the light into the hole. “Lordy, what a mess!” he said. “Whatever it was, it went right through the engine block. Knocked the valves all to pieces.”

  “Can you see what it might’ve been?”

  He moved the light around. “Nope. Must’ve been hard as a cannonball and movin’ like a bat out of hell, though.” He glanced up at Stevie. “Oops. Forgive my French, honey.” He returned his attention to the beam of light. “Well, I’d say it got pulverized in there somewhere. Doc, you sure are lucky it didn’t go through the firewall or hit the gas tank.”

  “I know.”

  He straightened up and flicked the light off. “Guess you’ve got insurance, huh? With the Dodger?”

  “Right.” Dodge Creech had an Texas Pride Auto and Life Insurance office on the second floor of the bank building in Inferno. “I don’t know exactly how to describe the accident to him, though. I’m not sure anything like this is covered in my collision insurance.”

  “Ol’ Dodger’ll find a way. He can talk the tears out of a stone.”

  “It’s still in there, Mama,” Stevie said softly. “I can hear it singing.”

  Tyler and Bess looked at her, then at each other. “I think Stevie’s a little shaken up,” Jessie explained. “It’s all right, hon. We’re going to be on our way home as soon as Mr. Mendoza—”

  “It’s still in there,” the child repeated. This time her voice was firm. “Can’t you hear it?”

  “No,” Jessie replied. “And neither do you. I want you to stop playacting, now.”

  Stevie didn’t answer, she just kept staring at the truck, trying to figure out exactly where the music was coming from. “Stevie?” Bess said. “Come on over here and let’s give Sweetpea his sugar, okay?” She dug into her pocket and brought out a few sugar cubes, and the palomino strode toward her in anticipation of a treat. “Sweets for the sweet,” Bess said, giving the horse a couple of cubes. “Come on, Stevie! You give him one, okay?”

  Normally, Stevie would have jumped at the chance to feed Sweetpea his sugar—but she shook her head, unwilling to be pulled away from the wind-chimes music. She took a step nearer the truck before Jessie could stop her.

  “Looky here,” Tyler said. He bent down beside the flat right front tire. There was a blister in the metal of the wheel well’s fender. He clicked the light on again and shone it up into the wheel well. “Somethin’s lodged in here. Looks like it’s burned to the metal.”

  “What is it?” Jessie asked. Then: “Stevie! Don’t get too close!”

  “Not very big. Haven’t got a hammer on you, do you?” When Jessie shook her head, Tyler gave the blister a knock with his fist, but the object wouldn’t come loose. He reached up into the wheel well, and Bess said, “Be careful, Ty!”

  “Thing’s slick with oil. Stuck tight, I’m tellin’ you.” He grasped it and gave a yank, but his hand slipped off. He wiped his palm on his dungarees and tried again.

  “That oil’ll never come out!” Bess fretted, but she came closer to watch.

  Tyler’s shoulder muscles strained with the effort. He kept working. “It moved. I think,” he said. “Hold on, I’m gonna give it my best.” His fingers tightened around it, and he yanked again with as much strength as he could muster.

  The object resisted him for a few seconds longer—and then it popped out from its indentation in the fender and he had it firmly in his hand. It was perfectly round, and he drew it out like a pearl that had been nestled inside an oyster’s shell.

  “Here it is.” He stood up, his hand and arm black with grime. “Doc, I believe this is what did the damage.”

  It was, indeed, a cannonball. Except it was the size of Stevie’s fist, black as ebony and looked to be smooth and unmarked.

  “Must’ve hit the tire, too,” Tyler said. He frowned. “I swear, that’s the damnedest thing!” This time he didn’t bother to apologize for his French. “It’s the right size to have made that hole, but…”

  “But what?” Jessie asked.

  He bounced it up and down in his palm. “There’s hardly any weight to it. Thing feels about as tough as a soap bubble.” He began wiping away the oil and dirt from its surface on his dungarees, but underneath the black was just more black. “Want to see it?” He offered it to Jessie.

  She hesitated. It was only a small black ball, but Jessie suddenly wanted no part of it. She wanted to tell Tyler to put it back where it had been, or just to throw it as far as he could and let it be forgotten.

  “Take it, Mama,” Stevie said. She was smiling. “That’s what’s singing.”

  Jessie had a sensation of slow dizziness, as if she were about to pass out. The sun was getting to her, pounding through her skull. But she extended her hand, and Tyler put the ebony ball into it.

  The sphere was as cool as if it had just come from a refrigerator. Her fingers were shocked by its chill. But the truly amazing thing was its weight—about three ounces, she figured. She ran a finger across the smooth surface. Was it glass or plastic? “No way!” she said. “This can’t be what hit the truck! It’s too fragile!”

  “You got me,” Tyler agreed. “But it was sure tough enough to knock a blister in the metal and not crack to pieces.”

  Jessie tried to squeeze the thing, but it wouldn’t give. Harder than it appears, she thought. A whole hell of a lot harder. Looks like a perfect sphere, tooled by a machine that left no marks. And why is it so cool? It went through a hot engine and now it’s exposed to the direct sun, but it’s still cool.

  “Thing looks like a big ol’ buzzard’s egg,” Bess remarked. “I wouldn’t give you two cents for it.”

  Jessie glanced at Stevie; the child was staring fixedly at the sphere, and Jessie had to ask the question: “Do you still hear it singing?”

  She nodded, took a step forward and lifted both hands. “Can I hold it, Mama?”

  Tyler and Bess were watching. Jessie paused, turning the ball over and over. There was no mark on it anywhere, no crack, not even a scuff. She held it up to the sun to try to see into it, but the thing was utterly opaque. It must’ve had a hell of a velocity when it hit us, Jessie thought—but what was it made of? And what was it?

  “Please, Mama!” Stevie hopped up and down impatiently.

  It didn’t seem particularly threatening. It was still strangely cool, yes, but her hand felt all right. “Don’t drop it,” Jessie cautioned. “Be very, very careful. Okay?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Reluctantly, Jessie gave it to her. Stevie cradled it in both hands. She now felt the wind-chimes music as well as heard it; the notes seemed to sigh through her
bones—a beautiful sound, but kind of sad too. Like a song of lost things. It made her feel like she knew what her daddy was feeling, like her heart was a tear, and all things she knew and loved were soon to be gone, left a long, long way behind; so far behind you couldn’t even see them if you stood on top of the highest mountain in the world. The sadness sank deep, but the beauty of the notes entranced her. Her expression was caught between crying and wonder.

  Jessie saw. “What is it?”

  Stevie shook her head. She didn’t want to talk, wanted only to listen. The notes soared through her bones and made colors spark in her brain. They were colors unlike any she’d ever seen before.

  And suddenly the music stopped. Just like that.

  “Here comes Mendoza.” Tyler motioned toward the bright blue wrecker approaching along Cobre Road.

  Stevie shook the sphere. The music did not return.

  “Give it to me, hon. I’ll take care of it.” Jessie reached out, but Stevie retreated. “Stevie! Come on, now!” The little girl turned and ran about thirty feet away, still with the ebony sphere in her hands. Jessie pressed down her anger and decided to deal with the child when they got home. Right now, they had enough to worry about.

  Xavier Mendoza, a husky white-haired man with a large white mustache, pulled the wrecker off Cobre Road and got it situated to hook Jessie’s pickup. He stepped out to have a look at the damage, and his first reaction was “Ai! Caramba!”

  Stevie walked a little further away, still shaking the black ball, trying to wake up the music. It occurred to her that it must be broken, and maybe if she shook it hard enough, the wind chimes inside might work again. The next time she shook it, she thought she heard it slosh faintly, as if it might be filled with water. And it didn’t seem as cool as it had been a minute before. Maybe it was getting warmer, or maybe that was just the sun.

  She rotated it between her palms. “Wake up, wake up!” she wished.

  With a jolt, she realized the black ball had changed. She could see her fingerprints on it, and the prints of her palms, outlined in electric blue. She pressed her index finger on a black place; the fingerprint held, then slowly began to vanish as if drawn down into the depths. She drew a little smiling face on it with her fingernail; it too stayed there in a startling blue a hundred times more blue than the sky. She drew a heart, then a little house with four stick figures; all the pictures held for about five or six seconds before they melted away. She looked up and started to call for her mother to come see.

  But before the words could come out there was a roaring behind her that almost scared her out of her skin, and she was engulfed in whirling dust.

  A gray-green helicopter circled over the wrecker and Jessie’s truck. Jessie knew it must have come speeding out of nowhere—maybe from beyond that ridge to the southwest—and now it made slow, steady turns above them. Sweetpea neighed and reared, and Bess grabbed his reins to settle him down. The dust spun around them, making Mendoza curse a blue streak in Spanish.

  The helicopter made a few more rotations and then turned again toward the southwest; it picked up speed and zoomed away.

  “Damned fool!” Tyler Lucas shouted. “I’ll kick your butt!”

  Jessie saw her daughter standing in the road. Stevie walked toward her and showed her the sphere. “It went all black again,” Stevie said, her face coated with dust. “Know what?” The little girl’s voice was low, as if confiding a secret. “I think it was about to wake up—but I think it got scared.”

  What would the world be without a child’s imagination? Jessie thought. She was about to demand the sphere back, but she didn’t see any harm in letting Stevie hold it; they’d hand it over to Sheriff Vance as soon as they got to town, anyway. “Don’t drop it!” she repeated, and then turned away to watch Mendoza at work.

  “Yes ma’am.” Stevie walked off a few paces and kept shaking the black ball, but neither the wind-chimes music nor its brilliant blue returned. “Don’t be dead!” she told it; there was no response. It was just black through and through; she could see her own face reflected on its glossy surface.

  Deep down, in the center of the blackness, something might have shifted—a cautious, slow stirring; an ancient thing, contemplating the shine of light that touched it through the murk. Then it was still again, pondering and gathering strength.

  Mendoza got the truck hooked to the wrecker. Jessie thanked Tyler and Bess for their help, and she and Stevie climbed into the wrecker with Mendoza. They drove away toward Inferno, the black sphere still clutched firmly between Stevie’s hands.

  To the southwest and almost out of sight, a single helicopter followed.

  7

  Nasty in Action

  THE BELL SHRILLED FOR change of classes, and in another moment the quiet halls of Preston High were tumultuous. The central air conditioning was still broken, the bathrooms reeked of cigarette and marijuana smoke, but the rowdy shouts and laughter underscored a joyful abandon.

  Much of the laughter, though, had a false ring. All the students knew this was Preston High’s final year; even if Inferno was a hot and hellish place, it was still home, and home was a hard place to leave.

  They were walking histories of the struggles that had preceded them, their features a mirror of the tribes and races that had come up from Mexico and down from the heartland to carve a home in the Texas desert: here the sleek black hair and sharp cheekbones of the Navajo; the high forehead and ebony glare of the Apache; the aquiline nose and sculpted profile of the conquistador; there the blond, brown, or red hair of frontiersmen and pioneers, the wiry builds of bronco busters, and the long, confident strides of easterners who’d come to Texas seeking their fortunes long before the first shot had fired at a mission called the Alamo.

  It was all there in the faces and bones, in the walks and expressions and speech of the students changing classes. A hundred years of showdowns, cattle drives, and saloon brawls moved through the hallways. But their ancestors, even the buckskinned Indian fighters and the warpainted braves who’d sliced off their scalps, might have moaned in their graves if they’d been able to see current fashions from the Happy Hunting Ground. Some of the boys had their heads shaved to a military stubble, some had hair twisted into spikes and tinted with outrageous colors, some wore crewcuts with long tails of hair hanging down their backs. Many of the girls had hair cropped just as severely as the boys’ and dyed even more garishly, some wore sleek Princess Di cuts, and some sported manes swept back and frozen with gel, then decorated with feathers in an unconscious tribute to their Indian heritage.

  They wore a mixed assemblage of jumpsuits, overalls in military camouflage patterns, madras-plaid shirts with buckskin fringe, T-shirts that exalted bands like the Hooters, the Beastie Boys, and the Dead Kennedys, paisley surfer tees in electric hues that slam-danced the eyeballs, tie-dyed khaki trousers, faded and patched jeans, pegged pants with Day-Glo stripes, combat boots, hand-painted sneakers, penny loafers, gladiator sandals, and plain old flipflops carved out of used tires. There’d been a dress code at the beginning of the year, but the principal of Preston High—a short Hispanic man named Julius Rivera and known as Little Caesar by the student body—had gradually let the code go when it was apparent there would be no reprieve for the school. Students in Presidio County would be bussed thirty miles to the high school in Marfa, and in September Little Caesar would be teaching a sophomore geometry class at Northbrook High in Houston.

  The seconds ticked past on the clocks, and the young descendants of gunfighters, ranch hands, and Indian chiefs continued to their next classes.

  Ray Hammond was digging his English text from his locker in B Section. His mind was on getting to his next class, way at the end of C Section, and he didn’t see what was coming up behind him.

  As he brought the book out, a size-ten foot in a scuffed combat boot suddenly kicked it from his hand. The book opened—notes, page markers, and obscene doodlings sailing into the air—and slammed against the wall, barely missing two girls a
t the water fountain.

  Ray looked up, his eyes wide and startled behind his glasses. He saw then that doom had finally come for him. A hand clenched the front of his shirt and lifted him up on the toes of his sneakers.

  “Hey, fuckmeat,” a slurred, thickly accented voice growled, “you’re in my way, man.” The boy who’d spoken was about sixty pounds heavier than his captive and stood more than four inches taller; he was a junior named Paco LeGrande, and he had bad teeth and acne pocks on a grinning, vulpine face. A tattooed rattlesnake crawled across one thick forearm. Paco’s eyes were red and unfocused, and Ray knew the boy had been puffing a little too much weed in the bathroom this morning. He usually timed his visits to the locker so as to miss Paco, who had the one right next door, but the inevitable had caught up with him. Paco was fueled and high and ready to give somebody a nitro lesson.

  “Hey, X Ray!” Another Hispanic boy was standing behind Paco. His name was Ruben Hermosa, and he was shorter and not nearly as heavy as Paco but his eyes were also aflame. “Hey, don’t shit in your pants, amigo!”

  Ray heard his paisley shirt ripping. He was barely balanced on his toes, and his heart was pounding in his skinny chest but he kept his expression spaceman cool. Other kids were moving back, getting out of danger’s way, and there wasn’t a Renegade in sight. Paco balled up a tremendous, scarred fist.

  “You don’t want to break the rules, Paco,” Ray said, as calmly as he could manage. “No trouble in school, man.”

  “Fuck the rules! And fuck school! And fuck you, you little four-eyed piece of—”

  A home economics book with a smiling cartoon family on its blue cover whacked into the side of Paco’s head with a noise like a gunshot. The blow rocked him, and Ray wrenched free as Paco’s grip weakened. He scrabbled across the green linoleum to the base of the water fountain.

  “A wetback prick with no balls shouldn’t talk about fuckin’,” a girl’s smoky voice said. “It’ll give you ideas you can’t do anything about.”