“Screw up, ” I said. “But at least it won’t be us screwing up.”
“They won’t burn em all. They’ll want samples for study.”
“I’m sure they’ll take precautions.” Bobby laughed.
I laughed, too, with as much bitterness as amusement. “Okay, sign me up
for the march on the castle. But Orson and the kids come first.
Because once we light that fire, we won’t be as free to move around
Wyvern.” I inserted a blank cassette into the second deck.
Bobby said, “Making a dupe? ”
“Can’t hurt.” When the machines started working, I turned to him.
“Something you said earlier.”
“You expect me to remember all the crap I say? ”
“In that bungalow kitchen, with Delacroix’s body.”
“I can smell it vividly.”
“You heard something. Looked up at the cocoons.”
“Told you. Must’ve been in my head.”
“Right. But when I asked you what you heard, you said, Me.
What’d you mean by that? ” Bobby still had some beer. He drained the
remaining contents of his bottle “You were putting the cassette in your
pocket. We were ready to leave I thought I heard somebody say stay.”
“Somebody? ”
“Several somebodies. Voices. All speaking at once, all saying stay,
stay, stay.”
“Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.”
“So you’re studying to be a jock at KBAY. The thing is … then I
realized the voices were all my voice.”
“All your voice? ”
“Hard to explain, bro.”
“Evidently.”
“For eight, ten seconds I could hear them. But even later ..
. I felt they were still talking, just at lower volume.”
“Subliminal?”
“Maybe. Something way creepy.”
“Voices in your head.”
“Well, they weren’t telling me to sacrifice a virgin to Satan or
assassinate the pope.”
“Just stay, stay, stay, ” I said. “Like a thought loop.”
“No, these were like real voices on a radio. At first I thought they
were coming … from somewhere in the bungalow.”
“You panned your flashlight over the ceiling, ” I reminded him.
“The cocoons.” The faint glow from the audio equipment was reflected in
his eyes.
He didn’t look away from me, but he didn’t say anything.
I took a deep breath. “Because I’ve been wondering. After I called you
from Dead Town, I started to feel vulnerable out in the open. So before
I called Sasha, I decide to go into a bungalow, where I wouldn’t be so
exposed.”
“Out of all those houses, why did you pick that one?
With Delacroix’s body in the kitchen. With the cocoons.”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering, ” I said.
“You hear voices, too? Saying, Come in, Chris, come in, sit down, come
in, be neighborly, we’ll be hatching soon, come in, join the fun.”
“No voices, ” I said. “At least not any I was aware of. But maybe it
wasn’t by chance I chose that house. Maybe I was drawn to that place
instead of the one next door.”
“Psychic hoodoo? ”
“Like the songs that sea nymphs sing to lure unwary sailors to
destruction.”
“These aren’t sea nymphs. These are bugs in cocoons.”
“We don’t know they’re bugs, ” I said.
“I’m way sure they aren’t puppy dogs.”
“I think maybe we got out of that bungalow just in time.” After a
silence, he said, “It’s crap like this that takes all the fun out of the
end of the world.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to feel like a piece of chum in a school of
hammerheads.
” The tape was duped. I took the copy to the composition table and,
picking up a felt-tip pen, said, “What’s a good neo-Buffett song title?”
“Neo-Buffett? ”
“It’s what Sasha’s writing these days. Jimmy Buffett. Tropical bounce,
parrot head worldview, fun in the sun but with a darker edge, a
concession to reality.”
” Tequila Kidneys, ” he suggested.
“Good enough.” I printed that title on the label and inserted the
cassette into an empty slot in the rack where Sasha stored her
compositions. There were scores of cassettes that looked just like it.
“Bro, ” Bobby said, “if it ever comes to that, you would blow my head
off, wouldn’t you? ”
“Anytime.”
“Wait for me to ask.”
“Sure. And you me? “