bags. He tilted the slit over the tiny hole, spread the cloth, and poured through one cupped, bloody hand.
The red light was obliterated at once, as if the thing down there feared it might inadvertently set off the charge itself.
“You can’t!” it screamed, its voice muffled now-. but Johnny heard it clearly enough in his head, just the same. “You can’t, damn you! An lab! An lab! Os dam! You bastard!”
An lab yourself Johnny thought. And a big fat can de lach in the bargain.
The first bag was empty. Johnny could see dim white-ness in the hole where there had been only black and pulsing red before. The gullet leading back to Tak’s world or plane … or dimension … wasn’t that long, then. Not in physical terms of measurement. And was the pain in his back and legs less?
Maybe I’ve just gone numb, he thought. Not a new state for me, actually.
He grabbed the second bag of ANFO and saw one entire side of it was sopped through with his blood.
He felt a growing weakness to go along with the fog in his head. Had to be quick now. Had to go like the wind.
He tore open the second bag with the hammer’s claw, trying to steel himself against the shrieks in his head; Talc had lapsed entirely into that other language now.
He turned the bag over the hole and watched ANFO pellets pour out. The whiteness grew brighter as the gullet filled. By the time the bag was empty, the top layer of pellets was only three inches or so down.
Just room enough, Johnny thought.
He became aware that a stillness had fallen here in the well, and in the an tak above; there was only that faint whispering, which could have been the calling of ghosts that had been penned up in here ever since the twenty-first of September, 1859.
If so, he intended to give them their parole.
He fumbled in the pocket of his chaps for what seemed an age, fighting the fog that wanted to blur his thoughts, fighting his own growing weakness. At last his fingers touched something, slipped away, came back, touched it again, grasped it, brought it out.
A fat green shotgun shell.
Johnny slipped it into the eyehole at the bottom of the mi, and wasn’t surprised to find it was a perfect fit, its blunt circular top seated firmly against the ANFO pellets.
“You’re primed, you bastard,” he croaked.
No, a voice whispered in his head. No, you dare not.
Johnny looked at the brass circlet plugging the hole at the bottom of the mi. He gripped the handle of the hammer, his strength flagging badly now, and thought of what the cop had told him just before he stuck him in the
back of the cruiser. You ‘re a sorry excuse for a writer, the cop had said. You’re a sorry excuse for a man, too.
Johnny shoved the helmet off with the heel of his free left hand. He was laughing again as he raised the hammer high above his head, and laughing as he brought it down squarely on the base of the shell.
“GOD FORGIVE ME, I HATE CRITICS!”
He had one fraction of a moment to wonder if he had succeeded, and then the question was answered in a bloom of brilliant, soundless red. It was like swooning into a rose.
Johnny Marinville let himself fall, and his last thoughts were of David-had David gotten out, had David gotten clear, was he all right now, would he be all right later.
Excused early, Johnny thought, and then that was gone, too.
PART V
HIGHWAY 50: EXCUSED EARLY
There were dead animals lying in a rough ring around the truck-buzzards and coyotes, mostly-but Steve barely noticed them. He was all but eaten alive with a need to get out of here. The steep sides of the China Pit seemed to loom over him like the sides of an open grave. He reached the truck a little ahead of the others (Cynthia and Mary were flanking David, each of them holding one of the boy’s arms, although be did not seem to be staggering) and tore open the passenger door.
“Steve, what-” Cynthia began.
“Get in! Ask questions later!” He butt-boosted her up into the seat. “Push over! Make room!”
She did. Steve turned to David. “Are you going to be a problem?”
David shook his head His eyes were dull and apathetic, but that didn’t completely convince Steve. The boy was nothing if not resourceful; he had proved that before he and Cynthia ever met him.
He boosted David into the truck, then looked at Mary. “Get in. We’ll have to bundle a little, but if we’re not friends by now-”
She scrambled into the cab and closed the door as Steve hurried around the front of the truck, stepping on a buzzard as he went. It was like stepping on a pillowcase stuffed with bones.
How long had the boss been gone? A minute? Two? He had no idea. Any sense of time he might once have had was completely shot. He swung into the driver’s seat, and allowed himself just one moment to wonder what they’d do if the engine wouldn’t start.
The answer, nothing, came at once. He nodded at it, turned the key, and the engine roared to life. No suspense there, thank God. A second later they were rolling.
He turned the Ryder truck in a big circle, skirting the heavy machinery, the powder magazine, and the field office. Between these latter two buildings was the dusty policecruiser, driver’s door open, front-seat area plastered with Collie Entragian’s blood.
Looking at it-into it-made Steve feel cold and a little dizzy, the way he felt when he looked down from a tall building.
“Fuck you,” Mary said softly, turning to look back at the car. “Fuck you. And I hope you hear me.”
They hit a bump and the truck rattled terrifically. Steve flew up and off the seat, his thighs biting into the bottom arc of the steering wheel, his head bumping the ceiling. He heard a muffled clatter as the stuff in the back flew around. The boss’s stuff, mostly.
“Hey,” Cynthia said nervously. “Don’t you think you got the hammer a little too far down for rocktop, big boy?”
“No,” Steve said. He looked into the mirror outside his window as they began tearing up the gravel road which led to the rim of the pit. It was the drift opening he was looking for, but he couldn’t see it-it was on the other side of the truck.
About halfway to the rim they hit another bump, a bigger one, and the truck actually seemed to leave the road for an instant or two. The headlights corkscrewed, then dipped as the truck dove deep on its springs. Both Mary and Cynthia screamed. David did not; he sat crooked between them, a lifesized doll half on the seat and half on Mary’s lap.
“Slow down!” Mary screamed. “If you go off the road we’ll go all the way to the bottom! SLOW
DOWN, YOU ASSHOLE!”
‘No,” he repeated, not bothering to add that going off this road, which was as wide as a California freeway, was the least of his worries. He could see the pit-rim ahead. The sky above it was now a dark, brightening violet instead of black.
He looked past the others and into the mirror outside the passenger window, searching for the dark mouth of the tunnel in the darker well of the China Pit, can tak in can tah, and then didn’t have to bother.
A square of white light too brilliant to look at suddenly lit up the pit-floor. It lashed out of the China Shaft like a burning fist and filled the cab of the truck with savage brilliance.
“Jesus, what’s that?” Mary screamed, throwing a hand up to shield her eyes.
“The boss,” Steve said softly.
A heavy thud seemed to run directly beneath them, a muffled battering-ram of sound. The truck began to shiver like a frightened dog. Steve heard broken rock and gravel begin to slide. He looked out his window and saw, in the dying glare of the blast, black nets of PVC pipe-emitters and distribution heads-sliding down the pit-face. The porphyry was in motion. China Pit was falling in on itself.
“Oh my God, we’re gonna be buried alive,” Cynthia moaned.
“Well, let’s see,” Steve said. “Hang on.”
He jammed the gas-pedal to the floor-it didn’t have far to go, either-and the truck’s engine responded with an angry scream. Almost there, honey, he thought at it.
Almost there, come on, work with me, beautiful, be there for me- That battering-ram rumble went on and on beneath them, seeming at one moment to fade, then coming back like a wave-form. As they reached the rim of the pit, Steve saw a boulder the size of a gas station go bouncing down the slope on their right. And, more ominous than the rumble from below them, he heard a growing whisper from directly beneath them. It was, Steve knew, the gravel surface of the road. The truck was northbound; the road was headed south. In only a few moments it would collapse down into the pit like a dropped carpet-runner.