“I hope he sleeps in the damn parking lot,” Ralph said. “Or beside the road.”
David barely heard them. He felt the way he had that day in the Bear Street Woods-not when God was speaking to him, but when he had become aware that God was going to.
He bent forward and picked up Johnny’s wallet. When he touched it, something that felt like a wallop of electricity exploded in his head. A small, explosive grunt escaped him. He fell against the wall of the truck, clutching the wallet.
“David?” Ralph asked. His voice was distant, his concern echoing over a thousand miles.
Ignoring him, David opened the wallet. There was currency in one compartment and a squash of papers-memoranda, business cards, and such-in another. He ignored both and thumbed a snap on the wallet’s left interior side, releasing an accordion of sleeved photographs. He was faintly aware of the others moving in around him as he looked through the pictures, using one finger to spool back through the years: here was a bearded Johnny and a beautiful dark-haired woman with high cheekbones and thrusting breasts, here a gray-mustached Johnny at the railing of a yacht, here a ponytailed Johnny in a tie-dyed jabbho, standing beside an actor who looked like Paul Newman before Newman ever thought of selling red-sauce and salad dressing. Each Johnny was a little younger, the head-hair and facial hair darker, the lines in the face less carven, until- “Here,” David whispered. “Oh God, here.” He tried to take the photo out of its transparent pocket and couldn’t; his hands were shaking too badly. Steve took the wallet, removed the picture, and handed it to the boy. David held it in front of his eyes with the awe of an
astronomer who has discovered a brand-new planet.
“What?” Cynthia asked, leaning closer.
“It’s the boss,” Steve said. “He was over tbere-’in country,’ he usually calls it-almost a year, researching a book. He wrote a few magazine pieces about the war, too, I think.” He looked at David. “Did you know that picture was there?”
“I knew something was there,” David said, almost too faintly for the others to hear. “As soon as I saw his wallet on the floor. But.., it was him.” He paused, then repeated it, wonderingly. “It was him.”
“Who was who?” Ralph asked.
David didn’t answer, only stared at the picture. It showed three men standing in front of a ramshackle cinderblock building-a bar, judging from the Budweiser sign in the window.
The sidewalks were crowded with Asians. Passing in the street at camera left, frozen forever into a half-blur by this old snapshot, was a girl on a motorscooter.
The men on the left and right of the trio were wearing polo shirts and slacks. One was very tall and held a note-book. The other was festooned with cameras. The man in the middle was wearing jeans and a gray tee-shirt. A Yankees baseball cap was pushed far back on his head. A strap crossed his chest; something cased and bulky hung against his hip.
“His radio,” David whispered, touching the cased object.
“Nope,” Steve said after taking a closer look. “That’s a tape-recorder, 1968-style.”
“When I met him in the Land of the Dead, it was a radio.” David could not take his eyes from the picture. His mouth was dry; his tongue felt large and unwieldy. The man in the middle was grinning, he was holding his reflector sunglasses in one hand, and there was no question about who be was.
Over his head, over the door of the bar from which they had apparently just emerged, was a handpainted sign. The name of the place was The Viet Cong Lookout.
She didn’t actually faint, but Mary screamed until something in her head gave way and the strength deserted her muscles. She staggered forward, grabbing the table with one hand, not wanting to, there were black widows and scorpions crawling all over it, not to mention a corpse with a nice tasty bowl of blood in front of him, but she wanted to go tumbling face-first onto the floor even less.
The floor was the domain of the snakes.
She settled for dropping to her knees, holding onto the edge of the table with the hand that wasn’t holding the flashlight. There was something strangely comforting about this posture. Calming. After a moment’s thought she knew what it was: David, of course.
Being on her knees reminded her of the simple, trusting way the boy had knelt in the cell he’d shared with Billingsley. In her mind she heard him saying in a slightly apologetic tone, I wonder if you ‘d mind turning around. . . I have to take off my pants. She smiled, and the idea that she was smiling in this nightmare place-that she could smile in this night-mare place calmed her even more. And without thinking about it, she slipped into prayer herself for the first time since she was eleven years old. She’d been at summer camp, lying in a stupid little bunk in a stupid mosquito- infested cabin with a bunch of stupid girls who would probably turn out to be mean and of a pinchy nature. She had been overwhelmed with homesickness, and had prayed for God to send her mother to take her home. God had declined, and from then until now, Mary bad considered herself to be pretty much on her own.
“God,” she said, “I need help. I’m in a room filled with creepy-crawlies, mostly poisonous, and I’m scared to death. If you’re there, anything you can do would be appreciated. A-”
Amen, it was supposed to be, but she broke off before she could finish saying it, her eyes wide. A clear voice spoke in her head-and not her own voice, either, she was sure of it. It was as if someone had just been waiting, and not very patiently, for her to speak first.
There’s nothing here that can hurt you, it said.
On the other side of the room, the beam of her flash-light illuminated an old Maytag washer-dryer set. A sign over them read: NO PERSONAL LAUNDRY! THIS MEANS U!
Spiders moved back and forth across the sign on long, strutting legs. There were more on top of the washing machine. Closer by, on the table, a small scorpion appeared to be investigating the crushed remains of the spider she had torn out of her hair. Her hand still throbbed from that encounter; the thing must have been full of poison, maybe enough to kill her if it had injected her instead of just splashing her.
No, she didn’t know who that voice belonged to, but if that was the way God answered prayers, she supposed it was no wonder the world was in such deep shit. Because there was plenty here that could hurt her, plenty.
No, the voice said patiently, even as she turned the flashlight past the decomposing bodies lined up on the floor and discovered another writhing tangle of snakes. No, they can’t. And you know why.
“I don’t know anything,” she moaned, and focused the flashlight’s beam on her hand.
Red and throbby, but not swelling. Because it hadn’t bitten her.
Hmmmm. That was sort of interesting.
Mary put the light back on the bodies, running it from the first one to Josephson to Entragian. The virus which had haunted these bodies was now in Ellen. And if she, Mary Jackson, was supposed to be its next home, then the things in here really couldn’t hurt her. Couldn’t damage the goods.
“Spider should have bitten me,” she murmured, “but it didn’t. It let me kill it instead.
Nothing in here has hurt me.” She giggled, a high-pitched, hysterical sound. “We’re pals!”
You have to get out of here, the voice told her. Before it comes back. And it will. Soon, now.
“Protect me!” Mary said, getting to her feet. “You will, won’t you? If you’re God, or from God, you will!”
No answer from the voice. Maybe its owner didn’t want to protect her. Maybe it couldn’t.
Shivering, Mary reached out toward the table. The black widows and the smaller spiders brown recluses- scuttered away from her in all directions. The scorpions did the same.
One actually fell off the side of the table. Panic in the streets.
Good. Very good. But not enough. She bad to get out of here.
Mary stabbed the black with the flashlight until she found the door. She crossed it on legs that felt numb and distant, trying not to tread on the spiders that were scurrying everywhere. The doorknob turned, but the door would only go back and forth an inch or so. When she yanked it hard, she could hear what sounded like a pad-lock rattling outside. She wasn’t very surprised, actually.
She shone the light around again, running it over the poster-LET THE BASTARDS
FREEZE IN THE DARK-and the rusty sink, the counter with the coffeemaker and the little microwave, the washer-dryer set. Then the office area with a desk and a few old file cabinets and a time- clock on the wall, a rack of timecards, the potbellied stove, a toolchest, a few picks and shovels in a rusty tangle, a calendar showing a blonde in a bikini. Then she was back to the door again. No windows; not a single one. She shone the light down at the floor, thinking briefly of the shovels, but the boards were flush with the corrugated metal walls, and she doubted very much if the thing in Ellen Carver’s body would give her time enough to dig her way out.