“What about them? There were just a few more cans in the bag than we thought, that’s all.”
He was sweating, though. Sweating the way he had in ‘Nam, sometimes. It wasn’t the heat, although it had been hot, and it hadn’t been the fear, although you were afraid even when you were sleeping. Mostly it had been the sick sweat that came with knowing you were in the wrong place at the wrong time with fundamentally good people who were spoiling themselves, maybe forever, by doing the wrong thing.
Unobtrusive miracles, he thought, only once again he z. He heard the words in the old rumdum’ s voice.
He was, by God, chattier dead than alive. Why, if it wasn’t for the boy, you’d still be in a jail cell now, wouldn’t you? Or dead. Or worse. And you deserted him.
“If I hadn’t distracted that coyote with my jacket, David’d be dead now,” Johnny said.
“Leave me alone, you old fool.”
He spotted a hammer lying on a worktable against the wall. He headed in that direction.
“Tell me something, Johnny,” Terry said, and he froze in his tracks. “When exactly was it that you decided to deal with your fear of dying by giving up real life completely?”
That voice wasn’t in his head, he was all but sure of it. Hell, he was sure of it. It was Terry, hanging on the wall. Not a lookalike, not a mirage or a hallucination, but Terry. If he turned around now he would see her with her head raised, her cheek no longer on her shoulder, looking at him as she had always looked at him when he fucked up-patient because Johnny Marinville fucking up was the usual course of things, disillusioned because she was the only one who kept expecting him to do better. Which was dumb, like betting on the Tampa Bay Bucs to win the Super Bowl. Except sometimes, with her-for her-he had done better, had risen above what he had come to think of as his nature. But when he did, when he excelled, when he fucking flew over the landscape, did she ever say anything then? Well, maybe
“Change the channel, let’s see what’s on PBS,” but that was about the extent of it.
“You didn’t even give up living for writing,” she said. “That would at least have been understandable, if contemptible. You gave up living for talking about writing. I mean Jesus, Johnny!”
He stalked to the table on trembling legs, meaning to throw the hammer at the bitch, see if that would shut her up. And that was when he heard the low growling from his left.
He turned his head in that direction and saw a timber- wolf-very likely the same one that had approached Steve and Cynthia with the can tah in its mouth-standing in the doorway leading back to the offices. Its eyes glowed at him. For a moment it hesitated, and Johnny allowed himself to hope-maybe it was afraid, maybe it would back off. Then it was running at him full-tilt, its muzzle wrinkling back to expose its teeth.
The thing which had been Ellen had been concentrating on the wolf-using the wolf to finish with the writer-so deeply that it was in a state akin to hypnosis Now something, some disruption in the expected flow of things, interrupted Tak’s concentration. It pulled back for a moment, holding the wolf where it was, but turning toward the Ryder truck with the rest of its tenible curiosity and dark regard. Something had happened at the truck, but Tak was unable to tell what it was. There was a feeling of disorientation, a sense of waking in a room where the positions of all the furniture had been subtly altered.
Perhaps, if it wasn’t trying to be in two places at the same time- “Mi him, en tow!” it growled, and sent the wolf at the writer. So much for the man who would be Steinbeck; the thing on four legs was fast and strong, the thing on two, slow and weak. Tak pulled its mind out of the wolf its vision of Johnny Marinville first dimming, then fading out as the writer turned, groping for something on the worktable with one hand while his eyes went wide with fright.
It turned its full mind toward the truck and the others although the only one of the others who mattered, who had ever mattered (would that it had understood earlier) was the shitting prayboy.
The bright yellow rental truck was still parked on the street-through the overlapping eyes of the spiders and with the low-to-the-ground heat-vision of the snakes Tak saw it clearly-but when it tried to go inside, it was unable. No eyes in there? Not even one tiny scuttering spider? No? Or was it Prayboy again, blocking its vision?
No matter. It didn’t have time to let it matter. They were in there, all of them, they had to be, and Tak would have to leave it at that, because something else was wrong, as well.
Something even closer to home.
Something wrong with Mary.
Feeling strangely and uncomfortably harried, feeling driven, it let the Ryder truck fade and now centered on the field office, looking through the uneasily shifting eyes of the creatures which filled it. It registered the out-of-place dryer first, then the fact that Mary was gone. She’d gotten out somehow.
“You bitch!” it screamed, and blood flew out of Ellen’s mouth in a fine spray. The word wasn’t good enough to express its feelings, and so it lapsed into the old language, spitting invective as it got to its feet..
. and staggered for balance on the edge of the mi. The weakness of this body had advanced in a way that was appalling. What made it worse was that it didn’t have a body to which it could immediately go, if necessary; for the time being, it was stuck with this one. It thought briefly of the animals, but there were none here capable of serving Tak in that way. Tak’s presence drubbed even the strongest of its human vessels to death in a matter of days. A snake, coyote, rat, or buzzard would simply explode immediately upon or moments after Tak’s entry, like a tin can into which someone drops a lit stick of dynamite. The timberwolf might serve for an hour or two, but the wolf was the only one of its kind left in these parts, and currently three miles away, dealing with (and by now probably dining on) the writer.
It had to be the woman.
It had to be Mary.
The thing that looked like Ellen slipped out through the rift in the wall of the an tak and limped toward the faint purple square that marked the place where the old shaft now opened into the outside world.
Rats squeaked eagerly around Ellen’s feet as it went, smelling the blood flowing out of Ellen’s stupid, sickly cunt. Tak kicked them aside, cursing them in the old language.
At the entrance to the China Shaft it paused, looking down. The moon had passed behind the far side of the pit, but it still shed some light, and the domelight inside the policecruiser shed a little more. Enough for Ellen’s eyes to see that the cruiser’s hood was up and for the creature now inhabiting Ellen’s brain to understand that the sly OS pa had fucked the motor up somehow. How had she gotten out of the field office? And how had she dared do this? How had she dared?
For the first time, Tak was afraid.
It looked left and saw that both pickups were standing on flats. It was like the Carvers’ RV all over again, only this time it was on the receiving end, and it didn’t like the feeling one bit. That left the heavy equipment, and although it knew where the keys were-sets for everything in one of the field office file cabinets-they would do it no good; there was nothing down there it could drive. Cary Ripton had known how to run the heavy stuff, but Tak had lost Ripton’s physical skills the moment it left him for Josephson.
As Ellen Carver, it had some of Ripton’s, Josephson’s, and Entragian’s memories (although even these were now fading like overexposed photographs) but none of their abilities.
Oh, the bitch! Os pa! Can fin!
Clenching and unclenching Ellen’s fists nervously, aware of her sodden panties and the soaked shirt inside them, aware that Ellen’s thighs were painted with blood, Tak closed Ellen’s eyes and looked for Mary.
“Mi him, en tow! En tow! En Tow!”
At first there was nothing, just blackness and the slow flux of cramps deep down in Ellen’s stomach.
And terror. Terror that the os pa bitch was gone already. Then it saw what it was looking for, not with Ellen’s eyes but with ears inside of Ellen’s ears: a sudden alien echo of sound that made the shape of a woman.