“What have you got for actual paperwork?”
“My discount card from Tower Records and Video,” she snapped. “Two punches left and I get a free CD. I’m shooting for Out Come the Wolves. Seems fitting, given the soundtrack in these parts.
Satisfied?”
“Yeah,” he said, and began to laugh. She stared at him for a moment, cheeks green, shadows rippling across her brow, eyes dark, and he felt sure she was going to launch herself at him and see how much of his skin she could pull off. Then she began to laugh, too, a helpless screamy sound he didn’t care for much. “Come here a second,” he said, and held out his hand.
“Don’t you get funny with me, I’m warning you,” she said, but she scooted across the seat and into the circle of his arm with no hesitation. He could feel her shoulder trembling against his. She was going to be cold in that tank-top if they had to get out of the truck. The temperature fell off the table in this part of the world once the sun went down.
“You really want to go into town, Lubbock?”
“What I want is to be inDisneyland eating a Sno-Kone, but I think we ought to go up there and take a look. If things are normal … if they feel normal … okay, we’ll try reporting it there. But if we see anything that looks the slightest bit wrong, we head for Ely on the double.”
She looked up at him solemnly. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“You can.” He put the truck in gear and began to roll slowly toward the road. To the west, the gold glow which had been filtering through the sand was down to an ember.
Overhead, more stars were poking through, but they were beginning to shimmy as the flying sand thickened.
“Steve? You don’t happen to have a gun, do you?”
He shook his head, thought about going back into the Quonset to look for one, and then put the idea out of his head. He wasn’t going back in there, that was all; he just wasn’t.
“No gun, hut I’ve got a really big Swiss Army knife, one with all the bells and whistles.
It’s even got a magnifying glass.”
“That makes me feel a lot better.”
He thought of asking her about the statue, or if she’d had any funny ideas-experimental ideas-and then didn’t. Like the thought of going back into the Quonset building again, it was just too creepy. He turned onto the road, one arm still about her shoulders, and started toward town. The sand blew thickly across the wedge of light thrown by his high beams, twisting into lank shadows that persistently reminded him of hanged men dangling from hooks.
The body of his sister was gone from the foot of the stairs, and that was something. David stood looking out through the double doors for a moment. Daylight was fading, and although the sky overhead was still clear-a darkening indigo-the light was dying down here at ground-level in a choke of dust. Across the street, an overhead sign reading DESPERATION COFFEE SHOP AND VIDEO STOP swung back and forth in the wind.
Sitting beneath it, and looking attentively across at him, were two more coyotes. Sitting between them, tatty feathers flap ping in the wind like the feathers on some old woman’s church-and-Bingo hat, was a large bald-looking bird David recognized as a buzzard.
Sitting right between the coyotes.
‘That’s impossible,” he whispered. and maybe it was but he was seeing it, just the same.
He dressed quickly, looking at a door to his left as he did. Printed on the frosted-glass pane were the words DESPERATION TOWN OFFICE, along with the hours-nine to four. He tied his sneakers and then opened the door, ready to turn and run if he sensed anything dangerous . . . if he sensed anything moving, really.
But where would I run? Where is there to run?
The room beyond the door was gloomy and silent. He groped to his left, expecting something or someone to reach out of the darkness and grab his hand, but nothing did. He found a switchplate, then the switch itself. He flipped it, blinked as his eyes adjusted to the old- fashioned hanging globes, then stepped forward. Straight ahead was a long counter with several barred windows like tellers’ stations in an old-fashioned bank. One was marked TAX CLERK, another HUNTING PERMITS, another MINES AND ASSAY. The last one, smaller, bore a sign reading MSHA and FEDERAL LAND-USE
REGS. Spray-painted on the wall behind the clerks’ area in big red letters was this: IN THESE
SILENCES SOMETHING MAY RISE.
I guess something did, too, David thought, turning his head to check the other side of the room.
Something not very- He never finished the thought. His eyes widened, and his hands went to his mouth to stifle a shriek. For a moment the world went gray, and he believed he might faint. To stop it happening he took his hands away from his mouth and squeezed them against his temples instead, renewing the pain there. Then he let them drop to his sides, looking with wide eyes and a hurt, quivering mouth at what was on the wall to the right of the door. There were coathooks. A Stetson with a snakeskin band hung on the one nearest the windows. Two women hung on the next two, one shot, the other gutted. This second woman had long red hair and a mouth that was open in a silent frozen scream. To her left was a man in khaki, his head down, his holster empty. Pearson, maybe, the other deputy. Next to him was a man in jeans and a blood- spattered workshirt. Last in line was Pie. She had been hung up by the back of her MotoKops shirt.
Cassie Styles was on it, standing in front of her Dream Floater van with her arms folded and a big grin on her face. Cassie had always been Pie’s favorite MotoKop. Pie’s head lolled over her broken neck and her sneakers dangled limply down.
Her hands. He kept looking at her hands. Small and pink, the fingers slightly open.
I can’t touch her, I can’t go near her!
But he could. He had to, unless he planned to leave her there with Entragian’s other victims. And after all, what else was a big brother for, especially one who wasn’t quite big enough to stop the boogeyman from doing such an unspeakable thing in the first place?
Chest hitching, greenish-white curds of soap drying to scales on his skin, he put his hands together again and raised them in front of his face. He closed his eyes. His voice, when it came out, was trembling so badly he hardly recognized it as his own. “God, I know that my sister is with you, and that this is just what she left behind. Please help me do what I have to for her.” He opened his eyes again and looked at her. “I love you, Pie. I’m sorry for all the times I yelled at you or pulled your braids too hard.”
That last was too much. He knelt on the floor and put his hands on top of his bowed head and held them there, gasping and trying not to pass out. His tears cut trails in the green goo on his face. What hurt most was the knowledge that the door which had swung shut between them would never be opened, at least not in this world. He would never see Pie go out on a date or shoot a basket from downtown two seconds before the buzzer. She would never again ask him to spot her while she stood on her head or want to know if the light in the refrigerator stayed on even when the door was closed. He understood now why people in the Bible rent their clothes.
When he had control of himself, he dragged one of the chairs which stood against the wall over to where she was. He looked at her hands, her pink palms, and his mind wavered again. He forced it steady-just finding he could do that, if he had to, was a welcome surprise. That wavering toward grief returned more insistently as he stood on the chair and observed the waxy, unnatural pallor of her face and the purplish cast of her lips. Cautiously, he let some of the grief in. He sensed it would be better for him if he did. This was his first dead person, but it was also Pie, and he did not want to be scared of her or grossed out by her. So it was better to feel sorry, and he- did. He did.
Hurry, David.
He wasn’t sure if that was his voice or the other’s, but this time it didn’t matter. The voice was right. Pie was dead, but his father and the others upstairs weren’t. And then there was his mother. That was the worst thing, in a way even worse than what had happened to Pie, because he didn’t know. The crazy cop had taken his mother some-where, and he might be doing anything to her. Anything.