“Excellent question,” Johnny said. “Who’s that with you?”
“Audrey Wyler from across the street,” a woman replied. “Can we get out of these woods, please?”
Johnny suddenly knew that he could not carry his end of Jim Reed’s body all the way back to the Carver house, let alone help Brad boost it over the fence. He looked around. “Steve? Can you spell me on this for a whi-” He broke off, remembering Steve’s dance with the Picasso mountain lion. “Shit, you can’t, can you?”
“Oh, Chri… ist.” Tom Billingsley’s voice made one syllable into two, then cracked on the second one like a teenager’s. “Which twin is that?”
“Jim,” Johnny said. Then, as Tom stepped next to him: can’t, Tom, you’ll have a stroke, or something.”
“I’ll help,” Audrey said, joining them. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Steve saw that the old veterinarian and the woman from across the street had come on to the path at the same place where he and Entragian had come on to it. There was a cow’s skull half-buried in the ground where the discarded batteries had been and an old rusty horseshoe where the potato-chip bag had been, but the wrapper from the baseball cards was still there. Steve bent, picked it up, and held it so the moonlight would strike it. Upper Deck cards. Albert Belle with the bat coiled behind his head and a predatory look in his eye. Steve realized an odd thing: this felt like the anachronism, not the cacti or the cow’s skull or even the freakish cat which had been hiding in the ravine. And us, he thought. We’re the abnormalities now, maybe.
“What are you thinking about?” Cynthia asked.
“Nothing.”
He let the wrapper drop from his fingers. Halfway to the ground it suddenly spread, filling out like a sail, turning from what might have been light green (it was hard to tell in the moonlight) to bright white. He gasped. Cynthia, who had turned to check the path behind them, wheeled back in a hurry. “What?”
“Did you see?”
“No. What?”
“This.” He bent and picked it up. The baseball card wrapper was now a sheet of rough paper. Staring out of it was a scruffy-bearded villain with hooded, half-bright eyes. WANTED, the poster blared. MURDER, BANK-ROBBERY, TRAIN-ROBBERY, THEFT OF RESERVATION FUNDS, MOLESTATION AND TERRORIZING, POISONING TOWN WELLS, CATTLE THEFT, HORSE THEFT, CLAIM-JUMPING. All that above the picture. Below it, in big black type, the villain’s name: JEBEDIAH MURDOCK.
“Give me a break,” Cynthia said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“That isn’t a crook, it’s some actor. I’ve seen him on TV.”
Steve looked up and saw the others were pulling away. He took Cynthia by the hand and they hurried after them.
Tak dangled in the archway between the den and the living room with Seth’s dirty toes barely touching the carpet. Its eyes were bright and feverish; it used the boy’s lungs in quick, hard gasps. Seth’s hair stood on end, not just on his head but all over his body. When any of this fine fuzz of body-hair brushed against the wall, it made a faint crackling noise. The muscles of the boy’s body seemed not just to quiver but to thrum.
The death of the cop had ripped Tak out of its TV-daze, and it had snatched for the cop’s essence quickly, instinctively, going all the way to the edge of its range… and then past, leaping for the prize like an outfielder stealing a home run that’s already over the centerfield fence. And getting it! Energy had boomed into it like napalm, another barrier had fallen, and it had found itself closer than ever to Seth Garin’s unique center. Not there yet-not quite-but now so close.
And its perceptions had also boomed. It saw the boy with the smoking pistol in his hand, understood what had happened, felt the boy’s horror and guilt, sensed the potential. Without thinking-Tak didn’t think, not really-it leaped into Jim Reed’s mind. It could not control him physically at this range, but all the fail-safe equipment guarding the boy’s emotional armory had temporarily shorted out, leaving that part of him wide open. Tak had only a second-two, at most-to get in and turn up all the dials, overloading the boy with feedback, but a second had been enough. The boy might even have done it, anyway. All Tak had done, after all, was to amplify emotions which had already been present.
The energy released by Jim Reed’s suicide had lit Tak up like a flare and shot its borrowed nerves all the way into the red zone. Fresh energy-young energy-flooded in, replacing the enormous amounts it had expended thus far. And now it hung in the doorway, humming, totally loaded, ready to finish what it had started.
Food first. It was ravenous. Tak floated halfway across the living room, then stopped.
“Aunt Audrey?” it called in Seth’s voice. A sweet voice, perhaps because it was so little used. “Aunt Audrey, are you here?”
No. It sensed she wasn’t. Aunt Audrey was able-with Seth’s help-to block off her mind sometimes, but never the steady pulse of that mind’s existence; its thereness. That was gone, now, but only from the house. She could be with the others, probably was, but she had gone no farther. Because Poplar Street was surrounded by Nevada desert, now… except it wasn’t exactly the real Nevada, more a Nevada of the mind, the one Tak had imagined into being. With Seth’s help, of course. It couldn’t have done any of this without Seth.
Tak moved toward the kitchen again. Aunt Audrey’s leaving was probably for the best. It would make Seth easier to control, make it less likely that he’d become a distraction at a crucial moment. Not that the little feller could present much of a problem under any circumstances; he was powerful but in many crucial ways helpless. At first it had been an arm-wrestle between equally matched opponents… except they weren’t equally matched, not really. In the long run, raw strength is never a match for craft, and Tak had had long millennia in which to hone its hooks and wiles. Now, little by little, it was gaining the upper hand, using Seth Garin’s own extraordinary powers against him like a clever karate master matched against a strong but stupid opponent.
Seth? it asked as it drifted toward the refrigerator. Seth, where are you, pard?
For a moment it actually thought Seth might be gone… except that couldn’t be. They were completely entwined now, partners in a relationship as saprophytic as that of Siamese twins fused at the spine. If Seth left this body, all the para-sympathetic systems-heart, lungs, elimination, tissue-building, cerebral wave-function-would cease. Tak could no more maintain them than an astronaut could maintain the thousands of complicated systems which first thrust him into space and then kept him there in a stable environment. Seth was the computer, and without him the computer operator would die. Yet suicide was not an option for Seth Garin. Tak could keep him from the act just as it had driven Jim Reed to it. And, it sensed, Seth did not want to commit suicide. Part of Seth, in fact, did not even want to be free of Tak, not really. Because Tak had changed everything. Tak had given him Power Wagons that weren’t just toys; Tak had given him movies that were real; Tak had come out of the China Pit with a pair of seven-league cowboy boots just the right size for a lonely little buckaroo. Who would want such a magical friend to leave? Especially if you would once again be locked in the gulag of your own skull when your trusty trailmate was gone?
Seth? Tak asked again. Where are you, y’old cayuse, you?
And, far back in the network of caves and tunnels and boltholes the boy had constructed (the part of him that did not want Tak, the part that was horrified of the stranger now living in his head), Tak caught a glimmer, a faint pulse, that it recognized.
Thereness!
It was Seth, all right. Hiding. Confident that Tak couldn’t see, hear, or smell him. Nor could it, exactly. But the pulse was present, a kind of sonar blip, and if it needed Seth, it could hunt him down and drag him out. Seth didn’t know that, and if he was a good little trailhand, he would never have to find out.
Yessir, it thought, opening the fridge, I’m a regular one-man posse. But even posses got to eat. They get powerful hongry, posses do, chasin down them bank-thieves and cattle rustlers.
There was fresh chocolate milk on the top shelf. Tak took the tall white Tupperware pitcher out with Seth’s grimy hands, set it on the counter, then inspected the contents of the meat drawer. There was hamburger, but it didn’t know how to cook and there was certainly no information on the subject stored in Seth’s memory-banks. Tak had no objection to raw meat-liked it, in fact-but on two or three occasions, eating hamburger that way had made Seth’s body ill. At least Aunt Audrey said it was the raw meat which had made him sick, and Tak didn’t think she was lying (although with Aunt Audrey, it could never be completely sure). The last go-round had been the worst-vomiting and shitting all night long. Tak had vacated the premises until it was over, just checking in every now and then to make sure there was no funny stuff going on. It hated Seth’s eliminatory functions even when they were normal, and on that night they had been anything but.