Desperation (51 page)

4

There was silence in the
truck; they watched until Johnny was out of sight, and still no one said anything. David stood with his father's arm around him, thinking he had never felt so hollow, so empty, so utterly done in. It was over. They had lost. He kicked one of the empty Jolt bottles, his eye following its skitter to the wall of the truck, where it bounced and came to rest next to—

David stepped forward. “Look, Johnny's wallet. It must have fallen out of his pocket.”

“Poor baby,” Cynthia said.

“Surprised he didn't lose it sooner,” Steve said. He spoke in the dull, preoccupied tone of a man whose real thoughts are somewhere else entirely. “I kept telling him a guy on a motorcycle trip ought to have a wallet with a chain on it.” A ghost of a grin touched his lips. “Getting those motel rooms in Austin may not be as easy as he thinks.”

“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, plosive 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 there—‘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 notebook. 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 he 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.

5

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 nightmare 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 had 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 flashlight 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 had 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 padlock 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.

Try the dryer, Mare.

That was she herself,
had
to be, but she was damned if it
sounded
like her . . . and it didn't feel exactly like a thought, either.

Not that this was the time to worry about such things. She hurried over to the dryer, taking less care about where she put her feet this time and stepping on several of the spiders. The smell of decay seemed stronger over here,
riper,
which was strange, since the bodies were on the other side of the room, but—

A diamondback rattler poked up the dryer's lid and began slithering out. It was like coming face to face with the world's ugliest jack-in-the-box. Its head swayed back and forth. Its black preacher's eyes were fixed solemnly on her. Mary took a step backward, then forced herself forward again, reaching out to it. She could be wrong about the spiders and snakes, she knew that. But what if this big fellow
did
bite her? Would dying of snakebite be worse than ending up like Entragian, killing everything that crossed her path until her body exploded like a bomb?

The snake's jaws yawned, revealing curved fangs like whalebone needles. It hissed at her.

“Fuck you, bro,” Mary said. She seized it, pulled it out of the dryer—it was easily four feet long—and flung it across the room. Then she banged down the lid with the base of the flashlight, not wanting to see what else might be inside, and pulled the dryer away from the wall. There was a pop as the pleated plastic exhaust-hose pulled out of the hole in the wall. Spiders, dozens of them, scattered from beneath the dryer in all directions.

Mary bent down to look at the hole. It was about two feet across, too small to crawl through, but the edges were badly corroded, and she thought . . .

She went back across the room, stepping on one of the scorpions—
crrunch
—and kicking impatiently at a rat which had been hiding behind the bodies . . . and, most likely, gorging on them. She seized one of the picks, went back to the exhaust-hole, and pushed the dryer a little farther aside to give herself room. The smell of putrefaction was stronger now, but she hardly noticed. She worked the short end of the pick through the hole, pulled upward, and gave a little crow of delight when the tool yanked a furrow nearly eighteen inches long through the rotted, rusted metal.

Hurry, Mary—hurry!

She wiped sweat off her forehead, inserted the pick at the end of the furrow, and yanked upward again. The pick lengthened the slit at the top of the hole even more, then came loose so suddenly that she fell over backward, the pick jarring loose from her hand. She could feel more spiders bursting under her back, and the rat she'd kicked earlier—or maybe one of his relatives—crawled over her neck, squeaking. Its whiskers tickled the underside of her jaw.

“Fuck
off
!” she cried, and batted it away. She got to her feet, took the flashlight off the top of the dryer, clasped it between her upper left arm and her left breast. Then she leaned forward and folded back the two sides of the slit she'd made like wings.

She thought it was big enough. Just.

“God, thank you,” she said. “Stay with me a little more, please. And if you get me through this, I promise I'll stay in touch.”

She got on her knees and peered out through the hole. The stench was now so strong it made her feel like gagging. She shone the light out and down.

“God!”
she screamed in a high, strengthless voice.
“Oh Jesus,
NO
!”

Her first shocked impression was that there were hundreds of bodies stacked behind the building she was in—the whole world seemed to be white, slack faces, glazed eyes, and torn flesh. As she watched, a buzzard that had been roosting on the chest of one man and pulling meat from the face of another took to the air, its wings flapping like sheets on a clothesline.

Not that many,
she told herself.
Not that many, Mary old kid, and even if there were a thousand, it wouldn't change your situation.

Still, she couldn't go forward for a moment. The hole was big enough to crawl out of, she was sure it was, but she would . . . .

“I'll land on them,” she whispered. The light in her hand was jittering uncontrollably, picking out cheeks and brows and tufted ears, making her think of that scene at the end of
Psycho
where the cobwebby bulb in the basement starts swinging back and forth, sliding across the wrinkled mummy-face of Norman's dead mother.

You have to go, Mary,
the voice told her patiently.
You have to go
now,
or it will be too late.

All right . . . but she didn't have to
see
her landing zone. No way. Not if she didn't want to.

She turned off the flashlight and tossed it out through the hole. She heard a soft
thunk
as it landed on . . . well, on something. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and slipped out. Rust-ragged metal pulled her shirt out of her jeans and scraped her belly. She tilted forward, and then she was falling, still with her eyes squeezed shut. She put her hands out in front of her. One landed on someone's face—she felt the cold, unbreathing prow of the nose in her palm and the eyebrows (bushy ones, by the feel) under her fingers. The other hand squashed into some cold jelly and skidded.

She pressed her lips together, sealing whatever wanted to come out of her—a scream or a cry of revulsion—behind them. If she screamed, she'd have to breathe. And if she breathed, she'd have to smell these corpses, which had been lying out here in the summer sun for God knew how long. She landed on things that shifted and belched dead breath. Telling herself not to panic, to just hold on, Mary rolled away from them, already rubbing the hand which had skidded in the jelly-stuff on her pants.

Now there was sand beneath her, and the sharp points of small, broken rocks. She rolled once more, onto her belly, got her knees under her, and plunged both hands into this rough, broken scree, rubbing them back and forth, dry-washing them as best she could. She opened her eyes and saw the flashlight lying by an outstretched, waxy hand. She looked up, wanting—needing—the cleanliness and calm disconnection of the sky. A brilliant white crescent of moon rode low in it, seeming almost to be impaled on a sharp devil's prong of rock jutting from the east side of the China Pit.

I'm out,
she thought, taking the flashlight.
At least there's that. Dear God, thank you for that.

She backed away from the deadpile on her knees, the flashlight once more clamped between her arm and breast, still dragging her tingling hands through the broken ground, scouring them.

There was light to her left. She looked that way, and felt a burst of terror as she saw Entragian's cruiser.
Would you step out of the car, please, Mr. Jackson?
he'd said, and that was when it had happened, she decided, when everything she'd once believed solid had blown away like dust in the wind.

It's empty, the car's empty, you can see that, can't you?

Yes, she could, but the residue of the terror remained. It was a taste in her mouth, as if she had been sucking pennies.

The cruiser—road-dusty, even the flasher bars on the roof now crusted with the storm's residue—was standing next to a small concrete building that looked like a pillbox emplacement. The driver's door had been left open (she could see the hideous little plastic bear next to the dashboard compass), and that was why the domelight was on. Ellen had brought her out here in the cruiser, then gone somewhere else. Ellen had other fish to fry, other hooks to bait, other joints to roll. If only she'd left the keys—

Mary got to her feet and hurried to the car, jogging bent over at the waist like a soldier crossing no-man's-land. The cruiser reeked of blood and piss and pain and fear. The dashboard, the wheel, and the front seat were splashed with gore. The instruments were unreadable. Lying in the footwell on the passenger's side was a small stone spider. It was an old thing, and pitted, but just looking at it made Mary feel cold and weak.