Forever Never Ends (30 page)

Nettie pounded louder and began yelling. The preacher was close enough so that she could see his lightbulb head, now lit with a neon green filament. He smiled at her as if she were a lamb that had hopped between the fence poles of the slaughterhouse holding pen. The musk of the others drifted across the dewy night, a stench of sun-split melons and swamp rot.

She was about to offer a final prayer for mercy, that she might die before she went to living hell, when a light blinked on in a far window of the parsonage. At the same instant, truck headlights swept up the road and across the parking lot, flashing over the marble teeth of the cemetery.

***

"Hold on just a second," Chester said.

Tamara and DeWalt gathered around him like oversized scarecrows, their faces pale in the moonlight. Emerland stood by the Mercedes, arms folded. They were back at the Mull farm, about to head up into the dark woods. Chester hoped the other three were as scared as he was, because fear provided the kind of shock absorber that still worked even when corn liquor didn’t.

Chester gave DeWalt the shotgun and nodded toward Emerland. "I don't reckon he'll be going anywhere, but just in case. Be back in a minute. I just thought of something."

"Chester? I think we'd better hurry.” Tamara’s hands were on her bulging pockets, where dynamite sticks poked out of the cloth like fat brown licorice.

"This might be worth waiting for, darling. We're gonna need all the help we can get."

He walked across the barnyard to the collapsing shed. He kicked open the door, hoping the wildlife was put to bed. Stale dust and powdery chicken shit filled his nostrils. A shaft of moonlight pierced the blackness where a few boards had fallen off the side of the shed. Stacks of feed, fertilizer, and other bags were piled by the door, cobwebs catching silver light among the moldering paper.

Concrete statues and birdbaths leaned against one wall like sentries sleeping at their posts. Plastic buckets holding dry dirt and the skeletons of shrubs formed a dead forest behind the feed sacks.

Enough junk here to open a lawn and garden store. I'm glad I never got around to making Johnny Mack get rid of this mess. Like anybody around here—besides Hattie, God rest her soul—ever gave a damn about keeping the place up. And she would have had a fit if she knew her youngest boy had been packing away stolen goods. I ain't all that proud of having a sorry thieving no-account for a son, but right now I guess I can forgive him.

Every time Sylvester drove his Bryson Feed Supply truck up to the farm, back before he’d moved out for good, Johnny Mack had swiped some of whatever happened to be in the truck bed. Johnny Mack didn't give a damn whether the products had any earthly purpose or not. He stole for the same reason a rooster crowed, just to celebrate the fact that the sun had come up again.

The rats had torn at the sacks of sorghum grain and the chickens had worked through the open holes until the meal had gotten so stale even the vermin wouldn't forage in it. But the other bags were mostly intact, covered with thick dust. Chester knelt to a pallet covered by smaller bags, his arthritic joints laughing pain at him and calling him a foolish old sonuvabitch. He'd have time to ache later. Or else he wouldn't give a damn one way or the other.

Chester glanced back through the door at the others. They seemed glad for the delay. Nobody looked overly anxious to go into the woods where the Earth Mouth gaped and the mushbrains crept around like mildewed snails, even though the three people paced impatiently. DeWalt held the shotgun down beside his waist like a city slicker, but Emerland didn't seem interested in making a run for it. He'd been quiet ever since that mushbrain had pressed itself against the fence back at the construction compound.

Chester wiped the grime away from one of the labels. "Screw a blue goose," he muttered. "Shoulda thought of this right off."

He lifted the sack, sending dust rising in the moonbeams like floating worms. He wasn't sure he could carry the twenty-pound sack through two miles of dense woods, but he had a feeling he had no choice. If they were trying to exterminate something that had come from God-only-knows-where, they'd better throw everything at it they could get their hands on.

Chester tossed the sack on his shoulder, then staggered for a moment until he got the load balanced. He wouldn't be able to take a drink with both hands occupied, but the corn liquor hadn't done him much good anyway. He’d gotten more sober as the night wore on, no matter how many sips he’d taken. He'd mostly been drinking out of habit anyway, taking comfort in the familiar way it burned his throat.

"What's that?" DeWalt asked when Chester stepped out of the shed.

"Sevin. Fungicide. What you put on the tomato plants to kill off mold and such."

DeWalt's mouth fell open and Tamara smiled. Chester liked her smile. If he were thirty years younger . . . hell, she'd be thirty years younger, too.

"I know the
shu-shaaa
thing looks like some kind of plant-creature," DeWalt said. "But how do we know if its chemistry resembles that of earth vegetation?"

"I think it adopts some of the host's chemistry as part of its mimicking," Tamara said. "Like the old saying, ‘You are what you eat.’ Maybe in the thing’s natural state, it’s invincible. But I think it's vulnerable right now, at least compared to what it's going to be. If it gets smarter by absorbing from the environment, maybe it absorbs some weaknesses, too."

"Just the way it adopted the language of humans after it, uh, converted them?" DeWalt said.

"Yeah. And
shu-shaaa
also speaks the language of plants and rocks and dirt and water. Remember that strange music you heard?”

“Mushy shit,” Chester said. “Like what old Don Oscar was saying. The thing fucks big time with their brains, that’s for sure.”

“Besides, what do we have to lose?" DeWalt said.

"They's some more stuff in here," Chester said. "If y’all are up to toting it."

DeWalt and Tamara walked up to the shed. Emerland followed with his head down. The developer had removed his tie and didn't seem worried that his fancy shoes would never serve in high society again. But the rules of society had changed, even a rock head like Emerland could see that, and the Earth Mouth didn't give a rat's ass how much money a man had. It would gobble him up and use his shoulderbone as a toothpick.

Emerland looks like a man who's had the truth slapped upside his head. Like a man finding out the kids he'd brought up had been made by somebody else. Or that cancer is eating away his guts and there's not a damn thing to be done but pass blood and pray. Or that God didn't give two shits about the human race, or else He wouldn't let such bad things happen to it. A truth that ought not to be, but is.

Tamara went into the shed, then DeWalt followed. "Hey, here's a five-gallon can of Roundup," Tamara called to Chester.

"That would kick like a damned donkey, all right, but that'll get mighty heavy mighty fast," Chester said, his words gurgling around his chaw. He spat and gummed rapidly, excited despite feeling every single one of his sixty-seven years. Or was it sixty-eight now? Or a
hundred
-and-sixty-eight?

"I can handle it, Chester," she said. "I know what's at stake more than anybody."

Chester figured this wasn't a good time to haggle about equal rights and that other uppity horseshit he'd heard about. That was big-city worry, as far as he was concerned. In Windshake, women knew their place, for the most part. Didn't stir up trouble. Still, she was probably in better shape than him and DeWalt put together.

If she really
could
read the alien zombiemaker’s mind—and Chester found himself believing all kinds of things that he used to laugh at when he saw them on the magazine covers in the grocery checkout line—then he might be wise to trust her judgment.

"Have a go at it, then,” he said. “That's some Acrobat M-Z in the brown sack, DeWalt. Experimental stuff that's supposed to kill blue mold on tobacco. Got to have a permit to buy it.” He laughed, choked on tobacco juice, spat, and continued. “But not to steal it, I reckon."

"It's concentrated poison," DeWalt said. "It says on the directions that one tablespoon of this stuff makes a gallon of fungicide. Making this bag about a thousand gallons worth."

"Maybe we can volunteer Emerland to bring it along, seeing as how your hands are full with that dynamite rig and the shotgun. What say, Emerland?"

Emerland stared vacantly ahead, then nodded as if he were a dummy on the knee of a stoned ventriloquist. He shambled into the shed, doing a pretty fair imitation of one of the mushbrains.

"Every little bit helps," said DeWalt. "Or hurts, if you want to look at it that way."

Emerland showed surprising energy in lifting the forty-pound sack onto his shoulder. Chester figured he probably worked out in one of those fitness clubs, with wires and weights hanging from metal bars and sweat seeped into the carpet. Probably hadn’t done an honest day’s work in his entire life, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, in Chester’s opinion. Emerland's jaw clenched and his eyes shone with either grim determination or madness.

They gathered outside the shed, all looking silently toward the faint green glow on the far ridge. An owl hooted in the barn, lonely and brooding in the high wooden rafters. A wind tried to stir the brown leaves from the corners of the fence but gave up, too tired after a long winter's work. A dog barked, followed by another’s, and the sound echoing off the cold mountains reminded Chester of old Boomer.

Tamara broke the peace of the waiting night. "Chester, can I use the telephone real quick?"

Chester looked up at the deep sky, at the gorgeous bright lights jabbed in the roof of forever, like holes put there so the world could breathe. He found himself wondering how many more of these Earth Mouth bastards were up there, riding the black wind on their way to wherever such as those were meant to be. He hated trying to look at the Big Picture, or worrying over the fuck-all Why. That was for preachers and college boys. Some things were just too big for a broken-down dirt farmer to understand.

"Power's out. Phone might be out, too. Tree musta fell on the lines," Chester said.

"I have to try," Tamara said. “My husband’s probably worried sick by now.”

"Better let me come with you. Might break your neck in that mess.”

He laid the sack of Sevin across the Roundup can and led Tamara across the yard, wondering if all the chickens had turned by now, whether they were sitting with their stupid heads under their wings, their green eyes shut against the world. Probably dreaming of laying tiny rotten plums in their nests, come morning.

Chester wondered what might hatch out of those tainted eggs.

Or if he'd still be here when the sun pissed its yellow light down on the world again.

***

Little Mack crawled deeper under the trailer, his face pressed in the dry dirt. He was scared.

He could hear voices, only they weren't making words. Just wet sounds. And he sort of recognized his mom's voice. He wondered if she was one of
them
now.

Because he'd seen them fall out of the trailer, slide out of the door while he'd still been hiding in the bushes, just as the sun went down and he'd first started really getting lonely.

Jimmy, the mean one he'd seen lying naked on top of his mom that time, had walked like a drunk man across the yard and went into the Wellborns' trailer, and Mack had heard screaming and yelling inside, then the Wellborns were walking like drunks, too, Sue and Grady and their little girl Anita, as they scattered and stumbled into the woods.

Anita had lifted her dress one time and showed him her panties when he'd given her a nickel, and she said for a dime that she'd take her panties off. But Little Mack never had a whole dime, that was a lot of money. Now he didn't think he wanted to see under her dress even for free. Because her skin was slimy looking and her eyes glowed like Jimmy's. And Jimmy was so slimy looking when he came out of the Wellborns' trailer that he looked like he was dripping.

Mack held his breath as a familiar pair of boots appeared on the trailer step. Mack knew those boots inside and out. They had thick brown heels and smelled like old baseball gloves, and Mack had once hidden yucky oatmeal in them. Those were Daddy's boots.

Daddy was home and would make everything all right, just like that stupid pig cop had promised, only the stupid pig had let Old One-Eye kiss him on the lips, so he must be what Junior called a “queer.”

Daddy would beat up that ugly Jimmy and then they would all be happy and maybe Mom would slice up some wieners to put in the macaroni and cheese the way she sometimes did on special occasions. And maybe even Junior would come home, but this was Friday night, and Junior never came home on Friday nights.

At least Daddy was here, and maybe he'd even killed something and would be in a good mood. Sometimes he'd tack an old squirrel skin or raccoon fur to a board and give it to Mack, and Mack would rub it and sniff it and dream about playing out in the woods. Except now the woods scared him because it was full of the slimy people.

He crawled on his hands and knees to the front of the trailer and was about to call out when he saw that Daddy was drunk, too, only Daddy didn't drink, even though Papaw Mull did and Junior did and Mom did and One-Eye did and Jimmy did and everybody. But not Daddy. So why couldn't Daddy walk straight?

Then Mack saw that Daddy's jeans were damp, as if he'd peed in his pants. Except the wetness was slimy, like motor oil or syrup. Which meant . . .

Which meant that Mack better not make a sound.

Which meant if he was going to cry, he'd better let the tears slide soft down into the dust. He couldn’t break into a bawling fit. Junior said Mack was just an old bawl-baby, anyway. And maybe he was, but he was scared, scared enough to wet his pants, and it was dark and Daddy was slimy.

His mom came out of the trailer.

She stood in the yard and tried to call. "Muh . . . aaaaaaaahck."

She was naked in the moonlight and covered with milky snot. He bit his tongue and didn’t answer.