Stinger Part 28

42 The Fortress

No one spoke for a long moment. Smoke drifted through the light. Then Vance jabbered, "I was ready to shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I was just waitin' for the word, and I could've blown its head off!"

"Right," Rhodes said. He wiped the creeping line of blood from his cheek, his eyes hollowed out and scared. "And gotten yourself and the rest of us torn to pieces too. Tom, what time is it?"

"One minute till two."

"Which means we've got fifty-eight minutes to find Daufin and her pod. We're going to have to split up and start searching."

"Hold on!" Jessie said. "What are you saying? That we're going to give Daufin up?"

"That's right. Have you got a better idea?"

"We're talking about my little girl."

"We're talking about an alien," Rhodes reminded her. His insides were still quaking. The smell of hot metal remained in his nostrils. "No matter what it looks like. We've gotten into something here that I think we'd better get our a.s.ses out of real fast."

"I'm not handing my little girl over to that sonofab.i.t.c.h!" Jessie vowed. Tom started to touch her shoulder to calm her, but she pulled away. "Do you hear me? I'm not doing it!"

"Jessie, it's either Daufin or a lot of people-your friends-who die. I'm not doubting for one second that Stinger could lay waste to this whole town. Right now I don't care why Stinger wants Daufin, or what she's done; I just want to find her and save some people's lives, if I can."

"What about Stevie's life?" Tears scorched Jessie's eyes. Her heart was pounding wildly, and she couldn't seem to draw a full breath. "My G.o.d, we'll be throwing my daughter's life away!"

"Not if we can find Daufin and get her to go back into her pod. Maybe that'll release Stevie." He couldn't stand this house any longer; the walls were closing in on him. "I'm sorry, but we don't have any choice. Sheriff, I say we go get your deputy and break into teams for a house-to-house search. Go up and down the streets and pick up some volunteers, if we can find any." He knew that a street search in all this smoke and dust was going to be almost impossible, but there was no other way. "Maybe somebody at the clinic's seen her, or she might've gone across the bridge into Bordertown. Tom, will you and Jessie go check your house and start searching east along Celeste Street from there?"

Tom stared at the floor. He felt Jessie watching him. "Yes," he said. "We will."

"Thank you. We need to meet somewhere in thirty minutes and map out where we've been. How about the Brandin' Iron?"

"Fine," Tom said.

"All right. Let's get started." Without waiting for the others, he left the house and went out to the patrol car, parked in front of the Hammonds' Civic at the curb. Vance and Gunniston followed, then Jessie and Tom. Vance said, "Better take this," and gave Tom the Winchester. "I'll pick up the other rifle at the office. You two be careful, hear?"

"We will be," Tom told him, and Vance got behind the wheel, pulled the car away from the curb, and drove back toward the center of town.

Jessie watched the car's lights move away and be swallowed by the murk. She felt faint and she stumbled, but Tom caught her and she held on to him. Tears tracked through the dust on her cheeks. "I can't do it," she said weakly. "Oh Jesus, I can't give her up."

"We have to. Listen to me." He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head. "I want more than anything in the world to have Stevie back, just like you do. But if Stevie's gone-"

"She's not! Daufin said she was safe!"

"If she's gone," Tom continued, "our world's not going to end. We have Ray, and we have each other. But if we don't find Daufin and turn her over to that thing, a lot of people are going to die." Jessie was almost blinded by tears now, and she put her hands to her face. "We have to," he repeated, and he opened the door for her and then went around to the driver's side. Jessie was about to slide in when she heard the muttering of an engine, coming closer. A single headlight showed brownish yellow through the smoke. Somebody on a motorcycle, she realized.

Tom hesitated, gripping the door handle, as Cody Lockett stopped beside the car. Cody pushed his goggles back up on his forehead. Attached to the handlebars with a strip of electrical tape was a sawed-off baseball bat with nails protruding from it: a weapon from the 'Gade a.r.s.enal. "I'm lookin' for Vance and Colonel Rhodes," Cody said. "They're supposed to be here."

"You just missed them. They're on their way to the sheriff's office." Tom opened the door and put the Winchester into the backseat. "Who told you they were here?"

"I... uh... ran into Rick Jurado. Listen..." He glanced at Jessie, could see from her red and puffy eyes that she'd been crying. He didn't know exactly how to say this, so he just plowed on ahead. "I found your little girl."

Tom was speechless. Jessie choked back a sob and said, "Where is she?"

"Up at the fort. The apartments, I mean. There's a whole lot of people up there, so she's okay."

Cody would never forget the faces of Tank, Nasty, and Bobby Clay Clemmons when he'd told them that the little girl wasn't what she appeared to be. They hadn't believed him until she'd started to talk, and then their jaws had fallen to the floor. Along with most of the Renegades, there were about two hundred or more people in the building who'd been drawn by the electric lights. Cody had gotten the creature settled in, poured warm beer over the two gashes on his ankle, and taped a cloth around it, then come hunting for Vance and the colonel. "Uh... there's somethin' else you ought to know," he said. "I mean...she looks like your little girl and all, but... she's not."

"We know that," Tom replied.

"You do? Man, I thought I was goin' off the deep end when she told me who she was!"

"Same here." He glanced at Jessie, and saw she knew what he was about to say. "We have to tell Rhodes. We can catch him before he leaves the sheriff's office."

"Tom... please. Wait," Jessie said. "Why don't we talk to her first? Try to make her understand that we've got to get Stevie back?"

Tom looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. It was four minutes after two, and he'd never thought a second hand could move so fast. "We've got less than thirty minutes before we're supposed to meet at the Brandin'

Iron."

"That's time enough for us to talk to her! Please... I think we might be able to make her understand better than Rhodes could."

His gaze lingered on the racing second hand, but his mind was already made up. "All right," he said.

"Take us to her," he told Cody, and got behind the wheel as Cody lowered his goggles and swung the motorcycle around.

At the end of Travis Street, a dozen cars and pickup trucks were parked haphazardly in the apartment building's lot; a couple of them had run right up to the front door. Cody waited for Tom and Jessie to get out of their Civic, and then he threaded his motorcycle through the vehicles and to the door, which was covered with gray sheet metal and had a narrow view slit like all the first-floor windows.

"Open up, Bobby!" he called, and heard the sound of the many latches being thrown back. Bobby Clay Clemmons pulled the heavy door open, its hinges groaning like the entrance to a medieval castle, and Cody powered the motorcycle on through and into the stark white glare of the wall-mounted incandescents.

He popped the kickstand down and left the Honda near the stairway that ascended to the second floor, and a moment later Tom-carrying the Winchester-and Jessie came in. "Lock it," Cody said, and Bobby Clay pushed the door shut and shot all four of the bolts home. Neither Jessie nor Tom had ever been in the Winter T. Preston apartment building before. A long corridor lined with doors-some of them torn off their hinges-went the length of the first floor, and the cracked plaster walls screamed with graffiti in a blaze of Day-Glo orange and purple. The place smelled of marijuana, stale beer, and the ghost aromas of the mine workers and their families who'd lived here: a commingling of sweat, dry heat, and scorched food. For the first time in almost two years, voices other than those of Renegades echoed through the building.

"This way." Cody led them up the stairs. The second floor was a mirror image of the first, except a ladder ascended through a trapdoor to the roof. People were sitting in the hallway, and bare mattresses had been dragged out of some of the apartments for them to rest on. They were mostly Inferno people, with only seven or eight Hispanic faces among them. As they followed Cody, Tom and Jessie had to step over and around the refugees; the lights revealed familiar faces: Vic Chaffin and his wife Arleen, Don Ringwald and his family, Ida Slattery, the Fraziers, Jim and Paula Cleveland and many others. The apartments were full too, and a few infants keened a discordant chorus. There was some talking, but not a lot; most people were numbed, and some of them were sleeping sitting up. The heat from all these close-packed bodies was tremendous, and the air was tainted with smoke. Cody took them to a closed door that had HQ and KNOCK FIRST scrawled on it in red spray paint above a Billy Idol poster. Cody did knock, and a little sliding aperture opened. Nasty's green eyes, outlined with glittery gold mascara, peered out. Then the aperture shut, the door was unlocked, and they went in.

This was Cody's home whenever he came here. The front room held a cot, a stained plaid sofa with the stuffing leaking out through knife rips, a scarred pinewood table and chairs, and a small, battered refrigerator saved from the dump and forced to gasp out a few more months. The floor was covered with faded brown linoleum that was curling up in the corners, and on the cheaply paneled walls hung motorcycle and rock-star posters. A window, cracked open to admit smoky air, faced south. A short hallway went past a busted-up bathroom and into what used to be a bedroom, now the 'Gades' armory where a variety of weapons like bra.s.s knuckles and pellet rifles hung on wall hooks. Tank had been sitting on the sofa, and now he quickly stood up as he saw Mr. Hammond and his wife come in. His camouflage-daubed football helmet was snug around his skull. Cody relocked the door, and Nasty stepped back to let the Hammonds see who stood at the window, facing them.

"h.e.l.lo, Tom and Jessie," Daufin said, and smiled wanly.

The moment enfolded Jessie. That was Stevie's body, Stevie's face, Stevie's dimpled smile. Even the voice was Stevie's, if you chose not to hear the fragile undertone like wind chimes in the cradle of a breeze. Inside that body was Stevie's heart, lungs, veins, and organs; all of it belonged to Stevie except the unknown center where Daufin lived. Jessie took a step forward, and fresh tears broke. Another step, and Tom saw where she was going and he reached for her but let his hand fall short. Jessie walked across the room to the body of her daughter, and she started to place her hands on the little shoulders with the intention of picking the child up and holding her close-just for a moment, to feel the beating of Stevie's heart and know that somewhere, in whatever way she couldn't even begin to fathom, Stevie was alive.

But in the child's face the eyes sparkled with intelligence and fire-intense and even frightening-that was far beyond Stevie's years. The face was Stevie's, yes, but the spirit was not. That was clear to Jessie in an instant, and her hands poised over Daufin's shoulders.

"You're... you're filthy! " Jessie said, and blinked away the tears. "You must've been rolling in the dust!"

Daufin looked down at her own dirty clothes. Jessie's hands lowered, and brushed loose dust off the T-s.h.i.+rt. "Don't they teach you to be clean where you come from? My G.o.d, what a mess!" The auburn hair was full of tangles, bits of weed and spiderweb strands, Jessie saw Nasty's buckskin shoulderbag on the table; the bag was open, and the pink handle of a hairbrush protruded. She took the brush out and started going through the child's hair with the dirt-hating vengeance of a mother. Puzzled, Daufin started to back away. Jessie snapped, "Hold still!" and Daufin stood at attention while the brush strokes puffed dust into the air.

"We're glad to see you," Tom said. He knelt down so his eyes would be on a level with Daufin's.

"Why'd you run away?"

"I went whack-o," she said.

"Uh... we've been... like... teachin' her Earth lingo," Tank explained. "She's been tellin' us about her planet too. It sounds mighty gnarly, man!" For once, his grim, hatchet-nosed face had taken on a childlike s.h.i.+ne of excitement.

"I guess so." Tom watched his wife brus.h.i.+ng their child's hair with determined strokes, and he thought his heart might break. "Daufin, we just had a talk with... something. I can't say it was a man, and I can't say it was a machine."

Daufin knew. "Stinger."

"Yes." He looked up at Cody Lockett. "It took Mack Cade's body and made him into a..." Again, words failed him. "Part man, part dog."

"One of Cade's Dobermans is growing out of his chest." Jessie's hand continued to guide the brush.

"Freakacreepy!" Nasty said. Her love of danger was stoked and burning. "Man, I'd like to see that! "

"You're crazy as h.e.l.l too!" Cody snapped. "It got the Cat Lady," he said to Tom. "Mrs. Stellenberg. It made her into something with a tail full of spikes, and I shot the b.i.t.c.h full of holes but she just kept comin'."

"All are Stinger," Daufin said quietly, standing rigid while she endured whatever it was Jessie was doing. It seemed to be giving Jessie pleasure. "Stinger creates them, and they become Stinger."

Tom didn't quite follow that. "Like robots, is that right?"

"Living mechanisms. They think with Stinger's brain, and they see with Stinger's eyes. Stinger hears and speaks through them. And kills through them too."

"Somethin' mighty big's been roaming around under the streets," Cody said. "Is that one of Stinger's machines too?"

"No," Daufin said. "That is Stinger itself. Stinger captures and stores bodies for duplication. Signals-you would call them blueprints-pa.s.s from Stinger to machines on the s.h.i.+p and there the replicants are made."

"So we know it got Dodge Creech, Cade, Mrs. Stellenberg, and whoever that was in the autoyard. Plus the thing that left its arm with Rhodes." Tom stood up and laid the Winchester on the table.

"Stinger's probably taken a lot of others we don't know about too."

"There!" Jessie finished her battle with the last snarl and stepped back. She felt light-headed and drifty, and she'd caught a hint of the apple-scented shampoo she'd washed Stevie's hair with last night.

"Now you look pretty again!"

"Thank you," Daufin said; it was obviously a compliment, and deserved a reaction, though why these people lavished such attention on strands of limp cellular matter was another mystery of the human tribe. Her gaze went to Tom. "You said you talked to Stinger. About me, of course."

"Yes."

"Stinger wants me and my lifepod, and an ultimatum was given."

Tom nodded. "It said it wants you in one hour"-a glance at the racing hands of his watch-"and we've got about forty minutes left."

"Or Stinger will continue the destruction," Daufin said. "Yes. That's Stinger's way."

"The sonofab.i.t.c.h wants to take her back to prison!" Cody spoke up. "And all she did was sing! "

"Sing? That's not what Stinger said. He-it-told us about the chemical on your world," Tom recounted. "The poison, I mean. Stinger said you..." It was crazy, looking at his little girl's face and saying these things. "Said you were a wild animal."

"I am," she answered without hesitation. "To Stinger and the House of Fists, I deserve a cage and a frozen sleep."

"The House of Fists? What's that?"

"Stinger's masters. A race that wors.h.i.+ps violence; their religion is the conquest of worlds, and their entrance into the afterlife is determined by the deaths of what they consider lower beings." A faint, gritty smile surfaced. "Wild animals like me."

"But if they're trying to control this chemical, isn't that for the good of-"

Daufin laughed: a mixture of a child's laugh and the sound of coins thrown to the floor. "Oh yes!" she said. "Yes, they are trying to control the chemical!" The fires ignited in her eyes again. "But not for the good of their brother creatures, no matter what Stinger told you. They want the chemical for their weapons! They want to build deadlier fleets and more ways to kill!" The little body shook with fury. "The more of the chemical they steal from my planet, the closer my tribe comes to destruction! And the closer all worlds come to being destroyed, as well-including this one! Do you think Stinger will leave here and not tell the House of Fists about your planet?" She searched for words, stumbled over the tangle of human speech, grasped hold of a phrase the humans named Tank and Nasty had taught her: "Get real! "

The flesh of Daufin's face had drawn tight, showing the sharp angles of the bones. Her eyes blazed with anger, and she began to pace back and forth in front of the window. "I never meant to come here. My s.h.i.+p lost power, and I had to put it down where I could. I know I've brought hurting to you, and to others here. For that I will carry a burden for the rest of my life." She stopped suddenly, looking back and forth between Tom and Jessie. "Stinger will tell the House of Fists about you, and about this world. Stinger will say you are soft, defenseless life forms who were born to be caged, and they'll come here. Oh yes, they'll come here-and they might bring their weapons full of the 'poison' they've stolen from my planet! Do you know what that 'poison' is?"

Tom thought she was about to start spouting steam from her nostrils. "No," he said warily.

"Of course you don't! How could you?" She shook her head, exasperated. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her cheeks. "I'll do more than tell you; I'll show you."

"Show us?" Jessie said. "How?"

"Through the inner eye." Daufin saw no comprehension on their faces; they were blank slates, waiting to be written on. She lifted both hands toward them. "If you want to know, I'll take you there. I'll show you my world, through the eye of my memory."

The humans hesitated. Daufin didn't blame them. She was offering a glimpse of the unknown, and what was home to her would be to them an alien realm. "Take my hands," she urged, and her fingers strained for contact. "If you want to know, you have to see."

Tom took the first step forward, and when it was done, the hardest part was over. He walked to Daufin and slid his hand into hers. The flesh was oven hot, and as her fingers gripped tight he could already feel the p.r.i.c.kling of an electrical charge pa.s.sing from her into him.

"Jessie?" Daufin asked.

She came to her daughter's outstretched hand, and took it.

43 Waiting for the s.p.a.cemen

At twelve minutes after two, Tyler Lucas sat on the front porch of his house with a rifle beside him and waited for the s.p.a.cemen to come.

The sky was covered with a hazy violet grid. After the power had gone out, he and Bess had driven into Inferno, had seen the black pyramid and gotten the lowdown from Sue Mullinax and Cecil at the Brandin' Iron. "The s.p.a.cemen have landed, sure's shootin'!" Sue had said. "Cain't n.o.body get in or out, and the phones are dead too! I swear to G.o.d, when that thing hit, it lifted this whole block and me off my feet too, so you know it must've packed a punch!"

Then she'd given that giggly laugh of hers-the laugh that had made her so popular when she was a slim-waisted Preston High School cheerleader-and bustled off to fix Tyler and Bess cold hamburgers.

"Ty? Here y'go." Bess had come out and offered her husband a gla.s.s of iced tea. The tea had been made that morning, which was a good thing because the faucets wouldn't pull up a drop of water.

"That's the last of the ice cubes." They were small half-moons, and everything in the refrigerator was thawing out quick in this sullen heat.

"Thanks, hon." He rubbed the cold gla.s.s over his sweating face, sipped at the tea, and gave it back to her when she'd sat down on the edge of the porch next to him. She drank with a deep thirst. Off in the desert a chorus of coyotes howled, their voices jagged and nervous. Tyler watched the road. They'd decided that when the s.p.a.cemen came, they would die right here, defending their home. The air-force people had been wandering all over the place before the sun went down, scooping up little fragments of blue-green metal and putting them in weird bags that folded up like accordions. Where were the air-force men now?

Tyler and Bess had driven their pickup west along Cobre Road. A little less than half a mile had cranked off the odometer before they'd come to where the violet grid had entered the earth and blocked their way. Around the grid's glowing p.r.o.ngs Cobre Road's asphalt was still bubbling. Tyler had thrown a handful of sand into the grid, and little grains of molten gla.s.s had come back at them.

"Well," Tyler drawled, laying the rifle across his knees, "I never thought there'd come a time when you couldn't see the stars out here. I reckon progress has caught up with us, huh?"