Desperation (31 page)

“Are you kidding?” he asked. His voice, his Texas accent, but not his words, not now. These words were coming from the radio in his head, the one the piece of stone statue had turned on.

Its eyes, glaring at him from where it lay in the dust.

“What, then?”

He looked at her and grinned. The expression felt ghastly on his face. It also felt wonderful. “We'll get it together, of course. Okay by you?”

His
mind
was the storm now, filled with roaring wind from side to side and top to bottom, driving before it the images of what he would do to her, what she would do to him, and what they would do to anyone who got in their way.

She grinned back, her thin cheeks stretching upward until it was like looking at a skull grin. Greenish-white light from the dashboard painted her brow and lips, filled in her eyesockets. She stuck her tongue out through that grin and flicked it at him, like the snake-tongue of the statue. He stuck his own tongue out and wriggled it back at her. Then he groped for the doorhandle. He would race her to the fragment, and they would make love among the scorpions with it held in their mouths between them, and whatever happened after that wouldn't matter.

Because in a very real sense, they would be gone.

3

Johnny came back out onto
the sidewalk and handed the bottle of Jim Beam to Billingsley, who looked at it with the unbelieving eyes of a man who has just been told he's won the Powerball lottery. “There you go, Tom,” he said. “Have yourself a tonk—just the one, mind you—and then pass it on. None for me, I've taken the pledge.” He looked across the street, expecting to see more coyotes, but there were still just the five of them. I'll take the fifth, Johnny thought, watching as the veterinarian spun the cap off the bottle of whiskey. You'd go along with that, wouldn't you, Tom? Of course you would.

“What is wrong with you?” Mary asked him. “Just what in the hell is
wrong
with you?”

“Nothing,” Johnny said. “Well, a broken nose, but I guess that isn't what you meant, is it?”

Billingsley tilted the bottle back with a short, sharp flick of the wrist that looked as practiced as a nurse's injection technique, and then coughed. Tears welled in his eyes. He put the mouth of the bottle to his lips again, and Johnny snatched it away. “Nope, I don't think so, oldtimer.”

He offered the bottle to Ralph, who took it, looked at it, then bit off a quick swallow. Ralph then offered it to Mary.

“No.”

“Go on,” Ralph said. His voice was quiet, almost humble. “Better if you do.”

She looked at Johnny with hateful, perplexed eyes, then took a nip from the bottle. She coughed, holding it away from her and looking at it as if it were toxic. Ralph took it back, plucked the cap from Billingsley's left hand, and put it back on. During this, Johnny opened the bottle of aspirin, shook out half a dozen, bounced them in his hand for a moment, then tossed them into his mouth.

“Come on, Doc,” he said to Billingsley. “Lead the way.”

They started down the street, Johnny telling them as they went why he had all but broken his neck to get his cellular phone back. The coyotes on the other side of the street got up and paced them. Johnny didn't care for that much, but what were they supposed to do about it? Try shooting at them? Pretty noisy. At least there was no sign of the cop. And if they saw him before they made it down to the movie theater, they could always duck into one of these other places. Any old port in a storm.

He swallowed, grimacing at the burn as the half-liquefied aspirin slid down his throat, and tried to put the bottle into his breast pocket. It bumped the top of the phone. He took it out, put the bottle of pills in its place, started to shove the cellular into his pants pocket, then decided it couldn't hurt to try again. He pulled the antenna and flipped the phone open. Still no transmission-bars. Zilch.

“You really think that was your friend?” David asked.

“I think so, yes.”

David held out his hand. “Could I try it?”

Something in his voice. His father heard it, too. Johnny could see it in the way the man was looking at him.

“David? Son? Is something wr—”

“Could I try it
please
?”

“Sure, if you want.” He held the useless phone out to the boy, and as David took it, Johnny saw three transmission-bars appear beside the
S.
Not one or two but
three.

“Son of a
bitch
!” he breathed, and grabbed the phone back. David, who had been studying the keypad functions, saw him reaching a moment too late to stop him.

The moment the cellular phone was back in Johnny's hand, the transmission-bars disappeared again, leaving only the
S.

They were never there in the first place, you know that, don't you? You hallucinated them. You—

“Give it
back
!” David shouted. Johnny was stunned by the anger in his voice. The phone was snatched away again, but not too fast for him to see the transmission-bars reappear, glowing gold in the dark.

“This is so damned dumb,” Mary said, looking first back over her shoulder, then at the coyotes across the street. They had stopped when the people had. “But if it's the way you want to play it, why don't we just drag a table out and get drunk in the middle of the fucking street?”

No one paid any attention. Billingsley was still looking at the bottle of Beam. Johnny and Ralph were staring at the kid, who was stuttering his finger on the
NAME/MENU
button with the speed of a veteran video-game player, hurrying past Johnny's agent and ex-wife and editor, finally getting to
STEVE.

“David, what is it?” Ralph asked.

David ignored him and turned urgently to Johnny. “Is this him, Mr. Marinville? Is the guy with the truck Steve?”

“Yes.”

David pushed
SEND
.

4

Steve had heard of being
saved by the bell, but this was ridiculous.

Just as his fingers found the doorhandle—and he could hear Cynthia grabbing for hers on the other end of the seat—the cellular telephone gave out its nasal, demanding cry:
Hmeep! Hmeep!

Steve froze. Looked at the phone. Looked across the seat at Cynthia, whose door was actually open a little. She was staring back at him, the grin on her lips fading.

Hmeep! Hmeep!

“Well?” she asked. “Aren't you going to answer that?” And there was something in her tone, something so
wifely,
that he laughed.

Outside, the wolf pointed its nose into the darkness and howled, as if it had heard Steve's laughter and disapproved. The coyotes seemed to take that howl as a signal. They got up and disappeared back the way they had come, walking into the blowing dust with their heads lowered. The scorpions were already gone. If, that was, they had been there at all. They might not have been; his head felt like a haunted house, one filled with hallucinations and false memories instead of ghosts.

Hmeep! Hmeep!

He grabbed the phone off the dashboard, pushed the
SEND
button, and put it to his ear. He stared out at the wolf as he did it. And the wolf stared back. “Boss? Boss, that you?”

Of course it was, who else would be calling him? Only it wasn't. It was a kid.

“Is your name Steve?” the kid asked.

“Yes. How'd you get the boss's phone? Where—”

“Never mind that,” the kid said. “Are you in trouble? You are, aren't you?”

Steve opened his mouth. “I don't—” Closed it again. Outside, the wind screamed around the cab of the Ryder truck. He held the little phone to the side of his face and looked over an oozing lump of buzzard at the wolf. He saw the chunk of statue lying in front of it as well. The crude images of intermingled sex and violence which had filled his mind were fading, but he could remember the power they had exercised over him the way he could remember certain vivid nightmares.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you could say that.”

“Are you in the truck we saw?”

“If you saw a truck, likely that was us, yeah.
Is
my boss with you?”

“Mr. Marinville's here. He's okay. Are
you
all right?”

“I don't know,” Steve said. “There's a wolf, and he brought this thing . . . it's like a statue, only—”

Cynthia's hand darted into the lower part of his vision and honked the horn. Steve jumped. At the entrance to the cafe parking lot, the wolf jumped, too. Steve could see its muzzle draw back in a snarl. Its ears flattened against its skull.

Doesn't like the horn,
he thought. Then another thought came, one of those simple ones that made you want to slam your hand against your own forehead, as if to punish your laggard brains.
If it won
't get out of the way, I can run the fucker over, can't I?

Yes. Yes, he could. After all, he was the one with the truck.

“What was that?” the kid asked sharply. Then, as if realizing that was the wrong question: “Why are you doing that?”

“We've got company. We're trying to get rid of it.”

Cynthia honked the horn again. The wolf got to its feet. Its ears were still laid back. It looked pissed, but it also looked confused. When Cynthia honked the horn a third time, Steve put both of his hands over hers and helped. The wolf looked at them a moment longer, its head cocked and its eyes a nasty yellow-green in the glare of the headlights. Then it bent, seized the piece of statuary in its teeth, and disappeared back the way it had come.

Steve looked at Cynthia, and she looked back at him. She still looked scared, but she was smiling a little just the same.

“Steve?” The voice was faint, dodging in and out of static-bursts. “Steve, are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Your company?”

“Gone. For the time being, at least. The question is, what do we do next? Any suggestions?”

“I might have.” Damned if it didn't sound as if maybe
he
was smiling, too.

“What's your name, kid?” Steve asked.

5

Behind them, back in the
direction of the Municipal Building, something gave in to the wind and fell over with a huge loose crash. The sound made Mary wheel around in that direction, but she saw nothing. She was grateful for the mouthful of whiskey Carver had talked her into taking. Without it, that sound—she guessed it might have been some building's false front tumbling into the street—would have had her halfway out of her skin.

The boy was still on the phone. The three men were gathered around him. Mary could see how badly Marinville wanted to take the phone back again; she could also see he didn't quite dare.
It'll do you good not to be able to have what you want, Johnny,
she thought.
Do you a
world
of good.

“I might have,” David said, smiling a little. He listened, gave his first name, then turned around so he was facing the Owl's Club. He ducked his head, and when he spoke again, Mary could hardly hear him. A kind of dark wonder passed over her like a dizzy spell.

He doesn't want the coyotes across the street to hear what he's saying. I know how crazy that sounds, but it's what he'
s doing. And you know something even crazier? I think he's right.

“There's an old movie theater,” David said in a low voice. “It's called The American West.” He glanced at Billingsley for confirmation.

Billingsley nodded. “Tell him to go around to the back,” he said, and Mary decided that if she was crazy, at least she wasn't the only one; Billingsley also spoke in a low voice, and glanced over his shoulder, once, quickly, as if to make sure the coyotes weren't creeping closer, trying to eavesdrop. After he had made sure they were still on the sidewalk in front of the Water and Utility Building, he turned back to David. “Tell him there's an alley.”

David did. As he finished, something apparently occurred to Marinville. He started to grab for the phone, then restrained himself. “Tell him to park the truck away from the theater,” he said. The great American novelist also spoke in low tones, and he had one hand up to his mouth, as if he thought there might be a lipreader or two among the coyotes. “If he leaves it in front and Entragian comes back . . .”

David nodded and passed this on, as well. Listened as Steve said something else, nodding, the smile resurfacing. Mary's eyes drifted, to the coyotes. As she looked at them, she realized an exceedingly perverse thing: if they managed to hide from Entragian long enough to regroup and get out of town, part of her would be sorry. Because once this was over, she would have to confront the fact of Peter's death; she would have to grieve for him and for the destruction of the life they had made together. And that was maybe not the worst of it. She would also have to
think
about all this, try and make some sense of it, and she wasn't sure she could do it. She wasn't sure
any
of them would be able to do it. Except maybe for David.

“Come as fast as you can,” he said. There was a faint bleep as he pushed the
END
button. He collapsed the antenna and handed the phone back to Marinville, who immediately pulled the antenna out again, studied the LED readout, shook his head, and closed the phone up.

“How'd you do it, David? Magic?”

The kid looked at him as if Marinville were crazy. “God,” he said.

“
God,
you dope,” Mary said, smiling in a way that did not feel familiar to her at all. This wasn't the time to be pulling Marinville's chain, but she simply couldn't resist.

“Maybe you should have just told Mr. Marinville's friend to come and pick us up,” Ralph said dubiously. “That probably would have been the simplest, David.”

“It's
not
simple,” David replied. “Steve'll tell you that when they get here.”

“They?”
Marinville asked.

David ignored him. He was looking at his father. “Also, there's Mom,” he said. “We're not leaving without her.”

“What are we going to do about
them
?” Mary asked, and pointed across the street at the coyotes. She could have sworn that they not only saw the gesture but understood it.

Marinville stepped off the sidewalk and into the street, his long gray hair blowing out and making him look like an Old Testament prophet. The coyotes got to their feet, and the wind brought her the sound of their growls. Marinville had to be hearing them, too, but he went on another step or two nevertheless. He half-closed his eyes for a moment, not as if the sand was bothering them but as if he was trying to remember something. Then he clapped his hands together once, sharply.
“Tak!”
One of the coyotes lifted its snout and howled. The sound made Mary shudder.
“Tak, ah lah! Tak!”

The coyotes appeared to move a little closer together, but that was all.

Marinville clapped his hands again. “
Tak! . . . Ah lah . . . Tak!
 . . . oh, shit on this, I was never any good at foreign languages, anyhow.” He stood looking disgusted and uncertain. That they might attack him—him and his unloaded Mossberg .22—seemed the furthest thing from his mind.

David stepped down from the sidewalk. His father grabbed at his collar. “It's okay, Dad,” David said.

Ralph let go, but followed as David went to Marinville. And then the boy said something Mary thought she might remember even if her mind succeeded in blocking the rest of this out—it was the sort of thing that came back to you in dreams, if nowhere else.

“Don't speak to them in the language of the dead, Mr. Marinville.”

David took another step forward. Now he was alone in the middle of the street, with Ralph and Marinville standing behind him. Mary and Billingsley were behind them, up on the sidewalk. The wind had reached a single high shriek. Mary could feel the dust stinging her cheeks and forehead, but for the time being, that seemed far away, unimportant.

David put his hands together in front of his mouth, finger to finger, in that child's gesture of prayer. Then he held them out again, palms up, in the direction of the coyotes. “May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and lift you up, and give you peace,” he said. “Now get out of here. Take a hike.”

It was as if a swarm of bees had settled on them. They whirled in a clumsy, jostling mass of snouts and ears and teeth and tails, nipping at one another's flanks and at their own. Then they raced off, yapping and yowling in what sounded like some painful argument. She could hear them, even with the contending shriek of the wind, for a long time.

David turned back, surveyed their dumbfounded faces—expressions too large to miss, even in the gloom—and smiled a little. He shrugged, as if to say
Well, what are you gonna do?
Mary observed that his face was still tinted Irish Spring green. He looked like the victim of an inept Halloween makeup job.

“Come on,” David said. “Let's go.”

They clustered in the street. “And a little child shall lead them,” Marinville said. “So come on, child—lead.”

The five of them began trudging north along Main Street toward The American West.