Stinger Part 22

"A little bit, but it's mighty tight in here. We're breathin' okay, though."

"Good." It was clear to Ortega that they were going to need more muscle power to get the three men out. "Just take it easy, now. We're going to have to go back for some picks and shovels."

"Whatever it takes, man! Listen... can you leave the light where I can see it? I keep thinkin' I hear somethin' diggin' down here. Like underneath us. I'm scared of rats. Okay?"

"Okay," Ortega said, and wedged the flashlight in between two bricks so its beam would shine down into the airs.p.a.ce. "We'll be back!" he promised, and he grasped Joey's shoulders and pulled the boy up too.

They started back across the autoyard, under the violet glow and the motionless black clouds, and Rick had that crawly sensation of being watched again. He turned toward the pyramid. A man was standing about twenty feet away. He was lean, tall, and broad around the shoulders; he stood slightly hunchbacked, and his arms dangled limply at his sides. Rick was unable to tell much about the man's face, other than that it looked to be wet. The man wore dark pants and a striped short-sleeve shirt, the clothes covered with dirt. He was just standing there, his head c.o.c.ked slightly to one side, watching them. "Father?" Rick said, and Ortega heard the raw nerves in Rick's voice and stopped; he looked back, and then all of them saw the hunchbacked man who stood like a statue. Ortega's first thought was that it was one of Cade's workmen who'd just dug himself out of the ruins. He stepped forward. "You all right?"

"Who's the guardian?" the man asked, in a thick, slow drawl that had an undercurrent like the whistle of steam from a teakettle.

The priest's steps faltered. He couldn't see much of the man's face-just some slicked-down gray hair and a damp and gleaming slab of forehead-but he thought he recognized the voice. Only the voice usually said What can I fit you for, padre? It was Gil Lockridge, Ortega realized. Gil and his wife Mavis had owned the Boots 'n Plenty shoestore for over ten years. But Gil wasn't so tall, Ortega thought. And he wasn't so large around the shoulders, nor was he hunchbacked like this man was. But...it was Gil's voice. Wasn't it?

"I asked you a question," the man said. "Who's the guardian?"

"Guardian?" Ortega shook his head. "Guardian of what? "

The man drew in a long lungful of air and released it-a long release-with a noise that reminded Rick of the way that sidewinder had rattled when he'd reached into the box for the Fang of Jesus. "I don't like bein'..." There was a hesitation, as if he were searching for the correct phrase. "Bein' trifled with. I don't like it a'tall." He took two strides forward, and Ortega backed away. The man stopped, and now Ortega could see some kind of ooze sliding off the man's lantern-jawed face. Gil's eyes were black, sunken, terrible. "I know the one I'm lookin' for is here. I know there's a guardian. Maybe it's you." The eyes fixed on Zarra for a second. "Or maybe it's you." A glance at Rick. "Or is it you?" The gaze returned to Father Ortega.

"Listen... Gil... how'd you get out here? I mean... I don't understand what you're-"

"The one I'm seekin' is a subversive criminal," the man went on. "An enemy of the collective mind. I don't know how you deal with criminals on this"-he looked around with a sinuous movement of the neck and said contemptuously-"world, but I'm sure you understand the concepts of law and order. I intend to bring the creature to justice."

"What creature?" It hit him then: what Colonel Rhodes had said about Stevie Hammond. "The little girl?" he asked before he could think about what he was saying.

"The little girl," the voice repeated. The eyes had taken on a keen glint. "Explain."

Ortega stood very still, but his insides had twisted into knots. He d.a.m.ned his tongue; there was an awful hunger on the wet and waxy face of the man-thing that stood before him. It was not Gil Lockridge; it was a mocking imitation of humanity.

"Explain," the thing commanded, and took a gliding step forward.

"Run!" Ortega shouted to the boys; they were frozen with shock, couldn't move. "Get away!" he yelled, and as he backed up he saw a length of pipe lying on the ground beside his left foot. He picked it up and held it threateningly over his head. The thing was almost upon him, and he had no choice; he hurled the broken pipe at the Gil Lockridge face with the strength of panic. The pipe smashed into the moist features with a noise like a hammer whacking a watermelon. The right cheek split open from eye to corner of mouth, and gray fluid dripped out. The face showed no reaction, no pain. But there was a slight smile on the crooked mouth now, and needlelike teeth glinted inside the cavity. The rattling voice said with a hint of pleasure, "I see you speak my language."

There was a ripping sound: the tearing of brittle cloth. Little crackling noises like a hundred bones breaking and rearranging themselves within seconds. Joey Garracone screamed and ran, but Rick and Zarra stood their ground, transfixed with terror. The man's hunched back was swelling, bowing his spine downward; his eyes were riveted to Ortega, who moaned and retreated on trembling legs. The thing's shirt split open, and a bulbous lump rose at the end of the spine. It tore through the pale counterfeit skin and revealed black, interlocking scales similar to those on the pyramid. From its lower end uncoiled a dripping, segmented tail about five feet long and triple the thickness of Zarra's bullwhip; the tail rose into the air with a clicking, bony sound, and at its tip was a football-sized nodule of metallic spikes.

"No," Rick heard himself croak-and the grinning, split-open face ticked toward him. Father Ortega turned to run; he got two strides away before the monster leapt after him. The spiked tail whipped forward in a deadly blur, caught the side of the priest's head, and demolished it in an explosion of bone and brains. Ortega fell to his knees, his face a crimson hole, and slowly, with exquisite grace, toppled into the sand.

The monster whirled around, crouched and ready, the tail flicking back and forth with fragments of Ortega's head clinging to the spikes.

Zarra let out a choked shriek, backed away, and stumbled over a pile of rubble. He went down hard on his tailbone, sat there gaping as the creature took a step toward him. Rick saw automotive parts scattered all around him; there was no time to judge if he should run or not, because in another few seconds that spiked tail would be within range of Zarra. Rick picked up a twisted hubcap and flung it, and as it sailed at the monster's head the tail flicked out almost lazily and knocked the piece of metal aside.

Now Rick had the creature's undivided attention, and as it stalked toward him Rick hefted a car's door from the sand and held it before himself like a shield. "Run!" he shouted to Zarra, who started crawling frantically on his hands and knees. "Go! "

The tail swept at Rick. He tried to dance out of its way, but the thing hit his makeshift shield and threw off a shower of sparks; the impact lifted him off his feet and hurled him onto his back on the ground. His hands still gripped the dented-in car door, which lay on top of him, and as he struggled up, his head ringing, the monster advanced in a crouch and the tail swung again. This time the car's door was ripped away from him and flung through the air. Rick twisted, scurrying toward the unpainted frame of a Jaguar sedan that sat near a pile of rusted metal six feet away. As he flung himself into the doorless and windowless car, he heard the bony rattling of the monster's tail right behind him; he pulled his legs in just as the ball of spikes whammed against the Jaguar's side, making the frame shudder and moan like a funeral bell. He scrambled through the opposite door hole, got his feet under him, and ran.

He didn't know where Zarra was, or if he was heading out of the autoyard or deeper into it. The hanging layers of dark smoke accepted him, and fitful fires glowed red through the gloom. On all sides stood heaps of car parts, cha.s.sis, rows of BMWs, Mercedes, Corvettes, and other high-ticket vehicles awaiting transformation. The place was a maze of metal walls, and Rick didn't know which way to run; he looked over his shoulder; he couldn't see the thing behind him, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. He ran on, his lungs straining for air through the smoke, and in another moment found his way blocked by a steep ridge of sc.r.a.p metal. He turned back, ran past a collapsed building where a dead man in a blue shirt lay sprawled amid the bricks.

Rick stopped below a pile of flattened car bodies, his lungs heaving, to try to get his bearings. He'd never been in here before, the smoke seared his eyes, and he couldn't even think straight. What had happened to Father Ortega seemed unreal, a pull from a bad dose of weed. He was shaking now, his body out of control. He was going to have to start running again, but he feared what might be waiting for him out there in the smoke. He slid his hand into his pocket to grasp the Fang of Jesus. But before he could get his fingers on the switchblade, something dark dropped down like a noose and tightened around his throat.

He knew what it was, because he heard the bony clicking of the tail's segmented joints. The monster was above him, sitting on one of the flattened cars. Rick's heart stuttered, and he felt his face freeze as the blood left it. Then he was being lifted off his feet, the pressure just short of strangling him, and he thrashed until a hand gripped his hair.

"The little girl," the awful, hissing voice said. The thing's mouth was right beside Rick's ear. "Explain."

"I don't... I don't... know. I swear..." His feet were about six inches off the ground. He didn't know anything about a guardian, or a little girl, and he felt the gears of his brain start to smoke and slip. The tail tightened. Rick squeezed his eyes shut.

Maybe five seconds pa.s.sed; to Rick it was an eternity he would never forget. And then the voice said, "I have a message for the one called Ed Vance. I want to meet with him. He knows where. Tell him."

The tail went slack- click click click-and Rick fell to his knees as it released him. At first he could only lie huddled up, waiting for the spikes to smash his head in, unable to move or think or cry for help. But gradually he realized that the thing was going to let him live. He crawled away from it, still expecting a blow at any second, and finally he forced himself to stand. He could sense the thing watching him from its perch, and he dared not turn around to look at it; the slick, bony feel of the tail remained impressed in the flesh of his throat, and he wanted to scrub that skin until it bled. Rick almost broke into a run, but he feared that his legs were too weak and he'd fall on his face. He started walking, retracing the way he thought he'd come; the smoke parted before him and closed at his back. He was dimly aware that his legs were moving on automatic, and in his mind the images of the monster killing Father Ortega and pursuing him through the autoyard darted like a cageful of shadows. He came out of the autoyard about forty yards north of where they'd gone in, and how long that journey had taken he had no idea. He kept walking south along the collapsed fence, and finally he saw Cade's Mercedes sitting in front of him.

Instantly Lockjaw began barking furiously, rearing up in the backseat. Zarra was sitting on the pavement, shivering, his knees drawn up to his chin and both arms clutching the bullwhip to his chest. He looked up, saw Rick, and scrambled to his feet with a grunt of surprise. Mack Cade stood at the edge of the autoyard, the.38 in a white-knuckled grip in his right hand. He whirled around, aiming the pistol at the figure that had just lurched out of the smoke. About fifteen minutes ago, Joey Garracone had raced past him, trailing a scream that had even overpowered Cade's tape deck. Soon afterward, Zarra had come out babbling about something with a tail that had killed Domingo Ortega. "Hold it!" Cade shrieked, his blue eyes wide. "Stop right there!"

Rick did. He wavered, almost fell. "It's me," he said.

"Where's Ortega?" Cade's false cool had cracked like cheap plastic, and underneath it was a little boy's terror. "What happened to the priest, man?" He kept his finger on the trigger.

"Dead. Out there somewhere." Rick motioned with a leaden arm.

"I told you not to go in there!" Cade shouted. "Didn't I? I told you not to, you stupid s.h.i.ts!" He peered into the haze, searching for Typhoid; the dog had raced out there a few minutes ago, barking and growling at something, and hadn't returned. "Typhoid!" he hollered. "Come on back, boy!"

"We've got to tell Vance," Rick said. "It wants to see him."

"Typhoid!" Cade took three steps into the autoyard, but could make himself go no farther. The concertina wire snagged his trousers, and oily beads of sweat rolled down his face. "Typhoid, come on!"

Lockjaw kept barking. Cade prowled along the wire, calling for Typhoid in a voice that began to strain and quaver.

"I said we've got to tell Vance!" Rick repeated. "Right now!"

"I've gotta find my dog!" Cade shouted, his face stricken. "Something's happened to Typhoid!"

"Forget the dog! Father Ortega's dead! We've got to tell the sheriff!"

"I told you not to go in there! I said you were all crazy as h.e.l.l!" Cade felt a weakness falling over him, like a sun in eclipse. The yard and its fortune of cars were reduced to true junk, and in that smoke Cade could smell the burning of syndicate money and his own skin. "Typhoid!" he yelled, his voice rasping.

"Come back!" His voice echoed over the ruins. There was no sign of the Doberman.

"You going to take us to Vance or not?" Rick asked him.

"I can't... leave my friend," Cade said, as something that had been nailed in place for a long time broke inside him. "Typhoid's out there. I can't leave him." He stared at the boy for a few seconds, to make sure he understood, and then Cade said thickly, "You can take the car. I don't give a s.h.i.t." He started walking into the yard, and Lockjaw saw his master going and leapt out of the Mercedes to follow.

"No!" Rick shouted. "Don't!"

Cade went on. He looked back, a terrible smile on his sweat-damp face. "You gotta know who your friends are, kid. Gotta stick up for them. Think on these things." He gave a short, sharp whistle to Lockjaw, and the Doberman walked at his side. Cade began to call for Typhoid again, his voice getting weaker, and the two figures vanished into the haze.

"Get in the car," Rick told Zarra, and the other boy stumbled dazedly toward it. Rick slid behind the wheel, turned the keys in the ignition, and laid rubber in reverse.

33 The Flesh

"Howdy, Noah," Early McNeil said as Tom escorted Noah Twilley into the clinic lab. "Shut the door behind you, if you please."

Twilley blinked in the glare of the emergency lights and looked around. His eyes were used to the funeral chapel's candlelight. In the lab were Sheriff Vance, Jessie Hammond, and a dark-haired man with a crewcut and blood all over his shirt. The dark-haired man was sitting on a stainless-steel table, holding his left wrist. No, Twilley realized in another second; no, that was not the man's hand on his wrist. It was a hand and arm that ended at a mutilated elbow.

"Lord," Twilley whispered.

"Kinda thought you might say that." Early sneaked a grim smile. "I asked Tom to fetch you over 'cause I figured you'd want to see this thing, you bein' on a speakin' acquaintance with bodies and all. Come take a closer look."

Twilley approached the table. The dark-haired man kept his head down, and Twilley saw a syringe lying nearby and realized the man had been sedated. Also on the table, lying in a little plastic tray, was an arrangement of scalpels, probes, and a bone saw. Twilley took one look at the nub of the elbow and said, "That's not bone."

"Nope. Sure as h.e.l.l isn't." Early picked up a probe and tapped what appeared to be a tight coil of flexible, blue-tinged metal that had erupted from the wound. "That's not muscle, either." He indicated the ripped red tissue, which had oozed a spool of gray fluid onto the floor. "But it's pretty close. It is organic, though it's not like anythin' I've ever seen before." He nodded toward a microscope set up on the counter, with a slide that held a smear of the tissue. "Take a gander at it, if you like."

Twilley did, his pale, slender fingers adjusting the lens into focus. "Lord A'mighty!" he said, which was about the strongest language he used. He had seen what all of them already knew: that the muscle tissue was part organic and part tiny metallic fibers.

"Too bad you didn't shoot the head off this s.h.i.tter, Colonel," Early told him. "I sure would like to get a look at the brain."

"You go down in that hole!" Rhodes's voice was a harsh rasp. "Maybe you'll have better luck."

"No thankee." Early picked up a pair of forceps and said, "Doc Jessie, will you shine that light a bit this way, please?"

Jessie clicked on a small penlight and aimed it where the metallic fingernails had pierced the colonel's flesh. One of the fingers had crunched into the face of Rhodes's wrist.w.a.tch and stopped it at four minutes after twelve, about a half hour ago. The colonel's hand had taken on a blue tinge from the pressure. "Well, let's start with this one," Early decided, and started trying to withdraw the little saw blade from the man's flesh.

By the penlight, Jessie could see age spots scattered over the top of the false hand. There was a small white scar on one knuckle-maybe a burn scar, she thought. A knuckle's brush against a hot pan. Whatever had created this mechanism had gotten the texture and color of an elderly woman's flesh down to perfection. On the ring finger was a thin gold band, but strands of the pseudo-skin had grown over and around it, entrapping it as if the thing that had made this replica had a.s.sumed the ring was somehow an organic part of the hand.

"Thing don't want to come out." The finger was resisting Early's forceps. "It's gonna take some skin out of you, Colonel. Hope you don't mind."

"Just do it."

"I told him not to go down there." Vance felt woozy, and he sat on a stool before his legs gave way. Thin creepers of blood had intertwined around Rhodes's wrist. "What the h.e.l.l are we gonna do? "

"Find Daufin," Rhodes said. "She's the only one who knows what we're up against." He flinched and drew a breath as Early pulled the first fingernail loose. "That tunnel... probably goes all the way under the river." He stared at the penlight in Jessie's hand. His brain gears were thawing out, and he remembered the creature protecting its eyes from the flashlight's beam. "The light," he said. "It doesn't like light."

"What?" Tom asked, coming closer to the table.

"It... tried to shield its eyes. I think the light was hurting it."

"That d.a.m.ned thing with Dodge's face didn't mind the light," Vance said. "There were oil lamps hangin' from the ceilin'."

"Right. Oil lamps." Rhodes was getting some of his strength back, but he still couldn't bear to look at the gray hand clamped to his wrist. Early was struggling to extract the second fingernail. "You didn't have a flashlight, did you?"

"No."

"Maybe it's just electric light that hurts it. Firelight and electric light have different spectrums, don't they?"

"Spectrums?" Vance stood up. "What the h.e.l.l's that?"

"A fancy word for the strength of wavelengths in light," Early told him. "Hold still, now." He gripped the forceps hard and jerked the finger's metal saw blade out of Rhodes's skin. "That one just about grazed an artery." The other fingers still held on to Rhodes's wrist like the legs of a spider.

"So maybe the wavelengths in electric light do something to its eyes," Rhodes went on. "It said 'hot,' and it had to tunnel underneath me because it didn't like the light. If it screwed up on the bones and the teeth, maybe it screwed up on the eyes too."

"h.e.l.l, light's just light!" Vance said. "Ain't nothin' in it to hurt anythin'!"

"A bat would disagree with you, Sheriff." Noah Twilley turned toward them from the microscope.

"So would a whole encyclopedia of cave-dwelling rodents, fish, and insects. Our eyes are used to electric light, but it blinds a lot of other species."

"So what are you sayin'? This thing lives in a cave?"

"Maybe not a cave," Rhodes said, "just an environment where there's no electric light. That could be a world full of tunnels, for all we know. From the speed it digs, I'd say Stinger's used to traveling underground."

"But electric lights don't bother Daufin," Jessie reminded him. "All the lights were on in our house before the pyramid came down."

He nodded. "Which goes along with what I think is true: Daufin and Stinger are two different forms of life, from different environments. One transfers itself in and out of a black sphere, and the other travels underground and makes replicants like this one"-he glanced distastefully at the false hand-"so it can move above ground. Maybe it makes copies of life forms on whatever world it lands on. I can't imagine what the process is, but it must be d.a.m.ned fast."

"d.a.m.ned strong too." Early was doing his best to pry the fingers loose with the forceps and a probe.

"Noah, reach in that bottom drawer down there." He motioned to it with a lift of his chin. Noah opened it. "Nothing in here but a bottle of vodka."

"Right. Open it and hand it here. If I can't smoke, I can sure as s.h.i.t drink." He took the bottle, swigged from it, and offered it to Rhodes, who also took a swallow. "Not much, now. We don't want you keelin' over. Doc Jessie, get me some cotton swabs and let's mop up some of this bleedin'."

Early had to ask Tom to take another pair of forceps and help him twist each finger out of Rhodes's flesh. It took the strength of both men, working hard, to do the job. The fingers broke with little metallic cracking sounds, and the hand finally plopped to the table. On Rhodes's wrist was a violet bruise in the shape of a hand and fingers, and he immediately doused his flesh with vodka and scrubbed it with a paper towel, opening up the cuts again. He poured more vodka on it, wincing with the pain, and kept rubbing until the paper towel came apart and Early clutched his shoulder with a pressure that would have made a Brahma bull pay attention.

"Settle down, son," Early said calmly. He took the fragments of paper from Rhodes and tossed them into the wastebasket. "Tom, will you help the colonel to a room down the hall, please? I believe he could do with some rest."

"No." Rhodes waved Tom away. "I'm all right."

"I don't think you are." Early took the penlight from Jessie and used it to examine the man's pupils. Their reaction was sluggish, and Early knew Rhodes was tottering right on the edge of serious shock.

"I'd say you've had kind of a rough night, wouldn't you?"

"I'm all right," Rhodes repeated, pushing the light aside. He could still feel those d.a.m.ned cold fingers on his wrist, and he didn't know if he would ever stop shaking inside. But he had to put up a brave front, no matter what. He stood up, averted his gaze from the false hand. "We've got to find Daufin, and I don't have time to rest." He smelled the blood and acrid juice that had spurted out of the dragonfly. "I'd like to change shirts. This one's had it."

Early grunted, watching the younger man below beetling brows. Rhodes didn't fool him for a second; the colonel was holding himself together with spit and gristle. "I can get you a scrub shirt. How about that?" He walked over to a closet, opened it, and pulled out one of the lightweight sea-green shirts. He tossed it to Rhodes. "They come in two sizes: too small and too large. Try it on."

The shirt was a little too large, but not by much. Rhodes's blood-smeared knit shirt followed the paper towel into the wastebasket.

"I left my mother alone," Noah Twilley explained. "I'd better get back."

"Ought to get yourself and ol' Ruth to a place with electric lights-like here," Early said, motioning toward the emergency floods. "If the colonel's right, that d.a.m.ned Stinger'll stay away from 'em."

"Right. I'll go get her and bring her back." He paused for a moment to jab a probe at the hand that lay palm up, fingers curled like the legs of a dead crab, on the table. The probe touched the center of the palm, and the fingers gripped into a fist, the sudden movement almost shooting all of them-especially Rhodes-out of their shoes. "Reflex action," Noah said, with a sickly half smile, and he tried to pull the probe free but the fingers had locked around it. "I'll go get my mother," he told them as he hurried out of the lab.

"Just what we need: that crazy loudmouth woman runnin' around here," Early groused when Noah was gone. He picked up a towel and wrapped the hand in it, probe and all, and when he was done he took another swig from the vodka bottle.

Someone knocked on the door. Mrs. Santos looked in without waiting for an invitation. "Sheriff, there're two boys here to see you."

"What do they want?"