Stinger Part 29

She started to answer, but could not. She was a tough old bird, and she hadn't cried for a long time. There were tears in her eyes now, and her throat had constricted. Tyler eased an arm around her. "Kind of a pretty light, though," he said. "If you like purple."

"I hate it," she managed.

"Can't say I cotton to it much, either." His voice was soft, but he was mulling over some hard questions. He didn't know how they would come, or when, but he didn't mean to give up without one h.e.l.l of a fight. He was going to drill as many as he could, and go down fighting like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. But the worst question gnawed at him: should he save a bullet for Bess, or not?

He was thinking about it, his gaze on the road, when he heard a woman scream. He looked at Bess. They stared at each other for a second. The woman's scream came again. They both realized what it was at the same time. Not the scream of a woman, but the shrieking of Sweetpea, back in the barn.

"Get a flashlight! Hurry!" he told her, and as she ran inside he sprinted on his wiry legs off the porch and around the house. The barn was about thirty yards back, next to Bess's cactus garden. He heard the frantic thump of Sweetpea's hooves. .h.i.tting the sides of his stall, and Tyler's palms were wet around the rifle. Something was at the horse.

He threw back the crossbeam and hauled the doors open. Everything was as dark as sin in there. The big palomino was still screaming, about to bash the boards loose. Tyler shouted, "Whoa there, Sweetpea! Settle down, boy!" but the horse was going wild.

Tyler's first thought was that a sidewinder or scorpion must've gotten into the stall-but suddenly there was a cracking noise and the barn's floor shook under his boots. Sweetpea grunted as if he had been kicked in the belly. There followed a thrashing, panicked sound coupled with Sweetpea's high screams. Tyler looked over his shoulder, saw Bess running with a flashlight's beam spearing ahead. She gave it to him, and he aimed it at the horse's stall. The palomino was sunk up to his flanks in the sandy earth, broken floorboards jutting up around him. Sweetpea's eyes were red with terror, and foam snorted from his nostrils as he fought. His hind legs had disappeared into the hole, the front legs pawing at the air. Muscles rippled along his body as he tried to tear loose from whatever was pulling him through the barn floor. Tyler gasped, the sense knocked out of him. The horse sank another two feet, and the barn echoed with Sweetpea's cries.

"The rope!" Bess shouted, and reached for the lariat coiled near the door. There was a slipknot already on it, and she widened the noose, swung the rope twice around to play it out, and let fly for Sweetpea's head. Her aim was off by six inches, and she quickly reeled it back to try again as the horse was jerked down to his shoulders in a spray of sand.

On the next attempt, the rope slipped over Sweetpea's skull and tightened around the base of the neck. The rope pulled taut between them, started smoking a raw groove through Bess's hands. Tyler dropped the rifle, wedged the flashlight into the joint of two beams, and grabbed the rope, but both he and Bess were wrenched off their feet and dragged across the splintery floor. Sweetpea disappeared into the earth up to his throat.

Tyler struggled up, the rope entwined around his hands and his shoulder muscles popping. He planted his boots and fought it, his fingers turning blue, but he was being pulled steadily toward the stall. Now only Sweetpea's muzzle was still visible, and the sand was starting to slide over it.

"No!" Tyler yelled, and heaved backward on the rope so hard the raw flesh of his fingers split open like blood-gorged sausages. The sand eddied around like a whirlpool, there was a last feeble thrashing, and Sweetpea was gone.

But the rope continued to be drawn downward by a tremendous strength. Bess grabbed her husband's waist, and they went to the floor again. "Let go!" Bess screamed, and Tyler opened his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers but the rope was tangled around his hands.

Bess held on, splinters piercing her arms and legs. Tyler was trying to shake the rope loose, and they were almost pulled under the railing into Sweetpea's stall before he felt the tension go slack. Tyler lay on his belly, tears of pain crawling down his cheeks. Bess rolled over on her side, softly moaning.

He sat up, forced his hands to close around the rope and started pulling it from the depths. "Bess, bring the light," he told her, and she silently went to get it. The rope came up, foot after foot. Bess retrieved the flashlight. Its bulb had dimmed, in need of a fresh battery. She pointed it toward the empty stall.

Tyler walked into the stall, continuing to draw the rope up. It was wet, and glistened in the murky light. Everything was dreamlike to him, this couldn't possibly be real, and in a minute or so he would awaken to Bess's call that breakfast was on the table. He sank to his knees beside the broken floorboards and watched the rope slither from the sand.

Its other end emerged. Tyler picked it up. Held it toward the light. Strands of thick gray ooze dripped from the ragged edge.

"Looks like... it's been sawed clean through," he said.

And a shape came corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up in a whirl of sand, so fast Tyler had no time to react. A pair of jaws opened. Silver-blue needles snapped shut on Tyler's throat. The flat, reptilian head flailed viciously from side to side, the needle teeth ripping through tissue and arteries. Tyler's mouth filled with blood. He realized that the rope had not been sawed; it had been chewed.

That was his last thought, because with the next savage twist the creature broke his neck. It kept twisting, and Tyler's head with its bulging, sightless eyes began to crack from the spinal column. Bess screamed, dropped the flashlight as her hands pressed to her mouth. She saw what the creature was: a large dog-a Doberman concocted from a madman's nightmare. Instead of hair, its hide was covered with leathery, interlocking scales, and beneath it the knots of muscle bunched and rippled. Its amber eyes found her. The thing gave Tyler's neck one last ferocious shake and began to stretch its jaws impossibly wide, like the unhinging jaws of a snake. It flung the dead man aside. Bess backpedaled, tripped, and fell on her tailbone. The monster scrabbled up over the top board of Sweetpea's stall, dropped to the floor, and advanced on her, its mouth trailing Tyler's blood. The Winchester had tripped her up. Her legs were lying across it. She swung the rifle up and started shooting at the approaching shape. One bullet furrowed across its skull, a second entered its shoulder, a third slammed into its ribs. But then it was upon her, and its mouthful of needles clamped shut on her face.

She kept fighting. Her finger continued to spasm on the Winchester's trigger, sending bullets through the walls while the other fist beat at the thing's scaly hide. She was a Texas woman, and she didn't give up easily.

The issue was settled in another five seconds. Bess's skull broke with a noise like that of a clay jar cracking, and rows of needle teeth sawed into her brain.

Blood ran through the hay. The monster released the crushed ma.s.s and turned upon the flashlight, tearing it to pieces with teeth and metal-nailed claws. Then it crouched in the darkness, belly to the floor, and listened eagerly for the sounds of any other humans nearby; there were none, and the thing gave a low grunt of what might have been disappointment. It climbed back into Sweetpea's stall and began to dig down through the sand where the horse had gone. The monster's front and hind legs moved in a blur of synchronized power, and in another moment it had burrowed into the earth and the sand shifted over it like a whisper.

44 Through the Inner Eye

"Don't be afraid," Daufin said. "Seal your external visualizers."

"Huh?" Tom asked.

"Close your eyes."

He did. And promptly opened them again. "Is this... going to hurt?"

"Only me, because I'll see my home again."

"What are you going to do?" Jessie's arm was tight, ready to pull away.

"I'm going to take you on a journey, backward through the inner eye. I want to answer your questions about why I'm called a criminal. These things can't be told; they must be experienced."

"Wow!" Nasty stepped forward, the light sparkling off the bits of golden glitter in her Mohawk. "Can I... like... go with you?"

"I'm sorry, no," Daufin said. "There's only room for two." She caught Nasty's wistful expression.

"Maybe some other time. Close your eyes," she repeated to Tom and Jessie, and they did. Cody came closer to watch, and his heart was beating hard but he didn't have a clue as to what was about to happen.

Daufin's eyes shut. She waited, as the energy cells of her memory began to charge like complex batteries.

Jessie feared that Stevie's body temperature was getting too high, and that the heat would damage her brain and organs. But Daufin had said that Stevie was safe, and she had to trust this creature or she would lose her mind. Still, the hand she held continued to heat up; Stevie's body could tolerate such a fever for more than a few minutes without breaking down.

Tom said, "I feel like we're getting ready to go play hide-and-see... d.a.m.n! " He jumped, because what had seemed like a thunderbolt had snapped along his spine. He opened his eyes but the light was a brutal shock, with a hard yellow-green underglow, and he shut them again.

"Tom? What is it?" Jessie asked. To him her voice was a slow, underwater slur, and he thought, My brain's getting scrambled.

"Silence," Daufin whispered, and in her voice chimes echoed. Jessie kept her eyes closed, waiting for she didn't know what. Though the hand she held seethed with heat, cold currents were beginning to run through her arm and up her shoulder; an electrical power being generated within Stevie's body, steadily gaining strength and entering Jessie through the connection of flesh.

The cold pulse had entered Tom's bones too, and he shivered. He thought he could no longer feel the floor beneath his feet; he seemed to be drifting, his body slowly skewing to right and left, held only by Daufin's grip. "What's happen-" He stopped speaking, because the harshness of his own voice, the alien quality of it, terrified him.

Jessie had heard a hoa.r.s.e grunt that may have been the semblance of a human voice. The cold had enfolded her, from scalp to toes, like a breeze from the Ice House on a blistering July day. Another sensation was coming upon her: movement at a tremendous speed. She thought that if she could force her eyelids up, she might see the atoms in the wall in motion like patterns of static on a television screen and her own body moving so fast it found an opening between them and slipped through. There was no panic, only exhilaration. It was what she thought a night sky-dive might be like, freefalling through darkness except there was no up or down-just out, beyond what she knew of life. Something glinted on her left, on her right, above and below. Blurred points and cl.u.s.ters of light pa.s.sing at incredible velocity. But her eyes were still closed-or at least she sensed they were. Stars, she realized. My G.o.d... I'm in the middle of a universe!

Tom had seen them too. Constellations wheeled across the heavens, ringed worlds luminous with distant sunlight, gas clouds rippling like the wings of manta rays. And then they were almost upon it: a world as white as a pearl, surrounded by six white moons that crossed each other's...o...b..t with unerring precision. The planet loomed before them, citadels of clouds covering its surface and in their midst storms spinning with silent ferocity. Too fast! Jessie thought as the clouds came up at her. Too fast! We're going to- They pierced the clouds, descending through whirlwinds. A smell of ammonia filled Jessie's nostrils. There was another breath-stealing shock of cold, followed by utter darkness. They were still traveling at high speed, slanting downward. Warmth touched Tom and Jessie, chasing away the cold. The darkness lightened to royal blue, then a rich, aquatic blue-green. Silken liquid pressed at Tom's face, and claustrophobia gripped him. We're going to drown! he thought, and tried to pull free from Daufin's hand but her grip strengthened, would not release him. He wanted to thrash loose and get to the surface, but he realized he was still breathing just fine. We're not really in an alien ocean, he told himself as they continued down. This is a dream... we're still standing in the apartment building, back in Inferno...

With an effort, he twisted his head to look at Daufin for rea.s.surance. He was no longer holding the hand of a little girl.

The hand was ghostly gray, as transparent as mist, with two slender fingers and a short, flattened thumb. It was a small thing that looked as fragile as blown gla.s.s, and attached to that hand was a stalk that trailed four or five feet to Daufin's real form.

Beside Tom in the gliding aquamarine was a body shaped like a torpedo, perhaps eight feet in length and full of iridescence like trapped stars. More stalks-tough, tentaclelike arms-drifted with the motion of the liquid around them, each with a similar two-fingered, single-thumbed hand. The body ended in a thick flat paddle of muscle that effortlessly propelled them onward, and attached to a protrusion just short of the tail was a silver filament that linked the body with its small black sphere. Electrical energy sparked through Daufin's translucent flesh. Organs were visible in there, anch.o.r.ed by a simple framework of gray cartilage. Tom looked at where he thought Daufin's head should be, and saw a curved k.n.o.b with a sickle-shaped mouth and a trunklike appendage about two feet long. He could see one of the eyes: a yellow orb the size of a baseball, with a vertical green pupil. The eye c.o.c.ked in his direction. There was peace in its gaze, a languid power. The head nodded, and Tom inhaled sharply at the sign of recognition; air filled his lungs instead of liquid. The ghostly, electric-charged fingers squeezed his hand, and another arm drifted up and touched Tom's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. Daufin took them deeper. Warm currents slid around their bodies and the light was growing stronger, as if this planet's sun lay at its center.

Rising up from the depths like flickers of moving neon were more of Daufin's tribe. Jessie recoiled, felt Daufin's strong grip, and then she looked and saw Daufin as Tom had. Her first impulse was to pull away from the spindly hand, but she checked it. Of course Daufin was a different form; what else could she have expected? Daufin was a creature designed for an oceanic world, even though the "ocean" might be composed of ammonia and nitrogen.

The other creatures propelled themselves in joyous spirals, leaving phosph.o.r.escent wakes and their pods weaving at the ends of the tethers. They were oblivious to the human presence, but both Tom and Jessie knew that this was Daufin's memory-her inner eye-and they were only visitors here, the alien ghosts of the future. Hundreds of the creatures made a formation around Daufin, sailing with the precise movements of birds through untroubled air, and Jessie realized Daufin must be a leader of some kind to merit such an escort.

Now the impressions of Daufin's world, filtered through her inner eye, came in rapid succession to Jessie and Tom: shimmering outlines of Everest-sized mountains and deep valleys between them, huge orchards where rows of kelplike vegetation were tended, creva.s.ses showing cracks of fierce white glare-a glimpse into the immense power source that lay at the heart of this world. The vermiform towers of a city-sloping, curved, and ridged shapes that resembled the intricacies of seash.e.l.ls-stood beyond the mountains, and thousands of Daufin's tribe moved in currents above their walls. Time shifted, or Daufin's memory skipped tracks. In a valley below was a miles-long chasm of white fire that shot up whiplashes of electricity. The tides had changed too; they were no longer gentle, but swirled with restless energy. Daufin began to roll over and over, still gripping Tom and Jessie, and underneath what might have been the throat a series of small gill-like flaps vibrated; from them issued a compelling chiming sound.

In response came Daufin's tribe, struggling against the currents. They rolled like Daufin, and from the underside of their bodies emerged round pink nipples. Other shapes, also summoned by Daufin's song, rose from the valley's chasm; they were disk-shaped creatures, blue electrical impulses sparkling around their rims and at their centers a knot of pulsing fire. As Daufin's song continued, the new creatures began to attach themselves to the pink underbelly nipples. Dark fluids jetted, shimmering with iridescence. Wheels of creatures danced, rose, and fell in the turbulence. Three of them fixed to nipples on Daufin's belly, spasmed, and spun away like dead leaves. It was a ma.s.s mating ritual, Jessie realized; a ballet of life and death.

Another blink of time. Something was approaching from beyond. Something alien, and horribly cold. It arrowed through the sea with a chatter of circuits, expelled a black harpoon, and sped downward into the valley of fire. More came, following the first. The new arrivals were connected to long clear hoses that snaked up to the surface. Machinery began to grind and pumps hissed, and through the hoses were drawn hundreds of the disk-shaped creatures that lived at the center of Daufin's world. Down came more dark spears, more greedy hoses. The brutal harvest continued, suctioning up seed-giving creatures older than time itself, that were a vital part of the planet's power source. When the wild currents called Daufin and she sang again, there weren't enough seed-givers to impregnate even half the tribe; they were being harvested faster than the unknown creation processes of the planet could produce them.

Daufin's inner eye revealed the first stirrings of fear, and with them the knowledge of balances in decay. And now a clear sign of crisis: the planet's central fires dimming, the great engine of light and warmth wearing itself out as it tried to manufacture more seed-givers to replace those being lost. Tom and Jessie saw the image of a peace mission-four of Daufin's tribe swimming the long distance to the surface, to communicate to the aliens above why the harvesting must stop. Time pa.s.sed, and they did not return.

Death had come. Daufin swam with her new calf amid the forest of hoses; her study of mathematics, used in the building of the tribe's cities, would allow her to calculate the time remaining from the number of seed-givers being suctioned up a single hose, but that was a statistic she didn't wish to know. The orchards, the city, the entire tribe-all had been sentenced to death by a cold executioner. The calf played innocently between the hoses, unaware of the terrible reality-and the sight of that blind innocence amid the carnage cracked something within Daufin, made her thrash and wail with anguish. Aggression was evil, buried in the long-ago legends of a war that had evolved the tether and sphere as part of the tribe's natural defenses, but a chasm of fire had opened within Daufin and wild tides summoned her. Her wail became a song of rage, like the urgent tolling of alarm bells-and then her body hurtled forward, and her fingers gripped the nearest hose. Too strong to tear, which further enraged her. The sickle-slash mouth opened, and the flat teeth of a vegetarian clamped on the hose and ground into it. A shock of agony and shame coursed through her, but the song of rage powered her on; the hose ripped, and seed-givers spilled out, whirled around her, began to drift downward again into the valley. The next hose was easier, and the one after that easier still. A storm of seed-givers flowed from the tears. And through that storm Daufin saw two of the tribe, hovering, watching with a mixture of horror and reawakened purpose. They hesitated, on the verge of sacrilege, and as Daufin's song rose in intensity they propelled themselves forward and joined her task.

A dark cloud approached from the city. Adrift in the inner eye, Tom and Jessie saw it just as Daufin had: thousands of the tribe, responding to this almost-forgotten song. Many saw the violence and stayed back, unable to give themselves to aggression, but many more attacked the hoses in a frenzy. A timeshift: more machines and hoses streaked down from the surface, harpooning into the planet's heart, but swarms of Daufin's tribe followed as she sang-a turbulence of rage as raw as a scream. Finally, the battleground lay silent, and broken hoses drifted in the current. But the peace was short, the nightmare just beginning. A blink of the inner eye, and Tom and Jessie felt a vibration in their bones. From the surface's darkness descended four rotating metallic spheres; they roamed over the city, issuing sonic blasts like Earth thunder magnified a millionfold. The walls and towers shivered and cracked, shock waves destroyed the towers, the city crumpled, and the bodies of dead and wounded spun in the debris. Daufin's calf was torn away from her; she reached for it, missed, saw the calf instinctively withdraw into its lifepod in a shimmer of contracting organs and flesh. The pod sailed away, mingling with hundreds of others buffeted in the savage tides. A piece of jagged wall flew out of the murk at Daufin. There was a crackling of energy, a shrinking of flesh and internals, the skin turned to smoke, the organs merged into a small ball of electrical impulses, and in the next instant there was nothing but the black sphere, hitting the fragment of wall and ricocheting away. A current took them-Daufin, Tom, and Jessie, bodiless and floating in an armored sh.e.l.l-and the darkness closed in. There was a rapid ascent, as if they were being hurled upward in an Earth tornado. Something glimmered ahead: a blue webbing-a net, full of entrapped creatures from the upper regions, things that resembled fluorescent starfish, flat gasping membranes, and aquatics with eyes like golden lamps. The sphere hit it, was enfolded in the webbing. And hung there, along with the other helpless life. A thudding of machinery came from above. The net was being hauled up. The sphere broke the surface like a sheet of black gla.s.s, and in that realm between the ocean and the low white clouds spidery structures squatted like malignant growths. Nightmarish figures stood on them, watching the net come up. One of them reached out a talon, and gripped the pod.

Daufin's inner eye cringed. The power of memory was not strong enough to hold her, and she fled. Stars swept past Jessie and Tom-an outward journey, away from Daufin's world. Each had glimpses of hallucinatory scenes: ma.s.sive, scuttling creatures with voices like doomsday trumpets; s.p.a.ce machines bristling with weapons; a gargantuan pyramid with mottled yellow skin and two scarlet suns beating down on a tortured landscape; a floating cage and amber needles that punctured the pupils of Daufin's eyes.

She moaned, and her hands opened.

Tom and Jessie were grasped by an abrupt deceleration, as if they were aboard a high-speed elevator shrieking to the bottom of a mile-long shaft. Their insides seemed to squeeze with compression, their bones bending under gravity's iron weight. And then the stop came: a whisper instead of a crash. Tom lifted his eyelids. Three monsters with bony limbs and grotesque fleshy heads were standing before him. One of them opened a cavity full of blunt little nubs and grunted, "Yu-hoke, Mstyr Hamynd?"

Jessie heard the guttural growl, and her eyes opened too. She was supported on unsteady stalks, the light was glary and hostile; she was about to topple, and as she cried out the sound daggered her brain. One of the aliens, a thing with a horrid angular face topped with coiled pale sprigs and a totem of some kind dangling from a flap on the side of its head, moved forward and caught her with snaky arms. She blinked, momentarily stunned. But the creature's face was changing, becoming less monstrous. Features-hair, ears, and arms-became familiar again, and then she could recognize Cody Lockett. Relief rushed through her, and her knees sagged.

"I've got you," Cody said. This time she could understand the words. Tom wavered on his feet, his palms pressed to his eye sockets. "You okay, Mr. Hammond?" Tank asked again. Tom's brain ached as if deeply bruised. He managed to nod. "If you're gonna puke, you'd better do it out the window," the boy advised.

Tom lowered his hands. He squinted in the light and looked at the three Renegades; their faces were human again-or, in Tank's case, nearly so.

"I can stand by myself," Jessie said, and when Cody let her go, she sank wearily to her knees. She didn't know if all of herself had returned from the void yet, and maybe it never would. Cody offered to help her up, but she waved him off. "I'm all right. Just leave me alone for a minute." She looked to her side, into the face of her little girl.

Tears had streamed down the cheeks. The eyes were tormented. "Now you know me," Daufin said. Tom lifted his left wrist, had a few seconds of difficulty in deciphering the numerals, as if he'd never seen such symbols before. It was two-nineteen. Their "journey" had taken less than three minutes.

"You two look sick! " Nasty observed. "What happened?"

"We got an education." Jessie tried to rise, but still wasn't ready. "The chemical," she said to Daufin.

"It's reproductive fluid, isn't it?"

"Yes." Daufin's gaze was impa.s.sive, and a final tear trickled slowly down her left cheek. "What the House of Fists calls 'poison' is the same chemical that gives my tribe life."

Jessie remembered the jetting of dark fluid during the mating ritual. The same chemical vital to the reproduction process on Daufin's world was a weapon of destruction for the House of Fists.

"I have to get home," Daufin said firmly. "I don't know how many are still alive. I don't know if my own child still is. But I led them. Without me, they won't fight. They'll slip back into the dream of peace."

She drew a long breath, and for a few seconds she allowed herself to feel the caress of the tides again, rising and falling. "It was a dream that lasted too long," she said, "but it was a wonderful dream."

"Even if you could get home, how would you fight them? They'd just keep coming, wouldn't they?"

"Yes, they would, but our world is a long way from theirs. We have to stop them from building a permanent base, and destroy everything of theirs we can. Their treasury isn't bottomless; they spend all they have on weapons. So there has to be a breaking point beyond which they can't go."

"That sounds like wishful thinking," Tom said.

"It is, unless I can get home to act on it. We know the planet. They don't. We can strike and hide in places they can't reach." Her eyes shone with a glint of steel again. "The House of Fists has been studying me to find out why my body resists the 'poison.' I've escaped Rock Seven before. This time they'll kill me. I can't give myself to Stinger-not yet. Do you understand that?"

"We do. Colonel Rhodes might not." Another glance at the wrist.w.a.tch. "Jessie, he's going to be waiting for us by now at the Brandin' Iron."

"Listen, I don't get all this," Cody said, "but I believe one thing for sure: if we let Stinger take Daufin and leave here, that won't be the end of it. Like she said, he'll send those House of Fist sumb.i.t.c.hes after us-and that won't be just Inferno in deep s.h.i.t, man! That'll be the whole world!"

"Maybe so, but we've still got to let Rhodes know we've found her."

"Tom's right," Jessie agreed. She stood up, still felt light-headed and stretched, and she had to lean against the table for support. "We'll go get the colonel and bring him back here," she said to Daufin. "He can help us figure out what to do."

"You two better stay here with her." Cody fished the Honda's keys out of his pocket. "I'll go down to the Brandin' Iron and get him."

"Yeah, and I've gotta go find my folks," Tank said. His camouflage-painted pickup truck, one headlight and the radiator grille smashed from its rude entry into the Warp Room, was in the parking lot.

"I ain't seen 'em since I left the clinic."

"Just stay in here and hang tight," Cody told Tom and Jessie. He left the apartment, and Nasty followed Tank to the door. She paused, looked at Daufin with something like admiration, and said, "Bizarre! " Then she strode after Tank, and the door closed behind her.

45 Spit 'n Gristle

Vance parked the patrol car in front of the Brandin' Iron, peeled his sweat-sopped shirt off the seat back, and walked in. The plate-gla.s.s window had been shattered, but a sheet had been nailed up over it to keep most of the smoke out. A few kerosene lamps cast a fitful glow, and the place was empty except for a back booth where three old-timers sat talking quietly. Vance avoided their stares and bellied up to the counter. Sue Mullinax, still wearing her gold-colored waitress uniform and her heavy makeup still more or less where it ought to be, came down the counter with a cup about a quarter full of cold coffee.

"This is the last of the Java," she said as she gave it to him, and he nodded and swigged it down. He angled his wrist toward a nearby lamp and checked the time. Twenty-three minutes after two. The Hammonds were late, and so were Rhodes and Gunniston. Didn't matter much, he thought. n.o.body was going to find that little critter, at least not in the time they had left. You couldn't see a thing for all that smoke out there. He and Danny had checked houses all along Aurora, Bowden, and about a third of Oakley Street. n.o.body had seen the little girl, and several of the houses had no floors, just holes into darkness. Danny had started going to pieces again, and Vance had to take him back to the office. Inferno had always seemed like such a small place, but now the streets had elongated and the houses had become shadow mansions, and with all this smoke and dust there was just no d.a.m.ned way to find somebody who didn't want to be found.

"Rough night," Sue said.

"Better believe it. Cecil gone home?"

"Yeah, he lit out awhile back."

"Why don't you shut down and head out too? Not much use stayin' open, is there?"

"I like to have somethin' to do," she said. "Better stay here than go to a dark house."

"Reckon so." The low light was flattering to her. He thought that if she didn't wear enough makeup to pave a road, she'd be real pretty. 'Course, Whale Tail was as chunky as a fire plug, but who was he to consider size with all the spare tires he was trucking around? Maybe she did wear a mattress on her back, but maybe there was a reason for that too. "How come you never left Inferno?" he decided to ask, to keep his mind off the inexorable tick of time. "Seems like you were real smart in high school and all."

"I don't know." She shrugged her fleshy shoulders. "Nothin' ever came along, I reckon."

"h.e.l.l, you can't wait for things to come along! You gotta go after 'em! Seems like you could've found yourself a good job somewhere, got yourself hitched up, maybe have a houseful of kids by now."

He upturned the cup and caught the last bitter drop of coffee.

"Just never happened. Anyways"-she smiled faintly, a sad smile-"the men I've been seein' don't exactly want to get married and have kids. Well, I probably wouldn't have been too good at that, either."

"You're still just a kid yourself! What are you, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?" He saw her grimace.

"That's not old! h.e.l.l, you've still got"-his voice faltered, but he kept going-"plenty of time yet."

She didn't answer. Vance looked at his watch again. Another minute had gone. "Danny's sweet on you," he told her. "You know that, don't you?"

"I like Danny. Oh, I don't mean for marryin'. Not even for... y'know." A blush rose in her round cheeks.