Stinger Part 32

"You shut up!" Rick looked around, trying to find a Rattler to help him, but the rest of them had already gone; Father LaPrado was herding the remaining thirty or so people out. A car horn began blaring in the distance, getting louder, and Rick knew what that meant: Diego and Pequin had seen something and were racing back. He pushed his way through the door and out to the steps, with Cody and Miranda following.

The Impala had pulled up to the curb, and already people were jamming into it. Others had decided to run, and they were heading north toward the riverbank. Pequin got out of the car just as Rick reached the street. "We saw somethin', man!" Pequin pointed west, and his hand trembled. "Out there, maybe thirty or forty yards!"

"What'd it look like?" Cody asked him.

Pequin shook his head. "I don't know, man. We just saw somethin' movin' out there, and we hauled a.s.s back! It's comin' this way!"

"Rick, I'm ready to go!" Mendoza was behind the wheel of his pickup, with Paloma and his wife in the cab beside him. Eight others were loaded into the truck bed. "Bring your sister!"

"When you go, I go," she told Rick before he could speak. He glanced into the haze to the west, then back to Mendoza. Time was ticking past, and the creature was getting closer. "Take off!" he said. "I'll bring Miranda over myself!" Mendoza nodded, waved a hand, and drove toward the bridge. Diego's car was jammed so full it was dragging the pavement, and the last car was loaded down too. More than eighty people were going north on foot. Diego put the Impala into reverse and it shot backward, throwing sparks off its hanging tailpipe. "Wait for me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Pequin shouted, running after him.

"Hey, Jurado," Cody said quietly, "I think we've got company."

The haze swirled before the thing's approach. They could hear the sc.r.a.pe of metal on concrete. The last car, carrying seven or eight people and a couple hanging to the doors, backfired and sped away. The shape came out of the smoke and lurched into the candlelight that streamed from the church's windows.

49 Stinger's New Toy

Rick laughed. He couldn't help it. All that hurrying to get people evacuated, and what had emerged from the murk was a horse. A palomino, broad-shouldered and muscular, but just a d.a.m.ned horse. It took another clumsy step forward and stopped, tottering as if it had been sipping from a trough laced with whiskey.

"It's a drunk horse!" Rick said. "We were scared s.h.i.tless of a drunk horse!" The thing must've gotten away from somebody's farm or ranch, he figured. Surely this wasn't what had come out of that hole in the street. At least now he and Miranda had a ride across the bridge. The horse was just standing there, staring at them, and Rick thought it might be in shock or something. He started toward it, his hand offered. "Easy, boy, Take it ea-"

"Don't!" Cody gripped his arm. Rick stopped, less than ten feet from the horse. The animal's nostrils flared. Its head strained backward, showing the cords of muscle in its throat, and from the mouth came a noise that mingled a horse's shrill whinny and the hiss of a steam engine. Rick saw what Cody had seen: the horse had silver talons-the claws of a lizard-instead of hooves. His legs were locked. The creature's deep-socketed eyes ticked from Cody to Rick and back again-and then its mouth stretched open, the rows of needles sparkling in the low light, and its spine began to lengthen with the cracking sounds of bones breaking and re-forming. Cody stepped back and b.u.mped into Miranda. She clutched at his shoulder, and behind her the last dozen people to emerge from the church saw the thing in the street and scattered. But the final person to come out stood in the doorway, his backbone straight as an iron bar; he drew a deep breath and started purposefully down the steps.

The creature's body continued to lengthen, muscles thickening into brutal knots under the rippling flesh. Dark pigment threaded through the golden skin, and the bones of its skull popped like gunshots and began to change shape.

Rick retreated to the curb. His heart was beating wildly, but he couldn't run. Not yet. What was being born in front of him held him like a hallucination, a fascinating fever dream. The head was flattening, the lower jaw unhinging and sliding forward as gray drool dripped from the corners of the mouth. The spine bowed upward, the entire body hunched, and with a sound of splitting flesh, a thick, segmented black tail uncoiled from the base of the vertebrae. A wicked cl.u.s.ter of metallic spikes, each one almost six inches long, pushed out of the black wrecking ball at the end of the tail. The monster had doubled its length, the legs splaying out like those of a crab. And now spinier legs, each with three silver talons, were bursting through the skin of its sides. The body settled, its belly grazing the pavement. The flesh was splitting open, revealing a hide of interlocked black scales like the surface of the pyramid, and the thing thrashed as if trying to escape a coc.o.o.n. Flakes of golden skin flew like dead leaves.

Cody had the.38 in his hand. His motorcycle was just beside him, and he knew he should get on and go like a bat out of h.e.l.l, but the spectacle of transformation held him fast. The creature's elongated, knotty skull was now somewhere between that of a horse's and an insect's, the neck squat and powerful, muscles bunching and writhing as the body threw off pieces of dead flesh. It hit him that this was unlike anything he'd ever seen in any sci-fi or Mexican horror flick for one simple and terrible reason: this thing seethed with life. As the old skin ripped away, the creature's movements were no longer clumsy but quick and precise, like those of a scorpion scuttling from the wet dark under a rock. The flesh of its head burst open like a strange fruit and dangled in tatters. Beneath it was a nightmare visage of bone ridges and black scales. The convex eyes of a horse had been sucked inward, and now amber eyes with vertical black pupils gleamed in the armored overhang of the brow. Two more alien eyes emerged from the holes where the horse's nostrils had been, and diamond-shaped vents along the sides of its body gasped and exhaled with a bellows' whoosh.

The monster shrugged off the last sc.r.a.ps of horseflesh. Its narrow body was now almost fifteen feet long, each of its eight legs six feet in length and the ball of spikes quivering another twenty feet in the air. The two sets of eyes moved independently of each other, and as the thing's head turned to follow the flight of a Bordertown resident across First Street toward the river, Rick saw a third set of eye sockets just above the base of the skull.

"Get back," Cody said to Miranda. Said it calmly, as if he saw creatures like this every day of his life. He felt icy inside, and he knew that either he was about to die or he was not. A simple dare of fate. He lifted the.38 and started to squeeze off the four bullets.

But someone walked into the pistol's path. Someone wearing black, and holding up with both hands a staff with a gilt crucifix atop it. Father LaPrado walked past Rick. Rick was too stunned to stop the priest but he'd gotten a look at LaPrado's ashen face and he knew the Great Fried Empty had just swallowed him.

Father LaPrado began shouting in Spanish: "Almighty G.o.d casts you out! Almighty G.o.d and the Holy Spirit sends you back to the pit of h.e.l.l!" He kept going, and Rick took two steps after him, but the quadruple eyes on the creature's skull locked on LaPrado and it rustled forward like a black, breathing locomotive. LaPrado lifted the staff in demented defiance. "I command you in the name of G.o.d to return to the pit!" he shouted. Rick reached for him, about to snag his coat. "I command you! I command-"

There was a banshee shriek. Something whipped past only inches in front of Rick, and the wind of its pa.s.sage whistled around his ears. His hand had blood all over it, and suddenly Father LaPrado was gone. Just gone.

Blood on my shirt, Rick realized. The unreality of a dream cloaked him. He smelled musty copper. Drops of crimson began to shower down on him. And other things and parts of things. A shoe hit the pavement to his left. An arm plopped down on the right, six or seven feet away. The remains of Father LaPrado's body, hurled high and torn to shreds by the ball of spikes, fell to the earth around him. The last thing down was the staff, snapped in two.

The monster's tail, dripping with blood and bits of flesh, lifted up into the air again. Cody saw the thing quiver, about to strike. Rick just stood there, paralyzed. There was no time to weigh the past against the present: Cody started running toward him, got off two shots, and saw a pair of the amber eyes fix on him. The tail hesitated for a vital three seconds, the creature choosing between double targets, then whipped in a vicious sideswipe, the air shrieking around the bony spikes. Cody hit Rick with a bodyblock and knocked him sprawling over the curb, heard the ball of spikes coming, and flattened himself against the b.l.o.o.d.y pavement.

It pa.s.sed less than a foot over him, came back again in a savage blur, but Cody was already twisting away like a worm on a hot plate and the tail struck sparks off the street. The tail was retracted for another slash, and Cody saw Rick sit up, the boy's face splattered with LaPrado's blood. "Run!" Cody shouted. "I'll get Miranda across!" Still Rick didn't respond, but Cody couldn't help him anymore. Miranda was crouched down on the church steps, calling for her brother. Cody got up, took aim at one of the thing's eyes, and fired the last two bullets. The second shot gouted gray fluid from the top of the skull, and the creature made a sharp hissing noise and scuttled backward. Cody sprinted back across the street, zigzagging to throw off the thing's aim. He dropped the pistol, leapt onto the motorcycle's seat. The key was already in the ignition, and Cody yelled "Get on!" to Miranda as he stomped on the starter. The engine racketed, popped, would not catch. The creature started striding forward again, getting within striking range. Cody came down on the starter a second time; the engine backfired, caught and faded, fired up again with a throaty growl. The back of his neck p.r.i.c.kled. He sensed the tail curling up into the air. Cody looked over his shoulder, saw the monster's black head with its underslung jaws full of needles thrusting toward him. And then a figure ran from the right, shouting and waving its arms, and one set of eyes darted at Rick. A foreleg lifted, the silver claws slashing so fast Rick hardly saw it coming. He flung himself backward, the talons streaking past his face. But Miranda was on the motorcycle, clinging tight to Cody's waist. She screamed "Run!" to Rick, and Cody throttled up. The machine shot away from the curb and sped toward Republica Road. Rick scrambled on his hands and knees up over the curb. He heard the slithering of the thing coming after him, the sc.r.a.pe of the talons on the concrete. He got to his feet and ran north, across a yard and in between two houses. And in that narrow s.p.a.ce he stepped on a loose stone and his left foot slid, the ankle twisting with a pain that jabbed all the way to his hipbone. He cried out and fell on his face in the sand and weeds, clutching at his ankle.

The houses on either side of him shuddered and moaned. Boards cracked, plaster dust puffing from the walls. Rick looked back, and saw the dark shape trying to squeeze its body into the s.p.a.ce after him, its strength breaking the houses off their foundations.

Eighty yards away, Cody and Miranda were almost across the bridge when something-a human figure-rose up from the smoke directly in front of them. Cody instinctively hit the brakes, started to swerve the machine aside, but there wasn't enough time. The motorcycle smacked into whoever it was, skidded out of control, and flung both of them off. It crashed into the side of the bridge, the frame bending with a low moan like guitar strings breaking and the front tire flying up into the air. Cody landed on his right side and slid in a fury of friction burns.

He lay curled up and gasping for breath. Fate bit my a.s.s this time, he thought. No, no; must've been the Mumbler, he decided. Old f.u.c.kin' Mumbler just crawled up on the bridge and gave us a whack. Miranda. What had happened to Miranda?

He tried to sit up. Not enough strength yet. There was an awful pain in his left arm, and he thought it might be broken. But he could move the fingers, so that was a good sign. His ribs felt like splintered razors; one or two of them were snapped, for d.a.m.n sure. He wanted to sleep, just close his eyes and let it all go, but Miranda was somewhere nearby-and so was whatever they'd crashed into. Some protector I turned out to be, he thought. Not worth a d.a.m.n. Maybe the old man was right after all. He smelled gasoline. Motor's tank ruptured. And about two seconds later there was a whump! of fire and orange light flickered. Pieces of the Honda clattered down around him and into the Snake River's gulley. He got up on his knees, his lungs. .h.i.tching. Miranda lay on her back about six feet away, her arms and legs splayed like those of a broken doll. He crawled to her. Saw blood on her mouth from a split lower lip and a blue bruise on the side of her face. But she was breathing, and when he spoke her name her eyelids fluttered. He tried to cradle her head, but his fingers found a lump on her skull and he thought he'd better not move her.

Cody heard footsteps-two boots: one clacking, one sliding. He saw someone lurching toward them from the Bordertown side. Rivulets of gasoline had run from the smashed motorcycle, and the figure kept coming through the fire. It was hunchbacked, with a spiked tail, and as it got nearer Cody could see a grin of needles.

Half of Sonny Crowfield's head had caved in. Something that shone like gray pus had leaked through the empty left eye socket, and the imprint of a motorcycle tire lay across the cheek like a crimson tattoo. The body jittered, one leg dragging.

It came on across the streams of flame, the cuffs of its jeans smoking and catching fire. The grin never faltered.

Cody crouched over Miranda. He looked for the nail-studded baseball bat but it was gone. The clacking boot and dragging boot closed in, the hunchbacked body and tail of spikes silhouetted by fire. Cody started to rise; he was dead meat now, and he knew it, but maybe he could get his fingers in that remaining eye and jerk it off its strings. Pain shot through his ribs, stole his breath, and hobbled him. He fell back to his side, wheezing for air.

Stinger reached Miranda. Stood over her, staring down. Then a metal-nailed hand slid over her face. Cody was all used up. There was nothing more. Tears were in his eyes, and he knew Miranda's head was about to be crushed and there was only one chance to save her life. The words were out of him before he could think twice: "I know who you're lookin' for."

The dripping head lifted. The hand remained clasped to Miranda's face. She moaned, still mercifully unconscious, and Stinger gripped her hair with the other hand. "The guardian." The voice was a gurgle of fluids. "Where is she?"

"I... can't..." Cody felt close to a faint. He didn't want to tell, and tears burned his eyes but he saw the fingers tighten on Miranda's face.

"You'll tell me," Stinger said, "or I'll tear this bug's head off."

Lying between the two houses on First Street, Rick hugged the ground and started crawling. The monster couldn't get its body into the s.p.a.ce, and neither would the arm reach Rick. He heard a crash that seemed to shake the earth. Timbers flew around him, and he realized the thing was beating the two houses to pieces with its tail. He struggled up, hobbling on his good leg, as roof shingles and shards of wood exploded like bomb blasts. Ahead was a chest-high chainlink fence and on the other side the river's gulley. He saw fire on the bridge but he had no time to concern himself with what was burning; he clambered over the fence, slid down a slope of red dirt, and lay in the muddy trickle of water. From Bordertown he could hear the crash and shatter of the houses coming apart. In another couple of minutes the creature was going to break through and come across the river. He roused himself, shunting aside the pain in his swollen ankle, and started climbing up the opposite slope toward the rear of the buildings on Cobre Road.

On the bridge barely fifty yards from Rick, Cody Lockett knew his luck-and possibly Daufin's too-had finally run out. Stinger would destroy the town and everyone in it, starting with Miranda. But the fort was protected from Stinger not only by its foundation of bedrock and its armored windows, but by its electric light. Even if he knew where Daufin was, there was still no way he could get to her. Cody sat up, his brain doing a slow roll, and smiled grimly. "She's up there," he said, and pointed to the faint smudge of light. He saw an expression of dismay flicker across the ruined face. "Pretty, huh? Better wear your sungla.s.ses, f.u.c.khead."

Stinger released Miranda. Both hands gripped Cody's throat, and the tail thrashed above the boy's head. "I won't need sungla.s.ses," the gurgling voice replied. The face pressed toward Cody's. "I'm gonna earn my bounty by scoopin' up some live bugs to take on a little trip. I'm real close to findin' her pod too. If she doesn't want to go, that's fine: she can rot in this s.h.i.thole. Comprende? "

Cody didn't answer. The thing's breath smelled like burned plastic. And then it let go of his throat, put an arm around his waist, and lifted him off the concrete as easily as if he were a child. The pain in his rib cage savaged him, brought cold sweat to his pores. Stinger lifted Miranda with the other arm. Cody tried to thrash loose, but the pain and effort were too much. He pa.s.sed out, his hands and legs dangling. Stinger tucked the bodies to his sides and continued walking across the bridge toward Inferno, dragging the malfunctioning leg. He entered a sky-blue house near the intersection of Republica and Cobre roads. The living room had no floor, and Stinger dropped into darkness with his cargo of bugs.

50 High Ground

Ed Vance and Celeste Preston were sharing a third bottle of Lone Star at the Brandin' Iron and waiting for the end of the world when they heard the shriek of tires turning onto Travis Street. Several times in the past fifteen minutes the Brandin' Iron's floor had shuddered, and a stack of plates had crashed down in the kitchen with a noise that had almost shot Sue Mullinax out of her sneakers. The old-timers who'd been sitting at the back had fled, but Vance didn't budge off his seat because he knew there was nowhere to run to.

Now, though, it sounded like a lot of cars were heading north up Travis. Sounded like some of them were banging into each other, they were in such a hurry. Vance got off the counter stool and went out to the street. He could see the headlights and taillights of vehicles roaring along Celeste Street, turning onto Travis, some running up over yards and adding more dust to the thick air. Looked like a ma.s.s exodus, but where the h.e.l.l were they going? He could barely make out the glow of the 'Gade fort, and he figured that was drawing all the cars. They were racing like the devil himself was snapping at their fenders. He realized Celeste had followed him out. "I'd better get up there and find out what's goin' on," he told her. "Seems that'd be a safe place for you too."

"I'm gettin' my a.s.s out of here." She still had hold of the Lone Star bottle, about three swigs left in it, and she dug into her jumpsuit pocket for her Cadillac keys. "Best thing about that big ole house is, it's got one h.e.l.l of a strong bas.e.m.e.nt." She started around to the driver's side, but paused before she slid under the wheel. "Hey, Vance!" she called. "Bas.e.m.e.nt's got a lot of room. Even enough for a fat sumb.i.t.c.h like you."

It was a tempting offer. Maybe it was the beer sloshing in his belly, or maybe the fact that the light wasn't worth a d.a.m.n, but Vance thought at that instant that Celeste Preston was... well... almost pretty. He wanted to go. Wanted to real bad. But this time the monsters of Cortez Park would not win. He said, "I reckon I'll stick here."

"Suit yourself, but I think you've seen High Noon too many times."

"Maybe so." He opened the patrol-car door. "You take care."

"Believe it, pardner." Celeste got into the Cadillac and plugged the key into the ignition. Vance heard a sound like clay plates cracking. Celeste Street seemed to roll like a slow wave, fissures snaking across the concrete. Sections of the street collapsed, and human figures began to crawl out of the holes. Vance made a choking sound.

Something burst up out of the street next to Celeste's Cadillac. She looked into the seamed face of a heavy-set Mexican woman, and the woman's hand darted in through the open window and closed on Celeste's wrist. Celeste stared dumbly at the brown hand, at the saw-blade-edged fingernails digging into her flesh. She had a split second choice of whether to scream or act. She picked up the beer bottle beside her on the seat and smashed it into the creature's face. Gray fluid splattered from the slashed cheek. Then she let the scream go, and as she jerked loose, ribbons of flesh flayed off her arm. The thing reached for her again, but Celeste was already squirming out the pa.s.senger door. The claws ripped across the back of the driver's seat. Celeste tumbled to the curb. The creature hopped nimbly up onto the hood, was about to leap at her-and then Vance shot it point-blank in the head with the Winchester rifle he'd pulled out of the patrol car.

The bullet went through its skull and shattered the windshield; now Vance had the creature's full attention. He put the next bullet between its eyes, the third one knocking its lower jaw out of joint and fountaining broken needles into the air. It made a shrieking noise and jumped off the hood, its spine bowing and the scorpion tail bursting loose. Its arms and legs elongated, mottled with black scales, and before Vance could fire again the thing scrabbled off and dropped into a hole in the street. Another hunched and misshapen replicant, its spiked tail weaving like a cobra's head, rushed out of the smoke at Vance. He had time to see it wore the ooze-wet face of Gil Lockridge and then he started shooting. A bullet ricocheted off the pavement, but the next thunked into the body, staggering the creature, and Vance shot it in the forehead. The tail crashed against the front of Celeste's Cadillac, caving in the radiator grille, but it backed off and retreated. An acidic, sickly-sweet smell was in the air. Vance saw other figures scuttling in the haze, and he ran the four strides to the patrol car, popped out the spent clip of bullets, and shoved a fresh one in. He had two more, each holding six cartridges, and those he jammed into his pocket. A third figure lurched toward him. Vance fired twice at it, didn't know if he did any damage or not but the thing-a scorpion's body with the dark-haired head of a man-hissed and darted away. "Come on!" Vance shouted, his gaze sliding from side to side and his heart slamming. "This is Texas, you sonsofb.i.t.c.hes! We'll kick your a.s.ses!"

But no more of the things rushed him. There were others out there, maybe five or six of them, emerging from the holes like scorpions stirred up from a nest. They were racing toward Travis Street. Oh Jesus, Vance thought. Stinger's found out where Daufin is. There was a crashing sound and the thud of falling bricks. Vance looked to his right, saw the smoke and dust swirling around a shape as long as a train's engine moving along Celeste Street. He caught a glimpse of a ma.s.sive spiked tail, and then it slashed from one side to another and the storefronts exploded as if hit by a demolition ball. The thing's tail swept aside the chainlink fence that surrounded Mack Cade's used-car lot, hit a car, and knocked it onto its side. Then the thing was clambering through the cars like a roach over food crumbs, and as the tail kept smashing cars Vance saw sparks fly. A pickup truck upended and slid into the street. The creature got amid the cars and madly flailed left and right, and there was a hollow boom of gasoline going up, followed by a leap of red flame that let Vance and Celeste see the black, eight-legged body and the narrow head that was a bizarre combination of horse and scorpion. The thing flung cars in all directions, more fires started up and fed on the ruptured gas tanks, and then it continued its progress through the heart of Inferno. Vance grasped Celeste's bleeding arm and pulled her up. Sue Mullinax was standing in the cafe's doorway, her freckled face milky white as she watched the monster coming. Vance saw that it would be on them in seconds, and its tail was battering everything on both sides of the street. "Get inside!" he yelled at her. She backed into the cafe, and Vance pulled Celeste with him through the door. Sue scrambled over the counter, huddling down beside the refrigerator. Vance heard stones crash into the street: a wall toppling. He dropped the rifle, hefted Celeste Preston and shoved her over the counter, and he was climbing over too when the entire front wall of the Brandin' Iron imploded in a storm of white stones and mortar. The patrol car slewed in, smashing chairs and tables out of its path. Three fist-sized pieces of rock slammed into Vance's shoulder and side and knocked him over the counter like a bowling pin.

The roof sagged, the air white with rock dust. Pools of fire burned around the broken oil lamps. The Brandin' Iron's front wall was a gaping cavity. Outside, the creature veered to the right, its tail whipping through the front of the House of Beauty, and then it crawled north along the buckled wreckage of Travis Street. In its wake, five more of the smaller things came up out of holes and followed like scavengers after a shark.

In the Hammonds' house, Scooter was barking fit to bust. Sarge lay on the den floor, his hands covering his head and his body trembling violently. About a minute before, something had hit the wall that faced Celeste Street and the entire house had jumped off its foundations in a shatter of gla.s.s and breaking stone. Sarge sat up, his nostrils stung by dust and his eyes wide and gla.s.sy with the memories of incoming artillery rounds. Scooter was right beside him, still barking furiously. "Hush," Sarge said; his voice was a husky rasp. "Hush, Scooter," he said, and his best friend obeyed. Sarge stood up. The floor had been knocked crooked. He'd gone into the kitchen ten minutes before to raid the refrigerator and had found a pack of wooden Fire Chief matches, and now he struck one of them and followed its light to the front door.

There was no front door. Most of the wall was gone too. Ant.i.tank gun, Sarge thought. Blew a hole clean into the house. He could see the red leap of fires in the direction of Cade's used-car lot. And something else out there, gliding through the smoke and flames. Tiger tank, he thought. No, no. Two or three Tigers. Maybe more. But he couldn't hear the clank of treads, and the thing didn't lumber like a machine. It had the fluid, terrifying power of life.

Celeste Street had broken open. Sarge could see other shapes-human-sized, but hunchbacked things that moved with the quick purpose of ants swarming toward a meal. The match burned his fingers. He shook it out and let it drop, and he retreated from the collapsed wall. Struck another match, because the darkness had claws. Scooter circled his legs, whining nervously. The house was no longer safe; it was laid open like a wound, and at any moment those things in the street might scurry in. Sarge dared not leave the house, but he knew he and Scooter couldn't stand out in the open like sh.e.l.l-shocked fools, either. He backed out of the den and into a hallway. There was a door on his left; he opened it, faced a closet full of boxes, a vacuum cleaner, other odds and ends. It was too narrow for both himself and Scooter. The match went out, and he struck a third one. Panic was eating into him. He remembered a captain's face, the man saying, Always take the high ground. He looked up, lifted the match, and found what he was seeking.

At the hallway's ceiling there was a little recessed square and a cord hanging down about six inches. Sarge reached up, grasped the cord, and pulled it. The square opened, and a folding metal stairway came down. Just as in his own house, there was a small attic. The high ground, Sarge thought. "Go on, Scooter!" he said, and the dog scampered up the steps. Sarge followed. The s.p.a.ce was a little larger than the attic in his house, but still there was just enough room to lie flat on his belly. He got himself turned around, pulled the steps back up, and the attic door clicked shut. The match died. He lay for a moment in the dark. The attic smelled of dust and smoke, but he could breathe all right. Scooter nudged up against him. "Ain't n.o.body can find us here," Sarge whispered.

"n.o.body." He sc.r.a.ped another match along the Fire Chief box and held it up to see what was around them.

He was lying on a mat of pink insulation, and the storage s.p.a.ce was jammed with cardboard boxes. A broken lamp leaned against the eaves, and what appeared to be sleeping bags were rolled up within Sarge's reach. The insulation was already itching his skin. He grasped one of the sleeping bags and pulled it toward him to lie on. He got it spread out, but there was something lumpy in it. Something round, like a baseball.

He reached into it, and his hand found a cool sphere.

The match went out.

51 Scuttle and Sc.r.a.pe

Daufin had seen the red burst of explosions from the center of Inferno, and she knew the time had come. Cars and pickup trucks had careened into the parking lot, people rushing to the safety of the apartment building, and Gunniston had gone to find out what was happening. Jessie, Tom, and Rhodes remained with Daufin, watching as the alien paced back and forth at the window like a desperate animal in a narrowing cage.

"I want my daughter back," Jessie said. "Where is she?"

"Safe. In my pod."

Jessie stepped forward and dared to grasp Daufin's shoulder. The alien stopped her pacing and looked up at the woman's face. "I asked you where she is. You're going to tell me."

Daufin glanced at the others. They were waiting for her to speak, and Daufin knew it was time for that too. "My pod is in your house. I put it through the upper hatch."

"Upper hatch?" Tom asked. "We don't even have an upstairs!"

"Incorrect. I put my pod through the upper hatch of your house."

"We looked through every inch of that place!" Rhodes told her. "The sphere's not there!"

But Jessie searched the child's face, and she remembered the flecks of pink insulation in the auburn hair. "We looked everywhere we thought you could reach. But we didn't check the attic, did we?"

"The attic? That's crazy!" Rhodes said. "She couldn't even walk when we found her! How could she have gotten into the attic?"

Jessie knew. "You'd already learned how to walk by the time we'd gotten there, hadn't you?"

"Yes. I did the teeah-veeah thing." She saw they didn't comprehend. "I playacted," she explained, "because I didn't want you to look through the upper hatch."

"You couldn't have reached the trapdoor by yourself," Jessie said. "What did you stand on?"

"A bodily-support instrument." She realized that hadn't translated as she'd intended. "A chair. I made sure it was back in place, exactly where it had been."

Jessie recalled the little girl pulling the chair to the window and standing up on it to press her hands against the gla.s.s. It had never occurred to her that Daufin could have used a chair once before, to reach the trapdoor's cord. She looked out at the fires and saw they were on Celeste Street, very close to their own house. "How do you know Stevie's safe?"

"My pod is... how do you say... in-de-struc-ti-ble. Nothing can break it open, not even Stinger's technology." Daufin had felt the chill sweep of the seeker beam two minutes before, and she calculated that it made a complete rotation once every four hundred and eighty Earth seconds. "What is the time, please?" she asked Tom.

"Eighteen minutes after three."

She nodded. The seeker beam should return in approximately three hundred and sixty seconds. She began a mental countdown, using the rigid Earth mathematics. "Stinger's searching for my pod with a beam of energy from his ship," she said. "The beam's been activated since Stinger landed. It's powered by a machine that's calculated the measurements and density of my pod, but the pod has a protective mechanism that deflects the beam."

"So Stinger won't be able to find it?" Jessie asked.

"Stinger hasn't found it yet. The beam's still activated." She watched the dance of the fires, and she knew she had to tell them the rest of it. "The beam's very strong. The longer I'm out of the pod, the weaker the defense mechanism becomes." She met Jessie's gaze. "I never thought I'd be out of it this long."

"You mean Stinger's got a good chance of finding out it's in our attic," Tom said.

"I can calculate the odds, if you like."

"No." Jessie didn't care to hear them because they'd be in Stinger's favor, like everything else seemed to be.

Rhodes walked to the window to get a breath of air. The last few cars were barreling into the parking lot. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what those people were running from. He turned toward Daufin.

"You said you could get away in Stinger's ship. How is that possible?"

"I've escaped from Rock Seven twice before. I was hunted and taken back by Stinger both times. I know the ship's systems, and the machines that operate the controls. And I know how to use the star corridor to get home."

"If you got inside, you could find a way to shut off the force field?"

"Yes. The force field comes from the auxiliary power supply. That power is rerouted to start the..."

There were no Earth words to describe the pyramid's flight system. "The main engines," was the best she could do.

"So the force field has to be shut down before the engines can start? How long does that take?"

"A variable amount of time, depending on how much power's been drained. I'd calculate roughly fifteen to twenty of your minutes."

He grunted, trying to clear his mind enough to think. "Sun'll be coming up in about an hour and a half. There're probably several hundred state troopers, air-force people, and reporters around the force field's perimeter by now." A faint smile touched his mouth. "I'll bet old Buckner's in charge. Bet that b.a.s.t.a.r.d's going crazy trying to keep the news hounds from taking pictures. What the h.e.l.l: this'll be all over the newspapers and TV within twelve hours and there's not a d.a.m.ned thing anybody can do about it." The smile faded. "If the force field was down, we'd have a chance to get out of here with our skins still on." He lifted his arm and looked at the bruise in the shape of a hand imprinted around it. "Most of us, I mean. I want you to think hard: is there any way to get into that ship?"

"Yes," she answered promptly. "Through Stinger's tunnels."

"I mean another way." The mention of those tunnels had sent a dagger of fear into Rhodes's heart.