"Yeah, but can you win me a goddam Nobel Prize for Literature?"
Johnny slipped the bags of ANFO off his neck, then yanked the hammer from his belt. He'd have to work fast. He was cut in what felt like a billion places, and already he could feel the grayness of blood-loss crowding in on his mind. It made him think of Connecticut again, and the way the fogs came in after dark during the last weeks of March and the first weeks of April. The oldtimers called it strawberry spring, God knew why.
"Yes! Yes, I can do that!" The voice from the narrow red throat sounded eager. It also sounded frightened. "Anything! Success ... money ... women ... and I can heal you, don't forget that! I can heal you!"
"Can you bring David's father back?"
Silence from the ini. Now the brownish-black mist coming out of the hole found the long confusion of slashes along his back and legs, and suddenly he felt as if he had been attacked by moray eels ... or piranhas. He screamed.
"I can make the pain stop!" Tak said from its tiny hole. "All you have to do is ask--and stop yourself, of course."
With sweat stinging his eyes, Johnny used the claw end of the hammer to tear open one of the ANFO bags. He tilted the slit over the tiny hole, spread the cloth, and poured through one cupped, bloody hand. The red light was obliterated at once, as if the thing down there feared it might inadvertently set off the charge itself.
"You can't!" it screamed, its voice muffled now--but Johnny heard it clearly enough in his head, just the same. "You can't, damn you! An lah! An lah! Os dam! You bastard!"
An lah yourself, Johnny thought. And a big fat can de lach in the bargain.
The first bag was empty. Johnny could see dim whiteness in the hole where there had been only black and pulsing red before. The gullet leading back to Tak's world ... or plane ... or dimension ... wasn't that long, then. Not in physical terms of measurement. And was the pain in his back and legs less?
Maybe I've just gone numb, he thought. Not a new state for me, actually.
He grabbed the second bag of ANFO and saw one entire side of it was sopped through with his blood. He felt a growing weakness to go along with the fog in his head. Had to be quick now. Had to go like the wind.
He tore open the second bag with the hammer's claw, trying to steel himself against the shrieks in his head; Tak had lapsed entirely into that other language now.
He turned the bag over the hole and watched ANFO pellets pour out. The whiteness grew brighter as the gullet filled. By the time the bag was empty, the top layer of pellets was only three inches or so down.
Just room enough, Johnny thought.
He became aware that a stillness had fallen here in the well, and in the an tak above; there was only that faint whispering, which could have been the calling of ghosts that had been penned up in here ever since the twenty-first of September, 1859.
If so, he intended to give them their parole.
He fumbled in the pocket of his chaps for what seemed an age, fighting the fog that wanted to blur his thoughts, fighting his own growing weakness. At last his fingers touched something, slipped away, came back, touched it again, grasped it, brought it out.
A fat green shotgun shell.
Johnny slipped it into the eyehole at the bottom of the ini, and wasn't surprised to find it was a perfect fit, its blunt circular top seated firmly against the ANFO pellets.
"You're primed, you bastard," he croaked.
No, a voice whispered in his head. No, you dare not. Johnny looked at the brass circlet plugging the hole at the bottom of the ini. He gripped the handle of the hammer, his strength flagging badly now, and thought of what the cop had told him just before he stuck him in the back of the cruiser. You're a sorry excuse for a writer, the cop had said. You're a sorry excuse for a man, too.
Johnny shoved the helmet off with the heel of his free left hand. He was laughing again as he raised the hammer high above his head, and laughing as he brought it down squarely on the base of the shell.
"GOD FORGIVE ME, I HATE CRITICS!"
He had one fraction of a moment to wonder if he had succeeded, and then the question was answered in a bloom of brilliant, soundless red. It was like swooning into a rose.
Johnny Marinville let himself fall, and his last thoughts were of David--had David gotten out, had David gotten clear, was he all right now, would he be all right later.
Excused early, Johnny thought, and then that was gone, too.
PART V
HIGHWAY 50: EXCUSED EARLY
1
There were dead animals lying in a rough ring around the truck--buzzards and coyotes, mostly--but Steve barely noticed them. He was all but eaten alive with a need to get out of here. The steep sides of the China Pit seemed to loom over him like the sides of an open grave. He reached the truck a little ahead of the others (Cynthia and Mary were flanking David, each of them holding one of the boy's arms, although he did not seem to be staggering) and tore open the passenger door.
"Steve, what--" Cynthia began.
"Get in! Ask questions later!" He butt-boosted her up into the seat. "Push over! Make room!"
She did. Steve turned to David. "Are you going to be a problem?"
David shook his head His eyes were dull and apathetic, but that didn't completely convince Steve. The boy was nothing if not resourceful; he had proved that before he and Cynthia ever met him.
He boosted David into the truck, then looked at Mary. "Get in. We'll have to bundle a little, but if we're not friends by now--"
She scrambled into the cab and closed the door as Steve hurried around the front of the truck, stepping on a buzzard as he went. It was like stepping on a pillowcase stuffed with bones.
How long had the boss been gone? A minute? Two? He had no idea. Any sense of time he might once have had was completely shot. He swung into the driver's seat, and allowed himself just one moment to wonder what they'd do if the engine wouldn't start. The answer, nothing, came at once. He nodded at it, turned the key, and the engine roared to life. No suspense there, thank God. A second later they were rolling.
He turned the Ryder truck in a big circle, skirting the heavy machinery, the powder magazine, and the field office. Between these latter two buildings was the dusty police-cruiser, driver's door open, front-seat area plastered with Collie Entragian's blood. Looking at it--into it--made Steve feel cold and a little dizzy, the way he felt when he looked down from a tall building.
"Fuck you," Mary said softly, turning to look back at the car. "Fuck you. And I hope you hear me."
They, hit a bump and the truck rattled terrifically. Steve flew up and off the seat, his thighs biting into the bottom arc of the steering wheel, his head bumping the ceiling. He heard a muffled clatter as the stuff in the back flew around. The boss's stuff, mostly.
"Hey," Cynthia said nervously. "Don't you think you got the hammer a little too far down for rocktop, big boy?"
"No," Steve said. He looked into the mirror outside his window as they began tearing up the gravel road which led to the rim of the pit. It was the drift opening he was looking for, but he couldn't see it--it was on the other side of the truck.
About halfway to the rim they hit another bump, a bigger one, and the truck actually seemed to leave the road for an instant or two. The headlights corkscrewed, then dipped as the truck dove deep on its springs. Both Mary and Cynthia screamed. David did not; he sat crooked between them, a lifesized doll half on the seat and half on Mary's lap.
"Slow down!" Mary screamed. "If you go off the road we'll go all the way to the bottom! SLOW DOWN, YOU ASSHOLE!"
"No," he repeated, not bothering to add that going off this road, which was as wide as a California freeway, was the least of his worries. He could see the pit-rim ahead. The sky above it was now a dark, brightening violet instead of black.
He looked past the others and into the mirror outside the passenger window, searching for the dark mouth of the tunnel in the darker well of the China Pit, can tak in can tah, and then didn't have to both
er. A square of white light too brilliant to look at suddenly lit up the pit-floor. It lashed out of the China Shaft like a burning fist and filled the cab of the truck with savage brilliance.
"Jesus, what's that?" Mary screamed, throwing a hand up to shield her eyes.
"The boss," Steve said softly.
A heavy thud seemed to run directly beneath them, a muffled battering-ram of sound. The truck began to shiver like a frightened dog. Steve heard broken rock and gravel begin to slide. He looked out his window and saw, in the dying glare of the blast, black nets of PVC pipe--emitters and distribution heads--sliding down the pit-face. The porphyry was in motion. China Pit was falling in on itself.
"Oh my God, we're gonna be buried alive," Cynthia moaned.
"Well, let's see," Steve said. "Hang on."
He jammed the gas-pedal to the floor--it didn't have far to go, either--and the truck's engine responded with an angry scream. Almost there, honey, he thought at it. Almost there, come on, work with me, beautiful, be there for me--
That battering-ram rumble went on and on beneath them, seeming at one moment to fade, then coming back like a wave-form. As they reached the rim of the pit, Steve saw a boulder the size of a gas station go bouncing down the slope on their right. And, more ominous than the rumble from below them, he heard a growing whisper from directly beneath them. It was, Steve knew, the gravel surface of the road. The truck was northbound; the road was headed south. In only a few moments it would collapse down into the pit like a dropped carpet-runner.
"Run, you bitch!" he screamed, pounding on the wheel with his left fist. "Run for me! Now! Now!"
The Ryder truck surged over the rim of the pit like a clumsy yellownosed dinosaur. For a moment the issue was still in doubt, as the crumbled earth under the rear wheels ran out and the truck wallowed first sideways and then backward.
"Go!" Cynthia screamed. She sat forward, clutching the dashboard. "Oh please go! For God's sake get us out of h--"
She was thrown back in the seat as the wheels found purchase again. Just enough. For a moment the headlights went on stabbing at the lightening sky, and then they were rushing across the rim, headed north. From behind them, out of the pit, rose an endless flume of dust, as if the earlier freak storm had started up all over again, only confined to this one location. It rose in the sky like a pyre.
2
The trip down the north side of the embankment was less adventurous. By the time they were running across the two miles of desert between the pit and the town, the sky in the east was a bright salmon-pink. And, as they passed the bodega with the fallen sign, the sun's upper arc broke over the horizon.
Steve jammed on the brakes just past the bodega, at the south end of Desperation's Main Street.
"Holy shit," Cynthia murmured in a low voice.
"Mother Machree," Mary said, and put a hand to her temple, as if her head hurt.
Steve could say nothing at all.
Until now he and Cynthia had only seen Desperation in the dark, or through veils of blowing sand, and what they had seen had been glimpsed in frantic little snatches, their perceptions honed to a narrow focus by the mortal simplicities of survival. When you were trying to stay alive, you just saw what you had to see; the rest went by the board.
Now, however, he was seeing it all.
The wide street was empty except for one lazily blowing tumbleweed. The sidewalks were drifted deep with sand--drifted completely under in places. Broken windowglass twinkled here and there. Trash had blown everywhere. Signs had fallen down. Powerlines lay snarled in the street like broken distributor heads. And The American West's marquee now lay in the street like a grand old yacht that has finally gone on the rocks. The one remaining letter--a large black R--had finally fallen off.
And everywhere there were dead animals, as if some lethal chemical spill had taken place. He saw scores of coyotes, and from the doorway of Bud's Suds there ran a long, curving pigtail of dead rats, some half-covered with the sand skirling about in a light morning breeze. Dead scorpions lay on the fallen leprechaun weathervane. They looked to Steve like shipwreck survivors who had died badly on a barren island. Buzzards lay in the street and on the roofs like dropped heaps of soot.
"And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about," David said. His voice was dead, expressionless. "And you shall say, 'Take heed to yourselves that you go not up into the mount.' "
Steve looked into his rearview mirror, saw the embankment of the China Pit looming against the brightening sky, saw the dust still pouring out of its sterile caldera, and shuddered.
"'Go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death: There shall not be a hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through. Whether it be beast or man, it shall not live.' " The boy looked up at Mary, and his face began to shiver apart and become human. His eyes filled with tears.
"David--" she began.
"I'm alone. Do you get it? We came upon the mountain and God slaughtered them all. My family. Now I'm alone."
She put her arms around him and pressed his face against her.
"Say, Chief," Cynthia said, and put a hand on Steve's arm. "Let's blow this shithole of a town and find us a cold beer, what do you say?"
3
Highway 50 again.
"Down this way," Mary said. "We're close now."
They had passed the Carvers' RV. David had turned his face against Mary's breasts again as they approached it, and she put her arms around his head and held him. For almost five minutes he didn't move, didn't even seem to breathe. The only way she could tell for sure that he was alive was by the feel of his tears, slow and hot, wetting her shirt. In a way she was glad to feel them, thought them a good sign.
The storm had also struck the highway, she saw; sand covered it completely in places, and Steve had to wallow the Ryder truck through several drifts in low gear.
"Would they have closed it?" Cynthia asked Steve once. "The cops? Nevada Public Works? Whatever?"
He shook his head. "Probably not. But you can bet there wasn't much of anyone out last night--lots of interstate truckers holed up in Ely and Austin."
"There it is!" Mary cried, and pointed at a sunstar twinkling about a mile ahead of them. Three minutes later they were pulling up to Deirdre's Acura. "Do you want to come in the car with me, David?" she asked. "Assuming the damned thing will even start, that is?"
David shrugged.
"The cop let you keep your keys?" Cynthia asked.
"No, but if I'm lucky..."
She hopped out of the truck, landed in a loose dune of sand, and made her way to the car. Looking at it brought Peter back in a rush--Peter, who had been so goddamned, absurdly proud of his James Dickey monograph, never guessing that the planned follow-up wasn't going to happen ...
The car doubled in her sight, then blurred into prisms.
Chest hitching, she wiped an arm across her eyes, then knelt and felt around under the front bumper. At first she couldn't find what she was looking for and it all seemed like too much. Why did she want to follow the Ryder truck to Austin in this car, anyway? Surrounded by memories? By Peter?
She laid her cheek against the bumper--soon it would be too hot to touch, but for now it was still night-cool--and let herself cry.
She felt a hand touch hers, tentatively, and looked around. David was standing there, his gaunt, too-old face hanging over a slim boy's chest in a bloodstained baseball tee-shirt. He looked at her solemnly, not quite holding her hand but touching her fingers with his, as if he would like to hold it.
"What's wrong, Mary?"
"I can't find the little box," she said, and pulled in a large, watery sniff. "The little magnetic box with the spare key in it. It was under the front bumper, but I guess it must have fallen off. Or maybe the boys who took our license plate took that, too." Her mouth twisted and she began to cry again.
He dropped to his knees beside her, wincing as something pulled in his
back. She saw, even through her tears, the bruises on his throat where Audrey had tried to choke him--ugly black-purple blotches like thunderheads.
"Shhh, Mary," he said, and felt along the inside of the bumper with his own hand. She could hear his fingers fluttering in that darkness, and suddenly wanted to cry out: Be careful! There might be spiders! Spiders!
Then he showed her a small gray box. "Give it a shot, why don't you? If it doesn't start ..." He shrugged to show it didn't matter much, one way or the other--there was always the truck.
Yes, always the truck. Except Peter had never ridden in the truck, and maybe she did want the smell of him a little longer. The feel of him. That's a nice set of cantaloupes, ma'am, he'd said, and then touched her breast.
The memory of his smell, his touch, his voice. The glasses he wore when he drove. Those things would hurt, but--
"Yeah, I'll come with you," David said. They were kneeling in front of Deirdre Finney's car, facing each other that way. "If it starts, that is. And if you want."
"Yes," she said. "I do want."
4
Steve and Cynthia joined them, helped them to their feet.
"I feel like I'm a hundred and eight," Mary said.
"Don't worry, you don't look a day over eighty-nine," Steve said, and smiled when she made as if to pop him one. "Do you really want to try making Austin in that little car? What if it gets stuck in the sand?"
"One thing at a time. We're not even sure it'll start, are we, David?"
"No," David said in a kind of sigh. He was going away from her again, Mary could feel it, but she didn't know what to do about it. He stood with his head bent, looking at the Acura's grille as if all the secrets of life and death were there, the emotion draining out of his face again, leaving it distant and thoughtful. One hand was wrapped loosely around the gray metal Magna-Cube with the spare key in it.
"If it does start, we'll caravan," she told Steve. "Me behind you. If I get stuck, we'll hop into the truck. I don't think we will, though. It isn't such a bad car, actually. If my goddamned sister-in-law just hadn't used it as a dope-stash ..." Her voice trembled and she closed her lips tightly.