David turned on his knees and pulled his clothes out through the bars. He squeezed his pants, feeling for the tube of the shotgun shell in the pocket. The shotgun shell was there.
He got to his feet, and for a few seconds the world turned into a merry-go-round. He had to reach out for the bars of his erstwhile cell to keep from falling over. Billingsley put a hand over his. It was surprisingly warm. “Go, son,” he said. “Time’s almost up.”
David turned and tottered toward the door. His head was still throbbing, and his balance was badly off; the door seemed to be on a rocker or a spindle or something.
He staggered, regained his footing, and opened the door. He turned to look at his father.
“I’ll be back.”
“Don’t you dare,” his father said at once. “Find a phone and call the cops, David. The State cops. And be careful. Don’t let-”
There was a harsh ripping sound as Johnny’s expensive leather jacket finally tore in two.
The coyote, not expect-ing such a sudden victory, went flying backward, rolled over on its side, and saw the naked boy in the doorway. It scrambled to its feet and flew at him with a snarl. Mary screamed.
“Go, kid, GET OUT!” Johnny yelled.
David ducked out and yanked the door shut behind him. A split second later, the coyote hit it with a thud. A howl-terrible because it was so close-rose from the holding area. It was as if it knew it had been fooled, David thought; as if it also knew that, when the man who had summoned it here returned, he would not be pleased.
There was another thud as the coyote threw itself at the door again, a pause, then a third.
The animal howled again. Gooseflesh rose on David’s soapy arms and chest. Just ahead of him were the stairs down which his kid sister had tumbled to her death; if the crazy cop hadn’t moved her, she would still be at the bottom, waiting for him in the gloom, eyes open and accusing, asking him why he hadn’t stopped Mr. Big Boogeyman, what good was a big brother if he couldn’t stop the boogeyman.
Ican ‘t go down there, he thought. I can’t, I absolutely can’t.
No… but all the same, he had to.
Outside, the wind gusted hard enough to make the brick building creak like a ship in a working sea. David could hear dust, too, hitting the side of the building and the street doors down there like fine snow. The coyote howled again, separated from him only by an inch or so of wood… and knowing it.
David closed his eyes and pressed his fingers together in front of his mouth and chin.
“God, this is David Carver again. I’m in such a mess, God, such a mess. Please pro-tect me and help me do what I have to do. Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”
He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and groped for the stair railing. Then, naked, holding his clothes against his chest with his free hand, David Carver started down into the shadows.
Steve tried to speak and couldn’t. Tried again and still couldn’t, although this time he did manage a single dry squeak. You sound like a mouse farting behind a baseboard, he thought.
He was aware that Cynthia was squeezing his hand in a grip powerful enough to be painful, but the pain didn’t seem to matter. He didn’t know how long they would have stood there in the doorway of the big room at the end of the Quonset hut if the wind hadn’t blown something over outside and sent it clattering down the Street. Cynthia gasped like someone who has been punched and put the hand not holding Steve’s up to one side of her face. She turned to look at him that way, so he could see only one wide, horrified eye. Tears were trickling down from it.
“Why.” she whispered. “Why.”
He shook his head. He didn’t know why, didn’t have a clue. The only two things he was sure of were that the people who had done this were gone, or he and Cynthia would have been dead already, and that he, Steven Ames of Lubbock, Texas, did not want to be here if they decided to come back.
The large space at the end of the Quonset hut looked like a combination workroom, lab, and storage area. It was lit by hanging hi-intensity lamps with metal hoods, a little like the lights which hang over the tables in billiard emporiums. They cast a bright lemony glow. It looked to Steve as if two crews might have worked here at the same time, one doing assay work on the left side of the room, the other sorting and cataloguing on the right. There were Dandux laundry baskets lined up against the wall on the sorting side, each with chunks of rock in it. These had clearly been sorted; one basket was filled with rocks that were mostly black, another with smaller rocks, almost pebbles, that were shot through with glitters of quartz.
On the assay side (if that was what it was), there was a line of Macintosh computers set up on a long table lit-tered with tools and manuals. The Macs were running screen—saver programs. One featured pretty, multicolored helix shapes above the words GAS CHROMATOGRAPH READY. Another, surely not Disney-sanctioned, showed Goofy pulling down his pants every seven seconds or so, revealing a large boner with the words HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK written on it.
At the far end of the room, inside a closed overhead garage door with the words WELCOME TO HERNANDO’ S HIDEAWAY printed on it in blue paint, was an ATV
with an open carrier hooked up behind it. This was also full of rock samples. On the wall to its left was a sign reading YOU MUST WEAR A HARDHAT MSHA REGULATIONS NO EXCUSES. There was a row of hooks running below the sign, but there were no hardhats hung from them. The hardhats were scattered on the floor, below the dangling feet of the people who had been hung from the hooks, hung like roasts in a butcher’s walk-in freezer.
“Steve… Steve, are they like… dummies. Depart-ment store mannequins. Is it… you know… a joke.”
“No.” The word was small and felt as dusty as the air outside, but it was a start. “You know they’re not. Let up, Cynthia, you’re breaking my hand.”
“Don’t make me let go,” she said in a wavery voice. Her hand was still up to her face and she stared one-eyed at the dangling corpses across the room. On the radio, The Tractors had been replaced by David Lee Murphy, and David Lee Murphy had given way to an ad for a place called Whalen’s, which the announcer described as “Austin’s Anything Store!”
“You don’t have to let go, just let up a little,” Steve said. He raised an unsteady finger and began to count. One… two… three…
“I think I wet my pants a little,” she said.
“Don’t blame you.” Four… five… six…
“We have to get out of here, Steve, this makes the guy who broke my nose look like Santa Cl-”
“Be quiet and let me count!”
She fell silent, her mouth trembling and her chest hitching as she tried to contain her sobs. Steve was sorry he’d shouted-this one had been through a lot even before today-but he wasn’t thinking very well. Christ, he wasn’t entirely sure he was thinking at all.
“Thirteen,” he said.
“Fourteen,” she corrected in a shaky, humble voice. “Do you see. In the corner. One of them fell off. One of them fell off the h-h-h-”
“Hook” was what she was trying to say, but the stutter turned into miserable little cries and she began to weep. Steve took her in his arms and held her, feeling her hot, wet face throb against his chest. Low on his chest. She was so goddam small.
Over the fuzz of her extravagantly colored hair he could see the other side of the room, and she was right—there was another body crumpled in the corner. Fourteen dead in all, at least three of them women. With their heads hanging and their chins on their chests, it was hard to tell for sure about some of the others. Nine were wearing lab coats-no, ten, counting the one in the corner-and two were in jeans and open-necked shirts. Two others were wearing suits, string ties, dress boots. One of these appeared to have no left hand, and Steve had a pretty good idea of where that hand might be, oh yes indeed he did. Most had been shot, and they must have been facing their killers, because Steve could see gaping exit wounds in the backs of most of the dropped heads. At least three, however, had been opened like fish. They hung with their white coats stained maroon and pools of blood beneath them and their guts dangling.