Ralph watched, numb with sickness and the weight of defeat.
Muehlenfeldt’s laughter grew louder until it filled the space. A string of saliva bisected the cavernous mouth.
The yellowish teeth suddenly lengthened, sliding in their gums.
The teeth. Ralph stared, the realization bursting in him. He’s the slithergadee!
The laughter stopped. Muehlenfeldt’s figure seemed to grow larger as it rose from the chair. It was swelling, changing into its true shape. “Yes,” said the voice from the gaping mouth, sounding hollow and distant. “But it’s too late! Look out the window!”
He looked and saw that the sky outside had turned red, a fire that stretched to the end of every universe. Fumbling with the rifle, he backed away from the thing in front of him. The floor tilted beneath him and he fell against a table. The jet was climbing.
“Too late!” The voice was buried beneath the thing’s armor. Its claws ripped the carpet as it scrabbled toward him, the fangs in its mouth fully extended.
Ralph rolled over the top of the table and fell on the other side. His fingers trembling, he matched the dials on top of the gun. He pushed himself away from the table, lifted the gun and fired point-blank at the thing rising above him like a wave.
A flash of light and Muehlenfeldt’s muffled laughter echoed again in the cabin. “Idiot! How can you hit me with that thing when I can alter my level at will?”
“No,” moaned Ralph. He lifted the gun to his face. The needle of the dial on the left was swaying erratically back and forth.
“Give up,” intoned the buried voice.
Ralph got to his feet on the angled floor. He shouted something but the blood roaring in his ears drowned it out. A mountain of glistening scales and fangs toppled toward him. He didn’t look but watched the left dial’s needle reach its farthest point, then fall the other way. With the gun butt braced against his stomach, he turned the right dial’s needle in the opposite direction. In the split-second when they matched positions he fired.
Light, which grew brighter until he was blinded. He felt himself pressed upward against something. It dissolved and he was falling. Then he burned away as well, leaving nothing.
Chapter 17
He awoke on the shimmering desert. Sand and sky danced blurrily until he blinked and cleared his eyes. He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked around. There was nothing to be seen but the empty desert.
I wonder where the base is. He stood up, his knees trembling unsteadily for a moment, and shaded his eyes. One direction’s good as another, he thought, shrugging his shoulders. He started walking, his head lowered.
After several minutes of trudging through the sand and dry brush, he heard the sound of an automobile engine approaching. It appeared on the horizon, trailing a cloud of dust, and grew larger. He stopped and waited for it.
Sarah was at the wheel of a jeep. She pulled in front of him and stopped. The black dress, dusty now, was rolled up over her knees. “Get in,” she said.
The wind bathed him, coming over the lowered windshield. The jeep bounced over the sand and rocks for a little while, then climbed onto a strip of asphalt road and picked up speed.
“Where’d you get this?” he said finally.
“It was at the base.” Sarah pointed behind them with her thumb. “I managed to reach there after he—or whatever it was—dumped me off the plane. Spencer filled me in on what was happening, where you’d gone. Then I sneaked out and stole this.” Her hand patted the dash.
“Oh.” He looked at the strip of highway bisecting the desert in front of them. “How’d you find me out there?”
“Didn’t I tell you once I had a knack for finding things that were important to me? I knew where to look.” Her hand drew a line in the air. “You were like a falling star when you came back. Would you like something to eat? There’s a carton of something in the back.”
He found it and lifted it onto his lap. It was filled with cans marked U.S. Army, followed by a number of several digits. He pulled the opening strip on one and discovered canned peaches inside. He plunged his hand into the warm syrup and pulled out a slippery golden crescent that dissolved in his mouth like part of the sun. “Where’re we going?” he asked when he had finished the can.
“I thought up north would be pleasant,” said Sarah. “Big redwood trees with lots of shade under them. And it rains every week. Isn’t there a town up there called Eureka?”
“I have found it,” murmured Ralph. He closed his eyes. He opened them again when an after-image formed inside the lids of a gaping fanged mouth. “Got any money?” he said. “It’s a long drive.”
She pulled a man’s wallet from under the seat and handed it to him.
“Should be enough.”
It was crammed with folded bills. A twenty fluttered free as he looked inside. The wind caught the bill and sucked it into the dust behind them.
When he laid the wallet on the seat between them, Sarah took one hand from the wheel and touched his. Without thinking, he jerked it away, as though it were burned.
Her face turned a little, the eyes studying him. “He told you that I’m—like he was. Didn’t he? The same kind of thing. He told me he would say that to you.”
Ralph nodded. “Yeah. He said that.”
“It’s not true. It was just hate on his part, trying to come up with the lie that would hurt you most.”
He pressed his hand softly to her cheek. “I didn’t really believe it anyway.”
They drove on for a while. Ralph scratched his chin. “Won’t Spencer and the Beta group wonder what happened to me?”
She shrugged. “They’ll probably just figure you were destroyed when you set off the detonator. The whole dreamfield collapsed and went out of existence. They’ll look for your body for a little while and then give up. What does it matter? You’ve done enough for them.”
Ralph nodded. Maybe up north I’ll start writing again, he thought. He decided it wasn’t worth trying to get into L.A. and fetching his old unfinished manuscript from his parents’ house. They were probably still mad at him for abandoning their Ford somewhere in the city. Better to start all over. With everything. He turned and watched Sarah for a few moments, her hands resting easy on the jeep’s wheel.
“What’s the matter?” Her glance caught his. “Still thinking of what that thing said about me?”
“No,” said Ralph. He leaned back in the seat. “I don’t really care anyway. It’s all right with me if you are really a being from some other star. Just as long as you don’t do that thing with the teeth. You know? Where they turn into fangs and come sliding out in their sockets?”
“Okay,” she said. And smiled.