Stinger

Working in the glare of a wall-mounted emergency light, Jessie made the last of six stitches and pulled the sutures tight under Cody Lockett's right eye. He winced just a fraction.



"If I was a horse," he drawled, "I'd already have kicked you across the barn." "If you were a horse, I'd have already shot you." She gave a little extra tug on the filament, tied the sutures off, and snipped the excess. She swabbed another dash of disinfectant on the wound. "Okay, that does it." Cody stood up from the treatment table and walked to a small oval mirror on the wall. It showed him a face with a left eye purple and swollen almost shut, a gashed lower lip, and the stitch ridges less than an inch below his right eye. His Texaco shirt was ripped and splattered with bloodstains - his own and Rattlesnake blood too. His head had stopped its drumrolls, though, and all his teeth were still in their sockets. He figured he'd been lucky.



"You can admire yourself somewhere else," Jessie said tersely. "Call the next one in as you leave." She had four more teenagers to see, waiting in the hall, and she went to the sink to wash her hands. When she turned the tap, a thin trickle of sandy water spooled out.



"Pretty good job, doc," he told her. "How's X Rayi He gonna be all righti" "Yes." Thank God, she thought. Three of Ray's ribs were badly bruised, his left arm had been almost dislocated, and he'd come very near biting a piece out of his tongue, not to mention the other cuts and bruises. Right now he was resting in a room down the hall. a few of the other kids had lost teeth and been cut up, but there were no broken bones - except for Paco LeGrande, whose nose had been shattered. "Somebody could've been killed." She dried her hands on a paper towel, feeling grains of sand between her fingers. "Is that what you were trying to doi" "No. I was tryin' to keep X Ray from gettin' his clock cleaned." He regarded his own skinned knuckles. "The Rattlers started it. The 'Gades were protectin' our own." "My son's not a member of your gang." "It's a club," Cody corrected. "anyway, X Ray lives on this side of the bridge. That makes him one of us." "Club, gang, whatever the hell you call it - it's a pile of shit." She crumpled the paper and tossed it into the wastebasket. "and my son's name is Ray, not X Ray. When are you and the Rattlesnakes going to stop tearing this town to piecesi" "It's not the 'Gades who're tearin' things up! We didn't ask 'em to jump X Ray and bust up the Warp Room! Besides" - he motioned toward the window, at the black pyramid - "that sonofabitch did more damage in about two seconds than we could've done in two years." Jessie couldn't dispute that fact. She grunted, realizing she'd come down pretty hard on the boy. She didn't know much about Cody Lockett: just what Tom had told her, and that his father worked at the bakery. She recalled that she had smelled alcohol on the man's breath one day when she'd gone in for some sweet rolls.



"Damn, it's big." Cody went to the window. Some of the roughness had left his voice, and it held a note of awe. a few fires were still burning in Cade's junkyard, spiraling sparks into the sky. Up at the top of the glowing violet grid was a massive dark cloud of smoke and dust, hanging motionlessly over Inferno and blanking out the moon. Cody had never put much stock in the idea of UFOs and aliens before this, though Tank swore that when he was nine years old he'd seen a hovering light in the sky that had scared his underpants brown. He'd never thought much about life on other worlds, because life on this one was tough enough. all that stuff about UFOs and extraterrestrials seemed too distant to be concerned about, but now... well, this was a horse of a different shade. "Where do you think it came fromi" he asked, in a quiet voice.



"I don't know. a very long way from here, I'm sure." "Yeah, I reckon so. But why'd it come down in Infernoi I mean... whatever's inside it could've landed anywhere in the world. Why'd it pick Infernoi" Jessie didn't answer. She was thinking about Daufin, and where the little girl - no, she corrected herself - where the creature might be. She looked out the window at the pyramid, and a single word came to her mind: Stinger. Whatever that was, Daufin was terrified of it, and Jessie was feeling none too easy herself. She said, "Better tell the next one to come in." "Okay." Cody tore himself away from the window. He paused at the door. "Listen... for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry X Ray got hurt." She nodded. "So am I, but he'll be all right. I guess he's tougher than I thought." She stopped short of thanking him for helping her son, because the details were still unclear and she saw him and Rick Jurado as the instigators of a gang fight that could've ended in kids getting killed. "You'll probably need something for a headache," she said. "If you ask Mrs. Santos at the front desk, she'll get you some aspirin." "Yeah, thanks. Hey, maybe I'll have a neat little railroad track to remember tonight by, huhi" "Maybe," she agreed, though she knew the scar would be hardly noticeable. "anybody here to take you homei" "I can walk. Gotta pick up my motor, anyway. Thanks for the patch-up job." "Try to stay out of trouble, okayi" He started to flip a witticism at her, but her eyes were honest and he let his swaggering pose drop. "I'll try," he said, and left the room. In the hallway, also lit by the harsh emergency lights, he told the next boy waiting on the bench to go in; the guy was a Rattler, with sullen eyes and a lower lip that looked as if it had lost a tangle with a meat grinder. Then he walked along the hall, passing rooms on either side. From one of them wailed a man's voice, a sound of pure agony. The smell of burned meat hung in the air, and Cody kept going. People were bustling around, throwing long shadows in the half-light. a Hispanic woman with blood all over the front of her dress hurried past him. a man on crutches and with a large bandage stuck to the side of his face stood in a doorway, staring blankly and muttering. Cody saw Doc McNeil coming, supporting a woman with dusty gray hair from which pink curlers dangled. She was wearing a blue robe, her face dead white and her eyes as wide as if she'd just stuck a finger into an electric socket. McNeil helped her into a room on the left, and Cody couldn't help but notice the bloody footprints on the carpet.



Then he was through the gauntlet of suffering and had reached the front desk, where he asked the round-faced nurse, Mrs. Santos, for his aspirin. She gave him a few tablets in a little plastic bottle, made sure she had his name and address down on the records sheet, and said he could go home. The waiting room was full of people too, most of them Bordertown residents who'd been shaken up by the concussion or who were waiting for word on injured relatives.



as Cody crossed the waiting room and headed for the door, his father stood up from a chair in the corner and said, "Boyi Hold on a minute." Cody glimpsed the garish necktie and almost burst out laughing. No wonder the old man didn't wear ties; the thing emphasized his sinewy neck and made him look like a geek. Cody had had enough of the medicinal odors and anguished noises of the clinic, and he kept striding out the door without waiting for his father. His motorcycle was still parked in front of the Warp Room, and he meant to claim it. Behind him, his father called, "Cody! Where're you goin'i" Cody might have slowed a step or two; he didn't realize it if he had. But then his old man was catching up with him, really stretching out those long legs. Curt walked to the side with the length of a man separating them. "I'm talkin' to you. Don't you understand english no morei" "Just go away," Cody said, his voice clipped and tight. "Leave me alone." Over the smells of scorched metal and burning rubber, the aromas of Vitalis and body odor reached him.



"I came to see about you. Heard you got yourself in a fight. Lord, you look like you got your ass busted for sure!" "I didn't." "Looks must be deceivin', then." Curt watched the helicopter slowly circling over Cade's autoyard, making tentative approaches to the black pyramid and then veering away through the smoke. "I'm tellin' you," he said, "hell has sure come to Inferno. ain't that about the weirdest sumbitch you ever sawi" "I guess so." "It's spooky. Somethin' like that shouldn't be. You know, I almost ran over Ginger Creech awhile ago. She was just strollin' down the street in her nightgown. God knows what's happened to Dodge. Whatever's goin' on, it's knocked Ginger right off her tracks." The woman in the blue robe, Cody thought. Mrs. Creech. Sure, he should've recognized her. But then again, he'd never seen her looking like a crazy woman before.



"Guess whati" Curt asked when they'd gone a few more strides. "I'm a deputy. Don't that beat alli Yessir! Sheriff Vance said that if I was to take Ginger to the clinic, he'd make me a deputy. Bet I'll get me a badge. a silver badge, all shiny and nice." The helicopter zoomed overhead, stirring a storm of dust off the street, and turned toward the pyramid again. Curt gazed up at the skygrid. He didn't know what the thing was, but it was something else that should not be. It reminded him of jail bars, and started a crawling sensation of claustrophobia at the back of his neck. Without lights, Inferno resembled a ghost town, all the swirling dust and running tumbleweeds adding to the sense of desolation. Curt's thirst was getting stronger, and he thought it was somehow right that just as he was given some responsibility, Inferno was falling to pieces. He looked at Cody, walking beside him, and he saw how close that cut was to the boy's eye. Tomorrow morning he was going to feel as if he'd stuck his head into a blender. "You all righti" Curt asked.



"What the fuck do you carei" It came out before Cody could stop it.



Curt grunted. "Hell, I didn't say I cared. Just asked, that's all." He let silence reign for a few seconds, then tried again: "I got busted up like that once. a Mexican did it, in a bar. Fast little bastard, he was. Man, I couldn't see straight for a week!" "I'm okay," Cody told him grudgingly.



"Yeah, you're a tough pair of nuts, ain't youi That shirt's a goner, though. Guess old Mendoza'll pitch a fit, huhi" "No. Mr. Mendoza won't." Curt decided to let that "mister" lie. What was the pointi It amazed him, though, that Cody could still speak of that old wetback with respect after a Mexican had just about bashed his fool head in. Well, Cody had a lot to learn about Mexicans yet. "I found a tie," he said. "Seei" "Yeah. It looks awful." Curt's first impulse was to snarl and clip him on the back of his skull, but he figured the boy had had enough punishment; anyway, Cody's comment made a faint smile steal across his mouth. "I reckon it does, at that," he admitted. "Never said I had good taste in ties, did Ii" Cody glanced at him, and Curt looked away to hide the smile; it wouldn't do for Cody to see it, he decided. It was time to go collect on that bottle of Kentucky Gent. The five dollars was burning a hole in his pocket, and he hoped the Bob Wire Club was still open. If not, he'd kick the damn door down himse -  His thoughts were interrupted by a low rumbling noise that made his bones throb like a mouthful of bad teeth. Curt stopped in his tracks, and Cody halted because he'd both heard and felt the vibration. The noise continued, like the sound of heavy concrete plates grinding. "You hear thati" Curt asked. "What is iti" The sound drifted across Inferno and set the dogs howling again.



Cody looked at the pyramid and pointed. "There!" a thin vertical crack of muddy violet light had appeared about thirty feet below the pyramid's apex. The grinding noise went on, and the crack of light was widening.



In the clinic, Jessie heard it and went to the window. Rick Jurado came out of his house, and stood on the front porch with Miranda beside him. Mack Cade was standing on Third Street next to his Mercedes, watching the volunteer firemen futilely trying to coax water pressure back into the limp hose, and his first thought was that the rumbling sounded like a massive crypt opening. Typhoid and Lockjaw ran around in a circle, yapping.



Others peered out their windows, and some of the seventy-eight people who had gathered in the Catholic church came out to the front steps to see. Sheriff Vance, who had returned only a few minutes before from Dodge Creech's house, emerged from his office into Celeste Street while Danny sat shaking inside.



The vertical line was about fifteen feet long and stretching open like a cyclopean eye. In the helicopter, Captain Taggart swooped past the fissure. Rhodes, who occupied the copilot's seat, and Gunniston in the observer's seat just behind him were shoved against their backrests by the g-forces. They saw the reptilian plates sliding away from the aperture, and the glow that drifted through was more like luminous mist than earthly light. The aperture's edges appeared moist, rimmed with gray like diseased gums. "Stay away from that grid," Rhodes warned as Taggart took the 'copter up again, but he knew Taggart understood the consequences of hitting that thing as well as he did. The rumbling noise continued as the plates unhooked and slid away from each other. The opening was now about forty feet wide, and Taggart lined the 'copter up with it and used his two control sticks to angle the blades so the machine hovered. Streams of liquid were oozing down from the sides and edges of the opening, running over the plates beneath it. Rhodes leaned forward, the seat belt tightening across his chest. He could see nothing but murk inside the fissure; it was like trying to peer through slimy water.



"Want me to get closeri" Taggart asked.



"Hell, no!" Gunniston yelped, his hands clenched to the armrests.



"Just hold this position," Rhodes told him. Several more plates moved apart, and then the noise abruptly ceased.



Mist curled from the opening and was tattered by the rotors. Taggart checked his gauges: fuel was getting low. They'd followed the grid from east to west and north to south and found that it extended just over seven miles in all directions. Its highest point was about six hundred feet directly above the pyramid, sloping away to spear through the earth at the grid's limits. Below the helicopter were dull red centers of flame amid the wreckage of Cade's autoyard, and the rising of heated air made the machine shudder.



"Thing looks like it's got skin," Gunniston said, staring with revulsion at the slick ebony plates.



Rhodes watched the opening. Banners of black smoke moved past the canopy, and for a few seconds his vision was obscured. When it cleared, he thought he saw something move inside the aperture: a drifting shadow, approaching through the mist. He didn't know what it was, but he realized they were far too close to the pyramid for comfort. "Move us away," he said tautly.



Taggart changed the rotors' pitch, started to slip the helicopter to the left.



as he did, the thing that Rhodes had seen emerged from the mist. Gunniston gasped, "Oh, Christ!" and Taggart throttled the engine up, veering away with such speed that the men were lifted off their seats. Never in his wildest nightmares had he witnessed such a thing as now cleared the pyramid's opening and hovered in the turbulent air.