Stinger

The creature's fist banged down like an anvil on the top of Curt Lockett's Buick. The metal dented in over his skull, and now the underside of the roof was as crumpled as a crushed beer can. The car was shuddering, just on the edge of going out of control, and the speedometer needle trembled on the wild side of seventy.



Curt screamed, "Get off!" and jerked the car to right and left. The Buick roared around a curve, slipped off the road, and threw up a boil of dust and stones. When he got the tires back on the pavement, he saw a shape before him in the headlights: a pickup truck going about twenty miles an hour, its bed loaded down with a mattress and junk furniture and a little dark-haired Mexican child sitting atop a stack of crates. The child's eyes had widened with terror, and as Curt fought the wheel the Buick grazed past the pickup and left it in a swirl of dust.



The road wound between red boulders the size of houses. Over the engine's shriek Curt heard the squeal of the roof peeling back; the metal-nailed fingers were at work, gripped along the top of the passenger door. More screws popped out, and she kept battering the roof in with her other fist. He jerked the car violently left and right again, but the monster held on as tight as a tick.



The roof broke loose from the rim of the windshield. Cracks jigsawed across the glass. Her hand folded around the rusted metal at the top of the driver's door, and Curt beat at the fingers with his fist. She reached in, groping for him, and almost snagged his hair before he could slide across the seat. The car slewed to the right, left the road, and bounced over ruts that whammed Curt's skull against the roof dents. and suddenly the creature lost her grip, slid backward over the roof with a skreek of metal nails and down the rear windshield. She tried to catch hold, found nothing to grip. In the rearview mirror, Curt saw her slide over the fishtailing trunk, saw her half-mangled, half-beautiful face glisten in the red glare of the taillights. Her face disappeared over the trunk's bulbous slope, and Curt whooped with joy.



"To hell with you!" he shouted hoarsely as he veered the car back up on the road. "Teach you to mess with a cowboy!" Highway 67 straightened out to meet more desert. In the distance, maybe two miles ahead, the purple grid plunged into the earth all along the horizon. It blocked the road, but beyond it was a sea of flashing blue-and-red lights: state trooper cars.



Cain't such a thing be solid, he remembered Harlan saying. ain't such a thing possible.



Curt glanced at the speedometer. Seventy-five. I can bust through it, he told himself. Bust right through like it's made out of glass. and if I can't... well, I won't never know it, will Ii



His hands clenched the wheel to hold the jittering tires steady. Curt kept the pedal flat, and he could feel the engine's heat bleeding through the firewall on his legs.



and then there was a hollow boom like a bomb going off and steam shot from under the hood. Black smoke burst from the tailpipe. The Buick hitched, and metal clanged like Chinese gongs in the engine. That did her, Curt thought. Somethin' busted bad. Instantly the speedometer began falling: through seventy... sixty-five... sixty... But the grid was looming up fast. I can make it, he reasoned. Sure thing. I can bust right through that sonofabitch, because can't such a thing be solid... I'm leavin' my boy behind.



The realization of it knocked him breathless. I'm hightailin' like a yellow-assed coward, and I'm leavin' my son back there.



My son.



The speedometer had fallen to fifty. The grid was less than a half mile away. I can still make it, he thought.



But his left foot poised over the brake. Hesitated, as the yards swept past.



Damn kid can't take care of himself, Curt thought. everybody knows that.



He jammed his foot down. The brake pedal popped, went loose, and sparks jumped from the brake shoes. The inside of the car was full of scorch smell, and the brakes were gone.



The grid grew in the windshield, and beyond them the flashing sea of lights.



He wrenched up the parking brake and fought the gearshift from fourth into second; there was a deep grinding and machine-gun chatter as the gears were stripped. The car jolted, kept going at forty miles an hour the last two hundred yards. He twisted the wheel, but the slick tires had their own mind and even as they started to turn he knew the grid was going to take him.



a hand and arm suddenly reached through the open window of the passenger door. The creature's head and shoulders pulled through, and Curt realized the thing had been hanging on to the Buick's side like a leech. The good eye fixed on him with cold rage, the hand straining toward his face.



He screamed, lost the wheel. The Buick angled off the road, heading for the grid fifty yards away. He had time to see that the speedometer needle hung at just over thirty miles an hour, and then the creature with blond hair had pulled half her body into the car.



There was only one way out. Curt wrenched upward on the door's handle and jumped. He landed in yielding sand, but the impact was rough enough to send constellations reeling through his brain. The wind bellowed out of his lungs, but he had enough sense left to roll away from the car and keep on rolling.



The Buick traveled another fifteen feet and hit the grid. Where the car impacted, the violet weave pulsed a fierce incandescent red, like the eye of a stove. The hood caved inward, the engine block bursting through the rusty firewall like a red-hot fist. Daggers of metal flew into the creature with Laurie Rainey's face, and she was caught under the dashboard as it folded upon her.



The car bounced back, the crumpled hood glowing scarlet as if it had absorbed heat from the grid. The tires were melting, black smoke belched as oil caught fire, and with an orange flash and an ear-cracking explosion, the Buick tore apart at its seams and debris spun into the air. all of it had taken about three seconds from contact to blast.



Pieces of the car banged down around Curt, who lay on his belly puking up Kentucky Gent. The smell sickened him further, and he kept heaving until there was nothing left but air.



He sat up on his knees. The way his nose was bleeding, it was broken for sure. Not a lot of pain, though. He figured that would come later. He looked at his left arm - the side he'd landed on - and saw tatters of skin hanging down. From the shoulder to the elbow was a red mass of friction burns, and the flesh over his ribs on that side was scorched raw too. Blood tainted his mouth, and he spat out a tooth and stared at what used to be his car.



The remains of the Buick were on fire, but what was left looked like black twists of melting licorice. Fearsome heat lapped at Curt's face. The grid's red glow was fading, returning to cool violet. another blast leapt up from the Buick's chassis, throwing molten metal like a spray of silver dollars.



Curt stood up. His legs were a little wobbly, but otherwise all right. His tongue found another tooth hanging by a strand of flesh on the left side of his jaw, and he reached in and jerked the bit of broken enamel out.



Something emerged, running, from the Buick's wreckage.



It was coming right at Curt, but he was too shocked to move.



The thing was charred ebony, humpbacked and twisted. It looked to be a headless, burned-up body with one remaining arm writhing at its side like an injured snake - and at the base of its spine was another burned thing, about five feet long, that whipped wildly back and forth.



Still Curt didn't move. He knew he ought to, but his brain couldn't get the order through to his legs.



The horror lurched past about ten feet in front of Curt. He could smell a sickly-sweet reek that might have been burning plastic, and he heard a high, terrible hissing noise. The thing stumbled, went on six more strides, then fell to its knees in the loose sand and began to frantically dig with its remaining hand. Sand flew; it shoved its headless neck and shoulders into the burrow, its feet kicking up spirals of sand. In another few seconds the creature had gotten in up to its waist and then it began to shudder uncontrollably. Its legs twitched, burned pads of its feet pushing with feeble effort.



and finally it lay still, all of it hidden beneath the sand except for the blackened legs.



Whatever it was, Curt wouldn't have gone a step closer to it for a million dollars and a truckload of Kentucky Gent; in fact, whiskey was the last thing he wanted right now. a sip of water to cleanse the foulness from his mouth was what he craved. He backed away from the charred creature; it did not move again, did not rise from the sand, and he prayed to God that it was dead.



Curt turned, everything hazy and dreamlike, toward the grid.



Beyond it were not only state trooper cars, but several dark blue cars, unmarked vans, and a couple of white panel trucks. and a lot of people over there too: men in trooper uniforms and men in dark blue uniforms and caps. Government men, Curt reckoned. Looked like air-force blue.



He walked nearer the grid to get a better look. The grid made a faint humming noise that pricked pain in his eardrums, and the air smelled of lightning storms. a helicopter was landing beyond the cars; Curt could see the rotors whirling around but could hear no engine sound. Over on the right were two large trailers and more trucks. Off in the distance along Highway 67 were a lot of headlights. Roadblock up ahead, he figured. He blew blood and snot from his nose, wiped his nostrils with his skinned forearm, and saw the excitement on the grid's other side.



a group of eight or nine men had gathered, and several of them were motioning for Curt to come closer. They seemed to be shouting, from the strained expressions on their faces, but Curt couldn't hear a word.



He approached to within six feet of the grid and stopped. On the ground just to his left was what looked like half of a burned-up coyote.



a man in khaki trousers and a sweat-stained gray knit shirt waved for his attention. The man cupped his hands around his mouth and began obviously shouting. Curt shook his head and pointed at his ears. There was a hurried conference among some of the men, then one of them sprinted off toward a panel truck.



another man, wearing an air-force uniform and visored cap, came through the group and stood staring at Curt with dark, deep-set eyes in a hawk-nosed face. Curt could see the name tag on his jacket: "Col. Buckner." Curt didn't know what to do, so he gave the officer a jaunty little salute, and Buckner nodded grimly.



The one who'd gone to the panel truck returned with a clipboard and black marker. Buckner took it from him and scribbled something, then held it up for Curt to see: IS COLONeL RHODeS aLIVei



Curt remembered what he'd heard about an air-force officer at the Bob Wire Club, and he shouted, "I think so!" but realized they couldn't hear him either. He nodded in reply. Buckner ripped off the clipboard's first sheet of paper and wrote another question: CaN YOU FIND RHODeS aND BRING HIM HeRei



Curt mouthed Howi and motioned toward the Buick's wreckage. The man in the khaki trousers pointed to something beyond Curt, and he turned to look.



The pickup truck full of furniture was just groaning to a stop. Its driver, a heavyset Hispanic man, got out and gaped at the grid. On the passenger side was a woman holding a baby, and the little boy in the truck's bed climbed up on top to get a better view. The man came forward, babbling rapidly in Spanish.



"Forget it, amigo," Curt said, getting the gist of what the man meant. "There's no way out." He turned back to the officers. Buckner had written a statement on the clipboard: VITaL TO FIND RHODeS. We MUST KNOW SITUaTION.



"The situation is real shitty," Curt answered, and gave a hollow laugh.



"We tryin' to get out!" the pickup's driver said, his voice on the edge of panic. "My wife and childrens! We gotta get out!" "Not by this road." Curt scanned east and west. The grid was unbroken in both directions. "Might as well head back to town." "No! We gotta get out!" "That used to be my car." Curt jerked a thumb toward the flaming ruin. "It hit this damned cage." He bent down, picked up a fist-sized rock, and tossed it into the grid. There was a quick popping noise and the stone exploded into fiery particles. "I don't think you want your family endin' up in a grease spot, do youi" The man hesitated, his seamed face stricken. Looked at his wife and son, then back at the grid. "No," he said at last. "I don' want that." Curt glanced at the air-force officers. Buckner was still holding up the clipboard, and Curt made an okay sign with his hand. "I'd appreciate a ride to town," he told the Mexican. "ain't nobody gettin' out by this road tonight." "Si." The man stood for a moment, not knowing what to do, then went to tell his wife they would not be going to Odessa after all.



Curt walked to where the burned creature lay in the sand. It still wasn't moving. He gathered bloody saliva in his mouth and spat it out. The spit sizzled when it hit the thing's leg. Curt retreated to the pickup and climbed into the truck's bed, wedging himself between the crates and a cane table. The little boy, dark eyes as big as walnuts, sat cross-legged on the other side and regarded him studiously. Four chickens in a cage cackled and fretted, and the truck vibrated on the verge of breakdown as the Mexican reversed it away from the grid. He cranked the wheel around, turned the truck, and headed for Inferno. Curt watched the rotating trooper lights until the road curved and they were lost to sight, and then he rested his chin on his skinned knees and tried to keep his mind from going back to the Bob Wire Club, where five men lay mutilated. It was an impossible task. a fit of shivering hit him, and tears came to his eyes. He felt himself cracking to pieces. Got to find Cody, he thought. Got to find my boy.



Something tugged at the cuff of his trousers. The little boy had slid forward, and he said, "Be okay, mister. Be okay." The child reached into a pocket of his dirty blue jeans and brought out a half-gone pack of peppermint Life-Savers. He offered the next ring of candy to Curt, and Curt saw a tie rack in his son's hand and his heart almost broke.



He lowered his head, and the child removed a Life-Saver and laid it beside the man.