Stinger

Vance parked the patrol car in front of the Brandin' Iron, peeled his sweat-sopped shirt off the seat back, and walked in. The plate-glass window had been shattered, but a sheet had been nailed up over it to keep most of the smoke out. a few kerosene lamps cast a fitful glow, and the place was empty except for a back booth where three old-timers sat talking quietly. Vance avoided their stares and bellied up to the counter. Sue Mullinax, still wearing her gold-colored waitress uniform and her heavy makeup still more or less where it ought to be, came down the counter with a cup about a quarter full of cold coffee. "This is the last of the Java," she said as she gave it to him, and he nodded and swigged it down.



He angled his wrist toward a nearby lamp and checked the time. Twenty-three minutes after two. The Hammonds were late, and so were Rhodes and Gunniston. Didn't matter much, he thought. Nobody was going to find that little critter, at least not in the time they had left. You couldn't see a thing for all that smoke out there. He and Danny had checked houses all along aurora, Bowden, and about a third of Oakley Street. Nobody had seen the little girl, and several of the houses had no floors, just holes into darkness. Danny had started going to pieces again, and Vance had to take him back to the office. Inferno had always seemed like such a small place, but now the streets had elongated and the houses had become shadow mansions, and with all this smoke and dust there was just no damned way to find somebody who didn't want to be found.



"Rough night," Sue said.



"Better believe it. Cecil gone homei" "Yeah, he lit out awhile back." "Why don't you shut down and head out tooi Not much use stayin' open, is therei" "I like to have somethin' to do," she said. "Better stay here than go to a dark house." "Reckon so." The low light was flattering to her. He thought that if she didn't wear enough makeup to pave a road, she'd be real pretty. 'Course, Whale Tail was as chunky as a fire plug, but who was he to consider size with all the spare tires he was trucking aroundi Maybe she did wear a mattress on her back, but maybe there was a reason for that too. "How come you never left Infernoi" he decided to ask, to keep his mind off the inexorable tick of time. "Seems like you were real smart in high school and all." "I don't know." She shrugged her fleshy shoulders. "Nothin' ever came along, I reckon." "Hell, you can't wait for things to come along! You gotta go after 'em! Seems like you could've found yourself a good job somewhere, got yourself hitched up, maybe have a houseful of kids by now." He upturned the cup and caught the last bitter drop of coffee.



"Just never happened. anyways" - she smiled faintly, a sad smile - "the men I've been seein' don't exactly want to get married and have kids. Well, I probably wouldn't have been too good at that, either." "You're still just a kid yourself! What are you, twenty-eight, twenty-ninei" He saw her grimace. "That's not old! Hell, you've still got" - his voice faltered, but he kept going - "plenty of time yet." She didn't answer. Vance looked at his watch again. another minute had gone. "Danny's sweet on you," he told her. "You know that, don't youi" "I like Danny. Oh, I don't mean for marryin'. Not even for... y'know." a blush rose in her round cheeks.



"I thought you and Danny were... uh... real close." "We are. Friends, I mean. Danny's a gentleman," she said with dignity. "He comes over to my place, and we talk. That's all. It's rare to find a man to talk to. Seems like men and women have a hard time just talkin', don't iti" "Yeah, I guess so." He felt a pang of shame for making fun of her, and it occurred to him that maybe Danny was more of a man than he'd thought.



She nodded. Her head turned toward the doorway. Vance saw her eyes; they seemed to be fixed on a great distance. "Maybe I could've gone," she said. "I was the best in my typin' class. Reckon I could've been a secretary. But I didn't want to leave. I mean... Inferno ain't the best place in the world, but it's my home. That makes it special, no matter how much it's broke down. I've got real good memories of Inferno... like when I was head cheerleader at the high school, and one night we were playin' the Cedartown Cavaliers." Her eyes shone with the blaze of ten years past. "It was rainin' that night, just pourin' down, but me and my girls were out there. and right when Gary Pardee threw that forty-yard touchdown the girls lifted me up and I did a monkey flip and everybody on that field let out a holler like I hadn't never heard before. ain't heard one like it since, either. Folks came up to me later and said it was amazin', how I could do a monkey flip in all that rain without breakin' my neck, and they said I came down light as an angel's feather." She blinked; just like that, the spell broke. "Well," she said, "I'm somebody here, and out there..." She motioned toward the rest of the world. "I wouldn't be nobody." Her eyes found his, and looked deep. "This is my home. Yours too. We've gotta fight to keep it." The taste of ashes was in Vance's mouth. "We will," he said, but the words had a hollow ring.



Headlights shone through the sheeted window. a car pulled up beside Vance's. The headlights were cut, and then a solitary figure approached the door. Not Rhodes or Gunniston, Vance knew. They'd gone off on foot. Celeste Preston sauntered in as if she owned every crack in the tiles, sat down at the far end of the counter, and said, "Gimme a beer and an egg." "Yes ma'am." Sue got a lukewarm Lone Star out of the cooler and went to the refrigerator for the egg.



Celeste's gaze wandered down the counter. She nodded at Vance. "Kinda past your bedtime, ain't iti" "Kinda." He was too tired to trade punches with her. "I wouldn't sleep very good, anyways." "Me neither." She took the egg Sue gave her, broke its shell against the counter's edge, and swallowed the yolk whole, then chased it down with a chug-a-lug of beer. "I gave blood a couple of hours ago," she explained, and wiped a yellow strand off her mouth with the back of her hand. "Wint used to say a raw egg and beer was the quickest way to get your vitamins." "Quickest way to puke too," Vance said.



She swigged down more beer, and Sue went to check on the old-timers at the back. "How come you're not out protectin' the town, Vancei Maybe drag that sonofabitch outta his spaceship and sit on him till he calls unclei" Vance took his pack of Camels from his breast pocket and lit a cigarette, mulling her questions over. He snorted smoke, looked at her, and said, "and why don't you crawl up your ass and pull the hole in after youi" She just stared at him, her eyes like bits of cold flint and the beer bottle short of her lips. "You're an almighty high bitch to be sittin' in here tellin' me what I oughta do. You don't think I give a shit about this town, do youi Well, maybe I screwed up some - screwed up a lot - but I've always done what I thought was best. even when I was takin' money from Cade. Shit, what else was gonna keep Inferno alive but that little bastard's businessi" He felt blood ballooning his. face, and his heart was pounding. "My wife hated every inch of this town and ran off with a truck driver, but I stayed. I've got two sons that went with her, and they only know enough about me to cuss me over the telephone, but I stayed. every day I eat dust and get cursed in two languages, but I stayed. I've paid my dues, lady!" He jabbed the cigarette at her. "So don't you sit there in your joggin' suit and your diamond rings on your fingers and say I don't care about this town!" and then he said something he'd always known, but never dared to admit: "It's all I've got!" Celeste stayed motionless for a moment. She sipped from the Lone Star and set the bottle softly down on the counter. Lifted her fingers to display the rings. "They're fake," she said. "Sold the real ones." a brittle smile played across her mouth. "I reckon I deserved that, ed. Spit 'n gristle's what we've been needin' around this cemetery. How about sharin' your smokesi" She picked up her beer and slid over the seats, sitting down with two between them.



ed, he thought. That was the first time she'd ever used his first name. He skidded his pack of Camels and his lighter toward her, and she scooped them up. She lit a cigarette and inhaled with pure pleasure. "Figure if I'm gonna die, I might as well go happy," she said.



"We're not gonna die. We'll get out of this." "ed, I like you better when you tell the truth." She spun the pack and lighter back to him. "Our hides are worth about as much as Kotex in a men's prison, and you know it." They heard the growl of an engine outside. Cody Lockett came in through the smoke and lifted his goggles. "I'm lookin' for Colonel Rhodes," he said to the sheriff. "He's supposed to be here." "Yeah, I'm waitin' for him too. He's about ten minutes late." He didn't care for another glance at his watch. "What do you want him fori" "The little girl's up at the 'Gade fort. You know who I mean: Daufin." Vance almost came up off his seat. "Right nowi She's there right nowi" "Yeah, Mr. Hammond and his wife are with her. So where's the coloneli" "He and Captain Gunniston were goin' across the bridge into Bordertown. I guess they're still over there." "Okay. I'll go hunt 'em. If they show up here, you tell 'em the news." He put the goggles back over his eyes and sprinted out to the Honda, got on, pumped the kickstarter, and headed east on Celeste Street. Two things hit him: he'd just given an order to the sheriff - and been obeyed - and that was Celeste Preston herself sitting in there. He turned onto the bridge and throttled up, the engine making a choked roar in the dirty air.



He was halfway across when two headlights stabbed through the haze. a car was racing over from Bordertown, straddling the center line. Cody and the car's driver hit their brakes at the same time, and both vehicles swerved with a scream of tires and stopped almost abreast of each other. The car's engine rattled and died.



Cody saw it was Mack Cade's silver Mercedes. There were two men in it, the driver a rugged-looking dude with close-cropped dark hair and a streak of dried blood on his face. "You Colonel Rhodesi" Cody asked, and the man nodded. "Mr. Hammond and his wife sent me. Their little girl's up at the apartment building." He motioned to it, but its lights couldn't be seen from this distance. "at the end of Travis Street." "We already know." Rhodes started the engine again. "a boy at the church told us." He and Gunniston had gone into the Catholic church on First Street and asked Father LaPrado if they could address from the podium the people who'd come in for shelter. along with the information, Rick Jurado had given them the keys to the Mercedes. "We haven't got much time," Rhodes said, and he backed the car up, straightened it out, and sped away.



Cody knew who he'd found out from. Jurado was the only one who could've told him. He started to turn his bike around, but he realized he was only about thirty yards from Bordertown. The church was maybe another fifty or sixty yards along First Street. If Jurado was there, his sister would be too. He decided he might maybe even go in if he felt like it. What were the Rattlers going to do, jump him right in churchi It would be worth seeing the shock on Jurado's face - and, besides, he wouldn't mind another look at Miranda.



everything was going to hell anyway, and this seemed like the right time to dare fate. He gunned the engine and headed south, and in another few seconds the tires bit Bordertown pavement.