Fiends (38 page)

10

Three hours; they had covered two thirds of a mile underground. Nothing looked familiar to Ted. He said, for the tenth time in ten minutes, "Are you boys sure—"

"That's our mark on the wall, ain't it?" Rex replied, turning his helmeted head to shine the carbide lamp on the chalked insignia. They were sideways in a passage with little headroom. Rex sounded surly. One of his eyes was redly swollen and smarting from grit lodged under the lid.

"Well, how far do you think—"

Neither Rex nor Alvy bothered to answer him. Ted looked back at Wayne Buck Vedders, whose face was a mask of mud, except for the whites of his round eyes. Buried in mud, his expression was still miserable. He breathed harshly through his mouth. Bill Whipkey, bringing up the rear, whistled a monotonous tune. Tight spaces didn't bother him. For a few yards they were almost ankle-deep in bitingly cold water. Then the water drained away mysteriously, the passage angled upward for thirty yards, gradually widening so that they were no longer on top of one another. Alvy, the lead dog, hiked ahead confidently, then stopped, the beam of his headlamp fading into a vast chambered darkness sprinkled here and there with the mild pastel glow of luna wings. The smallest noise now raised a sharp echo. Ted felt a welcome draft of chilled air on his humid face.

Alvy switched on the electric lantern fastened to a steel ring on his coveralls.

"There they be," he said, looking down. His tone was pensive. His breath plumed. "We are in Boogerland, girls."

They took turns filing up to the jagged hole in the wall of the cavern where, standing next to Alvy, they could look down and see by the focused light of his lantern the shimmering cocoon that filled the floor space, drifting in places, like a primordial, pristine snowfall, to a depth of five or six feet.

"Resembles a spiderweb, sure 'nuff," Bill Whipkey said.

"Well, I ain't going down there," Wayne Buck Vedders said vehemently. "Only one thing spiderweb means to me, and that's spiders. Goddamn but it's cold!"

"You notice that?" Alvy said. "Maybe twenty degrees colder in here than anywhere else. Damn near freezing."

"This here what you saw?" Rex asked Ted.

"No, I never did see it for myself. But Duane was here, and this is exactly how he described it to me. What do you think, Billy?"

Whipkey flashed his own brilliant torch light around the walls and fanged ceiling of the cavern, peering into stalactite crannies and passages opposite them. Here and there luna moths were glowingly fixed to the walls.

"It's a bitch," he said finally. "Piece of Swiss cheese. No way I'd get that ceiling to fall right, even if I could get up there with the plastic I have. It'll take me a long time to rig charges just to plug up all the holes in the walls. Three or four hours, maybe."

Ted rubbed his grimy forehead. His eyes hurt from straining to see in dark places. He had a sinus headache. He still had a bad feeling. They were there, and now he wanted to go home. "How much plastic you toting?"

"Ten pounds."

"Let's go down there, pile it all in the middle of the floor, and touch it off."

"Hoss, depending on what's underneath, that floor might drop to the center of the earth."

"Good."

"We want to be well away from here when that much banger goes off. All the way outside, would be my recommendation."

"How do we do it?"

"No problem. I brought three timers along. Just set 'em for three in the morning and make tracks. You know, I don't see none of the boogers you gen'mun's advertised. So far it ain't been worth missing the opening of deer season for."

"They're in there, all right," Rex told him. "You can't hardly walk without steppin' on some."

"Let's sling some ladders and get started," Ted advised.

They anchored two rope ladders with pitons hammered into the floor of the passage. Rex and Alvy went down first, their combined breaths rising in clouds like live steam from a pit. Ted followed. Bill Whipkey stayed behind with Vedders to prepare the explosive charges: three packages of plastic, each with a timer. Whipkey whistled through his teeth while he worked. Vedders fidgeted, getting up from time to time to cast his light around the cavern.

"Looking for bats? No batshit, no bats."

"I don't know what I'm looking for."

On the floor of the cavern Alvy was searching through the maze of silk, parting it with gloved hands. A remote dark face, slick as pitch with closed lids like patent leather, came into view. And another. Ted felt a stricture around the heart.

"That's something I didn't notice before," Rex said quietly. "Look there, around the neck. Like they been strangled with that vine. The both of 'em."

"They were strangled, all right."

Alvy continued to prowl, as if taking inventory. "Little one over here." he announced. "Man, what preserved them this a way?" Wayne Hud Vedder's light cut across his back and wavered against a wall. "Hmrn" Alvy reached deeper into the cocoon, groped for a few moments. He straightened. "Looky here at this," he said, turning. He held up a piece of dried strangler fig. It had been cut. "You can see here where one of 'em was lying. This silk stuff s all tacky with something, some kind of fluid." He turned his head again, looking for Ted, carbide lamp flashing redly.

"Better move on back toward the ladder," Ted told him in a choked voice. "Bill! How long?"

"Got a jammed mechanism here. Couple minutes more."

Vedders's light swept across Alvy's face, and Alvy put up his other hand. The light moved on a few feet, then jumped behind Alvy and stayed there.

"Jesus Christ!" Vedders called hysterically. "Get out of there! Run! Get out!"

There was movement in the cocoon behind Alvy, a glossy undulation. He turned haplessly as something surfaced just behind him: a domed, hairless head white as shaped marble, the vaguely human face finely drawn. It had a kind of dolorous, primitive beauty, and was fantastically endowed with living, blazing blue eyes: light and furious, accusatory and deadly. She rose from the cocoon with a long slashing motion, flicking a hand at Alvy just below the chin. He gave a little start, and stiffened, his helmet slightly askew on his head, the light of the carbide lamp picking up little blips of fresh blood, dotting her face where once she had brows. Then the blood jetted from his opened throat and Alvy sagged down into the agitated silk, helplessly clutching himself while his life pumped away.

"Lord a' mercy," Rex said, "what kind of booger be
that?"

As he spoke Ted reached out and snatched an arm, hauled Rex through the obstructive silk toward a ladder. Rex didn't need to be told to climb for his life.

Birka was coming, gliding toward Ted. He looked her in the eyes.

"I had a feeling," he said dismally. He didn't try to run, or even back off a little. And his seeming lack of fear gave Birka pause. She smiled, reluctantly.

"You again?" Birka said.

"Hard to kill, ain't you?"

"We don't die."

"Well, whatever you call it—" He had one hand in a pocket of his deer-hunter's vest. With the other he gestured. Stalling a little, giving Rex time to grunt and bang his way up the wildly swinging ladder. Vedders still held his flashlight beam on Birka, isolating her like an apparition in the midst of the cocoon.
How many more?
Ted thought.
How many of them on the loose?
She read him perfectly. But her own expression was not difficult for him to read. Birka scowled, and he knew. Just her, so far. It gave him heart to face the next few moments, which he knew would be the most difficult of his life. The thorn! God, she was so quick with that thing! "Whatever you call it, like them asleep in here, reckon if it ain't death, it'll do."

"In just a little while there will be no more sleepers."

"Yeah, well I reckon"—Ted paused to breathe, to steady himself, and gleaned another truth in the darkness beneath his feet, from the Dark Ones themselves—"reckon if you could do something about the state they're in, you would've done it already."

Her smile was slight, and rueful. She said nothing, but started for him again, right hand at the level of her breast, slightly clawed, the three inches of black thorn standing out from the marbled fingers. Ted felt a flurrying panic.

"You need help, don't you? Can't touch them yourself, once they're . . . asleep like that."

"Ted!" Vedders said in a strangled voice. "Get the hell out of the way, let me get a bead on her!"

"No, don't shoot! Won't do no good. Let me handle her. We're . . . like old friends, kind of." He spoke to Birka. "What's your name, anyway? Folks have names where you come from?"

Stay away from me, bitch.

You
are
cunning, aren't you? Perhaps we should keep you. Now I wonder . . . what treachery you have in mind?

"I'm Birka."

"Ted."

"Yes, I know. I know everything about you. Enid told me."

Enid!

Everything you suspect . . . Ted, and more. Well. Why don't we just distract you for an instant, and let me get this over with?

Beams of light crisscrossed the cavern and Vedders screamed, "There's another one coming up!"

Ted turned, plenty distracted, all right, and saw Enid's pallid face inside the hood of her parka. Blinded by the bright lights, she cowered, her hands in front of her face. In one hand was a sturdy pair of scissors.

"Birka!" she called, shrilly. And Birka, instead of falling on Ted with her slashing thorn, delayed momentarily to savor this moment.

No no you don't have her you don't you fucking

"Bitch!" Ted screamed, yanking his hand from the cargo pocket of his vest, uncoiling a whiplike strand of recently cut, green strangler fig, weighted at the tip with several ounces of lead fishing sinkers. The lead gave direction and impetus to the improvised lash, which Birka barely saw coming and could not avoid as it flicked around and around the slender column of her throat. Her mouth was frozen in a silent shriek, her pale eyes flashed on him. She touched the encircling vine with both hands and the tips of her fingers blackened instantly, dark as the thorn on her right hand.

Still she made an incredible effort, leaping, trying to destroy him with a single jab that Ted avoided, pivoting awkwardly in the clinging silk, yanking on the anchored, three-foot length of vine. He sent Birka crashing off balance almost to the floor. She kicked and struggled but could not reach him. Her eyes fumed, a burning deep in their desolate blueness. Her neck had turned the glossy black of congealing tar. All the unused veins and arteries of her body revealed themselves in almost limitless tracery, like the silhouette of a leafless tree against a mild twilight sky. She sank deeper into the shining cocoon, hands now clawed and lifeless. The Black Sleep overtaking her, rising to the level of her frantic eyes.

No! I will give you the world—you will be a king like no other! I, I can do this! Release me! Oh, Ted . . . please don't do this to me!

"Goddamn, I had a feeling," Ted said, holding on grimly, watching the immobile lips seal, her eyelids fall and darken until there was only a distant gleam of blueness, and they sealed too; and everywhere, from toes to the shapely dome of her head, Birka was in the deepest night the temper of God had ever willed.

"Enid?"

She was standing where she had risen, shocked, blinded; he made his knots secure around Birka's shrunken neck and plunged through the cocoon toward Enid.

"Bill! Got those charges ready?"

Enid swung around at his approach, gasping, he touched a cold cheek and she hacked ineffectually at him with the scissors, fending him off. He'd been prepared for that, knowing she couldn't be in her right mind, just hoping . . . he took the scissors and pocketed them, and Enid was a mumbling heap in his arms.

"Somebody give me a hand down here! Boogers ain't gonna bite! Boogers is done for! Get Enid out of here, and Alvy, what's left of him!" He sounded hysterical to his own ears, and didn't care. "I want to blow it! Blow it now! Send them all to Kingdom come! Now, now, give me all that shit, Bill, we're blowing it
now!"

11

Duane heard the telephone ringing and rose through depths of sleep, only gradually becoming aware that he wasn't at home, in his own bed.

Marjory's arms were around him, but she was sound asleep, breathing against his neck. She hadn't heard the phone. Duane began to shiver as he woke up. They had piled all the quilts and comforters they could find on her bed, but he was still cold.

He disentangled himself and Marjory rolled over complainingly, took up a pillow in her arms instead. He caressed her bare bottom, teeth chattering, and slipped out of the bed, plucked a quilt from the layer of bedclothes and wrapped himself in it.

Pain in his right foot when he put his weight on it. He hobbled in the direction the telephone was ringing, for a good three minutes since it had awakened him, and found the phone in Enid's room. A window was open; cold air poured in. It was dark outside, except for a distant streetlight. He thought of teeth that glowed like radium, bones in the stable, a corpse. His stomach contracted painfully. His foot was sore and throbbing.

"Hello?"

"Who's that?" Ted's voice.

Duane felt a rush of relief. "Ted. This's Duane."

"Duane? You need to speak louder, I'm partial deaf from—what're you doing there? Is Marjory—"

"She's all right! I think! Sleeping! Tonight we—listen. He was here! Alastor, I mean. I told you about him."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Big 'un.
What happened?"

"I got him. Carbon tetrachloride, I used carbon tet. Sprayed him like a moth. Awful. But he's—" Duane coughed, and it turned into retching. "I don't want to think about it. He killed somebody. Marjory's neighbor. Mr. Crudup. Body's in the stable. Alastor skinned him before I—you better get over here."

"Can't right now. I've been sure enough busy myself. I'll tell you later."

"Ted! Enid stole my—my dad's car. Something wrong with her, you've got to find—”

"I've got her, Duane. Enid's with me. She's all right. I'll bring her home in the morning. You stay there until I come, hear?"

"Yeah. Wait! Ted, what if there's more of them around?"

"There won't be. I took care of it tonight. They're all buried, Duane, under fifty-sixty feet of rock."

"How—?"

"Can't talk about it now. I'll see you."

"Got to get my dad's car back."

"Don't worry, Duane. You will. Take care of Marjory."

When Duane got off the bed after hanging up, the pain in his foot was intense; he saw stars and thought,
The thorn.

A cold clutching in his stomach. He couldn't breathe properly. A good lungful of air was a precious thing. His fear was more intense than the pain in his throbbing foot.

The thorn.

In the bathroom he went through the contents of the medicine chest and found a pair of cuticle scissors, a straight pin with a little green knob on it. He ran hot water in the basin, soaped the scissors and washed them off, then sat trembling on the edge of the tub where earlier he had tried to soak the cold from their bones. He cocked his right leg across his other knee and touched the spot on the arch of his foot, swollen the size of a pigeon's egg. Not soft, like a bulging blister. It was a hard white cyst, enclosing something uniquely poisonous, life-threatening. Duane gasped when he touched it. Then he ground his teeth and with his left hand stabbed the center of the cyst with a blade of the scissors, and screamed.

Marjory found him sitting naked on the bathroom floor, holding his bloodied foot and sobbing. She didn't speak but kneeled slowly beside him, took his fist in her hands, opened it. Blood in the palm, and the ragged black remnant of a wicked thorn.

She took it from him, and flushed it down the toilet.

"Did you get all of it?"

"I don't know."

Marjory sat next to him, and tenderly lifted his bloodied foot. She bent her head and put her mouth to the wound. Sucked gently. He put an arm around her, and his head on her shoulder. Marjory sucked harder, spat onto the tiles, sucked again. After a minute or so she rose and went to the wash basin, rinsed her mouth. She came back and settled down between his knees with her back to him and bent to the wounded foot again, licking gently, saying nothing. When all the tremors in his body ceased she straightened, turned slowly so as not to disturb him. Knees on either side of his thighs, she leaned to kiss him. The taste of his own blood on her lips completed his arousal. He put his hands on her waist.

Marjory brushed his lips again with her own, back and forth a few times, lastly with the tip of her tongue.

"Oh, Marjory! I'm still so cold."

"Come on, Duane. I want to go back to bed."

Her body, her embrace, her continuing slow kisses proved to be more of a sedative than an aphrodisiac. A creeping warmth; he dreamed, although he was not asleep. Rocked on her breast, lulled by the animal heartbeat, the surging pulse in her throat, he dreamed of wild places, a hot noon sea. The throbbing pain in his foot had diminished to a dull ache. In napping green, within a shaded thorny place, she sighed beneath him, thrillingly; there was a stillness of depletion.

At dawn he was awake, sitting beside her sleeping form, looking at the frost-rimmed windows, dappled gold by the rising sun, magical as first fruit.

He touched Marjory's shoulder, he touched a peeping nipple, she stirred and smiled without awakening. He wanted, not to be happy, that was asking too much, but to comfort and be comforted.
The thorn,
Duane thought.

the thorn the thorn

the

thorn

This day there were two less children in Eden.