Crawlers (19 page)

They all mingled one with the next, the way the wall shifted when you were stoned, creatures amalgamated of things that should never be connected at all. They danced together to make a sort of sketchy man-shape in the air that was circling around Carlos, not letting him go more than a step before it flowed to block his escape, wherever he tried to run. The things chattered to themselves in voices that were almost animal and almost human and almost like talking heard from a distant radio station lost in static, as they darted in and out to rip small pieces from Carlos, cutting him up little by little in an even way, strips and ribbons torn away from him all the way around, flaying him in snip-snaps at the same neatly calculated levels, spiraling ruinously and bloodily up him as he spun around flailing. Blood spotted the dirt more and more thickly.

There was a man, too, or something close to a man, at the back of the truck—opening the cages of the pit bulls.

Metzger automatically shouted at the raggedy figure—

“Oh, fuck, don’t open those cages!”

—and in reaction the guy’s head revolved on his shoulders, swiveling like a periscope to look backwards. He had only one remaining eye. In place of the other eye was just a red hole in his head, and his clothes were the tatters of a uniform. Maybe a marine uniform. Then the tattered marine seemed to speak to the dogs as he climbed up on the truck—crawled up the side of it, really, almost defying gravity by gripping the side of the truck with stretched-out arms and legs—as all six pit-fighting dogs came stalking out of the back of the truck toward Metzger.

“It seems a waste,” the man clinging to the truck said to Metzger. “Your Mexican friend will be used, some for fuel and some for parts. But you—I just want to see them eat you. I used to like dogs, and maybe there’s some of that left in me. But the All of Us is also modeling justice scenarios. They figure there’ll be some resistance to complete absorption, and they may need social controls. So we get to punish people for being assholes now and then. It’s all an experiment. The All of Us loves experiments—maybe because it was one.”

While Carlos fell wailing under the hopping shapes, the things of fur and feathers and hooks that carved him apart worked with surprising efficiency from the outside to the inside.

Metzger saw the dogs’ intention in their eyes, in the rigidness of their bounding bodies.

He turned to run into the barn, but never got through the door. The dogs leapt as one and knocked him down and then there was a tearing agony at one with their growls and delighted yips as they wrenched him this way and that and tore him to pieces and ate him. They were eating him alive.

The last things he saw in life were their foaming jaws and the man above who crawled up the side of the barn, pausing to look down at him with his one eye. And then a sheet of blood drew itself over all the world.

14

December 9, night

Joe Sindesky had given up trying to get comfortable. He had a comfortable bed, he had taken all his pills, and it was even warm enough in here since his grandson had brought him that space heater. He didn’t have to yell at the cheap bastards who ran this retirement home to turn up the heat. His arthritis was bothering him only like a house on fire, not like a forest fire, and he sure as double hell was tired enough to sleep.

He was hoping to die in his sleep, the way Margie had. And he hoped it was going to be soon.

But lately he’d been tormented by the old memories. He might have to start taking that Zoloft stuff again. He was remembering Anzio, and Omaha Beach. Especially the beach, how he’d had to abandon his own cousin, Little Benjy, just leave him to die—Benjy who he’d pledged to his aunt to look after, and he’d even pulled strings to get him put in his outfit. Joe’d had to leave Benjy writhing on the sand bleeding to death from a 9mm round in the bread-basket, because Joe was a sergeant and he was expected to move the platoon up onto the beach. They had to protect those engineers who were going to bust open the bunker, and he’d had “the mission first, the mission no matter what” drilled into his head over and over, and it was ten times as strong because this was fucking D day for god’s sake, but Little Benjy, all of eighteen, was screaming,
Please, don’t leave me, Joey.

“Shut the fuck up, Benjy,” Joey muttered, “it’s sixty goddamn years later and I’m tired of hearing it.”

But I bled to death all alone. You weren’t even there to hold my hand.
Maybe you could’ve carried me on your back.

They’d have nailed me, I moved that slow, carrying somebody.

You see? It was your own ass you were worried about, not the mission, Joey.

“Shut the fuck up,” Joe said again, getting carefully out of bed and crossing the little studio room to the closet. He moved slowly because it hurt to move fast, but mostly because if he tripped in the semidarkness, with only the nightlight on so he could go to the head if he needed to, why, he’d have cracked a hip, at least, and be stuck in bed, in misery, till he died. A man just didn’t heal good at his age.

As he pulled the photo album down, he wondered yet again why God kept them alive so long past their use—yet let so many nice kids die young. He felt despair tighten over him, familiar as an old, ill-fitting coat.

He had lived with despair a good long while now. It was like the way they lived with humidity in New York, like the way people lived with the dryness in Arizona. Despair was part of the atmosphere of his life, something he accepted. Only, tonight, maybe it was just too much to accept. Maybe the time had come.

He’d have done himself a while back—he had enough nerve for that anyway—except Father Enzena said it was a mortal sin. Or was it a venal sin? He couldn’t remember. Maybe he hadn’t heard clearly. It was hard to tell what that goddamn Filipino priest was saying in his mushy Tagalog accent.

Oh, you got used to the Flips, they were okay; he just wished they’d speak clearly, because you felt like a fool, fiddling with your hearing aid all the time.

He could go over to Berkeley; they had an Irish priest over there, but they were all liberal sons of bitches, giving their blessings to gay marriages. Always in hot water with the diocese. How could you trust a priest like that?

He hobbled over to the chair beside his bed with the photo album and opened it toward the back where there were more pictures of him and Margaret together.

There was Margie in her elegant sun hat. She loved those fancy sun hats.

He suddenly felt himself weeping: it just came over him all of a sudden. He missed her, had missed her for thirteen years, though she was crazy senile at the end—but it was more than that. It was feeling that he had no purpose without her, and without work. That was what made him want to cry.

He couldn’t manage a garage anymore; the figures confused him; he got the billing mixed up. He had done some volunteer work, but it was so hard to get around now. And a lot of people just treated him like he was a grumpy old busybody.

So what did that leave you? You were in a waiting room, is all it was, and what was in the next room? Death. You were waiting to be erased from the world. Until then, all you had was playing cards with Mrs. Buttner and that old bald-headed yahoo with the big age spots on his head, could never remember the guy’s name. That was about it. What the hell kind of life was that? And TV nowadays embarrassed him. My god, those Victoria’s Secret commercials made you ashamed to watch TV with your grandchildren. You could tell the kids and grandkids were all just putting in time, when they came to visit.

Oh, shit, he was crying again.

Well. Fuck that Filipino priest. The real reason he’d held off was because he had been afraid the saints wouldn’t let him see Margaret in the next world. But he had to admit it—

Had to admit he’d stopped believing in a next world. What did priests know? Literally dozens of them arrested on child molestation out in Boston. Even more in Ireland. If they hadn’t been molesting, they’d been tolerating it. How could you trust a bastard like that? Child-molesting priests, homosexual priests, they had to be liars, and that would include about heaven.

He’d been raised Catholic, but being a practical man, a nuts-and-bolts man, he’d really never been able to believe in anything he couldn’t see.

Sure. It was all a scam. He’d always suspected that. Not that he’d want his grandkids to stop going to church. But then again, if you couldn’t trust the fucking priests to keep their hands to themselves . . . Oh, the hell with the whole fucking thing.

He had the .32 in his drawer, under some papers. They didn’t know about it, of course. Residents weren’t supposed to have firearms. People got crazy senile and paranoid in their old age, and they really shouldn’t have firearms, no. So he’d had to smuggle it in.

Feeling a real sense of purpose now, and silently laughing at the irony of it, Joe got up with a grunt and hobbled over to the little rolltop desk. Dumped out the pencil box, found the little key he’d hidden at the bottom, and fumbled at unlocking the drawer. The lock took a minute, what with the shaking of his crooked fingers, but finally he got it unlocked and got the pistol out.

He held the gun in his hand and admired it. He’d had it for fifty years. He’d kept it in good repair. He made sure the safety was off. He cocked it and raised it to his mouth.

“Hello, Joe, whatya know?” said a voice from the doorway. “Is this good timing or what?”

Joe was so startled he almost pulled the trigger. But he managed to ease off. He didn’t want anyone to have to
see
him blow his brains out.

He lowered the gun and squinted at the dark figure in the doorway. He hadn’t heard the door open, but then that figured, with his ears being as bad as they were.

“Who’s there?”

The figure reached to turn on the lamp atop the dresser. Joe recognized him. It was Garraty.

“Why, Garraty.” Joe glanced at the clock. It was one in the morning. “How’d the hell you get in? They don’t allow no visitors at this hour. Place is all locked up. Security guard and the whole business.”

“Well, I’ll tell you.”

“Speak up, dammit.”

Garraty spoke a little louder, closing the door behind him. “I was just saying, Joe, I did in fact have to kill that security guard. Ran into him when I jimmied the back door. He was a foul-mouthed little punk anyway. I can’t imagine you feel sorry about him.”

Joe blinked. “You say you killed him? Oh!” He chuckled because it was expected when someone was pulling your leg. But he didn’t feel like laughing. “Damn, you had me there. I don’t remember that kind of sense of humor from you, Garraty. Well, hell, I’d make small talk and ask how your missus is but—”

“She’s better than she’s been for twenty years.”

“—but I figure you must’ve noticed this gun.”

“I did,” Garraty said. “Seems I got here at the perfect time. Just a moment later and
boom!
—a terrible waste.”

Joe felt a warm pulse of hope. Maybe there was another way. Maybe somebody gave a damn. Maybe . . .

“Now, look,” Garraty went on, “we go way back. Elks together for twenty-five years at least since I moved out here. I know what time of day it is, Joe. I understand how you feel. I’m here to tell you I’ve got something better than putting a bullet in your head.”

Joe groaned in disappointment. “Oh, no. You’re born again, ain’t you. Is that all it is? I hate that stuff. Goddamn it there, Garraty, I’m Catholic. I was just now thinking it’s probably a lot of bullshit, but it’s
my
family’s bullshit, and what do I want
your
bullshit for?”

“I’m not born again—not the way you mean. I’m not a Christian, Joe. It’s not religion I’m talking about. Nope. It’s better than that. It’s real, you see. Let me show you something.”

Then he did a handstand, right there in the middle of the room. Without any visible effort, no tremble in his arms. Joe just stared.

“I’m dreaming, is what it is,” Joe muttered.

“No, you’re not,” Garraty said, flipping down to his feet again. “I’m young again inside, Joe. Eventually, if I cared to, I could make the outside look young, too. So I’m told. I could do it, anyway, if it helps the All of Us. But I don’t think whether I look old or young is important anymore. I don’t care about that. I don’t need sex, and if you don’t need sex, why do you need to look good? Vanity? I’ve got something better than vanity. I’ve got life and power. You can have ’em, too.”

Joe looked at Garraty and considered. Finally said, “You were in bad shape, last I knew. Something happened to you, sure. But why’d you come to me?”

“I’ve been assigned to you, Joe. We’re recruiting the older folks first. They’re much easier than the younger ones. We still have to attune for the brain chemistry of the younger ones, and we haven’t got the thinking power to work that out yet. That’s a big thinking. We tried a couple of the young ones, and they sort of worked and sort of didn’t. One of them was in hand, for a while, but he got troublesome, and the other one is just wandering around in the woods, converting animals and keeping an eye on things in his own half-assed way. We’re working on a test to sort out which kid’s susceptible.”

He paused. Smiled oddly. “Then, too, Joe, there’s a temporary shortage of the communion wafer.”

“The what?”

“That’s what I call it, anyway. It’s the special material that integrates the All of Us through the nervous system of the people we convert. It has to be manufactured. We still haven’t got enough, and we had to build the mechanism to manufacture it. So we can’t convert everyone, all at once. But pretty soon we’ll have a new system. The stuff will be able to make
itself
more easily. After the launch, Joe, very soon. And then everything will speed up.

“So what you want to do, Joe, is get in on the ground floor here.”

“Sounds like this new world of yours has got a lotta bugs in it,” Joe said, stalling. “You can’t do everyone, you got problems with the kids.”

“Sure, but we’re getting the bugs worked out. Then we’ll start again on the younger ones, don’t you know. Hell, even some of the middle-aged ones, they can resist a bit—and there are complications. They have to be reset.”

“What’s that, ‘reset’?”

“Why, sometimes it means they’ve got to be killed, Joe.” Garraty’s smile never faltered. “The rest of the time we just need to restore them to status—if the person was already with us.”

“Killed! You really did kill that security guard!” Joe felt a long slow chill slither through him.

“Certainly. He just wasn’t suitable for conversion, for various reasons. Some people are like cats; we have trouble with cats, too. Cats—we don’t care for ’em. Wrong brain chemistry. Hard for us to utilize, and the little buggers seem to sense us. Anyhow, when it comes to people, we prefer voluntary recruitment because the process is quicker, more foolproof. Of all the various systems modeled, voluntary recruitment is the most cost efficient.

“We’ve had to do a lot of experimenting, Joe. Some of the early formats were . . . a mess. But as you see, we’ve almost got it down to an art form now. The changeover can happen in a minute or two now.”

Joe was trying not to look at the door. “And you’re saying I don’t have to take that last trip to the cemetery?”

“Funny you should say that. You have to go there in one sense. But not to die. We’re using the cemetery, see. Central’s there. It turns out to be the place where there’s the best insulation against electromagnetic fields from the outside. We have a risk problem with—” He broke off, seemed to be listening. “No need to go into that with you. Well, you ready to be rejuvenated, Joe? What do you say?”

Joe shook his head. “Garraty—or whatever you are—you can kiss my ass. I figured what you are, more or less. And I’ll tell you something. I ain’t much—but I ain’t ever going to be
that
.”

“Joe, what else have you got? A choice between the misery of old age, isolation, endless loneliness—and oblivion? Old age is a bitch, Joe. I remember when I realized I was getting old. I was in my early fifties. It’s like being told you have a terminal disease, and seeing the first symptoms of that disease come on you. That’s how it felt. But not now, not the way I am now. This way, Joe, you live pretty much forever.”

Joe swallowed. His mouth was suddenly so dry, it was hard to do. “Forever?”

“Well, there’s a little something called entropy that will eventually take its toll—in maybe ten thousand years.”

“Ten thousand!” It made him tired just to think of it. “Ten thousand years? You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Maybe longer. If you join us, all pain ends for you, Joe. All sickness. All weariness. All sadness. All uncertainty, gone. It’s all over with. You get to be part of something beautiful, growing like the patterns in a snowflake. You’d be useful again! If only you could see it the way I do, you’d say yes in a hot second.”