One Door Away From Heaven (64 page)

The floor of the porch groaned under the weight of a bottle collection that would, redeemed at a nickle apiece, purchase a fine automobile for the owners to put up on blocks in the front yard. When Noah led the way through a narrow walk space, the bottles made fairy music.

The door between the porch and the kitchen was double-locked. One lock could easily be loided with a credit card, but the other was a deadbolt that would not succumb to a slip of plastic.

They had to assume that Maddoc had either heard them drive up, in spite of the wind and rain and thunder, or that he had seen them arrive. Stealth might matter inside, but it didn’t matter when they were
getting
in.

The bottles encroaching on both sides didn’t allow him a full range of motion, but he kicked the door hard. The shock of the impact expressed itself all the way into the wound in his shoulder, but he kicked again, and then a third time. Half eaten away by dry rot, the jamb crumbled around the lock, and the door flew inward.

THREE BLOWS shook the house, and Preston knew at once that his hope of having more than the briefest pleasure with the Hand had in this instant evaporated.

The Slut Queen wouldn’t have made that noise. She was in the farmhouse, seeking an exit, but striving
not
to draw attention to herself. In the unlikely event that she’d already found a route through the maze, she wouldn’t have needed to hammer her way
out
of the house.

Preston hadn’t heard sirens, and no one had yelled
police.
Yet he didn’t delude himself that a burglar would, by chance, have chosen precisely this point in time to force entry. Someone had come to stop him.

He abandoned his search for the Slut Queen hardly before it had begun, and turned back on his trail, eager to get to the armchair in which he’d left the Hand. He might still have time to choke the ugly little bitch to death, although such intimate contact would make his stomach churn, and then use the maze to slip away. He couldn’t allow her to fall under the protection of others, after all, because if at last she was able to convince anyone to listen to her, she would be the only witness against him.

POLLY WANTS CURTIS to remain in Noah’s rental car, but galactic royalty will always have its way.

Curtis wants Old Yeller to remain in the car, and he easily wins the issue that Polly lost, because sister-become is a good, good dog.

The grassless yard has turned to mud that sucks at their shoes. They splash through deep puddles as lightning strikes a pine tree in a nearby field, about a hundred feet away, causing a banner of flame to flutter briefly through the boughs before the downpour quenches the fire, and thunder loud enough to announce the Apocalypse shakes the day. It’s all so
wonderful.

On the front porch, when she tries the door and finds it locked, Polly draws the pistol from her purse and tells Curtis to stand back.

“It’d be cool to blow down the door,” the boy says, “but my way is easier, and Mother always says the simplest strategy is usually the best.”

He places both hands lightly on the door, wills it to open, and down on the micro level, where it matters, the brass molecules of the deadbolt suddenly prefer to be
there
rather than
here,
to be in the lock’s disengaged position.

“Can I learn that?” Polly asks.

“Nope,” he says, pushing the door inward.

“Got to be a spaceboy like you, huh?”

“Every species has its talents,” he says, allowing her to enter first, with her gun drawn, because in fact she edges him aside and gives him no choice.

Mummies line the downstairs hall. Indian mummies, embalmed in standing positions and clothed in their ceremonial best.

At the back of the big house, Noah or Cass is kicking down the door, and seconds later, they appear at the far end of the hallway, gaping in amazement at the mummies.

Polly signals them to check out the rooms on their end, and to Curtis, she says, “This way, sweetie.”

He follows her into chambers more interesting than any he has seen since arriving on this world, but—Oh, Lord—it sure does seem to be the kind of place where serial killers would hang out by the dozen to reminisce about the atrocities they have committed.

LEILANI WASN’T IN the chamber with the television, but her wet footprints lingered there, with the older, fading prints of Preston Maddoc. Micky could also see where the girl had faltered, fallen, and gotten up again, leaving the damp imprint of her sodden clothes.

Micky followed this trail from one short passageway into another, then around a second blind corner, moving far faster than prudence allowed, terrified that the girl would blunder into Maddoc.

Clearly, the bastard had brought her here to kill her, just as he’d brought Micky for that purpose. Couldn’t wait for Montana. Not with the complications that Micky had brought to his plans.

The house shook with three loud, rapid knocks, not peals of thunder, but hard blows, as though someone had struck the building with a great hammer.

The noise scared Micky, because she had no idea what caused it. A death blow of some kind? Maddoc triumphant? Leilani dead?

Then Micky turned another corner, and the girl was six feet ahead, bracing herself with one hand against the maze wall, limping but making determined progress, such a small figure and yet somehow towering at the same time, her head held high, shoulders thrown back in a posture of absolute resolution.

Sensing a presence, Leilani looked over her shoulder, and her expression at the sight of a faithful friend was a joy that Micky would never forget if she lived to be five hundred and if God chose to take all other memories from her in old age. All other memories, He could have if that day came, but she would never give Him the sight of Leilani’s face at this moment, for this alone would sustain her even in the hour of her death.

WHEN HE DISCOVERED that the Hand wasn’t in the armchair where he’d left her, wasn’t anywhere in the television annex, Preston began to set the maze on fire.

Ultimately, following what pain he’d wished to put her through, he’d always intended to leave the girl still alive so that she could live her last minutes in terror as the flames encircled her, and as the smoke stole the breath from her lungs. The former cruelty had been denied him; but he might still have the pleasure of standing in the rain outside and hearing her screams as she staggered and crawled helplessly through the baffling, burning labyrinth.

Bundled newspapers and magazines offered the best fuel. The kiss of the butane lighter ignited an immediate passionate response. The publications were so tightly compacted in the lower portions of the walls that, almost as dense as bricks, they would burn fiercely and for hours.

He circled the cramped space, bringing flame to paper in half a dozen places. He had never killed with fire before, except when as a boy he tortured bugs by dropping matches on them in a jar. Licking flames, lavishing bright tongues upon the walls, thrilled him.

When he first found the armchair empty, Preston had noticed the runt’s damp footprints made patterns with his own. Now he followed them, pausing briefly every few steps to apply the lighter to the tinder-dry walls.

NEITHER OF THEM had time to be weepy, but they wept anyway, even though tough babes like Micky B and dangerous young mutants were both averse to giving anyone the satisfaction of their tears.

Crying didn’t slow Leilani as she used the fragment of yellow glass to cut the loops of lamp cord that shackled Micky’s wrists. She needed perhaps a half minute to do the job, less than a half minute to clamp the brace around her leg.

When they were ready to move again, flames bloomed elsewhere in the maze. Leilani couldn’t yet see the fire itself, but its reflected light crawled the ceiling, like swarms of bright chameleons whipping lizardy tails across the plaster.

Fear nothing. That’s what the surfers said. Yeah, sure, but how long since the last time that any of those dudes had to worry about being burned to death while they were catching a honking big wave?

They started back the way they had come, but simultaneously they noticed the damp footprints, and without discussing the matter, they reached the same conclusion: Preston would follow the spoor as surely as Micky had followed it.

In truth, finding their way out was no harder if they went one direction instead of another. No easier, either.

Already, on the ceiling, slithering salamanders of firelight faded behind rising masses of smoke that were first carried on the updraft but that would soon pour down through the labyrinth in thick, choking clouds.

Micky put one arm around Leilani, lending support, and together they hurried as fast as the cyborg leg would allow. At intersection after intersection, they turned left or right, or continued straight ahead if that option existed, basing every choice on instinct—which brought them eventually to a dead end.