Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways (47 page)

A sob burst from his lips, but the grief that spawned it lasted only a few heartbeats before a black frenzy boiled out of the vault where he stored it and took over. Repressing a howl of rage, he rolled back to the post and found his plastic bag of grenades. Breath hissing through bared teeth, he snatched one from within, pulled the pin, popped the safety clip, and waited, counting…

One thousand and one…

The note Abe had included with the grenades said the M-67 fuse gave a four-to-five-second delay between release of the clip and detonation.

…one thousand and two…

It also said each grenade had a kill radius of fifteen feet and a casualty radius of about fifty. Dad and Carl weren’t much beyond that but he was only peripherally aware of the risk. His focus was tunneled in on the
Bull-ship
and nothing was going to pull it away.

…one thousand and three!

As soon as he hit three, he lobbed the grenade up and out, then ducked behind the pole. If it hit the deck and exploded, great; if it exploded above the deck, even better.

But he didn’t wait for it to hit before pulling another from the bag. He was popping the clip when the first went off. He poked his head up as he started counting. His throw had been short by maybe half a dozen feet, but not a complete loss. It had exploded at deck level and the screams of the wounded and frightened shouts of the rest were music.

…three!

This one sailed toward
Horse-ship
—no need for them to feel left out—and it too fell short, but not without doing some damage to hull and human alike.

It looked so much easier in movies.

Jack was ready to pop the clip on a third when he heard someone thrashing through the underbrush to his right. The fact that whoever it was made no attempt at stealth left him pretty sure it was his father, but he raised the Ruger anyway. Sure enough, seconds later, Dad burst from a stand of ferns in a crouch and dropped down beside him.

“What the hell are you doing, Jack?” His eyes were wide; rain ran down his face in rivulets. “Anya’s in one of those boats!”

“No, she’s not, Dad,” he said through a constricting throat. “She’s dead.”

He frowned. “How can you know that?”

“I found a big piece of her skin hanging back there.”

“No!” he gasped. Jack couldn’t see his complexion but was sure it had gone waxy. “You can’t mean it!”

“I wish I was wrong, but I saw her back the other day and the same marks are on that piece of skin. They skinned her, Dad. They fucking skinned her and hung it out to dry.”

Dad placed a trembling hand over his eyes and was silent a moment. Then he lowered the hand and thrust it toward Jack’s sack of grenades. His voice was taut, strained.

“Give me one of those.”

7

Semelee lay tremblin’ on the floor, head down, hands over her ears. It sounded as if war had broken out. Those weren’t just guns firin’ out there. With the explosions and the way the windows was shatterin’, it felt like they was bein’ bombed.

Luke fell through the door, grabbin’ onto a bleedin’ shoulder.

“They got grenades, Semelee! They’re killin’ us out there! Corley’s dead and Bobby’s leg’s bleedin’ real bad! Y’gotta do somethin’!”

“What can I do? Devil’s dead and Dora’s no good on land.”

“The things from the sinkhole, the ones you brought up last night…we need ’em now. We need ’em bad!”

“I can’t! I told you before—they won’t come up till after sundown.”

No matter how she’d tried yesterday, she couldn’t get those awful winged monsters to come out of the hole while the sun was up. But as soon as it went down, they were hers—or so she’d thought.

She’d almost lost it when she first saw them. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at them while they was down in the lights, but once they was up in the air, in the twilight, what she saw scared her so much she almost dropped her eye-shells.

The most horrible lookin’ critters she’d ever seen.

They was the size of lobsters—not the crawdad-like things around these parts; no, these was thick and heavy, like the big-clawed ones from up north. These things had shells and claws too, but that’s where the likeness ended. Their bodies was waisted, like a wasp’s, and they had wings, two big transparent ones on each side, sproutin’ from the top of the body like a dragonfly’s.

Chew wasps—that was the name that popped into her head, and it seemed to fit them perfect.

Plus they had teeth. Oh God did they have teeth—each had big jaws that opened wide as a cottonmouth’s, and they was filled to overflowin’ with long sharp transparent fangs that looked like slivers of glass. One of the weirdest touches was the rows of little blue dots of lights along their sides that glowed like neon. They looked like they’d been drug up from the bottom of the sea where the sun don’t shine, a place so deep and dark that even God’s forgot about them.

God…he must’ve been havin’ a real bad day when he made those things. She had to wonder what kind of a world they came from, and how anything else survived with them roamin’ free.

“It’s dark as night out there now! Give it a try! You gotta! They’re putting holes in the hull. They’re tryin’ to sink us!”

“But why’re they tryin’ to do that? Why’re they throwin’ grenades, Luke? If they think we got the old lady and they want her back, ain’t they afraid of killin’ her along with us?”

“Who knows why, damn it!” Luke shouted. “They’ve gone crazy!”

But Semelee caught a look in his eyes, like he was hidin’ somethin’.

“What is it, Luke? What changed their minds? What makes them think she’s not here, or that she’s dead? You didn’t open your big mouth, did you?”

“No. Course not. What kinda fool you take me for?”

“Well, then what? What, Luke?”

Luke looked away. “I guess they found her skin.”

“What? How could they do that? You buried it.” Luke still kept lookin’ away. “You did bury it like I told you to, didn’t you, Luke?”

He shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I hung it up to let the rain clean it off, then I was gonna tan it…you know, like a hide.”

Semelee closed her eyes. If she had a gun right now she’d’ve shot Luke—right through his stupid, brainless head.

Her thoughts flashed back to last night…

She’d been in a frenzy, completely out of control…so pissed at that old lady for killin’ Devil and then ruinin’ her plans for Jack that she just…lost it. All the trouble she had gettin’ those things to come out of their hole didn’t help matters none either. By the time she realized that they wouldn’t come out in the day, she was all but frothin’ at the mouth.

When sunset came, so did the things. She had trouble controllin’ them from the git-go. Soon as they came out they wanted to run wild, but she managed to gather them into a group and herd them toward the old woman’s house. When they got there, they went crazy, rippin’ through the screen and gnawing through the front door.

Their ferocity frightened the hell outta Semelee, and she remembered thinkin’, Oh, God what have I got myself into now? And, bein’ inside them, she was beginnin’ to feel some of their bloodlust.

When they got through the door, there was the old lady, standin’ in the middle of her livin’ room, all done up in one of them funny Japanese dresses. She just stood there smokin’ a cigarette. Smokin’! It was like she knew she was gonna die. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she didn’t even fight back.

But her plants did. They lashed out at the chew wasps and tried to entangle them with her branches. The wasps splintered them and striped off all their leaves.

But they still couldn’t get to the lady because of her little dog. Semelee especially wanted to even the score with that mongrel for killin’ Devil, but he wasn’t going quietly. She’d wondered how such a little thing could’ve killed the biggest gator she’d ever seen, and last night she found out. That tiny dog fought like a full-grown Rottweiler. He brought down two of the chew wasps before three of them ganged up on him and tore him to pieces.

And then there was nothing between the chews and the old lady. She didn’t try to run, she just stood there, like she was acceptin’ what was comin’.

That was when Semelee had second thoughts. She sensed somethin’ special about this lady—something
extra
special—and had a feeling she’d be losing somethin’ precious if she killed her.

Maybe it was the way she was just standin’ there. She had to be scared outta her mind but she wasn’t showing it, not one bit.

But the thing that most made Semelee want to hold off was knowin’ that this lady wasn’t just gonna be killed, she was gonna be torn apart. Much as Semelee hated her for messin’ with her plans, she didn’t know if she could go through with that. The other folks she’d sacrificed here at Gateways had been stung or bit or pecked up, and they’d died later…not right in front of her.

Semelee was gonna have to watch this and she didn’t have the stomach for it. Maybe gettin’ her house wrecked and her dog killed would be enough for the old lady. Maybe she’d learn her lesson and stop messin’ where she didn’t belong. Maybe she’d even have a heart attack and die later. A lot better’n bein’ torn to pieces.

But when Semelee tried to turn the chew wasps around and bring them home, they wouldn’t go. They smelled blood and there was no stoppin’ them. They lit into the old lady. And what did she do? She stood there and raised her arms straight out from her sides and just let them come.

Semelee wasn’t sure if it was the bravest or craziest thing she’d ever seen, but she did know it was horrible to watch.

More than watch. Semelee was in close with the wasps,
inside
them as they gouged the old lady’s flesh, crunched her bones. She could almost taste it, and gagged now at the memory. They was so fierce they didn’t even let her body fall to the ground. They ate her upright, even slurped sprays of blood right out of the air. And no matter what Semelee did she couldn’t pull them away. She wanted to drop the eye-shells but was afraid the chew wasps would turn on the clan who’d gone there just to see what these ugly-lookin’ things could do.

Finally, when they were through, there was nothin’ left of the old lady but the skin of her back. For some reason, the chew wasps wasn’t interested in it. They gobbled her up from head to toe, but left that rectangle of skin.

And when they was finished they started listenin’ to Semelee again. She quick got them outta there and back to the sinkhole. Soon as they was back where they belonged, Semelee yanked off the eye-shells and got real sick.

Back at the old lady’s house, Luke did two things, one smart and one dumb. The smart thing was pickin’ up the two dead chew wasps and bringin’ them back to the lagoon. If people came lookin’ for the old lady and found those, it’d be in all the papers and everyone’d assume they came from the Glades. Soon there’d be scientists and hunters and cops and thrill seekers all over the place, including the lagoon. The clan’s whole way of life’d be messed up.

The dumb thing Luke did was bring back the old lady’s skin. He—

The boom of another grenade—sounded like it must’ve exploded over by
Horse-ship
—yanked Semelee back to the here and now.

“Why, Luke?” She finally opened her eyes and stared real hard at him. “Why’d you do such a fool thing?”

“I wanted to keep it. You know, kinda like a souvenir. I like all those marks. They’re almost like a map. But never mind that. Y’gotta try those wasp things again, Semelee! You just gotta!”

She didn’t want to tell him that she was afraid to. She hated the way they made her feel…like all dark and ugly inside, with this endless hunger. Even with the gunfire, the explosions, the howlin’ wind, the leakin’ roof, the thunder and lightnin’ all around her, this seemed like a better place than where she’d been last night.

But she couldn’t just sit around and do nothin’ while the whole clan got massacred. She had to do somethin…and there was only one thing she could do.

Her gorge rose as she pulled the eye-shells out of her pocket.

“You’re gonna do it?” Luke said, a grin spreadin’ cross his face.

She nodded. “Yeah, but you gotta get outta here.”

The grin collapsed. “But Semelee…there’s all sorts of shootin’ out there.”

“Then get out there and shoot back. Just leave me alone so I can save our asses.”

“Okay, okay.”

He headed for the door in a crouch, then crawled out onto the deck.

Taking a deep breath, Semelee pressed the shells over her eyes and went searchin’ for some chew wasps…

8

“We’re not doing a whole helluva lot of damage with these things,” Dad said after they’d watched the latest grenade sail through the air and explode off the bow of the
Bull-ship
.

Jack had to agree. He would have thought that something that small and weighing almost a pound wouldn’t get tossed around by the wind. But this was no ordinary wind. He’d tried compensating for it by adjusting his throw but the trouble was you couldn’t wing these things like a baseball; you had to lob them, and the wind kept changing direction.