The Tommyknockers (99 page)

“Good old Peter,” he remarked to the still hot afternoon (was it yet afternoon? By God it was). He reached the porch steps and then disaster struck. His balance suddenly deserted him. His weight came down on the bad ankle. This time he could almost see the splintered ends of the bones digging into each other. Gardener uttered a high, mewling shriek—not the scream of a woman but of a very young girl in desperate trouble. He grabbed for the porch railing as he collapsed sideways.

During her frantic early July, Bobbi had fixed the railing between the kitchen and the cellar, but had never
bothered with the one between the porch and the dooryard. It had been rickety for years, and when Gard put his weight on it, both of the rotted uprights snapped. Ancient wood-dust puffed out into the summer sunlight . . . along with the heads of a few startled termites. Gard pitched sideways off the porch, yelling miserably, and fell into the dooryard with a solid meat thump. He tried to get up, then wondered why he was trying. The world was swaying in front of his eyes. He saw first two mailboxes, then three. He decided to forget the whole thing and go to sleep. He closed his eyes.

In this long, strange, and painful dream he was having, Ev Hillman felt/saw Gardener fall, and heard Gardener's thought

(forget the whole thing go to sleep)

clearly. Then the dream began to break up and that seemed good; it was hard to dream. It made him hurt all over, made him ache. And it hurt to combat the green light. If sunlight was too bright

(he remembered it a little sunlight)

you could close your eyes but the green light was
inside,
always
inside
—a third eye that saw and a green light that burned. There were other minds here. One belonged to
THE WOMAN,
the other to
THE LESS-MIND
which had once been Peter. Now
THE LESS-MIND
could only howl. It howled sometimes for
BOBBI
to come and let it free from the green light . . . but mostly it only howled as it burned in the torment of the draining.
THE WOMAN
also screamed for release, but sometimes her thoughts cycled into appalling images of hate that Ev could barely stand. So: yes. Better

(better)

to go to sleep

(easier)

and let it all go . . .

. . . but there was David.

David was dying. Already his thoughts—which Ev had received clearly at first—were falling into a deepening spiral that would end first in unconsciousness and then, swiftly, in death.

So Ev fought the dark.

Fought it and began to call:

“Get up! Get up! You out there in sunlight! I remember sunlight! David Brown deserves his time of sunlight. So get up!
Get up! Get up!
GET

UP GET UP GET UP!

The thought was a steady beat in Gardener's head. No; not a beat. It was something like a car, only the wheels were glass, they were cutting into his brain as the car motored slowly across it.

deserves his time of sunlight David Brown
GET UP
David
GET
David
UP
David Brown!
GET UP! DAVID BROWN! GET UP!
GET UP, DAMMIT!

“All
right!”
Gardener muttered through a mouth that was full of blood. “All
right
, I hear you, leave me alone!” He managed to get to his knees. He tried to get to his feet. The world grayed out. No good. At least the rasping, cutting voice in his head had let up a little . . . he sensed its owner was somehow looking out of his eyes, using them like dirty windows,

(dreaming through them)

seeing some of what he saw.

He tried to get to his feet again and was again unable.

“My asshole quotient is still very high,” Gardener croaked. He spat out two teeth and began to crawl through the dirt of the dooryard toward the shed.

Haven came after Jim Gardener.

They came in cars. They came in pickup trucks. They came on tractors. They came on motorcycles. Mrs. Eileen Crenshaw, the Avon lady who had been so bored at Hilly Brown's
SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW,
came driving her son Galen's dune-buggy. The Reverend Goohringer rode behind her, the remaining strands of his graying hair blowing back from his sunburned pate. Vern Jernigan
came in a hearse he had been trying to convert into a camper before the “becoming” got into high gear. They filled the roads. Ashley Ruvall wove between those on foot like a slalom racer, pedaling his bike like a madman. He had returned home long enough to get something he called a Zap Gun. This spring it had only been an outgrown toy, gathering dust in the attic. Now, equipped with a nine-volt battery and the circuit-board from his little brother's Speak 'n Spell, it was a weapon the Pentagon would have found interesting. It blew holes in things.
Big
holes. This was strapped onto the carrier of his bike, where he had once carried newspapers for delivery. They came in a ripping hurry and there were some accidents. Two people were killed when Early Hutchinson's VW collided with the Fannins' station wagon, but such minor things stopped no one. Their mental chant filled the hollow spaces in the air with a steady, rhythmic cry:
Before he can do anything to the ship! Before he can do anything to the ship!
It was a fine summer's day, a fine day for a killing, and if anyone needed killing it was James Eric Gardener, and so they came, well over five hundred of them in all, good country people who had learned some new tricks. They came. And they brought their new weapons with them.

By the time Gardener got halfway to the shed, he began to feel better—perhaps he was getting a second wind. More likely, he supposed, was the possibility that he really
had
gotten rid of almost all the Valium and was now starting to get on top of the rest.

Or maybe the old man was somehow feeding him strength.

Whatever it was, it was enough to get him on his feet again and hopping toward the shed. He clutched at the door for a moment, heart galloping wildly in his chest. He happened to glance down, and saw a hole in the door. It was round. The edges stuck out in a jagged bracelet of white splinters. It had a
chewed
look, that hole.

The vacuum cleaner that ran the buttons. This is how it
got out. It had a New and Improved cutting attachment. Christ, these people really
are
crazy.

He worked his way around the building and a cold certainty came to him: the key would be gone.

Oh Christ, Gard, give it a rest! Why would it
—

But it
was.
It
was
gone. The nail where it had hung was empty.

Gardener leaned against the side of the shed, exhausted and trembling, his body sheened with sweat. He looked down and the sun gleamed off something on the ground—the key. The nail slanted down a bit. He had put the key back in a hurry and had probably pulled the nail down a bit in the soft wood himself. It had simply slid off.

He bent painfully, picked it up, and began to shamble around to the front again. He was exquisitely aware of how fast time was passing. They would arrive soon; how could he possibly get his business done in the shed and then get out to the ship before they did? Since it was impossible, it was probably best to ignore it.

By the time he got back to the shed door, he could hear the faint sound of motors. He stabbed the key at the lock and missed the keyway. The sun was bright, his shadow little more than a puddle hanging from his heels. Again. This time the key socked home. He turned it, shoved the door open, and lurched into the shed.

Green light enfolded him.

It was strong—stronger than it had been the last time he was here. That big piece of cobbled-together equipment

(the transformer)

was glowing brightly. It was cycling, as it had been before, but the cycles were faster now. Thin green fire ran across the silvery road maps of circuit-boards.

He looked around. The old man, floating in his green bath, was looking back at Gardener with his one good eye. That gaze was tortured . . . but sane.

Use the transformer to save David

“Old man, they are coming for me,” Gardener croaked. “I'm out of time.”

Corner, far corner

He looked and saw something that looked a bit like a television antenna, a bit like a large coat-hanger mobile, and a bit like those back-yard devices on which women hang clothes, turning them to do so.

“That?”

Take it out into the dooryard

Gardener didn't question. There was no time. The thing stood on a small square platform. Gardener supposed its circuits and batteries were in that. Close-up, he saw that the things which looked like the bent arms of a TV antenna were really narrow steel tubes. He seized the central pole. The thing wasn't heavy, but it was awkward. He was going to have to put some weight on his shattered ankle, like it or not.

He looked back at the tank in which Ev Hillman floated.

You sure about this, old-timer?

But it was the woman who answered. Her eyes opened. Looking into them was like looking into the witches' caldron in
Macbeth.
For a moment Gard forgot all his pain and weariness and sickness. He was held in thrall by that poisoned gaze. In that instant he understood all the truth and all the power of the fearsome woman Bobbi had called Sissy, and the reason Bobbi had fled from her, as from a fiend. She
was
a fiend. She
was
a witch. And even now, in her fearful agony, her hate held.

Take it, you stupid man!
I'll
run it!

Gardener put his hurt foot down and screamed as a savage hand reached all the way up from his ankle to seize the soft double sac of his testicles.

The old man:

wait wait

It rose on its own. Not far; only an inch or two. The green swamplight brightened even more.

You'll have to guide it, son

This he was able to manage. It wavered across the green shed like the skeleton of a crazy beach umbrella, nodding and dipping, casting weird elongated shadows on the walls and floor. Gardener hopped clumsily after it, not wanting, not
daring
, to look back into that insane woman's eyes. Over and over his mind played a single thought:
Bobbi Anderson's sister was a witch . . . a witch . . . a witch . . .

He guided the bobbing umbrella out into the sunlight.

Freeman Moss arrived first. He swung the pulp-truck in which Gard had once hitched a ride into Bobbi's dooryard and was out almost before the laboring, farting engine had died. And by Christ, chummy, if the cocksucker wasn't right there, front and center, holding onto something that looked like a woman's clothes whirligig. Man looked like a winded runner. He was holding one of his feet—the left—up, like a dog with a thorn in its paw. That sneaker was bright red, dripping blood.

Looks like Bobbi put at least one good one into you, you snake.

Her murdering pal apparently heard the thought. He looked up and smiled wearily. He was still holding onto the whirligig with the platform stand on the bottom. He was supporting himself on it.

Freeman walked toward him, leaving the driver's door of the old truck hanging open. There was something childlike and winning in the man's grin, and in a moment Freeman understood what it was: with his missing teeth, it was the Halloween punkin grin of a little boy.

Jesus, I sorta liked you—why'd you have to be such a fuckup?

“What you doing out here, Freeman?” Gardener asked. “You should have stuck home. Watched the Red Sox. The fence is all whitewashed.”

You sonofawhore!

Moss was wearing a down-filled vest but no shirt beneath; the vest was simply the first thing to come to hand as he rushed out of the house. Now he brushed it aside, revealing not a gimmick or a gadget but a Colt Woodsman. He pulled it out. Gardener stood looking at him, holding the whirligig's post, foot up.

Close your eyes. I'll make it quick. I can do that, at least.

(GET DOWN ASSHOLE GET DOWN OR YOU'LL LOSE YOUR HEAD WHEN HE LOSES HIS I DON'T GIVE A TIN SHIT WHO GOES SO GET DOWN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE
)

In the tank, Anne Anderson's eyes blazed with stricken hate and fury; her teeth were gone but her bare gums ground together ground together ground together and a trail of small bubbles floated up.

The light pulsed faster and faster, like a carousel speeding up. It became strobelike. The hum rose to a low electric moan, and there was a rich smell of ozone in the shed's air.

On the one lit VDT screen the word

PROGRAM?

was replaced with

DESTROY

It began to flash rapidly, over and over again.

(
GET DOWN ASSHOLE OR STAY UP I DON'T CARE WHICH
)

Gardener ducked. His bad foot hit the ground. Pain leapt up his leg again. He dropped into the dust on his hands and knees.

Over his head, the whirligig began to spin, slowly at first. Moss stared at it, the gun sagging slightly for a moment in his hand. Realization crossed his face during the last instant he still
had
one. Then the slender pipes spilled green fire into the dooryard. For a moment the beach-umbrella illusion was perfect and complete. It looked exactly like a big green one that has been partially lowered so that its circular hem touches the ground. But this umbrella was made of fire, and Gard crouched below it, eyes squinted, one hand in front of his face, grimacing as if from strong heat . . . but there
was
no heat, at least not here, underneath Sissy's poison toadstool.