The Tommyknockers, Page 73

  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.

  9

  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.

  10

  (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)

  11

  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.

  Freeman Moss was at the edge of the parasol. His pants blazed up, then the down vest. For a moment the flames were green; then they flared yellow.

  He screamed and staggered backward, dropping the gun. Over Gardener's head, the whirligig spun faster. The skeletal metal arms, which had drooped comically downward, were pulled more and more erect by centrifugal force. The parasol's fire-hem belled outward, and Moss's shoulders and face were enveloped in sheeting flame as he backed away. In Gard's head, that hideous mental wailing began again. He tried to block it out, but there was no way--simply no way. He caught a wavery glimpse of a face running like warm chocolate, then covered his face like a kid at a scary movie.

  The flames spun around Bobbi's dooryard in a widening gyre, making a black spiral of dooryard dirt fuse into a gritty sort of glass. Moss's pulp-truck and Bobbi's blue pickup were both in the thing's final circumference; the shed was barely beyond it, although its shape danced like a demon in the heat haze. It was very hot at the edge of the circle, if not where Gard crouched; no doubt of that.

  The paint on the hood of Moss's truck and on the sides of the pickup first bubbled, then blackened, then burst into flame, burning down to clean white steel. The litter of bark, sawdust, and wood-chips in the back of Moss's truck blazed up like dry kindling in a woodstove. The two big trash-barrels in Bobbi's pickup, made of heavy pressed gypsum, also caught fire and burned like sconces. The dark circle at the edge of the fire-parasol's range became a brand in the shape of a saucer. The army blanket covering the torn seat in the cab of Moss's truck sprang alight, then the seat-covers beneath, then the tindery stuffing; now the entire cab was flickery furnace orange, with the skeletons of springs peering up through the glare.

  Freeman Moss staggered backward, twisting and turning, looking like a movie stuntman who has forgotten his flame-suit. He collapsed.

  12

  Even overmastering Moss's dying screams, Anne Anderson's mental cry:

  Eat shit and die! Eat shit and d--

  Then, suddenly, something let go in whatever remained of her--there was a final brilliant flare of green light, a sustained pulse that lasted nearly two seconds. The heavy hum of the transformer rose a notch, and every board in the shed picked it up and rattled in sympathetic vibration.

  Then the hum dropped back to its former sleepy drone; Anne's head slumped forward in the liquid, her hair trailing like that of a drowned woman. On the computer screen,

  DESTROY

  winked out like a blown candle and became

  PROGRAM?

  again.

  13

  The fiery parasol wavered, then disappeared. The whirligig, which had been spinning at a mad rate, began to slow, squeaking rhythmically, like an unlatched gate in a mild breeze. The pipes sank back to their former angle. It squeaked once more, then stopped.

  The gas-tank of Bobbi's truck suddenly exploded. More yellow flames spouted at the sky. Gard felt a piece of metal whiz by him.

  He raised his head and stared stupidly at the blazing truck, thinking: Bobbi and I used to go to the Starlite Drive-In over in Derry in that truck sometimes. I think we even got laid there once during some stupid Ryan O'Neal picture. What happened? Lord, what happened?

  In his mind, the old man's voice, almost exhausted, but somehow imperative:

  Quick! I can power the transformer when the rest come, but you got to be quick! The boy! David! Quick, man!

  Not much time, Gardener thought wearily. Jesus, there never is.

  He started back toward the open door of the shed, sweating, cheeks waxy-pale. He paused at that dark burned ring in the dirt, and then hopped clumsily over it. He somehow didn't want to touch it. He tottered on the edge of balance and then managed to hop on. As he made his way back inside the shed, the twin gas tanks of Moss's truck went up with a furious roar. The cab tore free of the body. The truck flipped over on its side like a tiddlywink. Burning chunks of seat-cover and seat-stuffing began to float out of the open passenger window and floated upward like blazing feathers. Most fell back into the dooryard and
went out. A few, however, wafted their way over to the porch, and three or four actually floated through the open door on the first faint puff of the easterly wind which would soon come up. One of these burning cotton puffs alighted on a paperback novel which Gardener had left on the table just inside the door a . week ago. The cover caught on fire.

  In the living room, another burning fragment of seat-stuffing lit up a rag rug which Mrs. Anderson had made in her bedroom and sent surreptitiously to Bobbi one day when Anne was gone.

  When Jim Gardener came out of the shed again, the entire house was on fire.

  14

  The light in the shed was at its lowest level ever--a dim and watery green the color of stagnant pond water.

  Gardener looked cautiously toward Anne, afraid of those blazing eyes. But there was nothing to be afraid of. She only floated, head bent forward as if in deep thought, her hair trailing upward.

  She's dead, son. If you're going to get the boy, it has to be now. I don't know how long I can provide the power. And I can't be divided, with half of myself looking out for them and half running the transformer.

  He stared out at Gardener, and Gard felt deep pity ... and admiration for the old bastard's brute courage. Could he have done half as much, gone half as far, if their positions had been reversed? He doubted it.

  You're in a lot of pain, aren't you?

  I ain't exactly feeling in the pink, son, if that's what you mean. But I'll get through it ... if you get going, that is.

  Get going. Yes. He had dilly-dallied too long, far too long.

  His mouth popped open in another wrenching yawn, and then he stepped toward the equipment in and around that orange crate--what the old man called the transformer.

  PROGRAM?

  the keyless computer screen beckoned.

  Hillman could have told Gardener what to do, but Gardener didn't need to be told. He knew. He also remembered the nosebleed and the blast of sound he'd taken as a result of his single experiment with Moss's levitation gadget. This made that thing look like a box of Lincoln Logs. Still, he had gone quite a ways down the path to becoming himself since then, like it or not. He would just have to hope it was enou--

  Oh shit, son, hold the phone, we got company.

  Then a louder voice overrode Hillman's, a voice Gard vaguely recognized but could not put a name to.

  (BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

  Just I think just one or maybe two

  That was the old man's exhausted mental voice again. Gardener felt his concentration go out to the whirligig in the dooryard. In the shed, the light began to grow bright once more, and the killing pulses began.

  15

  Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were still two miles from Bobbi's place when Freeman Moss's mental shrieks began. Moments before, they had swerved past Elt Barker. Now Dick looked up into the rearview mirror and saw Elt's Harley swerve across the road and go leaping through the air. For a moment Elt looked like Evel Knievel, white hair or no. Then he separated from the bike and landed in the scrub.

  Newt hit the brakes with both feet and his truck screamed to a stop in the middle of the road. He looked at Dick with large eyes that were both frightened and furious.

  Son of a bitch has got a gadget!

  Yeah. Fire. Some kind of

  Abruptly Dick raised his mental voice to a shout. Newt picked it up, amplified it. From Kyle Archinbourg's Cadillac, Kyle and Hazel McCready joined in.

  (BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

  They stopped, holding their positions. They were not great takers of orders as a rule, these Tommyknockers, but Moss's hideous screams, fading now, were great persuaders. All stopped, that was, except for a blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a bumper sticker on the back reading REALTORS SELL IT BY THE ACRE.

  When the command came to back off and hold position, Andy Bozeman was already in sight of the Anderson place. His hate had grown exponentially--Gardener lying bleeding and dead was all he could think of. He came slewing into Bobbi's driveway in a wild power turn. The Olds's rear end broke free when Bozeman stamped the brake; the big car nearly tipped over.

  I'll whitewash your fence, you fucking asshole. I'll give you a dead rat and a string to swing it on, oh you bastard.

  His wife pulled the molecule-exciter out of her purse. It looked like a Buck Rogers blaster which had been created by a fairly bright lunatic. Its frame had once been part of a garden tool marketed under the trade name of Weed Eater. She leaned out the car window and pulled the trigger utterly at random. The east end of Bobbi's farmhouse exploded into a caldron of fire. Ida Bozeman grinned a cheerful, reptilian grin.

  As the Bozemans began to get out of the Olds, the whirligig started to spin. A moment later the green parasol of flame began to form. Ida Bozeman tried to aim what she called her "molecule disco" at it, but too late. If her first shot had hit the whirligig instead of the house, everything might have been different ... but it didn't.

  The two of them went up like firetrees. A moment later the Olds exploded with three payments still due on it.

  16

  Now, with the screams of Freeman Moss just beginning to fade from their minds, the screams of Andy and Ida Bozeman took their place. Newt and Dick waited them out, grimacing.

  At last they faded.

  Ahead, Dick Allison could see other vehicles parked on both sides of Route 9, and in the middle. Frank Spruce was leaning out of the cab of his big tanker truck, looking toward Newt and Dick urgently. He/they sensed the others--all the others--on this road, on other roads; some were standing in the fields they had been cutting across. All of them waiting for something--some decision.

  Dick turned toward Newt.

  Fire.

  Yes. Fire.

  Can we put it out?

  There was a short mental silence as Newt thought about it; Dick could sense him wanting to simply push it aside and go on to where Gardener was. What Dick wanted wasn't complicated: he wanted to rip out Jim Gardener's gizzard. But that wasn't the answer and they both knew it--all the Shed People, even Adley, knew it. The stakes were higher now. And Dick was confident Jim Gardener was going to lose his gizzard anyway, in one fashion or another.

  Crossing the Tommyknockers was a bad idea. It made them mad. This was a truth many races on other worlds had found out long before today's festivities in Haven.

  He and Newt both looked out toward the tree-bordered field where Elt Barker had crashed. The grasses and the plumes of the trees were blowing--not hard, but clearly blowing in a wind which blew from east to west. Not even enough breeze to qualify as a cap o' wind ... but Dick thought it showed signs of brisking.

  Yes we can put out the fire, Newt replied at last.

  Stop the fire and the drunk too? Can we be sure of that?

  Another long, thinking pause, and then Newt came to the answer that Dick had already suspected.

  I don't know if we can do both. I know one or the other but I don't know if we can do both.

  Then we'll let the fire burn for now we'll

  let it burn yes all right

  The ship will be all right the ship

  will not be hurt and the wind the way the wind's blowing

  They looked at each other, grinning, as their thoughts came together in a moment of utter, chiming harmony--one voice, one mind.

  The fire will be between him and the ship. He won't be able to get to the ship!

  On the roads and in the fields, the people listening in on this party-line all relaxed slightly. He won't be able to get to the ship.

  Is he still in the shed?

  Yes.

  Newt turned his puzzled, troubled face to Dick.

  What the fuck's he doing in there? Does he have something making something? Something to hurt the ship?

  There was a pause; and then Dick's voice, not just to Newt Berringer but to all the Shed People, clear and imperative:

  NET YOUR MINDS. NET YOUR MINDS WITH OURS. ALL WHO CAN, NET YOUR MINDS WITH OURS AND LISTEN. LISTEN
FOR GARDENER. LISTEN.

  They listened. In the hot summer silence of the early afternoon, they listened. Two or three ridges over, the first smudges of smoke rose into the sky.

  17

  Gardener felt them listening. There was a horrid crawling sensation over the surfaces of his brain. It was ridiculous, but it was happening. He thought: Now I know how a streetlight must feel with a lot of moths fluttering around it.

  The old man moved in his tank, trying to catch Gardener's eye. He missed his eye but caught his mind. Gardener looked up.

  Never mind, son--they want to know what you're up to, but forget them. Won't hurt if they find out. Might even help. Slow 'em down. Relieve their minds. They don't care about David, only about their goddam ship. Go on, son! Go on!

  Gardener was standing by the transformer and holding one of the earplugs in his hand. He didn't want to put it in. He felt like a man who's gotten a hefty shock from one particular switch-plate who is compelled to touch that same switch-plate again.

  Do I really have to wear this fucker? I changed the screen just by thinking before.

  Yes and that's all you can do. You got to wear it, son. I'm sorry.

  Incredibly, Gardener's eyelids were growing heavy again. He had to force them up.

  I'm afraid it will kill me, he thought at the old man, and then waited, hoping the old man would contradict him. But there was nothing--only the pained eye looking at him, and the dim slisshh-slishhh-slissshhh of the equipment.

  Yeah, it may kill me, and he knows it, too.

  Outside, dimly, he could hear the crackle of fire.

  The fluttering feeling along the surfaces of his mind stopped. The moths had flown away.

  Reluctantly Gardener put the plug in his ear.

  18

  Kyle and Hazel relaxed. They looked at each other. There was an identical--and very human--expression in their eyes. The expression of people discovering something just too good to be true.