Part 23 (1/2)
”I asked him. He said he wanted to-”
”I mean it, Theda. Right this f.u.c.king minute.”
”Okay, I'm going to count to three,” Walter says. ”I'm going to count real slow, and whatever happens after that is entirely up to you.”
”Who the h.e.l.l are you people?” the redneck whimpers and tries to back away, knocking over the display of beef jerky and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a grinning stock-car racer brandis.h.i.+ng a bottle of Mountain Dew.
”Maybe we're witches,” Theda snickers. ”Maybe we're monsters. Maybe we're something worse than monsters.
Maybe there isn't even a word for what we are.”
”Little girl, there are a whole lot of words for what you are,” Archer says.
”Archer, shut the h.e.l.l up and get her out of here.”
”Mister, if I put down this gun you're going to shoot me,” the clerk says again. ”You're all crazy, and if I put it down you'll kill me.” His hands have started to tremble, and the barrel of the shotgun bobs and jerks.
204.
”One,” Walter says calmly, firmly, trying to figure out how everything could possibly have gone to h.e.l.l so fast.
How they could have gotten this close to Birmingham and not a detour or delay, and now he's about to have to put a bullet in this dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h's skull because Theda can't be trusted to p.i.s.s without turning the morning into a horror show. He takes a deep breath and another step towards the counter. ”Two,” he says.
”Jesus, Frank, just put down the f.u.c.king shotgun before somebody gets killed,” a man shouts from the back of the store. The redneck in the Lynyrd Skynyrd s.h.i.+rt is busy stomping at one of the black widows that's managed to free itself of Theda's stringy vomit and is crawling across the floor towards him.
”Hey, don't do that!” she yells. ”You'll kill it.”
”d.a.m.n straight, I'll f.u.c.king kill it,” the redneck replies and squashes the black widow beneath the sole of his work boot.
”Three, ” Walter whispers, one word meant for no one but the clerk, one last word of warning and the look in his eyes to say that he isn't kidding.
”All right,” the clerk says and sets the c.o.c.ked Winches-ter down on the countertop, then holds both his hands up like a bank teller in an old Western movie. ”There. I f.u.c.king put the gun down. Now get out of here, and take that G.o.dd.a.m.n freak b.i.t.c.h with you.”
”You're a smart man, Frank,” Walter whispers, so relieved that he wants to vomit, too, wants to get down on his knees next to Theda and barf up the hard, twisting knot that's settled into his belly. But Archer is already hauling the girl to her feet, and he reaches for his wallet instead, not lowering the Beretta.
The redneck stomps another black widow, and Theda moans and tries to pull free of Archer's grip. ”I hope all your children are born without eyes,” Theda snarls, spittle flying from her lips. ”I hope your wife's t.i.tties rot off. I hope you never have another f.u.c.king night's sleep without dreaming about me.”
205.
”Don't be such a d.a.m.ned drama queen,” Archer mutters, dragging her away towards the plate-gla.s.s doors. ”If you hadn't put them there, he wouldn't be killing them, now would he?”
Walter fumbles his wallet open and pulls out a couple of folded bills. ”Sorry about the mess. Take this and buy some bug spray and a mop. And you and your buddies here are gonna keep your mouths shut or all those things she just said,” and he nods towards Theda, ”that s.h.i.+t ain't nothing compared to what'll happen to you if I have to come back.”
He drops the money, a hundred and a fifty, on the counter, but the clerk just stares at it.
”All you guys gotta do is forget you ever saw us,” Walter says, easing his finger off the pistol's trigger and reaching for the shotgun. ”I hope you don't mind if I take this-”
”I don't give two s.h.i.+ts what you do,” the clerk replies.
”Just take it, and get out of here.”
Walter thinks about asking for the tape from the security camera mounted on the wall behind the counter, then decides not to press his luck. Archer's probably already seen to that, anyway, and there won't be anything for the cops but static and wavy lines.
”f.u.c.k this,” the redneck says. ”They're f.u.c.kin' everywhere, ” and he stomps another spider.
And Walter turns around, shoving the doors open with his right shoulder, and he follows Archer Day and Theda back out into the bright Alabama morning.
”They live in the deep places,” Spyder says, ”but when they die, their bones fill with gas, and the skeletons float to the surface. The fishermen bind the bones together and anchor them to the ocean floor.”
”My G.o.d,” Niki whispers, gazing up at the interlocking, jackstraw symmetry of the village ramparts rising from the fog-bound sea. ”They must be bigger than whales. They must be bigger than dinosaurs.” And she's surprised by her own wonder, that she can still be amazed at anything after 206 the Dog's Bridge, after the Palisades, after following the white bird through that other, ruined San Francisco.
”Yes,” Spyder says. ”They must.”
Low waves surge and break against the high ramparts, against the pontoon bases of floating wharves and the hulls of the small wooden boats moored there. Hundreds or thousands of lanterns s.h.i.+ne from hundreds or thousands of hooks, poles, and posts, flickering sentries against the night. There's a red buoy bobbing around in the water on Niki's left, not far from the edge of the walkway.
”There are many villages like this one-hundreds probably-scattered across the Outer Main,” Spyder says. ”But I've only seen a few of them.”
”Where is everyone? It looks deserted.”
”They're always wary of travelers approaching from the Palisades. Don't worry, Niki. It's not deserted.”
”I wasn't worried,” Niki says.
”We shouldn't linger here. Shake a leg,” and Spyder starts walking again.
There can't be much more than a couple hundred yards or so remaining between them and the tall rope and bamboo gates where the catwalk finally ends and the village begins, but Niki's so tired she thinks it may as well be a mile, and her bandaged hand aches so badly it's starting to make her dizzy and sick to her stomach. She glances back up at the walls, steep, uneven barricades fas.h.i.+oned from the skeletons of leviathans, wire and wood and sea-monster bone rising into the mist, the uppermost reaches almost entirely obscured by the fog. Is everything in this place built out of f.u.c.king bones? she thinks, and then realizes that Spyder's getting ahead of her and she runs to catch up, her footsteps echoing hollowly from the shadowed s.p.a.ces beneath the punky gray boards.
Strings are drawn tight, or hang loose.
And clocks tick the spent moments away-third wheels, center wheels, bra.s.s pendulum shafts-as atoms trapped in 207.
the blazing hearts of stars decay, and suns spit prominences to arch forty thousand miles above photospheric h.e.l.ls.
In her trapdoor, black-hole nursery, nestled at the rotten heart of every universe, every bubble frozen in the forever-expanding matrix of chaotic eternal inflation, the Weaver spins in her uneasy sleep, casting new lines of s.p.a.ce and time across the void. She dies and is reborn from her own restless thoughts. A trillion eggs hatch, and her daughters cloud the heavens.
Or drift down from night skies to swarm across rooftops and city parks.
Her heart beats, and this line is severed, or that line is secured.
A life is saved. A life is lost. Scales balance themselves or fall forever to one side or the other.
Twenty miles north of Birmingham, Alabama, a man who drives a rusty purple Lincoln Continental and knows how one world might end, sticks to the back roads and county highways, just in case. The ginger-haired woman sitting next to him chews a stick of spearmint gum and says her prayers to forgotten, jealous G.o.ds.
And at 10:37 A.M., a graduate student from Berkeley, searching for clams and mussel sh.e.l.ls along a narrow stretch of beach below Treasure Island Road, pauses to ad-mire the view of the Bay Bridge silhouetted against the cloudless morning sky. He spots something dark stranded among the rocks at the water's edge and thinks it's probably a dead sea lion, until he gets closer and can see the Asian girl's battered face, her skin gone blue and gray as slate, her hair like matted strands of kelp half buried in the sand. Her eyes are open wide, though they're as perfectly empty as the eyes of any dead thing. At first, he can only stand and stare at her, horror and awe become one and the same, beauty and revulsion, peace and death and the sound of hungry gulls wheeling overhead. After five or ten minutes, the noise of a pa.s.sing helicopter brings him back to himself and he drags her nude and broken body to higher ground so maybe the tide won't carry it out into the bay 208 again, then he scrambles up the crumbling cliffs to call the police.
A cell phone rings. And then another. And another.
News travels fast, and bad news travels faster still.
There is another sh.o.r.e, you know, upon the other side.