Robert McCammon - Stinger

Stinger

By

Robert McCammon

"She was offering a glimpse of the unknown, and what was home to her would be to them an alien realm."

Cody Stepped Through the Doorway of the Empty House

Suddenly he was tumbling forward, falling through darkness. His mouth opened in a cry of terror as he realized that the room had no floor, that he was crashing through the roof of Hell

Something whammed underneath his right arm, knocking the wind out of him, and he had the sense to grab hold of it before he slid off. He gripped both hands to a swaying thing that felt like a horizontal length of pipe. Dirt and stones cascaded into the darkness beneath him. He didnt hear them hit bottom. Then the pipes swaying stopped, and he was left dangling in midair

Minutes passed. Codys hands were slick with sweat. His arms had gone dead, all the blood running out of them, and his legs felt like hundred-pound sacks of concrete. His hands cramped into claws around the pipe.

Help me! he shouted, and instantly regretted it. The pipe swayed again, and a rush of dirt cascaded into the hole. Panic gnawed his guts. The chill of shocked nerves and blood-drained muscles began to spread through his shoulders.

And then he heard something that made the hairs stir at the nape of his neck.

It was a furtive, scuttling sound; a moist sound.

Cody held his breath. Something was moving in the darkness below

The motorcycle roared out of Bordertown, carrying the blond boy and dark-haired girl away from the horror behind them.

Smoke and dust whirled into the boys face; he smelled blood and his own scared sweat, and the girl trembled as she clung to him. The bridge was ahead of them, but the motorcycles headlight was smashed out and the boy was steering by the dim violet glow that filtered through the smoke clouds. The air was hot, heavy, and smelled burnt: the odor of a battleground. The tires gave a slight bump. They were on the bridge, the boy knew. He cut his speed slightly as the bridges concrete sides narrowed, and swerved to avoid a hubcap that must have fallen off one of the cars that had just raced to the Inferno side. The thing that both he and the girl had just seen still clawed at their minds, and the girl looked back with tears in her eyes and her brothers name on her lips. Almost across, the boy thought. Were gonna make it! Were gonna-

Something rose up from the smoke directly in front of them. The boy instinctively hit the brakes, started to swerve the machine, but knew there wasnt enough time. The motorcycle smacked into the figure, then skidded out of control. The boy lost his grip, felt the girl go off the motorcycle too, and then he seemed to turn head over heels in midair and slid in a fury of friction burns.

He lay curled up, gasping for breath. Mustve been the Mumbler, he thought as he struggled to stay conscious. The Mumbler crawled up on the bridge and gave us a whack. He tried to sit up. Not enough strength yet. His left arm was hurting, but he could move the fingers and that was a good sign. His ribs felt like splintered razors, and he wanted to sleep, just close his eyes and let go but if he did that, he was sure he would never awaken again. He smelled gasoline. Motors tank ruptured, he realized. About two seconds later there was a whump! of fire and orange light flickered. Pieces of metal clattered down around him. He got up on his knees, his lungs hitching, and in the firelight could see the girl lying on her back about six feet away, her arms and legs splayed like those of a broken doll. He crawled to her. There was blood on her mouth from a split lower lip and a blue bruise on the side of her face. But she was breathing, and when he spoke her name her eyelids fluttered. He tried to cradle her head, but his fingers found a lump on her skull and he thought hed better not move her.

And then he heard footsteps-two boots: one clacking, one sliding. He looked up, his heart hammering. Someone was lurching toward them from the Bordertown side. Rivulets of gasoline burned on the bridge, and the thing strode on through the streams of flame, the cuffs of its jeans catching fire. It was hunchbacked, a grotesque mockery of a human being, and as it got nearer the boy could see a grin of needles.

He crouched protectively over the girl. The clacking boot and dragging boot closed in. The boy started to rise to fight it off, but pain shot through his ribs, stole his breath, and hobbled him. He fell back to his side, wheezing for air.

The hunchbacked, grinning thing reached them, and stood staring down. Then it bent lower, and a hand with metal, saw-edged fingernails slid over the girls face. The boys strength was gone. The metal nails were about to crush the girls head, about to rip the flesh off her skull. It would happen in a heartbeat, and the boy knew that on this long night of horror there was only one chance to save her life

The sun was rising, and as the heat shimmered in phantom waves the night things crept back to their holes.

The purple light took on a tint of orange. Muted gray and dull brown gave way to deep crimson and burnt amber. Stovepipe cactus and knee-high sagebrush grew violet shadows, and slabs of rough-edged boulders glowed as scarlet as Apache warpaint. The colors of morning mingled and ran along gullies and cracks in the rugged land, sparkling bronze and ruddy in the winding trickle of the Snake River. As the light strengthened and the alkali odor of heat drifted up from the desert floor, the boy whod slept under the stars opened his eyes. His muscles were stiff, and he lay for a minute or two looking up at the cloudless sky as it flooded with gold. He thought he remembered dreaming-something about his father, the drunken voice bellowing his name over and over again, distorting it with each repetition until it sounded more like a curse-but he wasnt sure. He didnt usually have good dreams, especially not those in which the old man capered and grinned.

He sat up and drew his knees to his chest, resting his sharp chin between them, and watched the sun explode over the series of jagged ridges that lay far to the east beyond Inferno and Bordertown. The sunrise always reminded him of music, and today he heard the crash and bluster of an Iron Maiden guitar solo, full-throttle and wailing. He liked sleeping out here, even though it took awhile for his muscles to unkink, because he liked to be alone, and he liked the deserts early colors. In another couple of hours, when the sun really started getting hot, the desert would turn the hue of ashes, and you could almost hear the air sizzle. If you didnt find shade at midday, the Great Fried Empty would cook a persons brains to twitching cinders.

But for right now it was fine, while the air was still soft and everything-if just for a short while-held the illusion of beauty. At a time like this he could pretend hed awakened a long, long way from Inferno. He was sitting on the flat surface of a boulder as big as a pickup truck, one of a jumble of huge rocks wedged together and known locally as the Rocking Chair because of its curved shape. The Rocking Chair was marred by a barrage of spray-painted graffiti, rude oaths and declarations like RATTLERS BITE JURADOS COCK obscuring the remnants of pictographs etched there by Indians three hundred years ago. It sat atop a ridge stubbled with cactus, mesquite, and sagebrush, and rose about a hundred feet from the deserts surface. It was the boys usual roost when he slept out here, and from this vantage point he could see the edges of his world.