Mine

by Robert McCammon

Part V - The Killer awoke Chapter 3: The Secret Thing

 

  "Sometimes," Mary said as Drummer slept in her arms, "I get crazy. I don't know why. My head hurts, and I can't think straight. Maybe everybody feels like that sometimes, huhi"

  "Maybe," Didi admitted, but she didn't believe it.

  "Yeah. " She smiled at her sister in arms, the storm of madness passed for now. "I was so glad to see you, Didi. I can't tell you how much. I mean. . . you look so different and everything, but I've missed you. I've missed everybody. I think it was smart of you not to show up at the weeping lady. It could've been a trap, righti"

  "Right. " That was why Didi had gone to Liberty Island at noon, with the binoculars she'd borrowed from her neighbor Charles Brewer. She'd positioned herself on a vantage point where she could see the passengers getting off the boat, and she'd recognized Mary but not Edward Fordyce until he'd approached Mary. She'd followed them from Liberty Island, had seen them go into the apartment building, and had buzzed the apartment belonging to Edward Lambert. Her brown Ford was rented, and her real car - a gray Honda hatchback - was at the airport parking lot in Detroit. "What are you going to do from herei" Didi asked.

  "I don't know. Make it to Canada, I guess. Go underground again. Except this time I'll have my baby. "

  They hadn't yet breached the difficult subject. Didi wanted to know: "Why'd you take him, Maryi Why didn't you just come up by yourselfi"

  "Because," Mary answered, "he's Jack's gift. "

  Didi shook her head, not understanding.

  "I was bringing Drummer to Jack. When I saw the message, I thought it was from him. That's why I brought Drummer. For Jack. Seei"

  Didi did. She sighed softly, and averted her eyes from Mary Terror. Mary's insanity was as obvious as a scab; it was true that Mary was still cunning, in the way of a hunted animal, but the trial of the years - and her solitary confinement - had eaten her down to the desperate bones. "You brought the baby for Jack and he didn't show up. " Now the display of rage made more sense to her, but its explanation was madness enough. "I'm sorry. "

  "I don't need him!" Mary snapped. "and don't you be sorry for me! No way! I'll be just fine now that I've got my baby!"

  Didi nodded, thinking of the glowing burner. If she hadn't been here to stop it, the baby's face would have been scorched off his skull. One night - maybe not very far in the future - Mary would wake up in the throes of madness, and there would be no one to save the infant. Didi knew she'd done a lot of terrible things in her life. They were things that came back to her at night, bleeding and moaning. They haunted her dreams, and they had grinned and jabbered as she'd laid out the razor and soaked her wrists in hot water. She'd done terrible things, but she'd never hurt a baby. "Maybe you shouldn't take him with you," she said.

  Her face like a block of stone, Mary stared at Didi.

  "You can't move as fast with a baby," Didi went on. "He'll slow you down. "

  Mary was silent, rocking the sleeping child in her arms.

  "You could leave him at a church. Leave a note saying who he is. They'd get him back to his mother. "

  "I am his mother," Mary said.

  Dangerous ground, Didi thought. She was walking in a minefield. "You don't want Drummer to be hurt, do youi What'll happen if the police find youi Drummer might get hurt. Have you thought of thati"

  "Sure. If the pigs find me, I shoot the baby first and I take as many of them with me as I can. " She shrugged. "Reasonable. "

  Didi blinked, startled, and at that moment she saw the darkness of Mary Terror's soul.

  "I can't let them take us alive," Mary said. Her smile returned. "We're together now. We'll die together, if that's how it has to be. "

  Didi looked at her hands clenched together in her lap. They were earth-mother hands, the palms broad and the fingers sturdy. She thought of bullets going into bodies, and one of her earth-mother hands on the gun. She thought of the newscasts on TV, the pictures of this child's mother leaving the hospital in atlanta, her face tormented by worry, her body bent under a terrible weight. She thought of the secret thing, the thing she'd suspected for five years. Her life had been a twisted, treacherous road. She had destroyed her parents, driving her mother to drink and her father to a heart attack that had killed him in 1973. The farm was gone now, reclaimed by the bank. Her mother was in a sanitarium, babbling and wetting her bed. For Bedelia Morse the saying was viciously true: you can't go home again.

  She had seen the message in January's issue of Mother Jones. at first she'd had no intention of going to the Statue of Liberty on the eighteenth of February, but the idea had kept gnawing at her. She wasn't sure exactly why she'd decided to go. Maybe it was pure curiosity, or maybe it was because the Storm Front had been her true family. She had bought a round-trip ticket on american airlines, and left Detroit on Thursday night.

  Her flight back to Detroit was at one-thirty in the afternoon. She hadn't planned on sleeping at Mary's motel, but it was cleaner than the hotel she was staying at on West 55th in Manhattan. She was glad now that she'd stayed with Mary, for the baby's sake. and much less glad that she'd seen the inner nature of Mary Terror, though the newscasts of the FBI agent being shotgunned had been a forewarning. Didi turned the secret thing over and over in her mind, working it like a Rubik's Cube.

  Mary saw Didi's vacant stare. "What're you thinkingi"

  "about Edward's book," Didi lied. at Mary's sarcastic insistence Edward had told her what he was writing. "I'm not sure Jack would like that. "

  "He'd want Edward executed," Mary said. "No pity for traitors. That's what he used to tell me. "

  Didi looked at the child in Mary's arms. an innocent, she thought. It was wrong for him to be there. Mary's arms were folded around him as if he were cradled by vipers. "You said. . . you wanted to give Jack the baby. "

  "I wanted to give him a gift. He always wanted a son. That's what I was carrying for him the night I got hurt. " Was it true or noti She couldn't remember exactly.

  "So you're going underground againi" Click, click, click: the mental Rubik's Cube at work.

  "Tomorrow, after I take care of Edward. Then I'm heading for Canada. Me and Drummer. "

  She's going to kill Edward, Didi realized. and how long would it be before she had another fit and maimed or killed the babyi Click, click: more pieces, turning. Maybe Edward deserved to die. But he was a brother in arms, and didn't that count for somethingi The baby certainly did not deserve the fate ahead of him. Click, click. Didi stared at her earth-mother hands, and realized more human clay lay at her mercy. "Maryi" she said softly.

  "Whati"

  "I -" She paused. The secret thing had been a secret so long, it was reluctant to be born. But two lives - Edward's and the infant's - hung on her decision. "I. . . think I might. . . know where Jack is," she said.

  Mary sat without moving, her mouth partway open.

  "I'm not sure. But I think Jack may be in California. "

  No response from Mary.

  "Northern California," Didi continued. "a town named Freestone. It's about fifty miles north of San Francisco. "

  Mary moved: a shiver of excitement, as if all the blood had suddenly rushed back into her body. "That's near the house," she said. Her voice was tight and strained. "The Thunder House. "

  Didi had never been to the Thunder House, but she knew about it from the other Storm Fronters. The Thunder House was located above San Francisco, hidden somewhere in the woods that rimmed Drakes Bay. It was the birthplace of the Storm Front, where the first members had signed their names in blood on the pact of loyalty and dedication to the cause. Didi understood it had been a hunting lodge abandoned thirty or more years earlier, and its name came from the continual thunder of the waves on the jagged rocks of Drakes Bay. The Thunder House had been the Storm Front's first headquarters, their "think tank" from which all the West Coast terrorist missions had originated.

  "Fr
eestone," Mary repeated. "Freestone. " Her eyes had lit up like spirit lamps. "Why do you think he's therei"

  "I'm a member of the Sierra Club. Five years ago there was a story in the newsletter about a group of people who were suing the town of Freestone for dumping garbage near a bird sanctuary. There was a picture of them in the council meeting. I think one of those people might have been Jack Gardiner. "

  "You couldn't tell for surei"

  "No. Just the side of his face was in the picture. But I cut it out and kept it. " She leaned forward. "Mary, I remember faces. My hands do, at least. Come to ann arbor and look at what I've done, and you tell me if it's him or not. "

  Mary was silent again, and Didi could see the wheels going around in her head.

  "Don't kill Edward," Didi said. "Bring him with you. He'll want to find Jack, too, for his book. If Jack is in Freestone, you can take both Edward and the baby to him, and he can decide whether Edward should be executed or not. " Buying time for Edward, she thought. and time for herself, to figure out how to get the child away from Mary.

  "California. The land of milk and honey," Mary said. She nodded, her smile beatific. "Yes. That's where Jack would go. " She hugged Drummer, waking the baby with a start. "Oh, sweet Drummer! My sweet baby!" Her voice rose on a giddy note. "We're going to find Jack! Going to find Jack and he'll love us both forever, yes he will!"

  "My plane leaves at one-thirty," Didi told her. "I'll go on ahead. You and Edward can follow me. "

  "Yes. Follow you. That's what we'll do. " Mary beamed like a schoolgirl, and the sight ripped at Didi's heart. Drummer began to cry. "He's happy, too!" Mary said. "Hear himi"

  Didi couldn't bear to look at Mary's face anymore. There was something of death in it, something brutal and frightening in its maniacal joy. Was this the fruit of what we fought fori Didi asked herself. Not freedom from oppression, but madness in the nighti "I'd better get back to my hotel," she said, and stood up from the sofa bed. "I'll leave you my phone number. When you get to ann arbor, call me and I'll give you directions to my house. " She wrote the number on a piece of Cameo Motor Lodge stationery, and Mary tucked it into her shoulder bag along with Pampers, formula, and her Magnum pistol. at the door, Didi paused. The flurries had ceased, the air still and heavy with cold. Didi forced herself to look into the big woman's steely eyes. "You won't hurt the baby, will youi"

  "Hurt Drummeri" She hugged him, and he made a little aggravated squalling sound at being so rudely awakened. "I wouldn't hurt Jack's child, not for anything in this world!"

  "and you'll let Jack decide about Edwardi"

  "Didi," Mary said, "you worry too much. But that's part of why I love you. " She kissed Didi's cheek, and Didi flinched as the hot mouth sealed against her flesh and then drew away. "You be careful," Mary instructed.

  "You, too. " Didi glanced at the infant again - the innocent in the arms of the damned - and she turned away and walked across the parking lot to her car.

  Mary watched until Didi left, and then she closed the door. Behind it, she danced around the room with her baby, while God sang "Light My Fire" in her mind.

  It was near the dawning of a brand-new day.