Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  “John—”

  “After dinner, Lisse, okay? I’ll talk to them after dinner.”

  She grabbed his arm, yanked it gently. “That’ll be too late.”

  “You’re a pain, Montgomery.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She led the way to a couch near the entrance, a low table in front of it, armchairs on its flanks; she sat him down and headed for the gift shop, not knowing if the local paper had a holiday edition or not. He watched her go, the simple dress hugging her hips in a way that reminded him of her waitress’s uniform, and the way she used to exaggerate the roll of those hips to get his attention. He had thought it simple flirting then; now he knew better.

  A soft chime, the elevator doors slid open, and the kids walked out. Stiffly. Not touching. Space between them widening as soon as there was room. It didn’t take a psychic to know they’d been arguing again. When he raised a hand to get their attention, it was Cora who saw him, and he didn’t miss the hesitation in her step before she poked Reed in the side and nodded in John’s direction. They wore clean shirts, clean jeans, but they walked as if they were trudging barefoot across sharp stones.

  End of the rope, he thought; Lisse is right. They’ve reached the end of their rope.

  He stood and smiled as they approached, asking about their night, their sleep, reminding them as Cora took the chair on his left, that he’d made reservations for Thanksgiving dinner in the hotel restaurant.

  “Some Thanksgiving,” Cora grumbled as she shifted and draped a leg over the arm.

  “Better than eating beans out of a can,” Reed snapped. Grimaced. Looked an apology at John.

  She made a face and stared out the glass wall behind the couch. The hedge-rimmed parking lot was practically empty, save for a single police car idling near the hotel’s two-lane entrance. “Maybe we’ll see the march or something,” she said, as if that could only be the most boring thing in the world.

  John frowned. “March?”

  “It was on TV,” Reed explained when Cora didn’t seem inclined to answer. “Some people are protesting today. They’re supposed to march into town and have some kind of rally by the river.” He tucked his hands between his knees. “You know—stop the violence, where are the cops when you need them, peace on Earth, stuff like that.”

  “They’re going to start way out here?”

  The boy shrugged. “I guess. Somewhere out here, I don’t know where.”

  “Heck of a march.”

  Reed shrugged again and slumped back, didn’t move when Lisse returned empty-handed. Cora only gave her a halfhearted wave.

  Another patrol car moved into the parking lot and stopped beside the other.

  “It’s supposed to be cool, you know?” Cora said, foot bouncing, one hand folded atop the other on her stomach. “It’s Thanksgiving, it’s supposed to be cool. This sucks. I went out before, and it’s like seventy degrees out there.” She turned her head slightly. “Who the hell are you, mister?”

  “Cora,” said Reed angrily.

  “What’s the problem? He knows about us, we don’t know jack about him.”

  Her voice sounded brittle and hollow in the empty lobby. The desk clerk looked up for a second before returning to his paperwork. A family of five spilled out of the elevator, the two youngest children racing across the lobby, chasing each other in circles. Their laughter seemed too loud; their parents made no move to hush them.

  John pushed forward until he was on the edge of his cushion, a thumb stroking his cheek. Lisse sat back, smoothing her skirt as she tucked her legs under her. He looked at her, and she nodded.

  “What?” Cora demanded.

  “Cora, please,” Reed said. “Look, Mr. Bannock, I got to admit, I’m pretty curious myself. But for me, as long as we know the same guy, I guess that’s all right with me.”

  Cora scowled. “Not for me.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Hey,” Lisse said, not raising her voice. “Y’all keep pecking at each other like that, you’ll bleed to death before John gets in a word.”

  Reed blinked, then grinned; Cora pouted and sank deeper into her chair. Foot bouncing. Hands pressed to her stomach.

  John cleared his throat. He wasn’t sure this was the right thing to do, that he still might scare them off no matter what Lisse believed. He pulled absently at the skin under his chin, left hand patting his knee as if he were keeping tune to a slow marching song.

  Then he looked to the high ceiling, the faded tiles, the embedded lights, and said, “My son is a killer.”

  * * * *

  2

  I was writing a book, he said, refusing to meet either Cora’s or Reed’s astonished gazes. Believe it or not, I used to do people’s taxes and accounts, but a friend of mine, a pretty popular nonfiction writer, knew how I hated that job and talked me into working on something he had set up for me. What it was, was a series of in-prison interviews with mass murderers and serial killers. Men, women, a couple of kids not much older than you guys.

  My wife, Patty, and I... we had split up, partly because of that, the writing, the traveling, partly for other reasons. There’s no sense giving you all the details, most of them wouldn’t make sense to you anyway. But I learned pretty quickly from talking to all those killers that, unlike what the textbooks and profilers say, they were, all in all, pretty ordinary people. Families not perfect, but they weren’t horribly unusual either. No abuse, no rape, no beatings, nothing like that. These killers did what they did just because they felt like it.

  Because they were in the mood at the time.

  What I couldn’t find out was why. At least I didn’t find out right away. It was the famine time, you see, and things were, as the saying goes, tough all over. It didn’t occur to me until a whole lot later that not having a lot of food was only part of the famine’s structure. The rest, the biggest part, I think, had to do with the fact that a lot of people had few emotions anymore. Not real ones, anyway. They reacted the way they did because it was expected of them—crying and laughing and acting guilty or sorry—it was a false front, an act, a mask they put on and took off whenever they felt like it.

  They really didn’t feel a damn thing.

  Not when they held their children, not when they cut someone’s throat or dumped poison into their food or pushed them off a cliff.

  And even when I figured that out, sort of, it still didn’t make much sense—the why of it, you know?—until...

  Joey is my son. He’s adopted. At least, I used to think he was adopted. I mean, I used to think we chose him, Patty and I, to be our son, until I realized too late it was actually the other way around. He chose us... he chose Patty because he needed a way to get around the country. So he could see people. So he could touch them. Literally touch them. Sort of drain them, I guess, or turn off the switch that makes emotions real, that makes people care, that... damn, I don’t know.

  Anyway, Patty helped him move from one place to another, but I don’t think she really wanted to. I think today she had no choice. A little kid in a cowboy suit can’t really ... oh, hell, that doesn’t make much sense either.

  Patty’s dead now.

  Joey isn’t.

  I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.

  I have no idea where he is, not at this moment, but I have a bad feeling I know where he’s going.

  See, there was this horse he ...

  Oh, hell.

  Listen, you two, I know we’re all looking for the same guy, okay? We’ve all experienced something, I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, but we’ve experienced something that’s making us do this. And we know we have to do it by the end of the year.

  Casey called me once, after all the troubles you guys had at home, back there in New Jersey. He told me I was marked, or something like that. I didn’t know what that meant, I thought he was nuts, until Joey... until I had to...

  Let’s just say that I thought at the time that I had killed him. My own son. My Joey.


  I’m sorry, but it’s hard. My son isn’t my son, yet I can’t help calling him that. I can’t help it. Patty loved him. I loved him.

  Listen ... I don’t care who out there believes the Millennium is the End, and who thinks the Millennium is just another turn of a stupid calendar page. It doesn’t matter. You know Casey better than I do, you know what happened better than I, but you know that he’s different somehow, that he was able to stall or put off track or whatever the hell you want to call it whoever it was who caused all that death and destruction back then.

  I did the same thing.

  Lord help me, I did the same thing, and now it’s all coming to a head and if we don’t find Casey ... I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, I don’t know if what we’re supposed to do is going to do any good, but right now, I can’t see that we have any choice.

  We eat, we rest, tomorrow we get in the car and we try to find him.

  I mean, what the hell else can we do?

  * * * *

  3

  “Susan,” Cora said softly.

  John blinked, looked up. “What?”

  “Her name is Susan, and Casey fought her, but not until... you know.” She rubbed a finger harshly under her nose. “He almost died. We, uh, went to the hospital and his hair had turned all white and we didn’t think he was gonna live, you know? We didn’t think he was gonna live, so we left. There was nothing left of home, so we left. We were scared. I guess.” A shrug. “We came back, and he was alive, and he was gone.” Another shrug. And, surprisingly, the biggest smile John had ever seen on her face as she looked across the table. “So we aren’t alone, huh, Turner?”

  Relieved, Reed smiled back. “Nope. Guess not.”

  She giggled, though her eyes shone wetly. “You thought we’d think you were nuts, right?”

  John admitted it.

  “Well, we are, don’t you think?”

  Lisse sat up slowly.

  “I mean, of all the people in the world, we’re the ones who know what’s going on. I mean, for sure. And we’re weird, right? Reed’s got his dumb dreams, and I just follow along.” She shook her head, chin trembling, foot bouncing harder, faster. “I don’t like it. I want to go home.” Her voice rose a little. “But I can’t, can I? I can’t go home, because there ain’t no home to go home to. And even if there was—”

  “Honey,” Lisse said gently, “you ever do any waitressing, traveling around like you did?”

  Startled, Cora frowned. “What? Sure. Yeah. We needed money, so ... yeah, sure.”

  “You ever have some bad-tooth wonder make a grab for your ass?”

  Cora snorted. “Hell, yeah, lots of times.”

  “You ever slap his hand?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t want to lose my job. But what does this have to do with anything?”

  Lisse uncurled her legs, straightened her skirt, fussed with her hair. “Nothing. Just wondering. Besides, it’s after noon, and I’m hungry.”

  She grinned, and winked.

  Cora opened her mouth, closed it, shaded her eyes with one hand, and her shoulders began to shake. At first John thought she was crying. Until he heard the quiet laughter, saw her other hand wave as if batting something away from her face. When she hiccupped, her laughter exploded, filing the lobby, making the desk clerk grin uncertainly.

  “You’re ...” Cora swallowed air, hiccupped again. “You’re crazy, lady.”

  “Like you said, girl. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m hungry, and John here is buying.” Lisse stood, reached out a hand until Cora took it, then pulled the girl to her feet. “It may not seem like it, sugar, but you think about it, we got a lot to be thankful for. We haven’t been raped, we haven’t been killed, we can still walk, and John still has a wallet full of money. The rest of it, that doesn’t matter today. Okay?” She looked at Cora sternly. “That doesn’t matter today.”

  Arm in arm, then, they walked off toward the restaurant.

  John lifted his eyebrows, tugged at one ear, and stood.

  “What happened?” Reed asked, looking around as if he’d missed something vital. “I don’t get it. What happened?”

  “Mr. Turner,” he said with an exaggerated shrug, “don’t ask me. I’m just the funny-looking guy with the wallet full of money.”

  * * * *

  4

  The restaurant wasn’t large, but pale walls and white table-cloths, the white uniforms of the waiters, white flowers in milk-glass vases, glass walls on two sides made it bright and seem cavernous.

  The two dozen diners seemed lost in all that space.

  There was plenty of talk, rattling of silverware and glasses and plates; music from hidden speakers, the occasional squeak of a heel on the bare floor, the scrape of a chair leg, a mild scolding of one of the children, a braying laugh. Yet the room seemed almost silent. Hushed.

  John and the others took a table near the front window, which gave them a view of the parking lot and its shaggy hedge wall. He faced the glass, Lisse across from him, the glare putting her face in veiled shadow. They didn’t need to order; there wasn’t a menu. Dinner with all the trimmings was what the hotel had promised and what it delivered, no substitutions, take or leave it.

  The family of five sat two tables over, the parents grimly determined to give their children a good time. Over by the side wall another family, two children this time, and John wondered what had brought them here, of all places, to celebrate a holiday best celebrated at home. The other diners were mostly singles, only three or four couples; since there were no meetings posted on the message board beside the elevator, he guessed they were probably mostly in sales of some kind. Real tourists generally stayed closer to the riverfront, where all the supposed action was.

  It wasn’t until he’d finished his salad that he realized the others were looking at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “This isn’t a funeral, John,” Lisse told him, scolding mildly. “You want misery, go to the front desk and look at our bill.”

  He grinned, rolled his eyes. “Sorry.”

  Another moment of awkward silence before Reed said, “There was this lady at home, she wanted to get married in a spacesuit or something.”

  Lisse laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  Cora giggled, swore it was true, that the woman in question, when she wasn’t running her small grocery store, spent half her time looking for alien landing spots in the woods around the town, which there wasn’t much of since the place was in the middle of the wood. Or she signaled them with flashlights in the middle of the night, and spent the rest of her time trying to convince everyone that the aliens were already walking around and we had to do everything we could to make them feel welcome.

  “I think she figured that getting married in a spacesuit would bring them out in the open.”

  John laughed, more at the animation in the young man’s face than at the story itself, and watched with admiration as Lisse unashamedly goaded them on, demanding more information with whoops of delight.

  Over her shoulder he could see four cruisers at the entrance now, two of the cops dragging riot gear from a trunk as they joked with the others.

  From a table in the middle of the room, a fat man in a rumpled suit complained about the sun, why couldn’t someone pull a curtain or a shade, he could barely see his food.

  “Listen,” Lisse said, thickening her bayou accent, using her hands, “you think that’s something? I worked at this hotel, the Royal Cajun, near the Mississippi, in New Orleans? You ever been there? No? Too bad, you ought to go, it’s like no place you ever seen in your life. Anyway, we had this guy used to come in once in a while, he weren’t much taller than a good spit, he used to talk to the river.”

  “Yeah, right,” Cora said. “So what?”

  “So what? Honey, the river talked back. Told him what to order, what to wear, told him once that he should go into a casino and bet everything he had on number four.”

  Reed, hi
s mouth filled with turkey, giggled. “Did he?”

  “Damn right. Bought the hotel, made me manager, told John there he didn’t pay his bill, his ass’d be on the street before he took another breath.”

  They looked at him.

  John nodded solemnly and crossed his heart. “True. All true.”

  “So ...” Cora frowned. “So what did you do?”

  John snapped his napkin open, draped it over his lap. “What could I do? I married him. Hell, he was rich, right? You can do stuff like that in New Orleans, they don’t care. That made me her boss, so I fired her ass when she wouldn’t bring me breakfast in bed.”