Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03]

by Charles L. Grant

  After, that is, I take this next sip. Just a sip.

  So he sits there as the sun keeps drifting toward the mountains, and he tries to figure it out. The trouble is, he also keeps imaging the look on old Art’s face when the clipboard slams him to his knees, and that makes him giggle, and he has to scowl at his behavior and start all over.

  But it was truly a wonderful sight. Truly. Honestly.

  Finally, cheeks red from holding in the laughter, he says, “The hell with it.” He’ll go over later, when the sun is down and it’s not so damn hot. If nothing else, he has to do it out of courtesy. A heartfelt, honest thank you without getting all sentimental and sloppy, a solemn, equally heartfelt appreciation of the debt he’s incurred because of what she did, and a promise he’ll never—

  “Ah, the hell with that, too.”

  He bends over and takes off his shoes and socks, sighs, and wonders if sticking his feet in a pan of water with some Epsom salts will take care of those damn cuts and scratches. Not so bad as they were yesterday, but it still feels as if he’s walking on needles. Not bad looking, though, as feet go, are they? Not hairy, no toe sticking out from the others, no veins popping out, just smooth skin and a little rough around the edges, the way a foot ought to be. Not bad at all.

  “Holy Jesus,” he says, “I’m already drunk and I haven’t even had a drink.”

  He laughs, falls back, and kicks his feet in the air. Nearly gives himself multiple cramps when someone knocks on the door and scares him half to death.

  “Come on in,” he yells. “Damn thing’s not locked.”

  The door opens, and he’s on his feet as fast as he can get, too late to do anything about the socks, the shoes.

  “Eula,” he says, feeling like an idiot. “Hey, I was just coming over to see you.”

  “Were you?” she says, looking pointedly at his bare feet.

  He winces. “Well, not like this, no.”

  She smiles, an indulgent grandmother’s smile, and says, “You sure got yourself a mess of trouble, Roger Freneau.” A scolding shake of a finger before she pulls off her gloves. “Now you just sit yourself down again, let this old woman see what she can do to give you a hand.”

  Embarrassed, he sits. “Eula, look, this isn’t necessary. I can’t let you—”

  “Oh, yes you can,” she says, bustling in, putting down her purse, taking off her coat.

  Kneeling in front of him, grunting, adjusting her weight, embarrassing him even more.

  “Eula, please.”

  She silences him with a look, grasps his left foot by the heel and lifts it. Dark fingers making his skin look fish-belly white. Lifts it higher, forcing him back, chin against his chest, making him feel a pull at the groin, thinking if she lifts it any higher he’s going to slide onto the carpet.

  “My, my,” she says, shaking her head as she examines his sole. “My, you are something else again, boy, something else again.”

  She blows on it, runs a finger down it, shakes her head and gently lowers the foot until it’s flat on the floor. Then, waving off his hastily offered assistance, she pushes and grunts herself to her feet. “Be right back, got something in my house will take care of that.” Peers at him. “You all right?”

  “Yes, thanks, but you don’t—”

  He stops because she’s ignoring him. She puts on her coat, pulls on her gloves, picks up her purse, and is out the door without looking at him once.

  “Boy,” he says to the empty room. “Boy.”

  A self-conscious laugh, a shrug, and he decides to get himself something to drink before she gets back. Soda, not liquor, maybe iced tea or water. But first he’s got to use the John, and he sings wordlessly to himself as he walks into the bathroom, shakes his head, turns on the light and gets a look at himself in the mirror over the sink.

  “Oh,” he says.

  Just before he screams.

  * * * *

  The hiss of sand piling up against the foundation.

  The keening of the wind as it finds cracks in the eaves.

  * * * *

  “Fool,” Eula whispers as she stands at her window.

  * * * *

  3

  1

  I

  t had occurred to Trey more than once that, since he was still technically, most likely, within the Las Vegas city, limits, the gun Sir John held on him probably wouldn’t kill him. Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt him. But a probably or two and a maybe didn’t equal an absolutely, and for all the rattlesnakes, drunken cowboys, and curb-jumping cars he’d faced, he also couldn’t see how the old man could miss.

  “Do let me know,” Harp said amiably, “when you’ve decided whether to try to disarm me, would that be all right? I rather think you won’t, actually, and this bloody weapon is getting heavy.”

  Trey sat in the front of their rental car, twisted around against the door, the better to watch both of them without getting dizzy. Beatrice had augmented her outfit of the night before with a gauzy-white scarf tied loosely around her neck, and she fussed with it constantly as she drove. At, he couldn’t help noticing, a considerable rate of speed.

  “You don’t need that thing,” he said to the old man, who sat directly behind him.

  “You wouldn’t come with me without it, I think.”

  Trey nodded at the truth of it. “And I won’t try anything,” he promised. “Even if you miss, your wife will probably run off the road and kill us all.”

  “I doubt that, Mr. Falkirk. She’s quite a good driver.”

  He hadn’t even bothered to ask why the gun, the abduction, the need for a fresh change of clothes in an old suitcase, because in the short time he had known them he knew them too well. Every question would be answered with a riddle, or a quotation, or with a silence that was meant to be an answer in itself. Despite his anger, at himself as well as them, he figured they would get to the point soon enough. No sense in getting frustrated; it was all he could do anyway, just to keep his mind from slipping away to safer pastures.

  He hadn’t even been angry for very long, a measure, he thought, of how far gone he was. In fact, the only thing that did register as Harp hustled him out the back door and over to the car waiting beyond the T, was how nervous the old man was. He kept looking back over his shoulder, as if expecting to see someone there.

  Trey hadn’t asked; nerves or not, the gun was steady in his hand, his finger steady on the trigger.

  They had left the westbound highway ten minutes ago, Beatrice sweeping onto a single-lane dirt road that seemed to lead directly to the Spring Range. Dust kicked up behind them. The sun bore through the windshield as it reddened in setting, turning the inside, and the desert, a pale and unpleasant shade of blood.

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing this a bit?” he said, drawing one leg up, grasping it around the ankle. “You...” He laughed without a sound. Shook his head. “I said it before, I’ll say it again—this is nuts.”

  “No, Mr. Falkirk,” Sir John corrected. “This is a nightmare.”

  * * * *

  The dirt road ended, and Beatrice drove on, the car jouncing over rocks and hummocks while the mountains, splashed here and there with late spring green, took up more of the sky. She had said not a word since he’d gotten in, and each attempt he made to get her to talk had been countered with a silence and a dead-ahead stare. The old man, too, had not spoken again, and Trey wondered each time he glanced back just how heavy that gun was. It was in Harp’s lap now, but his finger was still on the trigger, and Trey doubted the caliber was too small to punch through the back of the seat if he fired.

  What amazed him was that all the bouncing and swaying hadn’t caused the gun to go off before this. More than once his head rapped against the ceiling or the window glass; more than once he had to thrust a hand against the padded dashboard to keep from sliding into the well. Beatrice didn’t seem to care that the car might not last long enough for the trip back. She neither slowed down nor avoided patches of cactus or scrub; she pl
owed through it all as if she were driving a truck.

  Then Harp said, “Here,” and she spun the wheel, jammed her foot on the brake, and the car whirled around to face the way they had come. And stopped.

  Metal creaked.

  A spinning dust cloud covered them, visibility zero, granules scratching across the roof like tiny racing claws.

  For the first time since leaving the house, Trey felt a little nervous, less than sure of their intent. He hadn’t thought they were out to harm him; they just wanted to push more of their incomprehensible agenda.

  But now...

  The dust settled; the sun was still red.

  “Red sky at night,” Harp said wearily. “But alas, no sailors here.” He gestured with the gun. “Outside, Mr. Falkirk. Please.”

  Beatrice didn’t move. Her hands were still clamped to the steering wheel.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Trey snapped, “until you tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

  Harp pulled the trigger.

  The explosion was deafening, and Trey wasn’t sure but that he actually felt and heard the bullet barely miss his cheek before it pocked a hole in the windshield.

  Beatrice didn’t even flinch.

  “Out,” Harp repeated.

  A million tough guy movies, a million tough guy books: you’re bluffing, old man; if you really wanted me dead I’d be dead by now.

  Trey swallowed, nodded, and opened his door, slid out, and stepped away from the sedan, hands away from his sides, fingers spread.

  Harp followed, closed his door gently, and stood by the rear fender, inhaling slowly, deeply, without once shifting his aim from Trey’s heart. He adjusted his hat by tugging at the brim. Then his hand and the gun disappeared into his jacket pocket. His free hand smoothed the lapels, touched the perfectly folded handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket.

  “You do understand,” he said mildly, “that we’re no longer inside the city limits.”

  Trey did. It was an agitated pair of wings in his stomach, a weight on his shoulders more than the heat that still pressed on the desert and made bleak the mountains’ slopes. It was a feeling he thought he had banished more than two years ago, to a place in his dreams where he seldom visited, and when he did, not by choice.

  Beatrice left the car, sunglasses but no hat. She stood on the other side of the hood, fingers tucked into her waistband.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it,” Harp said, waving his hand at the browning grass, the scrub, a stunted Joshua tree not far from the car. All that was missing was the bleached skull of a steer. “Because of the sunlight, you can’t see anything but the desert. You’d never know a large city was only a few miles from here. Quite an image, don’t you think?”

  Trey said nothing, and made no plans to overpower the old man, steal the car, and get out of here.

  A million movies, a million books, but he was a gambler, not a hero.

  And Harp was a hell of a lot tougher than he looked.

  * * * *

  2

  “Mr. Falkirk,” Harp said, “I have bungled this entire affair quite badly, and I must apologize. Had I not been so ...” A hand fluttered in search of a word.

  “Stuffy,” Beatrice said.

  “Yes. Well. Perhaps. Nevertheless—”

  “Pompous.”

  Harp stiffened, thrust out his chin. “All right. But—”

  “Damnably inscrutable.”

  Trey, struggling to keep a straight face, watched the old man turn his head slowly and stare at his wife, who walked around the car, shaking her head.

  “Damnit, John.” No sir this time. “If you hadn’t insisted on playing games with the poor man, we wouldn’t be in this awful mess.”

  “I was merely trying to educate him, my dear. Under the circumstances, not such a bad idea.”

  “But you wasted all our time!” She shook her head, closed her eyes, sagged against the car. “Mr. Falkirk, I’m so sorry. I’m as much at fault as Sir John, and I’m so terribly sorry.”

  Trey knew something had to be said at this point, but the situation was so ludicrous all he could do was shrug a no big deal, and wait. Especially since he didn’t know what the deal was.

  “She’s right, of course,” Harp said to him, barely a hint of contrition. “We’re both at fault. We have both fumbled our precious time, and now we must hurry.”

  “Fine,” Trey said. “Hurry for what? Where? And don’t,” he added, suddenly pointing at the old man, “answer me with one of your damn questions. I’ve been to school, I know the method, and it isn’t working, since you and I don’t seem to be speaking the same language.”

  Harp sucked his lips between his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and smiled. Dipped his head in a slight bow. Took his left hand from his pocket, but left the gun behind. Tapped thoughtfully on his chin.

  “No,” Beatrice scolded quietly. “No time for poses. Just tell him and let’s leave before she knows we’re here.”

  “Who?” Trey said. “Eula?”

  They looked at him intently; Harp nodded.

  “Too late,” he told them. “She already knows. In fact, she told me just a while ago to tell you it’s too late. Or, too little too late. Something like that.”

  “Oh, my God,” Beatrice whispered, and covered her eyes with one hand.

  Patience, Trey cautioned himself when he felt his temper stir; patience. For a while.

  Eula was right about one thing, though—they both seemed afraid of her.

  Harp took out his handkerchief, took off his hat, and mopped his brow and hairline. His hand trembled.

  “It’s rather simple, when you look at it the right way,” he said as he replaced the hat, tugged again at the brim. A tremble in his voice as well. “Those questions, Mr. Falkirk, were neither frivolous nor were they meant to be provocative. You are able to do the thing you do not because of those spirits that old Indian told you about, but because you are different from anyone else. Special, in a way you yourself have often considered, and discarded because you did not want to be special.

  “You cannot be hurt within the boundaries of this city, because you are protected. You are in danger outside the city, because you are not protected. You learned that quite well and rather painfully over the years as a dog learns a simple trick, and whenever you ever questioned the reasons, your only answer, the only safe answer, has been ‘just because.’

  “You do not ask yourself how long it will last because you do not want to know. I can tell you now, it will not be much longer.

  “And you know it is also true that if you ever venture ‘ out of the city again for any distance or any reason, if you ever get in trouble again beyond the protection’s reach, as you suffered the last time, you. . .” He shrugged helplessly. “You will probably die.”

  Trey wanted to hit him, he wanted to sit, he wanted to walk away, he wanted to scream.

  With little breath left in him he lowered himself into a crouch, resting awkwardly on his heels, balancing on his toes, the fingertips of one hand spread on the ground for support.

  “How we know this is not important, but—”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, looking up, seeing the old man against the distant mountain slope, the white suit ignoring the sun’s red light. “What are you, magicians or something? Some kind of psychics? Angels, demons, what?”

  Beatrice took off her scarf and wrapped it around her hands, over and over. “We’re not supernatural or divine, if that’s what you’re asking, Mr. Falkirk. We’re all too ordinary, I’m afraid. We’ve just been given something we have to do, and we’re not doing it well at all.”

  “Given by whom? And what the hell does Eula have to do with all this?”

  “Trey,” said Harp, so forcefully, so gently, that Trey almost lost his balance. “A good gambler is more than a good liar, you know. He is also a good listener. And surely you’ve been listening to what’s happening out here, outside the city, since you’ve gone to ground.”

  “How
can you help it?” he answered, poking at the ground, flicking dust off his boots. “People killing each other all over the place, people starving, this damn Sickness . . . how the hell can you help not noticing?”

  “Death,” the old man said. “Famine. Plague.” He sighed and shook his head. “As they say these days, perhaps it’s time you did the math.”

  “John,” Beatrice cautioned.

  His hand raised to stop her. “No, my dear. This time he must do it himself.”

  Trey scooped up a handful of grey sand, closed his hand, and let the sand escape slowly. “This is Millennium stuff you’re talking about, right? Apocalypse, stuff like that. The Four Horsemen, and all that jazz?” He dusted his hand on his knee and stood, disappointed, disgusted. “You know, you two are as bad as that guy on the Strip. Counting the dead to the end of the world.” He frowned, not bothering to work on dampening his exasperation or temper anymore. “Not that it makes any difference, but you’re right, I have asked myself all those questions, and a hundred more you couldn’t even begin to guess. And you’re right, I have said ‘just because,’ because sometimes that’s the right answer.” A half step toward the car. “I am what I am, which is why I can do what I do. I don’t drive myself nuts anymore trying to explain it.