At twilight, when streamers of mist unfurled across the water, Quinn stood down from his watch and went to find a secure place in which to pass the night: considering Mathis’s leeriness about his queen’s nocturnal temper, he doubted there would be any trouble before morning. He beat his way through the brush and came to an enormous ceiba tree whose trunk split into two main branchings; the split formed a wide crotch that would support him comfortably. He popped an ampule to stave off pain, climbed up and settled himself.
Darkness fell; the mist closed in, blanketing moon and stars. Quinn stared out into pitch-black nothing, too exhausted to think, too buzzed to sleep. Finally, hoping to stimulate thought, he did another ampule. After it had taken effect, he could make out some of the surrounding foliage—vague scrolled shapes, each of which had its own special shine—and he could hear a thousand plops and rustles that blended into a scratchy percussion, its rhythms providing accents for a pulse that seemed to be coming up from the roots of the island. But there were no crunchings in the brush, no footsteps.
No sign of the queen.
What a strange fantasy, he thought, for Mathis to have created. He wondered how Mathis saw her. Blond, with a ragged Tarzan-movie skirt? A black woman with a necklace of bones? He remembered driving down to see his old girlfriend at college and being struck by a print hung on her dorm-room wall. It had shown a night jungle, a tiger prowling through fleshy vegetation, and—off to the side—a mysterious-looking woman standing naked in moon shadow. That would be his image of the queen. It seemed to him that the woman’s eyes had been glowing…But maybe he was remembering it wrong; maybe it had been the tiger’s eyes. He had liked the print, had peered at the artist’s signature and tried to pronounce the name. “Roo-see-aw,” he had said, and his girl had given a haughty sniff and said, “Roo-so. It’s Roo-so.” Her attitude had made clear what he had suspected: that he had lost her. She had experienced a new world, one that had set its hooks in her; she had outgrown their little North Dakota farming town, and she had outgrown him as well. What the war had done to him was similar, only the world he had outgrown was a much wider place: he’d learned that he just wasn’t cut out for peace and quiet anymore.
Frogs chirred, crickets sizzled, and he was reminded of the hollow near his father’s house where he used to go after chores to be alone, to plan a life of spectacular adventures. Like the island, it had been a diminutive jungle—secure, yet not insulated from the wild—and recognizing the kinship between the two places caused him to relax. Soon he nodded out into a dream, one in which he was twelve years old again, fiddling with the busted tractor his father had given him to repair. He had never been able to repair it, but in the dream, he worked a gruesome miracle. Wherever he touched the metal, blood beaded on the flaking rust; blood surged rich and dark through the fuel line; and when he laid his hands on the corroded pistons, steam seared forth and he saw that the rust had been transformed into red meat, that his hands had left scorched prints. Then that meat engine had shuddered to life and lumbered off across the fields on wheels of black bone, plowing raw gashes in the earth, sowing seeds that overnight grew into stalks yielding fruit that exploded on contact with the air.
It was such an odd dream, forged from the materials of his childhood yet embodying an alien sensibility, that he came awake, possessed by the notion that it had been no dream but a sending. For an instant, he thought he saw a lithe shadow at the foot of the tree. The harder he stared at it, though, the less substantial it became, and he decided it must have been a hallucination. But after the shadow had melted away, a wave of languor washed over him, sweeping him down into unconsciousness, manifesting itself so suddenly, so irresistibly, that it seemed no less a sending than the dream.
At first light Quinn popped an ampule and went to inspect the island, stepping cautiously through the gray mist that still merged jungle and water and sky, pushing through dripping thickets and spiderwebs diamonded with dew. He was certain Mathis would launch an attack today. Since he had survived a night with the queen, it might be concluded that she favored him, that he now posed a threat to Mathis’s union with her—and Mathis wouldn’t be able to tolerate that. The best course, Quinn figured, would be to rile Mathis up, to make him react out of anger and to take advantage of the situation.
The island proved to be about 120 feet long, perhaps a third of that across at the widest, and—except for a rocky point at the north end and a clearing some thirty feet south of the ceiba tree—was choked with vegetation. Vines hung in graceful loops like flourishes depended from illuminated letters; ferns clotted the narrow aisles between the bushes; epiphytes bloomed in the crooks of branches, punctuating the grayness with points of crimson and purple. The far side of the island was banked higher than a man could easily reach; but to be safe, Quinn mined the lowest sections with frags. In places where the brush was relatively sparse, he set flares head-high, connecting them to trip wires that he rigged with vines. Then he walked back and forth among the traps, memorizing their locations.
By the time he had done, the sun had started to burn off the mist, creating pockets of clarity in the gray; and as he headed back to his firing position, it was then he saw the tiger cat crouched in the weeds, lapping at the water. It wasn’t much bigger than a house cat, with the delicate build and wedge-shaped head of an Abyssinian, and fine black stripes patterning its tawny fur. Quinn had seen such animals before while on patrol, but the way this one looked, so bright and articulated in contrast to the dull vegetable greens, framed by the eddying mist, it seemed a gateway had been opened onto a more vital world, and he was for the moment too entranced by the sight to consider what it meant. The cat finished its drink, turned to Quinn and studied him; then it snarled, wheeled about, and sprang off into the brush.
The instant it vanished, Quinn became troubled by a number of things. How he’d chosen the island as a fortress; how he’d gone straight to the best firing position; how he’d been anticipating Mathis. All this could be chalked up to common sense and good soldiering…yet he had been so assured, so definite. The assurance could be an effect of the ampules; but then Mathis had said that the queen could slip thoughts into your head without your knowing—until you became attuned to her, that is. Quinn tasted the flavors of his thoughts, searching for evidence of tampering. He knew he was being ridiculous, but panic flared in him nonetheless and he popped an ampule to pull himself together. Okay, he told himself. Let’s see what the hell’s going on.
For the next half hour, he combed the island, prying into thickets, peering at treetops. He found no trace of the queen, nor did he spot the cat again. But if she could control his mind, she might be guiding him away from her traces. She might be following him, manipulating him like a puppet. He spun around, hoping to catch her unawares. Nothing. Only bushes threaded with mist, trembling in the breeze. He let out a cracked laugh. Christ, he was an idiot! Just because the cat lived on the island didn’t mean the queen was real; in fact, the cat might be the core of Mathis’s fantasy. It might have inhabited the lake shore, and when Mathis and his men had arrived, it had fled out here to be shut of them…or maybe even this thought had been slipped into his head. Quinn was amazed by the subtlety of the delusion, at the elusiveness with which it defied both validation and debunking.
Something crunched in the brush.
Convinced that the noise signaled an actual presence, he swung his gun to cover the bushes. His trigger finger tensed, but after a moment he relaxed. It was the isolation, the general weirdness, that was doing him in, not some bullshit mystery woman. His job was to kill Mathis, and he’d better get to it. And if the queen were real, well, then she did favor him and he might have help. He popped an ampule and laughed as it kicked in. Oh, yeah! With modern chemistry and the invisible woman on his side, he’d go through Mathis like a rat through cheese. Like fire through a slum. The drugs—or perhaps it was the pour of a mind more supple than his own—added a lyric coloration to his thoughts, and he saw himself moving with splendid
athleticism into an exotic future wherein he killed the king and wed the shadow and ruled in hell forever.
Quinn was low on frags, so he sat down behind the fallen tree trunk and cleaned the upper barrel of his gun: it fired caseless .22-caliber ammunition. Set on automatic, it could chew a man in half; but, wanting to conserve bullets, he set it to fire single shots. When the sun had cleared the tree line, he began calling to Mathis on his radio. There was no response at first, but finally a gassed, irascible voice answered, saying, “Where the fuck you at, Quinn Edward?”
“The island.” Quinn injected a wealth of good cheer into his next words. “Hey, you were right about the queen!”
“What you talkin’ ’bout?”
“She’s beautiful! Most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“You seen her?” Mathis sounded anxious. “Bullshit!”
Quinn thought about the Rousseau print. “She got dark, satiny skin and black hair down to her ass. And the whites of her eyes, it looks like they’re glowin’, they’re so bright. And her tits, man. They ain’t too big, but the way they wobble around”—he let out a lewd cackle—“it makes you wanna get down and frolic with them puppies.”
“Bullshit!” Mathis repeated, his voice tight.
“Uh-uh,” said Quinn. “It’s true. See, the queen’s lonely, man. She thought she was gonna have to settle for one of you lovelies, but now she’s found somebody who’s not so fucked up.”
Bullets tore through the bushes on his right.
“Not even close,” said Quinn. More fire; splinters flew from the tree trunk. “Tell me, Mathis.” He suppressed a giggle. “How long’s it been since you had any pussy?” Several guns began to chatter, and he caught sight of a muzzle flash; he pinpointed it with his own fire.
“You son of a bitch!” Mathis screamed.
“Did I get one?” Quinn asked blithely. “What’s the matter, man? Wasn’t he ripe for the light?”
A hail of fire swept the island. The cap-pistol sounds, the volley of hits on the trunk, the bullets zipping through the leaves, all this enraged Quinn, touched a spark to the violent potential induced by the drugs. But he restrained himself from returning fire, wanting to keep his position hidden. And then, partly because it was another way of ragging Mathis but also because he felt a twinge of alarm, he shouted, “Watch out! You’ll hit the queen!”
The firing broke off. “Quinn Edward!” Mathis called.
Quinn kept silent, examining that twinge of alarm, trying to determine if there had been something un-Quinnlike about it.
“Quinn Edward!”
“Yeah, what?”
“It’s time,” said Mathis, hoarse with anger. “Queen’s tellin’ me it’s time for me to prove myself. I’m comin’ at you, man!”
Studying the patterns of blue-green scale flecking the tree trunk, Quinn seemed to see the army of his victims—grim, desanguinated men—and he felt a powerful revulsion at what he had become. But when he answered, his mood swung to the opposite pole. “I’m waitin’, asshole!”
“Y’know,” said Mathis, suddenly breezy, “I got a feelin’ it’s gonna come down to you and me, man. ’Cause that’s how she wants it. And can’t nobody beat me one on one in my own backyard.” His breath came as a guttural hiss, and Quinn realized that this sort of breathing was typical of someone who had been overdoing ampules. “I’m gonna overwhelm you, Quinn Edward,” Mathis went on. “Gonna be like them ol’ Jap movies. Little men with guns actin’ all brave and shit till they see somethin’ big and hairy comin’ at ’em, munchin’ treetops and spittin’ fire. Then off they run, yellin’, ‘Tokyo is doomed!’”
For thirty or forty minutes Mathis kept up a line of chatter, holding forth on subjects as varied as the Cuban space station and Miami’s chances in the A.L. East. He launched into a polemic condemning the new statutes protecting the rights of prostitutes (“Part of the kick’s bein’ able to bounce ’em ’round a little, y’know”), then made a case for Antarctica’s being the site of the original Garden of Eden, and then proposed the theory that every President of the United States had been a member of a secret homosexual society (“Half them First Ladies wasn’t nothin’ but guys in dresses”). Quinn didn’t let himself be drawn into conversation, knowing that Mathis was trying to distract him; but he listened because he was beginning to have a sense of Mathis’s character, to understand how he might attack.
Back in Lardcan, Tennessee, or wherever, Mathis had likely been a charismatic figure, glib and expansive, smarter than his friends and willing to lead them from the rear into fights and petty crimes. In some ways, he was a lot like the kid Quinn had been, only Quinn’s escapades had been pranks, whereas he believed Mathis had been capable of consequential misdeeds. He could picture him lounging around a gas station, sucking down brews and plotting meanness. The hillbilly con artist out to sucker the Yankee: that would be how he saw himself in relation to Quinn. Sooner or later, he would resort to tricks. That was cool with Quinn; he could handle tricks. But he wasn’t going to underestimate Mathis. No way. Mathis had to have a lot on the ball to survive the jungle for two years, to rule a troop of crazed Green Berets. Quinn just hoped Mathis would underestimate him.
The sun swelled into an explosive glare that whitened the sky and made the green of the jungle seem a livid overripe color. Quinn popped ampules and waited. The inside of his head came to feel heavy with violent urges, as if his thoughts were congealing into a lump of mental plastique. Around noon, somebody began to lay down covering fire, spraying bullets back and forth along the bank. Quinn found he could time these sweeps, and after one such had passed him by, he looked out from behind the tree trunk. Four bearded, long-haired men were crossing the lake from different directions, plunging through the water, lifting their knees high. Before ducking back, Quinn shot the two on the left, saw them spun around, their rifles flung away. He timed a second sweep, then picked off the two on the right; be was certain he had killed one, but the other might only have been wounded. The gunfire homed in on him, trimming the bushes overhead. Twigs pinwheeled; cut leaves sailed like paper planes. A centipede had ridden one of the leaves down and was still crawling along its fluted edge. Quinn didn’t like its hairy mandibles, its devil face. Didn’t like the fact that it had survived while men had not. He let it crawl in front of his gun and blew it up in a fountain of dirt and grass.
The firing stopped.
Branches ticking the trunk; water slopping against the bank; drips. Quinn lay motionless, listening. No unnatural noises. But where were those drips coming from? The bullets hadn’t splashed up much water. Apprehensions spidered his backbone. He peeked up over the top of the tree trunk…and cried out in shock. A man was standing in the water about four feet away, blocking the line of fire from the shore. With the mud freckling his cheeks, strands of bottom weed ribboning his dripping hair, he might have been the wild mad king of the lake—skull face, staring eyes, survival knife dangling loosely in his hand. He blinked at Quinn. Swayed, righted himself, blinked again. His fatigues were plastered to his ribs, and a big bloodstain mapped the hollow of his stomach. The man’s cheeks bulged: it looked as if he wanted to speak but was afraid more would come out than just words.
“Jesus…shit,” he said sluggishly. His eyes half-rolled back; his knees buckled. Then he straightened, glancing around as if waking somewhere unfamiliar. He appeared to notice Quinn, frowned, and staggered forward, swinging the knife in a lazy arc.
Quinn got off a round before the man reached him. The bullet seemed to paste a red star under the man’s eye, stamping his features with a rapt expression. He fell atop Quinn, atop the gun, which—jammed to automatic—kept firing. Lengths of wet hair hung across Quinn’s faceplate, striping his view of branches and sky; the body jolted with the bullets tunneling through.
Two explosions nearby.
Quinn pushed the body away, belly-crawled into the brush, and popped an ampule. He heard a thock followed by a bubbling scream: somebody had tripped a flare. He did
a count and came up with nine dead—plus the guy laying down covering fire. Mathis, no doubt. It would be nice if that were all of them, but Quinn knew better. Somebody else was out there. He felt him the way a flower feels the sun—autonomic reactions waking, primitive senses coming alert.
He inched deeper into the brush. The drugs burned bright inside him; he had the idea they were forming a manlike shape of glittering particles, an inner man of furious principle. Mats of blight-dappled leaves pressed against his faceplate, then slid away with underwater slowness. It seemed he was burrowing through a mosaic of muted colors and coarse textures into which even the concept of separateness had been subsumed, and so it was that he almost failed to notice the boot: a rotting brown boot with vines for laces, visible behind a spray of leaves about six feet off. The boot shifted, and Quinn saw an olive-drab trouser leg tucked into it.
His gun was wedged beneath him, and he was certain the man would move before he could ease it out. But apparently the man was playing bird dog, his senses straining for a clue to Quinn’s whereabouts. Quinn lined the barrel up with the man’s calf just above the boot top and checked to make sure it was set on automatic. Then he fired, swinging the barrel back and forth an inch to both sides of his center mark. Blood erupted from the calf, and a hoarse yell was drawn out of Quinn by the terrible hammering of the gun. The man fell, screaming. Quinn tracked the fire across the ground, and the screams were cut short.
The boot was still standing behind the spray of leaves, now sprouting a tattered stump and a shard of bone.
Quinn lowered his head, resting his faceplate in the dirt. It was as if all his rectitude had been spat out through the gun. He lay thoughtless, drained of emotion. Time seemed to collapse around him, burying him beneath a ton of decaying seconds. After a while, a beetle crawled onto the faceplate, walking upside down; it stopped at eye level, tapped its mandibles on the plastic, and froze. Staring at its grotesque underparts, Quinn had a glimpse into the nature of his own monstrosity: a tiny armored creature chemically programmed to a life of stalking and biting and, between violences, lapsing into a stunned torpor.
The Ends of the Earth Page 43
