The Border

by Robert McCammon

  “Let’s try the door,” he said.

  As he went up the steps, Dave felt like asking God for a favor. He wasn’t religious, was far from it, and if he’d been at all religious before the death of his family, that terrible event had wiped the visions of Heaven out of his head. He knew Hell existed, though. No doubt about that. It was everywhere now, burst from its realm of space and time. God, Dave thought as he reached the top of the stairs, if there’s anything to you, how about giving us a break? How about manning up and helping us?

  They needed so much to get one of those buses moving. They needed luck and about eight feet of hose, a hand crank pump of some kind, and two new batteries. They needed a probe to find out if there was already fuel in any of the buses, tanks so they wouldn’t be wasting their time on a dry hole. They needed so much, and there were so many people depending on them.

  But right now they needed for that door to open.

  Dave reached out for the handle.

  He felt his face tighten in preparation for disappointment. But even if this damned door is locked, he thought, we’ve got the broken window. Old Kenny Ray’s window, looking out at the flowers of love.

  Help us, he thought, and tears stung his eyes. Please.

  He grasped the door’s handle and pulled.

  Through the binoculars, Ethan saw what was coming.

  It had once been a yellow school bus, but the rain had done its damage. The top of the bus was rusted brown, and brown streaks of rust had dripped down the sides. Poudre School District was imprinted on the bus in faded letters, and the number 712. The bus was going slow, in allowance for the two horses whose reins were tied to the rear bumper.

  “They found a school bus!” Gary shouted to the people who waited below. There was a stir of activity as even some of the severely wounded managed to haul themselves to their feet. JayDee, Olivia, and a few of the others had been trying to give them comfort, as much as could be done without medical supplies. Gary took the binoculars from Ethan once more and watched the bus approach. “Christ, I never thought they’d find anything!”

  Ethan said, “I believe in Dave.”

  In another moment, the bus pulled into the open entranceway, came up the quake-cracked road, and stopped where the survivors had gathered near the swimming pool, in the shadow of the dead Gorgon ship.

  The doors opened, and Joel was the first one off, followed by Dave and then Hannah. All of them were dirtier than before, if that was possible. They looked wrecked. Dave staggered and had to catch hold of Joel’s shoulder to keep from falling. As those who could walk crowded around, Dave caught sight of Ethan standing up on the tower with Gary and Nikki, and he gave a slight nod that said, I haven’t forgotten.

  “Let’s get these people on board,” Dave said to Olivia, who came up to him with a plastic jug of water. He took a swig and passed it to Hannah. “Sorry, we lost one of your horses.”

  “We lost the rest to a group who decided to go on. No matter, we can’t keep them.” Her eyes looked bruised, but her voice was steady. “I’m going to untie those two.”

  Dave nodded. The important thing now was getting everyone out of here. Bus 712 had had a little more than a quarter tank of fuel already in it before Dave had used the pry bar, rubber hose, and metal containers he’d found to siphon diesel out of the underground tank. There had been four boxed-up heavy-duty batteries in the workshop; now two were in the bus and two were still in their boxes at the back of the bus. While they were at it, they’d put new oil in the engine, and though the thing still ran rough after being awakened from its long sleep, it did run, the wheels turned, it had an uncracked windshield, and six pretty good tires, and Dave thanked God for the Blue Bird bus company. He thanked God also for Hannah, who had gotten them around a lot of debris without tearing up the tires.

  “Couldn’t get to Poudre Valley North. Every way we tried was blocked,” he told JayDee as he helped get people aboard. “We went to Poudre Valley South, but every drug in the storeroom was gone. Hell, I wouldn’t know what to get if there’d been anything there but empty shelves. We stopped at a CVS and two Walgreen’s, both cleared out. Figure we might do better down the road.” Billy Bancroft was still cursing as he was carried on, but Dave knew it was to mask a lot of pain. A small number of canned goods had been recovered, as well as a few pistols, rifles, and some ammunition. Four oil lamps and two bottles of fuel made the cut. A dozen plastic jugs of water were put aboard. There was not going to be room in the bus for the heavy machine guns, and the ammunition was almost gone for those, so Dave and Olivia made the tough decision to leave them.

  Ethan, Nikki, and Gary stood up on the tower as the bus was being loaded, and finally Gary gave a sigh and said, “I’m not going to say I’ll miss this place, but it kept us alive.” He put a hand out to stroke the machine gun on its swivel. “I’d take this, if I had my way. Just hope we don’t wish we had it, wherever we’re going.” He cast one more look around at the sorry fate of the Panther Ridge Apartments, and then he went down the ladder.

  Ethan was alone with Nikki.

  She was staring at him, and her silence was making him nervous. “We’d better go,” he said. He started for the ladder.

  “I’ve heard things about you,” she said, and he stopped. “I’ve heard somebody say you think you caused the quakes that night.”

  He shrugged, but he didn’t look at her. “Who told you that?”

  “Somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody else. People think you must be…like…whacko.”

  “Good word,” he said. “Maybe that fits.” He remembered he had said I think I caused the earthquakes in front of a roomful of people. No, more than that. He’d said I know I caused them.

  “People say you’re spooky,” Nikki went on, her single eye fixed on him.

  “Yeah, another good word.” He turned to face her, and he pulled up a smile and gave it to her. “If I’m so whacko and spooky, why did you climb up here to see me?”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then she blinked, and it was her turn to shrug. “Maybe…I like whacko and spooky. ’Cause maybe I am, too.” She rubbed at an imaginary spot on the boards with the toe of a dirty blue Nike. “My folks said I was. After I got my third tattoo. They’re like…skulls and vines and stuff, on my back. You know, a little freaky. A friend of mine was studying to be a tat artist, so he did ’em for free. But I don’t have a tramp stamp,” she said quickly. “That would be a little much.”

  “I guess so,” Ethan agreed.

  “You got any?”

  “Tattoos? No.”

  She approached him. “You’ve got a bad bruise…right there.” She could see the dark purple of it just above the neck of his t-shirt, and she touched her own neck. “I mean…it looks real bad. What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s something I can’t remember.” Or don’t want to remember, he thought.

  “Does it hurt?” Maybe impulsively, Nikki reached out with her right hand and the index finger touched the bruise. Then, immediately, she gasped and stepped back. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh…wow,” she said. “I mean…look at that!”

  He tried to, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t like the tremor in her voice. “What is it?” His own voice had climbed.

  “Where I touched…my finger…the place turned silver. It’s starting to fade now. Wow,” she repeated. Her eye was wide. “Pull up your shirt.”

  Ethan did. Exposed was the ebony bruise that covered his chest.

  “Can I touch you again?” she asked.

  “Go ahead, it doesn’t hurt,” he answered, but he was scared, and his heart was pounding.

  Nikki reached out again, slowly, spread her fingers, and touched them to Ethan’s chest. Ethan felt nothing but her touch, though it appeared that the flesh seemed to shimmer around her fingertips. When she pulled her hand away, the fingermarks remained there in silver.

  Quickly, they began to fade. Ethan saw the look of wonder on Nikki’s face abruptl
y change. She stepped back from him in fear, as if she were about to leap from the tower, and he said in an outpouring, “I’m human. I am. It’s just…there’s something different about me that I don’t understand. I’m okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” He pressed a thumb into his chest and watched the silver mark it left melt back into the darkness of the bruise. “Listen,” he told her, “I’m not an alien. Like…one of their experiments. I’m not.”

  Her voice was very quiet when she spoke. “If you don’t know who you are or where you came from…how do you know what you are?”

  That was a question Ethan couldn’t answer. He lowered his shirt. “Please don’t tell anybody about this. Not yet. Okay?”

  She didn’t reply; she had backed away and was almost to the platform’s edge.

  “Please,” he said, and didn’t care that he was begging. “I feel like there’s someplace I have to go, and something I have to do. It’s so strong in me, I can hardly sleep. The place is White Mansion Mountain, and it’s in Utah. Dave found out where it is for me. I have got to get there. Nikki…I think maybe…there’s something that wants me to go, because there can be an end to this.”

  “An end? An end to what?”

  “Their war. I’m just saying…I feel like if I can get to that mountain, and find out why I’m being called to go there…there can be an end to it. Do you understand?”

  “No,” she said, very quickly.

  “Ethan!” It was Dave, calling for him from below. “We’re loading up! Come on!”

  “Okay, I don’t either,” he told the girl, “but please…please…don’t say anything about this.”

  “Maybe you’re turning into a Gray Man,” Nikki answered. “Maybe that’s what’s happening to you, and I ought to go down there right now and tell them, and they’ll take care of you before we pull out.”

  “You mean shoot me? Listen…Dave trusts me. So does Olivia…and I think Dr. Douglas kind of does. I’m telling you…I have got to get to that mountain, and if I do…when I do…I think something important is there for me. Either to have, or to know.”

  “What, you think you’re Jesus or somebody? Like you’re supposed to lead your believers out of this…this shit…somehow?”

  “I’m not Jesus,” Ethan said. And I’m not really Ethan either, he thought. “Just give me a chance, okay? You tell people about this, and it’ll scare them. I don’t need that. Nobody does.”

  “Maybe we should all be scared of you.”

  He was done. He could go no further with her. He said grimly, “Do what you want to do. Either tell them, or not. But I’m saying…I feel like I have a purpose. A reason to be here. Maybe we all do, but we don’t know yet what it is. The only things I want to hurt are the Cyphers and the Gorgons. I want them gone off this earth.”

  “We all want that.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Ethan had to look away from her frightened and accusing eye. “I’m going down to the bus,” he told her, in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Whatever you want to do…do it.”

  She didn’t wait for him. She was down the ladder so fast she nearly blurred out like a Cypher. I’ve freaked out the freak, he thought. He climbed down, expecting…he didn’t know what to expect. But the last group of people were being helped or herded into the bus, and Nikki Stanwick was among them. She didn’t look back at Ethan or speak to Dave as she went past him and Olivia.

  “Let’s go,” Dave said to Ethan as he approached. “Squeeze in back there.” Seats had been removed starting from about the middle of the bus back to the rear, thanks to the toolkit Darnell Macombe had saved from destruction, but still the bus was packed. The badly wounded were lying down or being supported by other people. The hardest part of this was the fact that JayDee had pronounced three wounded too severely torn up or bone-crushed to travel, and that their deaths were imminent. No other way, JayDee had said as he held himself up on his crutch. They may pass in an hour or two, or they may hold on for another five or six hours, but they don’t know where they are. It’s reality. There’s nothing I can do for them but suggest mercy.

  And just who’s going to do that, Doc? Dave had asked. Who’s going to pull the trigger three times and live with that?

  They shouldn’t be left alive here, JayDee had answered. In the dark, alone.

  Shit, Dave had said. Is there absolutely nothing you can do?

  I can’t even give them any pain pills. Only thing I’ve got is one bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I can’t fix Neal’s punctured lungs, and I can’t fix Dina’s broken back and her shattered legs, and I can’t give Asa a new brain to fix the one inside his crushed skull. I’ve got too many others that I can at least help…but…I guess what I should do…is…give out the medicine of mercy, because we don’t want any of our friends left behind—alive—if the Gray Men come tonight. So I’m going to take a pistol, and I’m going to walk over there where they’re lying, and I’m going to do what a doctor is sometimes called upon to do…play God. An imperfect, tortured, and feeble God…but someone has to do this. Now excuse me, Dave, while I finish my rounds.

  Inside the cramped bus with the last residents of Panther Ridge, Ethan heard three shots. No one spoke about them, and no one asked any questions of JayDee when Dave helped him up into the bus. Last on was Olivia, who eyes were bloodshot and who looked as if twenty years of heartache and despair had been burdened on her overnight, which Ethan thought was probably true. He stood up so others could sit. He caught a glimpse of Nikki, standing further at the back and staring a hole through him, but he quickly looked away.

  The terrible thing was…he knew he was changing. He was becoming something unknown…some kind of nightmare creature…and if he was anything human at all, he was in defiance of the Visible Man, because he figured he had died in the shockblast of a strip mall, and his bruises told the story, but he was not yet dead—as humans used to know death to be—and now his injuries were beginning to speak to him in another language, with a tongue of silver.

  “Everybody hold on to somethin’ or someone,” said Hannah as she slid behind the wheel. She turned the lever that closed the door, as she must’ve done a thousand times. She started the engine and heard it knock and complain, but then the wheels started turning, and they were moving away from Panther Ridge, moving out through the wall and the metal-plated door, out into the violent world of cosmic war, out upon the road that led south to Denver and hopefully to pharmacies or hospitals that had not yet been fully looted. And hopefully, then, to some kind of refuge from the madhouse that had claimed the earth, and some kind of safety, wherever that might be. JayDee, sitting with his injured knee outstretched, stared into empty space, and Ethan noted that his blue eyes were moist, and where they had been very clear, they were now dimmed and clouded.

  They passed within sight of a neighborhood burned black, everything looking like a firestorm had whirled through. Ethan saw Nikki staring out at it, and he figured her house used to be out there and now there were only ashes and bones, like the rest of the world.

  “Looky here, looky here,” said Hannah. She was speaking to Olivia and Dave, who stood near her as the bus rumbled and jounced along. “Three fellas walking our way in the road. One of ’em’s waving us down. Want to stop, or go right on through ’em?”

  Both Dave and Olivia could see the three figures ahead, walking in the middle of the road. The one at the center was waving his arms. On one side was a stocky man with long black hair and a beard and on the other a short bald-headed gent in a white shirt who might have been a banker out for his afternoon stroll, except he was filthy and staggering.

  “Run ’em down?” Hannah asked. “Take no chances?” She was keeping her foot on the accelerator.

  It came to both Olivia and Dave that three people had just been executed—and call it mercy if you want to, but that didn’t make it any easier. Three friends of theirs who had pulled the weight just like everyone else and at the end had been crushed by it. The bus hardly had room for one more person, let alo
ne three…and there was always the chance that these were only counterfeit humans.

  But there they were, right in front of the bus, and they weren’t getting off the road and Hannah wasn’t slowing down, and the decision had to be made in a matter of seconds.

  Olivia took a deep breath to clear her head, and she made it.

  They were not animals yet, and certainly not killers of human beings who could be helped. They had a dozen loaded guns if they needed to use them. They had accepted plenty of wanderers into Panther Ridge. What was the difference now?

  “Stop for them,” Olivia said. “Let’s see what the story is. But,” she added, “let’s keep our guns ready.”

  Hannah let up on the gas and mashed the brake pedal. The bus neared the three figures and began to slow down. Toward the back of the bus, Ethan was standing in the aisle with people packed all around him, and he could see nothing, but someone passed the word back that there were three men on the road. As the bus stopped with a squeal of protest, Hannah opened the door and pointed her big-ass pistol at the doorway. She called out matter-of-factly, “Any trouble and the first bullet comes from my cannon!”

  The three men were talking and made no effort to approach the bus. Olivia said, “Dave, let’s find out what they want,” and they went out, cautiously, with Dave’s Uzi drawn and a .45 Colt automatic in Olivia’s right hand. Her finger was on the trigger, and her mind was set that they could spend only a few minutes here, and whatever these three wanted, they’d better have a good salesman among them.

  SIXTEEN.

  “I USED TO BE…LIKE THEY SAY…PRETTY WELL FIXED,” SAID BURT Ratcoff, as he and Jefferson Jericho followed Vope on the long road that led through destroyed suburbs where no lawnmower would ever growl again and no summer lemonade would ever be poured. “My wife left me six years ago, but I learned to live with it. Kept in touch with our son. Lives in Glendale, California, he’s an insurance adjuster. That one with the talkin’ gecko.” Ratcoff nodded. “Yeah. I bet he’s okay. Him, Jenny, and the girls. They’re okay, I bet. They found someplace to hide, they’re gonna make it. Hey, spaceman! You’re killin’ my legs, I can’t keep up with you! Can you slow down a little…shit!” he said, wincing, and touched the back of his neck.