Shard

by John Richmond

  “What way?”

  “This way,” she said and dropped down on T.R.’s boney lap, facing him, her pelvis pressed against his belly, pinning him down even more. She entwined a claw into his hair and yanked his head back. T.R. started to thrash, but Loraine brought the ampule up to his right eye and stopped. “Hush,” she whispered. “You have one chance to save this eye. You need to answer my question and make me believe you. This close? I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  George couldn’t hear what Loraine was saying, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. This middle-aged writer who looked like she hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes in the sun in the past year had turned out to be the hardest bitch George Rhodes had ever encountered in truth or fiction. His mother would have loved her. No, that wasn’t fair. Loraine wasn’t being hard because it was fun or out of some spite. In fact, from everything he’d ever seen of her, this performance was counter to her nature. She was galvanized. Maybe the strangeness of everything that was happening was finally sinking in and pushing her into an emergency state. Maybe she was just pissed off that this little fucker threatened her boy. Either way, George was damn happy she was on his side.

  T.R.’s eyelids fluttered as the residue from the ammonia in the little tube wafted up. “You ain’t gonna do it. You ain’t got the stones.” That last was more a question than a statement. And once again, Loraine recognized a bad movie line when she heard it. This kid was just that: a kid, and he wasn’t fully in the moment, didn’t grasp the reality of the situation. Loraine questioned her soul, and found she could do it. She took a breath and muttered to herself, “Close your eyes and think of England.”

  * * *

  Childe Howard stared at the dry faucet in the little powder room next to the projectionist booth from just outside the open door. He wasn’t about to go in and stay in if he didn’t have to. Besides, he could barely see as it was and figured he would hear the water if it ever came out. The chances of that happening were pretty slim, as in no freakin’ way. Loraine just wanted him out of the way, and you know what? That was totally cool by him. She’d gone into full-on Sarah Connor mode and he didn’t feel like hanging out for that. A minute passed, another, and he was just about ready to pack it in and come down when T.R. started screaming. “Oh, God,” Childe said. That was his mother doing that. He hugged himself in the dark as competing emotions roiled in his chest—fear of and for his mother, and pride. She was doing this for him. Then a little shame because he was glad, and he loved her for it. He was the one who told her how everything had changed, how it was all different now. Sounded like ol’ Loraine had taken that and gone whole hog.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, Loraine stood back from T.R. and surveyed her handy work. He slumped sideways against his bonds, his boney chest chugging like an old freight train. His left eye was half-lidded and glassy. His right was a red hole. The eye itself lay on the theatre floor, wherever it had rolled to a halt. Loraine’s right hand was slick to the elbow. T.R. had bled a lot, but less than she was afraid he might. Wouldn’t do if he passed out or expired before he gave them Erica’s location. And he hadn’t yet.

  “Loraine,” George said.

  She threw a look over her shoulder. In the glow from the flashlight she looked like an extra out of Carnival of Souls. “He’s gonna tell us.”

  “I hear you, but c’mere a second.”

  Loraine walked over and plunked down in a chair, sending up a small puff of dust and mildew. She wrinkled her nose. “Man, it reeks in here. You can barely smell the sulfur over the mouse shit.”

  “Guess I stopped smelling the Fire a long time ago. I mean, I can still smell it, but I don’t notice it much anymore.”

  T.R. hitched a sob and moaned on the exhale. He’d go into shock soon if he hadn’t already. Loraine craned her neck back up the aisle. “You think Kiddo’s doing okay?”

  “He’s fine. I saw him stick his face in here a few minutes back, but he’s hanging out in the lobby. Darwin trotted up there to be with him.”

  “I don’t blame him for keeping his distance,” she said. “George?”

  “Yeah?”

  She lowered her voice so T.R. wouldn’t hear. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I fainted when I dissected a fetal piglet in high school. Went right over and clonked my skull on the lab table. But here I am playing Torquemada.”

  “How you doing?” George looked at T.R. “He going to crack or do we just forget it?”

  Loraine looked at him. “Think through what you just said. We ‘forget it’ and you can forget Erica.”

  George looked down.

  Loraine pulled a deep breath and, the air came out shaky. “I’m not sure I can keep doing this. I dropped that little piece of glass I was using for one.”

  “And for two?”

  “Jesus H, George! I just dug a kid’s eye out of his head. Me. I did that.” She sat back and shook her head.

  “Right,” George said. “Shift two coming on for duty.” Before she could say anything in protest—and Loraine wasn’t sure she would have—George hauled his bulk up. He braced himself on the backs of the row of seats in front of him and limp/hopped toward T.R. He gripped the carving knife T.R. had used on his Achilles tendon. In the back of his mind, George was pretty sure it was already too late. So much time had gone by since the afternoon. An image of Erica flashed in his mind—that smile when she said Wanna join me? With a detachment that reminded him a lot of how it used to feel when he was tanked on gin, George realized he might kill a young man in the next few minutes. His hand just happened to be at eye-level as he passed Loraine. She grabbed his wrist.

  “Loraine, let go. This has to hap—”

  “Shut up a second, handsome.” She leaned in and squinted at the knife. “George? Who’s C. Najarian? Is that—that’s Kiddo’s school teacher, right?”

  “Yeah. Yes, why?”

  Loraine sat back and smiled in the gloom. “It’s engraved on the knife. Twenty bucks says Erica’s stashed at Najarian’s house.”

  Fire lit George’s chest and shown in face. He turned to T.R. about to ask if it was true, but already had his answer. The boy was terrified, his remaining eye huge. His head shook back and forth. “Please,” he said. “You gotta’ kill me now.”

  Chapter 34

  Will was sorely pissed off at his deputy. George hadn’t made contact on the walkie-talkie in over—he checked the dashboard clock—eleven minutes which was exactly six minutes late, or more than twice the amount of time he was supposed to go before checking in. Will thumbed the talk button three times. On George’s end, three impatient clicks should squawk alerting said deputy that he was, in fact, lousy at his job. Nothing. Will slammed the walkie-talkie down on the passenger seat. “Shit!”

  He stared through the windshield at a crumbling Victorian. The porch drooped at the steps like a swollen lower lip. The front door stood open to the flies and mosquitos, though Shard didn’t have very many of the later. Will always figured the fumes from The Fire acted like the world’s biggest backyard tiki torch. A tarnished yellow light burned from deep inside, past the front hall. This was the most likely place to start: T.R.’s house.

  For a minute he just sat and stared, listening to the engine ticking as it cooled. If T.R. was in there he’d have to know Will was out here by now. In a town as tomb-quiet as Shard, a ladybug couldn’t pull up to the curb without announcing itself let alone a two-ton Jeep with a rusty muffler.

  But that wasn’t the problem because T.R. wasn’t in there. Will could feel it. His senses were so turned up the slightest change in the wind or air pressure would shrink his balls. But the night was dead still, the clouds low. The stars hid behind a blanket of dark purple, little gods that didn’t give a sparkly fuck what happened on a blue dot parsecs away. Will wondered if they had impossible creatures on the planets that orbited them like Yïn and Dampf. Did they have alien nightmares about demons like The Pompiliad? Maybe Earth was like Shard: too far away, too small and damag
ed to matter. Will whispered to himself, “They got dragons on Alderan?” The sound of his own voice textured his skin with goosebumps.

  He was stalling. Sitting here thinking about stars and muttering to himself because he was scared to go in there. It wasn’t T.R. that he was worried about. Will would have been happier about going in if he knew it was some burned-out teenager with a .22. That, at least, would be a known quantity. And more than anything else, it would be something killable. He closed his eyes for a second and the image of Howard Sams rushed up out of the dark to meet him: ghastly white skin, puffy sausage fingers reaching… Will shook his head to clear it. He pulled Smaug and flicked open the heavy chamber. Six .357 caliber copper eyes stared him in the face, their primers like tiny pupils. He snapped it closed. Aiming for the head, like in the movies, didn’t seem to cut it. Howard had gotten up after Will had taken most of his head off.

  “Giant-flock-of-carnivorous-fucking-cardinals’d do it, though,” he muttered. “Too bad I left my giant-flock-of-carnivorous-fucking-cardinals gun back at the station.”

  Will grabbed the walkie-talkie and clipped it to his belt. He jerked open the car door and pushed out onto the street. Okay, step one completed. The front door of T.R.’s house sprayed that weak yellow light out at him. His foot weighed about eighty pounds as he hauled it over the curb. Step two. The two upstairs windows, dark now, looked out on the yard, on him. His rubber-soled Chucks made almost no sound as he took one step, two, three up the short walk. He raised his pistol in a two-handed grip up next to his head. He hadn’t had time to clean his gun since he fired it earlier that night and the tang of cordite still wept from the metal.

  Will put his foot on the first step and made himself breathe. He pushed off and put his other foot down on the second step, wringing a hideous creak from the old wood. He froze and flashed his teeth in a wince. He raised his foot again and extended it like a ballerina. Will got an image of himself sneaking like a caricature, stepping on every loud board and shaking like a leaf. Would he step on a rake next and have it fwap up in his face? Whatever was in that house knew he was there already. “This is retarded,” he said and settled his weight on the steps.

  Will Two-Bears McFarlan took a breath and shouted, “ARMED POLICE!” He stepped up to the front door and broadcast into the house, “Lay down on the floor with your hands on your head!” He didn’t for a moment expect anything in there to comply with his order—it was just the closest thing to a battle cry his cop training had to offer under stress. Will didn’t do the peeking-around-corners-and-checking-sight-lines Miami Vice thing, he ran straight back through the living room toward the kitchen. He leveled Smaug and let off a thunder-blast as he passed what might have been a person standing by the couch. The top of the standing lamp exploded and fell over like a cartoon solider. He didn’t stop to look but kept on toward the light source. He jogged around the corner into a hall with a mirror hanging at the end, saw his own reflection and blew it to hell without thinking twice. Will was smiling now, grinning like a wolf. Going in guns blazing felt good. He burst into the kitchen and there it was: the corpse of what had to be Rick Becket sitting at the table just as prim as you please. Will had to guess it was Rick because the top half of its body was completely charred. The stink was amazing, but everything smelled like fire and brimstone anyway. Rick’s neck crackled as he turned his head toward Will.

  Will leveled his hand-cannon, “Just one of you, huh?”

  Rick’s jaw unhinged and his tongue unfurled; the Wasp that rode it was as big as a man’s thumb.

  Will took three steps toward Rick, “Uh-uh, buddy,” and used the barrel of his gun to shove the wasp back down Luther’s throat. Rick gagged but that was all the protest Will allowed. He unloaded the remaining four bullets into Rick’s head directly through his mouth. The first vaporized the wasp and a good portion of Rick’s neck. In spite of Will’s firm grip, the gun kicked up and back with every trigger pull and thus destroyed the rest of Rick’s head from jaw, to nose, to forehead. When the gun dry clicked, Will stepped back, deaf and hauling in breath after breath. What was left looked less like it had been shot and more like someone had fed the top half of it into a wood chipper.

  Will didn’t wait around like one of those cows in a horror movie. He snapped open the chamber, reloaded with a blur of fingers and shells and whipped it closed again. This was the part of the movie where the hero (or large breasted blonde, if you prefer) gets it in the back by the other bad guy/monster.

  Will faced the door into the kitchen and listened. He didn’t especially like having his back to what was left of Rick Becket, but that hunk of overdone steak wasn’t getting up again. The trick seemed to be not just blowing away the entire brain but the wasp as well. It was like the wasps were driving them. A shiver ran up and over Will’s shoulders. Note to George Romero, he thought, head shot alone not enough. The house was stone quiet. Will held his breath and listened for the slightest tick or creak. Nothing.

  The walkie-talkie on his belt brayed, “Will. Hey, Will! Two-Bears, you there or what?”

  Will fumbled the walkie off his belt and thumbed the talk button, “I’m here, Georgie.” He wiped his brow with his wrist and blew a long, shaking exhalation. “I’m at the Jeans’ house. Where’re you guys? Everyone okay?”

  “We’re fine,” George crackled. “We’re in the car now headed over to old Charlotte Najarian’s place. We found T.R. Or, rather he found us. Anyway, we left him—what would you call it, Kiddo?” Will heard the boy offer, “Secure?” Then George again, “Yeah, we left him secure as a psycho-killer duct taped to a movie theatre seat, or a bug in a rug, whichever you please. Anyway, we’re pretty sure Erica’s at Najarian’s. We oughta’ be there in about five minutes.”

  “On my way,” Will said and looked at the mess he left at the table. “And Georgie, be careful. I ran into another one of those things like the Sams kid. Had a big wasp in its mouth, uh, and everything.”

  “Jesus. Who was it?”

  “Pretty sure it was Rick Becket.” Will paused a second and thumbed the talk button. “Listen, George? I want to make sure all three of you can hear me.”

  Loraine and Childe Howard chimed in, “We’re here. We hear you.”

  “Yeah, right here, Constable Will.”

  “Okay,” Will sighed. He didn’t like talking this way to a kid, especially one who’d just seen his best friend, well, the way he’d seen him. “You have to kill the wasp and take the person’s head off,” he said and winced. Will glanced back at Rick, gone from the shoulders up. “Remember with Howie Sams we just got him in the head a couple of times and he kept coming? I’m not even sure what happened with the wasp. Anyway, Rick’s down and it was because I took his head clean off and killed the wasp.”

  Silence from the walkie-talkie.

  Will frowned. “You all copy me?”

  “We heard you, Will,” George said. “We’re just throwing up.”

  Will smiled. That they were joking meant they weren’t beat. Not even close. Which was good because he had the idea this was just the beginning. “All right, I want you three to wait for me just down the block from Najarian’s place. George, I know you want to storm in and see if Erica’s there, but I’m begging you, man, don’t do it until I get there.” Silence. “Loraine? Don’t you let him go in until I get there, you here me?”

  Loraine came on, “Oh, I won’t,” she said, and for a moment Will wasn’t sure he was hearing the same woman he knew. That Loraine Howard was dowdy and a little hippy-dippy, totally laid back. Will had attended a lecture, a kind of cop continuing education credit course in Louisville a few years back on Special Weapons and Tactics. The admin had been a decent enough guy, affable, but there had been an edge to his voice like his mind was ready to deploy around a situation like a machine. Loraine had that sound now, like she was tensed and ready but cold.

  “See you in five,” Will said. “Over. Out.”

  He clipped the walkie back on his belt, holstered Smaug an
d jogged toward the front door. It was standing open and the lights from the jeep sprayed into the living room. The night air had found its way into the house, the green smell of grass clashed with jeep exhaust and the hydrocarbons of the mine below. God Shard was weird—all the contrasts of destruction and poison on top of the clean and natural. Maybe it made sense that it would be some kind of nexus point between worlds. Will loved this town, had since he was younger than Childe Howard, and it broke his heart. Made sense, though, he guessed. A thing so beautiful and isolated from the rest of the world had to have a cost. He just wished it wasn’t so damn high.

  He stepped off the front porch. A white hand reached from under the steps and snapped shut around his ankle. Will pitched forward and caught himself in a painful push-up with a surprised, “Shit!” Young Luther Becket scrambled out from the crawlspace, all flailing limbs and grasping fingers. He flowed up Will’s body and pushed his open mouth right next Will’s ear. In a strange moment of stillness, Will could hear the wasp rustling forth from the back of the dead boy’s throat.

  Luther’s little hands were strong as iron clasps and he seemed to weigh three times what he should. Will could only move his head. In another second, the wasp was going to chew a hole through his cheek or bore into his ear and he’d become one of those mindless things. Will Two-Bears McFarlan stopped breathing. He felt the pornographic caress of the wasp’s antennae against his face. For a moment he almost smiled. He couldn’t believe what was about to happen, but he could at least face it head on. He snapped his head to the side facing Luther and stared into his gaping maw, open much wider than was possible without unhinging the jaw. The wasp was enormous. It brushed Will’s lips with its mandibles and he opened his mouth. Luther’s fingers, arms and legs constricted, even more. A tear squeezed from Will’s eye as he felt the little monster poke its head and thorax past his front teeth, felt it step onto his tongue. Will bit down, slicing the wasp in half.