"Maybe you’re right," he said at last. She had to be right. There was no other explanation. "Either we missed Baker or they’ve gone and renamed the place."
"I don’t know." Alicia was brooding now. "I don’t like the idea of letting anybody off in a place with a name like that."
He couldn’t keep himself from laughing. "With a name like what? Half the places in the Southwest have names like that. Bad Water or Devil’s Hole or Perdition. We just passed the turnoff to Bagdad yesterday. Bet Hades Junction is a paradise compared to that."
"You’re probably right. As long as it’s a place where she can find another ride."
"Pretty lady like her," he murmured, "shouldn’t have trouble getting a ride anywhere." But hadn’t she insisted she’d been waiting a long time until they’d paused to pick her up? Or had that just been a line? Here he was worrying about a total stranger again.
As they cruised eastward he kept an eye on the odometer. It looked to be functioning properly. When they’d gone six miles from the sign they’d just passed, he was, by God, going to stop and find himself a town, or a gas station, or something. Otherwise he’d have a few choice words for the highway department and the manufacturers of their so far inadequate road map.
The sky was darkening again, but this time with obvious reason. Clouds were gathering overhead. Peculiar clouds, though. Rain clouds. What was unusual was that they took the form of long, thin tendrils instead of thick, puffy masses. Streamers of storm.
So now you’re a meteorologist, he chided himself. First you decide the plants have gone crazy, now it’s the clouds. He glanced speculatively to his left, out the window. Sword-leafed yuccas pressed close to the barbed-wire fence that bordered the highway limit. Ocotillos waved their tentacle-like arms in the absence of wind. Feeling unexpectedly queasy at the sight, he turned away.
Since the three big trucks and the sports car, not a single vehicle had passed them. Unusual, since he was doing fifty-five and out here it was normal for most drivers to ignore the speed limit. You’d expect to see trucks, if not a lot of cars. As a lifelong Angelino, he felt uneasy at the absence of traffic.
Alicia was leaning forward. "Oh, look, Frank! There are animals on the overpass!"
No off ramp here. Just an elevated crossing for an unknown country road. He tried to identify the shapes as they bore down on the overpass. "Not deer," he declared with certainty. Then they were passing beneath and the single brief glimpse was lost.
What sounded like a deluge of empty beer cans danced on the motor home’s roof.
"Hey!" Steven put his comic aside to look ceilingward.
"Must’ve been kids," Frank decided. "They must’ve thrown something down on us."
Except that couldn’t be the cause because the noise continued. It didn’t sound like beer cans or garbage rattling around the luggage rack. It sounded a lot like feet. Small feet.
"Some idiots jumped onto us." His knuckles whitened where he gripped the wheel. He knew what he ought to do was pull over and step outside for a look. Something in his gut insisted that that wouldn’t be a good idea.
Whatever was up there, scuttling around among their rented patio chairs and spare tires, there was more than one of them. The cold feeling he’d felt when he’d seen that black tuft at the rear of the gas station attendant’s coveralls now returned. He thumbed a switch. The luxurious, brand-new motor home came equipped with power everything. It took only the quick gesture to lock all the windows and doors.
Almost immediately the main door began to rattle.
"Dad?" Steven’s voice had gone hollow. "Hey, Dad, there’s something trying to get in."
Frank said nothing, trying not to let his imagination get in the way of deciding what to do next. He should have brought the gun. But Alicia hated guns. Besides, of what use was a pistol on the busy interstate between Los Angeles and Vegas?
That’s when Alicia screamed. Frank let out an oath and fought the wheel, fighting his own panic simultaneously as something came crawling down the windshield. It descended from the roof by clinging to the metal shaft that divided the windshield in two.
It looked like a big rat, complete with reddish-brown fur and naked tail. A rat with a feral intelligence gleaming in its oversized eyes. Halfway to the hood it paused to stare in at them, grinning to display razor teeth. In its right paw it held a crude blade about two inches long.
As Frank tried to keep the motor home from crashing, the verminous passenger crawled the rest of the way down the windshield support. Safely on the hood, it squatted on its hind legs and turned to regard the motor home’s inhabitants with a murderous gaze. It was soon joined by a companion. Instead of a miniature knife, the newcomer carried a tiny pickax.
Alicia had stopped screaming to hold her breath. The rat-things were chittering animatedly to each other. When they finished, they began using their sharp utensils to dig at the insulation that ran around the windshield’s perimeter. Meanwhile the rattling at the door had not ceased. Scraping sounds began above Frank’s head. They were coming from the rim of the skylight a foot behind his seat.
"My God, Frank — what is it? What are they?"
"I don’t know, Alicia. I don’t know!" He could hear Steven whining anxiously somewhere behind him.
"Mom, Dad?" Wendy was whispering. "What’s going on?" All of a sudden she sounded neither cocky nor composed.
Frank swallowed, found his voice. "Alicia, you and Wendy get the big kitchen knives out of the drawers. Look around under the stove. Maybe there’s a firewood ax, too. Anything that can be used as a weapon. Understand?" There were half a dozen of the rat-things on the hood now, cutting and chopping around the windows and vent flaps, hunting for a way in.
"Okay. Okay." Alicia started to rise, then yelled and pointed.
The vent door that was built into the metal next to the accelerator was opening.
With a curse Frank jammed his left foot down hard, slamming the six-inch-high louver shut. There was a tiny, inhuman screech and the pop of small bones crunching.
"Hold the wheel!"
"Frank?"
"The wheel, hold the damn wheel!"
Alicia grabbed at it, kept the motor home more or less steady as Frank bent over to throw the manual latch on the vent cover. Then he straightened and instructed Alicia to do the same to the vent on her side. She managed, though her hands were shaking badly.
It sounded now like a small army was scurrying all over the roof and sides of the motor home. Wendy sat huddled in a corner next to the bathroom while her little brother’s eyes flicked nervously from one window to the next.
It took Alicia a few minutes to find all the knives. There was no firewood ax. "The toolbox!" Frank glanced into the overhead rearview mirror. "It’s under the fridge. Take out the hammer and the screwdrivers!"
The rat-things weren’t big, but there were dozens of them and they were fast. If they found a way inside he’d have to pull over to fight them, and if they stopped here who knew what other nightmares might be lying by the side of the road, crouching behind the mutated prickly pears and boulders, just waiting for the opportunity to get their hands on the motor home’s defenseless inhabitants?
A sharp cracking sound filled his ears. Wendy shrieked, as the small window opposite her was partly shattered. There was a fixed screen inside the window. It blocked the entry of a furious, frustrated rat-thing long enough for Alicia to smash the baseball-sized skull with the toolbox hammer. Wendy screamed again as blood and brains went flying. The little monstrosity fell away and another took its place. Alicia battered at clutching hands until tiny, clawed fingers had been beaten to pulp.
"Get out!" she screamed as she flailed with the hammer. "Out, out, out!"
One on one, Alicia had the advantage of size and determination. No longer was she defending the integrity of the motor home. She was protecting her children now, protecting them from the unadulterated, unmitigated evil that wanted to hurt them. Though they kept trying, none of the rat-c
reatures managed to slip through the screen or past her bloody hammer.
"Everybody hang tight!" Frank yelled. "I’m gonna hit the brakes hard! Maybe we can throw some of them off!"
Risky to slow to a stop, he knew, however briefly. Surely in that one abrupt, unexpected moment they wouldn’t be able to disable the vehicle. It was the only thing he could think of.
My God, he thought suddenly. What if they’re under the hood? He could envision them swarming over the engine, slicing away with their little knives, chewing with their sharp teeth. If they cut through the alternator or fan belt the motor home would die from lack of power, or overheat. If that happened, he knew they couldn’t hold back the furry tide for long. But he couldn’t stop to check under the hood.
Hit the brakes. That was their only chance. Maybe he could throw half of them off, or even more. They wouldn’t be expecting the maneuver and…
A new sound filled the motor home’s interior. It rose cleanly over the bloodthirsty chittering outside and the panicky screams and cries of the imperiled family within. It soared above the still-smooth hum of the engine.
Mouse stood by the door to the rear bedroom. She had her head back and mouth open, and she was singing a song unlike anything Frank had ever heard. It contained echoes of the song she’d sung for them earlier, echoes only. Compared to the edgy, vaulting lyrics, his daughter’s heavy metal sounded positively pastoral, and Mouse achieved the effect without any instrumental backup.
At times the sound disappeared, but you could tell by watching the singer that she was singing as powerfully as ever. You couldn’t hear with your ears, but you could feel it in your bones, a high-frequency vibration that set your teeth on edge. It was all overpowering and wonderful and frightening. Words in a language Frank didn’t recognize were interspersed with stretches of pure music. He discovered he was shivering even though it was warm inside the motor home and the air-conditioning thrummed dutifully in the background.
It did more than make the rat-things shiver. Dropping their weapons they pressed paws to their ears, squealing in agony. Then they broke and ran, forgetting about the soft, warm, meaty things locked in the steel box on wheels. Mouse continued her apparently effortless song, her lithe body arrow-straight, the music pouring out of her as if from the depths of a high-powered speaker. Claws skittered across metal as the attackers fled, leaping from the roof and hood, some landing safely, others breaking and splattering on the unyielding pavement. Something in Mouse’s song drove them insane. Dozens crunched beneath the big steel-belted radials. Their bodies were small enough so that the impact didn’t interfere with the motor home’s progress.
The scratching and skittering faded while the song remained strong and pure, until the last little carnivore with its glaring red eyes and piranha-like teeth had vanished.
Frank studied the view presented by the rear-facing side mirrors. He saw nothing and did not expect to. At the speed they were traveling they would already have left the tiny army far behind. Meanwhile Mouse concluded her saving song with an impossible triple trill that sounded more like the product of a synthesizer than a human throat. When it died away it was once more peaceful and calm inside the motor home.
Alicia held both arms across her chest as she stared silently forward. Wendy was still sobbing fitfully in back but was beginning to regain some self-control. Her little brother just crouched motionless against the couch, watching their guest.
"What the hell were those?" Frank drove mechanically, afraid to slow down, unwilling to release his convulsive grip on the wheel. "What the hell is going on?"
"This isn’t happening." Alicia’s voice was very small. She was shaking her head slowly from side to side. "It isn’t happening. It’s all a dream."
"Not a dream." Mouse came toward them. "I’m sorry. For your sakes, I wish it was."
Frank noticed that she kept her balance no matter how severely the motor home leaned or swayed. She kept her balance, and he’d kept control. He sat a little straighter. Plenty of guys would’ve panicked back there, would’ve let go of the wheel or pulled over and run screaming into the desert. He’d held together better than a lot of would-be heroes in the face of unexpected, unimaginable horror. Alicia’d always told him he responded well in a crisis, like that time her mother had been visiting and had suffered the bad heart attack. Five minutes from now he might go completely to pieces, but for the moment he was fine.
Better try to find out what was happening now, then.
"Who are you? Nothing’s been right ever since we picked you up. Has the world gone nuts, or have we?"
She sighed. "I am very much afraid you are all still sane. Madness would make it easier for you to cope. As we strive constantly to hold back the madness, we are concurrently forbidden the luxury of descending into insanity." Vast lavender orbs gazed directly into his eyes. They held nothing back, and concealed everything.
The last vestiges of hysteria had faded from his voice. "While you were sleeping in the back we stopped for some gas. The guy at the station was, well, weird would be an understatement. He did a lot of sniffing around the motor home. I mean really sniffing, like a bloodhound or something. As we were getting ready to leave he asked me if we’d seen or picked up any hitchhikers. I thought that was a real peculiar thing to ask, just out of the blue like that."
"And you didn’t tell him."
"No. Now I’m not so sure I should’ve lied. What have we gotten ourselves into by giving you a lift, Mouse? Or Moscohotcha, or whatever your name is? Who are you, and what’s going on, and why do I have this funny feeling this Vanishing Point of yours isn’t a nightclub? Dammit, you owe us some straight answers!"
"Nightclub?" She looked puzzled. "I never said anything about a nightclub."
"You haven’t said anything about anything. Business partner of mine once said that in the absence of information it was natural for people to speculate. So we’ve been doing a lot of speculating. Me, I’m fresh out of speculations. I don’t understand those rat-things that attacked us and I don’t understand that attendant and I especially don’t understand you."
"I am…" she began, then stopped and started again. "It has to do with Chaos."
Frank turned back to stare at the unwinding ribbon of highway, growled, "Oh, well, that explains everything."
"Try to understand what I am going to say to you," she continued anxiously. "There is a problem with the Spinner. The One Who Spins. Who Modulates."
"Spins what?" Wendy had come forward to listen. She was frightened and exhilarated and scared and exultant all at once. Mouse turned to smile at her. Though the difference in their ages did not appear great, Wendy was conscious of an immense gap between them. For some reason it didn’t intimidate her.
"The fabric of existence." Mouse plucked at her rainbow sari dress. "This stuff, only new. This is fashioned of old existence; forgotten memories and lost history. Places that were but are no longer. Thoughts no longer vital. I wear the echoes of what was once. The Spinner weaves the threads of what is and will be.
"Therein lies the trouble. Almost always the Spinner spins smoothly and without interruption. Only very, very rarely does it suffer distress. When that happens, the fabric of existence becomes tangled, begins to unravel in places. Instead of unwinding in intricate patterns of logic, lines of existence twist and tangle. It is a matter of stress."
"How do you fix something like that?" Wendy asked the question without being sure what she was asking about.
"By relaxing the Spinner. By soothing it. By helping it resume its former natural rhythm. You cure such problems among yourselves, infinitesimally minor, with medicines. There is not enough medicine in the universe to adjust the Spinner’s rhythm. It requires something much more powerful and elusive." The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "It requires music.
"On the line of existence where I come from, music is our art and our science rolled into one. We are the consummate musicians of our age. And since music is very much a universal
constant, something your people are only just coming to discover, we can survive the crossing from one line of existence to another. Among those of us who are considered gifted, I was the one chosen to try to reach the Spinner to soothe it. To regulate it with song. I was told it would be difficult and dangerous. In this I have thus far not been disappointed.
"I am not alone. Others will strive to reach the Spinner by other lines. But I was given the best chance. I cannot fail. I cannot assume that if I do so, another will be successful. And time is growing short."
"And this Spinner whatsis, it lives at this Vanishing Point place?" Frank asked dubiously.
"Where else would the Spinner exist?"
"Beats the hell out of me," he muttered sarcastically.
"What happens if you don’t get to this Vanishing Point in time?" Wendy wondered.
"Then," Mouse declared solemnly, "the fabric of existence will continue to tangle and unravel. Some lines will abruptly cease to exist, while many will cross and intertwine, to the destruction and detriment of all." She moved forward until she was standing close to the back of Alicia’s chair. "That’s why the countryside here has appeared different to you."
"What about those — creatures," Alicia asked. "Why did they attack us?"
"Because my journey is opposed. I was told it might be."
"So those things were after you, not us," Frank said. "Same with that station attendant." She nodded.
"But if what you’re trying to do is for the good of everyone, why would anyone want to stop you?" Wendy wondered.
"Not for the good of everything." Mouse turned her gaze to the road ahead. "There is Chaos. To it the tangling and unraveling of the lines of existence would be a final fulfillment. Once, eons ago, it almost achieved this, but the Spinner was modulated and the fabric of existence saved. Periodically, small lines of existence do break or knot. Your own line has several knots in it. Once, when plant life appeared. Again, when the creatures you call dinosaurs became extinct. But these were only knots, not breaks. Small interruptions to an otherwise intact and undamaged line."
To the Vanishing Point Page 7
