“What sort of cult leader goes to Dairy Queen?”
“They made great frozen chocolate-covered bananas. And you were there with these pretty women, and you said if you could put Jesus and the Buddha and Dionysus together, you’d really have something. You all looked so happy and alive. You invited me back for tacos. That was the first night we made love.”
“We . . . did?” Clearfather hiccupped.
“Well, along with about twenty other people. I don’t know how you kept going. Everyone loved you . . . worshiped you.”
“So what happened?”
The Nourisher’s face clouded over and hot tears leaked down her cheeks. “I betrayed you,” she whispered. “There were stories in the media of orgies and rites. Christian Nation hated you. The Muslims were angered. The Mormons were envious and worried. Women First resented the devotion you engendered. Efram-Zev and the pharmaceutical industry were afraid of your message about enjoying sex without drugs and implants. The outsiders began to band together. And that was when I met with a Federal agent in Amarillo to plot your overthrow.”
The Nourisher was sobbing now, gagging on her emotion.
“Why?” Clearfather asked.
“I was young and silly! I was the thirteenth wife. I grew jealous! So I gave the Feds information on how best to raid The Kingdom of Joy. There were wonderful buildings then—and gardens. We raised chickens and sheep—there was even a big tom turkey called David Letterman.”
“But you wanted to end—”
“I wanted to punish you! I thought they’d come and arrest you. They gave me their word—no violence! Hah. They came to slaughter with military weapons!”
“And I died?” Clearfather said softly.
“Along with many others—including all twelve wives and the babies they were carrying.”
“Babies? They . . . killed babies?”
“The bullets started flying like rain. The choppers came to firebomb the buildings. Once they had you hemmed in around the Obelisk in the center of the farm—they struck in force. I wanted to die with you—I was so ashamed. But I couldn’t bring myself to lose my baby . . . your baby . . . our son!”
“Did you say a baby? A son?”
“Yes!” the woman cried and held up the peculiar vessel she wore around her neck. “This was a part of the punishment—you see?”
Clearfather felt the pain in his head return, a dark rage rising within him. This couldn’t be. None of this could be true!
Staring closer at the cylinder, he saw that it was a small museum jar. Inside was a stillborn fetus, more tadpole than human, freeze-dried.
“You see, they wouldn’t let me die! I had no friends—my family wouldn’t help. For months I was held in a hangar at Altus Air Force Base. I was never charged—never tried—never convicted—but I was sentenced to a LifeForce research complex in northern Mississippi. They induced my baby’s stillbirth . . . and turned me into this! Surgery after surgery. Gene treatments. Hormone therapy. Year after year. I was only released when they thought I was going to die. I lived on the shriveled charity of relatives until I joined a sex lodge servicing Christian Nation heavies. But I needed too many drugs to stay normal. I turned back into this and then it came to me in a dream—as clear as I see you now . . . I would see you again. My punishment would have an end! I was to come back to Dustdevil—back to the ruins of The Kingdom of Joy—and one day you would return. You would see that I’d been faithful. You would forgive me. We would live as husband and wife again. So I at last came back. I came back! I found Van Brocklin and the others. And there were Signs. Someone had been here since The Kingdom of Joy had been destroyed. The tunnels had been rebuilt—and the Phoenix station was here—and the tornadoes started—and the Gifts came. And now you’ve come. You’ve come back to find me! Come my love . . . forgive me! Let us begin our new lives!”
Clearfather thought he might faint. At last he found his voice. “Shut up!” he roared.
“You’re still angry—you have every reason. But see how I’ve suffered—”
“I have not come back from the dead! I came from Pittsburgh. I don’t know who you think you’re waiting for. But I am not the one!”
The Nourisher’s face flared with anger for a moment—then deep hurt. Then a knowing splinter began to gleam in her eyes.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
“What?” Clearfather coughed.
She shifted in the hammock to spread the huge rolls of cellulite that were her legs.
“My suffering has not been in vain! I’ve believed. I’ve endured. I know you’ve come back to me. You are my Nourisher!”
With two of her meaty fingers, she squeezed a nipple and squirted a jet of milk at him. “Reveal yourself to me.”
“No!” he said, and the steel wires twanged and the bulk of the Nourisher slammed to the floor. But he could do no more. The horror was crawling toward him.
“Yes!” she whispered. “Don’t you see how I have waited—and suffered? You are my dream, my hope, my love!”
She bit into Clearfather’s left hand, which triggered a shiver of pain that sent his right fist shooting forward. There was a snap-crack sound and she fell back with a thud—as a voice filled the room—like the ones he’d been hoping to hear in his head.
“Quick!” it gurgled, and Clearfather recognized the voice as Davin’s. “You gotta get out of here. Chemo . . . he’s taken an interest in your little friend.”
“Can you tell me how to get up top?”
“All right,” Davin breathed. “But you gotta hurry!”
“Nah sa fast!” Clearfather heard Van Brocklin whistle through his long lump of nose, followed by a click of a shotgun. “Ah’ll syow ’im da way.”
CHAPTER 6
Cubby
Clearfather’s head pounded. The letters in his back burned. He didn’t know what to do. He was afraid for Kokomo. He had to find her—they had to get out.
“Dis is Cubby’s room.” Van Brocklin smiled and wagged his snout.
Clearfather braced himself to confront a steroid-cranked gladiator. But the shadow that filled this other, larger-domed ceiling room was more intimidating in its own way. It belonged to a plump white, freckle-faced boy with hair the color of hay. He was dressed in baggy improvised cargo shorts and a T-shirt made of bed linen—and was barefoot. He was only about seven or eight years old but he stood twelve feet high and must’ve weighed eight hundred pounds.
“How . . . how did he get so big?” Clearfather marveled.
“Hexperiments. At Genetica. Ah ’elped ’im get away. But ’e’s got behaverural problems. Da growth ’ormones an’ shid fucked ’im up. Turrible temper Cubby hass.” Van Brocklin grinned malevolently. “Now you’re gonna keep ’im ennertained.”
Van Brocklin shoved him forward, slamming the steel door shut behind. Shit, Clearfather thought. He heard the storm bells ringing down the tunnel. The wind was rising and Kokomo was with Opossum Face—with Vitessa waiting to pounce! He tried to reach out his mind to her but all he could feel was a seething black pain. He didn’t know about the psych implants inside—he only knew that his allies, the voices, were lost in a rage of pink-and-white noise—and that he was confronted with a giant Special Child.
Pieces of machinery and the heads of animals lay scattered. There were no bones visible, but Clearfather thought it possible the young ogre ate them. The boy’s bed was a slab of insulation from a refrigeration car, his roommates a family of punching bags with crude faces drawn on them. The single point of interest was a model train set laid out on a table of two-by-fours. Most of the cars had been hurled against a wall or broken in half but a few remained intact, stopped midbridge on their journey around the miniature town, where cars were parked on the roofs and the few remaining citizens seemed to be worshiping a Chewbacca the Wookiee PEZ dispenser.
Cubby grunted. Clearfather moved behind a pile of rotten phone books.
“Cubby wanna play!” the kid announced and charged toward him.
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Clearfather leapt over a pipe well and heard the voice of the Nourisher. Was she in his head, too? No, it came from the ceiling, he realized—a hidden speaker.
“I can save you, my love!” she wheezed. “Just as I betrayed you in your earlier life—I can save you now. And I will save you! I begged for your forgiveness—now all you have to do is ask for mine! Let me forgive your unkindness!”
“No!” Clearfather called.
At that exact moment the Corps of Discovery mind probe crossed paths with the stealth unit, drawing the attention of the combat probe away from its mission. The result was a surge of confidence and the emergence of a song in his mind—a variation on a song he remembered singing with Aunt Vivian and Uncle Waldo.
“Ah’m gonna wring yer neck!” Cubby grinned, groping out for him.
“No, you’re not, Tubby,” Clearfather replied, sidestepping him.
“Cubby!”
“You’re a big bully, Chubby.”
“Cubby!” the overgrown knee-skinner bleated.
“And I’m going to teach you a lesson. But first, I’m going to teach you a song. Someone’s singing, Lord . . . Kum-baya . . .”
“Argh!” Cubby groaned, clubbing his big dirty ears with his hands.
“Someone’s singing, Lord . . . Kum-baya . . .”
“SYUT UP!”
“Someone’s whining, Lord . . . Kum-baya . . .”
Cubby swung at Clearfather, who hurtled to one side as the galumphing boy’s fist connected with the steel door.
“Arggggggggh!” Cubby yowled, sucking his hand, as Clearfather dashed around and yanked the boy’s shorts down to his ankles.
“Someone’s pants are down, Lord, Kum-baya . . .”
Cubby stabbed his damaged fingers out, but Clearfather rolled underneath and drove an overhand right into the youngster’s testicles, where it sunk as if into uncooked dough. Cubby’s eyes crossed—he cupped his hands to his crotch and crumpled. The gargantuan brat staggered forward but forgot about his shorts. Tottering—he beat his arms to maintain balance, but it was too late—he fell with full force facedown upon the village, impaling his right eye on the church steeple. Clearfather grabbed the PEZ dispenser.
“Cubby!” a voice wailed as the door burst open and Van Brocklin’s fleshy snout swung in. “Ya’ve killed Cubby!”
Clearfather shot past and slammed the door behind him before the Odd Vark had a chance to use his shotgun.
“That was good work,” he heard Davin say. “Now find Guinefort, the greyhound—he’ll lead you. But look out for Van Brocklin. Turn left.”
“Bravo, my love—you Monster Slayer! But you can’t escape that easily,” he heard the Nourisher thrum. “You are my dream, my hope, my God!”
Damn it, thought Clearfather—both Davin and the Nourisher had the tunnels mined with cameras and microphones. He’d reached the ant farm when he saw the Bedpan Man in his robotic frame and the Mermaid in her Tractioneer™, clutching a Charter Arms Bulldog.
“Doan you make me shoot you now,” she quavered, the barrel of the oily .44 making circles in the air.
Clearfather pitched the PEZ dispenser as hard as he could at one of the bedpans on Judd’s roll bar and hit the deck. The noise so startled Lanette, she pulled the trigger, missing Clearfather by a good four feet. The first two-hundred-grain handload blew a clean hole in the ant farm. Her second shot, aimed low, inflicted a fracture in the surface and the transparent wall exploded, flooding the hallway with dirt, ruptured glass, and a cascade of pissed-off insects.
By the time he was close enough for her to hit, he had the gun in his hands and had shot out the motor in the Tractioneer™. The sharp corrosive scent of formic acid filled the corridor. “Hurry!” Davin called, and off Clearfather ran—just catching a gargle of consternation as the ants reached Judd—followed by the frantic sound of Lanette hopping for her life. Seconds later he heard a sequence of shotgun blasts echoing down the tunnels. He arrived back at the room where the boys in the bubbles rolled and the girls sat silently with their babies. They were all just as he’d left them. He ran through the air-shaft gardens to check on Davin and saw that someone had slit open the membrane of his envirotent, which had collapsed around him like soft wet glass. The man sat microphone in hand with a suffocated, shrink-wrapped expression on his face. Beside him was the platypus woman, Doreen. She raised a prairie dog boning knife. Clearfather raised the .44. With a squawk of terror she fled. He ran back into the children’s area—and there was Van Brocklin, reloaded and covered in ants. “Ya killed Cubby!”
Clearfather raced between the high chairs into the Randomizer. The rheumatoid madman blasted a hay bale apart. Then a bubble spun toward Clearfather and he kicked it at one of the pressure pads—which whooshed the boy into Van Brocklin, who tripped into the pit beneath the robotic shovelmouth. The open jaws plunged down and shot back to the ceiling, jerking the muscleman in half. When the jaws relaxed, the torso thumped to the concrete.
Clearfather spotted the greyhound between the bubbles. He followed the dog back to the air shaft and saw Kokomo, trussed up in one of the garden terraces. Between the terraces was a narrow flight of stairs leading up to the light. The greyhound barked. He untied the green-eyed girl and, cradling her, began clambering up the earthen stairs.
CHAPTER 7
The Harrowing
At the top of the garden stairs Clearfather kicked through a door. The skylight had been camouflaged from ground level and he noticed a tripwire, which he was careful to avoid. The greyhound was nowhere to be seen. It was late afternoon but from the look of the sky and the way the clouds were moving, time might have started running backward. Lightning pulsed, and the wind was heavy with ozone and nitrogen oxides. He set Kokomo down and glanced around, imagining windmills and oil pumps stampeding like frightened animals—fleeing something giant but invisible.
In fact what was closing in was about to become very visible. From the cardinal points of the compass rumbled four triceratops tanks the size of barns. Called Grim Reapers, they were modeled on giant combine harvesters but armored and equipped with terrain-leveling suspension tracks and Dark Rain cannons capable of replacing the air with jacketed steel for up to an hour without pause. Churning forward at a constant crawlspeed, the vehicles powderized pheasants and abandoned cars alike, obliterating everything in their paths. Outside this perimeter, the winter wheat had been blanketed with Jack O’Lanterns, beach-ball-sized land mines with evil faces painted on them, marching on spidery legs wherever their heat-seeking sensors directed them. Then there was the ominous orange freight train. Vitessa felt confident they had nothing to fear.
The whirring of the weather vanes grew louder, and somewhere Clearfather heard a terrible clanging of irrigation pipes. Kokomo limped into the wind farm, spreading her arms between the towers of conical steel. Her right leg, the same one he thought he’d hurt when he fell in Chemo’s trap, looked damaged, but other than that she appeared uninjured—her eyes shining tornado green. He ran to her. The weather vanes began spinning like tornadoes themselves. The great blades hummed, the rotors swimming hard to keep the turbines yawed against the wind. Clearfather wavered. How could he deny the signs the Nourisher had referred to? There was the silver spoon from his vision, the dreams he’d had of the women bleeding around the pillar—and the telltale emblem of the wheelbarrow of fire. He couldn’t dismiss all these resonances no matter how little clarity they provided. Maybe I have come back from the dead, he thought. Is this why Vitessa hounds me? He heard Kokomo begin to sing and held her in his arms. Hope surged through him. If he’d released powers within her, now he felt her releasing powers within him. They would stand together against Vitessa. Their minds would join. Let the others come, he thought. Let them bring their chemicals and weapons. Kokomo and I will unleash the wind! We will empty the pits and burrows. We will open a tunnel in the sky and send all these creatures to the stars. Together, we are One.
Still the Reapers ruthlessly advanced, the hinged track belt
s clanking like pile drivers striking bedrock, digging deep into softer earth, spewing out shotsprays of soil that looked like cottage cheese mixed with blood. At last they reached the containment point past which they would be in each other’s crossfire. They paused. At the edge of their range all that was left was a small circle of the immediate ruins of Dustdevil. The weather vanes were shrieking in their sleeves now—violet flames rippling over the husks of the cars. Clearfather looked up and saw the death machines surrounding them. And at that moment the Reapers ceased fire and there was movement within the orange train two miles away. The side panels of the boxcars slid back and released their cargo. Clouds of tiny wings rose up with a high-pitched whine to blacken what light was left. They swarmed over the dead oil fields and arid farmland like a haze of poisonous gas.
My God, he thought as they drew closer—they’re locusts. Then the first of the legion reached him and he crushed one in his hand—and saw that they were actually miniature winged robots, part organic, part titanium. Whatever they landed on they consumed, releasing a ravenous molecular solvent. Kokomo sang louder, and he found the words struck a memory chord within him. “Dust in the wind. All we are is dust in the wind. Dust in the wind. Everything is dust in the wind.”
Below these words he heard another message . . . rising like the tempest . . . words he remembered as if from a dream . . .
“Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. . . . Yea, he sent out his arrows and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings.”
Zanesville: A Novel Page 23
