The Tommyknockers (98 page)

Then, for one second, Gard saw
his
Bobbi for the last time.

He thought perhaps Bobbi was trying to smile.

Then the screaming began again. She screamed and tried to beat out the flames that were turning her torso to tallow, and that screaming was too much, far too much, too loud, far too loud; it was unbearable. For them both, he thought. He bent, found the triple-damned pistol on the floor, and picked it up. He needed to use both of his thumbs to get it cocked. The pain in his ankle was bad—he knew that—but for the moment it was lost to him, buried under Bobbi's shrieking agony. He pointed Hillman's pistol at her head.

Work, you goddam thing, oh please, please work
—

But if it worked and he missed? There mightn't be another cartridge in the mag.

His motherfucking hands wouldn't stop shaking.

He fell to his knees like a man struck with a sudden violent need to pray. He crawled toward Bobbi, who lay shrieking and writhing and burning on the floor. He could smell her; could see black shards of plastic from the radio's case bubbling their way into her flesh. He almost overbalanced and fell on top of her. Then he pressed the 45 against the side of her neck and pulled the trigger.

Another click.

Bobbi, screaming and screaming. Screaming inside his head.

He tried to pull the slide back again. Almost got it. Then it slipped.
Snick.

Please God, oh please let me be her friend this one last time!

This time he got the slide all the way back. He tried the trigger again. This time the gun went off.

The scream suddenly became a loud buzz in Gardener's head. He knew he was listening to the mental sound of mortal disconnect. He turned his head upward. A bright
stripe of sunlight from the unzipped roof fell across his face, bisecting it. Gardener shrieked.

Suddenly the buzzing stopped and there was silence.

Bobbi Anderson—or whatever she had become—was as dead as the pile of autumn-leaf corpses in the control room of the ship, as dead as the galley slaves which had been the ship's drive.

She was dead and Gardener would have gladly died then, too . . . but it still wasn't over.

Not yet.

Kyle Archinbourg was having a Pepsi in Cooder's when the screams began in his head. The bottle dropped from his hand and shattered on the floor as his hands jerked up to his temples. Dave Rutledge, dozing outside Cooder's in a chair which he had caned himself, was tilted back against the building and dreaming weird dreams in alien colors. His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright as if someone had touched him with a live wire, scrawny tendons standing out on his throat. His chair slid out from under him, and when his head hit the wooden wall of the market, his neck shattered like glass. He was dead before he hit the asphalt. Hazel McCready was making herself a cup of tea. When the screams began, her hands jerked. The one holding the teapot spilled boiling water across the back of the one holding the cup, scalding it badly. She hurled the teapot across the room, screaming in pain and fear. Ashley Ruvall, riding his bike past the town hall, fell over into the street and lay there stunned. Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were playing cribbage at Newt's house, a pretty goddam stupid thing to be doing since each knew what the other held in his hand, but Newt didn't have a Parcheesi board, and besides, they were only passing time, waiting for the telephone to ring, waiting for Bobbi to tell them the drunk was dead and the next phase of the work could begin. Newt was dealing, and he sprayed cards all over the table and floor. Dick bolted to his feet, eyes wild, hair standing on end, and lurched for the door. He ran into the wall three feet to the right of it instead and went sprawling. Doc Warwick
was in his study going over his old diaries. The scream hit him like a wall of cinderblocks being trundled along a set of tracks at brisk speed. His body dumped adrenaline into his heart in lethal quantities, and it blew like a tire. Ad McKeen was in his pickup truck, headed over to Newt's. He ran off the road and into Pooch Bailey's abandoned Hot Dog House. His face hit the steering wheel. He was momentarily stunned, but no more. He had been going slow. He looked around, dazed and terrified. Wendy Fannin was coming up from the cellar with two jars of peach preserves. Since her “becoming” had started, she ate little else. In the last four weeks she had eaten over ninety jars of peach preserves all by herself. She wailed and threw these two into the air like a spastic juggler. They came down, struck the stairs, shattered. Peaches and sticky juice ran and dripped.
Bobbi,
she thought numbly,
Bobbi Anderson's burning up!
Nancy Voss was standing blankly at the back window and thinking about Joe. She missed Joe, missed him a lot. She supposed that the “becoming” would eventually wipe that longing out—every day it seemed more and more distant—but although it hurt to miss Joe, she didn't want that hurt to stop. It made no sense, but there it was. Then the shrieks began in her head and she jerked forward so suddenly that she broke three of the windowpanes with her forehead.

Bobbi's screams blanketed Haven like an air-raid siren. Everything and everyone came to a complete stop . . . and then the changed people of Haven drifted into the streets of the village. Their looks were all one look: dismay, pain, and horror at first . . . then anger.

They knew who had caused those shrieks of agony.

While they went on, no other mental voice could be heard, and the only thing anyone could do was listen to them.

Then came the buzzing death-rattle, and a silence so complete it could only be death.

A few moments later there was the low pulse of Dick Allison's mind. It was emotionally shaken but clear enough in its command.

Her farm. Everyone. Stop him before he can do anything else.

Hazel's voice picked the thought up, strengthening it—the effect was like a second voice joining a first to make a duet.

Bobbi's farm. Go there. Everybody.

The beat of Kyle's mental voice made it a trio. The radius of the voice began to spread as it gained strength.

Everyone. Stop him
—

Adley's voice. Newt Berringer's voice.

—before he can do anything else
.

Those Gardener thought of as the Shed People had welded their voices into one voice of command, clear and beyond denial . . . not that anyone in Haven even
thought
of denying it.

Stop him before he can do anything to the ship. Stop him before he can do anything to the ship.

Rosalie Skehan left her kitchen sink without bothering to turn off the water running over the cod she had been freshening for supper. She joined her husband, who had been in the back yard chopping wood and who had barely missed amputating several of his toes when Bobbi's screams began. Without a word they went to their car, got in, and started for Bobbi's farm, four miles away. Turning out of their driveway, they nearly struck Elt Barker, who had taken off from his gas station on his old Harley. Freeman Moss was wheeling his pulp-truck. He felt a vague regret—he had sort of liked Gardener. He had what Freeman's pop had called “sand”—but that wouldn't stop him from tearing the bastard's gizzard out. Andy Bozeman was driving his Oldsmobile Delta 88, his wife sitting beside him with her hands folded neatly on her purse. In it was a molecule-exciter which could raise the spot heat of anything two inches in diameter roughly one thousand degrees in fifteen seconds. She was hoping to boil Gardener like a lobster.
Just let me get within five feet,
she kept thinking.
Just five feet, that's all I ask.
Beyond that distance, the gadget became unreliable. She knew she could have improved its effectiveness up to half a mile, and now wished she had done so, but if Andy didn't have at least six fresh shirts in the closet, he was like a bear. Bozeman himself wore a frozen sneer of rage, lips skinned back from his few remaining teeth in a dry, spitless grin.
I'll whitewash
your
fence when I get
hold of you, fuckface,
he thought, and pushed the Olds up to ninety, passing a line of slower-moving cars, all headed for Bobbi's place. They all picked up the Command Voice, which was now a hammering litany:
STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM, STOP HIM, STOP HIM!

Gard stood over Bobbi's corpse, half-mad with pain and grief and shock . . . and abruptly his jaws snapped open in another wide, tendon-stretching yawn. He reeled to the sink, trying to hop but doing a bad job of it because of the load of dope he'd taken on. Each time he came down on the bad ankle, it felt as if there was a metal claw inside him, relentlessly digging. The dryness in his throat was much worse now. His limbs felt heavy. His thoughts were losing their former acuteness; they seemed to be . . .
spreading,
like broken egg yolks. As he reached the sink he yawned again and deliberately took a step on the shattered ankle. The pain slashed through the fog like a sharply honed meat cleaver.

He barely cracked the tap marked H and got a glass of warm—almost hot—water. Fumbled in the overhead cabinet, knocking a box of cereal and a bottle of maple syrup onto the floor. His hand closed around the carton of salt with the picture of the little girl on the front.
When it rains it pours,
he thought soupily.
That is very true.
He fumbled at the pour-spout for what seemed like at least a year and then spilled enough salt into the glass to turn the water cloudy. Stirred it with a finger. Chugged it. The taste was like drowning.

He retched, bringing up salt water dyed blue. He saw undissolved chunks of blue pills in the vomitus, as well. Some looked more or less intact.
How many did she get me to take?

Then he threw up again . . . again . . . again. It was an encore performance of the projectile vomiting in the woods—some overworked circuit in his brain persistently triggering the gag reflex, a deadly hiccuping that could kill.

At last it slowed, then stopped.

Pills in the sink. Bluish water in the sink.

Blood in the sink. A lot.

He staggered backward, came down on the bad ankle, screamed, fell on the floor. He found himself looking into one of Bobbi's glazed eyes across the lumpy terrain of the linoleum, and closed his own. Immediately his mind began to drift away . . . but in that blackness there were voices. No—many voices blended into one. He recognized it. It was the voice of the Shed People.

They were coming for him, as he supposed he had always known they would . . . in time.

Stop him
 . . .
stop him
 . . .
stop him!

Get moving or they won't
have
to stop you. They'll shoot you or disintegrate you or whatever they want to do to you while you're snoozing on the floor.

He got to his knees, then managed to get to his feet with the help of the counter. He thought there was a box of No-Doz in the bathroom cabinet, but doubted if his stomach would hold them down after the latest insult he had dealt it. Under other circumstances it might have been worth the experiment, but Gardener was afraid that if the projectile vomiting started again, it might not stop.

Just keep moving. If it gets really bad, take a few steps on that ankle. That'll sharpen you up in a hurry.

Would it? He didn't know. All he knew was he had to move fast right now and wasn't sure he would be able to move for long at all.

He hop-staggered to the kitchen door and looked back one final time. Bobbi, who had rescued Gardener from his demons time after time, was little more than a hulk now. Her shirt was still smoking. In the end he hadn't been able to save her from hers. Just put her out of their reach.

Shot your best friend. Good fucking deal, uh?

He put the back of his hand against his mouth. His stomach grunted. He shut his eyes and forced the vomiting down before it could start.

He turned, opened them again, and started across the living room. The idea was to look for something solid, hop to it, and then hold on to it. His mind kept wanting to be that silver Puffer balloon it became just before he was carried away by the big black twister. He fought it as well as he could and marked things and hopped to them.

If there was a God, and if He was good, perhaps they all would bear his weight and he would make it across this seemingly endless room like Moses and his troops had the desert.

He knew that the Shed People would arrive soon. He knew that if he was still here when they did, his goose wasn't just cooked; it was nuked. They were afraid he might do something to the ship. Well, yes. Now that you mentioned it, that was part of what he had in mind, and he knew he would be safest there.

He also knew he couldn't
go
there. Not yet.

He had business in the shed first.

He made it out onto the porch where he and Bobbi had sat up late on so many summer evenings, Peter asleep on the boards between them. Just sitting here, drinking beers, the Red Sox playing their nightly nine at Fenway, or Comiskey Park, or some damn place, but playing mostly inside Bobbi's radio; tiny baseball men dodging between tubes and circuits. Sitting here with cans of beer in a bucket of cold well water. Talking about life, death, God, politics, love, literature. Maybe even once or twice about the possibility of life on other planets. Gardener seemed to remember such a conversation or two, but perhaps that was only his tired mind goofing with him. They had been happy here. It seemed a very long time ago.

It was Peter his tired mind fixed on. Peter was really the first goal, the first piece of furniture he had to hop to. This wasn't exactly true—the attempted rescue of David Brown had to come prior to ending Peter's torment, but David Brown did not offer him the emotional pulse-point he required; he had never seen David Brown in his life. Peter was different.