End Time (45 page)

The feed died.

Once more, Billy saw the lad's youthful exuberance in the Humvee at Dugway: the scientist's glistening eyes enjoying the greatest moment of his life while the poor gal from the AP gave her stomach the heave-ho into the snow. While a circle of rabbits surrounded the probe, almost as though they knew the significance of the Wild 3 comet dust locked away in the precious pod.

A great unease came over Billy again, just as it had in Utah. There was something about that storm that had always bothered him. And the curious appearance of the rabbits. Nature not being natural.

“That was me,” Billy Shadow admitted. “I met him.”

“I'll bet one of you even went to Senora Malvedos' and saw the girl who chose the saints,” Beatrice said.

“That was
me,
” Bhakti chimed in. And it sank into him that Big Bea had met the fortune-teller and Little Maria too. Cheryl shared a long glance with Beatrice, weighing the odds their crossed paths were mere chance. “What did Einstein say?” she asked. “‘Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.' So we're on the same side? No Felix allowed?”

Big Bea nodded her head. Something had been troubling her; quietly she confessed. “When Webster was recruited they did a background check. It helped he had family in government and all. Made me fill out a thirty-page questionnaire, take a polygraph. Not my tenth polygraph either. Half the reason they let my brother anywhere near that damn lab was because they thought I was reliable. They figured it runs in families. I knew Webster was involved in something classified, secret science. But I didn't know it was anything like—”

She broke off, unable to continue. She felt responsible.

The thunder rumbled, a little closer now.

Suddenly the kitchen doors swung open with a bang. Everyone nearly jumped out of their skins. Beatrice caught her foot behind the bar, and her game leg threatened to fold. She grabbed the bar for support.

“Dammit, Chaffy!” Bea hollered. “You're gonna gimme a stroke!”

The cook leaned heavily on the metal swing door. A man in his late fifties, wizened alky face, grizzly beard, having trouble standing. The man swayed every time he strayed from the swing door. White flecks of foam stuck to his lips. One gnarled hand clutched the waistband of his stained apron; the other hand gripped a twelve-inch carving knife. “They're coming,” Chaffy growled at them. His eyes bulged in their sockets. “They're getting close.” The carving knife flicked back and forth.

“Your cook has rabies,” Billy Shadow said softly, but so everyone at the bar could hear. “I think this man is rabid.”

Chaffy twitched at the word
rabid
.

“Rabbit! We got no rabbits. No rabbits on the menu. No rabbits in the house! Now you want rabbit? Bre'r rabbit? Broiled rabbit? Rabbit fricassee?”

Thunder rumbled overhead, much closer now. Chaffy's eyes darted in every direction. He almost crawled up the metal swing door. “They're right outside!”

Another low rumble. Not thunder—the rumble of diesel engines. The engines revved loudly, and the group at the bar heard the sounds of men shouting orders. Suddenly all the lights died. Jesus, a crazy man in the dark with a blade.

Then
pang
! Floodlights drove blinding columns of light into the roadhouse.

A voice from a megaphone penetrated the walls:

“Please stay where you are. Do not move or attempt to leave the building. We repeat, please do not attempt to leave the building.”

The urge to slither into the darkest corners seemed to infect everyone. Easy to imagine what waited outside: guys in tactical gear, guns and flash-bang grenades. Bhakti had crawled back to his booth. Like a frightened … rabbit? Chaffy the cook plastered himself against the jukebox, clutching it for safety.

Cheryl found herself at the front door with Billy and Big Bea to get a glimpse of the parking lot. Foolish bravery. The large woman threw the dead bolt on the door, slamming it home. Cheryl caught a glimpse of Rachel's ghost standing at a window looking outside. The floodlights seemed to pass right through her; now she really did look like a spirit. Rachel's soft voice touched her mind, apologetic, embarrassed.
“I really didn't see this coming. I would have told you if I did.”

“Told me! Told me!
Now
you tell me you could tell me?” Cheryl said loudly.

Making everyone in the saloon think maybe the lady cop was a little nuts too.

 

24

The San Remo

The lamp hanging over the interrogation table really bothered Billy. A government issued, green-shade model, with wire mesh over the hundred-watt bulb; he'd lived half his life under lamps like this. And he knew the sound of boots and armored personnel carriers and all about sticking men in metal cages. Now his turn had come for the cage.

Chaffy the cook didn't make the trip. The soldiers shot him where he stood clutching the jukebox. They zeroed in on the man like they knew exactly who and what they were looking for, then gave him the triple-tap—two rounds to the chest, one to the head—as he glared at them with wild eyes, snarling, “Rabbits!”

The entry team had Chaffy wrapped and bagged like Chinese take-out before the rest of them were cuffed and blindfolded. The military police or whatever this outfit called itself set up their field command in a tent surrounded by a maze of chain-link fence in a baseball field somewhere near Vandalia proper. Overhead, the thunderstorm passed; lots of noise and flashes of lightning with the heavy splatter of big droplets on the canvas, but it drifted off, and after a while you could hear crickets and the wind in the trees.

The officer in charge was regular army, a major, just like Billy used to be. Brass oak leaves on his shoulder boards, but no name tag on his battle dress and no divisional chevron on his arm. They'd taken off the plastic cuffs and brought in a few bottles of water. Billy passed on the one with the cracked seal, opening a fresh one for himself. And that made the major drink from an open bottle just for show.

The full military jacket of retired Major William Howahkan lay on the interrogation table, the thick file open to the first page, which showed Billy's official Army photo. They showed it to him as a courtesy; sort of like putting their cards faceup. Letting him know they were aware of what he used to be. A kind of respect.

“You want cigarettes or chewing gum or anything?” the major asked. “There's probably somebody around here who's got some.” Billy shook his head no thanks. There were no formal introductions, and Billy Shadow wasn't so stupid as to ask for any.

The Big
They
had arrived.

They'd assessed the situation, they'd shot the guy who needed shooting—and now it was time to talk.

Light from the hanging lamp was
really
starting to annoy. Billy felt a headache coming on. A bad one. The major rubbed his skintight jaw. From under the table he took the green Zero Degree tote sack from the Dodge minivan, the one they'd been lugging around in the Kargo Kooler for a couple of thousand miles. Unzipped it and drew out the evidence bag: the melted hunk of an ear and a dangling earring, all still mostly frozen.

Then he threw down the earring match from Bhakti's pocket that the Punjabi scientist had been carrying around since forever.

“Don't you think it's strange,” the major began quietly, “and
odd
how you and the lady cop and Babu haven't gotten sick yet? I mean, you've driven hither and yon, eaten in public, slept in a dozen motels, and crossed paths with a hundred people, most of whom now are probably sick—and what about you? Perfectly healthy.”

Billy Shadow shrugged. Healthy enough.

The major nodded to himself, like
Yeah right,
you never noticed it. Like never. Always dwelling on something more important.
He shoved the plastic baggie with the frozen bits of the Chen girl across the table. “I mean, you didn't even send this out to be analyzed, did you?”

Billy shook his head no
.

“No, of course not.” The major smiled. “No time, right?” He didn't wait for an answer. “You know what I think?”

Billy Shadow raised an eyebrow. Seemed the safest thing to do.
Okay, what do you think?

“You're gonna think I'm crazy
.
” The major shook the sealed plastic bag with the frozen human bits. “I think these leftovers are like some kind of Miracle-Gro, know what I mean?”

For a moment, Billy didn't. So the officer elaborated:

“Chemical sunshine, fertilizer, weed-killer, hand sanitizer, and spring rain all in one. You don't even have to take it out of the plastic bag for it to work. I'll bet there are trace elements of the stuff on the outside of the friggin' bag keeping you healthy. You touched it and brushed your teeth or rubbed your eyes. Then you breathed it on the motorcycle cop, then the lady cop shared a soda with Babu.” His voice stiffened. “Hell, Major Howahkan,
Retired
—it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. You've probably been immune since Van Horn and you didn't even know it.”

The officer paused in awe.

“Can you imagine what the real living thing is like? Lovely Lila Chen. Can you imagine what
that babe
could do?”

Billy Shadow looked long and hard at the bits of Lila Chen in the plastic bag, wondering for the hundredth time if the girl could really be some kind of genetic miracle like those kooks at Pi R Squared thought. More strands of DNA, however it worked—even in dead flesh? Maybe that was why he could see through Lila Chen's eyes in the back of the Stuka van—receiving her vibes via the bits in the baggie like a radio signal. Ah, a
rational
rationale. So maybe he wasn't touched with the walking curse after all; blame everything on biochemistry. Billy finally found a few words:

“Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine every damn thing the big brains would wanna do to her.”

The major sat in a folding chair and stroked his smooth face. “Yeah…,” he said after a long time. “I wonder if I rub some behind my ears it'll work on me too? Do you want to know
what else
I think?” he asked again.

Billy raised an eyebrow one more time:
What else do you think
?

“I don't think it will work on me. I think you were supposed to find it. Not me or anybody else. Do you know
why
I think this, William Howahkan,
Retired?
Here, I'll show you.” The major's hand carefully drew a string of dog tags on beaded ball chains and some religious trinkets on silver or gold chains out of his shirt pocket; several gold crucifixes, a sterling Star of David, aluminum dog tags: all nonmagnetic metals.

“A couple of my guys noticed an odd phenomenon during the routine search of your vehicles.”

The major held the different chains in one hand and dangled them beside the plastic bag, and Bhakti's extra earring. The chains leaped to adhere, as though sucked by a magnet. The major pulled them away. Then dangled them again.
Flap
—they stuck like glue.

“Here's the thing,” the major said slowly. “So far as I can tell these chains only do their ‘Dead Ear Earring Magnet Trick' around you four people: the CHiPs bitch, the Postal Mistress, Mahatma Gandhi, and
you.
When you four guys are in the room, or somewhere close, the magic works. When you're not, it doesn't. Why do you guys deserve to be immune? You wanna figure this out for me, Crazy Horse?” A rhetorical question.

“I don't know,” Billy muttered. “Sounds like we're two cans short of a six-pack. Maybe we need a white man to figure it out for us.” The officer wasn't amused.

The overhead light beat down on Billy's skull; he wished he could get out from under it, like crawling out of the blistering sun into the shade. He looked between his knees, wondering if the major would mind if he curled up on the nice cool grass. It had been a hell of a long day. If he could just lie down under the table for a while, he'd feel so much better. He noticed his boots were loose; kicked them off, then his socks. His feet sank into the cool damp grass. Oh, that was nice, so cool and nice.

Billy closed his eyes.…

When he opened them again, Granny Sparrow looked at him from her trailer bed, the covers pulled up around her chin. She stared at him with feverish eyes, sunk deep in her head. Was she sick? More scared than anything. She'd moved the American flag from the trailer wall to the back window, blocking the view outside. Granny's wizened face looked pancake-pale, almost like ghost dancer paint: white with black around her eyes. She glanced fearfully to the trailer door; all the bolts locked.

Billy didn't have to read Granny's mind to know how bad things were on the rez. Grandma Sparrow wouldn't lock herself in this way. No, she left her door open, not afraid of anybody. And nobody'd dare touch a hair on her head. My God, that
was
pancake makeup on her face. Ghost dancer paint. Granny rose halfway up on one elbow, and Billy saw something else, something new—she wore a ghost shirt.

Jesus, those
were
rare: supple white muslin cloth, V-neck, and hanging fringe. Two painted birds, hovering above her breasts; of course, sparrows. Protecting her. But from what?

Granny Sparrow spoke to him from the bed.

“I don't think you're going to get here on time, Billy. I don't think I'm going to make it. Bad weather. Everyone sick. Still want your wolf whistle? Where should I send it?” The thousand wrinkles of her face smiled at him. “Don't you ever believe the Walking Way is all just cells and DNA and science in a book. No sir, it's God's way of letting you have a hand in things. You mark my words.”

“You said I was going to like it,” Billy mumbled. “But it makes my head hurt.”