Fiends (31 page)

43

"Marjory?" Duane said. He said it again. Then he shook her.

"Go 'way," she murmured.

"Marjory, don't do that. Don't go to sleep."

"Tired."

"You can't go to sleep. It's because you're so cold. If you do, you'll die."

"Leave me alone."

"No," Duane said, as peevish as she was, and nearly as numb. He breathed in her ear. No response.

They had pulled themselves from the water onto a shelf of rock that was barely wide enough for the two of them lumped together like seals. Water dribbled down from somewhere but Duane scarcely felt it any more. Once he had stopped swimming lassitude set in. It was an effort to keep his eyes open, particularly with nothing to see. Utter, final blackness everywhere. Marjory so cold to the touch, and seldom moving. Barely responding when he pinched her arms, her thighs. He had another idea. He felt for a breast inside the soggy clinging shirt. Fingered a nipple and twisted it, cruelly.

"Stop!"

"Did that hurt?"

"Yes." She tried to push away from him.

"Don't. You'll go back in the water. I won't find you."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm making a fire," he said desperately, alternately rubbing and licking her nipples. Right, left. Breathing on them. No amount of agitation made them stand up.

"Stop that, Duane," she complained.

"What are you going to do about it?" Duane panted. "Get hot, Marjory. Get hot." He felt no lechery himself, no stirring of interest. If he couldn't get himself up, what was the use?

"Quit," Marjory said. "Couldn't if I. Wanted to. And I. Just don't want to. I'm going to sleep."

"No, you're not." Duane stopped belaboring her nipples, raised up, tried to fill his lungs. He screamed.

"Matter now? Get off."

Duane screamed again, and almost immediately he heard what he thought might be a gunshot.

"Marjory!"

"I'm so
tired."

"Didn't you hear that?" He looked around, wiped a drip of water from his face. And saw something, a wan pink glow. Almost directly overhead. He closed his eyes, shuddering, looked again. It was still there, faintly, like firelight reflected from low clouds.

"Marjory!"

"Uhh."

"I see something! I think somebody's . . . looking for us." He took a full, deep breath, and screamed "WE'RE DOWN HERE!" As befuddled as he was, he knew that might not mean anything. "Marjory!" He shook her, and she didn't respond. Terror gave him needed strength. "I SEE YOUR LIGHT!" Duane screamed it again, then fell, exhausted and sobbing, on top of Marjory, who did not move at all.

Seconds later, he heard two more gunshots, in quick succession.

He didn't know what that meant, or if it meant anything. And he was too far gone to raise his head again, to see if the angelic glow was still hovering somewhere above his head.

44

While Wayne Buck Vedders kept watch, Ted attacked, with the pickax they had brought, the wall of the passage that was thickly studded with quartz crystal. He kept the bill of his cap pulled low to afford some protection from flying shards and splinters of the glasslike rock, but his hands and jawline soon leaked blood from several nicks and cuts. When he paused to rest his aching shoulders and arms, he called Marjory and Duane. There was no answer.

"Man, that vein of quartz could be a quarter mile thick," Vedders said.

"No. You heard. 'I see your light.' They must have meant the flare. If light got through—fuck it—I'll get through." Ted kneaded his fingers and resumed with the pickax, driving the bit with savage grunts of effort into a seam he had opened.

Without warning a small section of the wall flew apart, a draft of cool air streamed through a hole the size of a watermelon.

Ted dropped the pickax, the handle of which was slick with his blood, and scrambled atop a small pile of rubble to peer into darkness. He heard the splashing of a waterfall.

"Give me a flashlight!"

He turned and seized the light Vedders handed up to him and thrust it through the opening.

"Duane!
Marjory—
it's Ted! Where are you?"

The beam of the light played off a ghostly acre of stalactites, sonic hanging in blue tapering bundles, like collections of knuckly pickled fingers, others as delicate as crystalline needles that looked as if they would shatter at a touch. His light dipped almost vertically to the glossy black surface of a rippled pool. There were stalagmite formations in the water, some neatly pyramidal and very much like the remnants of cypress trees in a swamp, others barely above the surface and resembling the worn, gnarled heads of trolls—the shocking, naked head of Big 'un, who crept on walls and grinned mischievously and survived gunshot wounds at close range. Ted coughed out something thick and bitter that had lingered in his throat. He located the waterfall that was making the noise, and other, lesser drips. But the powerful flashlight beam could not reach all the way around the cavern. With his other hand he pitched a chunk of quartz, and counted: three seconds to splashdown, a faint echoing splash. It was a long way to the pool from where he was. The size, the depth of the cavern intimidated him. And still he didn't know where the kids were.

"I see your light."

The voice so feeble he couldn't tell who had spoken.

"Who's that?" he called into the cavern.

". . . Duane."

"Duane, this's Ted! Ted Lufford! Are you okay, you hurt, what's going on?"

"Cold."

"Marjory? Where's—”

"Here with me. She's . . . Marjory, Marjory, wake up."

"What's the matter?"

"Too cold. Breathing. But . . . needs a doctor."

"Listen, Duane. I'm coming down."

Ted scrambled back from the hole in the wall and reached for the pickax. "You have to go back," he told Vedders. "Round up all the help you can find. Get a doc and an ambulance out here. Leave me the rope and some flares and—let me have your jacket, okay?"

"Yeh, okay, no problem. I'll be back in twenty minutes."

"Try to make it quicker."

"Unless I run into the Big 'un. Next time I'll just keep shooting until he's in so many pieces he can't find all of himself. How do you plan on getting down there?"

Ted turned and began attacking the wall again. "Rope's a hundred foot. It'll have to do."

"Take care. I'll be back."

"You, too," Ted said, smashing another large chunk of quartz out of the widening hole in the wall.

45

In the robing chamber Theron looked at the remains of Puff near the slab of rock that Duane had ridden over her and said, "She was one of us. Where did she come from?"

"The boy turned her," Birka said. "There was one other, he claims."

Theron frowned. To Birka he still seemed disturbingly insensible, disoriented; he'd had a painful awakening.

"Where is the boy now?"

"I don't know," Birka said. "He may have surprised our visitors. Yes, he would be quite a surprise to them. With luck he might turn them. It doesn't matter. He'll find us. Can you climb?"

Theron looked at the robes made from human skin, patiently chewed to near transparency and woven together with strands of silk, that hung a safe distance above the cavern floor. There were so many luminous moths in the cavern it was difficult to distinguish them from the robes.

"I can climb," he said. Without another word he began creeping up a near vertical wall, and Birka followed him. The moths were rioting, delirious. Soon they would have important company, the nightflying
huldufólk.

"We have to consider leaving here right away," Birka said. "It may still be night out there."

"What if it isn't?"

"Then when the resurrection is finished we'll go deeper into the caves and complete our cycle there."

"You know we don't have enough robes for everyone. That's the reason your husband caught up to us. It's always been a struggle, Birka. We have never been safe." Birka was lagging behind. Theron paused, hanging on grimly to the rock. "What's wrong?"

Marjory. She's alive, but weak. Weaker than you are.

Then she'll die.

"No. I don't want her to die. If I can get to her, I can turn her first."

"What difference . . . does one more human make?"

"I feel . . . motherly. Isn't that odd?"

"Yes."

"Theron?"

"What now?"

"I liked being outside."

"We all do. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as we can go to earth for our cycle."

"I want nice clothes again. I'm tired of my own skin already. 1 want to hear music and go dancing. What's the good of living forever, if we can't dance? He didn't take that away from us, did He?"

"No. He only took away the sun."

"And air. Air is no good to us, except it's hard to learn to speak without breathing. He took away hunger, and sex. But those aren't good things. They were good enough, when you could do something about them. Flying is better. And music. I would rather not have the sun than not have music. Oh, Mozart! If only one of us had turned him, he would still be composing that glorious music."

"No he wouldn't. It's one of the rules of our state. We can create our robes, which are necessary to sustain our existence. But everything else we borrow from humans. Their language, all of their art. We can never have a culture of our own. Or a permanent home. Let's get on with it."

"Theron? It's good to be us, isn't it?"

"Yes. But then I don't know any other way to be."

"Theron?"

"Why
do you keep rattling on?"

"Because I haven't seen you or talked to you since— Theron, did you see Him? On the East of Eden?"

"No. I wanted to look out, from where we were hidden. But I was afraid to. I only heard His voice."

"What did He sound like? Like heavenly thunder? Like mountains cracking open?"

"Like a schoolmaster with a boil on his ass."

"Theron! He did not. Well. At least you have your sense of humor back."

"Then why am I not laughing?" He paused again, thirty feet above the cavern floor, reached out and plucked a robe, saffron and gold and sizzling pink. "This one suits you," he said, and graciously passed it down to Birka.

"Thank you."

"And this will do for me."

"Yes, I think so. I like you best in blue." Birka shrieked, plunging toward the cavern floor, then swooped and turned over on her back with the colorful robe fluttering translucently around her. She floated there, kicking up her heels like a child, smiling up at Theron as he slipped into his own robe and came down more gracefully, trailing giant glowing moths in an imperial, fluttering train. For a few moments they lay side by side in air, luxuriating, the tissue-thin robes crafted from human skin swelling and receding over their marble-white bodies like iridescent waves of the sea.

"He gave," Birka said at last, "more than He took away."

"Sometimes," Theron murmured, "I think so, too. Even though I should know better by now. Humans are quite inventive, when it comes to new horrors to plague us."

46

Duane, looking up at the flare, like a smoky sunrise, in the cavern wall, saw Ted work his way through the hole which he'd cut and dangle on the rope wrapped once around his waist until his feet were braced. Then he rappeled efficiently down to a narrow ledge that was like a rim of unbaked piecrust a few feet above the ledge where Duane and Marjory were marooned: Marjory on her side and with her eyes closed, Duane straddling her.

Ted tested the piecrust ledge to see if it was going to hold him, then popped another flare.

"You all right?"

"Weak," Duane said, all but blinded by the abundance of light after hours in near darkness.

"Marjory?"

"I can't . . . wake her up," Duane said, and began to sob.

"Just take it easy, Duane, we'll get you out of here."

Duane, squinting up at the heights from which Ted had descended, shook his head hopelessly. "How?"

"More help on the way." Ted peered down at the lower ledge; Marjory took up most of it. There wasn't room for the three of them. He pitched the remainder of the rope down.

"Come on up here with me. Pass that rope under one arm and then around your waist and through your crotch."

"I did some rope climbing in gym," Duane said. "But—"

"You'll make it. Just hang on, I'll pull. How much do you weigh?"

"One eighty-six."

"Give me some help then, bubba."

Duane looked at Marjory; his glasses were badly smeared with calcium carbonate and her features were indistinct, but her pallor was frightening in contrast to the black water inches below. Duane took two deep breaths, then grasped the hairy rope with both hands and started to climb, as Ted leaned back and hauled. Part of the frangible rim of the ledge crumbled, bits of rock falling on Duane's lowered head.

Ted let go of the rope he had belayed and reached for Duane's wrists, then his elbows. Duane wormed over the edge and lay exhausted, si ill crying, at Ted's feet.

"Reckon you don't want to try the rest of it yet."

"No . . . sir. I can't."

"Okay, rest here. I'm going down to Marjory."

He was there in a jump, and felt the clamminess of her skin. "Duane! Did she drown?"

"No, sir. She's . . . just cold, that's all. Too cold."

Ted sat her up and worked frantically to tear the sodden half-buttoned shirt off. "Marjory? Marjory!" She made a sound, a protest of some kind, but her eyes didn't open. He rubbed the palm of one hand between her breasts, trying to stimulate the heart. He took Wayne Buck Vedders's jacket from the knapsack and dressed Marjory in it, still talking to her. He tilted her head back and pumped his breath into her lungs. There was a pulse in her throat, extremely faint.

He was frantic about Marjory and unaware of the gradual lightening in the cavern, the approach of the luna moths and the two creatures in their midst: huge, smooth, gliding quieter than a whisper across the dimpled jet-black pool.

Marjory.

Marjory gave a start in Ted's arms, a little flutter kick that almost rolled her away from him and into the pool. Gasping, he raised his head and looked into a pair of eyes so blue they were near to colorless, so cold they could not be human.

"There's nothing you can do," Birka said. "Let me take her. It's what she wants. If you could ask her, she would tell you. Marjory wants to be with me."