Periphery, p.18
Periphery, page 18
“What prompted you to dig this?” Andrew asked as he worked. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you did. But there’s no way you could have known I’d be able to score a box of high explosives. I didn’t know until the minute I walked out of the station with it.”
Little Billy handed him a second braid of Trenchrite, which Andrew attached to the first by squeezing the ends together.
“Hope, I guess. And not wanting to sit around waiting. Clock’s ticking.”
Once the explosives were in place, Andrew connected the blasting cap, synching one end around the detonation cord and the other to the control box’s looped ignition wire. He removed the plastic ties holding the loops together and began unspooling the wire, Katie and Little Billy following as he retreated its full length of forty yards.
Andrew would have preferred twice that, but kept his thoughts to himself. They hunkered behind one of the cemetery’s massive live oaks and Andrew held the controller up to Little Billy’s flashlight beam. It was nothing more than a plastic rectangle boasting an on-off switch, two indicator lights and a safety pin.
“So this is it?” Little Billy asked.
“Guess so.” Andrew hefted the controller a few times. “It’s light. Reminds me of the ignition boxes I used to launch model rockets with.”
“And I was picturing a big red thing with a handle,” Katie whispered. By some mutual and unspoken agreement, they had all begun speaking in lowered voices.
“Keep your heads down,” Andrew advised. He flipped the switch to “on” and frowned.
“Shouldn’t one of those lights have come on?” Little Billy asked, echoing Andrew’s own thought.
“Pretty sure.”
“It has batteries, right?” Katie asked.
Andrew’s shoulders dropped. The box’s heft had already answered the question. Turning it over, he thumbed open the battery door. “Of course not. Why would it?” He angled the empty compartment toward the light. “I don’t suppose anyone has two AAs?”
“I do. In the car.” She shook her head in mock dismay. “What would you boys do without me?”
“I could tell you were pissed when you opened the door,” Little Billy said as they wait for her return, “but she insisted on coming. And she’s not someone you can say no to. Not easily. Plus, she’s had a rough day. They buried her bother this afternoon.”
Andrew was finding it hard to reconcile the frightened girl at the mercy of a raving hostage taker with the confident, competent woman now saving their scheme from an unforeseen setback.
“Don’t worry about it.” He slapped him on the back. “We’re obviously incapable of pulling this off on our own. I wonder what she does for a living.”
“Teaches second grade at Egypt Lake Elementary. She’s on summer break.”
“Ah.”
After a moment, Little Billy cleared his throat. “Get any sleep this afternoon?”
“Plenty.”
Another pause. “It’s just that tonight we should all be as… focused… as possible.”
“Agreed.”
“Look, if you ever want to talk. Not that I’m a wealth of wisdom. I know a hell of a lot more about monsters than men. But I can lend an ear, if it helps.”
Andrew stared into the branches above them. “I’ve found that most people can’t see the big picture until they step far enough back from it. Maybe your unique perspective has given you some unique insights. I might take you up on your offer. When this is all over.”
Katie materialized out of the gloom, presenting the double-AAs with a flourish. “I return triumphant.”
Andrew installed the batteries and turned the box over. The red indicator light was aglow. He removed the safety pin and the green indicator lit.
“Maybe we should have the car running,” Andrew suggested, crouching down with the others. “To save time.”
“How much time does it take to turn a key?” Katie already had her fingers pressed to her ears. “I’m not going to miss this. But if you insist, I’m sure Will will be more than happy to keep the engine running.”
Little Billy snorted. “Fuck that shit. I’m not missing this either.”
Andrew nodded. “On three then.” Peeking around the edge of the tree, he had a clear line of sight to the xalantracoil, an obsidian claw blacker than the surrounding night, curving up from the bone dry earth.
“One.” Andrew’s thumb slid over the fire button.
“Two.” Little Billy followed Katie’s lead, plugging his ears with his fingers.
“Three.”
The detonation wasn’t as loud as he feared, more like the crack of an enormous whip than the deep-throated boom he had expected. The ground around the coil heaved upward in a brown plume that was immediately obscured behind a cloud of white smoke. A gust of hot air ruffled his hair, bringing with it the acrid smell of rapid combustion and the cries of birds startled from their roosts. Andrew reinserted the safety key and turned the controller off as a rain of leaves and Spanish moss fell around them.
“That was impressive,” Katie said. She stood and peered around the tree. “That thing’s history. Pieces of it are probably landing in people’s yards three blocks away.”
“I’m going to check.” A chorus of dogs was barking alarms throughout the neighborhood. A light flicked on in a second story window across the street, a porch light a few doors down. They would have to move quickly. “Wait here.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Katie said, matching him step-for-step as he edged into the smoke. Little Billy was at her side, his flashlight beam sweeping through the air in rapid arcs. There was something in Andrew’s hair. He ran a hand over his head and removed a clump of moss. A small lizard landed on the back of his neck and wiggled beneath his shirt collar. He scooped it out and tossed it away, imagining a dozen 911 calls reaching dispatch in the next few seconds. Which fire station would get the call? Fifteen? Or maybe sixteen. Go, go, go, he chanted under his breath; the clock is most definitely ticking. Still, Katie was probably right. The coil should be nothing but…
“Holy shit,” she said.
A puff of warm breeze had parted the smoke enough to reveal a crater ten feet across descending into darkness too deep for the flashlight’s beam to penetrate.
“What a hole.” She punched Andrew in the upper arm. “None too shabby, Master Blaster. I just hope no graves were… Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Through the dissipating smoke, a sweep of black stone appeared like the prow of a ship emerging from a fog bank. The crater exposed another fifteen feet of the xalanthracoil corkscrewing downward, widening in places to bulbous knuckles before narrowing once again. To Andrew, it resembled a petrified taproot burrowing toward whatever bedrock lay below the sandy topsoil.
“It was worth a shot.” Little Billy sighed after a moment. “Maybe it was pie-in-the-sky to think we could destroy something that’s survived millions of years.”
“It’s leaning more.”
“Katie…”
“I’m sure of it. Not by much, but we definitely loosened it.”
“We need to go.” When Andrew turned, Katie grabbed his arm.
“Go? We can’t go. We need to try again. Use everything that’s left.”
“No time.” Andrew thought he caught the faint warble of sirens over the clamor of barking dogs, maybe the rumble of a patio door sliding open. “You saw how long it took to set the first charge. We have to go. Now.”
“This might be our only chance.” Katie blocked his path, both hands pressed against his chest. The desperation in her face wasn’t quite as intense as it had been when Comanche had ordered her to reach out and take the water bottle, but it was close.
“Getting arrested will guarantee that. We go now, fall back to plan B.”
Katie’s hands curled to fists, twisting the fabric of his shirt, pulling him down until they were nose-to-nose. “My brother’s in a place just like this now. You want the same thing to happen to your family?”
Sirens. He was sure. Blocks away but approaching fast. Closing his own hands over hers, he squeezed until her fingers untwined from his shirt. “We're done for now.”
“Discretion is the better part of valor,” Little Billy added, approaching with outstretched arms, as if attempting to herd them both back.
Katie yanked her hands out of Andrew’s. “We quoting Shakespeare now? How about this one: 'et tu, Brute?' You two need to grow a pair and finish what we started.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” Little Billy shot back. “Andrew’s right, we can’t risk getting arrested. I’m leaving. He’s leaving. And if you still want to be a part of this, I suggest you snap out of it, get behind the wheel and drive us the hell out of here.”
Without another word, Katie spun and began trotting toward the exit.
“Grab your stuff. She might leave our asses behind.”
“Do we have a plan B?” Andrew asked, gathering up his paraphernalia.
“Convince the military to bring in a few tanks and blast the shit out of every single coil.”
“Brilliant.”
“In the meantime, I have a more immediate plan.”
“What’s that?”
“Run.”
Thirteen
Little Billy and Katie spent most of the next day working their way in a slow circle from one xalanthracoil to the next, trying to determine the best candidate for a second, bigger assault. The cemetery coil was no longer an option. It had been cordoned off with yellow police tape and flashing barricades. Little Billy wondered if the people who had erected the perimeter had experienced any odd sensations as they worked, a sense of disorientation maybe, or an unpleasant tingling across exposed skin, as if invisible insects were attempting to scuttle under collars and cuffs. And what about the hot glow pulsing from its fissured surface like methodically stoked coals? Had they noticed that? Christ, how could they not?
“Of course,” Katie slapped her forehead. “Tampa!”
Little Billy pulled his handkerchief from a pocket and mopped the back of his neck. They had surveyed six coils so far and rejected each as too exposed. The one they stood before now, rising from a triangular patch of landscaping in the center of a strip mall parking lot, wouldn’t do either. Security cameras kept surveillance from at least three locations. And there was a busy street not twenty yards away. He wondered what this xalanthracoil looked like to passersby. A birdbath? The base of a streetlight? Or nothing at all, erased from awareness not by a trick of mental manipulation but by the triviality of its location, just another dusty green island in an ocean of gray asphalt.
Little Billy was beginning to doubt they’d find another coil isolated enough to plant explosives around. He’d never scouted them all himself. That had been John’s department. Now he was relying on a map the senior Tate had given him shortly before his arrest.
“Hello? McFly?”
Little Billy turned. “Sorry. What was that?”
Katie’s mood had improved dramatically from the previous evening. Unwilling to spend another night in Andrew’s den of self-pity, he’d been prepared to curl up on a park bench, especially after their silent ride back to Andrew’s motel. As the other man exited Katie’s CRV, Little Billy, who was riding shotgun, opened his own door.
“Call tomorrow if you want,” he told her, one foot already on the pavement.
“Don’t be stupid,” she responded flatly, not taking her eyes from the front windshield. Little Billy met Andrew’s glance as he passed and they exchanged smiles, his sheepish, Andrew’s sympathetic. At her apartment, Katie banging through the front door without a backward glance, leaving it for Little Billy to close after slinking inside. And yet at breakfast, she had been pleasant and talkative, as if their relationship had reverted overnight to a prior emotional setting. He had no idea if she’d had a real change of heart, or if she was just playing mind games with him.
“Think, McFly. I just made a major discovery here.”
“Were you even born when that movie came out?”
“You sure like reminding me about my age.”
Little Billy refolded the map he’d been consulting and tucked it in his pack. “Do I?”
“Yes. It’s annoying. Knock it off. Anyway, my discovery.” She motioned him to lead on, having apparently rejected this xalanthracoil without need of his counsel.
“Your discovery.”
“I just figured out how Tampa got its name.”
“‘Sticks of fire,’ right? That’s what ‘Tampa’ means in the Seminole language. Or was it some earlier dialect? It’s been a while since middle school.” Little Billy pulled his water bottle from the pack, took a gulp, offered it to Katie.
“Who knows? Point is, everyone thinks ‘sticks of fire’ refers to either lightning or the guns of the Conquistadors.”
“Sounds right.” He pointed to the other side of the street and they crossed at the intersection. Their next target was three blocks north and two east. Hopefully, it was tucked away at the back of an overgrown lot and not smack in the middle of somebody’s front yard. The coil he had shown Andrew the other day in the litter-strewn ditch was far from ideal, but it was looking more and more like their next best candidate. At least it wasn’t visible from the highway.
“It’s not. That’s not what the Indians were referring to.”
“Native Americans.”
“Jesus, would you just listen? They weren’t referring to lightning bolts or guns. They were talking about the xalanthracoils!”
“Say what now?”
“Think about it. Sticks of fire. That perfectly describes what they look like when they’re firing up, big glowing sticks poking from the ground.” Katie stopped him with an arm across his chest. “Which means this isn’t the first time they’ve come to life. This convergence thing, whatever, must have happened before and somehow primitive natives found a way to stop the invasion! If they can do it, so can we.”
“First, we’ve got no proof ‘sticks of fire’ refers to the xalanthracoils.” Katie opened her mouth to protest and he hastened to add, “but let’s say it does. And let’s say the Native Americans could see through the illusion, saw them powering up. Just because they started to glow doesn’t mean a convergence was about to happen. Maybe the conditions weren't quite right. A near miss. There’s a shitload we don’t know. We’re talking about alternate universes and parallel realities and things that make wormholes seem ho-hum. I doubt they could have stopped a full-blown invasion with bows and arrows.”
They set off again. Little Billy had made his own discovery today. As they surveyed more and more coils, their power to repulse had become more and more obvious. Nothing had been built over or around them, no building or bridge, no cell tower or, as they had just observed, parking lot. In some cases, the spacing between utility poles changed dramatically in order to leapfrog them. Otherwise straight roads veered and veered again in avoidance. Walls notched around them. He doubted these adjustments, subtle or otherwise, had been conscious decisions, and in their discovery, he felt like an archeologist unearthing the underlining principle of the city’s design. The xalanthracoils were unmovable outcroppings around which centuries of development had flowed.
“So how do we know this isn’t another near miss,” Katie asked. “Maybe we’re getting all worked up for nothing.”
“If it wasn’t for the voices in my head, I’d say you had a point. Or if the voices were fading. But they’re not. They’re getting louder. Every day. Every hour. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Ever since touching that thing,” she said after a moment. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. But maybe they won’t be as loud tonight. Or an hour from now. Maybe this is as close as they’ll ever be. You never… What?”
They’d crossed into a neighborhood of modest cinderblock homes, chain link fences, canted mailboxes and doghouses whose residents were too heat-dazed to do more than pant at them. Rounding a hedge of dying bougainvillea, Little Billy had come to a sudden halt, his lips parting in bewilderment.
The xalanthracoil was in the corner of a backyard, nearly buried beneath a heap of deadfall. Something was swelling from its tip like a soap bubble. It grew until it was about three feet across, then detached and rose, undulating, into the air. It lasted only a second or two before imploding with a soft “whoosh,” but it was long enough for Little Billy to glimpse within its membranous surface a brown sky ablaze with hundreds of ancient red stars, a vast, hardpan plain stretching to black mountains and the spires of a distant city clawing at sulfurous clouds.
“What would the name of the city be if the natives had seen that?” he whispered.
“Loosely translated: ‘we’re fucked.’ ”
Andrew woke the following morning feeling better that he had any right to. The empties were gone from the kitchenette’s wastebasket, tossed into the motel’s outdoor bin. The refrigerator was cleaned out except for an ancient box of baking soda. His clothes were all freshly laundered and folded in his suitcases. Before leaving for work he dropped by the front office and checked out. He wasn’t sure where he would stay after his shift ended, but it wasn’t going to be in this damp armpit of a motel. That phase of his self-exile was over.
The booze was over too. How many times had he told himself that? Hundreds? In the car, rushing Anna to the hospital on that horrible day he had sworn off drinking so vehemently he had to fight the urge to pull over and bash his head repeatedly against a wall screaming ‘never again’ at the top of his lungs. But two weeks later ‘never again’ turned into ‘one last time,’ just to prove he was capable of stopping after a single longneck. A few days later he had another Heineken to verify his previous success hadn’t been a fluke. Before long he was reassuring himself three or four times a day.
This was different. He had nothing to base that on other than the profound clarity and sense of purpose he now felt in the aftermath of Little Billy’s text, although initially, the message had filled him with queasy dread: Need to sound the alarm. Will explain face-to-face. END IS NIGH.
Words worthy of a sandwich board.
Little Billy handed him a second braid of Trenchrite, which Andrew attached to the first by squeezing the ends together.
“Hope, I guess. And not wanting to sit around waiting. Clock’s ticking.”
Once the explosives were in place, Andrew connected the blasting cap, synching one end around the detonation cord and the other to the control box’s looped ignition wire. He removed the plastic ties holding the loops together and began unspooling the wire, Katie and Little Billy following as he retreated its full length of forty yards.
Andrew would have preferred twice that, but kept his thoughts to himself. They hunkered behind one of the cemetery’s massive live oaks and Andrew held the controller up to Little Billy’s flashlight beam. It was nothing more than a plastic rectangle boasting an on-off switch, two indicator lights and a safety pin.
“So this is it?” Little Billy asked.
“Guess so.” Andrew hefted the controller a few times. “It’s light. Reminds me of the ignition boxes I used to launch model rockets with.”
“And I was picturing a big red thing with a handle,” Katie whispered. By some mutual and unspoken agreement, they had all begun speaking in lowered voices.
“Keep your heads down,” Andrew advised. He flipped the switch to “on” and frowned.
“Shouldn’t one of those lights have come on?” Little Billy asked, echoing Andrew’s own thought.
“Pretty sure.”
“It has batteries, right?” Katie asked.
Andrew’s shoulders dropped. The box’s heft had already answered the question. Turning it over, he thumbed open the battery door. “Of course not. Why would it?” He angled the empty compartment toward the light. “I don’t suppose anyone has two AAs?”
“I do. In the car.” She shook her head in mock dismay. “What would you boys do without me?”
“I could tell you were pissed when you opened the door,” Little Billy said as they wait for her return, “but she insisted on coming. And she’s not someone you can say no to. Not easily. Plus, she’s had a rough day. They buried her bother this afternoon.”
Andrew was finding it hard to reconcile the frightened girl at the mercy of a raving hostage taker with the confident, competent woman now saving their scheme from an unforeseen setback.
“Don’t worry about it.” He slapped him on the back. “We’re obviously incapable of pulling this off on our own. I wonder what she does for a living.”
“Teaches second grade at Egypt Lake Elementary. She’s on summer break.”
“Ah.”
After a moment, Little Billy cleared his throat. “Get any sleep this afternoon?”
“Plenty.”
Another pause. “It’s just that tonight we should all be as… focused… as possible.”
“Agreed.”
“Look, if you ever want to talk. Not that I’m a wealth of wisdom. I know a hell of a lot more about monsters than men. But I can lend an ear, if it helps.”
Andrew stared into the branches above them. “I’ve found that most people can’t see the big picture until they step far enough back from it. Maybe your unique perspective has given you some unique insights. I might take you up on your offer. When this is all over.”
Katie materialized out of the gloom, presenting the double-AAs with a flourish. “I return triumphant.”
Andrew installed the batteries and turned the box over. The red indicator light was aglow. He removed the safety pin and the green indicator lit.
“Maybe we should have the car running,” Andrew suggested, crouching down with the others. “To save time.”
“How much time does it take to turn a key?” Katie already had her fingers pressed to her ears. “I’m not going to miss this. But if you insist, I’m sure Will will be more than happy to keep the engine running.”
Little Billy snorted. “Fuck that shit. I’m not missing this either.”
Andrew nodded. “On three then.” Peeking around the edge of the tree, he had a clear line of sight to the xalantracoil, an obsidian claw blacker than the surrounding night, curving up from the bone dry earth.
“One.” Andrew’s thumb slid over the fire button.
“Two.” Little Billy followed Katie’s lead, plugging his ears with his fingers.
“Three.”
The detonation wasn’t as loud as he feared, more like the crack of an enormous whip than the deep-throated boom he had expected. The ground around the coil heaved upward in a brown plume that was immediately obscured behind a cloud of white smoke. A gust of hot air ruffled his hair, bringing with it the acrid smell of rapid combustion and the cries of birds startled from their roosts. Andrew reinserted the safety key and turned the controller off as a rain of leaves and Spanish moss fell around them.
“That was impressive,” Katie said. She stood and peered around the tree. “That thing’s history. Pieces of it are probably landing in people’s yards three blocks away.”
“I’m going to check.” A chorus of dogs was barking alarms throughout the neighborhood. A light flicked on in a second story window across the street, a porch light a few doors down. They would have to move quickly. “Wait here.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Katie said, matching him step-for-step as he edged into the smoke. Little Billy was at her side, his flashlight beam sweeping through the air in rapid arcs. There was something in Andrew’s hair. He ran a hand over his head and removed a clump of moss. A small lizard landed on the back of his neck and wiggled beneath his shirt collar. He scooped it out and tossed it away, imagining a dozen 911 calls reaching dispatch in the next few seconds. Which fire station would get the call? Fifteen? Or maybe sixteen. Go, go, go, he chanted under his breath; the clock is most definitely ticking. Still, Katie was probably right. The coil should be nothing but…
“Holy shit,” she said.
A puff of warm breeze had parted the smoke enough to reveal a crater ten feet across descending into darkness too deep for the flashlight’s beam to penetrate.
“What a hole.” She punched Andrew in the upper arm. “None too shabby, Master Blaster. I just hope no graves were… Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Through the dissipating smoke, a sweep of black stone appeared like the prow of a ship emerging from a fog bank. The crater exposed another fifteen feet of the xalanthracoil corkscrewing downward, widening in places to bulbous knuckles before narrowing once again. To Andrew, it resembled a petrified taproot burrowing toward whatever bedrock lay below the sandy topsoil.
“It was worth a shot.” Little Billy sighed after a moment. “Maybe it was pie-in-the-sky to think we could destroy something that’s survived millions of years.”
“It’s leaning more.”
“Katie…”
“I’m sure of it. Not by much, but we definitely loosened it.”
“We need to go.” When Andrew turned, Katie grabbed his arm.
“Go? We can’t go. We need to try again. Use everything that’s left.”
“No time.” Andrew thought he caught the faint warble of sirens over the clamor of barking dogs, maybe the rumble of a patio door sliding open. “You saw how long it took to set the first charge. We have to go. Now.”
“This might be our only chance.” Katie blocked his path, both hands pressed against his chest. The desperation in her face wasn’t quite as intense as it had been when Comanche had ordered her to reach out and take the water bottle, but it was close.
“Getting arrested will guarantee that. We go now, fall back to plan B.”
Katie’s hands curled to fists, twisting the fabric of his shirt, pulling him down until they were nose-to-nose. “My brother’s in a place just like this now. You want the same thing to happen to your family?”
Sirens. He was sure. Blocks away but approaching fast. Closing his own hands over hers, he squeezed until her fingers untwined from his shirt. “We're done for now.”
“Discretion is the better part of valor,” Little Billy added, approaching with outstretched arms, as if attempting to herd them both back.
Katie yanked her hands out of Andrew’s. “We quoting Shakespeare now? How about this one: 'et tu, Brute?' You two need to grow a pair and finish what we started.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” Little Billy shot back. “Andrew’s right, we can’t risk getting arrested. I’m leaving. He’s leaving. And if you still want to be a part of this, I suggest you snap out of it, get behind the wheel and drive us the hell out of here.”
Without another word, Katie spun and began trotting toward the exit.
“Grab your stuff. She might leave our asses behind.”
“Do we have a plan B?” Andrew asked, gathering up his paraphernalia.
“Convince the military to bring in a few tanks and blast the shit out of every single coil.”
“Brilliant.”
“In the meantime, I have a more immediate plan.”
“What’s that?”
“Run.”
Thirteen
Little Billy and Katie spent most of the next day working their way in a slow circle from one xalanthracoil to the next, trying to determine the best candidate for a second, bigger assault. The cemetery coil was no longer an option. It had been cordoned off with yellow police tape and flashing barricades. Little Billy wondered if the people who had erected the perimeter had experienced any odd sensations as they worked, a sense of disorientation maybe, or an unpleasant tingling across exposed skin, as if invisible insects were attempting to scuttle under collars and cuffs. And what about the hot glow pulsing from its fissured surface like methodically stoked coals? Had they noticed that? Christ, how could they not?
“Of course,” Katie slapped her forehead. “Tampa!”
Little Billy pulled his handkerchief from a pocket and mopped the back of his neck. They had surveyed six coils so far and rejected each as too exposed. The one they stood before now, rising from a triangular patch of landscaping in the center of a strip mall parking lot, wouldn’t do either. Security cameras kept surveillance from at least three locations. And there was a busy street not twenty yards away. He wondered what this xalanthracoil looked like to passersby. A birdbath? The base of a streetlight? Or nothing at all, erased from awareness not by a trick of mental manipulation but by the triviality of its location, just another dusty green island in an ocean of gray asphalt.
Little Billy was beginning to doubt they’d find another coil isolated enough to plant explosives around. He’d never scouted them all himself. That had been John’s department. Now he was relying on a map the senior Tate had given him shortly before his arrest.
“Hello? McFly?”
Little Billy turned. “Sorry. What was that?”
Katie’s mood had improved dramatically from the previous evening. Unwilling to spend another night in Andrew’s den of self-pity, he’d been prepared to curl up on a park bench, especially after their silent ride back to Andrew’s motel. As the other man exited Katie’s CRV, Little Billy, who was riding shotgun, opened his own door.
“Call tomorrow if you want,” he told her, one foot already on the pavement.
“Don’t be stupid,” she responded flatly, not taking her eyes from the front windshield. Little Billy met Andrew’s glance as he passed and they exchanged smiles, his sheepish, Andrew’s sympathetic. At her apartment, Katie banging through the front door without a backward glance, leaving it for Little Billy to close after slinking inside. And yet at breakfast, she had been pleasant and talkative, as if their relationship had reverted overnight to a prior emotional setting. He had no idea if she’d had a real change of heart, or if she was just playing mind games with him.
“Think, McFly. I just made a major discovery here.”
“Were you even born when that movie came out?”
“You sure like reminding me about my age.”
Little Billy refolded the map he’d been consulting and tucked it in his pack. “Do I?”
“Yes. It’s annoying. Knock it off. Anyway, my discovery.” She motioned him to lead on, having apparently rejected this xalanthracoil without need of his counsel.
“Your discovery.”
“I just figured out how Tampa got its name.”
“‘Sticks of fire,’ right? That’s what ‘Tampa’ means in the Seminole language. Or was it some earlier dialect? It’s been a while since middle school.” Little Billy pulled his water bottle from the pack, took a gulp, offered it to Katie.
“Who knows? Point is, everyone thinks ‘sticks of fire’ refers to either lightning or the guns of the Conquistadors.”
“Sounds right.” He pointed to the other side of the street and they crossed at the intersection. Their next target was three blocks north and two east. Hopefully, it was tucked away at the back of an overgrown lot and not smack in the middle of somebody’s front yard. The coil he had shown Andrew the other day in the litter-strewn ditch was far from ideal, but it was looking more and more like their next best candidate. At least it wasn’t visible from the highway.
“It’s not. That’s not what the Indians were referring to.”
“Native Americans.”
“Jesus, would you just listen? They weren’t referring to lightning bolts or guns. They were talking about the xalanthracoils!”
“Say what now?”
“Think about it. Sticks of fire. That perfectly describes what they look like when they’re firing up, big glowing sticks poking from the ground.” Katie stopped him with an arm across his chest. “Which means this isn’t the first time they’ve come to life. This convergence thing, whatever, must have happened before and somehow primitive natives found a way to stop the invasion! If they can do it, so can we.”
“First, we’ve got no proof ‘sticks of fire’ refers to the xalanthracoils.” Katie opened her mouth to protest and he hastened to add, “but let’s say it does. And let’s say the Native Americans could see through the illusion, saw them powering up. Just because they started to glow doesn’t mean a convergence was about to happen. Maybe the conditions weren't quite right. A near miss. There’s a shitload we don’t know. We’re talking about alternate universes and parallel realities and things that make wormholes seem ho-hum. I doubt they could have stopped a full-blown invasion with bows and arrows.”
They set off again. Little Billy had made his own discovery today. As they surveyed more and more coils, their power to repulse had become more and more obvious. Nothing had been built over or around them, no building or bridge, no cell tower or, as they had just observed, parking lot. In some cases, the spacing between utility poles changed dramatically in order to leapfrog them. Otherwise straight roads veered and veered again in avoidance. Walls notched around them. He doubted these adjustments, subtle or otherwise, had been conscious decisions, and in their discovery, he felt like an archeologist unearthing the underlining principle of the city’s design. The xalanthracoils were unmovable outcroppings around which centuries of development had flowed.
“So how do we know this isn’t another near miss,” Katie asked. “Maybe we’re getting all worked up for nothing.”
“If it wasn’t for the voices in my head, I’d say you had a point. Or if the voices were fading. But they’re not. They’re getting louder. Every day. Every hour. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Ever since touching that thing,” she said after a moment. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. But maybe they won’t be as loud tonight. Or an hour from now. Maybe this is as close as they’ll ever be. You never… What?”
They’d crossed into a neighborhood of modest cinderblock homes, chain link fences, canted mailboxes and doghouses whose residents were too heat-dazed to do more than pant at them. Rounding a hedge of dying bougainvillea, Little Billy had come to a sudden halt, his lips parting in bewilderment.
The xalanthracoil was in the corner of a backyard, nearly buried beneath a heap of deadfall. Something was swelling from its tip like a soap bubble. It grew until it was about three feet across, then detached and rose, undulating, into the air. It lasted only a second or two before imploding with a soft “whoosh,” but it was long enough for Little Billy to glimpse within its membranous surface a brown sky ablaze with hundreds of ancient red stars, a vast, hardpan plain stretching to black mountains and the spires of a distant city clawing at sulfurous clouds.
“What would the name of the city be if the natives had seen that?” he whispered.
“Loosely translated: ‘we’re fucked.’ ”
Andrew woke the following morning feeling better that he had any right to. The empties were gone from the kitchenette’s wastebasket, tossed into the motel’s outdoor bin. The refrigerator was cleaned out except for an ancient box of baking soda. His clothes were all freshly laundered and folded in his suitcases. Before leaving for work he dropped by the front office and checked out. He wasn’t sure where he would stay after his shift ended, but it wasn’t going to be in this damp armpit of a motel. That phase of his self-exile was over.
The booze was over too. How many times had he told himself that? Hundreds? In the car, rushing Anna to the hospital on that horrible day he had sworn off drinking so vehemently he had to fight the urge to pull over and bash his head repeatedly against a wall screaming ‘never again’ at the top of his lungs. But two weeks later ‘never again’ turned into ‘one last time,’ just to prove he was capable of stopping after a single longneck. A few days later he had another Heineken to verify his previous success hadn’t been a fluke. Before long he was reassuring himself three or four times a day.
This was different. He had nothing to base that on other than the profound clarity and sense of purpose he now felt in the aftermath of Little Billy’s text, although initially, the message had filled him with queasy dread: Need to sound the alarm. Will explain face-to-face. END IS NIGH.
Words worthy of a sandwich board.
