Stinger

Stinger Page 25

"Lord have mercy!" Dodge Creech peered out a cracked window at the pyramid. He was still wearing his yellow-and-blue-plaid sport coat, his red lick of hair damp with sweat and glued to his sparkling scalp. "Ginger, I'm tellin' you: if that thing had come down two hundred yards more north, we'd be laying in our graves right now. How in hell am I gonna explain this to Mr. Brasswelli" Ginger Creech thought about it. She was sitting in a rocking chair across the pine-paneled living room, wearing her plain blue robe, her feet in Dearfoam slippers and pink curlers in her graying hair. Her brow furrowed. "act of God," she decided. "That's what you'll tell him." "act of God," he repeated, trying it out. "No, he won't buy that! anyway, if it was a meteor or somethin' that fell without a mind to it, then it would be an act of God. If it's somethin' that's got a mind, you can't call it an act of God." Harv Brasswell was Creech's supervisor, based in Dallas, and he had a powerfully tight fist when it came to damage claims.

"You sayin' God doesn't have a mindi" she inquired, her rocking coming to a halt.

"No, 'course not! It's just that an act of God has to be like a storm, or a drought, or somethin' only God could cause." That still sounded lame, and he didn't want to stir Ginger up; she was a PTL, ernest angsley, Kenneth Copeland, and Jimmy Swaggart fanatic. "I don't think God had anythin' to do with this." The squeaking of her chair continued. The room was illuminated by three oil-burning lanterns that had been hung from the wagon-wheel light fixture at the ceiling. a couple of candles burned atop the television set. Bookshelves were packed with Reader's Digest Condensed Books, stacks of National Geographics, insurance law and motivational salesmanship books, as well as Ginger's collection of religious tomes.

"I'll bet that thing threw every house in town off its foundations," Dodge fretted. "I swear, ninety percent of the windows must be broken. Streets all cracked too. I never believed in spaceships before, but by God if that's not one, I don't know what is!" "I don't want to think about it," Ginger said, rocking harder. "No such thing as spaceships." "Well, it sure ain't the Big Rock Candy Mountain out there! Lord, what a mess!" He rubbed the cool glass of iced tea he was holding across his forehead. The refrigerator had quit along with the power, of course, but the freezer unit still held a few trays of cubes. In this heat, though, they weren't going to last very long. "That Colonel Rhodes is havin' a meetin' with the sheriff and Mayor Brett. Didn't ask me, though. Guess I'm not important enough, huhi I can sell everybody in town their insurance and wait on 'em hand and foot, but I'm not important enough. There's thanks for you!" "The meek shall inherit the earth," Ginger said, and he frowned because he didn't know what she was talking about and he didn't think she knew, either.

"I'm not meek!" he told her. She just kept rocking. He heard the deep, rhythmic tolling of the bell at the Sacrifice of Christ Catholic Church across the river, calling the parishioners. "Sounds like LaPrado's openin' up for business. Guess Reverend Jennings will too. It's gonna take more than church bells to keep folks - " There was another sound, one that stopped him midsentence.

It was a sharp, cracking noise: bricks being wrenched apart.

Under my feet, Dodge Creech thought. Sounds like the basement floor's rippin' to -  "What's that noisei" Ginger cried out, standing up. The rocking chair creaked on without her.

The wooden floor trembled.

Dodge looked at his wife. Her eyes were glassy and wide, her mouth open in a straining O. above their heads the wagon-wheel fixture shook, the oil lamps beginning to swing.

Dodge said, "I... think we're havin' an earthqu - " The floor heaved upward, as if something huge had battered it from below. Nails leapt loose, glittering in the lamplight. Ginger staggered backward and fell, shrieking as Dodge toppled to his knees.

She saw the floor split open underneath him with a scream of tortured wood, and her husband's body dropped into the seam up to his neck. Dust billowed around him and filled the room, but she could still see his face: chalky pale, eyes holes of shock. He was looking at her as she crawled away from the collapsing floor on her back.

"Somethin's got me," he said, and his voice was a thin, awful whine. "Help me, Ginger. Please..." He lifted his hand out of the hole for her, and what looked like gray snot was drooling from his fingers.

Ginger wailed, curlers dangling from her hair.

and then Dodge was gone, down the hole in the living-room floor. The house shook again, the walls moaning as if in pain at giving up their master. Plaster dust welled through cracks in the pinewood like ghost breath - and then there was silence but for the creakings of the rocking chair and the wagon-wheel fixture. One of the lamps had fallen and lay unbroken on the round red throw rug.

Ginger Creech whispered, "Dodgei" She was shaking, tears running down her face and her bladder about to pop. Shouted it: "Dodge!" There was no answer, just the chuckling of water down below, running from a broken pipe. The water soon ran out, and the chuckling ceased.

Ginger pushed herself toward the hole, her muscles sluggish as cold rubber bands. She had to look down it - did not want to, must not, should not - but she had to, because it had taken her husband. She reached the jagged edge and her stomach threatened eruption, so she had to squeeze her eyes shut and ride it out. The sickness passed, and she looked over into the hole.

Just dark.

She reached out for the oil lamp and turned up the wick. The flame guttered and rose to a knifelike orange point. She thrust the lamp down into the hole, her other hand gripping the splintered edge with white-knuckled fingers.

Yellow dust sifted and stirred in small, cyclonic whorls. She was peering down into the basement eight feet below; and in the basement floor was another hole that looked - yes, she thought, oh Jesus son of God Holy Christ yes - gnawed through the concrete bricks. Beneath the basement floor lay more darkness.

"Dodgei" she whispered, and it echoed Dodgei Dodgei Dodgei Her fingers spasmed; she lost the oil lamp, and it fell through the hole in the basement floor, kept falling, maybe ten or twenty more feet, finally shattered against red Texas dirt and the flames gouted as the rest of the oil caught. Down in that hole, Ginger could see the glimmering of ooze where something had dragged her husband to hell.

Her senses left her altogether, and she lay trembling on the warped floor, her body drawn up in a tight fetal position. She decided to recite the Twenty-third Psalm seven times, because seven seemed like a holy number and if she recited loud enough and wished hard enough she would lift her head and see Dodge sitting in his easychair across the room, reading one of his motivational salesmanship books, and the TV set would be tuned to PTL and the thing that could not possibly be a spaceship would be gone. She began to recite, but she almost gagged with terror; she'd forgotten the words.

a church bell was ringing.

It must be Sunday, she thought. Sunday morning, bright and new. She sat up, listening to the bell. What was that violet glow coming through the windowi Where was Dodge, and why was that hole -  She had always loved the sound of a church bell, summoning her to worship. It was time to go now, and Dodge could come along later. and if he wore that red suit today, she'd skin him, just skin him alive. She stood up, her eyes empty and tear tracks glistening through the dust on her face. She left the house, walked out of her Dearfoams, and kept going barefoot along Brazos Street.