“We’ll let you pass from this point right here into the pit of hell, you swine. We know who you are. Meddling in matters that don’t concern you, infecting communities wherever you go!”
Drucker and Soames now both pulled cudgels from beneath their dust coats. Lloyd grew truly frightened. It made no difference that he was not a Quist-he was in their company, this was his fight, too. And they were faced with overwhelming odds, from the lanky sneering coward in the beekeeper’s hat to the giant in the rear with the long hayfork. For a moment, Lloyd considered making a run for it. Just leave the Quist men to their fate and flee back to the Clutters’. With any luck, he would not be pursued. Hopefully, no one would see through which door he vanished. He would make it hard for any of these villains to recognize him again. By morning the horror would be over-one way or another. But his blood boiled at the thought of what that might mean. Somehow they had to get word to the others. They had to warn the Quists of the impending assault. He could not be party to any more loss of life if he could help it.
“I’ll tell you what,” the beekeeper mused. “I see you have a boy with you. No doubt you don’t want him hurt. What say you give us McGitney-take us to the others and we’ll let you go. I swear on the real Bible. You will go free.”
Drucker spat in the mud. “You’ll need a lot more than this ragtag posse a yourn.”
“Oh, we have more coming,” the vigilante leader replied. “Rest assured. Give up the others and you can save yourselves-and the boy.”
“No!” Lloyd cried, and pushed forward holding the Ambassadors’ box before him like a charm, his other hand still plunged inside his pocket, grasping the artificial eye. These men confronting them now were not Vardogers or Spirosians. They were just brutal, and perhaps as stupid as they looked.
The sight of the box with the luminous engravings startled them, but not as much as Lloyd had hoped, even when the etched symbols seemed to project out across their bodies and covered faces. Deftly, he spun the box around, making the figures whirl about like subtle, intelligent fire. The torch that one of the hooded men held seemed so primitive and clumsy by comparison.
“Eh, what’s this now? Some trick?” one of the sack-hooded men growled.
“Keep back!” Drucker yelled, hoisting his cudgel.
“We’ll take that bauble,” the beekeeper drawled. “Then you’ll take us to the others. They’re not far from here, we know. You can’t save them, but you can save yourselves. There’s tar and feathers and a nice oak tree on the edge of town otherwise. Or maybe we’ll burn ’em out!”
The gang cheered at this, and Lloyd thought the noise might draw some assistance. Then he realized that it was quite possible that these men were not mere outlaws and oafs but prominent local residents, ashamed or afraid in some way, yes, otherwise they would not be hiding their faces, but nevertheless doing the dirty work of the community by some after-midnight agreement.
Shades of Zanesville. Mob scenes from across America. The stories St. Ives and Hattie had told him of lynchings and castrations. The oppression he himself had felt too many times before. Scenes of every intimidation and assault he had ever endured flashed through his mind, swelling the impotent rage within him as he gripped the false eye of Mother Tongue ever tighter. He felt it burning now, so hot had his hand become-surely that was it. But why did it seem to throb, pulsing in time with the juice that slopped in the pit of his stomach and the white-hot hatred that scorched his forehead? He glanced down at his pocket and saw to his disbelief that the eye was shining through his hand, through the cloth, radiating up his arm as if the light and heat could not be contained.
“You’ll get naught out of us, you cur!” Soames snarled, plunging forward to strike the first blow.
The diabolical beekeeper drew one of his pistols and pointed it at Soames’s chest.
“Stop!” Lloyd shouted, and held above his head what was no longer an eye but the Eye. The Eye of his Storm.
The vigilantes gasped, for the brightness was so intense. Hotter and harsher than Greek fire or the silver rush of Chinese rockets. The Ambassadors’ box burned with a pale-green surrounding haze-but Mother Tongue’s Eye could not be looked at, it was so fiercely alight. Some of the men in the gang tried to cover their faces, as the baffled beekeeper man cocked and fired his pistol at Soames, but wide. Drucker ducked, shielding himself from the light the boy had produced from his pocket and trying to skirt the shot from the gun barrel. Soames dived forward, seeking to cudgel the hand that held the firearm, and lost his footing in the mud. Lloyd stood firm, one hand clutching the Ambassadors’ box, the other the Eye, whose rippling green electric flame he could feel racing through his nerves and then out into the dark like a jetted breath of deadly starlight.
The pistol exploded in the gang leader’s grip. The men beside him dropped their weapons and slapped their hands to their heads-their eyes. As one single cornered animal, they clamored in horrible unison and then collapsed, wriggling in the sloshy ground like worms. Only their leader did not fall to the ground. He was too busy dancing. A dreadful dance of unbearable pain that sent a wave of sickening fulfillment through Lloyd as he lowered the Eye and closed his fist around it, finding it cool once more.
The netted hat of the vigilante captain had ignited like a tumbleweed, encasing his face in a blue-green cage of flames, so that not even the stench of burning beard and skin escaped. He darted and weaved for a moment like some crazed new kind of pyrotechnic toy-the image of which might have made children laugh and clap, had the body below been some clever machine, and not a flesh-and-blood man, that could not be rebuilt in time for the next performance. Then he crashed into a wheel-rut puddle. The bloody shattered bone of his pistol hand lay outstretched, the fried black mass of what had been his head half submerged in the narrow ditch of rain, all skull and cobweb now, too hideous to look at.
Which his compatriots would never have to do. To a man, their sight had been seared shut like slits of blank slate-except for the colossus with the pitchfork, whose eyeballs had turned to scalding jelly and had leaked out of their sockets, staining his face and coat like offal flicked with a slotted spoon.
CHAPTER 3. The Quest and Questions of the Quists
WHETHER THE INHABITANTS OF INDEPENDENCE WERE SLEEPING very soundly that night, or whether such trouble had been anticipated in official quarters, after the blinding firestorm that had been released from the Eye, the dark of stars and the dim reflections of the moon in pools and rivulets returned, afterimages dwindling away like fiery leaves turned to ash. A lone stable dog howled at the other end of town, answered by the cry of coyotes or a wild pack in the distance. Soon the morning light would come creeping across the sky, the aroma of breakfasts would begin to rise-steel-cut oats bubbling and freshly laid eggs cracked and popping on buttered grills. Another steamboat would bring wagons and carriageloads of newcomers-barrels and crates of goods, workhorses dragging fresh timber, the smell of smoke, sweat, and the river clinging to their thickening coats. But all was still now, except for the mess of depraved and wounded humanity before them.
“Come quick,” urged Lloyd, pocketing his treasures and trying to raise Soames back up. Drucker kept blinking and batting the air, but it was clear that he had not been permanently debilitated. Both men could see all right again after a few moments, but neither could believe what he had seen. With the exception of the charred leader, the vigilantes lay sprawled on the mushy ground groaning, limbs tangled, fumbling for one another-for help, for answers to what had happened to them. Lloyd took charge and led the two Quist guards between the bodies and back toward the storehouse as fast as they could move, given their stunned, disoriented condition. After his miraculous performance, Soames and Drucker seemed more than willing to be led, boy though he was.