“Little gray brothers, I guess you call ’em-us-grunters…” He shrugged, and said simply, “They’re digging across the country.”
Goldie looked like Charlie Brown after Lucy yanked away the football, agape.
“Old mines,” Inigo continued. “Subway tunnels, storage facilities, caverns, anything underground basically. They’re connecting them all up, so they don’t have to go out in the air much, where there’s sun and stuff.”
Goldie, who’d had diarrhea of the mouth only moments before, was speechless. Then he rallied. “That’s nuts. I mean, Buddha on a Popsicle stick, do you know how many homunculi a stunt like that would take?”
“A friend of mine”-Inigo studiously avoided naming Papa Sky-“says maybe one in seventy-five turned into gray guys, maybe one in fifty. That makes somethin’ like two, three million of us, just here in the States alone.”
“Yeah, but not every one of you-”
“More and more of ’em diggin’ in every day, least that’s what I hear. I mean, I’ll tell ya, that UV’s a bitch.”
“It’s not possible. The whole country?”
“Well…” Inigo hesitated. “When they hit something they can’t go though, they find a way…around. There’s guys like you.”
Goldie’s eyes flashed, and there was that crazy scary determination again. “Guys like me. You mean, who can do some of the stuff I can do?”
Inigo nodded. On the road to Atherton, he had heard of Goldie’s knack with portals. And while portals could be finicky and selective-the more so depending on who wielded the power-they certainly cut down on travel time.
“Some are volunteers, some are drafted,” Inigo said of those with the gift. Captured he meant, held as slaves, like Olifiers and his group, but with different masters, to a different purpose.
Goldie was squeezing Inigo’s shoulder again, hard now. “Who’s the best you know?”
Inigo couldn’t tell him the best he knew, not personally. But he could tell him the best he’d heard of.
And fearing that Goldie-or the part of Goldie that was nothing like the rest of him-might change his mind and turn the juice on, Inigo showed him how to get there.
Moving quickly through dark passages, Goldie could sense the telltale membranes, the fading shut doorways where the connective tissues of the world were particularly permeable. For a time after they were opened, even those without the special gift, without the power to make things part, might still be able to pass through the doors.
Inigo led him to exactly the right spot, where the wall glowed in just exactly the right way. The boy was too terrified to pass through, but Goldie still had that strange connectedness to him, the vibe that let him know the boy had led him true, was pulling no shell game of bait and switch.
He let the boy go, and Inigo took off running full-out, back the way he came, all too glad to be let off the hook.
Goldman, however, pressed on.
He passed through the shimmering portal to parts unknown, felt the queasy, familiar sensation of being transported to someplace far from the point of origin, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away.
The best you know…
The Man with the Power. And Goldie would need that power, would need every trick he could glean, every skill and talent he might derive.
Emerging through onto the other side, he found himself in a dark corridor, the only sound the mausoleum-knock of his footsteps. He willed another globe rolling brilliant onto his hand and crept forward.
Then froze in his tracks.
Ahead of him, as far as the eye could see, metal spikes projected diagonally up out of the wall.
With heads stuck on them.
Big heads, far larger than any human would have-any normal human, at least.
His stomach lurching, throat in his mouth, Goldie forced his feet to move, forced himself to approach the nearest of the hideous trophies. He reached out and felt it, found to his relief and amazement that it was not flesh but rubber instead.
The heads, the heads were all masks, huge and grotesque, of mice and dogs and tigers and bears, of dwarfs and a rootless boy who led other Lost Boys.
Incredibly, he knew them, or at least recognized them from childhood years sitting planted in front of the TV screen. With a sense of disorientation and homecoming, he began to suspect just where he might be.
Continuing on, he discovered a stairway that led up to a closed metal door. He opened it, and it swung outward, surprisingly silent. A balmy night wind met him as he stepped onto level ground, with no hint of Midwestern chill.
Everything was dark, of course, and some of it was far different than he remembered it from long ago, when he had come here with his parents.
There was no Skyway, no Rocket to the Moon.
And, most significantly, no people.
At least, none of the human variety…
The puny, gnarled creatures scurried this way and that in their huddled groups, muttering nastily to themselves, one group chasing down a rat, pouncing on it with teeth and claws, consuming it alive.
Sounds like needle jabs drew Goldie’s attention, and he realized that it was demented, high laughter. He spied a bunch of the loathsome little curs swinging on the unmoving arms of the familiar framework he recalled from his youth. They clambered up into the fiberglass cars so artfully formed into the shape of grinning, flying elephants.
They were everywhere, had overrun the place, claimed it as their own.
A real E-ticket ride…
The grunters in the Magic Kingdom.
NINETEEN
Arcott called the place a boulangerie, but Cal discovered in reality it was nothing more than a funky new-old coffeehouse named Insomnia, crammed with thrift-store sofas and sagging bookshelves, stained oak tables with irregular legs, and scruffy college types poring over dog-eared texts.
And oh yeah, John Lennon and Bob Dylan blaring out of the speakers, laptops blazing atop every surface, and the microwave heating croissants to buttery perfection.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
For last year, that was. But for right now, a drop-jawed astonishment, as with everything else he and Doc had seen since crossing the city limits.
Not to mention why these students would be so casually bothering to study instead of scattering to the four winds in search of kin, or taking up a useful trade such as farming or necromancy or wandering samurai-for-hire.
A Cheshire Cat, Arcott settled himself into a scuffed leather wing chair flanked by Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade, opposite Cal and Doc. He signaled five fingers to the peroxided, pierced and tattooed waitress, who promptly brought over five steaming lattes.
“It’s on me,” Arcott said expansively.
“What do folks do for money around here?” Cal asked.
“Well,” Theo piped up, “paper money’s no good, obviously, though most folks are holding on to it in the hopes it someday will be.”
“They trade services,” Melissa added, “or whatever else might have concrete value.”
“Such as gemstones?” Doc asked.
Arcott smiled. “We put those to other use.”
Cal noted how Arcott used “we”: a royal pronoun for himself when making decisions for the town; a reference including everyone else when it was something Arcott himself needed. Casting a glance about the cafe, Cal saw that that everyone gave Arcott a subtle deference that might be respect or fear…or both.
The two deputies-clearly part of Arcott’s security force-stood blank-faced and watchful just inside the door.
“My, this is a treat,” Arcott said, sipping his latte. “We don’t get many visitors.”
“Not with that bubonic horror show you’ve got running on the perimeter,” Cal said. “And for those that can’t read the writing on the wall, you’ve got these.” He nodded at the gem-encrusted rifle perched on Doc’s leg.