My brothers and sisters, Jefferson thought, there are no rainbows in this window. We are caught in the middle of two power-mad forces, and no matter who wins we are screwed.
“Yes,” said the preacherman, “I’m sure your mom is just fine.”
And then he saw something on the road ahead, approaching.
He thought he was seeing things. A mirage, maybe. But…a yellow school bus?
Vope halted. His head seemed to vibrate so fast that for two seconds he was headless.
“We will stop that vehicle,” he said.
“The boy’s in it?” Jefferson asked.
“Yes,” came the answer. And again: “We will stop that vehicle.”
To Jefferson it didn’t look at if the driver of that bus intended to stop. Vope began striding forward again, with Jefferson beside him and just behind, and on the other side Ratcoff winced and staggered along on his blistered feet and aching legs. Jefferson lifted his arms and waved them back and forth as the bus drew nearer.
“They’re not stoppin’,” said Ratcoff. “We better get off this road.”
But Jefferson continued to wave and suddenly the bus began to slow down. He heard the shriek of old brakes engaging.
Vope said, “Hear me. Do as you’re instructed. If there is any…” He paused, searching for the word. “Difficulty,” he continued, “I will kill every one of your kind in that vehicle.”
“It may not be that easy,” Jefferson answered.
“We will take the boy,” Vope repeated. “If there is any difficulty I will kill—”
“No, you will not,” said the preacherman, and the alien turned toward him with a blank face but Jefferson knew what was going on behind it. The pain couldn’t be delivered as Vope would like, or the humans in that bus would see him fall to his knees. “I’m supposed to put my hands on him, isn’t that right?” The bus was stopping a dozen yards in front of them. “Then we’ll be teleported or whatever back to…wherever? If I’m supposed to get past whoever is protecting him, you have to leave it to me. You want that boy delivered alive. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t set off any alarms. Do you know what that means? It means you stand back and let me do what I do.”
Vope seemed to be thinking about this; Jefferson could tell the alien gears were turning.
The bus’s door was opening. A woman’s rough voice called out, “Any trouble and the first bullet comes from my cannon!”
“They have weapons,” Jefferson said. “Primitive to you, deadly to me and Burt. You don’t have to worry about being shot in the head, but we do. You’re going to let me take charge of this if you want it to be successful. Hear me?”
Vope said nothing, but neither did his arms grow to be snakelike monsters nor did any pain clench the back of Jefferson’s neck.
“Do you understand that a human being blinks his eyes every few seconds?” Jefferson asked. He saw a man and woman coming out of the bus; the man had a submachine gun and the woman carried a .45 automatic. “You don’t blink, they’re going to know you’re not human real quick. So do it, keep quiet, and let me talk.”
Then he turned his full attention to the man and the woman, and he said with a great exhalation of relief, “Thank God we’ve found somebody who’s not totally insane! We’ve been wandering all day, trying to—”
“What are you doing out here?” Dave asked sharply, keeping the Uzi’s barrel pointed at the ground between himself and Olivia and the three men.
“Well,” said Jefferson, “we’re not walking for our health, sir. We’ve been trying to find safe shelter before nightfall.”
“Is that so? And where the hell have you come from?”
Jefferson realized this rough-edged man in his torn black t-shirt, his faded jeans and a dirty dark blue baseball cap would rather shoot them all than spend any more time jawing. The man had a crust of blood from a cut across the bridge of his nose, and he might be a rock that refused to be turned. “We have come from Hell,” Jefferson answered, in a voice as grim as the grave. He kept his eyes fixed on the man’s. “A few days ago there were ten of us. We’re what’s left, after…” He lifted his chin just a fraction, as if in defiance of the world and this man’s Uzi. “After we were attacked on the road from Denver. I guess you know there are gangs of men driven insane out there. They fell on us and they shot our friends to pieces. We got away with one backpack, but we lost the rest of our supplies, our clothes, everything.” He made a point of eyeing the Uzi and the automatic. “I wish we’d had more guns, we could’ve fought back.”
“You don’t have guns? Why not?”
“I did have a gun,” Jefferson offered. “A Smith & Wesson .38. A nice piece.” He let his gaze slip toward the tall, slim woman, who was Hispanic and probably in her fifties. She had short-cut white hair and her face was tense, but Jefferson thought she’d been very attractive in the life that used to be. “When I ran out of bullets and couldn’t find any more, I traded my gun for a few cans of vegetables and some canned soup to keep my wife and daughter alive. That was in Kansas, four months ago.” The lies came so easily when one had a story-line. He gave the woman a sad and bitter smile. “I wish I could say my wife and daughter had made it out of Kansas with us, but…”
“What happened to them? Exactly,” growled the man, who still looked as if he wanted to shoot first and ask questions later.
Jefferson decided to go for the high roll, a shocker quickly conceived to back the bastard off. “Regina was raped and murdered in a basement by a madman who hit me over the head with a shovel and tried to bury me alive,” he said, his gaze steady. “When I crawled out of there and got to my gun, I used my last bullets on him. Amy wasted away. After her mother died, she lost the will to live. You want more details, sir?” He turned his full and intense power on the woman, who he perceived to be more malleable than the hard-ass. “My name is Jeff Kushman. This is Burt Ratcoff, and…” Don’t pause, he told himself. “Jack Vope.”
He had not earned his place in the world by being slow of mind or timid at launching tales to suit his purpose, and with two guns pointed in his direction his mind was going a hundred miles a second. He intended to stay alive as long as possible. He looked at Vope and launched not a tale but a searing thought that reached out like a slap to the face: Blink, idiot!
Vope returned the gaze. Something must have clicked, because suddenly Vope started blinking as if he had eyes full of gnats or the worst facial tic ever recorded. Slow down, Jefferson thought. Once every seven or eight seconds! He hoped the Gorgons were smart enough to understand Earth time, but maybe not.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dave asked. He’d seen the black-haired man start blinking like his eyes were on fire. Otherwise, the guy’s face was emotionless.
“Jack’s still in shock,” Jefferson said quickly. “He’s lost his family too.”
The blinking was still out of control. Dave thought the guy was about to have a fit. “Can’t he talk?”