“He needs some time. He’ll be all right. Settle down, Jack, you’re among friends.”
“Friends?” Dave asked. “How do you figure that?”
Jefferson brought up an expression that was partly quizzical and partly hurt. He asked the woman, “You are going to help us, aren’t you? Please say you’re not going to just leave us.”
“Yeah,” Ratcoff spoke up, finding his nerve and realizing he had to follow Jeff’s lead to get on that bus and do whatever it was the Gorgons demanded. Then at least he could get back to Microscope Meadows. “Don’t leave us, okay?”
Olivia looked from one man to the other. Jack Vope had stopped his rapid-fire blinking and he seemed to be controlling that better but still…his face was devoid of any expression, like a painted mask. She said, “Dave, let’s talk,” and she motioned him over nearer the bus.
Dave didn’t care to turn his back on these three so he retreated toward Olivia, all the time keeping watchful and ready for anything.
Olivia said quietly, “We can’t leave them. We have to—”
“Take them with us?” Dave interrupted. “Why? We don’t know them, why should we care?”
“Because they’re human beings and they’re in need, that’s why. We never turned anyone away from Panther Ridge.”
“Sure we did. We killed the ones who weren’t really human. How do we know these three are? And how about that Vope guy? Gives me the creeps. He looks like he might go nuts any minute.” Dave shook his head. “Olivia, we can’t test them with the saline. There’s no way we can know if they’re really human or not.”
Jefferson had seen the man shake his head. The rock was holding steady. Jefferson said, “Can I ask where you’re going?”
“To Denver,” Olivia answered. “We’ve got a lot of wounded people on board and we’re trying to find medical supplies.”
“Maybe I can help,” said the salesman, who had already decided his pitch when he heard the word wounded. “I’m a doctor.” He decided to give the lie more texture. “I was a cardiologist in Little Rock.”
“I’ve been to Arkansas,” Dave said, which was his own lie. “Who’s the President who was governor there?”
“William Jefferson Clinton,” said Leon Kushman, who had taken the name ‘Jefferson’ from that very person, after getting an autographed picture of himself as a seventeen-year-old, grinning political volunteer standing between Bill and Hillary at a fund-raising banquet. He would always remember what Clinton had said to him: You’re a comet with your tail on fire, aren’t you? That was the same weekend he’d wound up at a party smoking weed and discussing porn films with a law student named Andy Beale, who had become a Missouri senator and now—or was—President of these Used To Be United States. “Otherwise known as ‘Bubba’ or ‘Slick Willie’,” Jefferson went on. He frowned. “Is this a test?”
This joker was a human, Dave thought. Had to be. Still…he had a bad feeling about this. The weird guy blinked a few more times in rapid succession. The short bald guy was moving from foot to foot as if standing on a hot griddle. “Damn,” Dave said under his breath. They had to get moving, the sun was going down.
“We’ve got to go.” Olivia had read the situation just as he had. “All right, get aboard,” she told the three.
“But you’ll stand at the front,” Dave added. “Where I can watch you.”
“Thank you,” Jefferson said. He gave more texture to the spin: “I don’t really care to go back to Denver, but I guess there’s not too much ahead, is there?”
“Just get on the bus and keep quiet. And watch your buddy there, I don’t want him freaking out and hurting anybody. Any trouble from him and you’re all off.”
“As you say.” If you only knew, Jefferson thought. Idiot.
“I’m Olivia Quintero and he’s Dave McKane,” Olivia said as they walked to the bus. “We’ve been holed up in an apartment complex. Early this morning a Gorgon ship crashed into it.” She shuddered inwardly, with a memory of something half-seen and totally repulsive. She asked, “You men have your own food and water in the backpack?”
“Food, yes,” Jefferson said. “Water, no.”
“I’ll get you some. I guess you need it.”
“We sure do!” Ratcoff gasped. “I’m parched!”
They got aboard. Hannah gave the three newcomers the evil eye and when Olivia nodded she put her pistol away and closed the door. “We’re movin’!” she called to everyone, and then she started them forward again on the long road that in a few miles curved to a ramp onto I-25 south to Denver.
Olivia passed the word back to send up a plastic jug of water. Dave stood right behind the three men and he kept his Uzi in hand just in case. “Where’d you stay last night?” he asked, directing the question to Ratcoff.
“A farmhouse,” Jefferson said. “But—”
“I asked him. You shut up until I tell you to talk.”
“Look.” Jefferson turned toward Dave. Their faces were only inches apart. The preacherman glanced down at the submachine gun that was aimed somewhere south of his navel, into God’s country. “What’s your point, Dave? Can I call you Dave?”
“You can call me Mister Careful. We’ve seen things that try to pass themselves off as human, and they ain’t pretty. They’re things either the Gorgons or the Cyphers have made in their Frankenstein labs. So that’s why this gun is still out and it’s staying out.”
“I hope you have the safety on. You could make a real mess when we hit the next bump, Dave.”
“Ratcoff, where’d you stay last night?” Dave persisted.
To his credit, Ratcoff hesitated only a few seconds. “Like Jeff said…a farmhouse. I don’t know how many miles away it was, but we walked a long time. My feet are killin’ me.”
“Why didn’t you stay there?”
Ratcoff shrugged, still keeping his composure. “The place was half burned down. We were tryin’ to find people. Not crazy ones. And…you know…just us three alone…how long were we gonna make it?”
Good man, Jefferson thought. Listen and learn from the master.
Vope was immobile at his side. That was good too, Jefferson decided. Let everybody think the idiot was in shock and couldn’t talk. The Gorgons didn’t understand contractions, and everything Vope said came out as stiff as a high schooler trying to speak Shakespeare’s English. At least he had the blinking part taken care of, mostly. So just let him keep his mouth shut. When the plastic jug of water arrived, Jefferson took a drink and also took the opportunity to look around. The bus was so crowded it was hard to see beyond the people standing behind McKane and the woman. He saw a young blonde-haired kid who was maybe nineteen or so, with a bloody rag wrapped around his head, his eyes bleary, but that wasn’t who they were seeking. He remembered his starlet harlot saying You will know the boy when you find him, my Jefferson as he drifted into a dreamless narcotic sleep in the room that was not a room in the false French mansion. He wondered if in that sleep they had added some sensor device to him along with the pain stimulator in his neck, because he was absolutely sure the young man with the injured head was not the boy. He could see no one else who might be the boy, so the boy must be further at the back. The kid was here, though; if he wasn’t, Vope wouldn’t have wanted to stop the bus. Oh yeah, he was here. When the chance to take him came, Jefferson would know that too. Only he hoped the Gorgons would teleport them out of range of that Uzi before McKane could get the safety off.