Part 27 (1/2)
d.a.m.n IT!.
... one more drink, amigo, that's all I'm asking . . .” Just before dawn the old man had opened his eyes and turned his head to look at the boy sitting beside him. He'd stared at Silvera for a long time with the whiskey-swollen slits he had for eyes. He coughed several times violently, and Silvera saw the flecks of blood on his lips. The old man had reached out and gripped his hand with a leathery, four-fingered paw.
”Padre,” the old man had whispered. ”Help me . . . make it easy for me . . . please . . .”
”I ... ain't a priest,” he'd said. The grip had tightened.
”Padre . . . I'm a sinner ... I don't want to die!” A tear squeezed from one eye and trickled down through the dark folds of his face. ”Help me . . .”
”How? I can't ... do anything.”
”Yes, you can. You can. Say something for me . . . some words . . .” The man's grip was about to crush Silvera's hand. His eyes glistened, but the spark of life within was rapidly dying. ”Please,” the old man whispered. Me pray to G.o.d? the boy had asked himself. s.h.i.+t, that's a laugh! Me on my knees like a peon, simpering and crying? But the old guy was almost dead, he was drying up right there, so maybe he should at least try. But how to do it? What to say?
”Uh, G.o.d,” he said softly, ”this man . . . uh, what's your name?”
”Gulf Star,” he whispered, ”. . . sailed on the Gulf Star . . .”
”Uh, yeah. G.o.d, this man sailed on the Gulf Star and I ... guess he's a pretty good man.” His knuckles cracked under the pressure of the man's grasp. ”I don't know anything about him, but he's . . . uh, sick and he wanted me to say some words for him. I don't know if I'm doing this right or not, or if You're able to hear me. This man is really in bad shape, G.o.d, and I think he's going to ...
abination of professional and personal interests and leave it at that.”
”No,” Jo said suddenly. ”If anyone is going to go with you, it must be me.”
”You're staying here,” he told her. He glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch. ”It's almost four. We'll have to hurry, Miss Clarke. Did your friend ever tell you how he got up to Kronsteen's castle?”
”Not exactly, but I remember something about Outpost Drive.”
”We could lose more than an hour trying to find the way,” Palatazin said grimly.
”If we're there when the sun goes down-”
Jo said, ”You didn't hear me, did you? I said I was going. Whatever happens to you happens to me-”
”Don't be foolish, Jo!”
”Foolish? I'm not staying in this house by myself! If you want to argue about it and waste more time, then that suits me fine, too.” She stared at him, her eyes defiant and sure.
He met her gaze, then reached for her hand. ”Gypsies!” he said with mock disgust. ”You had to come from a family of them! All right. We'll have to hurry.
But I warn both of you-this is not for the weak-hearted. Or the weak-stomached.
When 1 ask for your help, you'll have to give it. There'll be no time for squeamishness. Understood?”
”Understood,” Jo agreed.
”All right then.” He leaned over and hefted the cardboard box full of stakes.
”Let's go.”
NINE.
The h.e.l.l's Hole Hilton was trembling. Boards squealed as the wind, which had risen to almost forty miles an hour in the last thirty minutes, swept across the mountains from the east. The gla.s.s rattled in the window frame, and Bob Lampley could see handfuls of sand hitting it like buckshot. The eastern sky was veined with gold and gray, the clouds swirling together and breaking apart like fast-moving armies. Lampley felt his heart hammering. The wind-speed indicator was still climbing, pa.s.sing forty now and rising to forty-two. The Hilton seemed to lurch suddenly on its rock and concrete base. Jesus! Lampley thought, his brain buzzing. This whole place is going to give if the winds keep building!
He'd made his last call to National less than an hour before. L.A. was getting twenty-five and thirty-five-an-hour winds all the way from the San Fernando Valley south to Long Beach, and blowing sand had even been reported in Beverly Hills. The National Weather forecasters were going crazy trying to figure out what had kicked up this storm. It had started right in the middle of the Mojave and seemed to be moving in a direct line toward Los Angeles. The black telephone rang. Lampley picked it up, trying to make out the tinny voice on the other end over the cracklings of electrical interference. Hal from Twenty-nine Palms was saying something about radar.
”What is it?” Lampley shouted. ”I can't hear you, Hal!” The message was repeated, but Lampley could grasp only fragments ”. . . wind speed is up to ...
emergency procedure . . . watch your radar!” Wood cracked, the sound loud in Lampley's ear. Hal's voice was frantic, and it scared the s.h.i.+t out of Lampley. Radar? he thought. What the h.e.l.l's he talking about? He glanced quickly at the sky and saw the undulating golden tendrils of sand whipping through the higher pines. He saw a tree branch crack and go tumbling away. The sand was beginning to build like a snowfall, covering every crevice of bare rock. ”Hal!” he yelled.
”What's your wind speed down there?”
The answer was a high, shrieking garble that was cut off in mid-sentence. The phone shrilled and crackled like mad laughter. Lines down, Lampley figured. That's it, sure. Lines down between here and Twentynine Palms. The Hilton lurched again, and now he seemed to be able to taste sand as it found its way through the c.h.i.n.ks between the boards. Better get my little a.s.s out of here before this whole d.a.m.ned place caves in! He checked his wind-speed indicator again. Forty-eight. The pressure gauge was going crazy, too. It would fall fast and rise, again and again. Right now it was taking a long, terrible tumble. He went quickly to the red phone and plucked it off the wall. He could hear the tones clicking like a combination lock. Then a familiar voice garbled slightly by static said, ”National Weather, L.A.”
”Eddie? This is Bob Lampley at . . .” And then he couldn't find his voice because he'd glanced down at the radar screen.
It was showing something that he just couldn't believe, as intensely as he examined it. The screen indicated a huge ma.s.s coming up from the east, bigger than anything Lampley had ever seen before. It seemed to be ... rolling.
”What's that?” he said, his voice choked with fear. ”What's that?”
”Bob? What . . . you . . . showing?” Static crackled and squealed. Lampley dropped the phone and leaned over the radar screen. Whatever it was, it stretched for miles. His eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. His panic was complete when he saw the barometer hit rock bottom and hang there. The wind had stopped. He could hear the Hilton resettling, like broken bones mes.h.i.+ng again.
He stepped to the window and looked out.
Very high up the clouds were still racing. The light had turned a murky gold, the color of p.i.s.s after an all-night drunk. Around the Hilton the trees were so still they could've been painted against the stone. A vacuum, he thought, it's as still as a vacuum out there. He glanced back at the ma.s.s on the radar screen and froze with the realization that something huge was sweeping in to fill that vacuum.
Lampley looked back out the window.
”Oh ... my G.o.d . . .” he whimpered.
He could see it now, filling up the whole eastern horizon, churning and rolling and thras.h.i.+ng but still terribly silent. It was the Lucifer of sandstorms, a troubled monster of nature. Lampley couldn't see the ends of it at the north and south, but the radar indicated it was at least thirty miles thick. Lampley, his brain clutching at the edge of rational thought, estimated its speed at between forty and fifty miles an hour. It seemed as large as the Mojave itself, now screaming toward him on tortured winds with the mingled colors of white, gray, and yellow.
He stood transfixed as the thing rolled forward. In another moment he could hear a faint, terrible hissing.