Stinger

Paco's scream still lingered. He was down on the floor, writhing and holding on to his jerked and freshly bleeding nose.

Gotcha, Ray thought - and then Juan Diegas hit him in the side of the head with a swinging fist and he slid across the floor like a crumpled sack of laundry.

Cody struggled to stand. He got to his knees, and Juan grasped his collar and hauled him up the rest of the way. Juan slammed a fist into Cody's mouth, splitting his lower lip. Cody's legs sagged. Juan hit him again, opening a cut under his right eye with that signet ring.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Kennishaw yelled, still too scared to move.

Juan lifted his fist for another smash.

"Hold it right there!" Deputy Leland Teal - middle-aged and potbellied, with a face like a weary weasel's - stepped into the doorway. The other nightshift deputy, Keith axelrod, was right behind him.

Juan just laughed. He started to deliver the punch that would break Cody's nose to pieces.

Headlights stabbed through the Warp Room's plate-glass window. There was a squeal of tires and the wailing of a supercharged engine, and Juan shouted, "Oh madre!" a pickup truck painted in mottled camouflage grays and greens roared up onto the curb, narrowly missing Cody's Honda, clipped away a parking meter, and crashed through the window in a glittering spray of glass and an ear-popping explosion. The deputies dove for their lives, and the truck smashed a couple of arcade machines to kindling before it stopped. at once, Bobby Clay Clemmons leapt from the truck's bed onto Juan Diegas, swinging at him with a chain. Tank jumped from behind the wheel, roared like an enraged beast, and kicked at Paco's ribs. "Party time!" Jack Doss shouted as he tumbled out of the truck; he was armed with a baseball bat; he attacked the machines in a marijuana-fueled frenzy. Nasty was there too, urging on the violence. Davy Summers stood atop the truck, looking for somebody to stomp, and Mike Frackner drank down a beer, crumpled the can, and hurled it at Juan's head.

In the Hammonds' kitchen, Tom was pouring himself another cup of coffee when he thought Daufin might have moved. Just a fraction, a twitching of a muscle perhaps. Jessie and Rhodes were in the den, talking about what was to be done. Tom put a spoonful of sugar in his coffee. again, he thought he caught a movement from the corner of his eye. He approached Daufin; her face - Stevie's face - was still frozen, the eyes staring straight ahead. But - yes! There it was!

Her right hand, motioning toward the window, had begun to tremble.

"Jessiei" he called. "Colonel Rhodesi" They came at once. "Look at that." He nodded toward the right hand. The shaking seemed to have gotten more severe just in the last few seconds.

Daufin's chest hitched, a sudden motion that made Jessie jump.

"What is iti" Tom asked, alarmed. "Can't she breathei" Jessie touched the chest. The breathing was shallow and fast. She felt for a pulse at the throat. It was racing. "Heartbeat's way up," she said tensely. Peered into the eyes; the pupils had dilated to the size of dimes. "There's some kind of reaction going on, for sure." Her voice was steady, but her stomach flipflopped. The outstretched hand kept trembling, and now the tremors were coming up the arm as well.

Daufin's breath rattled in the lungs. It exhaled from her mouth, and made what Jessie had thought might have been a word.

"What was thati" Rhodes kept his distance from the creature. "What'd she sayi" "I'm not sure." Jessie looked into her face, was shocked to see the pupils rapidly contract to pinpoints and then begin to open up again. "Oh, Christ! I think she's having a seizure!" Daufin's lips moved, just barely. This time Jessie was close enough to hear the raspy word that emerged in a bated breath. Or thought she heard it, because it made no sense.

"I... think she said Stinger," Jessie told them.

Stevie's - Daufin's - face had begun to bleach of color, taking on a waxy, grayish cast. Her little girl legs had started trembling, and she whispered it again: "Sting-er." and in that whisper was the sound of utter terror.

as Juan Diegas begged for mercy from Bobby Clay Clemmons and Tank joined Jack Doss in tearing up the machines, Cody crawled over to Ray Hammond. The kid was on his hands and knees, shaking his head back and forth to clear it, blood dripping from his nose and burst lips to the floor.

"You okayi" Cody asked him. "Hey, X Rayi You hear me, mani" Ray looked at him, could tell who it was even without his glasses. "Yeah," he croaked. "Think I... shoulda... stayed out of the way." "No," Cody said, and grasped his shoulder. "I think you were right where you were supposed to be, bro." Ray's bloody mouth grinned.

Horns blared from the street, and headlights flashed. "We've got company!" Nasty shouted, reaching down into the truckbed for a length of wood with nails driven through it. "More Rattlers! a ton of 'em!" Cody got to his feet. The wrecked Warp Room spun around him, and Tank kept him from falling again.

"Come on out, you shitkickers!" came the first taunt. The horns kept blasting. "Let's get it on, assholes!" The two deputies backed away, knowing this was more than they'd bargained for. Their meager salaries weren't enough to make them face a riot. Four cars, two pickup trucks, and a couple of motorcycles carrying Rattlesnakes had converged upon the Warp Room. Deputy Teal had called Sheriff Vance at home before they'd left the office, but if Vance wasn't here yet, Teal decided not to risk his own blood and bones. The Rattlers, some of them armed with broken bottles and chains, began to get out of their vehicles. Deputy axelrod shouted, "You kids break this up and go on - " but a bottle shattered against the wall near his head and his attempts at law enforcement were done as he ducked and ran.

"Help me!" Juan shrieked. "Get me outta here!" Bobby Clay silenced him with a boot to the gut.

"Come on!" Ramon Torrez, wielding a chain, shouted at the other Rattlers. "Let's rush the fuckers!" "Rush 'em! Stomp their asses!" Sonny Crowfield motioned everybody on, but he was standing behind the safety of a car. at that moment Rick's Camaro pulled up and he and Zarra got out.

"I want you, bitch!" animal pointed at Nasty, and in her other hand held a sawed-off bat. More taunts were flung back and forth, and inside the Warp Room Cody knew they were going to have to battle their way out.

Tank was breathing like a bellows, his face gorged with blood in the shelter of his helmet. "Fuckin' wetbacks! You want somei" he shouted. "Let's party!" and, bellowing, he propelled himself out of the Warp Room and into the enemy's midst.

* * *

Daufin's trance broke. The color rushed back into her face. She was trembling wildly, and she sank to her knees saying, "Sting-er. Sting-er. Sting-er..." Over the noise of car horns, Jessie heard the glasses rattle in the cupboard.

a beer bottle exploded off Tank's helmet. He drove a fist into Joey Garracone's face, was hit across the back by a chain, and staggered. Somebody leapt off a car at him; two more bodies landed on him and drove him down, still swinging.

"Get 'em!" Bobby Clay's eyes shone with homicidal fury. He jumped through the Warp Room's shattered window, followed by Jack Doss, Nasty, and the other 'Gades who'd ridden the truck in. Fists and chains flailed; bottles sailed through the air. Rick ran into the melee, with Zarra at his side. Cody pulled another wrench from his tool belt and staggered outside, his muscles aching but his blood singing for violence.

and in his patrol car about twenty yards away, ed Vance sat gripping the steering wheel with wet palms, hearing a singsong Burro! Burro! Burro! at the place in his mind where a frightened fat boy lived.

He felt the car shudder. No, he realized in another second. It was not the car - it was the ground.

"Sting-er. Sting-er. Sting-er," Daufin repeated, her eyes wide with terror. She drew herself across the floor toward a corner, under the ticking cat-clock, and began to try to fold her body up like a contortionist.

The glasses were jumping in the cupboards. Now Jessie, Tom, and Rhodes could all feel the floor starting to vibrate. a cupboard popped open, and coffee mugs spilled out. The house's walls were creaking and popping, little quick fire-cracker sounds.

"Oh... my... God," Rhodes whispered.

Jessie bent down in front of Daufin, who had squeezed herself into a position that must be about to snap Stevie's joints. "What is iti" The floor vibrations were getting worse. "Daufin, what is iti" "Sting-er," the creature repeated, staring past Jessie, eyes fixed and glazed. "Sting-er. Sting-er..." The light fixtures swung.

The patrol car's horn began blaring, without Vance touching it. God a'mighty! he thought, and scrambled out. He could feel the ground shaking through the soles of his boots, and now there was a low rumble that sounded like heavy plates of stone grinding together.

Tank was fighting for his life. animal swung a bat at Nasty, who dodged and backpedaled, spitting curses. Rick saw figures fighting all around him, and his hand went to the Fang of Jesus but his fingers would not close on it. He heard tires squeal, looked over his shoulder, and saw two more cars full of 'Gades barreling along the street; before the cars had stopped, their passengers jumped out and joined the clash. a misthrown bottle crashed against his shoulder, and he tripped over two fighters and fell. He was about to struggle up when he felt the concrete shaking, and he thought, What the hell... i His eardrums had started aching, his bones throbbing to a deep bass tone. He looked up, and his breath caught.

There was a fireball in the sky, and it was coming down on Inferno.

Rick got to his feet. The fireball was getting larger. Somebody - a 'Gade - grabbed his shirt and started to deliver a punch, but Rick flung the boy away with furious disdain. The street trembled, and Rick shouted, "Stop it! Stop it!" but the fighting was too fierce around him, nobody was listening. He looked up again, being jostled as a Rattler with a bleeding face staggered past him. The fireball's orange light licked the street.

Behind him, Vance had seen the fireball too. He squinted in its glare, felt his heart rise to his throat and lodge there like a lemon. It's the end of the world, he thought, unable to run or cry out. The fireball looked to be coming down right on top of him.

"Listen!" Rick yelled. He plunged into the thickest of the fighting, trying to separate the battlers for a second.

and there he came face-to-face with Cody Lockett.

Cody's bones throbbed, his eardrums pounding with pressure, but he'd thought it was his injuries catching up with him. Now, though, he saw an orange glow, but before he could look up he ran right into Rick Jurado. His first thought was that Jurado would be carrying a knife, and he had to strike before Jurado did; he lifted the wrench to bash the other boy across the skull.

Rick seized his wrist. "No!" he shouted, his eyes wild. "No, listen to - " Cody kneed him in the stomach, driving the wind out of him, then he pulled his wrist loose to smash the weapon down on the back of Jurado's head.

Daufin screamed.

The fireball - almost two hundred feet across - roared down and crashed into Mack Cade's autoyard, throwing sheets of dust and pieces of cars into the air. Its shock wave heaved the earth, sent cracks scurrying along the streets of Inferno and Bordertown, blew out windows, and flung Cody Lockett off his feet before the wrench could fall. The metal fence around Cade's autoyard was flattened, and parts of it sailed off like deadly kites. The west-facing windows of the First Texas Bank exploded, followed a split second later by the east-facing windows as the shock wave roared through. The electric-bulb sign blew out as it registered 85��F. at 9:49.

The Hammonds' house shuddered, the floor jumping with a squall of stressed joints. Jessie went down, and so did Tom, and Rhodes was flung against the wall as the southern windows imploded and the shock hit him like a giant-sized hot skillet.

Paloma and Miranda were inside the house when the blast and the wind came, and they gripped each other as the floorboards danced and the walls puffed dust. Glass flew around them, Paloma's shelf of ceramic birds crashed down, and both of them were knocked flat as the bass boom passed through.

Some of the sun-bleached roofs of Bordertown houses ripped off and took flight. atop the Catholic church's spire, the cross was knocked crooked.

Ruth Twilley was thrown out of her bed, and screamed "Noooaaaahhhh!" as her son shielded his face from flying glass in his study. In the chapel, coffins rocked like cradles.

On his porch, Sarge Dennison cried out, "Incomin' mail!" and jerked awake to find himself sitting in a dust storm, his eardrums ringing and the steel plate in his skull pounding like Satan's anvil. Scooter had jumped into his lap and sat there shaking; Sarge rubbed the dog's invisible black-and-white-spotted hide with nervous fingers.

Burglar alarms were shrilling all along Cobre Road and Celeste Street. Dogs howled, and Inferno's three remaining caution lights creaked on their cables; the fourth, at the intersection of Oakley and Celeste, had crashed to the pavement.

The shutters had banged open in Curt Lockett's house, and he lay in the dark in a sweat-damp bed, his eyes wide as the walls moaned.

The shock passed on in phantom waves, and the night things darted into their holes.