Desert Angels (29 page)

She did not fire, though, because she was distracted by a sound; a familiar sound.

A flapping of wings also brought Jack's bleary attention to the center of the room. Even the demon looked up as Walter appeared through the hatchway. The bird flew to a favorite ledge, cooing and dancing frantically.

She knows, Laura nodded to herself. The Ball Job is getting closer and she knows. Well, Angela, we're trying old girl. Wish you could lend a hand, Laura mused in spite of herself.

Or a wing.

The demon bounded to its feet in a movement so quick and breezy that Laura inadvertently pulled down on the trigger of her weapon. The charge fired wide of the demon and the creature snarled, knocking the weapon from Laura's hands and sending it clanging to a corner.

Jack lunged forward, and found himself on his face, his broken leg failing him and the general shock to his body sabotaging what little strength remained. Cursing, he inched his way toward the gun, staying on the blind side of the demon.

With a vicious backhand, the thing slapped Laura full in the head, lifting her off the ground. Laura groaned, not even trying to escape. The demon reached for her again.

Something hit it square in the face, something soft and warm. The demon swatted at the ball of feathers and missed, irritated with the interference by the bird. In its complex mind, now fully committed to killing and pain and having no further use for communication or analyses, the demon roared and slapped the air as Walter did her best to distract it. Agile as she was, however, Walter was no match for the demon in its native form.

Again, a lightning quick movement from a claw that seemed to come out of nowhere suddenly sent Walter flying with considerable force into a wall near the spot Jack was approaching.

Walter slammed to the floor, her white feathers stained with blood. Jack let out a sound, as if he had been struck himself. Walter panted on the floor, her head and beak twisted unnaturally, her eyes, however, never leaving Jack. Jack reached out to touch her, but then shifted his focus back to the demon, as it picked Laura up and threw her across the room.

Jack snarled, a primal look of desperation and hate crossing his face. He rolled with the grenade gun in hand.

"Eat this!" he yelled out, as the creature turned, arms raised in anger and hatred.

The grenade pellet caught the demon in the neck, detonating, and sending the thing's head smashing into the still closing outer hatch. The creature's body disintegrated into a crumpled heap, twitching, reaching for a head it no longer possessed.

Jack stared at the head, snapping its fangs together, staring at him with surprise and loathing. Jack fired again, sending the remains of the head out the hatch, as the heavy door came to a close against the lock.

* * *

The Growler slumped in the seat beside Mathias, his giant hands falling away from the controls like wilting flowers. A few seconds later, and the mutant began to moan groggily, as if he were drunk or just waking up. Mathias didn't realize anything was seriously wrong, until the Ball Job began circling on itself, going nowhere fast. Veering sharply and suddenly to its left, the Ball Job crushed several corpse-soldiers and Maddogs. By the time Mathias reached over to commandeer the vehicle back on course, the Ball Job had retreated a quarter of a mile.

Confused, the Maddogs just stared at the Ball Job, ceasing their attack forward in toto. Grabbing their attention more than the erratic retreat of their leader's death tank was the inexplicable behavior of the zombie corpses that had performed so admirably up until now.

For suddenly, they had all collapsed, twitching pathetically in the sand, their dead eyes rolling into their heads. Some of the Maddogs tried to assist them in standing once again, but their efforts met with failure. They now just gibbered to themselves, looking hopefully to the Ball Job for an answer and for a further indication to sustain their attack.

Mathias shook the Growler gingerly, but only the strange, besotted moans escaped the mutant's lips. Mathias felt both relieved and angry; relieved, because undoubtedly, something had gone wrong, sending whatever inhabited the Growler's body away or helpless and angry because despite the presence of such an unholy entity in their midst, Mathias and the Maddogs were about to enjoy the novel taste of victory thanks to it.

Now, all the power and mystery had seemed to vanish in a single moment, taking with it the assured promise of success against Jack Calisto.

Mathias worked the controls of the Ball Job, fumbling with levers and buttons, eventually finding the correct ones to turn the complicated machine around. Yelling and waving his arms, he motioned to the watching Maddogs, now standing bovinely still in the desert a thousand or so yards from the Dome.

"Kill them!" he screamed hysterically, refusing to be robbed of this final glory, pounding his fists against the windshield and turning beet red.

But the Maddogs could not make out Mathias' wild gestures from so far away. They waited, shrugging to one another.

Apoplectic, Mathias screamed himself hoarse.

He did not hear the small buzzing sound from the lower level telling him that a fuse had been engaged. Nor would it have mattered if he had.

The Ball Job turned red for just a second, then white.

Finally, even the air turned to fire.

* * *

The impact of the explosion smashed into the Dome with all the disproportionate force of a sledgehammer hitting a pebble. Jack, for the last time, went flying through the air, coming to rest in his none-too clean kitchen area about fifteen feet from the outer hatch.

When he came to, Jack noticed that most of the interior of the Dome had fractured; plumbing lay tangled and scrapped on the floor, or hanging from the ceiling, like giant serpents, spitting forth either sewage or water or both. Somewhere, Jack thanked heaven, a generator still functioned, because the emergency lighting remained operational. Dust, ruptured concrete, masonry and plaster swamped the floor, making Jack's living room look like some kind of claustrophobic obstacle course.

Broken and sore, Jack moved slowly and carefully. He could only crawl at this point; both arms felt dislocated and the leg that wasn't fractured felt bruised and weak. As was his habit under any circumstance, Jack glanced at his watch. He had been unconscious since the Ball Job's detonation for about an hour.

His eye fell upon a little patch of floor in a corner; there lay Walter, and consequently Angela, bloody and lifeless.

From another corner, Laura moaned weakly. Jack threw himself over debris, rolling, crawling his way toward the source of the moans. He did not release the book, though.

Laura lay curled up like a fetus, breathing heavily. She was not quite conscious.

But she was alive.

Without a detailed examination, it was impossible to determine the extent of her recovery, but recovered Laura had done. Jack fell against the wall that she was leaning against, just watching her. He put his hand through her hair, and caressed her, not realizing that he was smiling now.

* * *

"Jack."

It was a dream, he knew. And he knew, too, that it would be over soon.

"Angela," he said.

She was standing a few feet away from him, dressed in a bright red skirt he had given to her for her twenty-ninth birthday, only a month before she died.

"No questions, please," she said softly.

He wanted to reach out and touch her – but couldn't. Another rule that was not to be broken, he mused.

"No questions," he said.

"Do you understand?"

"No. Not all of it," he said, wondering if he was shrugging or not.

Angela smiled radiantly.

"That makes two of us, darling."

She was beginning to fade. Jack panicked.

"Please come back. Don't leave me this time."

Angela smiled. "Part of me will always be with you. In Laura."

"How?" he asked.

"It was the only way I could save her. I could do that much. Part of whatever I am was used to give her life back."

"I don't understand."

"I know. But when you love Laura, you will be loving me. She won't remember you now; she'll have to relearn meeting you. She'll have to relearn
everything
."

Oh, god, if he could only hold her, he thought. Just for a moment.

"Take care of things, my sweet," Angela said. "Take care of Eden. And take care of Laura."

"For you," Jack heard himself whisper.

Angela smiled again, and this time Jack could see a tear roll down her cheek.

"I love you, Jack Calisto. I always have. And I always will."

Angela Doe Calisto, alias Walter to her closest friends, closed her eyes and disappeared.

* * *

Things change.

Gleeson was gone. So was Eden's baritone, Jim Rosen.

And Brandon, along with Garbo.

Jack leaned against the door of the Dome and stared out at the horizon. It seemed to him that only the good in the world changed - or disappeared, leaving only the stale and bad. Eden was still dying, along with the world. Perhaps the worst had come and gone, Jack thought, but there was still no happy ending in sight.

Perhaps, he concluded, there never would be.

Aunt Sheila came waddling up to him, smiling. Scrubby, after four years, was still holding up well. It was a lasting testament to skill and imagination that Garbo and Brandon could have both been proud of.

"How are we today?" Aunt Sheila asked, her hollow, sick little face somehow managing to give off a mad, happy glow.

"Holding up, Aunt Sheila. How about you?"

She seemed to think about the question for a second.

"Oh, dying – but what else is new?"

Jack stared at Aunt Sheila in wonder.

"I'm back, doctor," she said with a sad little smile. "I was gone for awhile, but now I'm back. I hope you'll forgive me one day."

"For what?" Jack asked, amazed.

"For being a coward. For my escape."

Jack could say nothing.

"But it was hard, dear. Do you know that I had two boys and a girl?"

"No."

"They died in my arms. Killed by the war, by the sickness. They were thirty years younger than me. I lived, but they – " Aunt Sheila shook her head and picked a hair off of Scrubby. "Who decides who lives and dies, doctor? Or is it all just chance?"

Jack swallowed hard. "I don't think it’s chance."

Aunt Sheila nodded. "I think it's just
life
. Period."

Jack said nothing.

"Problem is," Aunt Sheila went on, "how do you survive life?"

"I drink," Jack said immediately, not intending to be funny.

Aunt Sheila smiled. "And I dream, doctor. And I try to have a sense of humor."

"I'm afraid I don't have that," Jack said, smiling.

Aunt Sheila walked off the porch and into the sand. "Too bad," she said.

Aunt Sheila nodded sadly and then moved toward the new city of tents that Eden had become in the past few days. After a few seconds, she turned and winked at Jack.

"You come by and have some lemonade now, y'hear?"

Laura nodded, opened Angela's diary, and then shut it again.

Suddenly, he was laughing.

And he didn't stop for some time.

ALL IN THE HOUSE

THAT JACK BUILT

EPILOGUE

Laura stared out at the hazy sunset, enjoying a rare breeze that seemed sprinkled with a kind of alien freshness. For her, the world was not hideous and dead; life was too new for her to make any such judgments, or recall any such comparisons to anything truly hideous or truly beautiful. Exciting was what the world was, each new day bringing with it a sensation or person or question that needed to be explored fully.

Brushing her hair back with her hand, she turned and regarded the Edenites working near the Dome. It had been over three weeks since the explosion; now, Jack, was allowing people to work again. It seemed silly to Laura to wash the Dome so often with the water pumped in from the nearby river, but Jack had been insistent. He also had insisted that all the people wash themselves as well. Laura couldn't imagine getting much cleaner, but she figured that Jack knew what he was doing.

"Tired?" Jack asked, coming up from behind her and tickling her.

Laura nodded, holding Jack's eyes for a long time. She did not fully comprehend the word "tired" for she had not yet learned the art of language. But she understood Jack's tone of voice, and it was a soothing, questioning and knowing tone he used now, one that made her feel sleepy and happy.

What was there about those eyes, Laura wondered? For just a second, she thought they looked familiar. She was sure that she had never known Jack before they met inside of his house (she was still not exactly sure how she got there), but his face

haunted her. Something about him, she mused to herself, smiling at him and taking his hand.

Laura liked Jack; he was kind, patient, a little quiet. He could not explain how she could speak and understand his language, nor could he tell her anything about herself. One day, she knew, she would learn to speak the words that Jack and the Edenites spoke.

When that happened, she would talk to Jack.

And she would tell him that she liked him.

* * *

Jack smoothed the ground to Walter's grave with his hand and he straightened the little plaque jutting out of the sand. Laura crouched down next to him and mimicked the gesture, patting earth on the grave and making a fuss with the marker.

Jack smiled at her. But Laura could see that his face grew serious as he looked back to the plaque.

Laura reached out and touched his face – the first time that she could recall ever doing that.

Jack turned slowly – and hopefully.

"Laura?"

He had never called her that before, Laura recalled, and she tried to imitate the word slowly. But only the incoherent, inexperienced sounds of a child rang out.