Thirty-eight
Abe awoke to the sound of the door to his motel cabin
being wrenched from its hinges. He had time to raise his head, still
groggy from sleep, when two massive hands clamped tight on his shoulders
and yanked him from bed. Dressed only in underwear, he was spun about and
rushed through the broken frame of the door to a gray and chilled morning
outside.
King threw him, all six foot, three inches and two
hundred and ten pounds of him. Abe struck pavement and was on hands and
knees in an instant, ready to flee in any direction available to him.
King knelt before him and shoved a metallic object in
his face. “You knew about these!” he roared. “You knew about these and
you didn’t tell me!”
Abe climbed absently to his feet, presented with one
of Billy Trevor’s little machines close up for the first time. It was
dead, or at least inactive. The body had a stubby antenna protruding from
its metal body, but no eyes. Eight legs lined the underside, each tipped
with a pincher.
“It was found adhered to the underside of one of the
trucks leaving the shipping department of Silver Ridge Die-Casting, Mr.
Darker. These particular models would be long-distance transmitters,
locating devices obviously intended to track the progress and destination
of our trucks. You knew about these and you failed to warn me of their
presence!”
“But it doesn’t work!” Abe roared, angered by both
the accusation and the King’s senseless brutality. “What good are they if
Billy Trevor and Evie are dead!”
“It wasn’t dead! It was deactivated! By me!” King
tossed the machine to the ground. He reached into his pocket and
extracted a device looking like a remote-control to a television. He
aimed it and pressing a button with an embellished gesture of disdain.
Billy Trevor’s machine rose gracefully to all eight
of its legs. It pivoted in place nervously, then scampered off toward the
distant hill, leaping the curb and following the edge of the motel until
it managed to round the side of the structure and vanish into the
underbrush.
King raised an arm and signaled with a gesture. Abe
heard a familiar cry of pain from within one of the chain of cabins.
Delaney appeared to view dragging Lazarus along by the scuff of the neck.
Lazarus was tossed to the pavement at his side.
“Your brother told you that he saw both of those individuals alive!” King
bellowed.
“The bastard lies!” Abe said just as loudly.
King glared at him with primal rage. He then turned
to Lazarus. “Tell me about these machines. Tell me all you know.”
Lazarus struggled to his feet and staggered about
unsteadily. He wet his lips nervously. “They were Evie’s demons,” he
said, his tone of voice pitched high with fright.
“They were what?”
“We thought Evie was having bad dreams, so we teased
her. And then, I waited outside and I saw one myself—and I tried to bash
it with a baseball bat, but it got away.”
Thoughtfully and systematically, Lazarus told his
story. Despite Lazarus’ poor grasp of the significance of the animate
devices, King nodded satisfaction with the sequence of events he related.
“I have an adversary in this place, just as I feared. He rescued Evie
Darker as a concession to the native personality.” King laughed
contemptuously. “A fine example of blatant sensuality, a weakness that
will be his undoing.”
King looked again at Lazarus with narrowed eyes.
“Little sister Evie means a great deal to you, I take it.”
His interest piqued, Lazarus’s eyes lit up. “Yes,
sir. I love her. I didn’t mean her no harm.”
“Keep your eyes open, my unkempt beast. Report to me
each evening of what you have seen and heard about town, no matter how
trivial. I shall reward you with your beloved Evie in the end.”
King turned and pinned Abe with a glare of
displeasure. “You sought to spare Silver Ridge from a conflict between me
and Billy Trevor by withholding information.”
Abe had done exactly that, but he hadn’t done it
deliberately. He had only wanted to keep Billy Trevor and King two
separate crises. He hadn’t recognized the connection between the two.
“Answer me when I speak to you, Abraham Darker. You
are closer to death than you can possibly imagine.”
“I didn’t think he was important,” Abe said. “I
didn’t think the machines were important. Billy is just a kid. He played
with radio-controlled toys years ago.”
“Not toys of quite this sophistication.” King gazed
at him. Slowly, he relaxed. “I do not expect you to shed your loyalty to
these people lightly. When you have transferred it to me where it
belongs, it will serve you well. But neither will I disregard a threat to
my operations, or the failure of my men to inform me of unusual activities
in our environment, no matter how trivial.”
King sidestepped to put the barren Trevor hill in
view. He stared at it with his brow furrowed with concern. “No matter.
We are isolated. It will be a duel of ingenuity and resolve between us.
We both know who will be victorious in the end.”
“Then I can have Evie back?” Lazarus said,
interrupting a man who could kill him in an instant in loathing for his
narrow-minded pathology.
But King glared at Abe with lingering anger, not
Lazarus. “If the child was one of the beneficiaries of your misplaced
loyalty, it will be your punishment to watch your brother exercise his
perverse appetite with her. He can devour his sibling for all I care.”
Abe stood stock still, not certain of what King
expected of him. King glanced again at the desolate Trevor hill, growling
with irritation, and then stomped his way back to his cabin. Delaney
followed. Lazarus then noticed
that he stood alone with Abe in the middle of the court and hurried away
with a whimper of fright.
