Dark static a novel, p.29
Dark Static: A Novel, page 29
"Technology is a fickle whore," Zig agreed. "Superior quality is all too often negated by the need for convenience and cheapness."
Mrs. Williams coughed politely at Zig's off-color comment.
"What are we waiting for?" Tommy croaked. "Broadcast the message, Mr. Toll, please! My daughter could be hurt out there."
Zig turned to Ethan. "You're leaving?"
Ethan said, "I have to find Mina."
Zig nodded. "I'll do what I can from here."
"Thank you," Ethan said.
"Fuggle muck!" the parrot cried from its woody perch.
"Unusual bird," Mrs. Williams said.
"Parrotcles is quite the orator," Zig said, smiling. He touched the bird gently with the side of his index finger. "He's a green-winged Macaw I met and traveled with in South America. He saved my life once. In return, I brought him with me to the States in the seventies. We've been friends ever since."
Ethan looked at Zig. "He's in his forties?"
Zig laughed. "Pilgrim, old Parrotcles was in his forties when I met him in São Paulo. He's well into his eighties now. Older than Old Ziggy, aren't you, pal?"
"Fuggle muck!"
"What does that mean?" Tommy asked, staring at the bird in fascination despite his impatience.
"It sounds vaguely crude," Mrs. Williams said disapprovingly from the couch, having recovered her composure.
"Forty odd years, and Zig's yet to uncover that particular mystery," the deejay said. "Say goodbye, bird brain."
"Goodbye, bird brain!" Parrotcles squawked.
"Goodluck, Ethan," Zig said, offering his hand. "You face an adversary unlike any I've ever known."
Ethan took the man's hand. The grip was fierce. "Thanks."
The deejay locked eyes with him. "I'll do what I can for your friends. But trust is a rare commodity, pilgrim. I hope you know what you're doing."
"I'll find Mina and the Slaters. They're the key to all this." He turned to his friends. "I'll come back with help, I promise."
"Come back alive," Rusty said, getting to his feet.
"Stevie, you coming with or what?" Tommy asked.
Steve got to his feet. Sam gave him a look to kill.
"I gotta help the guys," Steve said. "The restaurant, babe. We gotta protect her, too."
She crossed her arms and turned away. Jeanette Williams put her hand on the woman and said, "It'll be ok, dear. There's safety in numbers."
"That's settled then," Zig said. "Ziggy'll send you off with some supplies to help you on your quest."
"Take care of them," Ethan said to Zig and Rusty.
Rusty reached into his pocket, removed the Glock. "Take it, Duskman. Our host here has enough firepower, by the sounds."
"No," Ethan said. "I can't risk a weapon. I don't know how to use it and I don't want to learn now."
"Here, let me have it," Tommy said, grabbing for the handgun.
Steve intercepted, grasped Tommy's wrist. "Amigo, you have not slept and you're worried sick about Joey and Tammy. No offense, but let me hang on to this." He smiled broadly.
Tommy held his gaze a moment before relenting his grip.
Steve took the Glock and stuffed it inside his jacket.
"You know how to shoot?" Ethan asked the restaurateur.
Steve shrugged. "Sure, Duskman. Don't worry. When the time comes, I'll know what to do."
PART THREE
We had fed the heart on fantasies
The heart's grown brutal from the fare
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love.
— W. B. Yeats
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
— The Gospel of John, Chapter 15, Verse 13
36
The drive back down the mountain was made in silence. Ethan sat in the passenger seat, his fractured view a spider web of broken glass the axe-wielding man had left. Steve Lòpez drove without word while Tommy sat behind them frantically thumbing his cell phone for any sign of his lost daughter.
Together they descended back into the fog as the mid-morning sun continued its silent transit, the light flattening, as if the world was somehow losing a dimension.
Zig Toll had seen them off with a cardboard box filled with three high-powered flashlights, a pack of emergency flares, a flare gun, three emergency ponchos, and enough dried food to last several days. Ethan and Steve had reciprocated by giving the deejay most of the bottled water crates they had brought with them from Pez Loco.
Ethan drank from a bottle now, slaking his thirst with the room temperature water, the minerals leaving a slight metallic taste on the back of his tongue, like blood.
He racked his brain for the answer to the problem of where to begin their search for Mina and the Slaters twins. He was sure they wouldn't go back to Ponderosa Christian Camp, not with the body there. Plus, the place would be crawling with G-men. He'd tipped the FBI to check the place out, a piece of misdirection to get the feds to find the body while simultaneously keeping them off Mina's trail. Why had he done that, protected her?
The single-wide trailer in Black Acres had been abandoned. The why of it was not a mystery, Ethan had probably exposed them. But then had Mina skipped town? He doubted it. As long as Judea Lock was playing his Game in Jawbone, Mina would stay.
"She's not answering," Tommy whined. "God help me."
"We'll find her, bro," Steve said.
"You trust that old fruit?" Tommy snapped at Ethan. "Guy's a crack case, spouting stuff about levitating monks and pygmies shooting laser beams out their asses. He's a kook. We left everybody we love with a washed-up hack."
Ethan couldn't bring himself to reply. Instead he turned back and looked out the passenger window. His own haggard reflection was the only thing that he saw in that glass.
Tommy continued, as if the only thing that was keeping him sane was the sound of his own voice. "And that crazy shit you was spouting, Duskman. What was that about? Extra-dimensions, G-men hunting down German Cold War spies."
"Don't forget the part about the evil super villain with the power to make people do anything he wants," Steve added darkly.
Tommy leaned forward into the front cab and put a hand on Ethan's shoulder. "Duskman, pal, we've always trusted ya, but I don't know if I can go along with some of this stuff, you know? It's not just crazy, it's crazy. Freaky. Look, what happened to Jennifer was the worst, we all know that. It's comin' up two years since it happened, but it feels like yesterday… Duskman, what I'm tryin' to say is, is it possible you're not exactly firin' on all cylinders when it comes to this situation?"
Ethan turned to Tommy.
Tommy visibly recoiled from his gaze.
Ethan said, "I didn't tell you this in front of Rusty and Jeanette, but when I went into that higher dimension, in the cabin, I saw more than just Them."
Tommy shivered. "W-what are you saying? W-what did you see?"
Steve threw Ethan a sideways glance.
Ethan held Tommy's gaze. "The dead man was there. He was trapped in the cabin, couldn't get out. He was screaming to get out. But outside was nothing, Tommy, nothing. Except an endless red sky filled with black rock, like the entire universe had gone cold, and all that was left were chunks of dead worlds floating in space. The Spencer guy screamed to get out. He wanted to see God, demanded to see the Big Guy in person. But no one and nothing came for him. And when he realized that, Tommy, do you know what happened?"
Tommy's head shook minutely from side-to-side, his hand white-knuckling his cell phone.
"He dissolved," Ethan said. He held his fists up and made them explode open. "Puff! Vanished. All that was left was his rotting carcass on the floor."
Steve crossed himself and murmured.
Tommy sat back in his seat, mouth open, eyes staring into nothingness. He wiped his face.
"What… What does that mean, Duskman?" Tommy said. "I mean, I ain't exactly an alter boy, you know, but there's gotta be something after death, right? I mean, there has to be something. All those people, Jesus, all those people who die… There's gotta be something!"
Ethan said nothing. He sat back in his chair and stared into the fog. The sign welcoming them to Jawbone emerged from the white, vanished. Shadows of trees hovered around them on the highway. Ethan squinted at a large form looming on the shoulder.
Steve saw it, slowed.
They passed a stopped big rig with trailer in tow. Ethan saw the truck's front wheel was shredded. Miss Bradshaw's, most likely. The woman had been telling the truth. Ethan felt sick at heart.
"We're almost into town," Steve said. "We'll stop at Tommy's place, investigate. Maybe Tammy-girl did pack a bag, eh?"
Tommy appeared distracted. Steve stared at him in the rearview mirror. "Sound good, Tommy?"
Thomas Anderson nodded. "What about that Jack Torrence type we left in the street? The axe-murdering maniac. What about him, Stevie?"
Steve patted his jacket. "We got protection now, Tommy-boy."
"Yeah, right. Right, sure," Tommy mumbled.
They pulled into Black Acres Estates. Tommy's trailer was quiet. No cars. No would-be axe murderers. Still, with the fog crushing existence down to only two-dozen feet, the three remained on high alert. Inside Tommy's place Ethan and Steve waited while Tommy dug around in Tamsin's bedroom.
Ethan looked out of the kitchen window beyond the grease-browned blinds. Nothing moved out there.
"We hit the restaurant next, check in on Pez Loco."
"We might not have time," Ethan said, letting the blind slat drop.
Steve caught Ethan's arm. "Listen, Duskman, I can't let my life be destroyed by whatever this is, comprendido? I've worked too hard, man. The business is finally taking off. I'm gaining a rep that won't recover if this thing gets wild."
Ethan pulled away. "It's already wild, Steve. You've seen it out there, you heard what I said at the station."
Steve clenched his jaw. He slicked back a stray curl and shrugged. "Maybe you hallucinated it, maybe you're back on the juice, who's to say?"
"That's bullshit, Steve, and you know it. You've seen what's out there, how people are behaving. You're scared too. Don't hide behind some macho facade."
Steve's eyes narrowed. He raised a finger and jabbed it at Ethan's face, but before he could say anything Tommy came running out of the bedroom, a long white cable dangling from his hand.
"Look at this! Look!" he cried.
Ethan took the cable. It was a cell phone charger.
"She don't go nowhere without that charger," Tommy said, missing any sign of the tension that had been building between his two friends.
"Maybe she had another one in the car," Ethan suggested.
Tommy thought. "Yeah, but that ain't one you can plug in the wall, right? This one is. Far as I can tell she didn't pack no clothes. Her bags are still in the closet. Christ, where could she be?"
"We go into town and look for her," Steve said.
"We need to find Mina," Ethan countered. "She can help us find Joey and Tamsin."
"We can't trust some perra we don't even know," Steve said. "What's her stake in all this? For all we know the FBI are right and she's behind this whole thing, and if she is…"
Ethan and Tommy waited but Steve never finished. He was staring at something on the kitchen counter. He walked over to the stove and picked it up. He swore in Spanish. Swore in English. His hands trembled.
"I-i-is that one of them, Duskman? Is that a tarot?" Tommy asked.
Ethan rushed forward and took the tarot card from Steve's hands. He peeled the back off. The card pictured a giant angel blowing a golden trumpet in the clouds. Below, bodies rose as if from graves, their arms raised in expectant jubilation. The Roman numerals XX were above the angel's golden hair. Below was the word JUDGEMENT.
Ethan turned the card over. On the back was the now familiar format.
[BEGIN
1. TOMMY ANDERSON DIES OR
2. ETHAN DUSKMAN DIES
3. IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLETE LINE 1 OR 2 BY MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, JOEY HERDSMAN AND TAMSIN ANDERSON WILL DIE AND PEZ LOCO WILL BURN
END]
Tommy took the card from Ethan, read it. Somehow his already pale face went whiter still. He handed the tarot back to Ethan, who read it a second and third time. Steve took the card and spent many seconds reading and re-reading the text before Ethan took it back.
"This one's different somehow," Ethan said, staring at the words.
"Different how?" Tommy almost screamed. "The sicko has Tamsin! This ain't no different from the others. He's gonna kill her, Duskman. He's gonna murder my little girl!"
Ethan shook his head. "Lock's never referred to me in the third person before. Look, right here. Is he saying Tommy dies or I will by default, or is it just a choice? Pick one and the other dies. Kill myself to save Tommy, Joey, Tammy and Pez Loco."
Tommy was speechless.
Steve covered his mouth with a trembling hand.
Ethan swallowed, pocketing the card. He needed water. He went to the sink, poured himself a glass and remembered his theory about contaminated water, tossed the water down the sink drain.
"What are we gonna do, Duskman?" Tommy asked. "He's got Tamsin. What are we gonna do?"
Ethan hung his head over the sink, squeezed down the nausea that threatened to rise. He had to figure out what the card meant, what the choices entailed. Time was slipping away. It was almost noon. Twelves hours to decide. Twelve hours to find Mina and stop Judea Lock.
Tommy came and put his hands on Ethan's jacket, spinning him around, fingers tightening around the lapels. "What. Are. We. Going. To. Do?"
"We can't give in to Lock," Ethan said. "If we do, it'll just get worse. That's what she told me. Mina Cross. She said it will continue, until you've lost everything and you long for death."
Tommy let go. His lips spread thin around his nicotine stained teeth as he said, "When we find this guy, he's ours. Got it? No cops, no courts. We end this fucker, permanently."
"Let's get going," Steve said.
Ethan saw Tommy's old boombox on the dinette table. He picked it up, examined it. Battery operated as well as wired. It took four C-type batteries. He disconnected the power cable.
"What is it?" Tommy asked. "We got a radio in the van."
"I need something portable," Ethan said.
"For what, Duskman?" Steve asked.
"I think we can find Lock using the radio static," Ethan said.
"And what if that don't work?" Tommy said. "What then, Duskman?"
Ethan opened the door. "Then I die, and this ends."
37
"You can't die, Duskman, not after everything we've done to keep your sorry ass alive this past year and a half. That just ain't right!"
Ethan ignored Tommy and watched a German shepherd pad across the street to duck behind a trash can. The animal peeked out from its temporary shelter, meeting Ethan's gaze inside the catering van with dark eyes that seemed to ask, "Hey, man, what's happening to this town?"
Main Street was awash in concealing fog, which showed no sign of dissipating in the afternoon sun. The brume lent the Drag a dreamlike quality, which would have been poetic, if not for the smashed and overturned vehicles and emergency tape fluttering in the slight breeze. The traffic lights at the intersection of Lakeshore and Main blinked red in the gloaming. Nothing else moved.
"Power's out," Ethan said, watching the lights
"Where the hell are the cops?" Steve asked irritably.
They approached Pez Loco. The shutters were still down. There was no sign of damage to the sign or the restaurant's facade. Nothing out of the ordinary except for the red spray-painted words BEANER GO HOME.
Steve slammed on the brakes.
"Don't worry about it," Tommy said quickly. "It's nothing, Stevie, just some dumb punks. The town loves ya, man."
Steve said nothing. He glared at the racist epitaph for a long while, face inscrutable.
Tommy sighed.
Ethan fiddled with the van's radio until he found KJAW.
"...And to the boys in blue who are out there in the middle of all this, I've got a message from Thomas Anderson of Black Acres Estates who is looking for his missing daughter, name of Tamsin Anderson, female caucasian, eighteen years of age, approx five-foot-six with brown hair with blonde streaks, a tattoo on her left forearm of a sparrow. Any info, anything at all, call this station…"
"He kept his promise," Tommy said disheartedly. "Fat good it'll do now."
"If someone saw Tammy, if they could get to a landline..." Ethan began, checking his cell. The service was still down. He thumbed to his mobile browser. No data. Something was blocking the signal.
"We can't wait on that," Tommy said. "Like you said, Duskman. We narrow down this guy's hideout using the radio. Plan?"
Ethan was already scanning the frequencies for the tell-tale clicking. He didn't have to scan far. The sound had bled over onto almost every channel on the dial.
"How're we gonna find anything with that racket?" Tommy said in disdain. "Damn thing sounds like one of them radioactive whatchamacallits."
"Geiger counter," Ethan said. "It's not too dissimilar, but we're tracking radio, not radiation." Ethan knew that radio waves were a part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, but he didn't want to confuse Tommy any further. Besides, his friend was right. The radio was outputting a constant stream of clicks and hiss. He could not imagine the sound getting any stronger.
"Jeez, it's freaky to listen to," Tommy said. "Sounds like...voices. How're we 'sposed to track anything with that?"
Tommy was right. Tucked between the incessant clicking and the rise and fall of static susurration were the incoherent whispers of a dissonant dead chorus.
