Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede - Bradley Denton (best thriller books to read TXT) 📗

tents and canopies have been set up. They glow orange and yellow as if they were about to catch fire. Thousands of people are packed around the tents like cattle at a stockyard, which must mean that the tents themselves are already full. I have the impression that the tents are mobile slaughterhouses where the waiting people will eventually be turned into hot dogs and braunschweiger.

I have finally found an Oklahoma City radio station that tells me what is going on here. This is a massive tent revival organized by the Reverend William Willard and his Corps of Little David. Its purpose, the radio says, is to concentrate as much “prayer power” as possible at one focus. Willard’s faithful have begun holding what they claim will be a continuous vigil until the Antichrist is defeated.

This strikes me as overly optimistic.

But now the radio reports that Willard believes Oliver is the Antichrist who must be vanquished.

Armageddon is around the corner, the people in the fields are shouting. The Rapture will occur at any second. (Good. Then maybe they’ll all disappear and we can get through this traffic jam.)

I’ve changed the radio station, and the news on the new one is no better. Vigilante squads of angry TV viewers are being organized to search for Oliver. Some of these are Willard-inspired, but most are led by secular couch potatoes who simply resent having their freedom of choice taken away.

The Federal Communications Commission has become the smallest of Oliver’s worries.

“If the vigilantes find him first,” Bruce says, “there won’t be enough left of him to prosecute.” Bruce sounds matter-of-fact, and it makes me angry at him again.

I must remind myself that he is an attorney. He isn’t supposed to get emotionally involved.

As a professional, I’m not supposed to get emotionally involved, either. But when you spend your life listening to other people’s pains and fears, how can you stay unaffected? Transference works both ways.

I am terrified for Oliver. I am afraid that he will die before I can find him. I am afraid that I will never find him at all.

I am afraid that I will never be able to ask him whether he really has spoken with beings from other worlds. I am afraid that I will never be able to ask him what they have told him.

Bruce drives on. The jam clears a bit, and we pick up speed. But it isn’t enough. We will never reach Lubbock in time.

Bruce points to a brilliantly lit white structure on a distant hill and tells me that it is the Cowboy Hall of Fame. I tell him big fucking deal.

RICHTER

After hours of monitoring on the Ford’s CB radio on Channel 19, he finally heard a trucker complain about “a rich bitch in a Jaguar.”

Richter picked up the microphone and thumbed the key. “Y’all mind sharing that rich bitch’s ten-twenty?” he asked, affecting a drawl. “She owes me money.”

“When I run into her,” the speaker answered, “she was at a roadside crapper on Oklahoma 17, about three miles east of Sterling. Maybe fifteen minutes ago.”

“She have anybody with her?” Richter asked.

“There was a motorcycle,” the trucker said, “but I didn’t see nobody with it. Could’ve been inside the car.”

“Ten-four,” Richter said.

He stopped at an all-night convenience store, where he used the rest room and bought a sandwich, a Coke, and an Oklahoma map. As he came outside again, the Doberman jumped out of the Ford’s bed and ran past him. He saw a blue spark in one of the animal’s eyes.

Richter watched the dog run out to the highway, turn south, and disappear into the darkness. He was short of sleep, but even so, he did not think that he had imagined the spark.

He reentered the crew cab and studied the map while gulping his sandwich and Coke. He was only twenty-five miles from the rest stop that the trucker had indicated, so it was time to prepare for battle. He took down the shotgun and rifle and loaded them with the shells he had found in the glove box, flicked off the safeties, and replaced the guns on their rack. Then he started the Ford’s engine.

He had driven only a mile when his headlights illuminated the Doberman running down the shoulder of the road. The dog glanced back, then put its head down and ran hard. It pulled away from the glare and became part of the night again.

Richter looked at the truck’s speedometer. He was driving seventy miles an hour.

His instincts told him that the dog was connected to Vale somehow, which meant that he and the creature would meet again. He was glad that he had loaded the rifle.

CATHY AND JEREMY

Jeremy was lying under the kitchen table, chewing on a boot. Cathy was pacing from the table to the refrigerator and back again.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Jeremy grunted.

“You were right,” Cathy said. “There. Does that make you happy? You were right.”

She stopped at the refrigerator and turned on the radio that she had placed atop it. The news was the same as it had been for hours: Protests. Vigilante squads. Lunacy.

She snapped off the radio and resumed pacing. “Well, at least that’ll convince the pro-flesh faction that these fleshbound maniacs aren’t worthy of higher learning.”

“Ought to,” Jeremy said around a mouthful of leather.

Cathy paused by the table. “How close is that G-man to Vale now?”

“Close,” Jeremy said.

“Maybe he’ll just take him into custody. Then the citizenry won’t be able to get to him.”

Jeremy dropped the boot and crawled out from under the table. “No. I didn’t see the whole thing because Ringo was busy ransacking a store, but I think that when the agent almost caught Vale last night, Vale made him look like a fool. The guy lost his car and had to steal two pickup trucks. I don’t think custody is what he has in mind anymore.”

“Nonsense. He’s a Federal agent. He has to follow orders.”

Jeremy cocked his head. “What planet have you been living on?”

Cathy stopped pacing and slumped into a chair. “It won’t do any good for us to go down there. If the agent is close, he’ll have Vale before we’re out of Kansas. And if he doesn’t, the Bill Willyites or other nasties will. Oklahoma is crawling with them.”

“Stop trying to talk yourself out of it,” Jeremy said.

Cathy rubbed her eyes and stood. “Grab anything you think these stupid bodies might need. I’ll go warm up the damn Datsun. We’ll use your eye-link to guide us, so stay sharp.”

Jeremy whined. “Couldn’t we just go to the basement and become noncorporeal? We could zip to Oklahoma in no time then.”

“And what would we do when we got there?” Cathy asked. “Whisk around and make pretty lights while they lynch the poor bastard? Only flesh can touch flesh.”

Jeremy scratched his ear. “I forgot. There are actually a few things flesh can do that nonflesh can’t.”

“Nothing worthwhile,” Cathy said, and went out to the garage.

RINGO

Ringo caught up with the motorcycle after a twenty-minute run. The Ariel was parked with a black automobile, but no people were in sight.

He trotted to the car’s left front window and peered in. Sure enough, Vale was asleep in the far seat… but in the driver’s seat was a woman who was awake.

The window slid down with an electric hum, and Ringo backed away. He remembered the Windex incident.

“I thought I heard someone out here,” the woman said softly. “It was the nose prints on the window that gave you away, though.”

Ringo cocked his head as he listened. The woman’s voice sounded neither afraid nor threatening. Instead, it was almost like a higher-pitched version of the voice of the man called Boog.

“Are you hungry?” the woman asked.

He wasn’t, really, because he was still saving treats from his raid of the night before. He took a step forward anyway.

The woman rummaged in a pocket of Vale’s thick outer garment. Vale shifted in his sleep and mumbled. There was a rustle of cellophane, and the woman pulled out a package of Twinkies.

“Yucch,” she said as she turned back toward Ringo. “You wouldn’t want this junk, would you?”

Ringo whined. It seemed like the polite thing to do.

The woman unwrapped the Twinkies and tossed one to the dog. He caught it in midair and swallowed it whole.

“I’ll have the other one myself,” the woman whispered. “Just don’t tell bugbrain here. It’d ruin my image.” She bit into the cake.

Ringo watched her for a little while, wagging his stump, and then trotted away. The woman seemed nice. He was glad that he had broken his rule about getting close to human beings.

He crossed the asphalt strip that cut through the park and then lay down in a clump of evergreens, where he dozed until the sound of an engine woke him. He recognized it as that of the second truck in which he had ridden.

Ringo raised his head and pricked his ears as the truck’s headlight beams speared through the trees. It stopped twenty yards from the car and the motorcycle, and as it stood there idling, the smooth-headed drive emerged and stood between the lamps. He was carrying a rifle.

The woman who had given Ringo a Twinkie stepped from the car, and Vale appeared on the other side of the vehicle. The woman looked angry, and Vale looked frightened.

The rifleman cocked his weapon and aimed it. Ringo leaped to his feet, but the man was already squeezing the trigger.

The sharp crack echoed among the trees as the man cocked the rifle again. The black automobile’s right rear tire had gone flat, but Vale and the woman were still standing. The rifle cracked again, and the car’s left rear tire exploded.

“Run, stupid!” the woman shouted at Vale, and then she sprinted for the black air beyond the reach of the headlight beams.

The rifleman cocked his weapon a third time and swung the barrel toward the running woman.

Ringo bolted from the trees as the man began to squeeze the trigger, and his jaws closed on the man’s left forearm. The dog’s momentum drove the man backward, pinning the gun to the hood of the truck, and the bullet flew far from its target.

“Son of a bitch!” the man yelled.

Ringo jerked his head, flinging the man to the ground. The rifle skittered away, and the dog released the man’s arm to go after it. His plan was to chew it to pieces, but as he reached the rifle, he heard the man scrambling back to the truck. He remembered then that he had seen a second weapon in the rack while riding in the bed. Leaving the rifle where it lay, Ringo whirled and ran past the man, beating him to the truck. Once there, he faced the man and growled, amplifying the sound electronically.

The man turned and dashed for the rifle. Ringo followed at a lope, still growling.

As the man bent to scoop up his weapon, Ringo heard the motorcycle grind, choke, and begin running raggedly. At a glance, he saw that Vale, now wearing his helmet, was lugging the machine onto the road.

Ringo turned his attention back to the bald man, who now had the rifle and was aiming it at Vale. The dog leaped and knocked him down, then clamped his jaws on the left arm again. He was careful not to bite all the way through.

The motorcycle, with Vale aboard, sputtered past Ringo and the bald man to the highway. Seconds later, the crew-cab truck pulled up beside them.

The passenger door opened,