Beneath the Stars
Chapter 10
They crossed a couple of bridges over small streams, and Mabel noticed the creeks were overflowing their banks, rain-swollen and colored a deep brown, with swirling branches and even logs rushing along.
"Must have rained hard up this way last night," Ford said. "That means Dipper can't just cut across country. He'll have to take the river bridge."
"Yeah, we're close to it now," Stan said. "There it is ahead."
The Kinzing Prichette Bridge was a modest concrete span, only about fifty feet long, but its central arch rose thirty or forty feet above the river surface in the gorge below. They could see the bridge, then lost sight of it again as they went around a curve and then Mabel could see it again and looked hard–but no Dipper.
However, just this side of the bridge, a logging truck pulled off on the narrow shoulder of the road. The driver, a burly, black-bearded man in stained green coveralls, was working beside the load, evidently re-fastening some heavy chains around the logs. Stan braked beside him, and Ford leaned out and said, "Excuse me, have you seen a teen-aged boy with a backpack and a blue-and-white cap?"
"Huh?" the big guy said. "Oh, yeah, picked him up a ways back. Said he's goin' campin'. I hadda stop to fix this chain, an' he hopped out an' went on. I was gonna go all the way up and let him out at the overlook, it was on my way anyhow, 'cause I sell firewood at my place 'cross the way in the Loop, but he—"
"How long ago?" Stan called across Ford.
The man rubbed his nose with the back of a gloved finger. "Didn't look at my watch. Fifteen, twenty minutes, I'd guess."
"Thanks!" Ford called, but Stan stamped on the gas, the El Diablo leaped forward, and the truck driver probably didn't even hear him. A minute or two later, Stan pulled off at the picnic area, and they all piled out.
"Let's go!" Stan said. "He can't be far ahead of us now. Let's find him!"
Ford used a handheld GPS device to navigate. They hurried along, trotting when the forest was open enough, practically running on the downslopes. Tremaine dropped back to the rear, with Ford in the lead, Stan right behind him, and then Mabel. "When we spot him, don't call out," Ford warned over his shoulder. "In his condition, Dipper would only run from us. We have to get close to him without his realizing it, and before he arrives at the crater!"
Mabel got winded before long. Stan silently picked her up and carried her, just as if she were twelve again. Ford found the places where they'd slashed through thickets and they followed the trail that Tremaine and Ford had blazed the day before.
"His backpack!" Ford said. It had been dropped beside the path they were taking.
Ford stooped to pick it up, but Stan said, "Leave it! We'll get it on the way back!"
They increased their speed, with poor Dr. Tremaine huffing and wheezing many steps back in the rear.
As fast as they traveled, when they got to the summit of the next ridge over from the crater, they saw Dipper ahead of them, down in the hollow, about to start the climb up. Yesterday's rain had long since ended, but the pulverized earth and wood was still wet, and it looked as if he slid back three feet for every two feet he climbed. Stan set Mabel down as they caught their breaths for the last rush.
They no longer tried to be particularly quiet, though they didn't talk. Dipper didn't seem to hear them. Except for the whisk of leaves against them and the squelch of soaked earth underfoot, the four hurried down in a kind of fearful silence, then with difficulty walked through clinging black mud–in rainy times the bottom of the hollow became swampy–and finally came to stand at the foot of the ridge.
Dipper was already twenty feet above them, with fifteen left to go, but he was obviously struggling to make that last distance. Tremaine stepped forward, knelt in the mud, held up his shiny pistol in his right hand, his left hand cupping the butt below, took aim–
"Don't!" Mabel yelled, jumping to try to knock the gun aside.
Everything happened in slow motion. Still in the air, she looked up at Dipper. He had to have heard her yell. Dipper's head whipped around, the gun went thwack! and a red blossom of blood bloomed high on the back of Dipper's thigh.
Mabel hit, skidded, fell on her butt, and then got back to her feet, her gaze still locked on Dipper, who'd slipped down a couple of feet. He cursed in a voice that sounded nothing like his own, then clambered desperately upward. Mabel followed, trying to reach her brother–but as Dipper reached the rim of the crater, he pitched forward convulsively, then collapsed on his stomach, sprawling. He twitched and his arms and legs jerked and he looked as if he might be dying.
Stan and Ford were climbing beside Mabel, with difficulty, trying to reach him. Mabel scrambled up between them, slipping, half falling, not caring that her clothes were caking with sticky mud or that dagger-sharp splinters stabbed her palms.
Ford reached Dipper first, then Stan. Mabel came panting up. Her voice came out edged with fear: "Is he all right? Is he dying?
"He's in the grip of a severe allergic reaction," Ford said. "It's hard on him, but if it works, it'll be harder on the parasite."
Dipper's swollen face had broken out in a splash of raised, angry red patches, looking like a map of islands. He gasped, choked inarticulately, and began to retch. Mabel reached for him, but Tremaine, there at last, pulled her back. "Not yet! His body is struggling to reject foreign substances!"
Then Dipper's whole frame lurched and thrashed with a horrible uncontrolled spasm, and he curled his back, his head arching back toward his spine, and he vomited–
No, some slow, horrible thing flowed from his mouth, gelatinous yellow slime drooling out with it, a living thing, squirming, dark green, its squamous skin glistening sickly, a few stiff yellow slime-stringed bristles sprouting from its back.
It was most like a horribly overgrown caterpillar, a foot long, without visible sense organs: a squishy, mucous-covered pulsating green tube, warty and alien. It squirmed and writhed on the very lip of the crater, dirt and wood chips clinging to it, and then shiny, many-jointed black legs, nine of them, shot from its surface and unfolded like a gigantic spider's legs, and it rose on them and began to scuttle downward, trying to reach the hole in the bottom of the crater where the remnants of the meteorite waited.
"Give Tremaine your disruptor!" Ford barked to Stan. "He's the best shot! Get the kids down–you're the only one strong enough. Here, take it. This is for Dipper! Give it to him ASAP! If we don't come back, for God's sake, get the kids home!"
For once, Stan didn't argue. He yanked a pistol version of Ford's quantum destabilizer from his belt and tossed it to Tremaine. Ford already held one. Stan barked, "Come on, Mabel!" As Tremaine and Ford leaped over the top like soldiers in a World War I movie, Stan grabbed Dipper and half fell, half slid down the muddy slope of the ridge. Mabel followed him, slipping and skidding.
The hollow between the ridges lay deep in the dark clinging mud, so Stan hauled Dipper over to the far side, where broad shaggy hummocks of tall, bright-green grass grew, and lay him down on one of those. He took out the thing Ford had handed him–a self-contained epinephrine injector–and Stan loosened Dipper's belt and yanked his jeans and underwear down.
Mabel heard something tear free of the cloth and saw a fat, two-inch long dart had fallen. It had a cluster of plastic "feathers" and a wicked tip like a large-gauge hypodermic needle. She realized with a shock that Tremaine had shot not a bullet but the dart into the top of Dipper's left thigh–he'd probably aimed for his butt, but her yell might have made him miss.
Stan tugged the protective caps off the epinephrine pen and plunged the injector against Dipper's bared buttock. Dipper jerked and twitched, but Stan held the injector in place for ten seconds or more. "That should fix him up," he said. "Don't look, I gotta get him dressed again."
"I don't mind seein' his butt if it's in one piece!" Mabel said fiercely. She crawled onto the hummock of grass and while Stan pulled Dipper's jeans up and fastened his belt, she cradled her twin's head in her lap. "You're OK now," she said, stroking his hair. "We–we'll get you back to the Shack, and, and . . . . You're gonna be OK!"
Woozily, Dipper opened his eyes and whispered, "Mabel? How'd you get way up here?" He sounded dazed but surprised.
Something behind Mabel crackled and buzzed, Ford yelled something and then a second sharp sound and buzz, and then the whole world shook beneath them.
"Whoa!" Stan yelled.
An explosion had erupted in the crater, not a loud one, but one that rushed the air with a deep kind of foom! It sent a shock wave that nearly pushed Mabel over, but she bent against it, her arms around Dipper's head, protecting him.
A heartbeat later, a column of brilliant flaring white-green light leaped up, separated itself from the crater, and shot straight into the sky, diminishing to a mere spark–and then it just kept going up until it vanished. "Ford!" Stan yelled. "Ya OK?"
Nothing but silence.
Stan headed back to the ridge. "No!" Mabel yelled, reaching up and grabbing his hand. "Grunkle Ford said to get back to the car!"
Without looking back, Stan jerked free and growled, "Would you leave Dipper?"
"Mabel?" Dipper asked weakly. "Why's Stan here? I–I have to go help Dr. Tremaine. He's going to examine the meteorite. There's no place for Ford to tie the rope. . .." he frowned, his red, swollen face making him look like a caricature of himself.
"It's OK," Mabel cooed, stroking his forehead. She fought to hold back her tears. "I'll tell you all about it later."
She watched Stan repeat the hard climb. He got to the rim, stood on it, and yelled, "Are you two lamebrains all right?"
And Ford's voice–Ford's voice!–came faintly from inside the crater: "We're not hurt, but we can't make that climb without a rope! We'll see if we can get up this low side here, and then we'll cut around the base of the crater rim to you. How is Mason?"
"Dipper's gonna be OK, I think," Stan called back. "Get your asses outa that hole an' we'll take him to the clinic!"
"What?" Dipper said. "What did you say?"
"Grunkle Stan said–"
"Not him," Dipper murmured. "I heard Wendy calling me. So plain. I . . . heard . . . Wendy."
His eyes crossed and closed, and he smiled in a way that broke Mabel's heart.
And then he lost consciousness.