Part Ten
"If I could take it all back, think again."
-Nickelback, "Breathe"
Luck was on their side and the group found a town to stop in for the night. The silent cadavers of buildings, quiet soldiers bearing dark gifts, unsettled everyone but Whitney. He went so far as to begin whistling a pop tune as he and Lindsey wandered the town for wood that could be broken up and burned. A low throbbing had set up shop in Lindsey's temples, and he wished that Whitney would stop.
"I've been outside of cities a grand total of five times in my life," Whitney told Lindsey, pausing to test some tree branches before deciding they were too green, "and each time I couldn't pass the minutes fast enough until I was back in one. Country-western singers can keep their wide open spaces."
Lindsey nodded, staring out at the wide expanse of desert that peeked through the holes of civilization. A breeze moved through the forlorn grass almost as it would wheat, and Lindsey felt a wave of homesickness that was as powerful as it was an intrusion.
"So, how much is the woman worth?" There were no words in Lindsey's vocabulary to catalogue how wrong the words sounded coming from Whitney's gentle, you-can-trust-me face. It was like watching a Madonna prepare to devour her own child. Lindsey stared, and Whitney's face split into a grin that suggested a belly laugh would soon be on its way. "Stephanie-Ann and I have been having the dreams, too. If your girl's determined to head towards that black bitch across the mountains then she ain't one of the Walkin' Dude's." Whitney touched the stone lying against the center of his own chest. "And there are quicker ways to get to Nebraska than by going through Vegas."
Lindsey shielded his eyes from the setting sun and stared back in the direction of the vehicle. Back-lit by the disappearing light, Cordelia and Stephanie-Ann were rendered into anonymous silhouettes. "Cordelia has…talents that make her unique," Lindsey said, turning back to Whitney. Secrets. "Beyond that, I don't make a habit of asking questions with irrelevant answers."
Whitney's grin turned salacious and Lindsey's hand curled into a fist. "I'll bet. Guess the Walkin' Dude's not so different from other men, after all."
The house before them had the kind of white picket fence rarely seen outside of Norman Rockwell paintings. The picturesque occupants and their 2.3 kids were likely moldering inside; at any rate, Lindsey didn't see them. The wind or passing vandals had knocked a portion of the fence down, so that pieces lay scattered across the dying lawn like teeth after a barroom brawl. Lindsey turned the pickets into a mental image of Whitney's white, oft-showed teeth, pictured how easily they would explode from his mouth like confetti with one good swing of a fencepost. Lindsey bent over and gathered a few pickets into his arms. He had done worse things.
Lindsey straightened, handing the wood off to Whitney. "You can carry it better than I," he said by way of explanation. He had done better things, too, and none of them involved pissing off a master with the ability to invade minds.
Whitney accepted the wood with no knowledge of how close he had come to being beaten with it. "Man, I thought the plague was bad," he said. "But then the dreams started, of that woman. Old bat was scary as hell. She have that effect on you, too?"
"Yes." The ache had moved from Lindsey's temples to behind his eyes, sharp little ice pick jabs into his brain.
"The Walkin' Dude, though." Whitney's breath made a whistling noise as he sucked it between his teeth. "Going to be a whole 'nother story once we get onto his turf. Not at all like the old bitch. She yelled about weasels every fucking time I dreamed of her, like a goddamned broken record."
'They both scare the hell out of me.' Lindsey flashed Whitney a glitter-diamond smile and said, "Why don't you do me a favor and shut up?"
Whitney's wounded expression came too quickly to be wholly real. The monster that lay beneath was exposed to the light and gone again before Lindsey could be sure that it was real. "Easy there, Lin." Lindsey's eyes narrowed, but he held himself still. "There's no need to work yourself into a fit." Whitney's lips quirked. "We'll be in Vegas tomorrow. Smooth sailing after that."
Lindsey gathered the wood and said nothing.
---
Cordelia listened to Stephanie-Ann with half an ear as the older woman bounced around, picking up cans, scanning the ingredients, and then setting them down again, fretting all the while about the lack of fresh food. Cordelia's offers to help had been rebuffed with a quick, "We all have our coping mechanisms. I'm afraid cooking's mine," and now her primary task was to marvel at a level of domestic energy that made her tired just to watch. Stephanie-Ann had awoken as the Hummer was pulling to a halt for the night and hadn't stopped moving since. She was a lot like Whitney in that regard, and in other, less quantifiable ways. Being in her company made Cordelia's spine go cold at odd moments, all the more troubling because she could not figure out why, much the way Lindsey had when he had first showed up on her doorstep. The way that, if she was going to be perfectly honest with herself, he still could with a careless word or gesture. A line appeared between Cordelia's eyes and something tingled at the edge of her mind, darting away when she tried to grasp for it.
Stephanie-Ann ceased her monologue long enough to pick up a final can, sigh, and say, "Ravioli it is, then."
"Did you guys pack any bowls?" Cordelia asked. "Lindsey and I didn't."
Stephanie-Ann flashed her a smile that nearly succeeded at being charming. Would have succeeded, if it were not for the low-level unease that was escaping its quarantine in Cordelia's spine and spreading through her entire body. "How do you feel about a little breaking and entering?"
'The same way I feel about walking into a tenanted coffin.' "'S not a problem." Cordelia hopped to her feet. "Be right back."
"Thanks." Stephanie-Ann switched from reading cans to organizing supplies, her brisk movements scarcely slowing down. 'Still something off,' Cordelia said. 'And I'd give anything to know what it is.' For the first time since the superflu-since her spectacular failure, if she really wanted to rip the bandage off-Cordelia wished that the Powers That Be would send her a vision.
Whitney and Lindsey approached camp, surrounded by coronas of dying light. The shadows were not so thick, however, that they hid Whitney's customary grin. Cordelia got a bad feeling whenever she saw that monochromatic smile, matched only by her distrust of the man behind it. Mayor Wilkins had often worn a similar expression. Whitney had yet to show any hint of scales, but they didn't have to be on the outside.
Lindsey trailed a few steps behind Whitney, appearing distracted and irritable. A good portion of that was likely self-consciousness about his hand-Whitney was the only one carrying firewood-but there was something else coiled beneath the surface, waiting and running its tongue across its teeth. Something that made the roof of Cordelia's mouth go dry and her heart change rhythms. She hadn't grown up in a town that boasted more vampires, demons, and man eating snakes than a girl could shake a stake at without developing a certain sense for when ugliness was about to erupt across the surface. That sense had begun to do an excited jig in her belly and up and down her spine, complete with the occasional pirouhette.
Stephanie-Ann was speaking, but in her reverie Cordelia missed the words. "I'm sorry, what?"
"I asked if you had any lighter fluid in your pack. Whitney and I were so eager to be out that we completely forgot to bring any."
"I'll get some when I go for bowls," Cordelia said, barely glancing at her. She had begun walking off before Stephanie-Ann could answer. Lindsey halted as she approached, his face becoming marble. She hated it when he did that. Ignoring Whitney completely, Cordelia took Lindsey's arm and pulled him off to the side. "I need to talk to you." A light glance towards Whitney made the implication clear.
"Ah." Lindsey turned back towards Whitney. "I'll catch up with you in a minute."
"Sure." Whitney resumed his walk towards camp.
"What's wrong?" Lindsey waited until Whitney was out of earshot before asking, searching her face with eyes so blue they deserved a warning label. The look was earnest and kind, and if there was ever a moment when Cordelia hoped that her paranoia was way off the mark, it was this one.
"I want to leave," Cordelia told him, giving his face the same searching look that he was giving hers. "Tonight."
Confusion rippled across Lindsey's face, so close to being real. Cordelia began cursing herself for an idiot. "Leave?" he asked. "Why?"
"Call it bad mojo, woman's intuition, whatever," Cordelia said. "But I have a bad feeling about going through Vegas. For the both of us." She told herself that she wasn't throwing Lindsey a lifeline. She told herself that she didn't care one way or another if he took it.
The worry on Lindsey's face became the faux-confident look that made Cordelia want to clench her fists and scream. Anything at all could be going on behind his eyes when he wore that expression.
"Cordy, that's ridiculous," Lindsey said. "What are we going to do, take off with no vehicle and no supplies?"
"Someone's bound to have left their keys lying around," Cordelia argued. "This town's full of cars, and there are plenty of other routes to Nebraska. Faster routes, even." Bingo. A shadow passed over Lindsey's eyes, and what had previously been guesswork based upon gut feeling became ugly fact. "Would you quit lying to me already?"
Was that betrayal that glowed in Lindsey's eyes, white-hot, before being smothered? Cordelia was too busy dealing with her own to tell. "Cordy-" Lindsey began.
"If this is the choice you're going to make," Cordelia said, measuring out each word and injecting it with a malice that surprised her, because she had thought herself beyond it, "then I don't think you should call me 'Cordy'. That's only for people that I Itrust/I." Bitter, savage stress upon the word, and it scorched her tongue to say it. "I'm not stupid, Lindsey. I've heard you muttering in your sleep. I was only hoping that you weren't stupid, either. Yay, Dark Man, huh?" Lindsey leaned back, just by a fraction, and Cordelia realized that it was the first time that she had spoken his name (one of them, anyway; Cordelia had the feeling that he was the sort of creature with a moniker for every occasion) out loud. Doing so felt good, like it reclaimed her power over him. Cordelia decided to do so as often as possible from there on out. "I watched how you and Whitney reacted the first time you saw each other, and I noticed that each one of you wears one of these." Cordelia snatched at the chain hanging around Lindsey's neck. He caught her wrist, too slow; the stone hung between them, a black accusation.
"Nice." Lindsey was gripping her wrist hard enough to leave bruises on the skin. Cordelia was riding on emotion too high to notice until later. Her voice sounded as though it were coming to her from a great distance and she had the feeling that if she wasn't yelling yet, she would start soon. "Someone really needs to tell this Dark Man that giving all of his bootlickers identical necklaces? Only slightly smarter than making them get matching tattoos. Does Stephanie-Ann have one, too, or this a boys club?"
"Cordelia, you're talking nonsense." But there was a hollowness to Lindsey's words, as if he knew that she was beyond convincing. He reached out to touch her shoulder, and Cordelia slapped his hand away.
"Nope, I think I'm making sense for the first time since I let you into my apartment instead of kicking your ass all the way back to the curb." Cordelia made her tone casual, sweet enough to cut even though she was so angry that her vision had begun to throb at the edges. "Should've known that you wouldn't waste any time in jumping from one pit of evil into another." Cordelia's snort was as weary as it was disgusted. "Beats taking a stand and thinking for yourself, doesn't it? The saddest thing is, I thought for a while that you might be a better man than that."
Lindsey's eyes were dark and grim, his expression the same one at the end of her tirade as it had been at the beginning. "And that," he said, "is where you made the biggest mistake of all."
---
Lindsey said nothing to anyone as he and Cordelia walked back into camp, taking a seat on the Hummer's bumper and running a hand over his haggard face. His eyes stared out at everything and took in none of it.
Cordelia was thick with the kind of sympathy that wasn't.
She hovered over her bedroll, not trusting herself to look Lindsey in the eye without bringing on a screaming harpy explosion but rating her chances of maintaining her temper with Stephanie-Ann and Whitney even less. Especially Whitney.
Cordelia folded her arms over her breasts, staring through the gaps in the coffin-houses to the desert that lay beyond. The Dark Man was in Las Vegas. The Dark Man wanted her in Las Vegas. No good could come of this. She was outnumbered and, due to her fantastic rant session, the bad guys knew that she was on to them. 'Now that I think about it, maybe not the best plan that I've had today.' Cordelia turned her eyes towards the sky. "Kinda flying blind here," she whispered, unsure if she was speaking to the Powers That Be, and old woman across the mountains, or both. "So any time you want to send a vision my way, I'm all brain cells."
The brain cells were silent. Cordelia sighed and dropped her arms back to her sides. In other words, time for her to take her destiny back into her own hands.
---
The fire had burned down into embers before Lindsey was able to nudge himself over the line into sleep. He tried to tell himself that he was making sure that Cordelia didn't run off, knew it to be a lie even before the sentence completed itself. If she tried, he wasn't sure that he would stop her.
The Dark Man-Randall Flagg, he was named, though Lindsey could not have said how he knew this any more than he could have said how he knew that he was also called the hard case-came to him immediately.
"What do you know. I had my doubts about you, I'll speak plain and honest about that, but you came through in the end."
"Guess I did." The bitterness hung in the air long after the words themselves had faded. Lindsey looked around him, taking in cornstalks that stood high all around them, making a sound not unlike the hissing of snakes as a night breeze moved through them. The plants were dead or dying, corn falling to the ground in rotting clumps. The hot, nearly sweet smell reminded Lindsey of an aging jungle.
"Where are we?" he asked, turning towards Flagg. Discretion made him avert his eyes towards the ground at the last second. His mouth twisted, but it wasn't enough to make him raise his gaze.
Flagg chuckled. The sound was high-pitched, almost a giggle. "We're in the carnival, of course. IMy/I carnival, and all the rides are ready to roll." He giggled again, producing a sound like glass on steel. A hand that was too cold and soft to be alive stroked Lindsey's cheek, so gentle and so soft. The skin slid about on the bone like an ill-fitting glove. Lindsey fought an extended battle with his gag reflex and won, barely. "I know you've been dreaming about that nigger bitch, Lindsey. I know the treats she's been trying to lure you away from my party with." Holland's voice had sounded like that, kind and reasonable and above all regretful, before he had ordered Lee killed. Lindsey imagined that he could feel the blood splattering against his cheek all over again.
A second later Lindsey yelled and jumped sideways, because he Icould/I feel it, as real as the dying corn and hot enough to blister. The pain was as brief and intense as orgasm, shocking Lindsey into forgetting who he was conversing with. He raised his eyes.
Flagg beamed at him, looking far less like a devil and more like a man than Lindsey would have liked. His hair was brown and wild, framing a face that could be forgotten in seconds at the same time that it would leave an impression for life. When he smiled, he revealed teeth that were very even and very white. "Expecting one of your demons, Lindsey?" he asked.
"It crossed my mind," Lindsey said, scanning Flagg for the trick, the zipper, the red eyes hiding beneath the hazel-colored contacts. "Deals with the devil seem to be my specialty, after all."
Flagg laughed, making the starlight bounce off the dozens of buttons on his jacket. Vertebra by vertebra, the solidity returned to Lindsey's spine. "That's my boy," he said, putting his arm around Lindsey's shoulders, where it burned hotter than blood. It was so easy to forget how cold it had been moments before. "All you have to do is give me the woman, and then I can give you everything else." Flagg took the fingers of Lindsey's hand-his right hand, clean and pink and whole, and with the corn disintegrating around him he had no way if he was imagining the reek that rose from the flesh-and closed them around the stone that hung from Lindsey's neck. When he allowed Lindsey to open his fist again, a small red flaw glittered in the center of the black. "Small price, after all."
Flagg led him away through his decaying carnival, and though Lindsey listened hard, he couldn't hear the faintest twang of a guitar.
---
Lindsey jumped awake, going from flat on his back to sitting up before his eyes had time to fully open. For the first time since the onset of the superflu, there was no sweat slicking his temples. Cordelia twitched in her sleep, rolling over and issuing a liquid murmur of nonsense syllables, and Stephanie-Ann appeared to be having an outright nightmare. Beyond that the camp was silent, even the insects cowed quiet. Lindsey watched Cordelia battle Flagg in her own mind, wondering what kept her from taking the chances for escape that presented themselves, slim though they might be. Meanwhile, the stone around his neck shivered like a live thing. Lindsey pulled it out from beneath his shirt, holding it up to the starlight. There was no red flaw in the center.
But there would be someday, that and so much more if he could just do this one thing, this small thing. All the old religions required sacrifice of one sort or another, and the gesture was often more important than the belief.
Lindsey lay back and stared at the stars.
---
The corn was thick and lush, so close to harvest time that the heads had begun to droop towards the ground. Cordelia took in deep lungfuls of the unique perfume. Her family, she decided, had not taken nearly enough visits to the Midwest while they had the chance.
"Hello, child."
The voice came without any rustle of stalks to mark its owner's approach, and Cordelia jumped. She broke into an embarrassed laugh when she saw that it was only Mother Abigail. "You scared me."
For the first time that Cordelia could remember, no gentle smile graced Mother Abigail's face. The deep, weather beaten lines seemed harsher without gaiety lying beneath them, and they lent Mother Abigail an aura of power that Cordelia couldn't begin to fathom. "It's going to be getting dangerous from here on out, Cordelia Chase," she said.
'It wasn't before?' Cordelia wondered, but thought it wisest to keep her silence.
Her eyes glittering with sorrow and something that may have been the beginnings of anger, Mother Abigail continued, "I had hoped that he would choose better than this. I suppose there's no fool like an old fool."
"Lindsey's fun Stockholm games had me convinced, too," Cordelia said, feeling the hot ball in her stomach being lessened a few inches by commiseration. "He's good at showing people what they want to see."
"A waste of a fine mind." Mother Abigail made a shivering motion, as if she were physically throwing off her disappointment. "But no matter. Whatever vengeance God does not mete out, mankind is always more than willing to provide. Lindsey McDonald is not the reason that we're here." Though none of the kindness faded away, a skewer developed in Mother Abigail's eyes. "We're here about you, Cordelia Chase. You've been floating along, letting the world turn you this way and that 'stead of the other way around. That ain't the woman that you were meant to be."
"Can we talk some more about why Lindsey sucks? 'Cause I think I liked that part better, actually," Cordelia said. Mother Abigail intensified her look. "Okay, point made. With the coasting comes the badness."
"The devils imp wants you, Cordelia." Mother Abigail lifted her hands up, carefully cradling Cordelia's head between them. They felt strong enough to hold up the world, even as the skin over them was stretched as thin as cellophane. "For what you have here. The power."
"My visions," Cordelia whispered. She shook her head until Mother Abigail pulled away. "I haven't had a vision since the plague began-and that one was hardly what I would call an overwhelming success, I might add. The Dark Man's wasting his time on a dead battery. The Powers don't care."
"The ways of God are different from the ways of man, and aren't always for those of us trapped on earth to understand." Mother Abigail ignored Cordelia's arched eyebrow. She leveled her finger at Cordelia's face. "The Imp, now, his desires read loud and clear. Unless you want to get swallowed up by them, you'd best get to standing your ground." Cordelia was silent as Mother Abigail took her elbow, leading her deeper into the forest of corn. The leaves whispered as they passed, masking the sound of Mother Abigail's urgent words.
---
Cordelia awoke with a gasp and a jolt, staring about at the campground. Everyone was asleep save for her, even Lindsey. She lay back down in her bedroll, staring up at stars that for the first time in weeks seemed to be winking at rather than mocking her, and allowed herself a delighted peal of laughter.