Scorpion Shards

“They got away,” said Dillon. '. . . And Deanna’s dead.” The four hesitated, not even wanting to get close to him. It was Tory who finally stepped down.

“We need to know about the hermit on the other side,” said Tory. “What can we do to stop him?”

Slayton! He had forgotten about Slayton! He was long gone, somewhere in Tacoma by now, already beginning the great collapse.

“I don’t think he can be stopped,” said Dillon sadly. “You should have killed me.”

But, instead, Tory reached her hand out to him. “Hurry, the hole’s almost closed.”

Up above, Michael and Lourdes had already forced their way through the hole, which was no larger than a basketball now.

“You’re gonna let him come with us?” Winston shouted down to Tory. “After what he’s done? With his leech-freak still out there?”

“He’s one of us,” was the only answer Tory gave.

Winston threw a bitter gaze at Dillon, and then threw himself into the hole and vanished. When Tory got to the top, she took a moment to look at the desolation here in this infinite “between.” Then she pushed her way into the hole, which stretched around her like right elastic, until she disappeared into darkness.

Dillon hesitated. If the world on the other side of that hole was already starting to fracture, it would soon be more of a hell than this tormented place they were leav­ing. But it was his world, and his responsibility to face what he had done there. So he took a deep breath and grabbed the lip of the hole with both hands, stretching the rend in space as wide as it would go. Then he squeezed his way into a layer of cold, suffocating darkness, and finally pushed himself through the gap on the other side, into the world of life.

***

The weapons locker was empty.

This was the first thing Dillon noticed as he fell from the hole to the cold wooden floor of Slayton’s shack. The weapons locker was empty, and Slayton was gone.

Dillon squeezed his eyes shut, trying to somehow disap­pear inside himself, but could not. “You don’t know how awful it’s going to be,” he told the others. “You can’t imagine what the world will be like tomorrow. . . .”

They all looked at each other, then turned back to Dil­lon.

“There’s something you should see outside,” Lourdes said.

It was night now, and the hermit’s old pickup was still there, its headlights shining straight at them. Its engine was on—overheating and billowing steam; radiator fluid soaked the ground.

Two figures were in the light of the headlights: a small boy making rivers in the dirt with the spilled radiator fluid, and Slayton, who was sitting up against the grill. It seemed Tacoma was no longer of any interest to him.

“Was this part of the plan?” Michael asked Dillon.

Clearly it wasn’t.

“You were good . . .” Tory told Dillon. “But I guess there’s some things not even you can predict.”

Lourdes picked Carter up in her arms, as the five of them stared at Slayton, loaded shotgun still in hand, sit­ ting motionless against the grill of the pickup.

The radiator was leaking because it had been punc­tured by a steel arrow. The same steel arrow that pinned Slayton’s lifeless body to the radiator grill.

“We was playing cowboys and Indians,” said Carter, still gripping Slayton’s crossbow in his hands. “I won.”

Inside the dead hermit’s shack, a hole in the wall of the world quietly healed itself closed and disappeared with a tiny twinkling of light.

18. The Five Of Wands

They buried Slayton beside his shack with his own shovel. He had lived forsaken, but was laid to rest with more tender care than he had known in life. They buried his weapons with him and, with each shovel of dirt, they not only buried the man, but also the nightmare they had lived under for so long.

They finished at dawn, and now the forest that had seemed so desolate revealed its own slow recovery in the growing light. Between the gray, lifeless trees, grass and wildflowers had come back to begin the process of life again.

Winston gathered some of the wildflowers, strewed them across the barren grave, then brushed his fingers across them until the grave sprouted into a colorful gar­den. Then the four of them built a fire to warm them­selves, and stood around it, talking of small, unimportant things, which they never before had had the luxury to do.

Only Dillon stayed away, still an outsider.

He had been the first to begin digging the grave, the first to gather wood for the fire, but when nothing was left for him to do, he placed himself in exile. They all were painfully aware of his presence.

“Someone should say something to him,” suggested Tory.

Winston gnawed beef jerky on teeth that were still coming in. “I got nothing to say to him,” he declared coldly.

They all stole glances at Dillon, who sat alone by the hermit’s grave, aimlessly shuffling a worn deck of cards he had found. He was thinner now, and his face almost cleared up, but there was a burden in that face so weighty and oppressive, it was hard to look at him.

“What can we say that will make any difference?” wondered Lourdes and glanced towards Carter, who now busied himself dropping sugar cubes into a bucket of rain­water, watching them dissolve with the same mindless in­difference he must have felt when he fired that crossbow. The boy was a living testament to the people and places Dillon had shattered, and nothing any of them could say would change that.

“Any one of us could have ended up like Dillon,” said Michael. “I know I almost did.”

Michael left the warmth of the fire and was the first to brave the distance to the boy they knew only as The De­stroyer.

***

“Solitaire?” asked Michael as he approached Dil­lon.

Dillon didn’t break the rhythm of his shuffling. “A trick,” he answered.

“Can I see it?”

Dillon looked at Michael apprehensively, then handed Michael the cards. “Shuffle them and lay them face up,” he said.

Michael sat down, shuffled the cards, then spread them out, face up, showing a random mix of fifty-two cards.

Dillon picked the deck up again and began to shuffle it himself. “I never liked playing cards,” said Dillon, “be­cause no matter how much I shuffled the deck, the first card I always turned over was the ace of spades. The death card.”

“That’s not the death card,” said Tory as she came over and sat beside them. “Believe me, I’ve seen the death card, and it’s not the ace of spades.”

Lourdes came over as well, leaving Winston the only one refusing to talk to Dillon. They watched as Dillon shuffled the deck over and over, and when he was done he handed the deck to Tory. “Flip the first card,” he asked.

Tory flipped it. It was the ace of spades.

“Cool trick,” said Michael.

It was Lourdes who realized that the trick hadn’t ended. “Why don’t you flip the second card?” she sug­ gested.

Tory flipped it; the deuce of spades.

“So?” said Michael.

Tory flipped another card; the three of spades; then the four of spades; then the five. She looked at Dillon