The Tommyknockers Read online

  The E-4 puked into his gas mask and nearly choked on the stuff before someone could get a fresh one over his face.

  "Someone get that popgun!" a major shouted through an electric bullhorn. His mask muffled his words but did not destroy them. "Get it, but be careful! Pick it up by the barrel! I repeat, be extremely careful! Don't point it at anyone!"

  Pointing it at someone, Gard would have said, always comes later.

  4

  More than a dozen were shot down on the first day of the invasion by scared, trigger-happy soldiers, kids, most of them, who pursued the Tommyknockers from house to house. After a while, some of the invaders' fear began to rub off. By afternoon they were actually having fun--they were like men driving rabbits through wheat. Two dozen more were killed before the Army doctors and Pentagon braintrusters realized that the air outside of Haven was lethal to these freak-show mutations who had once been American tax payers. The fact that the invaders could not breathe the air inside Haven would have seemed to have made the converse self-evident, but in all the excitement, no one was really thinking very well (Gard wouldn't have found this very surprising).

  Now there were only forty or so. Most were insane; those who weren't wouldn't talk. A makeshift stockade was built in the area which passed for a town square in Haven Village--just below and to the right of the towerless town hall. They were kept there for another week, and during that period another fourteen died.

  The changed air was analyzed; the machine which manufactured it was carefully studied; the failing batteries were replaced. As Bobbi had suggested, it didn't take the braintrusters long to understand the mechanics of the device, and the underlying principles were already being studied at MIT, Cal Tech, Bell Labs, and the Shop in Virginia by scientists who were nearly vomiting with excitement.

  The remaining twenty-six Tommyknockers, looking like the weary, pox-raddled remnants of the final Apache tribe in existence, were flown in the controlled-environment cargo-bay of a C-140 Starlifter to a government installation in Virginia. This installation, which had once been burned to the ground by a child, was the Shop. There they were studied ... and there they died, one by one by one.

  The last survivor was Alice Kimball, the schoolteacher who was a lesbian (a fact 'Becka Paulson had learned from Jesus one hot day in July). She died on October 31st ... Halloween.

  5

  At about the same time Queenie Golden was standing on the edge of Hazel's dry well and preparing to jump in, a nurse stepped into Hilly Brown's room to check on the boy, who had shown some faint signs of returning consciousness over the last couple of days.

  She looked at the bed, and frowned. She couldn't be seeing what she was seeing--it was an illusion of some kind, a double shadow thrown onto the wall by the light from the corridor--

  She flipped the wall switch and took a step closer. Her mouth dropped open. It hadn't been an illusion. There were two shadows on the wall because there were two boys in the bed. They slept with their arms wrapped around each other.

  "What--?"

  She took another step, her hand going unconsciously to the crucifix she wore around her neck.

  One of them, of course, was Hilly Brown, his face thin and wasted, his arms seemingly no thicker than sticks, his skin nearly as white as his hospital johnny.

  She didn't know the other boy, who was very young. He was wearing blue shorts and a T-shirt which read THEY CALL ME DR. LOVE. His feet were black with dirt ... and something about that dirt seemed unnatural to her.

  "What--?" she whispered again, and the younger boy stirred and wrapped his arms more tightly around Hilly's neck. His cheek rested against Hilly's shoulder, and she saw with something like terror that the boys looked very much alike.

  She decided she had to tell Dr. Greenleaf about this. Right now. She turned to leave, heart beating fast, one hand still clutching at her crucifix ... and saw something that was quite impossible.

  "What--?" she whispered for the third and last time. Her eyes were very wide.

  More of that strange black dirt. On the floor. Tracks on the floor. Leading to the bed. The little boy had crossed to the bed and gotten in. The two boys' facial resemblance suggested that this was Hilly's missing--and long since presumed dead--brother.

  The tracks didn't come from the hall. They started in the middle of the floor.

  As if the little boy had come from nowhere.

  The nurse bolted from the room, screaming for Dr. Greenleaf.

  6

  Hilly Brown opened his eyes.

  "David?"

  "Shut up, Hilly, I'm sleepun."

  Hilly smiled, not sure where he was, not sure when he was, sure only that many things had been wrong--just what those things had been no longer mattered, because everything was okay now. David was here, warm and solid against him.

  "Me too," Hilly said. "We got to trade G.I. Joes tomorrow."

  "Why?"

  "I dunno. But we got to. I promised."

  "When?"

  "I dunno."

  "As long as I get Crystal Ball," David said, settling himself more firmly into the crook of Hilly's arm.

  "Well ... okay."

  Silence ... there was a dim commotion at the nurses' station down the hall, but here there was silence, and the sweet warmth of boys.

  "Hilly?"

  "What?" Hilly muttered.

  "It was cold where I was."

  "Was it?"

  "Yes."

  "Better now?"

  "Better. I love you, Hilly."

  "I love you too, David. I'm sorry."

  "For what?"

  "I dunno."

  "Oh."

  David's hand groped for the blanket, found it, and pulled it up. Ninety-three million miles from the sun and a hundred parsecs from the axis-pole of the galaxy, Hilly and David Brown slept in each other's arms.

  August 19th, 1982

  May 19th, 1987

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material:

  "Thank the Lord for the Night Time" by Neil Diamond, copyright (c) Tallyrand Music, Inc., 1967. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  "Run Through the Jungle" by John Fogerty, copyright (c) Jondora Music, 1970. Courtesy Fantasy Inc.

  "Downstream" (Bob Walkenhorst), copyright (c) Screen Gems--EMI Music, Inc. and Bob Walkenhorst Music, 1986. All administrative rights controlled by Screen Gems--EM! Music, Inc.

  "Drinkin' on the Job" (Bob Walkenhorst), copyright (c) Screen Gems--EMI Music, Inc. and Bob Walkenhorst Music, 1986. All administrative rights controlled by Screen Gems--EMI Music, Inc.

  "Undercover of the Night" (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards), copyright (c) EMI Music Publishing Ltd., 1983. All administrative rights for the United States and Canada controlled by Colgems--EMI Music, Inc.

  "Hammer to Fall" (Brian May), copyright (c) Queen Music Ltd., 1984. All administrative rights for the United States and Canada controlled by Beechwood Music Corporation.

  "Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk" (S. Weedman, D. Locorriere, R. Haffkine), copyright (c) Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc., 1982 a cognizant original v5 release november 13 2010 Quote from Where the Wild Things Are, story and pictures by Maurice Sendak. Copyright (c) Maurice Sendak, 1963. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.