A Rage for Revenge

9 A Rhyme for Jason?

The problem was, I couldn't find a second rhyme for Jason. Basin? Pacin'?

Just south of the Dixon and Mason?

No. This was obviously not going to be one of my more noteworthy efforts.

Disgracin'? Maybe:

- but I doubt that he would be chastened.

Dammit. Why couldn't Delandro have been named Chuck? Chuck, I could rhyme.

This was the worst part of being captured. The waiting. The boredom. At least Loolie had a coloring book to keep her occupied.

I had given up trying to keep track of where we were going. We had wound around through so many twisty back roads, up and down so many rumpled brown hills, that I was beginning to wonder if we were still in California-or even on Earth. Large patches of ground were covered with red ivy-like creepers and purplish vines hung from many of the trees we passed. Blue and white tufts of something furry clustered in shady patches. The higher we climbed into the spiny mountains, the more pronounced the Chtorran vegetation became. There were stiff black spiky things, growing tall and slender; their trunks were smooth and naked-looking; I couldn't name them. There were tall puffy mounds dotting a mottled pasture-nests of nerve-burners; bright red insect-things the size of crabs. There were fields of mandala bushes and broad slopes of tall gray grass. There were curling hedges of purple and orange thorns. And there were bat-like things the size of eagles gliding high in the sky. We were leaving the human world behind.

It almost could have been pretty, except-somehow, the Chtorran life forms looked stark and malevolent; their growth was malignant. Cancerous. Where the infestation was at its thickest and reddest, the landscape looked diseased; it looked sick. The alien ecology leeched at everything it touched: the purple vines encircled the trees with spiky tendrils and sucked at the life within, the red ivy on the ground was bordered with brown patches of dying grass, and there were dead cows lying in a field of rust. Pink puffballs the size of tumbleweeds rolled across the hills, bounced across the highway.

The disaster was complete. The sky was yellow and smoky. Even the clouds were tinged with blood. The air smelled sulfurous---except when it was worse. As we climbed higher, the pungent and cloying odors that came in through the windows of the van were so thick as to be nauseating.

After a while, I couldn't look any more.

I closed my eyes and tried to make up limericks. They might control my body, but I was still in control of my mind.

There was an old witch, name of Jessie

whose crotch was all smelly and messie.

Um....

Jessie was even harder to rhyme than Jason.

No. I had to find a rhyme. I wouldn't be defeated. My sanity might depend on this. I had to have a way to resist.

She enjoyed a good squirm with an alien worm

But if I used that, I'd have to make up something else for Jason. Jessie. Jessie. What rhymes with Jessie?

- and got stains all over her dressie!

All right, so now what could I do with Jason?: What I really wanted to do was kill him, Painfully. With my bare hands, if I could.

I thought about that for a while.

It was much more satisfying than limericks. For a while.

The convoy jolted off the pavement onto a dirt road that twisted impossibly through dirty black brush. It was almost dusk. We'd been traveling half a day.

"We're almost there!" said Loolie. My gut began to tighten again.

It was the not knowing that was driving me crazy. Were they going to torture me? Feed me to the worms? Put me in a sensory deprivation tank? I'd heard stories about the Tribes.

We rattled across a wooden bridge over a dry gully, up an incline and down into a sheltered bowl of land, shadowed by leafy willows and black oaks. The only obvious sign of Chtorran infestation were purple and red veils hanging from some of the trees. They looked like cobwebs, or silk. They had a shimmery look where the sunlight still sparkled off of them.

As we circled down into the clearing, I could see that the camp itself was a ragtag collection of vehicles, motor homes, trucks, trailers, and collapsible dwellings scattered around the parking lot of an old abandoned motel. Some of the buildings showed signs of recent repair work.

The Tribe was already pouring out of the woods and the buildings, shouting and rushing to greet us. It was joyous pandemonium! I heard someone calling, "Come on! The young god is back!" A pack of children and dogs came scrambling and running out ahead of the rest, all screaming and yelping like wild baboons-and there were chittering bunnydogs, and those other naked-bunnydog things too, bouncing and careening along with them-followed by at least thirty or forty adults and teenagers, many of them carrying weapons.

The children were dirty, and many of them were naked, but none of them looked hungry or unhappy; they varied in age from toddlers to pre-teens. They came charging like warriors, the dogs barking and yapping around them. The dogs were a mixed assortment of unpleasant-looking canines; they looked like leftovers from the pound, the dregs of the species.

The various bunnydogs and bunnydog-things were just as varied; there were at least a dozen of them caught up in the rush, waddle-hopping like crazy as they tried to keep up. They bounced across the ground like an avalanche of rats and rabbits, yipping and squealing and gobbling like the children, but no two of them shared the same size, shape, or color. They ranged from a deep ruddy brown to a pale, almost-white shade of pink; there were even a couple of blue-purple and orange-yellow bunnydogs. Some were as small as toddlers; others were at least as large as six-year-olds, a meter or more. Most of them looked like parodies of the bunnydogs I had met last year. There were several small weasely-looking ones and a couple of very fat drunken-looking ones, and one in particular-a ghastly red, ratty-looking creature, half the height of a man-looked like a cat's nightmare.

And the humans too were just as assorted: tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, yellow, old, young.

Even before the convoy had come to a full stop, the chattering people and animals-and things-were already surrounding the vehicles, clustering excitedly to help unload and hear the news. All of them were abuzz with questions-but first they backed up politely to give Orrie room to dismount. The back of the truck slapped down into the dirt to make a wide ramp and Orrie flowed down and into the cheering crowd. They surged in close, oohing and aahing and patting at him affectionately.

"Whhhhrrrr!" said Orrie. "Whhrr-whhhhrrrrrr!"

It almost sounded like a purr. I'd never heard a worm make that sound before; but then, I'd never seen a worm that had acted like this one either. Delandro jumped down out of the truck next and the crowd surged in to hug him and kiss him too, men and women alike. Loolie and Jessie and Marcie burst happily out of the van to join them. I stayed where I was, trying as hard as I could to be invisible.

"All right, all right," said Jason, caught up in the crush, laughing with delight at being the center of so much attention, "let's get some of this gear unloaded first, okay!" But his words were swept away in the roar of greetings.

The younger children were all squealing in delight. I heard cries of "What did you bring us?" and "Did you get any candy?" The adults were also shouting back and forth, exchanging greetings and good-natured jibes.

I wanted to be afraid, but I couldn't. Mostly, I felt-left out. Most of the people here looked disappointingly mundane, and they acted as solid as a community of New Christian farmers. Many of the men wore beards, and most of the women had their hair pulled back in neat efficient ponytails, or close-cropped like the men. They all wore jeans and T-shirts, or jeans and flannel shirts, or jeans and sweatshirts, or jeans and no shirt at all-but all the adults looked clean. For some reason, that seemed important. The other two worms were climbing down from their truck now. The crowd greeted them enthusiastically too. Their affection and respect was obvious; but it was equally obvious that Orrie was held in special regard.

I could understand their enthusiasm. Orrie may have been one of the smallest worms I'd ever seen, but he was also one of the brightest. I couldn't take my eyes off of him. It had been my previous experience that the older and larger a worm was, the brighter and more distinct its stripes would be, but Orrie was just a baby and already his colors were vivid. His stripes were more sharply delineated than I'd ever seen before on a worm. His proud patterns shifted back and forth across his sides like the letters on a billboard. The crowd pressed in closer.

And the worm seemed to like the attention! He even lowered his eyes, so the children could reach up and scratch behind the thick fleshy stalks that supported them. Two of the smaller boys were trying to climb up on his back.

I could feel my fists clenching in my lap: I felt naked without a weapon. A flame-thrower.

A couple of the teenagers noticed me sitting in the back of the van then and started calling to the rest of the crowd. "Look, look-Jason brought back a new guest! H'ray!" They started waving affectionately to me. "Hi! Come on out! What's your name?"

They climbed in and took me by the hand and pulled me out to join the crowd. The people gathered around me like I was a long lost cousin. I was hugged and kissed by all of them, male and female, young and old, everyone who could get to me. "Welcome, welcome home! What's your name? We're so glad you came! Welcome!" They dragged me out in front of the vehicles where a large, raucous, and informal gathering was coming spontaneously together. Everyone was linking arms in a huge circle. The bunnydogs and naked-bunnydog things were joining the group too, but they did not link arms; instead they squatted attentively just inside the line of humans.

Just before the last few individuals linked up, Orrie flowed into the center of the circle, purring loudly. He swiveled his eyes around to look at everybody. People cheered and applauded and hollered with good-natured whoops of encouragement.

I found myself between a skinny adolescent girl and a nervous looking boy, but they seemed proud to be next to me.

And then Jason Delandro stepped into the middle of the circle.

He turned around slowly, so everyone could see him laughing and smiling and waving, and the wild cheering broke out again. What were all these people so excited about? Did they do this all the time? They applauded, they screamed, they stamped their feet and hollered.

Delandro grinned and raised his hands high. "Hello!" he shouted.

"Hello!" they shouted back.

"I want to share with you!"

Another burst of wild enthusiasm. My military mind decided they were mindless idiots. But I knew these people weren't stupid. There was something else going on here.

"As you can all see," Delandro pointed, "we have a new guest with us tonight!"

They looked at me and cheered again.

"His name is James Edward McCarthy. Until this afternoon, he was a lieutenant in the United States Army."

Faces turned to me. More smiles. People looked and waved and hollered, "Hello!" and "Welcome!"

"He's our guest," Jason continued. "We gave him the choice and he chose to be our guest. I know I don't have to tell you to give him all the love you can, because I know you will; but I want you to make a special effort to cherish Jim because he's still carrying a great deal of fear and he needs to know that there's nothing in the world to fear here, is there?"

They hooted and stamped and clapped again. The girl on my right put her arm around my waist and gave me a squeeze. The boy on my left-he wore thick glasses, he looked half blind-patted my shoulder warmly.

"All right now, I've got a lot of other news for you. There are some very exciting things happening! And I know you want to hear all about everything!"

"Yeah, Jase!" someone shouted. "Tell us!"

"But if I started to share all of it tonight, we'd be here till tomorrow!" He looked ecstatic. He said, "But I will tell you the big surprise right now."

"Do it, Jase!"

"Go for it!"

"I want you all to look at Orrie! Doesn't he look terrific! Orrie is very very pleased! Because we did good."

"Yeah!"

"Yay, Orrie!"

The cheering and stomping started to become a steady roar. I wondered if these people were about to erupt into a fit of collective hysteria. They were delirious with joy!

Orrie was circling and turning in the center. He was almost writhing. His excitement was growing with the crowd's.

"We did good!" Jason was hollering now to be heard. Someone shoved a microphone in his hand. He took it and shouted into it: "We did very good! We found what we were looking for!"

The crowd went crazy. They started jumping up and down, screaming and yelling, hugging and kissing each other.

Jason was screaming now. "We are going to add the fourth corner!"

And they screamed and cheered again. They started hollering, "When, Jason? When?" It turned into a chant. "When, Jason? When?"

Jason held up his hands and waited for silence. The crowd hushed quickly. As Jason lowered his hands, he was abruptly illuminated by two bright spotlights. They were mounted on the cabs of two of the trucks. Jason had to squint his eyes against the glare. Orrie's eyes went sput-phwut. Jason lifted the microphone to his mouth and whispered dramatically into it, "That's the big news. It looks like it'll happen before summer!"

This time, screaming wasn't enough. The circle broke ranks. They charged Orrie to hug him. They charged Jason to hug him. I was left standing and watching.

Suddenly, people were grabbing and hugging me. "Jim, it's great for you to be here!"

"You're so lucky! What a privilege!"

"I know this is confusing for you, but it's an incredibly joyous time. Not just for us, but for all humanity!"

Somebody turned me. I was looking into Jessie's face. Her eyes were glowing. She was wreathed in smiles. She hugged me and kissed me. She said, "Jim, this is bigger than Christmas! Something is happening here that is going to transform the human race! And you're going to be part of it!" She kissed me again. I stared at her.

I stared at all of these people. I was too dazed to be horrified. "Please! Everybody!" That was Jason, screaming into the microphone. The sound was deafening. "Everybody, listen! I know you're happy! This is what we've been waiting for! But there's still a lot of work that has to be done. We need to build a birthing pen, and we'll need to lay in a lot of supplies because we won't be able to travel for a while, and we're going to have to be very careful; we'll have to set up extraordinary security measures-and all the other day-to-day things that have to be done. But, I know I can count on you to get the job done. I just want to caution you: now that we're this close, we can't get careless! There's too much at stake. Right?"

"Right!" They roared back.

Jason beamed. "Now I know you all want to celebrate Orrie's return tonight. And our triumph! And we will! We'll celebrate in the biggest way possible! But we still have a lot of work left to do, so let's get it done just as fast as we can, and at midnight tonight, we'll gather together for the biggest damn Revelation we've ever had!"

Oh, my dear God in Heaven. Revelationists.

With three tame worms.