Traffic splashed by on both sides of the median, but the Cube was almost invisible in the copse of trees into which it had plowed. Goat looked at the car. It was totaled. Smoke curled up from the wheel wells and one tire had exploded.
“Never liked that faggoty little piece of shit,” grumbled Homer. “Now we need to shop for something better.” He pointed a finger at Goat. “Stay.”
He said it the way people do to dogs. Homer chuckled to himself and began walking toward the highway.
Goat stayed.
Then Goat realized that for some reason the traffic was completely stalled over there. Cars and trucks sat bumper to bumper under the pounding rain. The line stretched all the way to the west, far out of sight. On the other side of the road there was nothing. He tried to make sense of it, but his head was too sore and none of his thoughts worked the way they should.
You have a concussion, he told himself, but he couldn’t remember hitting his head. Could an airbag concuss a person? He thought he should know the answer to that, but couldn’t find it in the messy closets of his brain.
Homer was almost to the line of stalled cars now.
Run, jackass!
Goat tried to run. He had that much pride, that much clarity of thought left. But when he took his first step toward the opposite side of the highway, his left leg buckled and he went down hard into the mud. Like an old tape player slowly catching up to speed, Goat’s mind replayed the events of the crash. He remembered seeing the tree suddenly filling the view beyond the windshield, and then the windshield itself bursting inward in ten thousands pieces of gummed safety glass. He remembered the white balloon of the airbag and the numb shock as the dashboard seemed to reach in toward his knees, hitting one, missing the other.
Then blood and darkness and nothing.
He propped himself up on his elbows, spitting bloody water and mud from his mouth. How long had he been unconscious in the car? Long enough for the blood to dry to dense mud in his eyes.
For a moment—just a moment—Goat wished that the crash had been a little harder. Or that the blocky little Cube had been built with less care for the safety of its passengers.
It is a weird and dreadful thing to realize that death was far more desirable than being alive. Goat had never suffered through depression, never rode the Prozac and lithium highway. Never held a razor next to his wrists and wondered if the pain of the cut was worse than the pain of the next hour or next day. Never looked into the future and saw a world where he was absent. He was in love with life. With living it. With women and sex. With film and the complexities of filmmaking. With the tides and currents of social media. With being him.
But now …
Behind him he heard Homer calling out to the people in the cars.
“L’il help! L’il help now.”
Goat thought he heard a car door open. Then a man’s voice asked if Homer was hurt, if everyone was okay.
And then screams.
Such high, shrill, awful screams.
Goat closed his eyes and stared into the future and prayed, begged, pleaded for him not to be any part of what was happening or what was to come.
Like all of his prayers over the last twenty-four hours, it went unanswered.
And then suddenly the sky seemed to open and against all sanity and logic the morning sun rose in the middle of the night. Goat gaped at it, at the gorgeous, impossibly huge burning eye of morning.
“Oh … my … God…” he breathed and despite all of his lifelong agnosticism and cynical disapproval of organized religion, he believed that he beheld the fiery glory of a god revealing himself to His people at the moment of their greatest need.
He began to cry. He covered his head with his hands and wept, apologizing for everything he had ever done wrong, promising—swearing—that he would be a better man, that he would hone the grace of this moment. A part of his bruised mind could hear the shrill, hysterical note in his voice, but he didn’t care.
He was saved.
This is what people believed would happen. In the dark night of the soul. At the end of all hope.
The night became brighter and brighter and Goat looked up, truly expecting to see angels with fiery swords. Believing it in that moment.
A second sun rose above the horizon.
And a third.
Goat said, “Oh my God,” again. It meant something entirely different now.
This was not the rising of the sun any more than it was the shield of God’s protection to keep harm from His children.
They were fireballs rising from over the darkened hills.
“What—?” Goat asked the fire and the night and, perhaps, God.
His answer came in the form of a streak of light that arced across the sky and vanished behind the hill. Another ball of fire rose up, veined with red and black, expanding as it fought its way upward against the rain. Goat turned, following the backtrail of the streak and saw something massive and powerful tearing through the sky.
“God,” he said once more.
But it wasn’t what he meant.
The A-10 Thunderbolt II screamed through the storm above him. Others flew in a wide formation and they, too, spoke in voices of fire and thunder.
Goat’s brain, concussed and confused, now understood the difference between heaven come to earth and hell on earth.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
Patrick Freivald slowed his bike, suddenly unsure of how badly he needed to get to Starbucks and get out of the rain.
The sky was filled with dozens of helicopters. Their searchlights cut back and forth to illuminate something on the far side of the hill three hundred yards ahead; and all around the helicopters there were smaller flashes as the beams struck illusionary sparks from the falling rain.
As he slowed and the roar of his motorcycle eased down, he could hear sounds from up ahead. The heavy beat of rotors, the blare of horns. And something else, something staccato and deep. For a moment Patrick through it was the base rhythm of some techno music played at incredible volume, or a drum solo by someone gone totally apeshit.
It was neither, and as he slowed to a stop, he heard it much more clearly; and it was at that moment that he realized the flickering lights in the sky were not searchlights reflecting on raindrops.
They were muzzle flashes.
Above him there was a sharp hiss, loud as a fire hose, and something streaked over the tops of the cars toward the hill a few thousand yards away. It left a trail of smoke that was quickly torn apart by the rain. Then the whole night turned to day as an immense cloud of yellow and orange light rose up over the hill. The deep-chested boom of an explosion rolled along the blacktop, rocking the cars and knocking Patrick to the side. He nearly crashed his bike but pushed his weight against it and fought it back upright; and he did that without thought because his mind was numb from what he was seeing.
A fireball rose into the air, defying the rains to extinguish it.
Patrick said, “Oh my—”
But the rest was struck from his mouth as a second explosion sent a competing fireball up into the night. And a third.
A fourth.
Soon all of the helicopters were firing missiles and rockets. And guns.
People began getting out of their cars. Despite the rain, despite the insanity of all of this. Patrick could hear them yelling. And screaming.
There was movement near the top of the hill and for a moment it looked like roaches boiling out of a sewer drain, but then he realized it was people—hundreds of people—their clothes dark and shiny with water, running from the helicopter attack. Running along the road, moving between the cars, climbing over them, and …
And …
Patrick stared, not sure of what he was seeing. He raised his visor and peered through the slanting rain. Some of the people seemed to be fighting with each other. Wrestling, falling to the ground, bending each other backward over the hoods of cars.
“What the fuck…?” he said.
The tide of violence swept along the row of stalled cars. Coming his way.
Coming fast.
He had no idea what was happening. A riot of some kind. People going nuts.
Either way, he wanted no part of it.
Patrick cut a look across the wide median and for the first time took note that it was empty, and he tried to recall if he’d seen a single car come that way since this began.
He was sure he hadn’t. Not one.
What the hell was happening over that hill?
The helicopters kept firing. Fireballs raced each other into the air. People were trying to turn their cars, and some of them managed to squeeze out of the press and U-turn on the shoulder. They blared their horns and there were dozens of fender benders as the panic to escape the moment overcame everything else.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
A wall of superheated gas came rolling down the highway, flattened wet grass, knocking people down, setting off the car alarms of those stopped vehicles their owners had turned off, bending the trees, turning the rain to steam.
It hit Goat as he struggled to his feet and flung him against the wrecked Cube. He hit hard, cracking the back of his head, his elbows, the middle of his back. His skin suddenly felt like it was covered with ants as the heat leached moisture from his flesh. Goat felt hot wind blowing into his screaming mouth and down his throat.
He collapsed on his knees, aware on some distant level that new pain exploded in his injured knee but not immediately able to care, then as the fiery shockwave passed he sagged over into mud that was no longer wet and cold.
Goat lay there, flash-burned and stunned, gasping for air in a world that no longer seemed to have any. Then …
Pulled into the vacuum created by the shockwave, fresh air buffeted him. He dragged in lungfuls of rainy air, sucking it down like a gasping fish returned to the healing waters of the stream.
People were screaming.
Screaming.
Horns blared and Goat heard gunshots. Spaced, erratic. Hunting rifles, he thought.
A moment later, the air above him was churned to pieces by the beat of helicopter blades, and a split second later heavier guns opened up. Goat wriggled painfully toward the back of the wrecked car and looked past the rear wheel to see something that made no immediate sense.
Five big military helicopters swayed in the air, their pilots fighting the harsh winds as door gunners fired miniguns at the lines of parked cars.
People were running in wild panic between the cars, racing out into the farm fields on the far side of the road, tearing cross the median toward the empty westbound lanes. Some had managed to get their cars going and were peeling out of the traffic jam, but most vehicles were too tightly packed. The driver of a Jeep Patriot rammed his vehicle forward, threw it into reverse and rammed backward, and went forward again, crushing bumpers until he’d forced open a hole big enough for him to turn off the road. But the car was blind, the headlights smashed, the grill punched in. It limped down the shoulder but stalled within a dozen yards. And everywhere Goat looked the panicking people were fighting.
Except that wasn’t what it was, and after staring for several long moments he understood what was happening. The firebombing. The attacks on the people in the cars. The violence unfolding before him.
He spoke a name.
Not Homer’s name.
He said, “Lucifer.”
Then headlights burned his eyes as a huge Escalade came tearing through the storm. The SUV slewed to a sideways stop, showering Goat with fresh mud and rainwater. The driver’s door swung open and a figure climbed out. Huge and powerful, but moving stiffly as if every muscle was cramped.
Goat said his name now.
“Homer.”
“The fuck you doing down there, boy?” laughed the killer. His face and chest glistened with bright, fresh blood. “Nap time’s over. We gots to go.”
He jerked open the Cube’s doors, grabbed Goat’s camera bag, laptop, and recorder, put them into the Escalade, then bent and grabbed Goat by the belt and hauled him out of the mud with a huge sucking sound. Homer stood Goat on his feet and gave him a shove toward the passenger door.
“Get in.” He had to shout to be heard over the continuous machine-gun fire and all those screams.
Goat obeyed and crawled into the SUV.
He even buckled up for safety.
Homer staggered around and climbed in behind the wheel, grunting with the effort of bending his body. Goat wanted to believe that the killer’s stiffness and pain were the result of the accident, but he knew better.
It’s rigor mortis, he whispered in his own thoughts, marveling that something as bizarre as that could be the truth.
There was a hiss in the air and then on the road three cars flew up into the air on a fireball.
“Rocket,” said Homer as casually as if he was commenting on a breed of dog walking down the street. “Let’s get some gone between us and that shit.”
He put it in drive and the Escalade lurched forward, wanting to run, but Homer did not race away from the battle. Instead he killed the headlights and angled toward the trees that filled the thirty-yard-wide median. Between explosions and the lightning there was just enough light to steer, and Homer drove with care.
“Don’t want to wreck this ride,” said the killer. “Always wanted me an Escalade. Never could afford it.” He paused, thinking. “Guess the ticket price don’t mean shit now.”
Goat said nothing. He jammed his good leg against the floor and clutched the dashboard, using his hands to brace himself against unexpected impacts. But the car hit nothing.
No trees, anyway.
Several times Homer had to swerved to avoid running people, and twice he didn’t swerve fast enough. The dull thud of meat and bone against metal was horrifying.
“Slow as shit,” Homer said as one man went spinning off the left fender, his body twisting in ways it shouldn’t.
When the median thinned, Homer angled across the road to where the line of cars was now thinner. He bullied his way through the traffic and went right off the road again into a farm field.
With every second they were leaving the disaster farther behind.
Escaping.
Goat realized that he was watching the single most dangerous man in the world escape.
And he was too frightened to do a thing about it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Trout heard the sound and thought it was more thunder. He and Dez whipped around toward the row of windows that faced the north. They saw the light and for a moment they thought it was more lightning.
Then the whole sky lit up and something monstrous rose up from behind the forests and rows of houses. A colossus that towered like a fire god from some pagan dream of Ragnarok, a titan of flame who reared above the town and raised a burning sword with such fury that the storm itself recoiled in terror.
Dez said, “What the—”
She got no further as a wall of furnace-hot air blew across the treetops, setting them ablaze, tearing the smaller ones down, shattering thousands of windows, whipping debris into the air and igniting it.
The reinforced windows of the school bowed inward, the glass fracturing into tens of thousands of tiny silver lines but the fragments held fast by the wire mesh. Tongues of flame licked in through those windows that were open, setting fire to curtains and shelves of books, and American flags on wooden poles.
Trout screamed as he fell backward, steam rising from his clothes. Dez screamed, too, and began slapping at his clothes, swatting out tiny fires that wanted to take hold.
The building shuddered as if it was being pummeled by giants.
And then it was over except for the fading echo of a dragon’s roar that rolled away from them into the night.
Th
e space around the school seemed empty, devoid of air, as if they were suddenly on the surface of the moon. Then with a banshee shriek winds whipped out of the east and west with ferocity, attacking the vacuum left by the wave of heat. The winds brought with them the rains. The winds blew long and long and black.
Trout lay on the floor and Dez knelt over him, both of them gasping like runners, their eyes wide with terror, their faces flushed with residual heat.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” whispered Dez, “what was that?”
But they both knew.
In the distance the fireball still curled upward into the night. Silent now, but all the more frightening for its persistent reality.
CHAPTER SIXTY
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
Patrick Freivald’s mind was going into shock but he felt his body respond to a primal survival drive. Adrenaline slammed into his system and with a growl he wrestled his bike around, pointing the front wheel toward the verge. He gunned the engine and drove off the road. The verge slanted down and he sloshed through muddy water so deep it nearly stalled the engine, but Patrick kept it going, doing it right, steering well, keeping control.
He picked up speed, kicking up a fantail of mud forty feet high as he plowed through the rainy field, looping away from the madness and toward the line of cars that had been behind him. He was aware of other vehicles racing through the field, too, and they were all going so fast that he knew the drivers were in full-bore panic mode. That made them dangerous. A motorcycle in the rain was no match for even the smallest compact.
So he was forced to steer away from the road and deeper into the field, but it was ink-dark out there. His headlight couldn’t compete with the storm and rain. Far ahead, at the absolute outside range of his vision, he saw a small side road. A farm road. It was empty.
He thanked God and gunned the engine, racing to reach it and get the hell out of there.
Patrick never saw the big black Escalade that came bucketing across the field, headlights off, the driver pale and grinning; the passenger paler still, his mouth open in a silent scream. Patrick didn’t see any of that.
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