Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  “Freeze!” screamed the honky and leveled the pistol at Leroy’s chest. Leroy’s hands were already rising. His thumb sparked the flint; he felt the heat from the tiny flame near his right ear. “My luck. Lights the first fucking time,” said Leroy and dropped the lighter into his open pack of gasoline-soaked bottles of Shell unleaded premium.

  Anne Bishop was half a block from Grumblethorpe when the explosion occurred. She continued driving at a steady fifteen miles per hour, hands clenching on the wheel of the DeSoto, eyes straight ahead and unblinking. Every window on the third floor of the building across from Grumblethorpe flew outward in a thousand pieces. Glass glittered and shimmered as it fell like snow across Germantown Avenue. Thirty seconds later, the flames appeared. Anne Bishop pulled to the curb in front of Grumblethorpe and shifted the transmission lever to park. Working from reflexes a third of a century old, she carefully set the parking brake on.

  The flames from the burning building were much brighter now, casting an orange glow on Grumblethorpe and this entire section of the avenue. There came a scattered rattle of gunshots. Fifty yards down the block, half a dozen long-legged figures sprinted across the street. Just beyond the right wheel of the DeSoto, a boy lay facedown near the curb. A small, black pool had appeared under his shattered head and run down into the gutter.

  The burning building across the street made a loud crackling noise, as if hundreds of heavy twigs were being snapped. Occasionally ammunition would go off, sounding amazingly like popcorn being popped. Someone screamed in the distance. There came the wail of sirens. Anne Bishop sat in her 1953 DeSoto with her eyes straight ahead, hands on the wheel, waiting.

  Gentry had come through the open rear door quickly, Ruger ahead of him. An overturned table offered shelter and he took it, dropping heavily to one knee and looking around.

  The old kitchen was illuminated by a candle on a countertop and another burning on its side on the floor. The twin named G. R. lay dead in a huge fireplace six feet behind Gentry, his goose-down coat shredded from throat to crotch. Feathers covered the face, torso, and legs of the corpse. The rest of the kitchen was empty. A narrow door to the pantry or small room hung open near the entrance to a hallway, obscuring the view.

  Gentry aimed the Ruger at the pantry door, hearing noises in the hall beyond it. He realized that he was breathing through his mouth, too rapidly, coming close to hyperventilating. He held his breath for ten seconds. There was a pause in the rattle of gunfire outside, and in the momentary silence Gentry heard a gentle scraping in the shadowy corner behind him. He swiveled on his knee and watched as Marvin Gayle seemed to rise out of the stone floor, pulling himself up like a man coming out of a swimming pool. Even in the faint light, Gentry could see that the gang leader’s face was absolutely expressionless, the eyes little more than white slits with only a hint of iris.

  “Marvin?” Gentry said aloud at the same instant the boy raised a shotgun from what ever hole he was standing in, aimed it at Gentry’s head and squeezed the trigger.

  There was a click as the firing pin struck.

  Gentry brought the Ruger to bear even as Marvin pumped the shotgun and fired again. Again the shotgun’s hammer fell on emptiness.

  Gentry had squeezed the trigger hard enough to raise the Ruger’s hammer; now he caught it with his thumb and lowered it. “Shit,” he said softly and jumped forward even as the parody of Marvin Gayle dropped the shotgun and scrambled out of the tunnel entrance.

  The boy was shorter and lighter than Rob Gentry, but he was also younger, and faster and powered by a demon’s energy. Gentry did not know what it would take to beat him in what might be called a fair fight; he did not wait to find out. He got to the corner while Marvin was still scrambling to his feet and swung the Ruger in a vicious arc, clipping the youth on the temple with the long barrel. Marvin went down, rolled once, and was still.

  Gentry crouched next to him, found a pulse, and looked up in time to see the honky monster standing at the pantry door. Gentry fired twice; the first shot striking stone where the apparition had been standing a second before, the second punching through the pantry door. There were heavy footsteps in the hallway. From outside came the muffled concussion of an explosion.

  “Natalie!” yelled Gentry. He waited a second, yelled again. “Here, Rob! Be careful, he’s . . .” Natalie’s voice was cut off. It sounded like she was just down the hall.

  Gentry stood, shoved the table aside, and ran in the direction of her voice.

  Natalie had crawled as high as she could on the stairway, hoping to be able to kick at Vincent’s face if nothing else, when she realized she was not alone. She forced herself to quit peering back over her shoulder and to look up.

  Melanie Fuller stood at the top of the stairs, three feet from Natalie’s head. She was wearing a long flannel nightgown, a cheap pink robe, and fuzzy pink slippers. Candlelight from the nursery illuminated a face beyond years, wrinkles blending into folds eroding to tendons, a skull straining to escape a mask of dead skin. Her spiky nimbus of blue hair seemed far too sparse, her mottled scalp showing in patches, as if chemotherapy or some drug had caused much of her hair to come out in ragged clumps. Melanie Fuller’s left eye was closed and grotesquely swollen, her right eye showed only as a yellow orb. She smiled, and Natalie saw that the woman’s upper denture hung loose from her gums. Her tongue appeared black as dried blood in the candlelight.

  “Shame on you, dear,” said Melanie Fuller. “Cover your nakedness.” Natalie shivered and clutched the rags of her blouse to her breasts. The old woman’s voice was a sibilant death rattle; her breath fouled the stairway with the scent of decay. Natalie tried to crawl toward her, to get her hands on that corded neck.

  “Natalie!” Rob’s voice.

  She clutched at the torn wooden steps and called back to him. Where was Vincent? She was trying to warn Rob when Melanie Fuller came down three steps and touched her shoulder with a pink slipper. “Hush, dear.”

  Gentry came down the hall with a pistol raised. He looked up at Natalie and his eyes grew wide. “Natalie. Dear God.”

  “Rob!” she cried, using every second her mind remained free. “Be careful! The honky monster is right there . . .”

  “Shhh, dear,” said Melanie Fuller. The old woman cocked her head to one side and looked at Gentry with the intense scrutiny of the insane. “I know who you are,” she whispered, the loose dentures causing saliva to spray with each word. “But I did not vote for you.”

  Gentry glanced behind him down the hall, toward the parlor and front room. He stepped onto the staircase, pressed his back against the wall, and raised the revolver until it aimed at Melanie Fuller’s chest.

  The old woman shook her head slowly.

  The revolver dropped lower as if pulled by some powerful magnetic force, wavered, steadied, remained aimed directly at Natalie Preston’s face.

  “Yesss, now,” whispered Melanie Fuller.

  Gentry’s body spasmed, his eyes widened, and his face grew more and more red. His arm shook violently as if every nerve in his body were fighting the commands of his brain. His hand clenched on the pistol, his finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Yesss,” hissed Melanie Fuller. Her voice was impatient.

  Sweat broke out on Gentry’s face and soaked the shirt visible through the open jacket. Tendons stood out in his neck and veins bulged on his temples. His face was drawn into the mask of effort and agony visited only on those engaged in some supreme effort, an impossible task of muscle, mind, and will. His finger tightened on the trigger, loosened, tightened until the revolver’s hammer rose, fell back.

  Natalie could not move. She stared at that mask of agony and saw the blue eyes of Rob Gentry, nothing else.

  “Thisss takesss too long,” whispered Melanie Fuller. She brushed at her forehead as if tired.

  Gentry flew backward as if he had been engaged in a tug of war with titans and his opponents had released their end of the rope. He stumbled backward across the hall and slid d
own the wall, dropped the revolver on the floor as he gasped for breath. Natalie saw the elation in Rob’s face for the split second their eyes met.

  Vincent stepped out from the parlor and swung the knife twice in a waist-level blur. Gentry gasped and raised his hands to his throat as if he could seal the gaping wound with pressure. For three seconds it seemed to work and then blood flowed between his fingers, poured in unimaginable quantities down over his hands and chest and torso. Gentry slid sideways down the wall until his head and left shoulder gently touched the floor. His gaze never left Natalie’s face until his eyes slowly closed, a young boy sleepily closing his eyes for an afternoon nap. Gentry’s body spasmed once and relaxed in death.

  “No!” Natalie screamed and jumped at the same instant. She had come up eight steps and now she went down those headfirst, striking the lowest step so hard with her left arm that she felt something break in her shoulder. She ignored it, ignored the pain, ignored the feeling of fingers pawing at her mind like moths against a windowpane, ignored the second impact as she rolled across the hard wood, Rob’s legs, the back of Vincent’s legs.

  Natalie did not think. She let her body do what it had to do, what she had ordered it to do eons ago before she had leaped.

  Vincent teetered above her, waving his arms to keep his balance in the aftermath of her collision with him. He had to swivel his upper body around to bring the knife toward her.

  Natalie did not pause to think as she rolled on her back, let her right hand fall back to find the heavy revolver where she knew it had to be, brought it up and forward. She shot Vincent through his open mouth.

  The recoil knocked her arm back to the floor and the impact of the bullet lifted Vincent completely into the air. He struck the wall seven feet above the floor and left a broad smear sliding down it.

  Melanie Fuller slowly shuffled down the stairs, her slippers making a soft scraping sound on the wood.

  Natalie tried to use her left arm to pull herself up, but fell sideways onto Rob’s legs. She lowered the gun and levered herself to a sitting position. She had to brush away tears to aim the pistol at Melanie Fuller.

  The old woman was five feet away, two steps above her. Natalie expected the fingers in her mind to seize her, stop her, but there was nothing. She squeezed the trigger once, twice, a third time.

  “One must always count the cartridges, dear,” whispered the old woman. She descended the stairs, stepped over Natalie’s legs, and shuffled toward the door. She paused once and looked back. “Goodbye, Nina. We shall meet again.”

  Melanie Fuller took a last look around the hallway and the house, un-bolted the splintered front door, stepped into a street lighted with flames, and was gone.

  Natalie dropped the pistol and sobbed. She crawled to Rob, pulled him by the shoulders until he was free of Vincent’s sprawled body, and propped his head on her leg. Blood soaked her pant leg, the floorboards, everything. She tried to use the rags from her torn shirt to mop at his coat and shirtfront but gave it up.

  When Saul Laski and Jackson entered five minutes later, hurried by the flames, sirens, and renewed shots outside, they found her with Rob’s head still resting on her lap, singing softly to him, and stroking his forehead with gentle fingers.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Melanie

  I hated to leave Grumblethorpe, but there was little choice at the time. The neighborhood simply had become too unruly; the coloreds had chosen New Year’s Eve to stage one of the senseless riots I had read about for so long. These things never happened before the so-called civil rights agitations of the past two or three decades. Father used to say that if you give Negroes an inch, they will ask for a yard and take a mile.

  Nina’s messenger— a colored girl who would have been attractive had it not been for the nappy hair that made her look like a pickaninny— had almost convinced me that Nina had not sent her before I saw through her ruse. The voices told me. They were very loud that last day and night in Grumblethorpe. I confess I had difficulty concentrating on less important things as I strained to understand what the voices— unmistakably a young boy’s and girl’s, with quaint, almost-British accents— were telling me.

  Some of it made little sense. They warned me about the fire, the bridge, the river, and the chessboard. I wondered if these were actually events in their own lives— perhaps the final disasters that claimed their young lives. But the warnings about Nina were clear enough.

  In the end, Nina’s two emissaries— brought all the way from Charleston— were little more than nuisances. I was sorry to lose Vincent but, if the truth be told, he had served his purpose. I do not clearly remember all of those last moments at Grumblethorpe. I do remember that I had a terrible headache on the right side of my head. When Anne had been packing, prior to picking me up, I had her bring along a bottle of Dristan. It was little wonder that my sinuses were acting up in such a cold, damp, inhospitable northern climate.

  Anne slid across the front seat and opened the car door for me when I left Grumblethorpe. The building across the street was burning, undoubtedly the handiwork of Negro looters. When Mrs. Hodges used to visit and cluck about the most recent atrocities in the North, she rarely failed to point out that the supposedly poor, underfed, discriminated-against minorities invariably stole expensive television sets and fancy clothes at the first opportunity. It was her feeling that the coloreds had stolen whites blind when they were servants and they continued to do so now that they were welfare dependents. It was one of the few opinions I shared with that nosy old woman.

  There were three suitcases in the backseat of Anne’s DeSoto. One of the large ones held my clothes, the other contained the cash and remaining stocks Anne had accumulated, and the smaller one held some clothes and personal things of Anne’s. My straw tote bag was also there. On the floor by the rear seat lay the 12-gauge shotgun Anne had been keeping at her house.

  “Let us go, dear,” I said and leaned back in the car seat.

  Anne Bishop drove like an old woman. We left Grumblethorpe and the burning building and drove slowly northwest along Germantown Avenue. I looked behind us and noticed that there had been some sort of collision or altercation near where Queen Lane comes into the Avenue. A van and two low-slung, unattractive automobiles were tangled in the intersection. There was no sign of the police.

  We passed Penn Street and Coulter and were approaching Church Street when two commercial-looking vans pulled out across the street, blocking our way. I had Anne drive up onto the sidewalk on the left side and scrape by. Men jumped out of the truck and were brandishing weapons, but they were quickly distracted when the man I was watching turned his revolver in their direction and started firing at his colleagues.

  It was all nonsense. If they were there to arrest colored looters they should have done so and left two white ladies alone.

  We came to Market Street and even in the darkness I could make out the bronze Yankee soldier standing atop his monument. Anne had told me on our first outing that the granite was from Gettysburg. I thought of General Lee retreating in the rain, beaten that day but not defeated, carrying all the pride of the Confederacy away intact from that terrible carnage, and I felt better about my own temporary withdrawal from the field.

  Flashing lights of fire trucks, police cars, and other emergency vehicles rushed at us down Germantown Avenue. Behind us, one of the vans and a dark sedan were accelerating our way. I heard a strange noise and looked up to see flashing red and green lights above the rooftops.

  “Turn left,” I said. As we did so, I was close enough to see the face of the helmeted driver of the fire engine. I closed my eyes and pushed. The long fire truck cut abruptly across the middle of the Avenue, bounced over trolley tracks, and struck the van near the passenger door. The van rolled over several times and came to rest upside down in the center of Market Square. I caught a glimpse of the dark sedan skidding to avoid the red wall of the fire truck that now blocked the street, and then we were moving down School House Lane and away f
rom the commotion.

  Of all the things I had helped Anne to do, getting her to drive over thirty miles per hour was the hardest. I had to concentrate all of my will to have her operate the motorcar the way I wanted. Eventually it was through her senses that I saw the streets flash by, heard the sound of rotors still overhead, and watched what little traffic was left on the streets scurry to get out of our way.

  School House Lane was a pleasant street but had not been designed to accommodate a 1953 DeSoto traveling at 85 m.p.h. A green car skidded into the street to follow us. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of the he li copter roaring over rooftops parallel to us on our left or right. I had Anne brake to slide through a curve, then accelerate, and suddenly the right rear window starred and exploded glass inward. I looked back and saw two holes the size of my fist.

  A black man with no coat on stood weaving by the side of the road as we approached Ridge Avenue. He ran out as the green car approached and threw himself in front of the vehicle. I watched in the mirror as the green car swerved right, struck the curb at over 70 m.p.h., and did a complete spiral in the air before rolling through the glass front of a Gino’s hamburger stand.

  I fumbled in the glove compartment for a street map of Philadelphia while simultaneously keeping control of the car through Anne. I wanted an expressway out of this nightmarish city, and although there was a plethora of green signs, arrows, and overpasses approaching, I did not know which road to take.

  There was an incredible noise through the broken window and the large helicopter roared by thirty feet to our right. In the flash of passing streetlights, I could see the pilot on the far side and a man wearing a baseball cap leaning toward us in the back. The man had a maniacal grin and something cradled in his arms.

  I had Anne turn right onto an entrance ramp. The DeSoto’s left rear wheel slid onto a soft shoulder and for a second I was fully involved with her steering, counter-steering, tapping the accelerator, trying to keep us from crashing.