by Dan Simmons
The helicopter roared to our left as we curved around the endless clover-leaf. A red dot danced for the briefest second on Anne’s window and left cheek. Instantly, I had her floor the accelerator, the old car leaped ahead, the dot disappeared, and something struck the rear left fender of the car with a solid thunk.
We were suddenly on a bridge high over a river. I did not want to be on a bridge; I wanted an expressway.
The helicopter was to our right now, at the same level as us. A red light shone in my eyes for a second and then I had Anne swerve left and pull up next to a Volkswagen microbus, using it as a shield between the flying machine and ourselves. The driver of the Volkswagen suddenly slumped forward and the car swerved right into the railing. The helicopter drifted closer, somehow managing to fly sideways at 80 m.p.h.
We were off the bridge. Anne cut hard left and we bounced across a median, barely missed a semi-trailer truck that blasted its air horn at us, and exited at a large sign that said Presidential Apartments. Four empty lanes curved ahead of us, mercury vapor lamps creating an artificial daylight. There was a flash of red and green lights as the helicopter roared no more than fifteen feet over our heads, circled, and hovered broadside a hundred yards ahead of us.
It was too bright, too bare, too easy. It was a long shooting gallery and we were the little metal ducks.
I had Anne turn sharp left. The DeSoto’s tires made a terrible noise on the asphalt and then found traction, catapulting us onto a narrow, unmarked access road not much wider than a driveway.
The road ran southeast under an elevated section of what the map said was the Schuylkill Expressway. “Road” was too generous a term. It was little more than a rutted, graveled lane. Concrete pillars and supports flashed in our headlights and snapped by the windows. Anne’s dress and sweater were soaked with sweat and her face was very strange to look at. The helicopter appeared to our left, flying low above a railroad line paralleling the expressway. Pillars flashed between us and it, enhancing the sense of speed. Our old speedometer read 100 m.p.h.
Ahead of us, the gravel road ended, as a maze of cloverleafs above generated hundreds of pillars, abutments, and cross-braces. It was a forest of steel and concrete.
I was careful not to have Anne lock up the brakes, but we must have skidded half the length of a football field, throwing up a cloud of dust that covered us and showed our headlight beams as two skewed shafts of yellow light. The dust passed. We had stopped less than a yard from an abutment the size of a small house.
The DeSoto crept around it, rolled slowly between pylons, and moved cautiously out from under one roadway into the concealment of another. There must have been at least fifteen lanes of traffic on the cloverleafs above us, many curling toward a bridge that added more trunks to the stone and steel forest of supports.
We rumbled another fifty yards into the maze and I had Anne pull next to a concrete island, cut the engine, and turn out the lights.
I opened my eyes. We were like mice trespassing in a bizarre cathedral. Huge pillars lifted fifty feet to a roadbed here, eighty feet there, and even higher to the bases of three bridges rising across the dark Schuylkill River. There was silence except for the distant hum of traffic far overhead and the even more distant call of a train. I counted to three hundred before daring to hope that the helicopter had lost us and flown on.
The roar, when it came, was terrifying.
The infernal machine hovered thirty feet under the highest roadbed, the sound of its engine and rotors racketing off every surface, a searchlight stabbing ahead of it. The helicopter moved slowly, rotors never approaching pylon or embankment, the fuselage pivoting like the head of a watchful cat.
The searchlight found us eventually, and pinned us there in its relentless glare. I had Anne outside by that time. She held the shotgun awkwardly, bracing it on the roof of the DeSoto.
I knew as soon as I had her fire that it was too soon, that the helicopter was too far away. The blast of the shotgun added to the already intolerable noise but achieved nothing else.
The recoil pushed her back two steps. The impact of a high velocity bullet sent the shotgun flying and knocked her down. I was on the floor-boards when the second shot shattered the windshield and scattered powdered glass onto the front seat.
Anne was able to stand, stagger back to the car, and turn the ignition key with her left hand. Her right arm hung useless, almost separated at the shoulder. Bare bone gleamed through torn cloth and wool.
We drove directly under the helicopter— the desperate mouse scurrying beneath the legs of the startled cat— and then we were roaring up a gravel road, temporarily headed away from the river, curving up a wooded bluff toward a dark bridge.
The helicopter hurtled after us, but the bare trees on either side of the graveled lanes overhung enough to shield us as long as we kept moving. We emerged on a wooded ridge line, the lanes of the south-curving expressway to our right, the rail line and river to our left. I saw that our road hooked left to the southernmost of two dark bridges. We had no choice; the helicopter was behind us again, the trees were too sparse for cover here, and there was no way the DeSoto could get down the steep and wooded embankment to the expressway hundreds of yards below.
We turned left and accelerated onto the dark bridge. And stopped.
It was a railroad bridge, a very old one. Low stone and iron railings bordered each side. Rusting rails, wooden ties, and a narrow cinder roadway stretched ahead into darkness a sheer eighty feet above the river.
Thirty feet out, a thick barricade blocked our way. It would not have helped had we broken through the barricade; the roadbed was too narrow, too exposed, too slow with its obstacle course of ties.
We did not pause more than twenty seconds, but that was too long. There came the roar, a rising cloud of dust and twigs enveloped us, and I ducked as a heavy mass occluded the sky. Five holes appeared in the wind-shield, the steering wheel and dash shattered, and Anne Bishop thrashed as bullets struck her in the stomach, chest, and cheek.
I opened the car door and ran. One of my slippers tumbled down the embankment into the brush. My robe and nightgown billowed in the hurricane gale from rotors. The helicopter hurtled by, skids five feet above my head, and disappeared beyond the ridge line.
I staggered along the wooden ties, away from the bridge. Beyond the ridge and the reflected light haze of the expressway, I could see the relative darkness of Fairmount Park. Anne had told me that it was the largest city-owned park in the world, more than four thousand acres of forest along the river. If I could get there . . .
The helicopter rose above the tree line like a spider climbing its web. It slid sideways toward me. From the side window I could see a thin, red beam slicing through the dusty air.
I turned and staggered back onto the bridge, toward the parked DeSoto. That was exactly what they wanted me to do.
A steep trail cut through brush to the right down the embankment. I slid down it, slipped, lost my other slipper, and sat down heavily on the cold, damp ground. The helicopter roared overhead, hovered fifty feet over the river and set its searchlight stabbing along the bank. I stumbled along the trail, slid twenty feet down the steep hillside, feeling brushes and branches tearing at my skin. The searchlight pinned me again. I stood up, shielded my eyes, and squinted into the glare. If I could Use the pilot . . .
A bullet tugged at the hem of my robe.
I fell to all fours and clawed my way along the slope forty feet under the bridge. The helicopter dipped lower and followed.
It was not Nina in the he li cop ter. Then who? I crawled behind a rotting log and sobbed. Two bullets struck the wood. I tried to curl into myself. I had a terrible headache. My robe and nightgown were soiled.
The helicopter hovered almost level with me, thirty or forty feet out, not quite under the bridge. It pivoted on its own axis, playing with me, a hungry predator, almost ready to end the game.
I raised my head, focused all of my attention on the machine and it
s passengers. Through the agony of my headache I extended my will farther and harder and with more finality than ever before.
Nothing.
There were two men in the machine. The pilot was a Neutral . . . a hole in the fabric of thought. The other man was a User . . . not Willi . . . but as willful and intent on blood as Willi ever was. Without knowing him, seeing him, confronting him, I could never override his Ability sufficiently to Use him.
But he could kill me.
I tried to crawl forward, toward a stone archway support twenty feet away. The bullet slammed into the earth ten inches from my hand.
I tried to back up the narrow trail toward a thick bush. The bullet almost grazed the sole of my foot.
I pressed my cheeks against the ground and my back against the rotted log and closed my eyes. A bullet tore through pulped wood inches from my spine. Another thudded into the dirt between my legs.
Anne had been struck by four bullets. One had passed through her stomach and just missed her spine. One had struck her third rib, ricocheted out her chest wall, and shattered her left arm. The third one had passed through her right lung and lodged in her right shoulder blade. The final bullet had struck her left cheek, removed her tongue and most of her teeth, and exited through her right jawbone.
To Use her I had to experience all of the pain she was feeling as she died. Any buffer at all would have been enough to allow her to slip away from me, from everything. I could not allow her to die yet. I had a final use for her.
The ignition was on. The automatic transmission was set in park. To shift into drive, Anne had to lower her face through the broken steering wheel and wedge the metal lever with what remained of her front teeth. She had set the parking brake out of decades of habit. We used her knee to pull back and trip the brake release.
Her vision grayed and faded to nothing. I forced it back through the strength of my will. Bone fragments from her jaw clouded her right eye. It did not matter. She levered her shattered arms onto the metal horn ring, and hooked her clenched right hand onto the broken plastic of the wheel.
I opened my own eyes. A red dot danced on the dead grass near me, found my arm, traveled to my face. The rotted log had been shot away to nothing.
I tried to blink away the red beam.
The sounds of the DeSoto accelerating and crashing through the railing high above was audible even over the rotor noise. I looked up in time to see the twin headlights stabbing out and then down. There was a glimpse of dark transmission and oil pan as the 1953 DeSoto fell almost vertically.
The pilot was very, very good. He must have glimpsed something above him in his peripheral vision and reacted almost instantaneously. The helicopter’s engine screamed and the fuselage pitched forward steeply even as it turned toward the open river. Only the tip of one rotor contacted the falling car.
It was enough.
The red beam was gone from my eye. There was an almost human scream of tortured metal. The helicopter seemed to transfer all of its rotational energy from the rotors to the fuselage as the sleek cabin whipped around counterclockwise once, three, five times, before slamming into the stone arch of the railroad bridge.
There was no fire. No explosion. The shattered mass of steel, Plexiglas, and aluminum fell a silent sixty feet to splash in the water not ten feet from where the DeSoto had disappeared not three seconds earlier.
The current was very strong. For several bizarre seconds the he li copter’s searchlight remained on, showing the dead machine sliding deeper underwater and farther downstream than one could imagine in so short a time. Then the light went out and the dark waters closed over everything like a muddy shroud.
It was a minute before I sat up, half an hour before I tried to stand. There was no sound except the soft lapping of the river and the distant, unchanging susurration of the unseen expressway.
After awhile I brushed the twigs and dust off my nightgown, tightened the belt of my robe, and began walking slowly up the trail.
THIRTY-FIVE
Philadelphia
Thursday, Jan. 1, 1981
The children had been allowed to leave the house to play for an hour before breakfast. The morning was cold but very clear, the rising sun a distinct orange sphere struggling to separate itself from the innumerable bare branches of the forest. The three children laughed, played, and tumbled on the long slope that led to the woods and to the river beyond that. Tara, the oldest, had turned eight just three weeks earlier. Allison was six. Justin, the redhead, would be five in April.
Their laughs and shouts echoed on the forested hillside. All three looked up as an elderly lady emerged from the trees and walked slowly toward them.
“Why are you still in your bathrobe?” asked Allison.
The woman stopped five feet from them and smiled. Her voice sounded strange. “Oh, it was such a sunny morning, I didn’t feel like getting dressed before I took a walk.”
The children nodded their understanding. They often wanted to play outside in their pajamas.
“Why don’t you have any teeth?” asked Justin. “Hush,” said Tara quickly. Justin looked down and fidgeted. “Where do you live?” asked the lady. “We live in the castle,” said Allison. She pointed up the hill toward a tall old building made of gray stone. It sat alone amid hundreds of acres of parkland. A narrow ribbon of asphalt wound along the ridge into the forest.
“My daddy is assistant grounds superintendent,” intoned Tara. “Really?” said the lady. “Are your parents there now?”
“Daddy’s still asleep,” said Allison. “He and Mommy were up late at the New Year’s Eve party last night. Mommy’s awake, but she has a headache and she’s resting before breakfast.”
“We’re going to have french toast,” said Justin. “And watch the Rose Parade,” added Tara.
The lady smiled and looked up at the house. Her gums were pale pink. “You want to see me do a tumblesalt?” asked Justin, tugging at her hand. “A tumblesalt?” said the lady. “Why yes, I do.”
Justin unzipped his jacket, squatted on his knees, and rolled awkwardly forward, landing on his back with a thud of sneakers slapping the ground. “See?”
“Bravo!” cried the lady and applauded. She looked back at the house.
“I’m Tara,” said Tara. “This is Allison. Justin’s just a baby.”
“Am not!” said Justin. “Yes you are,” Tara said primly. “You are the youngest so you are the baby of the family. Mom says so.”
Justin frowned fiercely and went over to take the elderly woman’s hand. “You’re a nice lady,” he said.
She idly stroked his head with her free hand. “Do you have a car?” asked the lady.
“Sure,” said Allison. “We have the Bronco and the Blue Oval.”
“Blue Oval?”
“She means the blue Volvo,” said Tara, shaking her head. “Justin calls it that and now Mommy and Daddy do too. They think it’s cute.” She made a face.
“Is anyone else in the house this morning?” asked the lady. “Uh-uh,” said Justin. “Aunt Carol was coming, but she went to somewhere else instead. Daddy says it’s just as well ’cause Aunt Carol’s a pain in the ass.”
“Hush!” snapped Tara and aimed a slap at Justin’s arm. The boy hid behind the lady.
“I bet you get lonely in the castle,” said the lady. “Are you ever afraid of robbers or bad people?”
“Naw,” said Allison. She threw a rock toward the distant line of trees. “Daddy says the park is the safest, best place in the city for us kids.”
Justin peeked around the bathrobe, looking up at the lady’s face. “Hey,” he said, “what’s wrong with your eye?”
“I have a bit of a headache, dear,” said the lady and brushed at her forehead with shaking fingers.
“Just like Mommy,” said Tara. “Did you go out to a New Year’s Eve party last night too?”
The lady showed her gums and looked up at the house. “Assistant grounds superintendent sounds very important,” she said.<
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“It is,” agreed Tara. The other two had lost interest in the conversation and were playing tag.
“Does your father have to keep something to protect the park from bad people?” asked the lady. “Something like a pistol?”
“Oh yeah, he has one of those,” Tara said brightly. “But we aren’t allowed to play with it. He keeps it on the shelf in his closet. He has more bullets in the blue and yellow box in his desk.”
The lady smiled and nodded. “Do you want to hear me sing?” asked Allison, pausing in her hectic game of tag with Justin.
“Of course, dear.”
The children sat cross-legged on the grass. The lady remained standing. Behind them, the orange sun fought free of morning haze and bare branches and floated into a cold, azure sky.
Allison sat upright, folded her hands, and sang the Beatles’ “Hey, Jude,” canella, three verses, each note and syllable as clear and sharp as the frost crystals on grass that caught the rich morning light. When she finished, she smiled and the children sat in silence.
Tears filled the lady’s eyes. “I believe I would like to meet your father and mother now,” she said softly.
Allison took the lady’s left hand, Justin took her right, and Tara led the way. Just as they reached the flagstone walk to the kitchen door, the lady put her hand to her temple and turned away.
“Aren’t you coming in?” asked Tara. “Perhaps later,” said the lady in a queer voice. “I suddenly have a terrible headache. Perhaps tomorrow.”
The children watched as the lady took several hesitant steps away from the house, let out a small cry, and fell into the rose bed. They ran to her and Justin tugged at her shoulder. The old woman’s face was gray and distorted in a terrible grimace. Her left eye was completely closed, the other showed only white. The lady’s mouth gaped open, showing blood-red gums and a white tongue curled back like a mole burrowing toward her throat. Saliva hung from her chin in a long, beaded string.