by Al Ewing
"Helter skelter!"
Cade kept ploughing into the sons of bitches, and every time one of them went under the truck the whole damn thing shook and he could hear that detonator rattling around in the glove box. Those assholes needed to be shooting in front, clearing a path. As it stood, all they were was extra weight throwing off his driving.
Cade took a second to chew over whether he actually needed those guns or not. Most likely they hadn't been cleaned or treated right in months, so they were going to jam any second, and besides there was the problem of getting them off the idiot twins up top. Hell with it. Cade figured he was better off without them.
This plan, such as it was, had come nearly full-formed into Cade's head when he'd seen what he'd seen in the window of the Halloween Store, but it was still about half actual planning and half improvisation, and this was one of the improvisation parts. Every time he heard that glove box rattle, he was about a split-second away from getting blown sky high.
In the seat next to him, the Pastor was clutching at the side of the seat with his good hand, while the other dangled uselessly at his side, twitching occasionally. His eyes were squeezed tight shut, and his lips were moving in what looked like a prayer. Cade figured he needed it.
This was likely to be tight.
He spun the wheel, sending the truck into a skid, the tyres already slippery with blood - jackknifing the whole rig and spinning it like a top. Zeke and Josiah hadn't had any warning, and, unlike the bomb, they weren't secured. They went down like a couple of ninepins, tumbling off the flatbed of the truck, skidding across the road, the Uzis slipping out of their hands as the roadway tore swathes of skin off of them. Cade fought the wheel, prolonging the skid, inhaling burning rubber and blood, feeling the shock run through the steering column as something burst under his back wheel and the whole truck lurched sideways - he had a glimpse of Zeke in one of the mirrors, head pulped flat by one of the rear wheels - and then he was pulling out of it, getting back control, gunning the truck up Broderick. Behind him, in the rear view mirror, he could see one of the love children screaming their mantra, the Uzi in her hand blazing like a string of firecrackers as it pumped bullets into Josiah's chest. The gun misfired just before he swung the truck left, the tyres screeching again as he drifted onto Oak Street, heading for Golden Gate Park.
When he had a mind to, Cade could drive one hell of a mean truck.
The streets were swarming with the love children now, and Cade figured they were primed to go after outsiders. He hoped so, anyhow. Still, it seemed like a fair guess. The second they saw the pickup, they stopped clawing and punching at each other and ran in his direction, lips curled into bloody clown grins, howling at the top of their lungs. "Helter skelter! Helter skelter!" Cade had to fight the wheel to keep from crashing into them and wrecking the truck right there. He didn't know how many more full-on impacts it could stand, and the bastards seemed to have a habit of bouncing off the bonnet. It was already dented all to hell. Cade hoped he could explain it to Woody.
The Pastor was crying now, scrabbling at the gun in the holster at his side. Cade didn't know whether the Pastor wanted to shoot him or shoot himself, but either way he wasn't going to let that happen. He reached over, quick as a snake, and grabbed the gun from the Pastor's trembling hand, tossing it out of the window.
"Fetch!" he yelled, and a couple of the love children did just that, hurling themselves after the gun like dogs. They weren't too far gone to know what could kill.
"Satan." sobbed the Pastor, fat tears rolling down his face. Cade almost felt a pang of sympathy for the man. This was the battle he'd spent two years waiting for, the final confrontation against the devil he'd built up in his mind, and in one hot second Cade had taken it for himself, like a director stealing the leading man's part on the first night of the play. "Oh, Satan, why do you torment me?" The words were whined between hitching breaths.
"Be over soon." muttered Cade, keeping one hand on the wheel as he skidded the speeding truck between the Clearlyites, keeping one eye on the crowd building in the rear view mirror. Word spread fast, and they were running like a stampede of rats, like the casts of three horror movies at once, just waiting for the truck to spin out or flip over so they could tear it open like a turtle's shell and rip out the meat. His other hand reached into his pocket for what he'd got from the Halloween store. For half a second, he was almost sorry he'd had to kill Fuel-Air the second time. He might've gotten the reference.
They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's, man.
Keeping the truck steady, Cade pulled on the shaggy blond wig - a cross between a seventies rock star and some kind of show dog - and then covered his own beard with a larger, shaggier one the same blond. It wasn't about to fool anyone, even in the twilight, but he was counting on the Pastor to help him out with that.
Cade was a brutal man. He was a man who'd kill at the drop of a hat, without even breathing hard. He was a man who'd shot his own conscience in the face so he could murder easier when it came time to. But that didn't mean he couldn't be smart.
And it sure as hell didn't mean he couldn't be sneaky.
He unlocked the glove box and grabbed the detonator.
Ahead of him, he could make out the gates of Golden Gate Park, and just inside them, another massive crowd, easily as big as the one running to catch him up. He could make out Clearly, standing at the front, facing the crowd with his back turned to the truck, yelling about something. Some reason to set them moving. Cade figured he'd taken a dose of his own drug - from this distance, he looked like a fire and brimstone preacher, not so different from the Pastor at that. Cade had figured they'd turn out to be the same in the end.
Cade knew what Clearly was saying, even without hearing the words. He was giving them a direction to follow, a target to burn, the way he had when the bad times had come the first time around. He was being the ruler, the man in charge, the Daddy, letting his children play outside to keep them from wrecking the furniture. Oh, it was all for the good of the people. It was all excellent therapy. They needed it. It was the only way the community could survive. There were a hundred excuses you could make, but at the end they were all just more bullshit from Doctor Len Clearly, PhD.
Hell with that.
"There he is, Pastor," growled Cade. "This is it."
The Pastor blinked, sniffling, then straightened in his seat. Some of the old fire seemed to creep back into him, the serpentine bastard who'd nailed Cade to the street and killed anyone he didn't agree with.
Cade figured a man should die as he lived. "Go on." he muttered. "Let him know."
The Pastor breathed in hard, a snuffling, snot-filled breath, then screamed as Cade gunned the engine, his eyes almost popping from their sockets, face red, mucus flying from his throat with the force of the shout.
"SAAATAAAAAAAN!"
Cade hit the accelerator hard, slamming his foot to the floor, hurling the truck forward at the maximum speed, heading right for the Doctor.
The truck hit Clearly first, snapping his legs like twigs and cracking his pelvis with a sound like a gunshot, sending him flying over the bonnet until his head smashed through the windscreen, almost landing in the Pastor's lap as the truck ploughed into the crowd, crashing into three dozen bodies with the force of a sledgehammer smashing into a box of breadsticks.
Carnage wasn't the word.
"Satan!" screamed the Pastor, howling at the top of his lungs as Clearly blinked up at him, blood beginning to seep from his open mouth, somehow still conscious. "Satan! I know you! Devil! Spawn of the goat! I know you! I know your works! Your time is come and into hellfire will you be delivered! Satan, the time is come! The time is NOW!"
The love children had a habit of turning on outsiders, and Cade figured you couldn't get much further outside than that. He popped his seatbelt and checked his wig was straight, then started yelling at the top of his lungs.
"HELTER SKELTER! HELTER SKELTER! HELTER SKELTER!"
In the movies, the
re's often a part of a plan that involves something being done 'in the confusion'. Cade had never actually been in a confusion before, but he'd been in a clusterfuck, and he understood them pretty well.
He rolled out of the truck, and then started kicking and punching at it, driving his fist through the side window, shrieking like a madman. "HELTER SKELTER! HELTER SKELTER! HELTER SKELTER!"
Cade figured pretty much everybody in this crowd hated his guts about as much as they hated the Pastor's. If the Pastor was sitting in the truck that'd just mown half their people down, screaming his Jesus talk at the top of his lungs, Cade figured they'd pay less attention to the blond dude who looked a bit like some other dude they hated. Especially if they were fucked up on Clearly's compound. Cade had been on it and he hadn't even recognised himself, never mind anyone else.
Oh, if Cade had tried a stunt like that on his own, they'd have torn him into pieces, no doubt about it. They'd have hung his guts from the railings and played softball with his skull.
But the Pastor made a pretty damn good distraction. He had his good hand locked around Clearly's throat now, trying to strangle him before he died of his internal injuries. He looked like he might do it, too.
"Satan! Oh horned goat! Oh corruptor! Oh scavenger of men's souls! I know you! I know your stench and your rot and I will END you -"
Clearly was staring out, eyes bulging, looking right into the Pastor's, and the Pastor was the only one to see what look Clearly wore as he went to his grave. Confused, maybe. Sad. Apologetic. Raging with the fury of his own drug. Any of those might have done.
Clearly's shattered legs weaved and twitched on the bonnet like a spastic doll.
Hell of an undignified way to go, Cade figured.
The crowd seemed to agree. They rushed at the truck, pushing each other back to get at it, tearing at the doors and windows, reaching in like zombies in a motion picture, trying to claw Clearly free and tear the Pastor apart. Cade let himself be muscled back, shoved out of the way by the love children. He kept on yelling, trying to get the timbre right, to keep that cracked edge of madness in his voice. "Helter skelter! Helter skelter!"
Then he just dropped back, heading towards the west side of the park, making as good a pace as he could without drawing attention. He figured pretty much all of the love children would be swarming around the truck soon enough, trampling each other for the chance to take vengeance on the Pastor, never mind that he'd not even been driving.
He could still hear the Pastor screaming in his maddened voice, yelling about danger and terror and lust, howling like a banshee. There was pain in those cries, now - Cade figured they'd got their hands on him and they were tearing him out of that truck piece by piece.
He figured he'd got about eighty metres away from the truck now, but with a Fuel-Air Bomb that was definitely danger close. And then some.
"Oh lord! Oh spare me the torments of hell! Didn't your servant do right, oh lord, oh god... Dei! Dei! Deiiiii!"
The voice drifting over the screaming roar of the crowd was an agonised shriek, bubbling up out of a throat full of blood. The Pastor had about run out of time.
So had Cade.
As soon as the Pastor's body was cold, they'd look around them and go for the next outsider, and hippie wig or not, that was him. Hell, even if they didn't, they'd scatter in all directions, and then next night they'd probably do it all over again.
He thought about what they'd likely do with Woody and the Duchess.
A hundred metres.
Still danger close.
Cade saw the Pastor's head shoot up into the air, ripped off of his body, a length of spine flapping out of the neck. They were playing football with it.
Hell with it, thought Cade, I guess danger close really is coward talk after all.
He pressed the button.
Chapter Twenty-Six
And Then
THE SKY BURST OPEN
AND A HAND OF SOLID FIRE
SMASHED HIM TO THE GROUND.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Aftermath
He came to three days later.
Or it may have been four.
He'd got third degree burns over a fair amount of his body, probably more than a man should have and still be walking or even breathing. In other places, the skin was cracked and leaking something that looked like pus. He was blind in his right eye, which was a smashed, shapeless blob of jelly oozing from the socket. There was a constant ringing in his ears that, in the end, took a full three weeks to go away. He'd lost two of the fingers on his left hand. His eyebrows and most of his beard and the hair on his head had been singed clean off.
He was halfway down Nineteenth Avenue, and everything on all sides was a blackened ruin. He had no idea how he'd gotten there or what he was doing there.
He stood, swaying, blinking with his one good eye, and ran a dry, sandpaper tongue over cracked lips.
After a couple of minutes, he remembered what his name was.
Cade.
Then the blackness rushed up to claim him all over again.
He wasn't sure how much time passed, but when he opened his eyes he could have sworn the Duchess was standing over him, soaking a cool sponge loaded with ice water over his skin, and he was seeing her with two eyes.
Then he blinked, and realised that everything was flat and a little blurred and his skin was in agony. The pain came in waves, washing over him like chips of broken glass rubbing into his flesh. Hadn't there been a fella with a laugh like broken glass at one time? A laugh like broken glass and a walk like a snake. Cade maybe killed him, or somebody else did. Probably Cade.
Cade winced. His head was like crazy paving, one thought running into another. It came to him that he was in a coffee shop somewhere, which made sense. He seemed to pass a lot of time in coffee shops. He realised he was laying on his side, on a leather bench that was sticking to his suppurating, pus-coated skin. That didn't make as much sense, on account of every time he moved, the leather tugged at him. Moving hurt so much that he figured he should just pass out again. Pass out and maybe not wake up this time.
He tried for a while, but he couldn't.
Hell with it.
Somehow, Cade got himself onto his feet and wandered into a back room. He didn't see any corpses around, and that meant something, but he wasn't sure exactly what right at the moment.
On a table in the back room, there were bandages and antiseptic, and some kind of shiny hinged blades that Cade couldn't remember the name of. Handle-blades. Finger-blades. Dammit. Skin-blades. Skin-saws. Scythe-saws. Something close.
Scissors. That was it.
He looked at them for almost a minute.
Then he blacked out again.
The first couple of weeks were like that.
It was kind of a wonder that Cade didn't lie down and die at any point during this, but Cade wasn't the lying down and dying type, even in as much pain as he was in. Gradually, agonisingly, his body started to put itself back together, and his mind followed suit.
Somehow, he managed to keep his burns from killing him and do what he needed to do to bandage and treat them. To begin with, he did this using the contents of medicine cabinets and whatever drugs he could scrounge from other places, but after a while he was spending whatever time he could stand on his feet scavenging around Haight Street and the surrounding blocks, looking for any storehouses of medical supplies Clearly might have had. The Park was a ruin, of course, and big sections of Stanyan Street, Oak Street, Fell Street... it was a big blast, and it'd damaged a hell of a lot of the area. Cade still wasn't sure how he'd survived it.
Hand of a generous God, he figured.
He knew there were a couple of the love children left - he hadn't got all of them with the Pastor's bomb - but whenever he saw them they were wandering the streets like broken dolls whose clockwork had yet to come to a halt. It took him a day or two to realise that anyone who knew where Clearly's compound was stockpiled had taken their knowledge into th
e grave with them.
After a while, he didn't see the love children anymore. They just wandered away, whether to start again somewhere new or just to die away from the memories of their strange, good, evil community, Cade didn't know.
He didn't much care, either.
The last love child he saw on the streets was Thelma. He came across her suddenly - just a matter of turning the corner and seeing her at the other end of the street. She was looking broken - she'd lost an eye too, and it looked like she had a broken arm - but instead of running, or cursing him, like the other flower children did, she'd smiled, and raised something up in her hand.
The burnt remains of a blond wig.
"I told you!" she yelled at him, laughing. "Disguises! I told you!"
Then she ran around the corner, laughing giddily, as if the world had just begun to make sense.
He never saw any of the love children again.
It was another week before he found Clearly's medical stores, in a warehouse just outside the blast radius on Frederick street, complete with an eighteen-wheeler sitting outside. The Doc had been right - there was enough insulin there for hundreds of people, maybe thousands.
Enough to keep the Duchess going until she died of old age, Cade figured, and he'd still have enough space left in the trailer for some other bits and pieces that'd come in handy.
Of course, he couldn't load it as quickly as he'd have liked to, not in his condition. Time was, it'd have taken him less than a day to fill the damn thing top to bottom, but now it was a full week of agonising labour as every inch of his body screamed at him, every damn box of insulin like hefting blazing lava against his burned flesh. Loading that damned eighteen-wheeler up was like a punishment from the depths of Hell, and Cade was still messed up enough in his mind to wonder if he hadn't ended up there, if the Pastor hadn't been right. If he hadn't damned himself by standing against the snake-legged little bastard. Cade had never in his whole damned life been in so much pain.