by Al Ewing
It was clear, in other words, that this was a problem Cade would have to solve himself, despite being all of eight years old.
Time passed, and every day after school Cade would wander down to the site to watch his father work, waiting for Tobias to finish working so they could go home, where the drink and the belt waited. Sometimes he skipped school, so as to watch his father and the construction crew work through the whole day. There was no punishment for playing truant beyond what his father already did to him.
The men enjoyed the strange, silent boy's company - they ruffled his hair and joked amongst themselves about how the boy was touched. His father joked with them, keeping his anger for later.
Cade just watched.
He especially liked to watch when they got the big tarmac spreader, and spread the hot black tarmac over the foundations to make a parking lot or a driveway, and then rolled the big steamroller over it to make it flat. He watched that very carefully. He had very good eyes, for a boy of eight years old.
Then, one by one, the men would leave, and only his father would be left, checking through paperwork and time cards and then locking the site up for the day. He'd either take Cade with him to the bar, where the drunks and the rummies would ruffle his hair and say how the boy was touched while his father drank himself stupid on rye, or he'd just drag the boy back to the trailer and beat the shit out of him before going to the bar.
Either way, Cade could count on at least a few cracks of the leather belt, and probably a hard kicking with a steel toed work boot into the bargain.
This he tolerated until one day at the end of November.
The construction crew were building a new supermarket on the edge of the town, with a parking lot out front and another behind. They poured the tarmac for the first lot, and rolled it flat with the steamroller, and then it was clocking-off time and the men filed out. Marty Callaghan, who drove the steamroller, ruffled Cade's hair. "Poor fella's touched," he said, whereupon Cade hugged him tight - a gesture he'd not made before, and one that caused no end of laughter among the men. "I ain't your daddy, son," said Marty, chuckling. "Your daddy's over there." And he pointed to Tobias, who was standing in front of the steamroller, a blueprint in his hand, making a careful check of the equipment and what there was still to be done before he clocked off.
Cade knew where his daddy was, all right.
Marty Callaghan wasn't just the man who drove the steamroller. He was also, in his youth, what the papers had called a juvenile delinquent, and one of his souvenirs of that wild time in his life was a switchblade knife with a skull carved on the handle in ivory, still as sharp as ever. Marty occasionally liked to show it off, flicking out the deadly blade for the appreciation of his co-workers.
Cade liked to watch him do that.
Soon, all the crew were gone, and Cade looked around himself for a moment, then picked up a loose chuck of brick and wandered down onto the fresh-laid tarmac to say hello to his father.
"Dad?" he said. It was the first time he'd said a single word in about seven months.
Tobias hadn't kept count.
"Not now, boy." he said, not looking up from his blueprint. "Not now, you little -"
That was when Marty's switchblade, which Cade had carefully lifted from his pocket, severed Tobias' left Achilles tendon, and he went down like a ton of bricks, screaming at the top of his lungs. Cade swung the chunk of brick in his other hand and hit his father in the side of the temple with a hard clunk. Enough to put him out.
Then he turned his attention to the steamroller.
He'd lifted Marty's keys from his pocket along with the knife, and he'd watched closely enough over the past months to have a good understanding of how the steamroller was operated. He managed to get it going without too much fuss.
Then he set it rolling.
The big roller moved slowly, rumbling the ground, and Tobias actually had time to wake up out of his daze, although by that time the great steel roller was less than three feet away from him. There was no way he could crawl or roll out of the way in time.
"Jesus!" he screamed. "Jesus Christ, what the holy fuck are you doing? I'm your father, god dammit! Your father! Your -"
He didn't say anything else after that. Just screamed.
The roller crunched over his feet first, rupturing the flesh and splintering the bone to fragments, and then slowly crushed the rest of him. Tobias was still alive when the pressure burst his belly open and sent his guts flying, and he may even have been conscious when the hideous weight crunched his ribcage to powder and his heart with it, though that seems unlikely.
Cade waited until the roller had rumbled right over him, and then switched it off, and left the keys in it, and wandered home to the trailer that was now his alone.
He kept the knife.
You killed your Mom and then you ran your Pops over with a steamroller, after you'd driven your Auntie to an early grave. Heartwarming fuckin' story, dog.
Cade nodded. Things had gotten a lot better after that. The orphanage was a pretty decent place if you were willing to get your knuckles a little dirty, and Cade had been more than willing. After they kicked him out, it was a pretty average story - gangs, robbery with violence, a murder here and there. Eventually, the marines had offered him something close to a reason for living, or he'd felt that way at the time.
Bullshit. They just offered you a way to kill a shitload of people without any comeback, that's all. Don't kid yourself you were there for the reasons any other motherfucker was, bitch.
Cade blinked, and looked at the clock. Getting on for half six. The Pastor'd be stewing, and the sun would be getting ready to go down. Probably they were all screwing in the Park by now.
Best to get a move on.
But there was something he had to get done first.
"Won't be needing you for this next bit, Fuel-Air."
Fuel-Air sneered, the metal skin glinting as he leaned forward. Sure you don't. Want to commit your fuckin' atrocity in peace, right? Fuck you, dog. You're stuck with me, motherfucker, and I'm going to be on your fuckin' back until the day you die about every god-damn fuck-up you-
Cade took the gun out of his belt.
It was a Magnum .44, big and mean. Cade wasn't a fan of guns, but he'd figured he'd need one that's do the job.
Fuel-Air stared at it, stunned. Where the fuck did you get that?
Cade shrugged. "Does it matter?"
Fuel-Air snarled, and suddenly his face was a writhing, suppurating mass of maggots, crawling and slithering over one another, a boiling, oozing sea of putrefaction that seemed to burn into Cade's vision.
You called me up, motherfucker, don't you get it? You brought me out. I'm part of you, you stupid-ass son of a bitch, and I'm never fucking letting you be, not ever again - shit, dog, you honestly think you can put a bullet in me? A fuckin' bullet? You can't do shit. Let me draw you a picture, bitch - you snapped on that fuckin' road you were nailed to, you broke like fuckin' glass. Shit, it ain't no surprise, you know what I'm saying? You had to go a little crazy or a lot crazy, and I'm the crazy you went. I'm your fucking delusion, dog, your bloody conscience, the part of you that doesn't let you get away with this kind of fucking bullshit...
Cade nodded, and shrugged. Wasn't something he hadn't figured out, after all.
So what are you going to do with that fuckin' piece of yours, bitch? Shoot me? I'm a figment of your motherfucking imagination!
"Yeah." Cade shrugged again. Then his eyes narrowed. "So's the gun."
The roar of the Magnum filled the room, and Fuel-Air flew backwards as the bullet hit him right between the eyes. For a moment he didn't look like Fuel-Air. He looked like Sergeant A, or maybe the Captain, or maybe Duke, or maybe his father, or maybe all of them at once. Then his head burst like an over-ripe melon and his body slumped down the wall in a trail of old corpse-blood.
Cade put the gun down on the table, then leant back for a moment and closed his eyes.
When he opened
them, there was no body. There was no gun. There was just Cade, sitting in a coffee shop, watching a clock on the wall.
Okay, then.
On the way out, he caught a glimpse of something just across the street. HALLOWEEN STORE. This time he paid a little closer attention.
The glass was smashed, but there was plenty still in the front window of the store, waiting to be taken. Cade guessed there wasn't much call for anything a Halloween store might sell. The whole damn world was Halloween now.
He wondered what it was that kept drawing his eye, and then he saw it, sitting on a polystyrene head, dead centre. The whole plan fell into his head right there. It was crazy - maybe the craziest thing Cade had considered in his whole time in San Francisco, and that was saying a hell of a lot.
Still, he figured it couldn't be that crazy.
After all, Cade wasn't crazy anymore.
When Cade got back to the pickup, the bomb was just a bomb.
The Pastor didn't like being kept waiting. His face was dark as a thunderstorm and his fingers drummed the dashboard in a slow, deliberate pattern while he read through a pocket Bible. His men were slouched around the pickup, cocking and uncocking whatever guns they had like a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers. Cade wondered if they'd done anything sensible with the guns, like cleaning them or sharing out ammo, or if they'd just played and posed with them a while, trying to psyche themselves up for what was ahead, feel a little badass.
He wondered what the rate of misfires was going to be. If he knew anything at all about guns, those ones were going to jam after the first shot.
Hell with it. He'd find out soon enough.
"Brother Cade," hissed the Pastor, curling his lip back from his teeth in a cold, mocking sneer, "You've returned to us. I will confess, Brother, for a moment I took it in my mind to doubt you, even to wonder if you had de-sert-ed the true path of -"
Cade got behind the wheel and gunned the engine. "No time. Tell your men to run. Not got long. Sunset came quicker than I figured." That was a lie, of course. Cade had timed it damn near perfect.
The Pastor looked at him a moment, as if he didn't quite comprehend, and Cade wondered how much he'd found out about Clearly's people and their nightly cycle of free love and free hate. Cade didn't figure there was much point in explaining it. The point wasn't for them to live through this, after all.
"They're vulnerable. Let's go." Cade put her in gear and drove the truck forward at a clip, heading down Laguna, keeping just fast enough that the men behind had to run to keep up, but not fast enough to lose them. Not yet.
Cade looked to the passenger seat, and saw that the Pastor had the detonator clutched in his hand, his thumb caressing the button that would blow the both of them sky-high with one press. Not the best situation to work with.
Hell with it. It was what he had.
This was the endgame. This was where everything came to a head, for better or for worse.
If he was lucky, he was about to murder the city of San Francisco once and for all. The thought didn't bother him overmuch. In fact, he was starting to feel a hell of a lot more like his old self.
His palms didn't even itch any more. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly, almost, but not quite, a smile.
Then he gunned the engine, and turned right, heading down Haight Street towards the Golden Gate Park, and the not-quite-human things that were waiting there for him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Endgame
Haight Street in twilight.
In the end, it was all about the timing. If Cade hadn't killed a few hours in that coffee shop, they'd have hit Haight in the middle of the afternoon, breezing right into Clearly's territory just when it was busiest. That would've started a firefight - the Pastor's men would've held their own right up until they ran out of bullets, and then the mob would've torn them apart, or maybe the Pastor would've pressed his button and gone out in a blaze of glory first. Either way, most of Clearly's people would've made it out - only they'd have been even more ready to burn anything they saw.
If he'd left it any longer than now, the drugged-out mob of love children would've been long gone, most likely slipping right past them on the way to burn the Pastor's territory to the ground along with anybody left in it. Then they'd march on Muir Woods, most likely. Even if they didn't decide to head straight for Muir Beach, they'd most likely start the worst damned forest fire California had ever seen. It's a wonder they hadn't done that before, and Cade didn't want to take the risk twice.
No, the time to get onto Haight Street was now, with the sun just starting to dip down, and the shadows starting to lengthen. The streets were deserted, but Cade knew the love children were there, all around them, naked, without a thought in their heads but making love... but waiting, deep down, for the shadows to lengthen, for that switch inside their heads to flip.
Any time now.
He kept the pickup truck moving, watching the men running behind in the rear view mirror, noticing they were starting to sweat, panting a little, falling behind. These weren't the Pastor's best physical specimens - just what was left after the war with the cannibals. They weren't soldiers, and they damn sure weren't used to marching double-time.
To the west, the sun was beginning to lower itself below the buildings. The shadows were starting to fall.
The Pastor snapped to attention, his finger hovering over the button on the detonator. "What was that noise?"
His eyes swivelled, staring, while his head turned this way and that. Cade might have smiled, if Cade was a smiling man.
As it was, the corners of his mouth twitched again.
Just once.
"I thought I heard someone... say something." He muttered it, almost under his breath, looking to and fro, sweat beading. "Lord, Lord, be my shield in this time of danger..." His finger shook above the button. Cade reached out and gently gripped his wrist, shaking his head slowly.
"Not yet."
The Pastor looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and swallowed. He was scared, Cade could tell - terrified, in fact. Cade figured he was starting to flash back to the last time he was in enemy territory. That had ended with him being tortured for years in a bamboo cage. This might end worse - after all, as far as the Pastor was concerned, each and every man and woman in this part of town was a devil in human form, one of Satan's own, capable of any act of evil.
Cade frowned. He might be right at that. Cade hadn't exactly given the flower children any reason to be peaceful.
"Someone did say something! I heard it!" the Pastor hissed, eyes bright. Behind the truck, his men slowed, looking all around them, slick fingers holding wobbling guns that waved in all directions, trying to cover everywhere at once. The Pastor's face was glistening with cold, slippery sweat. "What are they saying?"
It was getting darker. Cade could hear it himself, now.
The chant.
"Helter skelter." he whispered, and felt the Pastor's wrist jerk in his grip. "Don't touch it. Not yet."
The Pastor pulled his hand away, lips curling into a snarl -
- and then they attacked.
It was like a swarm. A good two dozen of them, naked as the day they were born, crashing through doorways, snaking from around corners, a couple even hurling furniture through shop windows and launching themselves through the broken panes, cutting their feet on the glass as they landed. Two dozen men and women with foaming, twisted mouths, veins throbbing, faces red and contorted. Some held knives, improvised cudgels - most just had their fists.
The Pastor was white. "Satan's children -" he hissed, his finger jabbing down towards the detonator. Cade reached out and grabbed his wrist just in time, twisting it around hard. He heard the bones in the wrist snap first, then a tearing sound as the elbow joint popped. The Pastor screamed, and Cade took the opportunity to wrest the detonator out of his other hand and slam it in the glove box. Hopefully it wouldn't rattle too much. He shot the Pastor a look.
"Told you not to
."
Some fools never took a telling.
He slammed on the gas.
The pickup truck roared forward, the front bumper crashing into a red-headed girl and sending her tumbling off to the side, bones broken. Any other of the love children in the way had the sense to get out, although some poor bastard tried to grab hold of the passenger side mirror and got a face full of road rash for his trouble.
In the mirror, Cade could see the small band of the Pastor's men, out of breath and left behind, firing wildly into the crowd, dropping two, three, four - then disappearing under the rest. They weren't soldiers and they didn't know how to carry a gun or keep it from getting taken away, and they sure as hell didn't know how to deal with an army of psychopaths who didn't give a damn whether they got shot or not. They'd dealt with the cannibals, but the love children were a hell of a lot worse than them - at least the cannibals had some self-preservation to them. Not to mention brain damage. The love children had that perfect mix of madness and intelligence, and that was what made them so damned dangerous.
Cade watched as the melee dwindled in the rear view mirror, a severed head arcing lazily up from the centre of the pack. Tough break for somebody. He turned his attention to the road ahead.
So much for the Pastor's army. Still left the two goons with the machine pistols up top - Cade could hear the low, growling bra-a-aap of the weapons being fired. The two bodyguards were shooting back at the crowd behind them, for all the good that'd do now. Hell, Zeke and Josiah were probably blowing their own people apart as much as they were Clearly's. They'd be better off firing ahead - Cade was veering through a slalom of love children, all bursting out of the surrounding buildings screaming their battle cry.