"Mommy!" Vicky called as she struggled to get out of my arms. I held her firmly. "Daddy!"
The people on line turned, saw us standing at the other end of the aisle. There were gasps, cries of alarm. Both of the Browns started toward us, but Billy Dale Rokan grabbed their arms and pulled them back.
"I want my baby!" the woman shouted.
"The demons have her," Rokan said in a trembling voice as he set aside the paper cup filled with poison. "If you go to them, they'll have you."
"Shut up, Rokan," Garth said in an even voice that nevertheless carried throughout the chamber. "Stop being a horse's ass."
Billy Dale Rokan looked back and forth between Garth and the cup he had placed back on the altar.
"Now, all of you listen to me," Garth continued in the tone of voice of a stern parent, "and you listen good. We don't have a hell of a lot of time. You've all been duped-first by William Kenecky and Peter Patton, and then by Thomas Thompson. The world isn't ending tonight, and there aren't any demons outside. You'll find the world outside just the same as it's always been, except that it will be missing those poor fools on the floor who've burned their guts out."
"Please," Vicky's mother pleaded as she struggled to break free of Rokan's grip. "Have mercy! We can't live here any longer. We want to go to God now. Please let me take my baby with me!"
"Why be in such a hurry to die, Mrs. Brown?" I asked as I stroked Vicky's hair. The child had relaxed slightly, and had buried her face in my shoulder, apparently content now to remain in the arms of her Santa's helper. I could not know what the child was thinking and could only hope that her mind was numbed by shock; she'd already had far too much horror inflicted on her.
"Because it's the end of the world! The Final Days are here!"
"No, Mrs. Brown," Garth said firmly. "There are no demons outside. If there were, they'd already be in here by now, because my brother and I put a pretty good hole in your dome when we let ourselves in. You have three choices: drink that stuff and die like your friends have died, stay here and wait for bombs to start dropping on your heads, or come out with the three of us. There's nothing outside to be afraid of; it's all in your minds. Come and see."
I said, "You've all been listening to people like Kenecky and hopping each other up for so long that you can't tell truth from fantasy. Now's the time to listen to my brother. For once in your lives, give reality a chance."
Billy Dale Rokan slowly blinked. "Bombs?"
"You heard right," I replied. "By rights, this place should be rubble right now. I don't know why it's not, but the bombs could start dropping at any moment." I paused, looked hard at Vicky's mother. "Come out with us, Mrs. Brown. Take your husband's hand, and come out with us and your daughter. Look at the corpses in front of you. Do you really think God wants Vicky to suffer like that? Take a chance on life."
Vicky turned her face toward her parents-but she did not try to get out of my arms. Instead, she brought her hands up and gestured to her parents, beckoning them in a way that brought tears to my eyes. "Please, Mommy," she said in her small child's voice. "Daddy? I don't want to go to God now, and I don't want you to go. I want to play with my puppy. Please listen to Mr. Mongo and Garth. Please come away."
"Let her go, Rokan," I said. "Let them both go. If you want to drink that stuff and burn away your insides, go ahead. But let the Browns make their own decision."
Billy Dale Rokan hesitated, then released his grip on the arms of the man and woman. The Browns came rushing up the aisle to us. I set Vicky down to allow her to embrace her mother-but I kept a firm grip on one small hand.
"If the rest of you don't come out with us now, you'll be committing suicide, one way or another, for nothing," Garth announced coldly, then abruptly turned and started for the entrance. Mrs. Brown, with Vicky between us, walked with me, with Vicky's father just behind. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Billy Dale Rokan and the other robed figures hurrying up the aisle after us.
When I came abreast of Garth, I glanced at his watch. It read 12:26. I could not understand how Lippitt could have failed to level the place before midnight-but I was certainly glad that he had.
By the time we reached the path leading to the door cut into the retaining wall, all of the residents of Eden had caught up to us and were close behind. I again glanced over my shoulder, saw in their faces a mixture of hope and anxiety. Despite all I had seen and experienced in connection with bizarre human belief systems over the years, I was astonished anew at the insane and murderous self-delusions our species is capable of; these people, I kept reminding myself, really were still worried about the possibility that beyond the door they would find themselves face to face with demons who had risen from the depths of hell to shred their flesh with tooth and claw. It made me sick. I turned back, stumbled, but caught myself and kept walking. Garth, still leading, was a blur to me. I could have called to him for help, but I didn't want to let go of Vicky, and I was determined to walk out of this rotting hell humans had made on my own.
Garth reached the door, kicked at the lock bar across it. Nothing happened. He kicked again; the bar snapped forward, and the door swung open to let in a draft of cool, sweet-smelling desert air that wafted over my feverish skin like a balm. I opened my mouth wide, drew the clean air into my lungs in great, heaving gulps.
Mrs. Brown, Vicky, and I had just followed Garth through the door when suddenly the night was pierced by powerful searchlights that hit me square in the face, blinding me. I winced, turned away, and lifted my free hand to shield my eyes.
The people behind me began screaming in terror. I felt Vicky being tugged away from me, and I tightened my grip, sensing that something horrible would happen if I let go. But the sudden movement had caught me by surprise, and I felt the small fingers being pulled from my hand as she was tugged back in the direction of Eden.
Everything was spinning around me. I dropped to my knees, desperately reached for the girl with my other hand, couldn't reach her.
"Garth!" I shouted-or tried to shout. The screams of the panicked, terrified people behind me were blocking out all other sounds. The night was filled with horrified shrieking, then screams of pain, the sounds of bodies colliding with each other, and then the sickening crunch and crackle of breaking bones.
"Demons! Demons!"
The little fingers kept slipping away.
"Garth, help me!"
Billy Dale Rokan's voice momentarily rose above the screams. "Go back! It's a trap! The demons are here!"
And then the child was pulled from me. I collapsed on my face, struggled not to sink down into the hot mist that was swirling all around me. Then my vision cleared for a few moments-just long enough for me to see that Garth was using his body to block the entrance to Eden. I could see that he was standing on top of bodies, and between his outstretched legs I could see the bodies of other white-robed people who, in their blind panic to escape from the "demons" with their white lights, had crushed one another against the ground or the concrete wall.
As I watched, my mouth opening and closing in horror, the Browns, with Vicky being dragged between them on the ground, rushed up to him. Garth hit the man with a right cross to the chin, knocking him, unconscious, to the ground. Then he grabbed the woman's arm as she tried to slip past him, pushed her hard to one side at the same time as he scooped up the child in his arms.
The last thing I heard before falling down into the hot mist was the sound of more distant screaming coming from inside Eden.
18
The screams of the doomed, poisoned men and women who had "escaped" back into Eden kept echoing through my dreams, along with visions of the people crushed in and around the doorway. I thought I had seen Garth stop the Browns, and rescue Vicky-but I wasn't sure it hadn't been an hallucination. To escape the screams and visions, and to satisfy a terrible need in me to make sure the child was safe, I struggled back up through the hot mist that still cloaked me.
I opened my eyes to find myself looking up i
nto a very familiar face that was brightened by a most unfamiliar smile. Mr. Lippitt, our ancient, totally bald, seemingly ageless friend who was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and with whom we had shared so many adventures, hardly ever smiled. But now his smile was a veritable grin, and his large, soulful brown eyes gleamed with warmth.
Behind him and slightly to his left, at the opposite side of what appeared to be the hold of a cargo plane outfitted as a hospital emergency room, my brother, wearing slippers and wrapped up in a heavy gray woolen blanket, was watching as an Air Force medic gently applied a sling to Vicky Brown's injured left arm. A few feet away, a very sheepish-looking Mr. and Mrs. Brown stood by themselves, trembling slightly, arms wrapped around one another, also watching the daughter they would have killed to save from an end of the world that hadn't come, and demons that didn't exist. They looked not only sheepish, but also bewildered and lost-as if, for them, their world really had ended, and they had no idea how they would cope with the one they found themselves in. Despite the infectious pus I knew their thoughts to be, and despite what they had tried to do, I found I felt deep pity for them.
"Don't bother asking me how I feel, Lippitt," I croaked, trying and failing to sit up in the bed. "I feel like shit."
"Considering the fact that you have double pneumonia and are suffering the effects of amphetamine overdose, I don't really find that too surprising," the D.I.A. Director replied, still grinning. "Actually, what I was thinking is how cute you look in pink sneakers. They go quite well with your slightly greenish pallor. It's really quite festive."
"You and your warped sense of humor can go to hell, Lippitt," I said as I finally managed to sit up.
"Lie back, Mongo," the old man said seriously, gently gripping my shoulders and trying to push me back down onto the bed. "You're going to be all right, but you're a very sick man."
"It's all right, Lippitt," Garth said as he came across the hold of the plane, put one arm across the Director's shoulders and used the other to support my back. "He's not going to be able to really rest until he's checked out the situation. Everything's fine, brother. You see Vicky and her parents over there, and none of the bombs exploded. It's all over."
I turned, looked out one of the plane's windows. Searchlights had been set up on the desert, and emergency, and police vehicles were everywhere. There were reporters and photographers with sick expressions on their faces as they watched teams of gauze-masked paramedics carting plastic-shrouded corpses out of Eden.
"The others?" I asked in a small voice.
"A couple who got mashed in the doorway will survive," Lippitt replied, shaking his head slightly. "The rest are all dead-either trampled, or as a result of the poison" they drank after running back in there." He paused, sighed, added softly, "Crazy bastards."
"Crazy bastards is right," I said, glancing over-at the Browns, who, shamefaced, were studying us and listening to our conversation. "Christ, Lippitt, they panicked when the searchlights came on. They thought you were demons"
"I thought they might be chasing you, Garth, and the child. We'd been waiting outside for more than two and a half hours, worrying about you and wondering if you were all right. We were all a bit on edge. The moment the door opened, my first concern was to see just what was going on. I never dreamed the lights would cause them to try to run back and poison themselves."
"There's no way you could have known. You've been out here since ten?"
Lippitt nodded. "Ten here, midnight New York time."
"But-"
"In all likelihood, that was when the signal was supposed to be sent to detonate the bombs. But there was no need to bomb this place, Mongo-especially since you, Garth, and the others were still inside. The National Security Agency managed to identify and scramble the signal from here to the satellite; in fact, I think they might even have found a way to destroy the satellite itself, although they don't want to confirm that, even to me. The point is that the thermonuclear bombs weren't going off once the signal had been disrupted; we confirmed that from the bomb that was dismantled in
New York. Our next concern was the welfare of the Frederickson brothers, the child, and the rest of the people in this cursed place. We had no way of knowing how those inside would react to our forced entry, and virtually no chance of getting in without announcing our presence. Considering the forces and technology the planners of this thing had at their disposal, it was even conceivable to some people, including me, that they might have some sort of doomsday device-say, another hydrogen bomb-inside that they could set off if they were attacked. We just didn't know. You can't see it from here, but we did manage to attach a listening device to the section of the dome over the living quarters. We obviously couldn't hear everything, but we heard enough to know that the two of you were still on the loose and taking care of business, so to speak." Lippitt paused, looked back and forth between Garth and me, smiled wryly. "Past experience with you two has taught me never to underestimate the ability of the Fredericksons to take care of business, and themselves. If we'd heard anything to indicate that you'd been captured, then we'd have gone in. As it was, I felt the best course of action was to wait and see what happened. As I said, the situation was uncertain when the door was finally opened, which is why I ordered the lights turned on."
A khaki-clad angel of mercy appeared beside me with a china cup filled with what turned out to be chicken broth. It seared the roof of my mouth when I sipped it, but I couldn't remember anything ever tasting so good. Then the female medic held up a little paper cup with two purple pills in it. Garth took the cup from her, set it down on the bed next to me.
"Thanks, Lippitt," I said between more sips of the steaming broth. I was almost ready for sleep-lots and lots of it. "Thanks for taking care of business at your end, and thanks for caring about the kid and us. You do good work."
"No, my friends," Lippitt said. Then he really surprised me by hugging Garth, and then me. "You are the ones who do the good work. Because of your willingness to risk everything, including your lives, to help one child, the lives of millions of other people have been saved from a singular act of evil and insanity. The entire world owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude. And who knows? When the parts of this story that won't be classified come out, perhaps people will come to listen to deranged hatemongers like William Kenecky with just a bit less credulity and tolerance. Incidentally, our mutual acquaintance, the president, would like to speak to both of you on the phone when you feel up to it. He'd have been here in person, but he felt that his place was in the White House situation room until this matter had been resolved. I agreed, of course."
I looked at Garth. "You want to talk to Shannon?"
He shook his head. "Not at the moment."
Lippitt smiled thinly. "You're still angry with him over the Archangel business, aren't you?"
Garth said, "Mongo and I are still angry with a lot of people over the Archangel business, Lippitt. But not you."
"Hmm. Well, anyway, he wants to mount a very big White House dinner to honor the two of you with the Medal of Freedom; your second, I believe. But these won't be awarded in secret. There'll be a lot of publicity. I suggested to him that he consult with you before he starts making a lot of plans for your futures-he sometimes neglects these little niceties, as you're aware. And so he delegated me to ask if you would accept the honor, and agree to the publicity. My opinion is that it would be good for you to accept. I know you don't much care for the president, but he likes and respects the two of you very much. I also know that you think he's amoral, but in this case I think much benefit could come from the publicity surrounding the story; perhaps it could serve as a warning to others about the kinds of religious charlatans and zealots exemplified by the people who built Eden."
I thought about it, and almost laughed when a most diabolical thought occurred to me. I looked at Garth-and could tell by the look on his face that the same thought had occurred to him. He raised his eyebrows mischievously, grinned, an
d nodded to me.
"You tell him, Mongo."
"Garth and I accept, Lippitt-but there are conditions."
"And what would they be?"
"There are two other men who have to be similarly honored-one in particular."
"Who are they?"
"One is Lieutenant Malachy McCloskey of the NYPD, now retired. The other is Frank Palorino, another cop. If it weren't for McCloskey, Garth and I would have been vaporized hours ago-along with New York City and those millions of people you mentioned. We'll tell you all about it when we're feeling a bit more chipper."
"I'll look forward to it," Lippitt said evenly, his eyes, if not his voice, mirroring his interest. "And I don't see that there would be a problem in honoring the other two. In fact, I suspect the president might feel it would be to his political advantage to honor the common man, so to speak."
"Another thing, Lippitt," my brother said.
"What is it, Garth?"
"Palorino will advance very quickly in the department. It's McCloskey we want really taken care of-the full treatment; that's as it should be. We want him to get the full honors and publicity treatment. Like Mongo said, he's retired now, and he'll be looking for a decent job to while away his retirement years."
"In short, Lippitt," I said, "Garth and I want Malachy McCloskey to suddenly find himself very famous and very rich."
Mr. Lippitt narrowed his eyes as he looked back and forth between my brother and me. "Somehow, I get the impression that there are things you're not telling me."
"We'll tell you all about it, Lippitt," I said. "Later. There are also two pilots from British Airways-"
"Of course."
"For now, you give Shannon the message about our conditions. If he wants our help in getting political mileage out of the Eden business, he has to take care of those other people-especially McCloskey. And McCloskey can't know that we had anything to do with it."
Second Horseman Out of Eden m-7 Page 25