Billy seized on the image of Paula and Susan. It kept him at a safe distance from his loss and pain, gave him a place to put his rage. He thought about how they'd tried to use Mona's rape as a symbol of oppression, Mona's career as a striking piece of poetic justice, Mona herself as emotional cannon fodder in the grand crusade to rid the world of erect penises. Or even limp ones.
And then a truly hideous thought occurred to him, fanning the spark into a white-hot flame of hatred that grew and grew and grew.
And the thought was: What if they try to do the same thing to Lisa? What if they make her a martyr to their cause? It would be so easy to do. She wouldn't even be there to defend herself, much less make her own position clear.
He could picture it with total clarity. He could hear the bullshit now. All the words they would put in her mouth. All the lies they would make of her life.
"Sorry, girls," he hissed, scarcely more than a whisper. "I can't let you do that."
Billy closed his eyes, and Paula Levin's face played crystal clear in the private screening room of his mind. It took a little longer to bring the face of the other woman into focus. But it came.
Somewhere in the city, they were together. From the darkness of that private screening room, he reached out for them.
With the Power.
In the last several seconds before their lives spiraled down into nightmare, Paula and Susan were pleased with themselves. They'd faced a tough decision, but they'd risen to the occasion. They had to. There was a war on, and grief was a debilitating factor.
Diane's betrayal still rankled them, of course: they'd been robbed of their moment of glory if they took credit for the bombing, they would also have to take credit for the deaths. Aside from the crimp that a prolonged incarceration would put in their agenda, the Movement was liable to frown on such a successful fuckup. Their involvement with the death of Show World had to be kept absolutely secret.
Fortunately Diane had her own reputation to look after. Beyond that, she swore a solemn oath that not a word about the entire affair would leak. Her letter had arrived today, postmarked Chicago, accompanied by a trio of sadistic paperbacks that she evidently found amusing.
The note was short and sweet. It read:
Dear girls,
Have fun with the books. If you won't tell, I won't tell. Good luck with your next movie. You should stick with them. You're much better at rhetoric than you are at real life.
It was an infuriating footnote, but there was a nugget of truth therein. Making movies was their business; spreading the word was their mission. Once it was clear that they would not be going to prison, they were free to get back down to it.
Hence, their difficult decision. With which they were well pleased.
The bad news was that another beloved sister had died. The good news was that she would have a chance to live on. And Pieces of Meat had a new central image: a gut-wrenching true story to dramatize and bludgeon the male supremist society to its knees with.
The true story of Mona and Lisa.
In the last several seconds before their world went mad, Susan was breaking out the wine. Their nerves were frazzled from two pots of coffee and the meticulous restructuring of their harrowing tale. Making Lisa a hero was a piece of cake: even though they'd often disagreed with her, they'd always respected her inner strength and dedication to the Movement. Correcting her obvious flaws in judgment was child's play; what she'd failed to grasp in life, she'd come to symbolize in death. It was an honor that either of them would have been proud to bear.
Fleshing out Mona was a little more difficult, because they really didn't understand her. Not that it mattered all that much. Wrongheadedness had held the public center stage long enough; it didn't need to be lovingly spelled out again.
But if the power of her conversion was to come across on the screen, it was important that they make her at least marginally deserving of respect. Giving the opposition credit for anything beyond a certain animal cunning was always a problem. It was much easier to simplify, zero in on their faults.
"Well, Lisa seemed to like her," Susan said, acknowledging her glass of Chablis with a terse and joyless sip.
"I think the reasons are obvious," Paula stated. "It was a matter of infatuation. Lisa never quite outgrew the male concept of feminine beauty. You know how slavish she was about her looks . . ."
Paula had a point that she was circling in on, vulturelike. She never quite got to make it.
Because the pain hit.
And the world went mad.
And the whiripooling nightmare sucked them in.
The two women screamed, very nearly in unison. The wine bottle slipped from Susan's fingers and exploded against the floorboards. Paula doubled up in her seat. Susan did much the same, but she was crashing to her knees in the process.
In the first quarter of human development that follows conception, the sexes are exactly alike. They share the same organs, the same primordial sex glands. if a person's sexual politics were determined at that point, there would be no war. There would be no other side.
But somewhere in the neighborhood of the eighteenth week, the crafty male supremist Y chromosome imposes itself on slightly less than half of the fetus population.
That early in the person's development, the transition to maleness is both natural and painless.
Undergone some thirty years later, it's another story entirety.
Bones creaked and shrieked and ground against each other: broadening shoulders, narrowing hips. Breasts receded and sprouted hair. Hormones mutated. Cells went berserk.
Both of them were on the floor now, writhing and howling with voices that steadily deepened in pitch. For Paula Levin, the anguish of her rebelling physiology was nothing compared to the anguish of her mind. A different kind of conception had taken place there: an embryonic lunacy that would, grow and grow and grow.
Just as something else was growing, in the battlefield between her thighs.
Her enemy was growing there.
And, dear God, it was enormous.
"Hey, buddy!" yelled the voice from far away. "You want out here or what?"
It took Billy a minute to claw his way back to the surface. For one thing, he was in something very much like a trance; for another, he was having a blast there. The visuals, from his private screening room's vantage, were not to be believed.
But he realized that the cab had stopped, and that the cabbie was getting impatient. It's alright, he told himself. Now that the girls are big strong men, I'm sure they can take care of themselves.
He paid the cabbie and got out. The cab wheeled away, and Billy turned to face the darkness of East Thirteenth Street. He could feel the adrenaline pumping now, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
"Look out, Stanley, cuz here I come," he announced. "Gonna send you to a far better place."
The night, ever tactful, let him go on believing it.
FIFTY-ONE
THE ROAD TO HELL
Another cab was on its way downtown and to the east. It bore no satisfied passenger, no vengeful lunatic glee.
Just a dark shape, huddled alone in the backseat, with one smoking red eye that blinked and glowed.
Over and over and over.
It had been a quarter to eleven when Mona left the apartment, venturing out on the street alone for the first time since the rape. Though the night was cool and clear, she could feel it weighing down on her shoulders like a black woolen shroud. A ponderous night. Foreboding. Foretelling.
God, or whatever powers there be, had seen fit to send a cab her way almost instantly. She'd given her thanks as she climbed in.
And now she was on her way, the cab rolling smoothly through the moderate traffic on the West Side Highway. She stared through her window at the dark waters of the Hudson, while the one red eye stared back at her in silent, somber reflection.
Mona knew that the nightmare was wailing for her. She knew that the worst was yet to come. It was hard to
believe, but she'd reached the point where she could believe anything now.
And I need some answers, she told herself, while the world whipped past her window. I need to know what's going on.
In the minutes following her conversation with Larry, she'd used up the last of her tears. There was so much to hurt about—there didn't seem to be any end to it—but she was getting tired of hurting, she was getting tired of being dragged around and victimized by fate, she was getting tired of standing around in the dark while forces beyond her wildest dreams tore apart everything she loved.
Because she was strong, dammit! She was better than that! Let some other weeping pussy willow bend to the wind; she had fought her way to the brink of success—a lift she loved, a community, a career—and she would be good and God damned if she was gonna just let it all cave in on her.
And as for you, Billy Rowe, her mind harangued, just who the hell do you think you are? If I want to be with Dave, I'll be with Dave. If I want to be with you—
She stopped herself there.
The road to Hell was the West Side Highway, blasting down to the Canal Street exit. Mona knew that for a fact. Any road that led to Billy's apartment was the road to Hell, because Billy stood squarely at the heart of all the madness. She knew that, too.
And she was strangely unafraid.
Because whatever dark force had descended on all their lives—making hers a nightmare, stripping Lisa's away entirely—Billy was the first victim of it. Ever since the night of the party, when the first blood was spilled on the street before him, something had taken hold of Billy and transformed him into a creature both beautiful and terrible: an awesome more-than-human, with powers she could only guess at.
And Mona was tired of guessing.
She wanted answers. And she would have them.
Tonight.
The smoking red eye had burned down to its filter. She brought a fresh cigarette to her lips and lit it off the dying spark, then ground out the old in the ashtray. Making way for the new.
"Billy, I love you," she whispered into the darkness. "And I'll save you if I can. But it has to end, baby. The nightmare has to end."
The cab whipped up onto the exit ramp, wheeled left onto Canal Street. The road to Hell stretched out before her.
She knew what it was paved with.
She hoped to God that it was enough.
FIFTY-TWO
TRAILS
The door squealed open before Billy could touch it. He'd had that experience before. He half expected to see Christopher there, smiling and saying it's alright, man, it's alright.
But the vibe was all wrong. From the bottom of the stairs, three floors below, that much had been clear.
Christopher would not be here.
Only the horror.
Only the horror.
All the way up the stairs Billy had felt the ugliness thicken in the air, become a semisolid viscosity that he had to force his way through with effort. His previous cheer had given way to an inner coolness that sharpened to intensity and then gave way to out-and-out dread.
And now the door was sliding open before him, as if it were afraid of his touch. Billy smiled tersely at it, stepping forward. He figured it made them just about even.
Because he recognized the smell, and the smell was pure evil. It was the sweat that matted demon-fur, the slime that made them glisten. It was dying breaths and opened bellies, sulfur and sewage. It burned in his nostrils and throat like Drano, made the back of his eyeballs ache.
It made him wish, for just one honest second, that he could turn around and walk back a week in time.
It scared him very badly.
But not enough to stop me, fuckers, he silently hissed, moving into the doorway. Not enough to keep me from Stan the Man.
He stepped into the apartment.
The door slammed shut behind him.
A moment of silence.
And then the dance began . . .
They were lesser demons, one and all: most of them formless, and brainless as drones. Their functions were as tiny as their blackened souls; they performed them endlessly, all the while screaming in tones that only the Mad Ones could hear.
They'd all stopped, uniformly, when the Enemy came, terror coursing through their tiny maggot hearts. The Enemy was strong, so much stronger than they were. The Enemy could make them suffer in ways that they could not begin to imagine.
But they were strong in number, and they could smell the Enemy's fear. It made them fierce, in their brainless way.
The hive-mind buzzed, imperative.
The demons went back to work.
The three drawers of the kitchen cabinet went flying across the room. Billy whipped around to his right, watched them hit the wall just as the framed photographs on the wall behind him exploded. He whirled again, and the TV changed channels, and the empty TV dinner trays and crumpled paper bags began to levitate off of the coffee table that bucked and shuddered and thumped its wooden feet against the floor in epileptic frenzy. Closets and cabinets flew open, slammed shut, flew open again. Billy turned, turned, turned. The TV changed channels.
There was a glass case mounted on the wall behind the front door. It was crammed full of knickknacks, wide-eyed and ceramic: kitties and birdies and horsies and clowns. One by one, their heads flew of and bled: redness thick as motor oil, oozing from the saw-toothed stumps. Billy turned and watched them bleed. The TV changed channels. Changed channels. Changed channels. A butter knife windmilled across the living room, embedded in a newspaper clipping that was Scotch-taped to the wall above the sofa whose stuffing ripped out through its Colonial flesh and raced to the ceiling where it hovered like a layer of cumulus clouds. A rat-thing the size of a cocker spaniel scuttled out from under the cushy chair in front of the TV and raced toward the bedroom door. The TV changed channels.
Billy stared at the scuttling rat-thing, and it burst into greasy flames.
The apartment went silent.
And nothing moved.
The demons knew terror.
It froze the television dial in place and the stuffing to the ceiling. It stranded the paper bags in midair and paralyzed the coffee table. Closets and cabinets, doors formerly in motion, stayed right where they were.
The Enemy was too strong.
But they couldn't stop screaming, and that was the worst part. Even though they knew that he could hear them, Mad One that he was, they continued to screech and wail. They couldn't help it.
Terror was their frame of reference.
They were learning it anew.
"Shit!" Billy yelled, eyes burning, heart pounding, ears ringing with the mewling chorus of tiny demon screams. He had them right where he wanted them; the only problem was, they weren't who he wanted at all.
The one he wanted wasn't here.
"Shit!" he reiterated, bellowing. "Shit Shit SHIIIIITTT!" He punted the cushy chair, lifting it five feet and slamming it into the TV set, which fell over on its back and died in a shower of sparks. Another of the rat-things had been cowering under the chair; it stared up at him with its black-hole eyes, bared the sharp yellow teeth in its hideous bulging pink gums, and went skreeeeeee for one second before its skull flattened out under Billy's boot.
It wasn't enough.
"Peckard, God damn you! Come out here and TAKE YOUR MEDICINE!" he screamed. The demons yammered away, but no one stepped forward. No one could. Stanley Peckard was gone.
Billy refused to accept it. He stomped around the apartment, tearing doors off their hinges, overturning furniture. He found seven more monsters and did them in with barely a second glance.
It wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough. He felt swindled, stripped, pissed on and left for dead. The Power, thrumming with its own deadly life, threatened to dissolve him into a pool of bubbling fat if he didn't find somewhere to put it, fast.
And he had nothing to go on, no leads to follow . . .
. . . except his sense of smell.
"Ooo, baby,"
he said softly, allowing himself to smile again. His nostrils flared, savoring the stench of Stanley's apartment, grinding it into his memory banks. He had followed it up the stairs.
He would follow it back out.
This time, when Billy came to the front door, he had to open it by hand. There was a demon in the doorknob, but it was trying to hide. It made a sound like a whistling teakettle when it died.
The door slid shut behind him quietly, and he started down the stairs. The stench was here, yes, noxious and fulsome, leading him by the nose as he descended.
And as he descended, a connection came to him: the place where he had smelled that smell before. It hobnail-booted his memory into recollection, spun him back to a place some twenty-eight hours before.
Just before he ran into Lisa.
Out in front of the Variety Photoplays.
Ah, yes, he mused, remembering the moment. Remembering it very well. The same flaring of nostrils. The same eviscerating dread. With nothing to peg it on, he'd had no choice but to shrug it off.
Now he knew what it was.
And his mind went there . . .
There were thirty-seven men, three working women, a pimp named Cool, and a working blond transvestite by the name of Johnny in the Variety Photoplays when the fire broke out. It started simultaneously in three distinct locations: the bottom of the screen, the rear of the projectionist's booth, and the floor of the ticket taker's cubicle. It did not take its good-natured time. The projectionist and the ticket taker were dead before they had a chance to scream more than a dozen times, much less leave the death traps in which they found themselves flambéing. Between the actual flames, so rapidly spreading, and the shifty ventilation system that failed to disperse the smoke, every single one of them was dead before Billy reached the bottom of the stairs.
Not a one of them was named Stanley Peckard.
Billy knew that before he started the fires.
The Cleanup Page 34