In front of the cottage almost directly across from us was a red tricycle.
We could have only a few minutes left.
Millions of people …
And in, on, Eden, at any moment, bombs would start to fall …
But there was nothing to do but keep going.
Again keeping low, we sprinted across the road and into the shadows between two cabins, pressed up against the side of the cabin with the red tricycle in front of it. Once again we were gasping for air in the tainted atmosphere of Eden.
As we crossed the road I had caught a glimpse of Eden’s place of worship—a church, or an obscene parody of a church, with a gray-white gabled front and a twisted swastika for a cross. The sight of the structure, placed here as it had been in the model, gave me a perverse sense of hope.
Houses of worship were the places where worshipers placed effigies of their gods, and the only real god these people worshiped was death.
“Did you … see … the church?”
Garth nodded, and from the expression on his face I could tell that he was thinking the same thoughts I was: the bombs would have to start falling at any moment. Indeed, I could hardly believe that the bombing run had not begun already. The alternative—that the planes had not been able to get into the air, and that at that very moment a radio signal was being sent that could ignite nuclear holocausts—was almost unthinkable.
I continued, “Do you suppose the transmitter could be in there?”
“I’m going to check it out.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. At least you may be able to save the girl. You try to find her, then get her to someplace safe, if you can.”
“Garth—”
“There’s no time to argue, Mongo. Go get the child—and be safe.”
And then he was gone, his running, mud-covered figure disappearing into the darkness of the shadows surrounding the cottages as he headed toward the swastika-crowned church down the road.
I sidled along the edge of the house, darted around the corner, went up the single step, and tried the front door. It was open. I eased myself into the darkened living room, quietly closed the door behind me until only a sliver of light was coming through, then looked around—and started.
Across the room, on a table set next to a half-closed door from which flickering candlelight emanated, the luminous dial of a clock radio glowed.
It was 10:10 in Idaho, Mountain Time.
In New York, the new year had already begun.
Mr. Lippitt’s planes were too late.
Unless the radio transmitter was keyed to Mountain Time, and Lippitt had somehow found that out. But how could he?
All moot questions, I thought as I moved to the doorway, mud-filled revolver in my hand. I paused to clean some of the slime off the metal, hoping to make it at least look threatening, then peered around the edge of the door.
In the center of the room a young couple was kneeling in front of a small, makeshift altar on which a swastika-cross was flanked by two crimson candles. Both the man and woman were dressed in hooded white terry-cloth robes. I put the gun back in the waistband of my jeans, next to my spine, then stepped into the room.
“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Brown,” I said quietly. “I have to talk to you.”
Both the man and woman whipped their head and shoulders around. They were young, fresh-faced, and attractive, probably in their mid-twenties. The man had close-cropped brown hair, and the woman’s hair was a reddish-blond. Their eyes were filled with shock, fear, and alarm.
“Who are you?!” the man shouted as he leaped to his feet. “What are you?!”
“My name is Robert Fred—”
“Demon!” the man screamed as he leaped at me. “You’re a demon!”
So much for the easygoing approach. I hit him in the stomach as he reached down for me, then followed up with the barrel of my gun against the side of his head. He went down, and stayed down.
“Mrs. Brown,” I said quickly, “please listen to me! If I meant harm, I could have killed your husband just now. But I didn’t. I didn’t even hit him that hard; he’ll be all right. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want you to listen to me.”
I paused, put the gun back in my waistband and smiled tentatively—but the woman’s almost childlike face remained frozen in shock and horror that I felt almost as a physical blow. She was, I realized, thoroughly terrified of me—not because I was a mud-covered intruder who had startled her, or even because I had cold-cocked her husband with a very large and nasty-looking gun.
The woman was speechless with horror because she believed me to be a demon.
“I’m just a man, Mrs. Brown,” I continued in a quiet voice that I hoped she would find soothing. “You are Mrs. Brown, aren’t you? Vicky’s mother?”
“You’re one of them,” the green-eyed woman said in a weak, quavering voice. Then she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and raised her arms in supplication. “Oh, Jesus, please take me to you now. Please take me now.”
“Mrs. Brown, your daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus. The letter was mailed in New York City by Thomas Thompson, and my brother and I wound up with it because of a certain Christmas tradition that’s followed in New York. I’m no demon; I’m a private investigator who just happens to be a dwarf, and right now my brother and I are trying to save a few lives. Did you know that your daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus a few weeks ago?”
The woman stopped her mumbling, lowered her head, opened her eyes, and stared at me. Then, for my efforts, I got a tentative nod.
“Did you read it?” I continued.
She shook her head.
“Your daughter was being sexually abused by William Kenecky. He was raping her, and he was doing it frequently. Did you know that?”
The green eyes clouded, and the color drained from the woman’s face. “What …? What are you saying?”
“All right, you didn’t know. Kenecky was molesting Vicky, Mrs. Brown—raping her, and worse. She was afraid to tell either you or your husband because Kenecky had her convinced that she wouldn’t go to heaven with you if she did.”
“It’s a lie,” the woman breathed. “Reverend Kenecky has gone on ahead, so he’s not here to confront you. What you say can’t be true.”
“Mrs. Brown, just how do you think Reverend Kenecky ‘went on ahead,’ as you put it?”
“God took him in a blinding flash of light. Mr. Thompson told us about it. Reverend Kenecky was Raptured ahead of all the others. It’s a very great honor.”
“Thompson killed him, Mrs. Brown. He killed him because he knew Kenecky was a child raper, and because he thought that by killing Kenecky he could keep my brother and me from finding this place—which, by the way, doesn’t seem to have worked out so well. The air here smells poisonous.”
The woman slowly, reluctantly, nodded. “Eden is wrong; it was not meant to be. I don’t understand why the reverend said we should be here. If we are not to be Raptured, then it must mean that we were meant to die, to go to God now to wait for the end of the Tribulation. You’re right when you say that Eden is poisoned. It is another sign. We do not want to suffer at the hands of the demons, so we’re all going to God in a little while.”
“Huh?”
“Please let us be.”
“What do you mean, you’re ‘going to God in a little while’? Who’s going to God?”
“All of us. It’s been agreed that we should all die by our own hands. It doesn’t make any difference, because we’ll all be resurrected when Jesus comes to establish His kingdom on earth. That’s only seven years away. In the meantime, God will take us to His bosom and we will be spared the agonies of the Tribulation.”
“You’re all going to commit suicide?”
The woman’s silence was her answer. A chill went through me, and I shuddered.
“Are you going to kill Vicky, too?”
The woman tilted her head slightly and stared at me. She seemed genuinely puzzl
ed. “Of course,” she said at last. “Do you think I would leave my own daughter behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation, to be torn by the claws of demons? Armageddon is about to begin.”
“Please listen to me very carefully, Mrs. Brown. Armageddon could begin in a little while—not because God or Jesus wants it, but because Kenecky and a man by the name of Henry Blaisdel wanted it. There are hydrogen bombs, and—”
“It’s God’s will. All but white, born-again Christians will be sent to hell anyway. What difference does it make if kikes, niggers, and mud people die now or later?”
Hearing the words from the young, attractive, innocent-looking woman shook me, and I involuntarily took a step backward. I wondered if she sensed how afraid I was of her, of the poison in her mind that had, in a few short years, corroded her rationality and morality.
“I’m no demon, Mrs. Brown,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “There aren’t any demons outside now, and there aren’t going to be any demons outside after midnight. What there’s going to be is a whole lot of death and destruction if we don’t stop what’s been set in motion. But we are going to stop it. You know about the radio transmitter, and you know where it is; if you don’t, your husband does, because he’s been looking after the place. One of you is going to tell me where it is, and then we’re going to shut it down. Then we’ll see if we can’t talk some sense into the rest of the people in here. If you kill yourself, it will be for nothing. Armageddon isn’t coming, Mrs. Brown; just a new year.”
“Lie,” she hissed, and suddenly hatred glinted in her green eyes. “You are a demon! Satan sent you!”
“Lady, those hydrogen bombs aren’t going to go off in any event, because this place is going to be leveled to the ground before the signal is sent. So let’s do us all a favor and—”
“Demon!” she screamed. It was her last intelligible word, as she suddenly threw her head back again and began to babble at the top of her lungs. Saliva flew from her lips, dripped down her chin.
There’d already been a good deal too much shouting, as far as I was concerned, and the woman’s sudden, very loud fit of glossolalia wasn’t helpful to either my nerves or the situation. “Sorry, ma’am,” I said as I stepped quickly across the room and clipped her on the chin. The speaking in tongues stopped, and she collapsed to the floor.
I went back into the other room, walked over to the clock radio, which now read 10:50; I reached out with a trembling hand, turned it on.
The radio was tuned to a country radio station, which was playing a Hank Williams tune. I slowly turned the dial, got light classical music, a talk show, a New Year’s Eve party, a news report on local weather conditions.
It was almost one in the morning in New York, but the bombs had not exploded—yet; it had to mean that the transmitter was set to Mountain Time. We still had a little more than an hour. I heaved a deep sigh of relief, shut the radio off.
Where the hell was Garth?
But I didn’t have time to worry about my brother, and I didn’t think it was a good strategy to follow in his footsteps. I had to assume that he was taking care of business. While it was true that the transmitter might be somewhere in the church, and while there was always the possibility that Garth had been captured, I didn’t think I should go there until I had explored other possibilities. Eden was a big place.
I was going to have to have a serious talk with Vicky Brown’s father.
Suddenly a hot flush spread over my body, and I felt faint. Sweat popped out on my forehead, rolled down my face. My vision blurred. Just what I needed.
There was a small bathroom off the living room. I went into it and splashed cold water over my face. Then I took out the bottle of green pills. I shook one out, started to put it in my mouth, then thought better of it. I was very sick, to be sure, and feverish once again. I was probably hanging by my toenails over the edge of exhaustion—but I remembered the reaction I had suffered earlier, and I didn’t want to risk having that happen to me again; if I passed out at any time in the next hour, I could well wake up in a world that had been forever changed, one with a few million fewer people in it and clouds of deadly radiation circling the planet. I tossed the pill in the toilet.
I pulled down the shower curtain and grabbed a towel, intending to use the items to bind the couple and gag the woman before I had my chat with Mr. Brown. I walked into the other room, stopped abruptly when I saw the child, dressed in a white terry-cloth robe like her parents, standing at the bottom of the staircase, which I assumed led to her upstairs bedroom. Considering all the commotion, I supposed it was surprising she hadn’t come down before, and I knew I was lucky someone hadn’t come to investigate.
The girl, rubbing her knuckles into eyes that were puffy with sleep, was staring at her parents on the floor, perhaps thinking that they were asleep. She was a beautiful child, with the same light, Nordic features as her parents. When she took her hands away from her eyes I could see that they were a pale blue. As I watched her I felt my boundless rage at the dead William Kenecky rekindled. I wondered how much damage, physically and emotionally, he’d done to her, and if it could ever be repaired.
“Vicky?” I said softly.
The child looked at me, then back at her parents—and perhaps saw the blood trickling from the gash I’d put into her father’s left temple. She looked at me again, and her cherubic features twisted with anger at the same time as tears welled in her eyes.
“What have you done to my mommy and daddy?!” she screamed, and then came running across the room, tiny fists raised in the air. She reached me, began pounding my chest and face. “You hurt my mommy and daddy! You’re a demon! I won’t let you hurt my mommy and daddy anymore! Go away and leave us alone, you demon!”
As the tiny fists flailed at me I felt tears well in my own eyes; I was struck by the incredible courage of this child who would attack a demon with her bare hands in order to protect her mother and father. I decided that she’d survive her trauma at the hands and penis of William Kenecky—and possibly, with some good professional help, the poisonous spiritual growth undoubtedly already growing in her mind from seeds planted by her parents and the other lunatics she’d been living around might be uprooted.
“Vicky, listen to me,” I said in an urgent whisper as I reached through the pounding fists, gently grasped the child, and pulled her to me. “Shhh. I’ve come from Santa.”
“You’re a demon!” she shouted as she pulled her hands free and began to pound at my head again.
“No. I’m one of Santa’s helpers. Look at me. Don’t I look like one of Santa’s helpers?”
That got her attention; she stopped pounding, carefully looked me up and down. “You’re all dirty,” she announced. “And you smell terrible.”
“That’s because I fell in the mud on my way here. You have to listen to me, Vicky, and don’t shout anymore. Santa got your letter asking for a puppy and telling him how Reverend Bill was hurting you and doing other bad things. Santa has a puppy for you, but it was even more important to him to make sure you weren’t hurt any more. Santa can’t stand it when children are hurt, and so he sent me to make things right for you.”
Vicky Brown’s tiny brow wrinkled in a puzzled frown, and there seemed to be a newfound—if tentative—respect in her pale blue eyes. “You really are one of Santa’s helpers?” she said in a small voice. “It’s the truth?”
“Santa’s helpers never lie,” I answered, and cast a quick glance over at the girl’s parents. They were both beginning to stir, and that didn’t bode well; I thought it might be a little difficult to explain to the girl why one of Santa’s helpers had been bashing her parents around. “Can’t you see that I’m an elf?”
“What’s your name?” she asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Mr. Mongo. I’m one of Santa’s helpers who takes care of heavy duty … uh, Santa sends me out to take care of people who hurt little girls and boys. I’m his toughest helper.”
Mr. Brown moaned, t
hen fell silent again. Mrs. Brown, however, was starting to come around. One leg twitched, and she started to raise her head.
“You sure you’re not a demon?”
“Yes, Vicky. Uh, why don’t you go into the bathroom and spla—”
“How come you have on pink sneakers?” she asked in an accusatory tone as she pointed a tiny finger at my unusual footgear, which the streams I’d waded through on my way from the swamp had washed clean. I decided that her interrogation techniques were as good as, probably better than, Malachy McCloskey’s. “Elves don’t wear pink sneakers. They wear shoes with pointy toes.”
“Only the elves who make toys in Santa’s workshop wear shoes with pointy toes,” I said tightly, keeping my eye on the woman, who was now pushing herself up from the floor with her hands, shaking her head. The child’s back was to her parents, but in another few seconds I was going to have to make some kind of move, and it looked like it was going to have to be an unpleasant one. “Tough elves like me who are sent out to help little girls wear pink sneakers.”
“I have to go to the bathroom, Mr. Mongo.”
Ah. “You go right ahead, Vicky. I’ll be right here when you come back. We’ll talk about your puppy.”
She’d no sooner stepped into the other room than I was across the floor. I stepped in front of the woman, once again clipped her on the chin—this time more gently, using the heel of my hand. I caught her head, eased it down to the floor, put the towel under it. Then I checked the man’s pulse and breathing. I’d apparently hit him harder than I’d intended, but I decided that he’d be all right as soon as he slept a little longer.
Next I checked on the clock radio in the other room. It read 11:05. I returned to the unconscious couple, made a show of covering the woman with an afghan from a sofa set against the wall. The child had become the key, and I couldn’t rush.
The child, still looking sleepy, entered the room. Now apparently trusting me completely, she came over to where I knelt beside her mother, wrapped her arms around my neck, and rested her head on my chest.
Second Horseman Out of Eden Page 23