Behind me, Tanker Thompson was using the handle of the fire ax to haul himself to his feet.
Once again able to suck air into my lungs after my brief rest stop, I resumed my labored struggle up the side of the slope. I reached the top, grabbed the revolver from the waistband of my jeans, and used the butt of the ruined weapon to smash the glass case over the transmitter. I tore wires from the terminals of the huge storage batteries powering it, then smashed the butt against the transmitter itself—once, twice, three times. The LED lights on a panel in front went out. I grabbed the antenna and snapped it off before slumping to the ground, quite thoroughly exhausted. I raised my head, still more than mildly curious to see what kind of progress Tanker Thompson was making.
I estimated that I had about six feet of life left—the distance between Thompson and his fire ax and me. And then even that was gone as he loomed over me, his earless, blood-covered skull appearing decidedly otherworldly as he stared down at me with his raisin eyes that now seemed virtually lifeless.
“… Over,” I croaked. “It’s over. Please … please don’t kill the girl.”
“I won’t kill her,” Thompson mumbled through lips that I could now see were covered with froth. “She will go to God with her parents, as God wants her to.”
“No … no sense. No …”
He staggered slightly, then planted his feet wider apart and used both hands to lift the ax over his head. The ax head simply kept arcing backward as his hands released their grip on the handle. A bullet hole had appeared in his temple, just above a ragged piece of flesh that had once been his ear. Still, he didn’t go down. Even with a bullet in his brain, he continued to stagger around like some grotesque chicken. He finally collapsed when a second shot rang out, and his right earhole widened.
I wearily turned my head to the right, the direction the shots had come from, to see who my savior might be, and was not at all surprised to see my brother, standing in a green-striped golf cart, slowly lowering his automatic to his side.
The meanest Santa’s helper of all.
Garth stuck the automatic into his back pocket, climbed out of the golf cart, and walked steadily but unhurriedly toward us. On his face, in his soft brown eyes, was an expression of incredible gentleness, and I could see tears running down his cheeks. He was looking at Vicky, and when I glanced into the face of the child standing beside me I saw that she was staring back at him with open joy, as if he were a favorite uncle she had known all her life. As he approached, she unhesitatingly ran to him, arms extended, and Garth swept her up in his arms and held her tight.
“It’s all right now, Vicky,” Garth murmured in her ear. “It’s all right.”
“Uh … dear brother of mine?”
Slowly, one of Garth’s hands came down and rested itself gently on my shoulder. “You do good work, Mongo,” he said softly, in a voice choked with emotion.
“So do you,” I replied, grabbing the hand and pulling myself to my feet. I was quite amazed that I was able to stand; I was still reflecting on my amazing recuperative powers when my legs gave out under me and I sat down hard on the sand. I stayed there, drawing my knees up and resting my forearms on them. “Do we have time to try to get her parents?”
Garth kissed Vicky on the forehead, then set her down. He glanced at his watch, then at me. “Yeah,” he said, once more pulling me to my feet and holding me under the arm as he steered me toward the golf cart.
“Uh, how much time do we have?”
“Just about enough for a very quick chat with a bunch of fools.”
17.
I sat against the passenger’s door of the golf cart, which was equipped with bicycle pedals, my arm wrapped tightly around Vicky as Garth, his powerful legs pumping furiously, guided the surprisingly speedy cart along a narrow pathway that circled the inner perimeter of the biosphere. To our left, the rotting biomass of Eden’s rain forest resembled nothing so much as a giant bowl of green Jell-O that had been tipped over.
“They’re planning to hold a Jim Jones–Guyana remembrance party back there,” Garth said as he deftly steered the cart around something lumpy in the middle of the path. “They want to poison themselves.”
“I know. What are they planning to use?”
“I got close enough to a bowl of the stuff to smell it, and it doesn’t smell like Kool-Aid.”
“It was Tanker Thompson’s idea.”
“Well, my guess is that they’ve mixed together gasoline, battery acid, and maybe a few other things to give it color. If they want to check out of this shithole by killing themselves, that stuff will certainly do the trick. But it’s going to be ugly.”
“Where are they?”
“They were gathering in the sanctuary of their church when I saw them; they’ve got the poison and a lot of paper cups up on the altar.” Garth whipped the steering wheel to the right, and we sped along the path next to the concrete wall, toward the glow spilling out of the archway leading to the living quarters. “I snuck in through a back door. Incidentally, there’s a door in the wall behind the church that looks like it must lead to the outside.”
“It does. What time is it, Garth?”
“What difference does it make?” Garth replied evenly. “We have to go in this direction anyway.”
“We’re running a little late, aren’t we?”
Garth looked over at me, laughed. “I love the way you put things. Actually, we’re running a lot late.”
“But—”
“Mr. Mongo,” Vicky said, tugging at my sleeve, “will my mommy and daddy be all right?”
“We’re on our way to get them now, Vicky.”
Again, Garth glanced in my direction, frowned. “Jesus, Mongo, you look green.”
“So do you; it must be the color of the month. At least I don’t have to do the driving. How are your legs holding up?”
“Legs? What legs? You had to mention them, right? By the way, if my calculations are correct, that business back there puts me one up on you in the rescue department. You botched your chance in the Blaisdel Building.”
“Bull—nonsense. That doesn’t count as a rescue.”
“It doesn’t? I could have sworn I saw Thompson standing over you with an ax, and it looked to me like he was getting ready to split you right down the middle.”
“I was just sitting down to get my second wind. But I won’t deny that I was happy to see you; I could tell that you were all right, and it meant that I didn’t have to rush back to rescue you after I took care of Tanker Thompson. How did you manage to get over there when you did?”
“While I was in the church, I debated whether or not to jump somebody and try to get the information we needed, but they all stayed together. I’d determined that the transmitter wasn’t there, and I figured that my best move was to go back to the cottage and work with you to get the information out of one of Vicky’s parents.” He took one hand off the steering wheel to rub his thighs, which had to be beginning to cramp, then reached out and pressed my shoulder. “The bottom line was that if we were going to die, I wanted us to be together. I hadn’t seen Thompson inside the church, and that made me uneasy. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Thanks, Garth,” I said seriously. “I may give you rescue credit after all.”
“Anyway, I was on my way back to the cottage when I caught sight of Thompson lurching up the road with that ax. I had a pretty good idea who he was chasing, so I took off after him. I was looking to get a good shot at him, but he had too much of a lead. By the time I caught up, you were all out paddling on that oversize cesspool. I couldn’t fire at him without risk of hitting you or Vicky, and I didn’t want to waste any bullets. I’d seen some of these golf carts back by the church, so I ran back and got this. By the time I made it back to the water, you were out of sight. But I knew you had to be trying to make it to the other side, so I just pedaled around on this path.” He paused and, despite the pain evident in his body and his shortness of breath, chuckled. “If I�
��d known you were just sitting there resting, I wouldn’t have been so quick on the trigger; I’d have just stood there and waited for you to stick that ax up his—”
“We have young ears among us, brother.”
“—nose.”
At the arched entranceway to the living quarters, Garth turned sharply and headed straight down the center of the road toward the swastika-crowned church at the end.
“Hold it!” I said as we came abreast of the Browns’ cottage. “Vicky’s parents may have stayed in their cottage; we have to check.”
Garth braked to a halt, then grabbed the back of my shirt just as I’d been about to topple out of the cart onto my face. “You stay here,” he said curtly. “I’m still a paler green than you are.”
Garth got out of the cart, paused for a few seconds to catch his breath and knead the muscles in his legs, then hurried into the cottage. I held Vicky very close, waited. He reappeared a few moments later, hurried back to the cart. There was a strange expression on his face.
“They’re gone?” I asked.
Garth nodded absently, got back into the cart, and resumed his pedaling.
“What’s the matter?”
His reply was to show me the watch on his left wrist. He had reset it to local time.
It read 12:07.
“Maybe it’s wrong,” I continued tightly.
Garth shook his head. “It’s not wrong; I checked the time when we were up in the plane.”
“As much as Lippitt cares for us, I can’t believe that he’d take a chance with the lives of millions of people and risk a world war just to spare the Fredericksons. And he’s had plenty of time; even if his people somehow missed the Eastern Time deadline, they couldn’t have missed this one. And he can’t know that I managed to smash the transmitter.”
“I agree.”
“Then why the hell are we still alive? Where are the bombs?”
“I don’t know,” Garth said as he braked to a halt in front of the church. He quickly got out, pointed to a path leading around behind the church. “Get Vicky out of here. That path leads right to the door that will let you out of here.”
But the child was having none of it. “I want my mommy and daddy!” she cried as she struggled out of my grasp, jumped over the side of the cart, and hurried after Garth.
I caught up with her on the steps, swept her up in my arms. I walked through the open door into the sanctuary, stopped beside my brother, and almost cried out. I quickly reached up and pushed Vicky’s face into my shoulder, shielding her eyes from the horror.
There were upwards of three dozen people in the sanctuary, the population of Eden. Twenty of them were still on their feet, all dressed in white terry-cloth robes, lined up in the center aisle before their altar of death on which had been placed the large bowl of poison and a stack of paper cups.
The rest were dead or dying. Hector Velazian was crumpled in a heap at the foot of the altar, his once-handsome Latin features now almost unrecognizable in a face knotted in horrible agony. The ex–major league ballplayer’s head lay in a pool of vomit. Billy Dale Rokan, the other ex-ballplayer who had served on Nuvironment’s security staff, had lifted a cup to his lips, but was apparently having second thoughts as he gazed in horror at his dying friend.
Whatever Tanker Thompson had mixed into the brew was obviously doing the trick—perhaps too well; a number of the others were looking at one another uncertainly, while a few were exhorting the man at the head of the line to get on with it and drink up. Vicky’s parents were standing just behind Rokan.
“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 an
d 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.
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