CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
There were certain things, Lydia maintained, that one simply did not do. Like putting an electric blanket on a water bed, for instance. Or eating pork sushi. Or autoerotic strangulation. You didn’t do these things, not because of the law, but because they were basically stupid ideas.
So it wasn’t the Art Crime, or the threat of getting busted, that was making her antsy. It was the fact that they were doing it so close to a major body of water.
And the storm was almost here.
Garth and Lydia stood at the foot of the steep, rocky incline that led down into the Codorus Basin, where the creek cut through the center of town on its way to Black Bridge and the river beyond. Standing in the shadow of the Philly Street Bridge, they were pretty well hidden from the road above.
At night, the rocky banks and shadowed overhang were a hangout zone for wayward inner-city youth; but by daylight they were desolate, with only the broken beer bottles, empty lipstick tubes and used condoms to remind you that you were in hell and found your pleasure where you could.
Directly across the creek lay the End Zone, Paradise’s premier yuppie sports bar. Frank Vickers’s environmental action group had convened there, as usual, to save the world while keeping track of the NFL action. After doing such a swell job on Garth’s old man, it was only fair to spread a little joy in Frank’s direction.
Under the shadow of the bridge, they couldn’t see you from the road; but the terrace of the End Zone had an unobstructed view. On the concrete wall of the pumping station spillway, Garth was spray-painting their little love note in jagged letters three feet high:
DRINK UP AND DIE, YUPPIE SCUM!
And it was lotsa fun and all, but Lydia was getting wired. From where they stood, it was less than ten feet to the rank-smelling, shit-churning, Guinness-colored waters of the mighty Codorus. Worse yet, they were less than a dozen feet from the dam: a reinforced concrete retainer wall, inset every few feet with jutting steel teeth, each one a yard long. The teeth acted as a flood stop and general shit-catcher for the fetid creek; but at the moment, they were doubling as the county’s largest instant lightning rod.
And the storm was almost here.
“This is weird,” she said, gazing up. “We should split.”
“Can’t,” Garth said. He was working on the comma.
“You really wanna die in an electrical storm?”
He shrugged, his back to her.
“ARGH!” she growled, arms flapping in frustration. Then she turned to address the storm. “Go ahead,” she told it. “This man is too stupid to live.”
Garth shook his head, still spraying. Thinking about his old man, and hers.
“No such thing,” he assured her.
When the first peal of apocalypse thunder broke, it was eight minutes to three.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The convoy headed south.
It paced itself: an advance battalion, running just minutes ahead of the storm. From the north side of town—as yet unaffected—the traffic was sparse, nigh unto barren. There was nothing to slow them down.
At seven minutes to three, it came to a red light just outside the city limits. From this point on, stoplights dotted Route 30 as far as the eye could see. They had left the boondocks and entered the land of fast-food drive-thrus, auto-service franchises and largely deserted strip malls, all garishly hawking the good life.
Red lights were not part of the plan.
The convoy went through. From its position in the lead, the Boonie-spawn surveyed the point where the Route 30 bypass crossed Interstate 83. Overmind cannibalized his memory, sucking shreds of knowledge from every synapse like meat off a chicken bone.
These were the major east-west and north-south highways. This was the hub of the wheel. Philly and New York, Baltimore and D.C.: all were within one to four hours of driving time.
Going the speed limit.
Har har har.
Inside Boonie, Overmind chuckled; the body did its best to second the motion. Crusty, gravid face-tissue crinkled, popped, and spurted with mirth. More scabs tore loose. They hung in strips.
In the raw meat beneath, there were no longer extra eyes.
Now they were eggs.
Almost ready to hatch.
The Boonie-spawn’s truck headed south. The tankers split off: one east, one west. The tankers would lock down the grid, reconnoiter on the far side of town, and then take this show on the road. Spreading the word.
But for the Boonster, this was good-bye.
Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted. They laughed as they went their separate ways. The roads stretched like arteries through the city, the county, the body of the world.
How convenient.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The whole way back to ‘PAL, Kirk’s mind was a thing unchained: racing ahead of him, flashing back, preediting tape in his head.
All around him, near and distant, sirens whooped and shrieked and wailed. Fire trucks, staters, city cops went smoking past, to God knows where. The radio was no help at all, and the TAC frequencies weren’t any better. People were stepping all over each other. Everyone knew something was happening. But they didn’t know what.
And that was where Kirk came in. Kirk Bogarde—Renegade Reporter!, with the scoop of a lifetime. Kirk Bogarde—Renegade Reporter!, alone in the lead, while the competition flailed behind, their heads wedged up their asses. Kirk Bogarde—Renegade Reporter!, barreling down the homestretch with a fireball in his gut: a feeling one part orgasm, one part motion sickness, one part sheer white-knuckling edge.
This was news. Not opening shopping centers. Not standing outside town meetings. Not finding out whether the average potato-shaped Paradise native preferred donuts or faschnachts with their morning coffee. Or had they kicked caffeine? Find out at eleven!
Bullshit bullshit bullshit. THIS was what life was about! Taking chances, following hunches, playing out leads, and nailing the truth wherever you could find it. Not taking your cues from cowards and bullies—not just Doing What You’re Told—but grabbing the world by the throat and forcing it to confess its sins and secret passions, cough up its deepest mysteries.
No matter what the cost.
Because we needed the truth. We deserved the truth. We could not live without the truth. And Kirk believed that to fulfill that need was the most beautiful, humbling, terrifying, and altogether essential function he could possibly imagine.
To be a part of something real.
To be a part of history.
The ACTION-9 Newsmobile screeched into ‘PAL’s parking lot at seven minutes to three. Kirk hopped out, ran to the back door, thumbed the code on the security lock, and yanked the door open a microsecond after the electronic dead bolt buzzed back. He took the stairs two at a time, clutching the camcorder, spilling through the newsroom door so noisily that he almost gave Laura a seizure.
“I GOT IT!” he crowed exultantly.
“Kirk!” she cried out, eyes afire with anger and relief.
And he grinned at her, he opened his mouth, he started to explain what had happened to him, and he got as far as inhaling for speech when he found himself suddenly spinning…
…and Gary was there, the words “You FUCK!” astonishingly loud in Kirk’s ears as a huge fist zeroed in on his left eye. Kirk moved, and it got his cheek instead, big square knuckles plowing into the soft skin beneath the right eye socket. “NAHHH!” he wailed, as the next blow came, catching his nose and mashing it flat, blood geysering out in thick twin jets…
…and there was a moment where everything went blank, very quickly over, and when he came back he found himself swinging at Gary with the camcorder, screaming, “GET OFFA ME FUCKER YOU DON’T UNNERSTAND…”
…as Gary nailed him with a right, sending the camcorder flying from Kirk’s grasp to bounce off the wall and cough up the tape which bounced and spun and slid underfoot, crunching under Gary’s boot and throwing him off-balance…
…as K
irk lurched forward, screaming “MY TAPE!”, diverting him just long enough for Gary to recover and draw a bead…
…and Laura was screaming, Kirk was screaming, everyone was screaming in the time it took for the last fist to connect.
It was six minutes to three.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
By this time, the storm clouds had buried the heavens, enveloped the county in premature night. Like a rumbling, primordial curtain being drawn across the world, it drew down the darkness.
And swallowed the moon.
“Micki,” whispered Gwen from the living room couch. Her voice, weakened by fear to a quaver, was chilling in and of itself.
Micki stood by the wind-hammered living room window. Terror welled huge in her soul. She felt infinitesimally small, like a gnat before a god: like the storm was an enormous black finger and thumb, reaching down to extinguish her spark.
“Micki…” Gwen’s voice was tremulous, lacking the power to exclaim. “I don’t feel very good…”
“It’s okay, baby, everything’s gonna be fine,” Micki said; her eyes closed, her teeth chattering. She leaned against the pane. “Oh God, Bobba, help me. Gwen…”
Make a circle, Bob-Ramtha said, slicing through her fear.
“What?” Confused.
Make a ritual circle. Now.
“I don’t understand. What good will that do? I mean, shouldn’t I take her back to the hospital or someth—”
No. You can’t.
“Why not?”
Silence.
“Bobba, I—”
Because if you take her out there, she’ll die. There was no mistaking the gravity of his tone. And so will the baby.
And so will you.
Outside the window, more thunder broke, and the wind intensified. It pounded the pane, whistled through the cracks.
It whistled down her soul.
“Something’s coming, isn’t it.” Not even a question. Her voice sounded tiny against the storm: a humorless Betty Boop squeak.
A moment of silence. Yes.
“What is it?”
I don’t know.
“You don’t…” Her voice ended there. A big question mark went off in her mind. “Wait a minute,” she continued, incredulous now. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
I mean—and there was actual shame in his voice—I didn’t see it coming.
No one did.
“Oh, Jesus…” Micki shook her head, let this little revelation sink in. Something horrible was on its way, and the entire spirit world had been caught unawares. “Jesus…” She didn’t like the sound of this at all.
In the background, Gwen moaned and softly began to cry.
Build the circle, Bob-Ramtha urged. Now.
It was five until three.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
It was time for Jennie Quirez to face the facts.
He isn’t coming. An inescapable, killing admission. Jennie, staring out the window at the human hell on earth. He’s not going to come for me. Like trawling a lake for a loved one’s body and—finally, horribly—hooking its stiff remains.
Austin is gone. Hauling up the clammy, lifeless truth.
And he is never. EVER.
Coming back.
For me.
At the Mt. Rose Amoco Shop ‘N’ Go—at the mouth of the mad, transmogrifying eastern valley—the last-minute exodus was in full swing. There was an easily forty-car-long gas line on Mt. Rose Avenue, extending all the way to the Route 74 exit. For the last twenty minutes, there hadn’t been less than forty cars in line. All around them, panic-stricken traffic surged, squealed, careened, and roared.
Fleeing the descending dark.
And the new world already upon them.
Jennie crouched behind the console of the vandalized, desiccated Shop ‘N’ Go. Its shelves had been picked clean by the second wave of insurgent wild-eyed refugees. When the orange highway cones went down, she had locked the doors. Turned off the lights. Kept the pumps inconspicuously rolling. It was the only way she could think of to deflect them, keep the mob from coming in and eating her alive.
She could no longer tell where the stain was or wasn’t. It wasn’t inside—she’d made certain of that—but the whole of the drive and parking lot were fair game. She watched for telltale screams and seizures at the pumps. That she didn’t see any felt almost like hope.
Many times, over the past forty minutes, she had thought about hopping a ride outta Dodge. There was only one problem: eighty percent of them were already afflicted, or carrying someone who was.
The rest were simply insane.
A couple of tumorous, terminally infected yuppies tried to pull an end run around the crowd, banking their Ford Taurus onto the lot by coming up over the curb. Jennie watched their mouths shape curses. The gas line steadfastly refused to part.
A twenty-year-old laid-off steelworker, sixth up from pump four, got out of his GM pickup and strode toward them. He had a Charter Arms Bulldog .44 in his hand. The yupsters stopped dead, screaming incomprehensible things—excuses, entreaties—that were all but drowned out by the roar of violent dissent that surrounded them.
They were all talk; and talk had never been cheaper.
He stood directly before them. Aimed.
And fired.
The first shot blew a hole through the driver’s heart: a wet confettied spray of upholstery, meat and padding, erupting onto the seat behind him. His girlfriend/wife/significant other shrieked. The second shot vaporized her throat. Her chin bounced off her shoulders, toppled onto her lap, in the second before the third dumdum slug penetrated the windshield, turned the driver’s head to mush.
Then he fired a couple more shots, just for the living hell of it. A bunch of people clapped. A couple of them helped him push the car out of the way.
From her place behind the console, Jennie Quirez watched civilization unravel beneath the shadow of the coming storm.
It was four minutes to three.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The Boon-spawn sat at the gate: contemplating the bizarre past behind it, the brilliant future ahead.
The run had been long, the last part almost entirely uphill. It had spent vast reserves of energy, throwing everything into the climb. It did so gladly, without compunction: like a salmon flinging itself upstream, knowing implicitly that death lay at the end of the journey.
And with it, rebirth.
What was once Boonie oozed across the seat, weakened to the point of no return. This chapter was over; it knew that, even as it sensed the dark one that awaited. The engine that drove it hung back, gauging the perfection of the moment.
And at the perfect moment, it moved.
Boonie shuddered and gripped the wheel as the last of his soul sputtered off to oblivion. His useless flesh sloughed loose in thick wet slabs, epidermis and dermis relaxing their hold and sagging, at long last relieved of the burden of life. Flesh and fat, tendons and ligaments rotted, popped, and slithered to the floor of the cab like dross, like offal. Eggs like tiny poison pearls plopped out and scattered, freed of their incubator.
While the core remained, still gripping the wheel.
It was a central nervous system, clinging directly to dessicated bone: a stripped-down chassis of barest motor control. Skeletal fingers clutched the steering wheel, rudely ratcheted the shifter. Boonie’s dead, sallow face fell off, revealing eyes wet and bright as a child’s.
It grinned, wet skull gleaming on a thin stalk of neck.
And threw the truck in gear.
The fence surrounded the facility, which was located high up on a hill on the southern side of the city. A small parking apron lay to the left, completely deserted. The gate itself was steel, electronically controlled, but far too flimsy: a deterrent only to the civilized. It was not built for terrorism.
A sign hung by the gate, the lettering burned into the wood in big rustic letters. It read:
PARADISE WATER COMPANY MUNICIPAL RESERVOIR
; In smaller, no less emphatic letters was the warning:
NO TRESPASSING!
The snout of the truck crushed it into kindling as it barreled through, pine and fir groves whipping past as it picked up speed. Drums rattled on the truck bed, the poison sloshing excitedly.
The thing in the cab laughed, smelling the high scent of evergreen and thinking of the rich new odors that would soon take its place, when the world was made over in their image. The wind buffeted its frail form; bits of its nervous system snapped off and flew into the slipstream, dry and brittle as twigs.
It didn’t mind. It didn’t need them anymore.
Besides, it was about to get all kinds of wet.
The truck rounded the bend, and there they were: two great standing pools, capping off some thirty-two million gallons of innocent, potable water. The city’s entire on-hand supply.
A low wrought-iron double fence surrounded the pools. The DER had recently insisted that the pools be capped, to prevent aerial contamination. But the Paradise Water Company had been given three years to implement that plan.
Once again: how convenient.
The truck plowed through the first fence as if it were a row of matchsticks, steel posts snapping and sparking as they dragged along behind. The thing in the cab cackled, as the truck kept on coming, reaching the lip of the first pool and then flying into space: six tons of steel and poison, defying the law one final time.
Then the truck belly-flopped into the water, sent up a jubilant hundred-foot spray. It immediately fused, dissolving even as it expanded: drums, tumor, truck, and all becoming one giant toxic Fizzie, spitting and sputtering as it went from solid to liquid to gas.
The poison pearls hatched on contact with the water, instantly charging it. The pool hissed violently as two hundred thousand gallons—the lifeblood of Paradise—cried out in orgasmic agony.
And then began to sing…
The Bridge Page 27