The Scream

  It did not appear to be working. More than half of the crowd was already inside. His guess was that Mary was among them.

  Not calling her parents immediately had been a mistake. He knew that now. But, after all, his expectation had been that they would find her.

  They almost always did.

  And when things did go wrong—as with the Anderson boy, the parents calling first and demanding to know just “what in Hell” was going on—he’d been able to explain the situation well enough to stave off the lawsuits. Barely.

  But this was more than bad. This was a dangerous place. If all rock concerts were like this, then Lord have mercy on our souls. All of the pastor’s worst suspicions were confirmed by these kids. He’d never seen such potential for violence and outrage, such rampant moral decay.

  And if anything happens to her, he mused, then cut it short, disallowing the thought. There were more important things to concentrate on. Like how to get inside.

  “Hey, mister,” said a voice from behind him. He turned. “You needa buy some tickets?”

  The speaker was maybe fourteen years old. He was sitting above them on the concrete wall outside the door, one leg dangling lackadaisically. He had hair like a rooster. He was drinking a beer.

  Dauntlessly, Paul Weissman leaped into the fray. “Let me handle this,” he whispered to Furniss, then, “Yeah, sure, dude. We’ll take two. How much are they?” He advanced, digging a hand into his pocket.

  “Hundred bucks.”

  Paul stopped dead in his tracks. “A hundred bucks for two tickets?!” he gasped.

  “No, dickhead,” the kid drawled. “A hundred bucks apiece.”

  “That’s obscene!”

  “Free enterprise, dude. The American way.” The kid took a long pull off his beer. “You wan ‘em or what?”

  “Let’s go,” Furniss said. “The Lord will provide.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my fuckin’ breath,” the kid said, then turned his attentions elsewhere. Furniss’s heart went out to him, replete with visions of the dear boy in proper clothes, with a proper haircut, after a couple of days in the Quiet Room with the Good Book and plenty of time to reflect on his sins.

  But at least he’d narrowed his possibilities. Soon, the Lord would show him the path of least resistance, and there he would go. He had no doubt that God was guiding him. The only real question was where.

  “Are there any other entrances we haven’t tried?” he asked Paul Weissman.

  And lo, Paul provided the answer.

  7:32 P.M.

  “God, these are beautiful.” Alex listened as the patterns shimmied in his ears and on the screen. “Just beautiful.”

  He sat at the computer console, a commset hooked delicately around one ear, hands deftly fingering the keys on the MIDI controller. The DIOS sat on its stand, LEDs strobing as the data fed in and the data fed out. The signal was strong.

  And so, for the first time in ages, was Alex.

  He felt superb, truly superb. It was as though an enormous cloud had been lifted from his eyes. And while that might not be so in the most clinically literal sense, it was true that he was seeing things he had never seen before.

  There, in the darkness in his mind. Getting clearer with every note that he played.

  “Okay,” he whispered into the commset’s mike, “let’s run through our feed sequences again, shall we?”

  “Roger,” came the voice from below the stage. “Feed sequence A coming on line.”

  “Okay.” Alex smiled. His fingers moved over the keys like speed-reading braille. “Switch on my command.”

  “Roger. On your command.”

  Alex nodded. On my command. Had a nice ring to it. He could get used to that. Father would be pleased. Momma certainly was.

  “Give me pulse . . .”

  “Check.”

  “Respiration . . .”

  “Check.”

  “Galvanic response . . . EMG . . . MEG . . .”

  “Check . . . check . . . check . . .”

  These were the best yet: sample-wise, they were looping superclean and clear, with not a trace of harmonic distortion, and most of all—fast. With his mind clear at last he had been able to finish the control program and load the sequencers and the coprocessors, which even now were number-crunching megabyte whole body gestalt complexes to beat the band. Walker’s new E-prom was just the ticket, bless his black heart. If Alex had any doubts about the efficacy of a live feed, they were dispelled forever. The studio was fine, but he had a feeling that nothing would beat a live performance of the Symphony of Death.

  “Okay, now for Momma Bear. Is she ready?”

  “Coming right up.”

  Momma Bear’s vital signs, too, were right on line. Alex couldn’t be more pleased.

  “Okay,” he said, “this is critical. Slip her the probe and give us little Baby Bear.”

  There was a pause. “She’s fighting us.”

  “Then sedate her again. But lightly. We don’t want to suppress her reaction time too much.”

  “No problem.”

  Alex turned his attention inward as he waited for them to bring her under control. It was closer still, responding to even the scantiest snatches of manifested sound as he did this last check. He stretched and tilted his head back.

  In his mind’s eye he saw the huge centerpiece of the stage, towering over him. The cloud was dissipating, now little more than a smoky film, obscuring the details like an underexposed Bob Guccione centerspread. Still, he could make it out. It was big. God, yes. It was smiling.

  And getting clearer by the second.

  And as for beauty, he thought, well, that’s in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?

  “She’s under.”

  “Wonderful. Now remember, this is going to be a very delicate, very tricky operation. In order to generate the proper feedback level we need to get a good representative signal from all the members of our happy family, and I’m getting a little glitching up here. We need better contact.”

  “Sorry, but it’s hot down here. She’s sweating like a pig, and he’s getting kinda gamy. The adhesive just gives out after a while.”

  “Oh dear,” Alex murmured. “Well, get a fan down there.

  “And see if anyone has some Crazy Glue.”

  Another pause.

  Then, “Roger.”

  Alex giggled a little. He’d almost forgotten just how much he enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the stage. Already he felt invigorated, refreshed. Like a new man.

  He felt the presence an instant before she made contact. He leaned his head against her belly as she pressed up against him. “Having fun?” Tara asked.

  “God, yes.”

  And the fun was just beginning.

  7:40 P.M.

  His hair was perfect, his makeup was perfect, his costume was perfect, but Rod could not get happy. His warmup exercises were not going well. More specifically, his hands were trembling so much that he was blowing his riffs. This was bad, especially when the show was this close to starting.

  “Damn!” He set down the guitar for a second and paced around his dressing room. He couldn’t shake the paranoia. As always, something strange was going on behind his back. He expected as much.

  But the change in Alex was a wee bit too extreme to be ignored.

  Sure, it was great to see the boy up and around again. At first it had been cause for outright celebration. But to see him bounce out of his deathbed so chipper was its own kind of frightening. It didn’t make sense.

  First thing, of course, Rod had checked his brother’s eyes, thinking if Tara did this to you, man, she’s fucking dead and it’s all over. The big surprise was that they were still intact. After what she’d done to the rhythm section, Rod wouldn’t put anything past her.

  But no. Little brother was fine. In fact, he was primo. The wheels were in motion. The sounds he was weaving were too good to be real. His playing was sharp. His wits were like a razor. He was laughing all the time.
>
  So why was he so scary?

  Rod reached into his pocket for the vial of toot, laid a sixth of a gram out and sucked it up. One thing was for sure: he would want to be aware. Nobody was gonna slip nothin’ by him tonight. When the Earth opened up for inheritance, Rod Royale would be there.

  But if you play one wrong note . . . , Walker said in his head, and that brought all the paranoia pinwheeling back. The question What exactly do you stand to gain from all this? occurred, for at least the millionth time; and again, it was Walker’s voice that answered.

  How much choice do you think you have?

  “All the choice in the world, man. Anything I want.” Rod laughed as he said it, the sound unconvincing. “I play my cards right, and the kingdom is mine. You promised me that.

  “You promised me.”

  This was all true, so far as it went, but the creeping doubt remained intact. For one startling second, it occurred to him that he was an absolute and thoroughgoing chump; that Walker and Tara and Momma Herself were luring him onward with a carrot on a stick, only this one was fourteen karats, har, har, promise him riches and he’ll follow us anywhere, even down to the mouth of Hell . . .

  . . . and this was not a good thought, it did nothing for his confidence and control, and if there was one thing he knew it was that he dare not screw up, therefore this line of thought was anathema and he’d better straighten up. There were other quotes from the Walker litany that served him much better, and he brought them to mind.

  She needs warm bodies.

  She needs us to pave the way and guard it.

  That was better, yes. That was much more helpful. Put that together with a farewell to Tara, and he could almost cheer up, see the end of the rainbow.

  “Okay.” He addressed the room. “Let’s do it. Let’s kick some ass.” He grabbed his guitar off its stand, strapped it on, wiped his sweaty left palm against his pantsleg before bringing it up to hold the neck. It was time to go out there and meet his destiny.

  If only he could make his hands stop shaking . . .

  7:45 P.M.

  Heimlich hung up the payphone, wandering gradually back toward the jet-black van, He took his time, pausing to light an unfiltered Camel, watching the last thousand kids or so straggle in toward the gates and the cops and vendors cruise the lot like sharks when the fish leave town. It was still way too hot to make a move. Now that he knew they’d be waiting awhile, the important thing was to stave off boredom. That meant staying out of the van as long as possible.

  Heimlich’s eyes were dark and impenetrable. There was little that they missed. His hair was dark and cropped close to his skull. His skin was the color of bronzed, cracked leather.

  He was a big man, and he moved big. Air got out of his way when it saw him coming. So did people, unless they were very drunk or very stupid. Few people were good enough to stay in his way for long.

  Heimlich was a professional, a warrior for hire. He was working right now. A very strange job indeed: hired by a rock star to blow the tits off of some other rock stars and to rescue some bimbo in front of over fifteen thousand people.

  The job was so strange, in fact, that he had almost considered turning it down. Instead, he’d simply doubled his price: two men, two thousand smackers apiece. Plus expenses.

  When Hamer had made the first payment in cash—half the money right there on the spot, with no hesitation—Heimlich had called it a deal.

  And the real craziness had begun . . .

  They had run a recon on The Scream’s Staten Island stronghold at eleven-thirty this morning. They had found it abandoned. That had been a bad sign. Whatever the twisted fucks were up to, it was clear that they had no intention of coming home again.

  It didn’t take long to figure out why.

  The inside of the mansion was bad enough. The torture chamber. The recording studio. Heimlich didn’t know shit about music, but it was clear from the reactions of Hempstead and Hamer that you didn’t need blood gutters and drains in the floor of your average recording studio.

  But the best part, without a doubt, was the garage.

  It was roughly the size of a small airplane hangar. Parts and tools and garage-style detritus lined the walls. There were no vehicles parked inside.

  But there were lots of bodies. Maybe a hundred. Mostly goats; but that still left thirty or more dead people.

  All of them, ex-goats and humans alike, dangled naked by their hind legs from the rafters. Their throats had been slit, the blood drained and removed from the premises. There were children in there. Babies.

  There were also a couple of women strung up that made Hamer’s olive skin blanch. Upside down like that, with dried blood on their faces, they were hard to recognize. He’d had to wipe one of them down before he knew that, no, she was not the bimbo they sought after all.

  But that didn’t mitigate the extent of the slaughter.

  Or the carelessness . . .

  “Sloppy,” he muttered. It was the only word that fit. Heimlich hated slovenliness, especially in killers, especially in butchers who made such extravagant overtures to style. Rich fucking rock stars making big-budget mayhem with a Z Grade mentality, playing a man’s game by Little League rules . . . killing them would accord him a depth of pleasure his line of work rarely permitted.

  They thought they were good. That was the big thing. Going public like this, not even covering their tracks . . . it was clear that they thought they were pretty goddamn special. Either they had one motherfucking ace in the hole or one motherfucking case of diarrheic self-esteem. In which case they were cake.

  And Heimlich could practically taste the frosting.

  The van was parked ten feet from the exit of parking section S6, maybe two hundred yards from the lip of the backstage loading ramp. That was far enough away from The Scream’s vehicles to avoid detection, close enough to get there quickly when the time came.

  The van was ten feet away from him now. Heimlich could feel the tension radiating through the sealed steel doors. He dragged, exhaled, took a deep breath of air. Sloppy target or not, if this was going to work, they would have to wait a little longer. Pennycate, his trusty pard and currently their man on the inside, had made that exquisitely clear.

  Jake wouldn’t like it, but he’d better get used to it.

  When you hired the best, you were best advised to listen.

  7:49 P.M.

  There were two unsavory-looking types at the bottom of the loading ramp, pacing back and forth like bored guards in a prison camp movie. They both appeared unarmed, an illusion largely due to the combination of bold-print Hawaiian shirts and figure-flattering belt clips. Either one was actually packing enough firepower to make an intruder do the Big Shoe, if need be. And neither of them was above using it.

  Their names were Dingo and Slick, and they were disposable. They both scored low on the placement exams of life. They asked very few questions. They did largely as they were told. They were told to keep out all creeps.

  And it looked like two were on their way now.

  Dingo scritched at the stubble on his long-chinned face. His ponytail swished as he turned toward his shorter, grungier companion. “Hey, Slick.” He nudged. “You see what I see?”

  Slick smiled and crossed his hands behind his back, palms grazing the button of his weapon. “I dunno. Whadda you see?”

  “I see two creeps coming down the ramp.”

  “Me, too.”

  The creeps waddled closer. Dingo and Slick watched impassively. When they were about twenty feet off, Dingo squinted and said, “Oh, shit, man. Walker ain’t gonna believe this.”

  “What?” Slick squinted harder; his night vision was for shit. “B’lieve what?”

  “Oh, man, this is too much!” Dingo laughed. “The big guy? I seen him last week, on the tee-vee. On Dick Moy-neehan.”

  “No shit.” Slick seemed genuinely impressed. “Is he famous?”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Oh.” Slick was du
mb as a pie tin. “So what do we do with him?”

  “See what he wants, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  Dingo laughed again. It lent a false sense of good fellowship to the approach of the famous asshole and his roly-poly pal.

  The old guy hastened to explain his situation in nervous, earnest tones: sometimes real man-to-man like, sometimes calling on the spirit of brotherly love to open their hearts to his plight. He smiled a lot. He called on them to do the right thing.

  Dingo and Slick smiled, too. He really was an asshole. And certainly a creep.

  But in truth, this was too good to dismiss outright. Dingo knew for sure that Momma would appreciate the humor. “You just hang on there a second, sport. I’ll have to ask permission.” Then with a nudge in the ribs to Slick, Dingo turned and ran back to find Walker.

  It only took a minute. He was right backstage with the band, who were about to go on. Walker looked annoyed for a second, then listened; and after a moment’s thought, did a rare and wondrous thing.

  He laughed.

  “Oh, that’s beautiful. They need passes. Here.” Walker dug into his pockets, then threw back his head and yelled, “Hoo, Lawd! Thank ya, Jeezus!”

  When he laughed again, Dingo joined right in.

  It was good to have done the right thing.

  7:52 P.M.

  There was a moment—a split second, really, hardly worth bringing up—in which Rod Royale felt the sudden, desperate urge to bolt, just hang it up and head full tilt for the exit ramp. It was especially strange in that it didn’t quite connect with the moments before or after: it just hung there by itself, flashpot-bright and compelling, then blanked out and was gone.

  What it left him with was aftershock, confusion. It was, after all, the dumbest flash he’d ever had or probably ever would. This was it, this was the big one, the moment they’d all been waiting for. The gates of the Kingdom were opening now. He was gonna run away from all that? Was he crazy?