Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  Fred stared at Jack, then up at Ba, then at Frank who stood behind them. Jack felt a little sorry for the guy, but there was no time to play nice.

  "Okay," Fred said. "I can do that. I can show you to the rental lot. But I don't know about keys or—"

  "You let me worry about keys. You just get us there."

  "All right," Fred said, glancing up through one of the broken skylights. "But we've got to hurry!"

  They could have walked. The rent-a-car lots were only a couple of hundred yards from the terminal. Jack used his Semmerling .45 to shoot a link out of the chain locking the gate to the Avis lot. The lot was littered with rotting fish—on the cars, between the cars, in the lanes—and so the stench was especially vile here. Fred's tires squished through the fish, sending sprays of rotting entrails left or right whenever he ran over a particularly ripe one. He drove them around the return area until they found a Jeep Laredo. Jack was ready to hot-wire it but didn't have to. The keys were in the ignition. It started easily. The fuel gauge read between half and three-quarters. That would be enough. Jack went back to where Ba and Frank waited with Fred in his car. He pulled out the Maui road map Glaeken had given him and pointed to the red X drawn above a town called Kula.

  "What's the best way to get here—to Pali Drive?"

  "You want to go upcountry? On Haleakala?" Fred said. "Now? With night coming? You've got to be kidding!"

  "Fred," Jack said, staring at him. "We've only known each other for a few minutes, but look at this face, Fred. Is this face kidding?"

  "All right, all right. I've never heard of Pali Drive but this spot you've got marked here is somewhere between the Crater Road and Waipoli Road. You take Thirty-seven, it runs right out of the airport here. That'll take you up-country. You turn left past Kula, keep to the left onto Waipoli Road, and it looks like it'll be somewhere off to your right. But there's nobody up there…except for the pupule kahuna and his witch woman."

  Jack grabbed Fred's wrist. "Witch woman? Dark, Indian looking?"

  "That's the one. You know her?"

  "Yeah. That's who we're going to see."

  Fred shook his head. "Lot's of strange stories coming down hill. Now I'm real glad you're not taking my car up there. Because you ain't coming back."

  "We'll see about that," Jack said.

  After Fred rushed off to drop Frank at the hangar where he planned to spend the night in his plane, Jack pushed a half dozen dead fish off the Jeep's hood, unzipped his duffel bag, and began laying out its contents.

  "Okay, Ba. Name your poison."

  He laid out the chew-wasp-toothed club Ba had given him, plus a .45 1911, a Tokarev 9mm, a couple of TT9mm nine-shot automatics, two Mac 10 assault pistols, and a pair of Spas-12 pump action assault shotguns with pistol grip stocks and extended magazines.

  Ba didn't hesitate. He picked out the 1911 and one of the shotguns. Jack nodded his approval. Good choices. Jack already had his Semmerling; he added the toothed billy, the Tokarev, and the remaining shotgun to his own armament, then tossed a fifty-cartridge bandoleer to Ba.

  "You ride shotgun."

  Ba pumped the Spas-12, checked the breach, then handed it to Jack.

  "No," he said, his face set in its usual mortician's dead pan. "I am a far better driver than you."

  "Oh, really?" Jack repressed a smile. This was the longest piece of spontaneous conversation he'd been able to elicit from Ba all day. "What makes you say that?"

  "The drive to the airport this morning."

  Jack snatched the offered shotgun from his grasp.

  "Fine. You drive. And try not to wear me out with all this empty chatter as we go," Jack added. "It distracts me."

  They'd gone about half a dozen miles or so on Route 37—some of the signs called it "Haleakala Highway"—driving on stinking pavement slick with the crushed remains of countless dead fish. The outskirts of a town called Pukalani were in sight when Jack glanced back at the lowlands behind them. It was fairly dark below; lights were few and scattered; the airport was completely dark. He glanced beyond the coast to the strange-faced moon peeking huge and full above the edge of the sea, but when he saw the sea itself, his heart fumbled a beat and he squinted through the thickening dusk to confirm what he thought he saw.

  "Whoa, Ba," he said, grabbing the Oriental's shoulder. "Check out the whirlpool. Tell me if you see what I see."

  Ba braked and looked over his shoulder.

  "There is no whirlpool."

  "Thank you," Jack said. "Then I'm not crazy."

  He wished he'd thought to bring the binocs so he could get a better look, but even from this distance in the poor light it was plain that the huge pinwheel of white water in the sea off Kahului Bay was gone.

  Had the hole in the ocean floor closed up?

  "I don't understand any of this," he muttered. "But then, I'm not supposed to. That's the whole point."

  He was about to tell Ba to drive on when he noticed a white area of boiling water bubbling up where the center of the whirlpool had been. The bubbling grew, became more violent, and finally erupted into the night. Not volcanic fire, not steam, just water, a huge thick column of it, hundreds of feet across, geysering out of the ocean and lancing into the sky at an impossible speed. It roared upward, ever upward, ten thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand feet in the air until it plumed into billowing cumulus clouds at its apex.

  And it kept spewing, kept on pouring unmeasured thousands of tons of water into the sky.

  "My…God!" was about all Jack could manage in the face of such a gargantuan surreal display.

  "It is as the attendant said," Ba said. "The whirlpool backs up at night."

  He threw the Jeep back into gear and continued up the highway. They had the road to themselves.

  Three or four miles uphill from Pukalani heavy drops of seawater began to splatter all around them. Jack rolled up his window as the shower evolved into a deluge, forcing Ba to cut his pace.

  A few minutes later, a blue and green parrot fish bounced off the hood with a nerve-jarring thunk. Then a bright yellow butterfly fish, then they were being pelted with sea life, banging on the hood, thudding on the canvas top, littering the road ahead of them. The ones that didn't burst open or die from the impact flopped and danced on the wet pavement in the glare of the headlights. A huge squid splatted against the windshield, momentarily blocking Ba's vision; when it slid off he had to swerve violently to the right to avoid a six-foot porpoise stretched dead across the road.

  And then fish weren't the only things in the air. Chew wasps, spearheads, belly flies, men-o'-war, and a couple of new species Jack hadn't seen before, began darting about. Ba accelerated. Jack was uneasy about traveling at this pace through pelting rain and falling fish over an unfamiliar road slick with dead or dying sea life. But the headlights and speed seemed to confuse the winged predators, and Ba plowed into the ones that wouldn't or couldn't get out of the way.

  After they passed through Kula, Jack spotted the turn-off for 377. Ba slid the Jeep into the hairpin turn as smoothly as a movie stuntman, downshifted, and roared up the incline.

  Jack had to admit—silently, and only to himself—that Ba was indeed the better driver.

  The Waipoli Road turn-off came up so quickly that they overshot it. But Ba had them around and back on track in seconds. And then the going got really rough. The pavement disappeared and devolved into an ungraded road that wound back and forth in sharp switchbacks up a steep incline. The slower pace allowed the night things to zero in on the Jeep. They began battering the windows and gnawing at the canvas top.

  I had to choose a jeep.

  But soon the headlights picked out a brightly painted hand-carved sign that read Pali Drive. Ba made the turn and the road narrowed to a pair of ruts. They bounced along its puddled length until it ended at the cantilevered underbelly of a cedar-sided house overlooking the valley. Ba stopped with the headlights trained on a narrow door in the concrete foundation.

  Jack rechecked his m
ap and notes by the dashboard light.

  "This is it. Think anybody's home?"

  Ba squinted through the windshield. "There are lights."

  "So there are. I guess that means we've go to go in."

  A spearhead rammed its spike through the canvas top then, narrowly missing Jack's head. Hungry little tongues wiggled through the openings behind the point and lapped at empty air. As it pulled back, sea water began to pour in through the hole.

  "Let's go," Jack said. "Shotguns and clubs?"

  Ba nodded and picked up the other Spas-12.

  "Okay. We meet at the front bumper and head for the house back-to-back. Use the shotgun only if you have to. Go!"

  Jack kicked open his door, leapt into the downpour, and dashed-splashed toward the front of the Jeep. Something fluttered near his head; without looking he lashed out at it with the wasp-toothed billy. A crunch, a tear, and whatever it was tumbled away. He met Ba in the glow of the headlights and they slammed their backs together. A spearhead darted through the light, low, toward Jack's groin, while a belly fly sailed in toward his face. The falling sea water stung the healing area on his arm where the first belly fly had caught him. He didn't want to let this one in close. He swung the club at the spearhead and shredded its wings while ramming the muzzle of the shotgun into the belly fly's acid sack, rupturing it.

  "Let's move." Jack shouted. "I'll lead."

  Like a pair of Siamese twins fused at the spine, they moved toward the door, Jack clearing a path with his billy and shotgun, Ba backpedaling, protecting the rear. When he reached the door, Jack began pounding on its hardwood surface, then decided he couldn't wait. He handed Ba his billy and pulled the plastic strip from his pocket, all the while congratulating himself for bringing Ba along. The big guy was faced into the headlights now, a club in each hand, batting the bugs away left and right. Fortunately, the bugs weren't nearly as thick here as they'd been in New York, but even so, without Ba, Jack would have been eaten alive as he faced the door.

  Jack quickly slipped the latch and they burst into a utility room. He spotted a sink and a washing machine before they slammed the door closed behind them and stood panting and dripping in the safe quiet darkness.

  "You okay?"

  "Yes," Ba said. "And you?"

  "I'm just groovy. Let's go see who—"

  Suddenly the overhead lights went on. A tall, dark-skinned man with reddish hair stood in the doorway. He was dressed in a loin cloth and a feather headdress and Jack might have laughed except that he was pointing a Marlin 336 their way.

  "Who are you?" he said.

  Jack put his hands up. "Just travelers seeking shelter from the storm."

  "No shelter here for malihini" He stepped forward and raised the rifle. "Get out! Hele aku oe!"

  "Easy there," Jack said. "We're looking for Miss Bahkti, Kolabati Bahkti. We were told she lived here."

  "Never heard of her. Out!"

  Even if the guy hadn't flinched at the sound of her name, the necklace around his neck, a perfect match to the copy Jack carried in his pocket, would have proved him a liar.

  Then Jack heard a woman's voice call his name.

  "Jack!"

  Kolabati had followed Moki down to the lower level to see who was pounding on the door; she'd hung back in the dark hallway, watching the scene in the utility room over Moki's shoulder. Two wet and weary men there, one white, the other a tall Oriental. Something about the smaller man, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Caucasian, had struck her immediately as familiar. But she didn't recognize him until he spoke her name. It couldn't be! But even with his hair plastered to his scalp and down over his forehead, even looking tired and older as he did, he could be no one else. Her heart leapt at the sight of him.

  She brushed past Moki and ran to him, arms outstretched. Never in her life had she been so glad to see someone.

  "Oh, Jack, I thought you were dead!"

  She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him. Jack returned the embrace, but without much enthusiasm.

  "I am," he said coolly. "I just came back to see how you were doing."

  She stepped back and stared at him.

  "But when I left you, you were—"

  "I healed up—my own way."

  Kolabati sensed Moki close behind her. She turned and was relieved to see that he had lowered his rifle. She manufactured a smile for him.

  "Moki, this is Jack, a very old and dear friend."

  "Jack?" he said, his gaze flicking between her and the newcomer. "The Jack you said you once loved but who died in New York? That Jack?"

  "Yes," she said. A glance at Jack's face revealed a bewildered expression. "I…I guess I was wrong about his being dead. Isn't that wonderful? Jack, this is Moki."

  Kolabati held her breath. No telling how Moki would react. He'd become so unpredictable—unbalanced was a better word—since the changes had begun.

  Moki's jaw was set and his smile was fierce as he thrust his hand open toward Jack.

  "Aloha, Jack. Welcome to my kingdom."

  Kolabati watched the muscles in Moki's forearm bulge as he gripped Jack's hand, a wince flicker across Jack's features before he returned the smile and the grip.

  "Thank you, Moki. And this is my good friend, Ba Thuy Nguyen."

  This time it was Moki's turn to wince as he shook hands with the Oriental.

  "You're both just in time," Moki said. "We were just about to leave for the ceremony."

  "Maybe now that they're here we should stay home," Kolabati said.

  "Nonsense! They can come along. In fact, I insist they come along!"

  "You're not thinking of going outside, are you?" Jack said.

  "Of course. We're heading uphill to the fires. The night things do not bother us. Besides, they seem to avoid the higher altitudes. You shall have the honor and privilege of witnessing the Ceremony of the Knife tonight."

  Moki had told her about the ceremony he'd worked out with the Niihauans, a nightly replay of last night's bloody incident. She wanted no part of it, and Jack's arrival was a good excuse to stay away.

  "Moki," Kolabati said, "why don't you go alone tonight. Our guests are cold and wet."

  "Yeah," Jack said. "How about a raincheck on that? We're kinda beat—"

  "Nonsense! The awakened fires of Haleakala will dry your clothes and renew your strength."

  "Go yourself, Moki," Kolabati said. "After all, the ceremony can go on without us, but not without you."

  Moki's glare spelled out his thoughts: Leave you here with your reborn lover? Do you take me for a fool? Then he faced Jack.

  "I shall be insulted if you do not come."

  "A guest must not insult a host," the tall Oriental said.

  Kolabati noticed a quick look pass between Jack and Ba, then Jack turned to Moki.

  "How can we refuse such an honor? Lead the way."

  Kolabati held on as Moki bounced their Isuzu Trooper up the rutted jeep trail toward Haleakala's fire-limned summit.

  "What sort of a ceremony is this?" Jack said from behind her.

  "You'll find out soon enough," Moki said.

  "I mean, is it traditional, or what?"

  "Not entirely," Moki said. "It has its traditional aspects, naturally—ancient Hawaiians often made sacrifices to Pele—but this variation is one of my own devising."

  Jack and his silent Oriental companion were two jouncing shadows in the rear as Kolabati turned from the front seat to face him.

  "Pele?" said Jack's shadow.

  "Hawaii's Goddess of Fire," Kolabati told him. "She rules the volcanoes."

  "So what are we doing—throwing some pineapples and coconuts over the edge?"

  Moki laughed as he turned onto Skyline Trail. "Pele has no use for fruits and nuts. She demands tribute that really matters. Human tribute."

  Jack's laugh was low and uncertain.

  Kolabati said, "He's not joking."

  Jack said nothing then, but even in the dark Kolabati could feel the impact of his gaze. Sh
e heard his silent questions, asking her what she had come to, what had brought her to this. She wanted to explain, but she couldn't. Not now. Not in front of Moki.

  The quality of the road improved as they approached Red Hill and the observatory. Moki pulled to a stop a quarter mile from the summit and the four of them walked under the cold gaze of the unfamiliar moon to the crater's edge.

  And there, half a mile below them, a sea of fire. The boiling center of the crater, the terminus of an express delivery tube from the planet's molten core, was alive with motion. Bubbles rose on the storm-tossed surface and burst convulsively, splattering liquid rock in all directions. Geysers of molten lava shot like whale spume, hurling red-orange arcs a thousand feet into the air. And governing the chaos was a steady downward flow to the sea in a wide fan of fiery destruction.

  Even here, thousands of feet above, with the reversed tradewinds blowing cold against their backs, the fire stroked them with its heat. Kolabati watched Jack hold out his hands to warm them, then turn his wet back toward the fire. The wind had an icy bite at 10,000 feet. He must have been freezing. The Oriental, too, rotated his wet clothing toward the heat.

  "I've figured out why Pele is so huhu" Moki said, shouting above Haleakala's roar. "She's seen her people abandoning the old ways and becoming malihini to their own traditions. She's sent us all a message."

  Jack was staring down into the fire. "I'd say she's one very touchy lady."

  "Ah!" said Moki, glancing off to their right. "The other celebrants arrive. The ceremony can begin."

  He strode away toward the approaching Niihauans. Their elderly alii raised his feathered staff and they all knelt before Moki.

  Kolabati felt a cold hand grip her arm. It was Jack.

  "He's just kidding about this human sacrifice stuff, isn't he? I mean, I keep expecting Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy LaMore to show up."

  Kolabati could barely meet his eyes. "I wish he were, but he means it. The group over there, the ones wearing the feathers and such, they're the last of the pure-bred traditional Hawaiians from the forbidden island of Niihau. Moki confronted them last night and told them he was Maui."