by Alan Rodgers
The woman stood. Her clothes were silk now — nothing but fine, dark cloth. She looked Paul Green carefully in the eye, scrutinizing him.
“Then why are you here?” she asked. Her tone of voice was pleasanter than Bill’s had been, but it still wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Because there’s someplace you must be. All four of you who’re with me now. And that place is far, far away from here, and you’ve little time to get there.”
“Is that so?” Bill asked. “Well, I’ll tell you something, Mister —”
The President held up his hand, to silence Bill. And damned if Bill didn’t shut up.
“There isn’t time,” he said, “to argue. You must wake now. And find a plane. And fly it east, to Kansas. To the Lake of Fire, in Cheyenne County, in the west part of the state.”
Behind him, now, was a woman who looked older than time. A dirty woman, dressed in rags. She glowered at the President impatiently. He turned to her, said “Yes, I know, I’m leaving now.” Turned back to Bill and the woman and the boy. Smiled, nodded, and vanished into thin air and his portal with him.
For a moment it was day again in that hilly, grassy place — and then they were waking. On the bed of a dirty truck that moved along a dirt road faster than anything ought ever to have moved.
The Major was there. Major Carver. And the boy, and the Oriental woman, and the dead policeman — those three lying on the dirty flatbed along with Bill. Joey and the Major’s other assistant, the lieutenant fresh from Annapolis. The only one missing was the private or corporal or whatever he was — the Major’s gofer. Chances were, Bill thought, that he was out chasing after something now.
The Oriental woman lay beside Bill, holding his hand.
He looked over at her, saw her watching him, and there was a question in her eyes that Bill couldn’t answer, because all he had was a question of his own.
“Corporal Roe,” the Major said. She cleared her throat. “Do you always talk in your sleep, Corporal Roe?”
What? Bill blinked, tried to clear his head. “Pardon me, Major? Talk in my sleep?”
“That’s what I asked you.”
“No ma’am. Not so far as I know. Can’t say I’m ever awake to hear it, though.”
“And you, young woman? And you, child?” She nodded at the Oriental woman. At the boy.
“No,” she said. She sat up to face the Major, let go of Bill’s hand.
The boy shook his head.
The Major sighed, and her sigh sounded exactly like the President’s sigh.
“It doesn’t matter. Much as I wish it could, what I saw here the last two hours can’t have had anything to do with talking in sleep.”
“What’s that, Major Carver, ma’am? What’d you see?” It was the boy who asked the question. Bill wasn’t any too sure that he wanted to hear the answer to it.
“I saw you healed,” she said. “I’d expected that. You, young man, had a fractured skull; I all but saw it mending.” She pointed at the woman. “Two bullets smashed your spine. The third one broke your neck.” Pointed at Bill. “Seizures. At least two dozen of them, and every one stopped your heart.” She waved her hand to encompass the three of them. “And all through that, dead and alive, the three of you were talking. Talking to each other. And responding.” She looked at Bill. “I checked your pulse, damn you. And there wasn’t any. You weren’t even breathing, but you drew a breath to answer her.”
She paused as if she expected one or another of them to say something. None of them did.
“Then, not five minutes ago, Officer Rodriguez over there started speaking. Officer Rodriguez, whose pupils don’t even dilate in the dark. Speaking in a voice I couldn’t help but recognize. And I think you know what he said.”
Bill looked away from the Major. He felt violated; as though he’d found someone eavesdropping on something so private that it was almost sacred.
“What do you want from us?” The Oriental woman asked her. “Why did you listen?”
Bill looked up in time to see the Major scowl. “What did you expect me to do, sew my ears shut? Don’t be impertinent, Ms. Park.”
“What do you want from us?” Her tone was plainly hostile, now.
The Major stood, furious. Her fist clenched.
“What in the Hell do you think I’m going to do? Where do you think we’re going?” She stamped her left foot, and Bill felt the thunder of it on the flat bed through his rump and thighs. “I’m putting you on a plane. All four of you. And sending you to Kansas.”
She didn’t bother telling any of them about the tiny tracer bugs she’d planted underneath the skin of their arms.
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Chapter Thirty-Nine
ST. CHARLES, MISSOURI
Again! The boy had gone and disappeared again. And he’d chosen the worst possible moment to do it, too. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! Luke should have known — shouldn’t have let that boy out of his sight, not even for an instant. Shouldn’t even have let him travel with them. Should have found a nice, suburban neighborhood to drop him off in, someplace quiet and safe, and let him find his own way home.
There wasn’t time to go searching for him. Wasn’t the first damned moment to spare. But for all the promises Luke had made to himself when the boy had first turned up, for all that he’d promised himself that if the boy made trouble for himself, he’d leave him to it — in spite of all of that Luke didn’t even consider leaving without him.
Christine was still sitting in the car, half awake, eyes not quite open.
“Did you see which way he went?”
“Uh — ? Who went? Andy, you mean?”
“Yeah. He’s disappeared.” Luke looked around, tried to spot the boy. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that; maybe he’d only gone to the men’s room. No, there he was — out in that field. Sixty yards away already, and still heading out.
“Christ.” This was going to take more time than they had. Long enough that he couldn’t just leave the car here and go chasing after the boy; he couldn’t leave the Dodge blocking the pumps for as long as it’d take to bring Andy back. Luke got into the driver’s seat, started the car, moved it to the edge of the gas station’s lot. “You want to wait here — watch the car — or. . . ?”
“No,” Christine said. “I’d better come with you.”
Whatever the hell that meant.
“All right — if that’s what you want. We’ve got to hurry. Are you awake enough to run?”
“I’ll manage.”
Andy was wandering away from the interstate, into a field of tall, dry grass beside the state road that the gas station was on. In the distance there were railroad tracks — elevated tracks on a bulwark of earth.
Andy was making a beeline for the train that was stalled on those tracks. Getting farther and farther away from them, even though it didn’t look as though he were running.
And there was no time at all for chasing after him. Not a single moment to spare. Luke knew it with his gut, knew it with a deep conviction. And he was right.
He took off running across that field with Christine beside him, running for all he was worth and stumbling over stones and ruts because the grass was too tall and too thick and he was in too much of a hurry to pay attention to where he was going.
Andy was climbing up onto the mound of earth now. Climbing up onto the train tracks and over them. Disappearing from sight.
That was when Luke stumbled into the worst rut in the entire field, a deep, narrow rut dug by rainwater from the palisade off to the left of the field. A rut just wide enough for his foot to stumble into, but too narrow to let it out, and Luke went down, slammed face-first into the grass and the stones and the hard dirt. Christine stopped and reached down to help him up, and Luke got to his feet right away, of course. But it was hard running so shaken up and with his ankle screaming at him the way i
t was, and even though he ran on it he ran slowly.
Out, across the field. Up onto the railroad mound, and over the tracks. Paused to try to sight the boy — and almost missed him altogether, because he was only a dozen yards away. Standing beside an empty freight car, looking in through the open door.
“C’mon, Mister Luke Munsen,” he said. “C’mon over here and see this — you got to see.”
“See what? Andy Harrison, you little pain in the —” Luke stopped himself “— We’ve got to get out of here. Got to get back on the road right now, right now —” He was marching along the edge of the tracks, between the train and the sheer drop on the other side of it. He was going to grab the boy, grab him and lift him up on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and he was going to haul him back to the car, and get all three of them the hell out of there —
When he got to the door of the freight car, he stopped, stopped dead in his tracks as stunned and in awe as Andy was.
“It’s him,” Christine said. She was climbing into the car, and her face was a mask of pain and concern. “It’s the one from my dream. He’s the one the dreams came from, I think.”
She walked to that incredible . . . thing, that incredible creature that lay writhing in agony on the floor of the freight car, and she stooped to touch his face, to caress it with love that tried to drain away a little of the pain but couldn’t take any of it and maybe Luke thought he ought to be jealous but it just wasn’t possible, it just wasn’t in him to feel it because he loved that creature at least as much as Christine did and maybe more.
“Luke Munsen? What are you doing here?”
And Luke looked up and saw Ron Hawkins, sitting on the far side of the car beside a filthy dog he almost remembered, and even if it was strange and impossible for him to be here, God it was good to see him, see him and remember him, he was a friend and the fact that he was there gave Luke a connection to his still-vague past and God that was a good thing.
“Same damn thing you’re doing here, I bet.” And remembered the urgency. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Is he well enough to move? We’ve got a car not far from here. Got to hurry — there’s no time at all.”
“Hurry where? From what? There’s no way he —” Ron nodded toward the creature “— can just get up and walk away from here, you know. Something’s wrong with him, seriously wrong.”
“Then we’ll have to carry him, that’s all. I’m not sure what’s going to happen — but . . . I had a dream, maybe an hour ago. A dream? No, not a dream. I was awake, and driving; there’s no way you could call it a dream. A vision, maybe?” Luke frowned. “I’ve been having a lot of dreams like that one, lately. We got to get away from here.
Christine looked up at him, away from the creature. “What did you see?”
Luke hesitated a long moment before he answered; he was afraid to say. And cursed himself for spending time they didn’t have. “An explosion. An explosion like the film of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that they showed us back in grade school.”
Andy was the one who broke the silence that followed. “Oh shit,” he said. “Are we going to get out of here, or what? Come on somebody. Let’s carry the big fella out of here.”
Ron shuffled over toward the creature, and together he and Christine slid the creature across the floor of the boxcar. Luke and Andy took his shoulders and lifted him out —
By then, of course, it was already too late. The fact was that it had been too late for them to get far enough away from the moment Andy had first set out across the field.
They had the creature half-way out when Luke lost his footing on the steep incline that led down from the train tracks, and he went tumbling ass-first down the stony dry dirt embankment, and Andy and the half-dead creature were only an instant behind since there was no way the boy could support the creature’s weight by himself —
And all three of them inside, Ron, Christine, and the dog Tom all came rushing down to help —
And that was the moment that the man in the plane triggered his nuclear warhead over the Mississippi River near Cahokia, just south of East St. Louis, and everything for miles and miles and miles around disappeared in a mushroom cloud of death and fire and subatomic vapor and pain.
Disappeared forever, without leaving behind a trace.
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FRIDAY
July Twenty-Second
INSET FL = Transmitted by satellite link
INSET FL = Friday, July 22.
JERUSALEM (REUTERS) — Israeli forces today pushed the joint Syrian-Iraqi army back across the Jordanian border, and launched a counter attack on Damascus through the Golan Heights. The Israelis claim to already be within 10 miles of the Syrian capital.
There are also unconfirmed reports that they have cut off lines of supply to the Iraqis and Syrians still fighting near the Jordan River. Israeli officials refused to comment on these reports. One official, who refused to be named, branded them “rumors — unfounded speculation.”
Egyptian representatives to the emergency meeting of the Arab League, now taking place in Tunis, condemned the Syrian-Iraqi attack as “criminal aggression.” Jordanian King Hassan, attending in person, called for the universal condemnation of Syria, Iraq, and Libya, which he accuses of having supplied Syria with material support. The League as a whole has not yet taken a position on the conflict.
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BOOK FOUR
Global Thermonuclear War
SATURDAY
July Twenty-Third
EXTREMELY CONFIDENTIAL
Transcript of a
conversation between
Herman Bonner and
our agent. Recorded
the morning of 7/23.
H.B.:You’re on time as always, Tim. I appreciate that.
A.:Of course I am, Dr. Bonner. What did you need from me?
H.B.:Several things. Several things. First, though, I wanted to check the progress of your missile program. How is it coming? Will you have them ready soon?
A.:Later this morning, if everything stays on time. No reason why it shouldn’t. (Pause.) Which reminds me of something I keep meaning to ask you.
H.B.:Yes. . . ?
A.:Well . . . we’ve never talked about this, so I’m not real sure. All these weird things that keep happening all over the country, all over the world. . . . Like all those weird things in the newspaper about that animal that’s like the Beast from Revelation. Like all those people who die and come back everywhere. Like how the newspapers always seem to read these things just the right way. Are we involved in that somehow? It almost seems like we have to be.
H.B.:Of course we are, Tim. Why do you ask?
A.:I thought so. It’s just that I’ve been wondering. . . .
H.B.:(Impatient.) Wondering what? Speak directly — there’s no time for this.
A.:Wondering how come we’ve got to do all this if what we really need to do is blow up the world. To make it clean. I mean — why don’t we just go ahead and drop those bombs, and to heck with all this stuff? Does it really make any difference?
H.B.:Ah. That’s what you’re getting at. I should have known. Yes, Tim — yes. It does make a difference. All the difference there can be. The fate of the world was written a long time ago, written by a hand far mightier than yours or mine. If we are to have any hope of accomplishing our ends, we must produce that fate as nearly as possible. Otherwise we are doomed to fail.
A Post-It note mounted in the center of the page obscures what lies below. It reads as follows:
When are we going stop this man, General? We’re left with almost no time at all. And we’ve already lost St. Louis. I gather that our man is actually arming these bombs? Why, for God’s sake? If the Air Force isn’t up to the job, I’ll march into this base and strangle him and Bonner with my bare hands. I don’t care if th
ey’ve got the man who’s legally our President with them. We need to put this to an end.
Below this, written in a finer, more careful hand:
Show a little patience, Ben. We’re working on it. Our man is in fear for his life. If he sabotaged Bonner, the man would kill him. And have someone else do the work. At least he’s feeding us information, and thank God for that.
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Chapter Forty
LAKE-OF-FIRE, KANSAS
By Saturday afternoon, George Stein had begun to pray that God would let him die. Die forever and for real and permanently. His heart needed an ending; the scars that Herman Bonner had left on his soul over the last two days were too deep to ever heal. His shame twisted him too hard, too far; there was no way he could ever grow easy with himself again. George Stein didn’t just want to die — he wanted more. He wanted the death that atheists see waiting for them: pure and sweet oblivion.
A total and final end for body and soul.
It was a vile thing to pray for. George Stein prayed for it all the same.
Not that it mattered. If God heard his prayers, he didn’t heed them. Three times since the sun had come up this morning he’d felt the life bleed away from him through broken arteries, and each time he’d woke only a short while later in coagulating pools of his own blood. And looked up, reborn, to see Herman Bonner leering at him.
Herman kept him chained much more carefully now. George had spent most of the day chained to that filthy, blood-crusted bed, each leg, each wrist bound individually. Then, half an hour ago Herman had kicked him till he woke, taken his chains from the bedposts, and carried him to the front of the room. George would have tried to fight him off if he’d had the strength, but he didn’t have it — he was so weak, in fact, that he hadn’t even had the spirit to try to fight.
“I want you to see this, George,” Herman said. And he hoisted George up toward the ceiling, and looped the chains that bound his wrists into a wide, heavy-gauge, white-painted hook — a hook George hadn’t noticed before, and whose original purpose he couldn’t imagine. Herman left him dangling like a side of beef in a meat locker. “It’s the culmination of everything we’ve worked on together for years. It’s important that you see.”