by Alan Rodgers
The plane that Bonner had ordered destroyed; that had to be the one. Seeing it, Luke was certain that there were people alive inside it. And just as certain that they would be a part of the events to come.
Up ahead, in the cockpit, the technician was driving the plane through the field. The Vice President was in there with him, someplace. Herman Bonner stood not far from the cockpit door, watching Luke and Ron Hawkins and George Stein. He had a machine gun trained on them, but something in Luke’s heart told him that it wasn’t really necessary. Told him that Herman Bonner was more than a match for the three of them.
“I still don’t get it, Dr. Bonner,” the technician said. “Why are we using this plane? It isn’t meant for this. It’s a miracle that the landing gear have held up to it.” A pause. “I could have found us a truck, or a jeep, or something. Wouldn’t have taken long.”
Bonner shook his head. “The missile, Tim. It’s the only one I have at the moment. And I’m not letting it out of my sight.”
And then they were slowing, coming to a stop. Right at the edge of the Lake of Fire.
And then they stopped.
Bonner opened the plane’s forward door. Gestured toward it with his rifle.
“Come along, gentlemen,” he said. “Your fate awaits you.”
Luke started forward, wondering how in God’s name they were going to get out when they’d left the landing stairs behind them, back at the runway on the base. He was still wondering when he got to the open door.
“Go ahead, Dr. Munsen. Jump. And don’t think of running when you reach the ground — I’ll have my gun trained on you. And Tim his.”
What was it — ten feet? Fifteen? More than a hop and a skip, that was certain. A little higher than the top of the fence they’d climbed when he and Ron broke into the base. More distance than Luke wanted to drop.
It wasn’t the moment to argue. Luke was certain of it.
So he jumped, and ended up landing too hard on the same damn leg he’d sprained coming down from the top of the fence. By the time he got done nursing it and opened his eyes Ron and George Stein were both on the ground with him, bruised and groaning from their own falls.
Luke looked up just in time to see Herman Bonner make the jump. And what he saw . . . unsettled him. Saw Bonner slide the distance gracefully, and land smoothly on his feet the same way most men step down from a curb. Not that there was anything impossible about the way he landed. Not exactly. It wasn’t right, exactly, either.
Bonner looked up, into the plane. “Come along, Tim,” he said. “Be sure to help the President before you see to yourself.”
The technician was a lot more sensible about getting down: he took the Vice President’s hand, bent low on his knees to lower him to within two feet of the ground before he let go. Then he slung his rifle over his shoulder, lowered himself from the doorway as though he were doing a chin-up in reverse. Let himself fall, and fell quick and rough.
Bonner looked at Luke. At Ron. At George Stein. Gestured with his machine gun toward the edge of the Lake of Fire. “Walk,” he said. “All three of you. To the brink of the bluff.”
He’s going to push us off. As though we were walking a plank.
And Luke smiled at the image. If the three of them didn’t make their break soon, there wouldn’t be time for it. Now. . . ? No. Not yet. His gut still told him to be calm, to bide his time.
Ron Hawkins looked at him pointedly with wide, nervous eyes.
Luke shook his head. And walked to the edge of the Lake of Fire.
And looked down.
And saw the sea of molten stone glowing twenty-five feet below. A sheer drop between here and there, magma flowing along the base of the cliff. Looked right, and left, and saw that elsewhere the drop was less sheer — in places there was a shore at the base of the bluff that looked almost like a beach.
Behind him, Herman Bonner laughed like a creature up out of hell.
³ ³ ³
APPROACHING THE EDGE OF THE LAKE OF FIRE
Andy was beginning to wonder if they were ever going to get wherever it was they were going. All of this walking and walking — and now backtracking in almost the same direction they’d started out in! You’d think that monster wanted them to spend the whole night walking around in circles.
Well, Andy was getting tired of it. Damned tired. Even if all of those dead people could just go walking around in circles all night, he couldn’t.
Even the dog was beginning to look a little droopy around the ears.
Well, he thought, if that old monster won’t give us a rest break, then the thing to do is go ahead and take one for ourselves anyway.
And he sat down, right there in the middle of nowhere with whatever that was out ahead of them glowing all over him, and the monster and all of those dead people tramping right by like he wasn’t even there. The heck with them, then, if they weren’t going to stop. Andy didn’t care about them anyhow. At least the dog stopped to rest with him.
Then right away, of course, the dumb old dog starts whining at him. Like he’d sat himself right in the middle of an ant hill or something, and the dog knew it and Andy didn’t, and he was trying to get Andy to get up and get himself the heck out of there.
Andy checked for an ant hill, of course, but there wasn’t any. So he just ignored that old dog. He was a strange dog anyhow — who needed to pay attention to him?
Not Andy. Nuh-uh. He was tired.
Which was about when he saw the plane, and the people there at the edge of the glowy lake.
What the heck were people doing with an airplane in the middle of a wheatfield?
Well, at least things were beginning to get interesting. Not that Andy was any too sure that this was the kind of interesting that he wanted anything to do with. Two of those guys had guns, didn’t they? Hard to be sure from this far, but it sure looked like it to Andy. People with guns were trouble, and Andy had got himself into quite enough trouble these last few days, thank you very much.
Old Tom the dog was still whining at him.
Well, go on and whine, you old dog, Andy told himself. You see if I care.
And that was when the dog attacked him.
Well, maybe not attacked him, exactly.
Darned near, though: dog lunged at Andy, real sudden-like. Set into Andy’s right shoe like it was some cat he’d finally got his teeth into. Yanked back and forth with Andy wrestling to get it away from it and wondering what on earth it was that had finally drove the poor dog out of his mind.
“Hey, dog! You cut that out!” Andy hollered. Didn’t slow that old dog down, not even for a second. In fact, it seemed to make him a little more desperate, if it did anything. And then all of the sudden Tom the dog managed to yank that shoe right off of him. And took off running like a dog bound for hell.
Which, of course, he more or less was.
And Andy thought: Boy, is my momma going to be pissed at me if I don’t get that shoe back.
Boy was she.
And thinking about his momma when she was mad, Andy didn’t give being tired or wary another moment’s consideration. He took off running after that dog for all he was worth.
And then some.
Up ahead, by the plane, six people stood right at the edge of the fire lake. And that darned dog was heading right at them. Right at them!
It was trouble. Trouble.
Whatever kind of trouble it was, it just didn’t compare to what his momma would have waiting for him if he didn’t get that shoe back. Andy took a triple-E shoe, and sometimes they’d have to shop for two or three weeks before they could find a pair that wouldn’t give him blisters.
One of those men was laughing now, laughing all crazy-like. Scary sounding. Andy definitely didn’t want to follow wherever that dog had a mind to go. Not if it was going to take him toward that man.
Absolute
ly didn’t.
He didn’t figure his momma would take that for an excuse. She tended to get real annoyed when he outgrew a pair of shoes — and the one time he’d got those sneakers all ruined with tar she’d grounded him for a month. And spent the whole time scowling at him.
So Andy put the guns and the crazy man and the fiery lake out of his mind. Kept his eye on the dog, and kept running.
The Monster and the dead people were way back there, now. Stopped, and the Monster was pointing off in that direction where Andy could hear the soldiers fighting with each other. Were they going to go off and leave him behind? Andy didn’t know what it was that old Monster had in mind. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
And —
Damn! That dog!
There he was. Running right up to those people at the edge of the lake. And him being just a dog, he hardly drew any notice. And instead of running on, so that Andy could cut the six people a wide berth, the darned dog turns to face him. Stands there, right in the middle of trouble, looks Andy in the eye, and drops the shoe.
That dog was going to suffer for this.
Well — maybe not suffer. But he was definitely and absolutely going to get his. That was a true fact.
So Andy ducked low, trying to pretend like he was invisible, and darted after that dog. Ran quiet and close to the ground, hoping to go unnoticed the same way the dog had.
Almost worked, too.
Andy went up to the dog, sneaking around not ten feet from the legs of one of the two gunmen. Grabbed that shoe right from under the dog’s face, and turned around to get the hell out of there.
And damned if that dog didn’t pick that moment to start barking! Like he wanted to hand Andy over to those people!
Well, if that’s what he wanted, then that’s what he got.
It didn’t take two seconds after the dog started making his racket for the nearer gunman to grab Andy by the collar. Like he was a kitten some cat was carrying around by the scruff of its neck.
Which was when Andy saw that two of the three people who had guns pointed at them were Luke Munsen and his friend Ron. There was another man who looked kind of familiar, too, and all three of them were perched on the edge of the bluff over the lake. Ron had this look in his eyes like he thought he was about to get pushed in. Damn that dog! What had he got Andy into?
And then this balding, pinched-faced guy, turned around and looked Andy up and down, smiling the way you smile at a roasted Thanksgiving turkey, only nastier than that. And after a little bit he started talking in low tones to the other guy who had a gun — Andy couldn’t make out what he said, but he heard enough to know that the man had a weird accent.
And he turned back to Andy, and he smiled again, and started shouting.
“Behold!” he said, “Another demon, plunged into our midst. And this time in the guise of a child! How foul! How vile! See the depths to which the minions of hell will sink!”
Aw, come on, Andy thought. You aren’t really talking that way about me, are you?
But damned if he wasn’t.
³ ³ ³
“It’s time,” the old woman said. “There isn’t another moment to waste.”
Christine looked at her. Frowned. Nodded.
“Is your heart certain, now? Have you freed yourself from fear? From doubt?”
Christine bit her lower lip. Sighed. “Yes,” she said. That was all she said.
And the old woman began to lead her more quickly, more purposely along the shore of the Lake of Fire.
³ ³ ³
When Luke saw them hoist the boy up off his feet, he felt the bottom drop out of his own stomach. Christ on a crutch, couldn’t that kid manage to steer himself clear of trouble even once? Just once?
Well, Luke thought, no. Of course he couldn’t. It wasn’t in Andy Harrison’s nature to be clear of trouble; it drew to him and he to it like the opposing poles of magnets.
Damn, it, though: any moment now everything was going to fall into place, and Luke would have to move, and the last thing in the world Luke needed under the circumstances was to have to look after the boy. And he did have a responsibility to see after him, too. Luke had tried to deny it since Andy had first turned up stowed away in the trunk of his car, but denial hadn’t changed even the first iota of his responsibility.
“Herman?” It was the Vice President’s voice. Speaking the first he’d spoken since they’d left the airfield. Luke looked at him, saw him petting Ron Hawkins’s dog, saw the dog licking the man’s fingers. His eyes were clearer, now, weren’t they? He looked, Luke thought, like a man coming out of a drug dream. “What are you planning to do to that child? What did you say about him?”
Bonner’s lips pursed. “It isn’t a child, Mr. President. Look carefully. Not a child, but a demon cloaked in a child’s flesh.”
“Set him down,” the Vice President said. And he stooped to look Andy Harrison in the eye. And kept looking, for a long, long while.
And then, finally, he spoke again.
“I don’t know, Herman. I think maybe you’re mistaken.”
And Luke looked at Bonner when he saw the Vice President turn to face him. And saw Herman Bonner seething with anger.
“Mr. President!” he said, “how you can doubt me? Looking at this creature, how can you doubt its nature?”
“I don’t know, Herman. I think I’d know a demon when I saw one. And he sure looks like a boy to me.” Luke saw the man turn to look at himself. At Ron Hawkins. At George Stein. “Point of fact — I can’t say that any of these people look like demons to me. If you say they are, then I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I won’t have you killing little boys. Do you understand me, Herman? I’m talking to you as your President, now.”
And quietly and suddenly and certainly, everything changed at once.
Changed as the Creature stepped into the light that came up from the Lake of Fire.
By his very presence the creature threw something that was almost his own light on everything around them.
Like a light — and something else, too. Here in the nuclear glow at the edge of the Lake of Fire the creature’s presence seemed to bring out . . . Luke wasn’t sure what it was. It was a thing that made Andy Harrison look elfin, impish. Made Ron Hawkins look deep and saintly and grim, like a knight set out to fight a crusade he didn’t want but couldn’t avoid. Made George Stein look like a fallen angel, struggling to repent.
Made the Vice President, Graham Perkins, look like a brave and noble man who’d been born to lead.
Made Herman Bonner —
None of them could compare to the way the light made Herman Bonner look.
The glow from the creature transformed Herman Bonner into the Beast from Revelation.
The image that surrounded Bonner looked, in fact, almost exactly as the creature had looked when Bonner had finished operating on him. Like a leopard in the general form of a man, but its feet like a bear’s and its mouths were like a lion’s.
And where the creature had been surgically transformed into a thing with three heads — and two of them dead — the thing that rose like a ghost above Herman Bonner had ten heads, each of them fully formed and alive.
The creature took a step toward Herman Bonner. And Bonner — Luke was sure of it — Herman Bonner cringed ever-so-slightly. Luke looked into his eyes, and what he saw in them was fear.
³ ³ ³
Leigh had just got the last of her charges into the car when she saw . . . there wasn’t a word for it. Hundreds of people. Dozens, at least. Out away from the lake among the wheatfields, only half visible in the moonlight. Like an army of the damned, they looked, risen up from hell.
She glanced back over her shoulder at the Lake of Fire. And shuddered. Who were they? Where were they going? With her eye she traced the line of their direction across the fields, to
ward its ultimate direction — and saw the armies, fighting on the plain and among the hills.
Were they going to join that battle? And why?
Someone groaned inside the car. Leigh didn’t even hear it.
She was too caught up in watching the army out of hell. Trying to see how many of them there were, and where. She looked hard out into the dark, trying to see if there were more of them. And her eye caught on the scene quarter of a mile away. By the other airplane.
What she saw there, glowing in that strange light, drew her in even more surely than the sight of the army of the damned.
³³³
“There’s nothing you can do to me,” Bonner said. There wasn’t an awful lot of conviction in his voice. “You’re my creation! I made you, vile thing. And even if I made you a more powerful thing than I realized, I still hold the secret of your life in my hand.”
The creature wasn’t moving quickly, but he didn’t slow down, either — didn’t even hesitate. Out of the corner of his eye Luke saw the Vice President taking Andy in his arms, moving the boy away, out of the thick of things. The dog followed just behind them, nipping at the man’s heels as though he thought he meant the boy some harm.
There was only a few feet left between the creature and Herman Bonner. Both of them were caught up in the glow from the lake, and Luke would have sworn there was some other glow, too — a glow like the light the creature cast on those around him. And more brilliant; bright enough to see even in the light that shone up from the lake.
And the insubstantial thing above Herman Bonner began to grow . . . solid-looking.
It was time to get the hell out of here.
The technician stood watching, terrified; his face was still and slack as soft stone.
Luke frowned. Clenched his teeth.
Ron and George Stein looked nearly as terrified as the technician did. Luke heard a noise, strange, small, like splintering bone; looked up at the creature, at Herman Bonner —
They were fighting, the creature and the beast that was Herman Bonner.
It was the insubstantial part of Herman Bonner that was doing the fighting. As Luke watched its claws like a leopard’s claws dug themselves into the muscular flesh of the creature’s belly, and the jaws on one leonine head dove for the creature’s neck.