But this had gone wrong. Lomax was supposed to tell him when they were coming out. George would remain hidden, then hit them. A good plan. But where was Lomax?
He had been immersed in his weeding, sure the guards were not making their usual rounds, were instead dealing with the noisy band outside. A minute was all he needed, anyway. There was some slim hope that he might even get away from this, after the deed was done. But George knew the odds were bad, very bad. He did not truly care. Kneeling in the warm earth, he prepared himself for his fate once he had rounded off his life’s work. He was talking to God about it.
Then the damned Sheffield woman had screamed. They were there, all three, sudden and solid.
She should not have even glanced at a gardener squatting down. And Lomax had not warned him that they were coming! But he could overcome the disarray that burst within him. Now it would all be done. His work could finally come to a consummation, devoutly to be wished.
He dealt with the Sheffield woman first. Like a banshee she wailed. He struck her heavily.
But the woman’s face. It pulled away as he struck it.
Beneath the mask of false flesh she had hidden the signature of the grave. Twisted, purple skin. A shine of rot. Slime, scabs. And through the bridge of her nose he had seen the white slabs of bleached bone. For him to see.
Bones of Ezekiel. These people still had their lattice cages of calcium rods, white-hard beneath their sinew, could still someday rise and dance on the final plain, clacking in the valley of dry bones beneath the whispering wings of angels.
All three seemed razor-sharp in the cutting noonday glare.
Each he had faced separately. Each was a chiller, a perversion of the natural order. Yet together, they sent shuddering waves of apprehension through him. Their accusing lantern eyes. Their lips curled in tight lines of loathing.
This should not be. He had sent them on to God. But now they walked again, and God was not here to help him. Only he faced their silent rebuke.
His stomach shot through his throat a sour mouthful of bile. His hands trembled. He found that his legs were moving, taking him back and away from their lancing eyes. But his legs were like bulky logs, wading knee-high through a syrup swamp.
“You! You!” the Sheffield woman screamed and sobbed.
A weight shifted within him, a liquid as heavy as mercury but dark, bitter, sloshing with its own grave momentum. Tipping him. He had to act, to draw down the curtain here, but something opaque and swelling slowed his hands, like a stone lodged in his brain. Filmy scarlet striations shredded the air. He backed away.
Cowell’s hoarse shout alerted him. He heard the fast footfalls behind and gave himself over to the sure physical sense he had learned in the jungle.
Slowed. Waited a thumping heartbeat. Swiveled and caught Cowell hard and sure.
He aimed with the spray tube and fired directly at Cowell’s stunned face. But the head dodged and the gob splatted across the bill of Cowell’s Dodgers cap.
Dr. Lomax had said these chemicals needed to find flesh, work their way fever-quick into the skull, eat the brain. His hands trembled. He fired again. Missed.
It had been easier, long ago, in the dark. Their faces were shadowed then, not raw and real in the glare of day.
He aimed at Cowell and saw the Hagerty woman picking up a rock. It rattled him, and he jerked the trigger on the canister too hard. The yellow plug passed over Cowell’s head without him even noticing it.
George started to turn back toward Hagerty and felt a blinding pain in his right temple. The world veered, teetered.
His feet broke free of the anchoring earth, dull snaps of disconnection reverberating up into his chest. He lurched away into the trees. A beckoning forest, moist and enclosing, like the years in Santa Isabella. In fevered fear, he headed toward the two men who could help him through this, down there, beside the pond.
Flat, cool, the pond.
Gray water stretching like an infinite plain.
The Hagerty woman was running at him with furious energy. Cowell was slower, his clothes still smoking with sour fumes.
He could not deal with them all at once. Better to draw them after him, then turn on them. He ran into the cool shadows beneath the eucalyptus. Out of view of the guards, which might give him precious extra seconds.
Here he would make his stand.
17
SUSAN
The corrosive fumes bit into her nostrils as she plunged after the man. Running past the wheelchair, she saw that Kathryn was hurt but not badly. And Alex was wobbly but had managed to get the yellow goo off him.
It was rage, not calculation, that threw her forward after the man. Here was death itself, and she hated its rigid, fanatic face. She would love to claw this man’s eyes out.
Susan followed him into the trees and down the gentle slope, shards of eucalyptus bark snapping beneath her exercise shoes. The man slowed, recharging his heavy canister. Susan gained on him. He glanced over his shoulder and then quickly back.
Of course. He would let her get within range, whirl, snap off a shot right in her face.
As she thought this, she veered to her left. The man turned, brought his hands up, carefully cradling the canister—and saw that she was not where he thought.
Susan dodged behind a tree, grabbed it to stop herself, and abruptly dashed back the way she had come. A pop told her he had fired, probably expecting her to emerge from the other side. Scrambling, she plunged through a thicket. He muttered angrily behind her. She reached another old, thick eucalyptus and stopped behind it. The man was only ten yards away. She heard his crackling footsteps in the eucalyptus bark. Moving to her left.
She crouched over, took a deep breath—and bolted to her right, face turned away from his direction. If he hit her, at least she wouldn’t take it full in the face. There might be a chance of wiping it away, the way Alex had.
Pop. Something acrid whipped by above her head. It smacked into a branch behind her. White smoke puffed past her nose.
The next big tree seemed far away. She straightened up to run, thrust forward—and her left foot went out from under her. She slipped, started to go down. Slippery bank all the way down.
Shot out an arm and turned the fall into a roll.
Downhill, tumbling, keeping some speed. Be a moving target.
She let her downhill momentum carry her for three complete rolls, sure he would not try such a difficult shot. Dry dirt in her nostrils. Her head smacked into something hard. She ignored the spike of hot pain and turned her roll into a sprawling, desperate scramble down the slope. No time to look back, see where he was. She could hear sounds of him coming through the undergrowth, bushes whipping against his legs.
Shaky, she got to her feet and spun away from sounds of pursuit. Anger with herself seethed in her throat. He had turned the tables, suckered her into this sheltered place where he could do his job.
She dodged behind a tree and saw a fallen limb. Crashing footsteps behind. Close.
She snatched up the brittle limb and turned, thrusting it out. He was right behind her.
He ran into the limb, coughed with surprise. It knocked him back, and his feet went out from under him. He sat down, face red, puffing. He still had the canister.
His shirt had popped its buttons, split open. Across his chest was a faded tattoo: GOD IS.
“Eternal life to you,” he said between gasps of air.
He lifted the canister and paused to aim in a curiously solemn gesture. Susan hit it with the limb. He would not let go of it. She clubbed him in the neck. He shrugged this off and started to get up. She heard a crashing and looked uphill. Let it be the guards. But it was only Alex.
18
GEORGE
He ran before Cowell could reach him. The woman had taken time, and he had still not hit her. He needed to take a moment to steady his aim.
The pond was not far away. But the woman had taken the wind out of him with her goddamned dodging, gobbling up precious seconds. Breath cut
in his raw throat. The air itself seemed to crowd in. A tunnel formed in the bright day, leading only to the gray waters.
There was a figure ahead, across the pond: Lomax. He must have followed the chillers out, without an opportunity to find George.
Footsteps from behind.
He turned. Cowell swelled like a grotesque apparition, spears of ruby radiance forking from him.
George heard something else, not a noise but a leaden silence, a huge pool of dead air in which he discovered he was drowning. Coughing. Struggling to drag thin sheets of God’s oily air into heaving, pain-shot lungs.
Cowell flew at him, launched across the thick zone of stagnant air. He drove his right shoulder into George’s chest, expelling the inert breath, wrapping a steel arm around his neck, throwing a hard weight against him.
The spray canister flew away.
George clawed at Cowell, found a left arm that swung lifelessly, no resistance. The arm was like a thing from the grave, a corpse limb attached to the living Cowell. George could not escape its flopping. The arm rolled over his face as he went down, thumping hard. Shiny blades of grass stabbed at his face. The devil arm was in his eyes, fingers dragging across his cheeks, and he hardly noticed the sharp slamming of Cowell’s good hand into his middle.
Cowell butted him hard under the jaw, hammered a fist into his neck. George saw sparks of hellfire ignite in the venomous air above Cowell’s head, wondered what they meant. He grappled at Cowell, cold fear striking into his bowels.
They rolled, face to face. In Cowell’s eyes he saw depthless time, and in the pupils a flat plane of gray menace. He sucked in air and tasted sweat, an acrid bite, a stench like rotting flesh from this animated corpse.
Cowell spat out curses, tearing at his hair, smashing the one free fist into George’s nose so that blood spurted hot and rich into his mouth. George yanked Cowell hard, rolling over him, getting a knee between them. Before he could thrust them apart, a sharp pain shot through his temple. He turned and saw the Hagerty woman stepping back to kick him again. Yelling something at him, eyes blazing.
Cowell punched at his chin, missed. George flailed back, hot lights darting in his eyes, and a shoe slammed into his ribs. He rolled away from the woman, tried to kick at Cowell. The grass writhed and murmured in his ear, dark earth-words he could not make out. A thick blade stuck up his nostril, jabbed sharply into his sinuses. Arise, do battle. He heaved up, tossing Cowell aside.
The sun boiled above. George gathered his feet to stand, and a shoe caught him in the chin, slamming him back sprawling. He recovered fast, rolling away. Purple dots swam in the clear sky. He saw a leg and snatched at it, yanked, brought down the Hagerty woman. She landed heavily. But in an instant she was on hands and knees, coming at him with raking fingers.
Bright shards of panic flared in him. An arm slipped around his neck, locking him in a choke hold. George grabbed the arm with both hands and lurched sideways, getting his shoulder into it. The arm lost its hold. Blindly he jabbed out, catching somebody. He got his legs under him and lurched up. He gasped in burning air, and the sun lanced in his eyes.
Then they were on him. Cowell hit him in the belly, and he went down. A mass slammed into him. He kicked out, heaved upward, made it to his knees. A shoe dug into his belly. Rage, fear, swarming blind confusion—all poured through him like hot oil.
Escape. Lomax would help. The thought spurted clear and quick through his turmoil. His analytical side, still there. Cool, distant.
The Hagerty woman hit him viciously in the neck. He sucked in air and punched fast, slamming his fists like hams. She was soft and went down.
He stepped back. Cowell was blinking, hair in his eyes. George shot a fist into his face and ran.
There. Dr. Lomax. Bringing to bear a shiny steel automatic pistol.
George was moving fast and he hardly registered the bang or the thump in his left shoulder. He stopped before Lomax, blinking in bewilderment. Lomax’s eyes were hooded, remote. This was not the way it was to be, not the way at all.
George threw himself forward and crashed into Lomax’s legs. The pistol smacked him in the head. Lomax swore and chopped at George’s neck. Sparks of silvery agony showered in his skull. He heaved himself up, pushed Lomax away. Laboring to breathe, George pivoted on a fulcrum of stupefied terror.
Lomax swung a thin fist at George. He caught it in midair with his left hand and hit Lomax with an overhand punch. The man staggered. Fell.
Shouting, words spraying like shrapnel.
Heaving, eating earth beneath a cutting sun.
Hagerty, limping, Cowell trotting unsteadily.
George faced them, tried to think. Lomax was down, holding his head. If only the Reverend were here.
George bolted. Somewhere there would be shelter from this strange storm. He slowed, peering at the pond, consternation crawling in his face.
A hand landed on his shoulder and yanked him to the side. Cowell. George tried to strike at him, but a fist smacked into his temple and the world teetered.
Arms around him, tight. He slipped free, but he had hurt his foot somehow and limped. Cowell hit him from behind. They both grappled. Water splashed on his legs. Cowell’s salty sweat and roaring demon breath swarmed over his face. George swung at Cowell, got him in the ribs. He stepped back, and the chilly pond came up over his knees. He grabbed and tried to sling Cowell to the side but lost his own footing and went in, water slopping up and over his back, enveloping his chest, lapping laughing at his chin. Nameless terror leaped into his throat.
In vain he tried to twist away. Cowell shifted suddenly and got him in a bear hug from behind. He bent forward to lift Cowell, and his face went under the water, sending a stark panic into his chest. Frantically he threw himself sideways and got one of Cowell’s arms loose but slipped and went into the water full, the awful chill covering his face. He rolled over and gasped. His feet thrust in all directions, seeking purchase.
He sucked in frosty vapor and was in a place of dead sound, hollow. Currents stirred in him, frenzied the air above. His arms flailed like sticks, smacked, splashed. The black lake was here at last and wintry. A gray flat plain of impassive water, and he could see only inches above it, legs struggling against nothing, no ground.
Flat, indifferent. He dipped below it. Into gray embrace.
Memory rushed out of an ebony tunnel toward him.
He was growing heavy, thick, ponderous. Down and down through grays and somber blacks, fleshy underwater growths brushing at him, schools of mottled fish, waxy reeds, plunging down through shrouded lanes of wintry water, ever colder as he grew sluggish and heavier, deeper and colder, sinking forever into an abyss more strange and awful as he felt its frigid hold wrap around him, gather, slow and creeping cold and depths beyond.
And more memories, exploding out of the black tunnel of decades lost. Slamming into him without pity.
The infinite black lake. And then the bursting forth, the blaring glare of the operating room, warped faces above him—
Not a vision from the Lord. A memory.
He did not feel his feet catch the mud bottom. Massive with the weight of water and years, he struggled up the slope. Staggered into the shallows. Waded up onto the brow of the pond.
Cowell was some distance away, and people came running over the hill. Cries cut the air. He shook the heavy water from him as best he could and felt a coat of anxiety and distortion shed from his weary body.
Lomax.
George pushed aside all the other chaos and concentrated on the figure, now bent over, the gray head trembling with nausea.
Slogging uphill. George reached him before the man could look up. Others were coming, there were only seconds. George shouted, “You did that to me! You!”
Lomax’s face tilted up, white with panic.
“You took me out of that lake!” George cried. “A boy, I was a boy and you did that, made me, made me—”
“I saved your goddamned life,” Lomax wheezed.
> “But you—but you—”
“Without my methods you would never have lived.”
“I drowned—I was frozen!”
“From the water, yes, but I had to lower you further, ice you, to preserve you until I could work out methods. Until I could bring you back up to normal temperature and—”
“You made me a chiller!”
Lomax stepped back, fear darting in the leathery face. George saw the same knot he had witnessed before, crawling crablike under the stretched skin, along Lomax’s jawline and into his neck, a clear sign from the Lord of the marked, the despicable. Filigrees of crimson and violet crackled all around Lomax’s cowering shape. The air worked with wracking impulses.
The black lake.
The stabbing lights as he awoke, a chiller, into the hideous world without his parents.
The shiny canister lay at his feet.
“Bones of Ezekiel!” he cried, and in one step had the frail old body of Lomax in his grasp. It was featherlight as George grunted, bending down, holding his prey in one hand while he picked up the canister.
Lomax beat against him, light as moth wings.
Strident voices bursting like shells around him.
Lomax’s pathetic whining, shrunken and thin.
Pop. A sticky yellow wad struck Lomax in the left eye and spattered over his nose into the gaping cavern mouth. Which had opened, George saw, to receive the bread and the wine. This is the body and blood given to thee, in abject tribute, for I have sinned.
Yellow foam boiled across Lomax’s face. It frothed eagerly in the throat, slopped over the bands of agonized muscles in jaw and neck. Already the stink of digestion curled up in tendrils from the bubbling skin.
Gray dark time.
The lake.
Flat and cool and waiting.
EIGHT
TIME’S WINGED CHARIOT
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near
CHILLER Page 59
