Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  * * * *

  Lyman Baylor stands at the living room window, hands twisting at his side. “Kitra, have you seen this?”

  “I’ve seen storms before, Ly. Come help me find the candles. We never have them ready when the power goes off.”

  “Kitra, please, just look.”

  “Ly, I just told you I haven’t got—Lyman Baylor, where are you going?”

  He has grabbed his raincoat from the coatrack in the hall and is hurrying to the door.

  “Lyman!”

  “Reverend Chisholm,” he calls over his shoulder. “I have to see Reverend Chisholm.”

  He’s gone before she can protest or stop him, but he hopes she takes the time to look at the sky.

  At the red lightning.

  At the green fire that dances within the clouds.

  It’s happening; he knows it’s happening, and Chisholm, he’s positive, has something to do with it. By the time he’s opened the garage door, he’s praying harder than he’s ever prayed in his life.

  * * * *

  Hector watches the increasing play of red and green in the sky and crosses himself, backs away from the window when it shimmers in the wind.

  Gloria, he thinks, is definitely going to kill me.

  * * * *

  “What is it?” Ben asks softly, standing at the Teach’s small front window. “What is it, Peg?”

  Pegleg is on the bar, out of his cage, bobbing his head. Muttering to himself.

  “What’s going on out there, Peg? What’s going on?”

  * * * *

  3

  Casey can’t keep away from the porch, despite the wind, despite the cold.

  After he’d climbed off the jetty, almost falling in several times, he was positive he knew where the battleground would be. Just before he left, he had seen, behind closed eyes, what looked like a dark wall where the clouds met the sea. But the wall moved, and it grew, and when he narrowed his eyes and looked harder, he realized it was a huge wave rising slowly, blackly, out of the water toward the clouds. Scarlet fire laced and twined inside it, and emerald sparks flared and popped where the crest should have been.

  And on the top, amid the fire and sparks, were the Riders, their mounts cantering easily over the surface, manes and tails flying in the direction of the wind. Smoke from their nostrils, flame from their hooves.

  He recognized Susan, and his stomach contracted; the little one must be Joey, and the old woman, Eula.

  The one slightly ahead of the others he could barely see at all, but he knew this too—that this was the Rider who would bring the world down.

  hello, casey, he’d said, across the miles, across the sea; heard you killed a man today.

  Now he stands on the porch, tapping a nervous heel, trying to think. The other had accepted the vision without question, almost hopeful now that they had something concrete to work with. But it was clear they hadn’t thought about it very long. How can he—they—fight something like that? The wave would sweep them away before they even met the Riders.

  Was the vision wrong?

  Was there some interpretation he was missing? Had he seen it all wrong?

  “Casey.”

  He shakes his head angrily. Not now. Not now.

  He shuts his eyes, tries to bring the scene back, but there is only darkness, and tiny points of light.

  “Casey.”

  He turns sharply, with a scowl, but says nothing when he sees the look on Beatrice’s face, how her hands are clasped at her stomach as if trying to hold it in.

  “Pakistan,” she says. Stops. Takes a breath. “Pakistan has launched another missile into India. They claim it’s an accident, like the others, but no one thinks India’s listening.” Her eyes close, open. “And China has declared war on Australia, Casey. Britain and the Commonwealth are mobilizing. It’s ...” She can’t find the words, or doesn’t want to use the ones she’s thinking, and she closes the door, cuts him off.

  With a low moan of frustration, he braces his hands against the posts that hold up the roof on either side of the screen door, and for a moment he sees himself as Samson about to bring the Temple down around his ears.

  “Fat chance,” he mutters, but just for the heck of it, he pushes anyway, not very hard and only for a few seconds. Then his arms drop, his head bows and shakes, and he thinks maybe it’s time to let the others figure it out, because it’s too much for him, and there’s no time to play the lone hero. There’s no time ... to be ...

  He blinks slowly.

  The lone gunman.

  He blinks again.

  Cautions himself not to smile as he presses a calming hand against his chest.

  Too soon; you could be wrong.

  A lungful of cold air, another, and he returns inside and stands under the arch.

  He points at the television. “Turn that off.”

  “But Reverend Chisholm,” Reed protests.

  “Now.”

  Cora scrambles to obey, and the children leave their places on the floor and gather around their mother, in her chair beside the couch.

  “It’s coming,” he says. “You know it is. You’ve seen the sky. John, was there anything ... I don’t know how to put it. Not magical, exactly. Not...” He taps the heel of his hand against his brow. “Like what I think I saw, I mean. You understand?”

  “Sure,” John answers. “And no, not really. It wasn’t ordinary, not by anyone’s definition, but it certainly wasn’t anything like a monster tidal wave.”

  “Jude.” He looks to her and the kids, and spreads his hands.

  Moonbow wrinkles her brow, looks to her sister, and says, “She—Eula, I mean—she made some people better. So they could—”

  “—fight us,” Starshine finishes. “And ride horses and shoot guns.” She shrugs. “Like that.”

  “Nothing like the wave?”

  Moonbow makes a face. “In the desert? Don’t be silly.”

  Casey cocks an eyebrow at her and, before anyone can move, crosses the room and picks her up by the waist. Holds her at arm’s length while she kicks her legs, then pulls her close and plants a big and loud kiss on her brow.

  “You,” he declares, “are a certified genius, my girl.”

  Moonbow ducks her head and blushes, and sneers at her giggling sister. When he puts her down, she stands beside him and holds his hand shyly; he doesn’t try to pull away.

  “Silly, she says,” Casey tells them. “Don’t be silly, it’s the desert. Well, this is an island. This”—he stamps on the floor—”is an island! This is the island. Lady Harp asked me why this place, and I told her I didn’t rightly know. I still don’t, except that this is the place where we have to be, and if the past is a teacher, there won’t be a tidal wave to get in our way.”

  Cora’s face is twisted in confusion. “I don’t get it. They’re coming on .. . what, a boat?”

  “With horses?” Reed says.

  “Right.” Casey watches them, willing them, demanding they put aside what their imaginations are feeding.

  Starshine yells, “The causeway!”

  And Casey says, “You’re right. Now get your coats. It’s time.”

  * * * *

  4

  Casey watches them on the porch. Excited. Afraid. Watching the emerald sparks and scarlet fire light the clouds, and make them darker.

  Lord, he thinks, there’s one more thing, if You don’t mind. Something special. For those kids.

  He opens the door and grabs Jude’s arm, pulls her inside before she can stop him.

  “Just be a minute,” he tells her daughters, and takes her into the kitchen, eases her away from the door.

  “I don’t understand,” she says, trembling so hard the veil ripples and sways.

  You don’t have to,” he tells her softly.

  And before she can stop him, he cups her cheeks in his hands, and feels the cold and feels the heat and feels the bone beneath his fingers and the flesh beneath his palms and the blood in her veins and the breat
h in her lungs and he whispers, “For your girls,” and yanks his hands away.

  Jude grabs his arm to keep her balance, blinking rapidly, breathing hard.

  “Okay,” he says, breathing a little heavily himself. “Okay, Jude, let’s go, they’re waiting.” But when she reaches for the veil, he takes her wrist gently and shakes his head. “For later,” he tells her. “Maybe nothing, but it’s for later.”

  * * * *

  On the porch they waste a few minutes arguing about how they’re all going to fit in one car, and raise a ragged cheer when Lyman Baylor pulls up.

  “Commandeer him,” Casey tells John. “I don’t think you’ll have to explain.”

  They rush out into the wind, into the first icy pellets of rain, shrieking at the cold while scarlet and emerald flash above them.

  “Casey?”

  It’s Beatrice, and he shakes his head.

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “In that case,” and she tugs at his arm until he bends over, and she kisses him on the cheek. A feather kiss. An angel’s kiss. “Just in case,” she says, pulling her scarf over her head.

  “Maybe not,” he says as he opens the screen door for her, and when she looks up at him before leaving, he knows what she’s thinking, and he knows she’s probably right—miracles are for special people, and we ... we’re only different.

  * * * *

  8

  1

  S

  carlet fire in the clouds becomes serpentine lightning reaching for the ground; emerald sparks become the rain. The wind throws whitecaps far up the Savannah River, rips old branches from old trees and spins them into cars and houses and a storefront church whose blue and red neon cross explodes into blue and red sparks; the rain Is at first a few stinging droplets that soon become a shower that soon becomes a downpour that raises rivers in gutters and smears dirt across windows and turns side streets into creeks quickly filling the drains; lightning scorches power fines and creates pockets of night before real night arrives, strikes the wing on an airliner that almost makes it to Atlanta; thunder prowls.

  Celebrations are canceled, no one can move in the storm; churches fill, and churches empty; a comedian jokes about the end of the world; a riverboat flounders, a bridge sags and moans; a weatherman tells his radio audience that as fierce as the storm is it’s too fierce to last long.

  Waves swell and rise and pound the jetties and shift the boulders; the traffic light over Midway and Landward jerks and tugs on its wires; lights go out; lights come on; there’s a rumbling underground as if the island’s going to shift.

  Scarlet fire.

  Emerald sparks.

  * * * *

  They sit in the white Continental in the parking lot of the Lobster Hut. No one has spoken for quite some time, but there’s nothing much left to say.

  Eula, in the backseat, hums a tune to herself, snapping the fingers of one white-gloved hand, tapping a foot against the floorboard, her head swaying side to side. A knowing smile on her lips.

  Joey bounces with impatience. He keeps wiping his window with a palm, frowning at the rain. He tries playing with his six-guns, but they’re no fun anymore. He puts his hat on, he takes it off, he finally drops it on the seat and wipes the window again.

  Susan has her hands still on the steering wheel, and every so often she turns it, just a little, as if she’s still driving. When lightning strikes the ground a few yards down the road, she can smell burning tar.

  The engine is off.

  The only sound is Eula’s humming, and the thunder. Always the thunder.

  * * * *

  Norville Cutler cowers in his cell, curled into the corner, and watches the rain on the window a few feet above his head.

  “Damnit, Norville,” Cribbs says from the adjoining cell, “you stop acting like a baby, for Christ’s sake? It’s only a little rain, for crying out loud.”

  “It’s gonna be bad,” Cutler says, knees drawn to his chest. “Ain’t ever seen it this bad.”

  “Oh, you have to. God almighty, back in, when was it? Seventy-six? Seventy-four? Water up to our asses, somebody’s damn boat floating down the street? God almighty, now that was a storm. Compared to that, this is just pissing.”

  Cutler tries to push harder against the wall. “But that didn’t have those colored lights and all.”

  Cribbs rolls his eyes. “More pollution, you idiot. You got more pollution, you got more colors. That’s why you see so many beautiful sunsets. More crap in the air, that’s all. Just more crap in the air.”

  Thunder makes the building vibrate.

  Cutler yells and ducks his head.

  Jasper grabs a couple of bars and bellows for a deputy. He’s been doing that for over an hour; no one’s come yet to see him.

  * * * *

  “Jesus, Casey,” John complains, reaching over the steering wheel to give a swipe at the windshield, try to clear some of the condensation away. “We’re going to drown before we even get there. Jesus.”

  “Watch it, son,” Casey tells him.

  John looks at him and curls his lip.

  Casey grins.

  * * * *

  Kitra stands in her living room, ordering herself to remain calm. It’s only a winter storm, she’s seen enough of them before, all she has to do is make sure all the candles are ready for the inevitable, and what’s in the freezer is ready to be transferred to the picnic cooler where she’s already laid in some ice.

  Lightning makes her jump; it fills the room with glaring white.

  Thunder makes her whimper; it’s too close, too damn close.

  If she weren’t so angry, she’d be petrified.

  Lyman has left her, and that’s about all she can concentrate on. He’s left her alone to take care of things for his return. She wished she were a swearing woman, because the right, the proper words were hard to come by just now.

  And to make it worse, she saw him drive by only a few minutes ago, trailing behind the car that belongs to one of Chisholm’s friends. Not a honk. Not a quick stop to explain what he was doing. If she hadn’t been checking the window seals just then, she would have never known it, never seen him go by.

  She would have, in time, thought he’d been killed by a falling branch, or lightning, or some other horrid thing.

  Not a honk.

  Not a quick stop.

  That man was going to pay.

  Lightning-and-thunder, and she held her breath until she could hear the rain once again.

  That was all.

  She frowned.

  Something was missing.

  “All right,” she said aloud to give herself some company. “All right, think it through, Kit, think it through.”

  She cocked her head, listened hard.

  Then she said, “Oh, dear Lord.”

  The furnace had stopped.

  * * * *

  The only good thing about the clinic is that the beds are soft, and no one bothers him.

  Dub Neely rolls over and pulls the thin thermal blanket up to his shoulders. He’s pretty sure he’s alone now, that the snotty receptionist and that grumpy nurse who stitched him up have gone. They didn’t even bother to stick a head in, see how he was doing.

  Yet that isn’t the worst part.

  What he’s doing is sobering up.

  He isn’t sure exactly what had happened after the fiasco at the cottage, only that the next thing he knew after he saw Freck coming at him was the bright light in the ceiling, and a nurse saying, “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Freck had said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “You should have seen it, man, it was incredible, all that fighting and stuff. We were lucky to get out alive. This guy was clobbered with something, I don’t know what, and the sheriff wants you to fix him, treat him right, put it all on the town’s bill.”

  “Are you sure?” the woman asked again.

  “Just do it, okay? Jesus H, lady, don’t argue, just do it.”

  And she had.


  And then she’d left him, and Dub hasn’t seen her since. Which, for the most part, is all right with him. He doesn’t want to figure out why Freck had done it, the hitting and the lying; he really doesn’t care. The bed is soft, the building is warm, and if he could only find his damn flask, he’d be in Dub Neely heaven.