Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  “Then get outta bed, you dumb jackass, and go find it.”

  Torn; he’s torn.

  Fearful that this is, somehow, a function of his injury, he doesn’t want to leave the bed because it might not be here when he returned; he might not even be in the clinic, but in someone’s empty house, waking up to the aftermath of a binge.

  But he’s sobering up, and while that might be a good thing considering the weather outside, there would also be the inevitable shakes and hallucinations, the pain and self-recrimination.

  Torn; he’s torn.

  And then: “Oh, what the hell,” and he tosses the covers aside, swings to a sitting position, and yells and grabs his head when the-pain lushes through his system.

  No question about it now; he has got to find that flask.

  * * * *

  Verna Dewitt drives slowly, using the powerful spotlight on the cruiser’s roof to help her see through the gloom and the rain. Nothing terrible so far, and for such small things she’s grateful. A few branches down. A broken window here and there. A couple of chairs wind-transferred from porches to lawn. Nothing terrible so far.

  The power is still on, and that’s a plus, although she knows that particular blessing won’t last very long. A number of the houses she’s checked seemed to be empty, either people stuck on the mainland, or people who left after Jordan sounded the alarm.

  She hopes he’s okay.

  She’s done her bit in the Tower, and doesn’t envy him there tonight. Today. Whatever it was now. But she’s still going to ream him a new one once this is over. There wasn’t a panic, but he’d forgotten to call her first, so she could assist in coordinating the leaving, if leaving is what people wanted. That’s the procedure, and he hadn’t followed it.

  Not that she doubts him.

  He knows the sea far better than she does, and if he says there’s a surge coming, then there’s a damn surge coming.

  She just wishes he hadn’t called it a monster.

  The patrol car shimmies when the wind catches it broadside. She’s past the bay shops and houses now, into a short stretch of woodland; no light but the lightning, and the spotlight on the roof. A few seconds later, the white beam picks up what looks to be a body, a sight that stops her heart until, closer, she sees it’s just a dark plastic garbage bag.

  “That’s it,” she tells the dashboard. She’s been out here too long; she’s seeing things now, so it’s time to get back to the office and let Dwight drive for a while. But she doesn’t speed up, because she still has a job to do.

  It does not, however, include checking that garbage bag over there, the one poking out of that ditch practically filled with water.

  “Damn people can’t even use their garbage cans,” she says angrily. “God, you’d think—”

  She hits the brakes and stares.

  “Oh ... shit.”

  It’s not garbage; it’s a body.

  * * * *

  “Don’t you think we should hurry?” Lisse asks from the backseat.

  Reverend Baylor shrugs. “I can only go as fast as Mr. Bannock, ma’am. And he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.”

  Once again she’s amazed at how calm he sounds. In the past few minutes he’s been grabbed by a horde of what he must have thought were jabbering fools, convinced to take part in part of the end of the world, and found himself driving through the worst winter storm he can remember.

  Calm, or scared to death.

  The wind slaps them.

  The rain tries to drown them.

  She clasps her hands in her lap and hopes John is all right.

  She does not, resolutely does not think about what’s going to happen, because then she’d start to scream. Cry. And damn Casey Chisholm for getting her into this mess.

  Beside her, Cora shifts impatiently, murmuring tonelessly, but Lisse knows it’s not praying.

  She wants it over with, and over with now.

  Lisse does too, but she can wait. She can wait.

  * * * *

  Rick Jordan blinks his eyes free of the rain, takes stock, and decides that if he doesn’t drown first, he’ll probably be all right. The ladder has shattered and crumpled, and most of it lies across his legs. The Tower fell away from him, and as far as he can see in too frequent flares of lightning, the only damage it’s done is take out some trees.

  What he needs to do now is decide whether to find shelter in the Tower’s ruins, or try to make his way down the Hook to a road and someone’s house.

  Danger in either choice.

  Pushing with elbows and hands in slippery mud gets him to a sitting position. Squinting against the rain, he tries to figure out which way is the right way down. He can’t see any lights, so he figures the power’s gone out.

  Until lightning flares again, and he realizes he’s facing south, toward the ocean.

  A bit of luck, he thinks, until another bolt shows him the ocean again. It’s moving.

  * * * *

  Susan doesn’t move when someone raps on her window.

  “All right,” she tells the others. “All right, he’s here.”

  Three doors open simultaneously; no one flinches at the cold, no one complains about the wind and rain.

  The great black steams and smokes, skittish, tossing its head, while Red holds the reins tightly and looks down at them with a smile. Quick, and done.

  “There,” he says, and nods toward the deserted restaurant.

  “Well, well,” Eula says with a white-tooth grin, and hurries across the slippery ground to a smaller black horse, who whickers at the sight of her and nuzzles her chest when she gets close enough. She strokes its neck, whispers something in its ear, and with the ease of a woman half her age, swings up into the saddle.

  Joey whoops with joy and runs and slips to a palomino almost as big as the great black. “Hello, boy, hello,” he says a dozen times as he dances around it, patting it, checking it, before clambering into the saddle and grabbing the horn. “Hello, boy, hello, I missed you.”

  Susan looks a question up at Red, who says, simply, “Your choice.”

  She smiles. “Not really.”

  Red laughs. “You’re right.”

  A lift of her shoulders in a sigh, an impatient wipe of a hand across her face to clear her eyes, and she walks to the hood and looks down the length of the Continental. Shakes her head sadly. Then puts a hand on the head of the silver hood ornament and strokes it down to the tip of its tail.

  “It rode nice,” she says to no one in particular. “Like driving a cloud.”

  Another sigh, and her hand reaches up to stroke the neck of a white stallion that turns silver the next time lightning fills the clouds. Its mane and tail are black. When lightning streaks again, the black almost looks bright blue.

  Red looks at them all—a smile, here and gone—and he touches his hat brim with the tip of a finger.

  By the time he reaches the road, they’re riding four abreast.

  * * * *

  The marsh has risen and spills over Landward Avenue, ripples across its surface, waves in the making. The sodden body of a blue heron floats to the other side.

  * * * *

  Kitra can’t move.

  The house has grown cold, but she can’t move; she just can’t.

  The lightning is worse, the thunder louder, but she can’t move because she’s heard something else.

  “Lyman,” she whispers. “Dear Lord, Lyman, where are you?”

  * * * *

  Deputy Dwight Salter frowns as he moves from the desk to the door. There’s not much to see out there, just the rain and a few lights, and he doesn’t want to open the door, not even a crack. Verna would kill him if any of the storm got inside, but he can’t help it. He has to know. Because what he’s just heard, he can’t believe.

  * * * *

  “What the hell was that?” Cutler says, pushing out of his corner and off the cot. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hush, Norville,” Cribbs says, with a slash of h
is hand. “Hush, I want to listen.”

  * * * *

  Hector Nazario throws up his hands and says to the ceiling, “I tried, Gloria, I tried, but the phones are still out.”

  She’s gonna kill me, he thinks; she’s gonna kill me.

  So preoccupied is he that he barely reacts when Ronnie Hull slams through the door at a run, drenched through and puffing, using the end of the counter to stop her before she falls. “Hector, did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  * * * *

  Verna, on one knee beside the body, looks up sharply, instantly regrets it when the rain hits her glasses and blinds her. Angrily she yanks them off, lets them dangle against her chest on today’s yellow cord, and turns her ear to the north. Trying to concentrate. Trying to hear.

  * * * *

  “Stop the car,” Casey says, and before it’s fully stopped, he’s out and in the road. The edge of the flooding laps at the front tires. Except for the vehicle behind, he can’t see little else.

  “What, Casey?” John asks, leaning over the seat. “What’s going on?”

  He hushes him with a hand.

  And he hears it again.

  * * * *

  The deep hollow resonance of a large church bell, tolling.

  * * * *

  2

  Impossible, thinks Verna, but she hasn’t got time to ponder. She has to drag Dermot Alloway’s body back to the car and get it in the trunk. Dwight, she thinks, is gonna shit when he sees this.

  * * * *

  Impossible, Kitra thinks as she sinks to the floor and hugs herself and trembles; there’s only a carillon, there’s no bell.

  But it’s loud enough to shake the house when the church bell tolls again.

  * * * *

  “Impossible,” snaps Cribbs. “Preposterous. It must be the storm.”

  “You ever hear a storm make a noise like that?”

  “I’ve heard them make lots of noises, Norville. Now shut up while I try and get that sorry-ass deputy down here.”

  * * * *

  Impossible, thinks Dub as he empties the flask and wipes a spill from his chin, then licks the finger to get every drop. He’s drunk it all, and already he’s having the stupid hallucinations. Still, he figures as he begins a room by room search of the building for something to complement the liquor, it’s a lot better than pink elephants. Or skeleton birds who want to kill him.

  * * * *

  “Can’t be,” Hector protests, standing at the luncheonette’s window. “We don’t got anything like that on the island.”

  “Good,” Ronnie says, toweling herself off. “Then you tell me what it is, okay? You tell me what that is.”

  * * * *

  Dwight mutters, “Impossible,” because there’s only one church on the island, and it has one of those electric bell things, not something that sounds like it belongs in some cathedral.

  He snorts and turns away, hears something else, and turns back to the door.

  Reaches for his gun.

  But Stump Teague has already pulled his shotgun’s trigger.

  * * * *

  Impossible, Rick thinks as lightning shows him again the height of the surge; damn, that’s impossible—unless it’s not a surge at all. He gasps, and scrambles to find the cell phone, praying that somehow, with all this lightning, it still works.

  * * * *

  3

  The two cars move slowly through the water, not much faster than a crawl. When the hubcaps are half submerged, it stops rising, begins to fall, and Casey closes his eyes in relief.. Once on the other side, he tells John to stop again, and gets out, walks back to the second car and mimes rolling down the window for Lyman Baylor.

  “Well, we’re here,” he says, pointing without looking at the end of the causeway. When Lyman moves to open his door, Casey shakes his head. “No. Not you.”

  As the others leave, Baylor frowns. “But why not?”

  “It’s not your fight, Lyman.”

  “What? You can’t mean that. Of course it’s my fight.”

  Casey nods. “Sorry, yes, you’re right. But your fight isn’t here, it’s back there.”

  Baylor looks as if he’s going to cry. “Reverend Chisholm, I don’t think—”

  “Your wife,” Casey says. Rain drips from his brow. “Right now, you belong with your wife. And your church.”

  Baylor’s fingers grip and release the steering wheel. Grip and release. Grip, and release. He shakes his head, and Casey grabs his arm. He doesn’t speak, but his look says it all, and Baylor slumps for a moment before, finally, reluctantly, nodding.

  He stares straight ahead. “I’m not dreaming.”

  “No.”

  “I never thought... I never believed ...”

  “No. No one does, when it happens. But it happens just the same.”

  Lyman covers Casey’s hand with his own. “God bless you, Casey. I... God bless you.”

  Casey squeezes the arm in thanks, and steps away, moves to the middle of the road to watch the car back up. A gesture to move it to the right just a little, another to move it back to the left.

  When Lyman reaches the other side, the headlights snap to high. To low. To high again, and Casey raises a hand in farewell and puts his back to the light.

  “Okay,” he says. “Okay, let’s go.”

  * * * *

  He stands at causeway’s end, arms away from his sides, fingers open, and he waits ... until Moonbow takes his right hand, Starshine takes his left. He looks down at them and smiles, looks around to the others and smiles at them.

  “No sermons, John. I want you awake.”

  Bannock shudders a deep breath.

  Casey begins to walk, the girls beside him, the others behind. Feeling the roadway vibrate beneath his boots as the waves attack and pull back, attack and spill over the tarmac with a rush that sounds less like hissing than wildfire. The wind snatches at him, pokes him, tries to push him back; the rain has slackened somewhat, but it still tries to blind him.

  * * * *

  scarlet fire overhead

  emerald sparks over the water

  and the church bell tolls

  * * * *

  4

  Verna pulls up in front of the office, not caring she’s facing the wrong way. No way is she going to get any wetter than she has to.. She checks to be sure she has everything, then opens the door and makes a dash for the recess. Slips to a halt and bangs her shoulder against the wall when she sees Dwight’s body spread-eagled on the floor.

  She draws her gun; she swallows.

  She eases her way to the door, gaze checking everything inside, and checking it again. Only when she’s reasonably sure she has a chance does she open the door and move in as fast as her wet soles will allow.

  The office is empty; it feels empty.

  Voices, then, to her right, and she can’t believe what she’s thinking—that in this lousy miserable stinking weather, somebody has come to visit the damn mayor.

  Or, she thinks, to get him out.

  One step, and her shoe squeaks. A soft curse under her breath, and she leans down, gun aimed at the door that leads to the cells below, and unties one shoe, then the other. Kicks them off. Moves to the door, and listens.

  * * * *

  “Did you have to kill him?” Cutler sounds hysterical. “Jesus, Stump, did you have to kill him?”

  “Mr. Cutler, calm down,” Kirkland Stone suggests sternly. “That sort of attitude will get you nowhere. Just be calm, relax, we’ll get you out—unlock the door, will you, please, Dutch—and we’ll all be on our way.”

  “You’re a miracle, Mr. Stone,” Cribbs says. “Nothing to it but a flat-out, genuine miracle.”

  “You’re too kind, Mr. Mayor.”

  “A bonus is in order, I think.”

  “Much too kind. But I won’t say no.”

  The two men laugh.

  “Come on, Lauder,” Cutler says impatiently. “Jesus Christ, can’t you even work a goddam
n key?”