Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]
Page 43
Lauder stares at him, looks over at Stone and the mayor, who pay him no heed, and takes one of his guns from its holster.
“Aw, Jesus,” Cutler says, backing away from the door, palms out. “Come on, Lauder, no call for that.”
“Mr. Lauder,” Stone says wearily, “one or the other, we’re running out of time.”
Lauder pulls the trigger.
Four times.
Cribbs barely blinks. “You men just do not fool around, do you?”
“Only when we’re off-duty, Mr. Mayor. Only when we’re off-duty.”
* * * *
and the church bell tolls
* * * *
Verna’s initial reaction at the gunfire is to leap down the steps, gun blazing, take out whoever is down there, and ask questions later. Her second reaction, the one she knows is more likely to keep her alive, is to close the upper door as quietly as she can, and lock it. Unless they have a blowtorch down there, no one, she thinks, is getting out real soon.
What she needs to do now is find help. If there’s going to be more trouble—and that door, even if it is metal, won’t keep them down there forever—she knows she won’t be able to handle it alone. Luckily, there was a light on at Betsy’s, and she’s fairly sure she’d seen someone there when she’d passed a while ago.
If she’s wrong, she figures the storm is going to be the least of her problems.
* * * *
Rick crouches under one of the Tower’s thick legs, feeble protection from the wind and rain, but better than being out in the open. The phone didn’t work, and after one near disastrous attempt, he knows he won’t be able to get off the Hook until the storm’s passed. He’s stuck. Really stuck. But not, he supposes, as stuck as the people who’ve stayed behind down below.
He reckons the surge will do a good bit of flooding. The Hook will block much of it from the bay, but he is glad he won’t have to see the Deuce in the morning, lying bashed and splintered in someone’s front yard. He doesn’t think the jetties will do a damn bit of good now, and prays that Ronnie has somehow gotten off the island.
Lightning makes him cringe.
Thunder shakes the ground.
He can’t see it, but he can feel it—the surge is climbing toward Camoret.
Any minute now; any minute.
* * * *
5
Casey is surprised at how quickly they were able to cross over to St. James Island. Although the sea threw itself at them, the barriers held, the road held, and despite water once riling around their knees, they all held.
But this, he decides, is as far as they’ll go.
They’re coming.
They’re out there, in the dark; he can’t see them, but he can feel them, and they’re coming.
“John, the first thing we have to do is get some shelter for the girls. If that door’s locked, smash it in.”
John grins. “Isn’t that a sin or something?”
“Just bash the damn thing in, John, we’ll worry about the sins later.”
The door is locked, and Reed doesn’t think twice—he uses his cast to smash the glass, reach in, and turn the bolt. Casey can see the pain in the boy’s face, but he says nothing. But he nods Cora over to take care of him until it’s time.
The girls leave him reluctantly, and he’s reluctant to let go of them—their hands, so small, so warm, were more comfort than they would ever be able to understand. He just wishes that touch had brought him a brilliant plan.
Right now, all he can do is stand in the middle of the road and look east. The two streetlights at each end of the island do nothing but turn the air behind them black, casting a pale white haze like a pale white wall across the road front and back. Camoret is invisible; the mainland is invisible. The sea, for all it climbs and roars and slams and batters, is invisible.
Scarlet lightning overhead.
Movement beside him.
“We’ve evened the odds. Now what?”
“I thought you were the general,” Beatrice answers, standing close but not touching, arms folded, shoulders up. Her voice is raised to be heard above the wind, the sea, the clatter of the rain on the Quonset huts.
“I thought I told you I wasn’t a general.”
“Well...” She shrugs, and tilts her head toward the Last Stop. Breaking glass, shouts, and cracking wood. “John is trying to find something to use as weapons. I wonder if it will do any good.”
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, except what’s about to happen, and even then he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do when it does. His lips press tightly together, his left foot taps a heel against the ground. He takes a step forward, turns, and steps back; forward again, and back. Scowling. Lifting a hand in exasperation. Another in resignation. He doesn’t feel the rain anymore, the cold; he hears nothing but a sustained roar, a blend of sea and wind.
He stares at the dark over the store. “Lord,” he says, trying not to sound too frustrated, “we don’t have any time left. I don’t know if You...” A helpless look at Cora, standing in the doorway, face in shadow. “I don’t know what You’re after here. It’s time and this is the place.” A wave behind him. “The island’s the place, I mean. But what...”
His head snaps to his left, and he stares toward Camoret.
“What...”
His head snaps to the right, and he stares toward the pale white wall of light, and the mainland beyond.
“Casey?”
“Time,” he says, barks a laugh, swallows, and says again, “time.” He strides back to Beatrice and says, louder, “Time,” and grabs her around the waist, lifts her as he had Moonbow, and plants a large and loud kiss in the middle of her forehead.
“Casey!”
But she grins.
Quickly he puts her down, steps back, waves excitedly at the others to get out here, now.
“Time.” He laughs, and sobers. “Bea, what time is it?”
“I beg your pardon,” she answers, sounding insulted.
Casey groans. “Bea, Beatrice, Lady Bea, Lady Harp, for God’s sake, what time is it?”
Four answers come at him from four different people at the same time: ten minutes to the new year.
He nods; he grins; he fakes reaching for Beatrice again, and laughs when she backs away hastily.
Then Lisse gasps and says, “Oh my God, Casey, look.”
* * * *
6
The jetties disappear under the surge as it rises out of the dark, so much of it that it appears to be barely moving at all.
The whale family vanishes.
The dunes vanish.
Trees bend, some snap; bushes pull away by the roots to become part of the wall, spinning slowly inside, tangling with each other, becoming walls themselves.
The houses have high foundations built for just such a time; most of them hold, some of them don’t, and the cry of tortured wood and stone rises and falls with the water.
* * * *
Casey’s left hand automatically goes to his chest, pressing the small cross into his palm.
Four shadows moving through the white wall; four shadows on horseback. Pale, almost transparent.
He can hear the wind now, and the sea, and he can hear the hooves on the road, like iron on hollow wood. Moving slowly. Shedding sparks. Steam curling from the horses’ nostrils, steam rising from their flanks untouched by the wind.
Pale.
Growing darker.
* * * *
“I’ll shoot the lock, okay, Mr. Stone?”
“Be my guest, Dutch. It’s getting stuffy down here.”
* * * *
Hector grabs Verna’s arm and pulls her away from the door. “You aren’t going anywhere,” he says.
“I have to get back,” she insists.
“No,” he tells her, and points at the surge welling out of the alleys.
* * * *
Kitra screams when the front door bangs open, jumps to her feet when Lyman races in, casting aside his
coat, opening his arms. Weeping.
* * * *
The rear windows of the clinic explode inward, and the water pours in waterfall hard. Dub hears it before he sees it, and he streaks for the exit, flinging aside a bottle he’d found in Alloway’s office.
If I can make it outside, he thinks; if I can just make it outside.
* * * *
while the church bell tolls
* * * *
The surge, already broken and fading, crosses Midway Road. It shatters windows, topples light poles, cleanses the lot where the Camoret Weekly once stood; it swirls around Town Hall and sweeps the tiny park clear; it pushes at the sheriff’s department building, curves around it and pushes at the windows behind.
When they break, the water follows.
When they break, Jasper Cribbs begins to scream.
When they break, Kirkland Stone climbs to the unopen door and looks through the small window to the empty office behind.
When the mayor stops screaming, he looks down to see the water surging after him, somebody’s shoe spinning on the surface.
“Open it,” he says desperately, grabbing Lauder’s arm. “Open it!”
Lauder knocks the hand away. “I can’t.”
“Then break the glass. Shoot it out. The water will—”
The water grabs him and he falls, and Dutch Lauder pulls his trigger.
* * * *
while the church bell tolls
* * * *
7
Pale riders, growing darker.
John slaps at Casey’s arm to force his attention, then hands him a gleaming and long piece of polished wood. Casey is puzzled until he recognizes it as a mount for a stuffed game fish, and he almost laughs aloud.
“Best I could do,” John says without apology.
“Time,” Casey answers.
“You’ve said that a dozen times already.”
“Midnight. The New Year.” He points at Camoret. “The place, John. The place. Don’t let them reach the place.” He walks away quickly, telling the others, praying that he’s right because if he’s not, he’s lost again. Then he takes Jude by the shoulder and says, “Take the girls inside. Pray if you want to, scream if you have to, but keep them away.”
“Reverend Chisholm, I can’t leave—”
“No,” he says fiercely. “What you can’t leave are your girls.” He glances at the Riders, looks back at her. “Do it. Please. If you have to help, find things to throw. Spook the horses. I don’t know. Just go, Jude, just go.”
He doesn’t move until she does, then returns to the road and stakes his place out in the center. John is to his far right, Lisse beside him, Cora beside her. Reed to his far left, Beatrice between them.
Dark Riders, growing darker.
Iron on hollow wood.
A wave slams against the store beyond the eastbound lane, and the Quonset hut shudders, the roof sign screeching as it topples and breaks apart before it reaches the ground.
A huge wave sweeps out of the storm just ahead of the Riders, washing across the road, spray adding to the rain, foam bobbing on the surface.
Casey braces himself.
A second wave, larger, suddenly looms out of the dark, follows behind the first and takes part of the roadway with it.
It’s breaking up, Casey thinks; the causeway’s breaking up.
* * * *
The Riders, moving faster, dark ghosts against the wall of pale light.
* * * *
scarlet fire and emerald sparks
* * * *
John looks left and gives Lisse a smile to display a bravery he doesn’t feel; when she returns with one of her own, he wants desperately to tell her he loves her, but it’s too late; it’s much too late.
“Daddy,” Joey calls, waving his hat, spurring his mount. “Daddy, hi, it’s me!”
* * * *
The Riders, moving faster.
* * * *
Beatrice sees a shadow standing by the Last Stop door, lifts a hand in a tremulous wave, tries a smile, and fails.
Good-bye, my dear, Sir John says. Take care of him for me.
“John,” she whispers. “John, we’re going to die.”
Good-bye, my dear. Stop fussing. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.
The shadow fades; the shadow’s gone; Beatrice holds a shieldlike piece of wood in her hands, hefts it once, and shakes her head.
We’re going to die, she thinks, and I’ll never get to answer his question.
* * * *
The Riders ... charging.
* * * *
From each corner of his vision, Casey can see the others bracing themselves. Turning sideways or spreading legs or bouncing on their toes.
One chance.
All they’ll get is one chance.
He knows which one is his.
Riding the great black, stubbled cheeks, stubbled chin, Indian-bead vest blown open by his wind; long hair in braids that bounce against his chest; flat green eyes.
He rubs a thumb across the cross and takes a backward step. Turning his left shoulder to the horsemen. Gauging speed and distance, holding his weapon like a club.
* * * *
“Hi, Daddy!”
* * * *
Scarlet lightning strikes the Last Stop on his right, and it mushrooms into flames that hiss and steam in the rain, cast shadows of their own as well as shadows of the Riders; add color to the air, and most of it is red.
Heat and cold in equal measure, despite the storm, despite the sea.
* * * *
He wants to see everything at once, to help if he can, to guide, but as the Riders fan out side to side, he can only see the great black, bearing down on him, hooves kicking emerald sparks.
He swallows and takes a breath.
Beatrice calls, “Two minutes.”
He nods and takes a breath.
And for that moment between the ticks of a clock, he sees as if he were looking at the fragments of a broken mirror:
Jude and the girls racing screaming from the store, hands filled with shining things that glow in the firelight, that glitter and dazzle in the firelight as they’re thrown at the Riders in a hail-and-shower of glass and stone;
Cora racing behind him, and up to join Reed, who is looking straight at Susan and daring her to come on, come on, it’s me, you remember? It’s me, come on, come on;
Beatrice running toward the girls, waving her club, screaming something at the Rider dressed in green, who looks down from her mount and laughs;
John and Lisse, side by side, Joey taking out his six-guns;
a wave tumbling over the road, leaving bedrock behind;
scarlet lightning;
a white horse slipping on the slick tarmac, legs frantic to find purchase;
emerald sparks;
a horse bucking and rearing at the glass and stone that bounce off its head and face;
and the fire taken and bloated by the storm, reaching toward them, roaring.
* * * *
while the church bell tolls
* * * *
Casey blinks and shakes his head, deafens himself to the shouts and screams of men and horses and children, concentrating on the Rider who ignores them as well. Smiling at him. Grinning at him. Quickly; here and gone.
Hello, Reverend Chisholm, hear you killed a man the other night.
He waits.
The other rides.
He waits, and holds his breath, and when the black storms up to take him and trample him to the ground, he yells and swings and jumps backward, lands a blow on the Rider’s leg that makes the Rider groan aloud, and yank the reins, and turn around.
Not a ghost, Casey thinks; at least he’s not a ghost.
The black charges again, and again Casey swings and steps away, missing this time, and slipping to one knee. Paying no attention to the pain when the Rider turns again.
Grinning.
Here and gone.