Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03]

by Charles L. Grant

  “Why, dear,” Jude said with that same exaggerated don’t you trust me? tone they’d used on her, “you think I’d cheat?” Then she took her hands on their shoulders, leaned over, kissed them on the top of the head. “This is important to me,” she told them. “I want it to be important to you, too. That’s the only reason I’m going to Roger’s. Because I want you to want this for me, for yourselves, not just because I want it.”

  She kissed them again and hurried off, the slap of her sandals soft on the ground.

  Once she was out of earshot, Moonbow rapped her sister on the arm. “What’d you do that for?”

  Starshine rubbed the arm absently. “To give us time to think of something else.”

  “But we promised, Star. We promised.”

  “But if we stall long enough,” she said, and looked down the street toward Trey’s.

  Moonbow understood, but she knew it wouldn’t work.

  She had seen the suitcase.

  She knew Trey was gone, with that funny old man and that frightened woman.

  “I just wish . . .” Starshine said.

  “Wish what?”

  Starshine turned around to show her sister the tears in her eyes. “I just wish that stupid bitch would turn that stupid music down!”

  * * * *

  7

  Jude walked quickly, drifting rather than angling toward the other side of the street. She was mad at her children for putting her in this position, and mad at herself for letting them do it. If she hadn’t needed their support so badly she would have broken the deal without a second’s thought. But she wanted them to be on her side. She needed them to understand she wasn’t getting any younger, but she was definitely getting more lonely. It was amazing, a miracle, that they accepted her as well as they did, as if her face were the norm and all the others were disfigured. The girls had been that way since the beginning, and sometimes, in bed, Jude wept uncontrollably, soundlessly, because she knew she didn’t deserve their strength.

  So she would go over to Roger’s, have a short talk, report back, and ... go to Eula’s.

  The music was loud, and as she cut across Roger’s front yard, she wasn’t sure but she thought she heard laughter. Was it true, then? Could Eula do it?

  She hopped onto the porch, made sure the veil was in place, and knocked on the door.

  Yet if Eula really could do it, could do what she never said aloud but strongly implied, why wasn’t she famous? Why wasn’t she besieged with the crippled and the sick? Why did she stay here, in Emerald City?

  She knocked again, harder, and the door swung open, a hinge creaking softly.

  Wonderful, she thought; wonderful.

  “Roger?”

  No lights inside, except for a faint glow to the left, where an arch led to the narrow hallway that separated the front room from the bedroom and bath.

  “Hey, Roger, it’s Jude.”

  Freneau had a major crush on her; that had been obvious from the first day they’d met. Since then, it had been almost comical the way he stumbled around her, watched her from a distance like a foundling puppy uncertain about his welcome. She hadn’t encouraged him because, aside from his sudden, ridiculous efforts to turn himself into a lush, there was something dark there that made her uneasy. Nothing she could put her finger on, but it was there nonetheless.

  She sang, “Roger,” and stepped inside.

  He could be across the street, of course. He could already be at the party, if party it was. Still, she used the glow to keep her from tripping over furniture and piles of books and a few empty bottles, crossed the empty hall and stood in front of his open bedroom door.

  “Roger?”

  It smelled funny in here. A long time since a cleaning, and something else, but she couldn’t place it. When she heard the groan, she closed her eyes briefly in disgust.

  “Damnit, Roger, are you drunk again?”

  She marched across the small room to the open bathroom door, looked in, almost didn’t see him lying in the tub, only his bare knees showing. Then an arm flopped over the side.

  Another moan, and violent coughing. “Jude, help me, huh?”

  Common sense ordered her to turn around, go home, but she figured the least she could do was make sure he hadn’t fallen while trying to take a shower. Drunk or not, maybe he needed medical attention. He might have cracked his skull on the porcelain, could be bleeding to death in there.

  “Roger, how do you do it?” she said. Averting her eyes because the last thing she wanted to see was Roger Freneau naked, she grabbed his hand and pulled. “Did you fall?”

  “Help,” was all he said, voice rasping.

  She pulled again, rolled her eyes as she realized she’d need to take his other hand. Pulling this way, oh virtually dead weight, would only slide him around, not sit him up.

  Which meant she would have to look.

  She did.

  “Jude ... help ...”

  She jumped back so quickly her legs hit the toilet and she sat on it, hard, hands up as if to push the sight away.

  His face and upper chest were marked with vivid pink pustules, most of them concentrated around his swollen lips, his puffy eyes, in the hollow of his throat. Thin trails of fresh blood twisted across his face from his brow where he’d been scratching; pus glistened on his chest, on his stomach; a foul darkness to his skin under the eyes and across his temples.

  A stench that made her gag.

  When his lips parted and she could see the bright color of his tongue, when he croaked, “Jude...” she screamed and ran, slipped on a small rug and slammed into the door. Screamed again and battered her way out of the house into the street, thinking that she had to get home, stand for as long as she could take it under a boiling shower, then take the girls and run.

  It was here.

  The Sickness was finally here.

  * * * *

  8

  walking

  * * * *

  Ricardo, bobbing his head in time to the music, stood on Eula’s back stoop, grinning so hard his cheeks began to ache. The kind of ache he would gladly suffer for the rest of his life. When Lil waved, he applauded. With both hands.

  “His name is Joker,” Lil told him, riding the pinto up to the stoop. Her hair was loose and lovely, her cheeks flushed pink with pleasure. “I used to ride him in the show, remember? I don’t know how she did it, but it’s Joker.” She blew him a kiss, and the pinto reared, and Lil and Ricardo laughed.

  * * * *

  singing

  * * * *

  “If you don’t come out of that bathroom now,” Stephanie said, laughing and, crying simultaneously, “I’m gonna explode!”

  Muriel put her hands on her hips, stood on tiptoe, and tried to see lower than her waist. The dress fit perfectly, and Eula had given her a single-strand pearl necklace to complement the black. “Not bad for a broad of fifty-plus, huh?”

  “Gorgeous,” Stephanie agreed truthfully. “But Muriel, I gotta go!”

  “It’s the biggest mirror she’s got,” Muriel complained. “I want to see my legs.”

  Laughing, Stephanie grabbed her arms and yanked her out, kissed her cheek, shoved her away. “Later,” she said, closing the door. “Later.”

  * * * *

  shouting

  * * * *

  Cable stood in the middle of the living room, bellowing the words to the song Eula sang along with him. He didn’t give a damn if they were the right words or not; he sang what he felt, what made him feel good and right and whole, what had detonated in his heart when he had seen the look on Steph’s face after Eula had run her fingers over his forehead, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, his chin with the dimple that had attracted Steph to him in the first place, so many years ago. And oh, Lord, but he felt good!

  Eula heard the scream and hurried to the door, pulling on her gloves. She stood on the porch, frowning, as she watched Judith Levin race ghostlike down the street, arms waving wildly.

  No sense going after h
er.

  That one was lost.

  She didn’t move when Stephanie joined her, still laughing a little, gasping for air, hands pressed to her chest.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Stephanie said once she had herself under control.

  Eula didn’t answer.

  “I’ve never seen him so...so...” A helpless wave for the loss of words.

  Eula waited.

  Stephanie wouldn’t look at her. “I feel so ashamed, you know? because I can’t help wondering if you could ... if you could ...”

  * * * *

  walking talking singing shouting

  * * * *

  All Eula said was, “How bad do you want it, girl? How bad do you want it?”

  * * * *

  5

  T

  he celebration waned as they grew tired, and ignited again when Ricardo asked Muriel to dance with him under the moon, even if there wasn’t a moon and the stars weren’t anything to shout about either.

  Eula heard it, nodded, and made her way around the outside of the house, so they wouldn’t see her and grab her and thank her and weep over her and each other.

  The air was still, the sky still fogged with thin clouds.

  She stood at the corner, out of the light that slipped through the back door and .die kitchen window, and waited while the pinto walked over to her, head bobbing, hooves silent. When it reached her, it pushed its muzzle against her chest, and she stroked its brow.

  Then, in a single liquid motion that belied her size and age, she swung onto its bare back. Its ears pricked up, it snorted, it pawed the ground.

  “That’s right,” she said. “That’s right. It’s time.”

  * * * *

  Part 4

  Chariot

  * * * *

  1

  1

  T

  rey stared at the back of Beatrice’s head after she crawled into the front seat. Neither had spoken to him, and he couldn’t think of anything to say, to them or to himself. There were other things he could do, of course:

  He could assume, since it was after sunset, that he was dreaming. But he wasn’t.

  He could assume that the shock of his injury still lingered in his system, and his mind had decided to retreat until the pain and confusion had sorted themselves out. But there was no pain, only confusion.

  He could assume that he was, pure and simple, out of his mind at last, all the bizarre, coincidental events of the past few years catching up to him in a single crushing wave. Overloading him. Tipping him over the edge. Sending him round the bend. Dropping him into the abyss. Lots of ways to put it, and no way to prove it had or hadn’t happened. Which, he further assumed, probably meant it hadn’t. A lousy string of logic, and oddly comforting.

  Whatever the answer, he wasn’t going to find it in the back of this car. And the answer was what he needed. Badly.

  He had already put on the fresh clothes Sir John had made him bring, the blood-stained ones jammed into the suitcase.

  “Where are we going?” he said, wincing at the dull sound of his voice.

  “Home, I should imagine, is the best place for you now,” Sir John answered solemnly.

  It probably was.

  Home. A shower. A couple of forty beers. Two or three bottles of the hard stuff. A long night’s sleep filled with images of—

  “No. Take me to the Strip.”

  Beatrice shifted so she could see him more easily. “Are you certain that’s wise, Mr. Falkirk?”

  “I’m not certain of anything,” he answered irritably. “Just take me there.”

  “As you will,” Harp said, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror.

  Not another word until, by accident or design, they were parked in the lot behind the Excalibur. Trey had already put on his boots, after wiping them off with his dirty shirt. The socks he discarded out the window when he felt them stiff with his blood.

  Harp said, “We’ll wait.”

  Trey opened his door. “Don’t bother.”

  “Nevertheless,” Harp said, and turned the engine off.

  * * * *

  Trey was halfway up the carpeted ramp to the casino, pennants overhead, the voice of coins and cards already loud, when he realized he was limping. And realized he didn’t have to.

  A shudder, a determined roll of his shoulders, and he slipped instantly into the routine, taking the measure of a Saturday night, most of the tables filled and overflowing, the faces he saw flushed with excitement, grim with purpose, anxious with the overwhelming size and choices spread before them.

  A party of seven, three with extravagant art deco masks, reminding him of the Japanese he had seen outside Madame Song’s, and he veered away.

  A woman seated on a padded red bench near Registration, flanked by two children no older than ten, waiting, he suspected by the expression on her face, for the father to come back so she could have her turn; the kids were simply tired and getting cranky.

  A man in faded jeans and backward baseball cap standing in the middle of the keno area staring at the huge electronic board on the wall, watching the latest game’s numbers light up, a single tear resting on the bulge of a fat cheek.

  A middle-age couple talking with a security man in a plain brown suit, the husband resigned, the woman indignant: “Yes, we’re from Oklahoma, but we’ve been here for three days, for God’s sake. Damnit, we aren’t taking any damn test, and if you make us, we’ll sue, isn’t that right, William?”

  “Vera, I don’t think this is the time—”

  “Hush, William, these are our rights we talking about here. For God’s sake, all I did was cough. Since when has that become a crime I want to know.”

  Like a fish in the monster aquarium where Beatrice had tried to tell him things, he darted in and out of the slot machine islands, testing, looking for a safe cave.

  Hi, and no response.

  He avoided the tall ones, the loudest ones, the complex ones, the jackpot ones; he looked for the simplest play, not wanting distractions.

  Concentrating, walking, hi how are you, until he found one and grabbed the stool and a plastic cup, and sat down, nodding to his neighbor, a young woman who seemed to have forgotten the cigarette dangling from her lips. He took a quarter, slid it in, and pulled the bandit’s arm.

  * * * *

  “I’m afraid for him, John.”

  “No need. He needs to believe.”

  “You mean he doesn’t? After all this, he still doesn’t?”

  “Yes. He does, but he needs to believe that he does.”

  “He’s a good man, John. I don’t want to see him hurt.”

  “About that I’m afraid we can do nothing. All we can do is be patient.”

  “That’s not the answer I want to hear.”

  “Beatrice, my dear, that’s the only answer I have.”

  * * * *

  Take a quarter from the catch-tray, put it in, pull the arm.

  Take a quarter from the catch-tray, put it in, pull the arm, wait for the quarters to stop falling, clattering, each fall a chime.

  How do you stand it? Beatrice wanted to know.

  White noise, he’d answered; it’s all white noise.

  Before they reached the highway, they told him more about the priest called Casey and the man called Bannock, and it hadn’t taken him long to follow their drift. Never speaking directly, they managed to lead him to the idea they had planted earlier, that this was indeed the Millennium of legend, and it made no difference whether you believed it or not.

  It was here, and They were riding.

  Quarter in, pull the arm.

  He was told about a preacher, white hair and intense, who believed in what he preached, but only believed so much until Bannock somehow forced him to believe more, and Trey wondered if it was the same man he had seen on television last week while searching for a baseball game, or a movie, or anything to pass the time—unlike the other evangelists, this one was solemn and solemnly earnest; he didn’t rant
or exhort, and was all the more convincing for it.

  Quarter in.

  He was told about one teenager who died, and two others who lived, because living and dying are random at the end of the world.