Magic Time

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “What the hell’s that?” Colleen said.

  Cal turned to her. She was staring up at the sky, toward the west, and he saw now that strange, dark clouds were roiling in from over the Hudson, blanketing the sky, moving with alarming speed. They weren’t like any stormclouds he had ever seen. Blue lightning played over them, slashing, ferocious as crazy bullwhips. Then the discharges began to hammer down on the city.

  “Inside! Get inside!” Doc thrust them toward the door. A yellow-gray pall swept over them; the clouds were directly overhead. Now they heard the thunder, a wind-whipped howl that battered their skin, shuddered the pavement under their feet. And piercing the roar that filled the world, another sound, high and terrible.

  Tina was screaming.

  The thunder smashed into Tina like a blow. She bolted up in bed, eyes snapping open. But what she saw was not the room about her, no, no, it was, it was—

  Blurred streaks like blood smeared on a mirror. Men, women, booted, hooded, gloved in marshmallow white, running, shouting. Machines spinning, pinwheeling sparks, a thrumming rising to a whine and then a wail. This is not right; this is not how it’s supposed to be. A rectangular door lined with lights. A gateway. And something emerging, slashing into existence, all colors and none, a whirlpool blaze of pure, savage power. The men and the women tumbling over each other, pitching headlong to get away, but the whirlpool surges up, seizes them and spins them back into itself. Faces shrieking as they melt together, a chaos of eyes and mouths, not dead but alive, not many but one, and screaming, screaming. And Tina was screaming, too, because this was not a dream, this was real, oh, God, it was real—

  Hands gripped her, arms wrapped around her; someone was shaking her as she screamed and screamed. Cal held Tina as the shrieks tore from her throat, her eyes shut tight.

  “Sh, sh, it’s okay,” he soothed, but she didn’t know him, couldn’t stop. “You’re safe. You’re safe, kiddo. You’re safe.” Keeping his own panic in check, he felt when the grip of her terror broke, when she clutched him, shaking, her face buried in his chest. Finally she quieted, eased into sobs.

  “I saw.” She couldn’t get the words out, gulping for breath. “Cal—Oh, God, Cal . . .” She turned her face up to him, and Cal’s blood went to ice. For even in the weak light from the doorway and the guttering lamp, he could see that his sister’s eyes, including the whites, were now a brilliant, incandescent blue, pupils mere vertical slits.

  Uncomprehending, afraid, he held her as she gasped out, face damp with tears, “I saw . . . I saw.”

  Sam dreamed that the evening had been a dream. He awoke to a bellowing nightmare.

  The roaring shook the rafters, and Sam came on the run, rubbing sleep from his eyes, disoriented and afraid. By the time he reached the guest room, all the ghastly, bloody events burst full upon his memory, the pitiless invader in his midst, the cold reality of it all.

  Stern was sitting up in bed, blinking himself to wakefulness, breathing hard, covers thrown about. He’d even kicked out one of the oak bedposts, sheared it clean off.

  Sam masked his horror, forced calm into his voice. “Goodness, Ely, what’s all the ruckus?”

  Stern turned his eyes like molten sunlight on Sam, and his expression was beatific. “I saw a vision,” he said.

  “In the west . . . it was in the west.” Tina was all cried out now, finally drowsy.

  “What, honey? What did you see?” He brought the blanket up under her chin. Her eyes were nearly closed, heavy with exhaustion, but Cal could still see their vivid aqua, like windows onto an ocean floor.

  “I . . . we . . . I . . .” Her eyes dipped closed as she whispered, “Wish . . . Wish . . .”

  “What is it, honey? What do you wish?” Cal’s eyes burned, a cobweb ache in his chest.

  “One to the south. Wish . . . Wishart . . .” And then she was asleep.

  Cal stroked her hair, soft as down. It too had grown paler, blanched like her skin. He ran his fingers along her cheek, found the skin warm but not searing as before. He straightened, swiped his hand angrily across his eyes, wiping away tears.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Cal said to Doc. “There’s no shot for that.”

  Colleen stepped to the open doorway. “Sky’s clear. The storm’s gone.”

  “If it was a storm,” Cal said. “I don’t know what anything is anymore.”

  “I’d say that’s a good philosophy to live by at present,” Doc said softly, watching Tina.

  Cal drew closer to him. “What is this? What’s happening to her? You saw her eyes.”

  “We’re in unfamiliar terrain, Calvin. Who can say what the rules are?” He studied the sleeping girl, quizzical. “To the west and to the south . . .”

  Asleep, Tina’s face was serene, and in her marble whiteness Cal had the dreadful sense that he was looking at her corpse. I can’t save them. I can’t save the people I love. Mom had died; he had been helpless to avert that. Now Tina was being swept inexorably away.

  Despair rose in him. But at the same time another sensation surged up, strangely familiar. Fight, it insisted, fight even though you don’t know what you’re fighting.

  “Can she be moved?” he asked Doc. “Back home to Eighty-first, then out of town? Away from here?”

  The Russian was quiet for a time, his eyes returning to Tina. “Her fever’s gone, but who knows if it will return? And what is happening to her is continuing to happen.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, if power doesn’t return—if the world doesn’t return to the way it was—this city’s a hungry beast, Calvin. A day, two days... it will begin to devour itself.”

  Cal nodded, his mind racing. Where would they go? Back to the prairies, the plains? Was this same nightmare happening there?

  He didn’t know. He was just going on a feeling.

  But in the past twenty-four hours, it had served him to trust his feelings.

  Colleen’s eyes met his. You really want to do this?

  He nodded. “Don’t think I’m not open to suggestions.”

  She smiled. “I’ve got some stuff I think you can use.”

  Her flat was just down the street from his, the next block over. He’d passed it a thousand times, but he’d never known she was there.

  Once Cal had gotten Tina safely settled in his apartment, Doc watching over her, he and Colleen had walked the few dozen yards to Colleen’s place. Her brownstone was much like his own, a relic of the previous century: weathered brick and mortar, decades of paint layers, railings of curlicued black iron. Once through the heavy oak door with its leaded stained glass, Colleen led Cal up the narrow wood staircase past silent apartments to the fourth-floor landing. Musty sunshine filtered through a dingy skylight. The thick odor of cooking cabbage filled the stairwell, and Cal wondered how they were managing it.

  At her door, Colleen slid her key into the lock, slipped back the bolt. She eased the door open and stepped through soundlessly, alert. Cal followed her in. The living room was airless, dark and still.

  “Hello? Rory?” Colleen called out. There was no response. “Guess he’s out.” She tried to make it sound neutral, but Cal heard the relief in her voice.

  She threw the drapes open, and light flooded in, twinkling dust in the air. Cal blinked against the sudden brightness, turned from the window and nearly jumped: rows of hunting knives in holders covered the walls, flanked by spears, fiberglass and wood bows, quivers of steel-tipped arrows. Colleen had vanished into the bedroom.

  “Your guy’s a real macho jerk, huh?” Cal called after her.

  Colleen returned, carrying an empty cardboard box. “Most of those are mine,” she said, nodding at the arsenal.

  “Oh.” And it made perfect sense, of course it did—and that there were no guns. Cal remembered the weekend warriors in Hurley, with their hats like Elmer Fudd, their assault rifles with the extra clips. But Colleen, with her sense of honor, would demand a more level playing field, pitting will and muscle, fang and claw, against that of her adversary
.

  And he felt sure that whatever she killed, she ate.

  “It also happens to be the stuff I thought you could use.” She shoved the carton against his chest. “You ask nice, maybe I’ll show you a trick or two.”

  “You know, once upon a time, I was Midwest regional junior fencing champ, three years running.”

  “Someone throws Errol Flynn at you, you’ll do great.” She began removing gleaming blades from the wall, selecting a bow, piling them into the box. “We’re not talking some effete rich boy’s sport here, slick. Where you’re going, you might not always be able to find dinner wrapped in paper and served in a sack. Might just have to run it down and wrestle it.” She handed over quiver and arrows, replacement barbs, then moved to the far end of the room, started rummaging in drawers.

  “Got a tent I can spare, and some thermals. That one’s Rory’s,” she added, as Cal fished out an elaborate blade of the double-deluxe super-duper Special Forces variety, complete with brass knuckles on the hilt and hacksaw on the back. “He’s a sucker for the really big ones. Goes through sporting goods stores like Sherman going through Georgia, but then they just collect dust.”

  Cal set the box on a weight bench. His eye fell on a photograph atop an end table. It showed Colleen in Gore-Tex and microfleece, victorious atop a snowy peak. “You climb, too.”

  “Hey, you ain’t got money or looks, you gotta do something.” She tossed a bundle of tent barely larger than a paving stone down by the box.

  Cal thought to correct her on the looks part but, feeling sure it would be rebuffed, said nothing. A man was standing beside her in the photo, a lopsided grin on his face, his arm around her. Rory, in all probability. A little roughneck with a knife at his belt (on a climb?) and a tattoo on his ungloved hand.

  “Matter of fact,” she said, turning toward a big wardrobe, “if I can find that gear, that’s something else you can probably—” A figure burst from the closet as she opened the door, blundered into her, clawing and shoving. “Jesus...!”

  But the figure bulled past them, frantic, as Cal sprang to Colleen’s side. It lunged to the front door on bare feet. As it struggled with the bolt Cal saw that it wasn’t human, at least not entirely so. It was five feet or less, wearing a brown bomber jacket and “I NY” T-shirt and jeans too big and bunched up; its skin was light gray, almost blue, its bald head huge, with tufted, pointed ears. There was a broad muscularity to it, in spite of its twitchy fear.

  Colleen was staring opened-mouthed. “Rory . . . ?”

  Now Cal too saw that, incredibly, the creature before them was Rory, unmistakably the guy in the photograph, but shrunken and altered to this thing before them.

  Rory froze in the open doorway. He stared at them through milky white, bulbous eyes with vertical slits for pupils. “I-I-I don’t want to live here no more!” With that, he ran thudding down the steps.

  Cal dashed after him, but the little brute was devilishly fast. By the time Cal hit the pavement, Colleen close behind him, Rory was halfway across the street. But he was slowing now, reeling, shielding his eyes with his hands. He’s blind, Cal thought. The daylight’s blinding him.

  Rory tripped over a discarded bottle and fell flat. Screeching hideously, he flailed his arms, legs kicking futilely. His fingers brushed a manhole cover. Desperately, he clawed at the edge, pried up the disc and lifted it with one hand. He scrunched into the open hole and vanished, the cover dropping back with a thump.

  Colleen was beside Cal now. “That was my old man. I mean, I mean, he was never any beauty prize but he didn’t look like—like—”

  “His eyes,” Cal said, and the anguish in his voice stopped her. “They were like my sister’s.”

  Afternoon sun slanted through the gauzy curtains and lay across Stern’s broad shoulders and massive head as he squatted in the living room, too big now for the sofa, a blanket wrapped around him. He held the china cup delicately in his taloned hands as Sam poured, then took a sip and sighed. “I’m not human till I’ve had my coffee.”

  Sam thought, That’s supposed to be amusing. And he sensed Ely had always been powerful enough to have underlings assure him that he was.

  Even squatting, Stern was now taller than Sam. Sam could see that Stern’s face was becoming more of a muzzle, teeth longer and sharper, brow more severe. His skin was continuing to alter, thicker now, its ordered trenches and rises gleaming like brown-black carapace.

  Sam replaced the kettle in the fireplace. While Stern had slumbered—twelve hours, dead to the world—Sam had searched feverishly for the notepad that Stern had confiscated, but he had not been able to find it anywhere in the house.

  No one messes with the big guy, but the big guy messes with them.

  Stern had relished the murder he had committed, that much was crystal clear. To be released from the bottle, to have no limits, no limits at all.

  And it was just the beginning.

  While Stern slept, Sam had gathered up all the other pads, armfuls of them, some of the browned pages older than many of his neighbors, and burnt them in the fireplace. He had crouched before the flames, heat singeing his eyes, as the paper blackened and curled and fell to ash. Watching silently as the journal of his life was consumed, Sam had felt his own life was burning, being devoured to nothing.

  But it had to be done; Ely mustn’t read any more of it.

  All the uncounted, solitary days and nights Sam had read and reread every scribble, reliving the old trespasses, weighted down with the familiar sense of impotent rage.

  Impotent. He’d had no idea. . . .

  Glancing back, he saw Stern contemplating one of the dolls near him, a 1910 Jumeau, her hair an eruption of blond curls, her dress a fantasia of lace. Stern ran his rough hand along her pale, perfect cheek. “All innocence when they’re young,” he murmured.

  “I have some muffins I could get us,” Sam offered.

  “Later,” Stern said, not looking at him, and Sam realized that Ely was holding the fugitive notepad in his other hand, beginning to flip through it.

  He must have had it with him, Sam thought, perhaps in the pockets of the old robe he had outgrown in the night, which lay burst and discarded like a ruptured cocoon on the bedroom floor. “I feel like stretching my legs,” Stern yawned, “making a new friend or two.”

  Sam forced himself to look directly at Stern, said almost inaudibly, “I think you’ve made your point.”

  “Point?” Stern’s molten eyes glided over to him. “There’s no point here.” He stretched, and the muscles in his back made a sound like creaking leather. “And anyway, last time I checked this was your writing, babe.”

  He’s right, he’s absolutely right, oh sweet God. . . . How many names were in that pad? Dozens, hundreds maybe. Sam felt light-headed, and in his imaginings the slick wetness that covered his body was not sweat but blood.

  Stern was still watching him with keen interest. “You got anything else you’d care to say?” There was a deliberate menace in his tone that made Sam’s guts twist.

  “Me?” Sam ducked his head, looked away.

  Stern chuckled, then dropped his gaze to the pad. He skimmed several pages, then stopped, incredulity dawning on his face. He looked up at Sam, and his lips curled in a smile of sheer, delicious joy.

  “This one,” Stern said, “will be a pleasure.”

  OUTSIDE D.C.

  Shango and Czernas reached the first plane before they even left Arlington County, just a few miles beyond Scott Key bridge. It was a JAL nonstop to Tokyo, a jumbo jet whose pilot had tried to put it down on a high school football field, Washington Parkway being jammed with cars heading into the city. The fat silvery monster had, not surprisingly, rammed into the auditorium and plowed through into the rank of summer-empty classrooms beyond. Charred patches on walls and grass showed where fuel from the ruptured tanks had sprayed, but there was surprisingly little evidence of fire.

  “He said she’d be on a United flight,” said Shango, as Czernas skidded to a halt
among the dead cars on the parkway and swung his bike up onto the median, to cross to the driveway into the school.

  People were milling around the walls. Shango could hear moaning, the low steady clamor of those exhausted by pain that would not cease. No meds, he thought.

  There was no sign of the National Guard or any kind of transport, though he could see bodies lined up under the shelter of the back of the bleachers. Movement there in the shadows, big birds—ravens or crows—and probably rats. At a guess they’d put the wounded in the gym.

  The still hot air brought them the smell of smoke and shit.

  A small white woman in green sweatpants and a white tank-top was striding toward them, waving her arms. “Let’s go,” said Shango, making a move to turn his bike, but Czernas didn’t follow. The aide’s face was twisted with shock and pity. Shango added, “There’s nothing we can do here.”

  Still Czernas waited for the woman, who had broken into a run.

  Having mentally reviewed McKay’s other friends, Shango guessed why the President had picked Czernas for the job. Press Secretary Ron Guthrie had to top out at two-eighty, and Nina Diaz, though slim and fit, would have been viewed as booty by the roving gangs of looters Shango and Czernas had encountered in the pillaged streets on their way to the bridge. But Steve Czernas, with his youth and fitness, had the idealism that in McKay had been chipped and filed by Nam and politics and years of responsibility.

  Maybe in his youth McKay would have turned aside from a mission to help people in need. Or would at least have waited to see what the woman had to say.

  In war, reflected Shango, that kind of behavior would probably get you and your men very dead, very fast.

  The woman in the green sweats stumbled up to them, panting. “Thank God,” she gasped, and caught Czernas’ arm, as if fearing he’d flee. “You’ve got to get help. Find the National Guard, wherever the hell they are. They sent out two guys—two guys!—last night and said they’d get water and food and some meds, and since then there’s been nothing.”

  She didn’t look bruised or smoke blackened, though her face was grimy with dust and sweat. Shango guessed she was from one of the houses in the upscale development down the road. She had the slim body and cut muscle of a woman who worked out hard and often, but her face was lined, her hair white: she was sixty-five at least. She took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was shaky but forcibly calm.