It was almost one in the morning in New York, but the bombs had not exploded-yet; it had to mean that the transmitter was set to Mountain Time. We still had a little more than an hour. I heaved a deep sigh of relief, shut the radio off.
Where the hell was Garth?
But I didn't have time to worry about my brother, and I didn't think it was a good strategy to follow in his footsteps. I had to assume that he was taking care of business. While it was true that the transmitter might be somewhere in the church, and while there was always the possibility that Garth had been captured, I didn't think I should go there until I had explored other possibilities. Eden was a big place.
I was going to have to have a serious talk with Vicky Brown's father.
Suddenly a hot flush spread over my body, and I felt faint. Sweat popped out on my forehead, rolled down my face. My vision blurred. Just what I needed.
There was a small bathroom off the living room. I went into it and splashed cold water over my face. Then I took out the bottle of green pills. I shook one out, started to put it in my mouth, then thought better of it. I was very sick, to be sure, and feverish once again. I was probably hanging by my toenails over the edge of exhaustion-but I remembered the reaction I had suffered earlier, and I didn't want to risk having that happen to me again; if I passed out at any time in the next hour, I could well wake up in a world that had been forever changed, one with a few million fewer people in it and clouds of deadly radiation circling the planet. I tossed the pill in the toilet.
I pulled down the shower curtain and grabbed a towel, intending to use the items to bind the couple and gag the woman before I had my chat with Mr. Brown. I walked into the other room, stopped abruptly when I saw the child, dressed in a white terry-cloth robe like her parents, standing at the bottom of the staircase, which I assumed led to her upstairs bedroom. Considering all the commotion, I supposed it was surprising she hadn't come down before, and I knew I was lucky someone hadn't come to investigate.
The girl, rubbing her knuckles into eyes that were puffy with sleep, was staring at her parents on the floor, perhaps thinking that they were asleep. She was a beautiful child, with the same light, Nordic features as her parents. When she took her hands away from her eyes I could see that they were a pale blue. As I watched her I felt my boundless rage at the dead William Kenecky rekindled. I wondered how much damage, physically and emotionally, he'd done to her, and if it could ever be repaired.
"Vicky?" I said softly.
The child looked at me, then back at her parents-and perhaps saw the blood trickling from the gash I'd put into her father's left temple. She looked at me again, and her cherubic features twisted with anger at the same time as tears welled in her eyes.
"What have you done to my mommy and daddy?!" she screamed, and then came running across the room, tiny fists raised in the air. She reached me, began pounding my chest and face. "You hurt my mommy and daddy! You're a demon! I won't let you hurt my mommy and daddy anymore! Go away and leave us alone, you demon!"
As the tiny fists flailed at me I felt tears well in my own eyes; I was struck by the incredible courage of this child who would attack a demon with her bare hands in order to protect her mother and father. I decided that she'd survive her trauma at the hands and penis of William Kenecky-and possibly, with some good professional help, the poisonous spiritual growth undoubtedly already growing in her mind from seeds planted by her parents and the other lunatics she'd been living around might be uprooted.
"Vicky, listen to me," I said in an urgent whisper as I reached through the pounding fists, gently grasped the child, and pulled her to me. "Shhh. I've come from Santa."
"You're a demon!" she shouted as she pulled her hands free and began to pound at my head again.
"No. I'm one of Santa's helpers. Look at me. Don't I look like one of Santa's helpers?"
That got her attention; she stopped pounding, carefully looked me up and down. "You're all dirty," she announced. "And you smell terrible."
"That's because I fell in the mud on my way here. You have to listen to me, Vicky, and don't shout anymore. Santa got your letter asking for a puppy and telling him how Reverend Bill was hurting you and doing other bad things. Santa has a puppy for you, but it was even more important to him to make sure you weren't hurt any more. Santa can't stand it when children are hurt, and so he sent me to make things right for you."
Vicky Brown's tiny brow wrinkled in a puzzled frown, and there seemed to be a newfound-if tentative-respect in her pale blue eyes. "You really are one of Santa's helpers?" she said in a small voice. "It's the truth?"
"Santa's helpers never lie," I answered, and cast a quick glance over at the girl's parents. They were both beginning to stir, and that didn't bode well; I thought it might be a little difficult to explain to the girl why one of Santa's helpers had been bashing her parents around. "Can't you see that I'm an elf?"
"What's your name?" she asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Mr. Mongo. I'm one of Santa's helpers who takes care of heavy duty. . uh, Santa sends me out to take care of people who hurt little girls and boys. I'm his toughest helper."
Mr. Brown moaned, then fell silent again. Mrs. Brown, however, was starting to come around. One leg twitched, and she started to raise her head.
"You sure you're not a demon?"
"Yes, Vicky. Uh, why don't you go into the bathroom and spla-"
"How come you have on pink sneakers?" she asked in an accusatory tone as she pointed a tiny finger at my unusual footgear, which the streams I'd waded through on my way from the swamp had washed clean. I decided that her interrogation techniques were as good as, probably better than, Malachy McCloskey's. "Elves don't wear pink sneakers. They wear shoes with pointy toes."
"Only the elves who make toys in Santa's workshop wear shoes with pointy toes," I said tightly, keeping my eye on the woman, who was now pushing herself up from the floor with her hands, shaking her head. The child's back was to her parents, but in another few seconds I was going to have to make some kind of move, and it looked like it was going to have to be an unpleasant one. "Tough elves like me who are sent out to help little girls wear pink sneakers."
"I have to go to the bathroom, Mr. Mongo."
Ah. "You go right ahead, Vicky. I'll be right here when you come back. We'll talk about your puppy."
She'd no sooner stepped into the other room than I was across the floor. I stepped in front of the woman, once again clipped her on the chin-this time more gently, using the heel of my hand. I caught her head, eased it down to the floor, put the towel under it. Then I checked the man's pulse and breathing. I'd apparently hit him harder than I'd intended, but I decided that he'd be all right as soon as he slept a little longer.
Next I checked on the clock radio in the other room. It read 11:05. I returned to the unconscious couple, made a show of covering the woman with an afghan from a sofa set against the wall. The child had become the key, and I couldn't rush.
The child, still looking sleepy, entered the room. Now apparently trusting me completely, she came over to where I knelt beside her mother, wrapped her arms around my neck, and rested her head on my chest.
"What's wrong with Mommy and Daddy, Mr. Mongo?"
"I … I had to make them go to sleep, Vicky."
"Why?"
"For two reasons, Vicky. First, they might not understand that I have to find something and shut it off before it hurts other little girls and boys like you. Second, because they might want to hurt themselves-and you-if I didn't make them go to sleep."
"Why would Mommy and Daddy want to hurt me, Mr. Mongo?"
"They wouldn't know they were hurting you. They believe wrong things. They believe they have to take themselves and you off to God. That's wrong. If God wants you, He'll take you in His own good time."
"We're all supposed to go to God in a little while, Mr. Mongo. There are going to be demons all around outside. We were supposed to stay here until Jesus came down to drive away all
the demons and take care of us, but now everything here smells like poo-poo. Mr. Thompson says it's a sign that we're supposed to go to God now, before the demons come. He's made us stuff to drink that will make us sleep while God takes us."
"Vicky, do you like Mr. Thompson?"
She made a small grimace. "I guess he's all right, but he looks real funny now that he doesn't have any ears. Some demon hurt him and took away his ears. Now he kind of scares me sometimes, and I know he scares my mommy and daddy. When he came around here and told us we have to drink that stuff, Mommy and Daddy tried to argue with him. He made them be quiet. I think he scared them."
"Vicky, Mr. Thompson is wrong. He believes wrong things about what God wants. Santa knows what God wants, and Santa doesn't want you or anyone else to drink that stuff and go to sleep like Mr. Thompson wants you to. If you do, you'll never wake up again, and then you won't be able to play with your puppy. That's why Santa sent me here to stop Mr. Thompson from doing those bad things. Do you believe me, Vicky?"
Her answer was a small nod of her head.
"I have to tie your parents up, Vicky, but it will only be for a little while. It's so they won't hurt themselves or try to stop me. After I find what I'm looking for, we'll come back and untie them. Okay?"
She thought about it, finally nodded. "Okay, Mr. Mongo. But please don't tie them too tight."
"I won't. Is there any rope in the house, Vicky?"
"I don't know. I don't think so."
"It's okay," I said, quickly getting to my feet, hurrying across the room, and sticking my head around the door to glance at the clock radio.
11:19.
I went back, quickly rolled the shower curtain lengthways, and started to tie the man's hands. "Vicky," I said tentatively, feeling the breath catch in my throat, "your father's been working here at Eden for a long time, hasn't he? He takes care of things, right?"
"Yes. But it's not his fault that things here smell like poo. He told me that they weren't building it right, and that they were putting too many people in here."
"Did he ever take you around Eden with him?"
"Oh, yes," she said, and smiled. "He used to take me with him all the time, and he let me help him take care of things. It was a lot of fun before everything started to smell like poo."
"Do you know what a radio transmitter is?"
She shook her head, and I swallowed a grunt of frustration as I tried to think how to describe something when I didn't even know what it looked like.
I continued, "Did your daddy ever talk about a machine, or anything, that was going to send everybody to God just before the demons came?"
"You mean the thing that's going to kill all the niggers, kikes, mud people, and burnoose-heads?"
"Where is it, Vicky?"
"Across the ocean, up on the shore just before the place where the jungle begins. Daddy never did anything to it. He told me it takes care of itself, and that it's all set. But he used to show it to me. It's going to help Jesus when He comes to fight the demons."
"How can we get to it, Vicky?"
"We can get there in a cart by going around the ocean, but it's more fun to go across in a boat."
"Where do they keep the carts, Vicky?"
"They're parked down by-" The girl suddenly stopped speaking, and her eyes suddenly went wide as she looked at something behind me. "What are you going to do with that ax, Mr. Thompson?"
I pushed Vicky to one side, then leaped away just as the heavy head of a fire ax buried itself with a loud thunk into the floor on the spot where I had been kneeling a moment before. Tanker Thompson cursed loudly as he struggled to free the ax head.
First I threw a pillow from the sofa at him, because it was the only thing at hand. He didn't seem even to notice as it bounced off his face. But he noticed when I threw a side kick into his left thigh, just above the spot where I had pumped a bullet into his leg. The seemingly indestructible giant screamed, grabbed with both hands at his thigh, and began hopping around on his right foot. I hopped after him, drawing my revolver and aiming it directly at the hole on the right side of his head where one of his ears had been before he'd pulled it off. I pulled the trigger; just as I feared, I was rewarded for my efforts with nothing more than a dull click. As he roared with pain and rage and reached for me, I ducked under his arms and brought the end of the barrel up hard into his groin.
His roar went up two or three octaves, and his torso came down. I brought the butt of the gun down with all the strength I could muster onto the top of his shaved head, and that sent him crashing to the floor.
From past experience, I estimated that it would take me at least a week to beat Tanker Thompson to death, and I had neither the inclination nor the time to hang around to see if he was going to stay on the floor. "Let's go, Vicky!" I shouted, grabbing the child's hand and pulling her after me out of the room.
We ran through the living room, and out the front door. When Vicky tripped, I swept her up in my arms and carried her, staggering drunkenly as I tried to run on legs that felt like rotten rubber. Sweat was pouring into my eyes, blinding me. Gasping for breath, I weaved my way down the center of the road back the way we had come, toward the shores of Eden's ocean.
I suffered two serious stumbles, but I managed to catch myself each time before I fell with the child in my arms. After what seemed an eternity of breathlessness and pain, I reached the shore of the ocean-which, now that I looked closer in the shimmering, pale green light, appeared to be covered with lumps of what looked suspiciously like unprocessed human excrement. I set Vicky down, looked up and down the shoreline. Twenty-five yards to my right, barely visible in the eerie chemical glow, were a rowboat and a kayak with portals for two people. In the distance, in what seemed to me at least a lifetime away across the ocean, the green, misty mass of the rain forest rose up, filling the entire end of the dome.
And I was about to pass out. I reached into my pocket with a violently shaking hand, took out the bottle of pills. I shook one out, popped it in my mouth, and swallowed it.
"He's coming, Mr. Mongo!" Vicky screamed.
I spun around and was astonished to see Tanker Thompson, blood running down over his bruise-colored face, hobbling up the road toward us, dragging his left leg along behind him. He was holding the fire ax firmly in his hands, occasionally using it as a crutch.
Although the amphetamine certainly couldn't have had time to work its way into my bloodstream, the sight of the ax-wielding Tanker Thompson making his way up the road had a near-miraculous effect on my nervous system and energy level. It was motivational. Vicky ran on ahead of me as, pumping my arms and gasping in the fetid air, I managed to shuffle along at a pretty good pace across the feces-covered sand to the boats. There was a two-bladed paddle next to the kayak. I gave the rowboat a shove with my foot, sending it out into the water, then sat Vicky down in the front portal of the kayak. I slid into the back, pushed against the sand with my paddle, and we glided out over the greenish-brown water.
I grabbed the two-bladed paddle in the center, with my hands about two feet apart, then began paddling, stroking first on one side, then the other. I tried to concentrate on keeping my pace steady, for it seemed an impossibly long distance across the polluted body of water, and I knew I was very near the edge of my energy reserves. I'd needed the pill, because I'd been close to collapsing, but now I was having a reaction. I wasn't having the near-hallucinations I'd experienced before, but it felt like there was a ball of fire in my stomach-and the ball was gradually growing hotter as it expanded, sending tongues of flame throughout the rest of my body. I didn't like the sensation at all.
"Vicky," I said to the child in a stranger's voice that shocked me with its raw hoarseness. "You have to point out to me where we have to go."
"I. . I'm not sure, Mr. Mongo. Daddy never took me over there when it was dark like this."
"Do the best you can, sweetheart. We have to land as close to the machine as possible."
Vicky hesitated, the
n pointed off to the right at a forty-five-degree angle. "I think it's over there, Mr. Mongo."
I stroked twice, hard, on my left, waited while the nose of the kayak swung around to the desired direction, then resumed my steady windmill paddling, trying to concentrate on taking deep, steady breaths. The air was growing even fouler as we crossed the water toward the far shore with its infernal machine, and the rain forest beyond.
"He's coming, Mr. Mongo!" Vicky cried out in a small, frightened voice as she pointed back over my shoulder.
Although I knew it would disrupt my rhythm, fear made me stop paddling and glance back behind me. I wished I hadn't. We were perhaps a quarter of the way across Eden's ocean; yet, despite the fact that Tanker Thompson had to be suffering a giant headache, and despite the fact that he'd had to wade or swim out into the water to retrieve the rowboat, he was no more than twenty-five or thirty yards behind me. Like the monsters of nightmares that keep coming at you, he was rowing the boat with steady, powerful strokes generated by his bulk and the bulging muscles in his broad back and thick arms. Even with his back to me, I could see that he was covered with offal from the fouled waters; he glistened in the pale green light like some giant slug turned into human form.
As I stared back at him, momentarily paralyzed with horror, he slowed his pace slightly, turned around, and met my gaze. He was close enough so that I could clearly see his features; his small eyes were filled with hate, and his lips were twisted in a grimace of fierce determination. The main outrider of the second horseman out of Eden was threatening to ride me down-or sink me. I wondered if he still had his fire ax with him.
I wondered what time it was, and if it was going to make any difference.
And then Tanker Thompson turned back, leaned far forward, dipped his oars in the water, and gave a mighty pull. His boat seemed to surge through the water; with that one pull, it seemed to me that he had almost halved the distance between us.
His performance was tremendously inspiring to me.
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