George R.R. Martin

by The Armageddon Rag

  For hours he stumbles through blind alleys and wicked streets that loop back upon themselves, until finally he emerges on the main thoroughfare again, the long, straight avenue with its tall iron street lamps haloed in the fog. But the street is empty now and he has lost all sense of direction and does not know where to go. He wanders to the middle of the street and stands there, baffled, helpless, looking first in one direction and then in the other, afraid to move, the blank gray walls of fog growing solid all around him. Around and around and around he turns, in dizzy circles.

  Then the fog parts a little and the Nazgûl are there. They are carrying their instruments, playing them as they walk, and others are walking behind them, an army of shadows, an army of memories, an army of good intent. Sandy walks with them for a while. “Where are you going?” he asks Gopher John, Maggio, Faxon. None of them will answer. Faxon bleeds from old wounds, and only the songs will salve his hurt. Maggio’s body is a ghastly thing of skin and bones, running with open sores. Gopher John beats on a big bass drum as he strides, and his eyes are far away. But Hobbins walks in front, sure-footed, laughing, and he draws Sandy aside. His red eyes are burning, pinpoints of fire in the fog, and his mouth twists in grim amusement. “C’mon now,” he says, “we’re marching to the sea,” and then he whirls and leaps out on ahead. The Nazgûl follow, and behind them the long, long column winds, but Sandy is no longer sure. He moves to the side, huddles in a door. The door has been bricked shut and he finds no refuge there; eventually the column passes, and he is alone again.

  He sinks to the ground and sits there, his back against the cold wet bricks, his face blank. He sits for days, but the fog does not melt away, nor does the sun come up. Sometimes he thinks he hears familiar music, dimly and far off, from the direction the Nazgûl had taken. Yet sometimes it is not music at all, but only the sound of battle. He is tempted to go that way. He feels abandoned and lonely.

  His head is cradled in his hands, so he does not see Maggie emerge from the fog, does not see where she has come from. But suddenly she is there. She holds his hand, and he looks up at her. “Where have all my lovers gone?” she asks in a plaintive voice. He knows what the answer should be, but he cannot say it. She smiles at him, a brave crooked smile, but her eyes are tired and sad. She pulls him to his feet, back out into the street, back out into the fog. But then she hesitates, and Sandy knows that she is as lost as he is. He hears the music once more. It gives him a direction, the only direction left in this terrible gray world. He takes her hand, pulls her, and they set out down the street. The music grows louder as they walk. Maggie is smiling now, and they hurry, although once, when he is near to running, she holds him back and complains that he moves too fast. He slows, and they move on, tireless. Her hand feels good in his, and her face is familiar, accepting, content.

  Then, in the center of the road, they come upon the motorcycle. It is a big motorized trike, painted red, white, and blue, and Slum is seated upon it, bare feet up on the handlebars, flowers threaded through his massive beard, a gentle smile on his face. He sees which way they are walking and shakes his head. The motortrike is pointed in the other direction.

  “You don’t understand,” Sandy says patiently. “There’s nothing for us there. This way. Come this way.” He points.

  The porkpie hat on Slum’s head moves of its own accord, lifts, and a tiny black kitten peers out from underneath. Slum takes it down, pets it, sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says, “that’s a war down there. I don’t believe in killing.”

  “But we’re fighting for… for things that matter,” Sandy says.

  “That’s what Butcher says,” Slum observes.

  “You’re a coward,” Maggie says accusingly. Or is it Maggie? Her voice sounds strange, and her hand has gone cold. It is ridged with callus along the edge of her palm. “Coward,” she repeats.

  “That’s what Butcher says,” Slum observes again.

  “War is just if the cause is just,” Ananda says with passion. “Sometimes killing is necessary.”

  “That’s what Butcher says,” Slum observes.

  “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” Ananda argues. “If you’re not one of us, you’re one of the enemy. We got battle lines being drawn.”

  “Nobody’s right if everyone’s wrong,” Slum says.

  Butcher Byrne steps from the fog, holding a shotgun. He is dressed in khaki, with a face like death. “Beware,” he says. He trains the gun on his son. Ananda draws a gun of her own and faces him. “Beware,” she says. Or is it Butcher again? Their voices sound just the same.

  “One, two, three, what are they fighting for?” Slum asks, shrugging.

  “Slum, I’m lost,” Sandy says. “Where do I go?”

  “Follow the river,” Slum suggests. “Follow the children. Follow the neon in young lovers’ eyes.”

  “How?” he says. “I can’t… can’t leave it all. Froggy, Maggie, Lark, Bambi, me. You. You especially. I have to go back with her, have to help it change. You don’t know the things that he’s done to you.”

  Slum reaches into his Slum suit and brings out a photograph. He hands it out to Sandy and says, “Time, see what’s become of me.” It is a snapshot of a different Jefferson Davis Byrne, a clean-shaven gaunt man whose eyes are wary and wasted, dressed all in white, mouth open in surprise or pain.

  Sandy nods. “You see?” he says. “You know, then. Why I have to go with her? Why we have to go back?”

  “Nope,” Slum says.

  “The picture. The way you’ve hurt. All of us.”

  “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Slum taps the photograph again. It is changed. The man in the picture is heavy almost to the point of fat, with a big spade-shaped beard streaked with gray. He is wearing a denim shirt and a red bandanna; his cheeks are full and ruddy, and his smile is very broad. It is Slum; an older, healthier, happier Slum. Sandy looks up at him. “It’s never too late,” Slum explains. “I got life, right?”

  Sandy is confused. He takes a step back, looks around. The fog still moves silently around Ananda and Butcher, who face each other with drawn guns, faces hard, locked in an eternal tableau.

  “I don’t know,” Sandy says. “I’m so confused.”

  “The best lack all conviction,” Slum tells him, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” He pets his kitten, tucks him back into his hat, replaces the hat on his head. Maggie is on the motortrike behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. She is smiling too, and Sandy does not know how he could have overlooked her. Slum grabs the handles, kicks down, and the motortrike roars to noisy life.

  “Where are you going?” Sandy asks, desperate. He does not want to be alone in the fog. He does not want to be left with Ananda and Butcher. He is afraid of them.

  Slum points. “There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night.”

  “Take me with you.”

  Slum shakes his head. “Sorry. If I knew your way, I’d take you home, but where I’m going, no one may follow.”

  “Slum, I have to stop it. It’s all coming down. Confrontation, war, armageddon. They don’t understand. It will destroy all of them, the Nazgûl, Larry Richmond, Francie… they’re going to use her in some kind of sacrifice, Slum, and the gates of hell are going to open and all the dead are going to come back.”

  “Then stop it, Sandy. Change it.” He revs the trike.

  “Wait,” Sandy calls out. “I can’t do it alone.”

  Maggie grins at him crookedly from beneath her broken nose. “Sure you can, love,” she says. She jerks a thumb upward. “Superman and Green Lantern ain’t got nothing on you.” Slum presses the accelerator, and they roar off, ripping through the billowing fog, rending it into fine white ribbons. Sandy stands and watches as they vanish in the distance. The tunnel they drive through the mist does not close. He begins to follow it, moving faster and faster. At last he begins to run, and finally, finally, he sees a sun, a
great white sun shining down at the end of the road. He rushes toward it, and the sun grows and grows until it fills his universe and drives away the shreds of dream.

  He came to lying on a narrow rollaway bed in a cluttered motel room. The curtains were open, and sunlight was streaming through the window onto his face. Sandy threw a hand across his eyes and struggled to sit up. His head swam. He was groggy and disoriented. He looked around, not recognizing the room. Where was he? How had he come here? For a moment, his only memory was a vague terrifying recollection of wandering endless fog-shrouded streets and holding strange surreal conversations. And then the dream began to unravel, and the other memories came rushing back. He remembered Denver and the room in the Hilton, Edan Morse and Gort lying dead, and Ananda’s three soft kisses.

  “Jesus,” he blurted. He got up with a real effort, reeled, almost fell again. He was very unsteady. His head was pounding.

  The room was empty, the twin beds unmade. A newspaper had been thrown on one. He picked up a section, stared at the letters for a long moment, unable to make any sense out of the headlines. Then he realized it was the sports section, and suddenly it all clicked into place. The paper was the Albuquerque Journal, dated September 20. He threw it down on the bed, glanced out the window again. It looked to be late afternoon from the position of the sun.

  Sandy was sick and hurting. Strange pains seemed to be stabbing at his body at random. He had a bad case of the chills, and there were needle marks all up and down his right arm. But he forced himself to move to the bathroom, to undress and shower and stand under the cold, icy spray until the water had washed away the dregs of his long drugged sleep. When he dried himself, he felt better, a lot better.

  His car keys were on top of the television set. In the closet he found fresh clothes… and something else. A rifle. Black and oiled, with a sling strap and a big telescopic sight. Sandy knew nothing about guns, had never fired a gun in his life. But he picked up the rifle and held it, ran his hands over it, drawn to it. He had to stop them, he thought. He remembered the way the Nazgûl had been stopped once before, in 1971.

  Daydream was parked right outside. She was filthy, streaked with road dust, her nose and windshield covered with dead bugs. It made him incredibly, irrationally angry. He opened the rear hatch, tossed in the rifle, emptied a duffle bag of dirty laundry on top of it. He climbed in and started her up. His digital watch said it was 4:49. He would have to hurry.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  This is the end/

  My only friend the end

  He had expected to fight the afternoon rush, but the streets of Albuquerque were oddly empty as Sandy sped west toward the lowering sun. The sky was pale eggshell blue, a shade somehow magical and very fragile; he knew it could not last for long. The people he glimpsed on the sidewalks seemed too quiet, almost hushed; of the other cars he spotted infrequently, at least half had their headlights burning. He wondered what that meant. It was as if an eerie stillness hung over the city, reminding him of the stillness of dawn on that morning, so long ago, when Peter Faxon had taken him up to the mesa to ride in the Flying Eye.

  Someone told me long ago, there’s a calm before the storm, he thought. And he feared that he’d see rain, and plenty of it, before the night was through.

  On the edge of town, he hit the roadblock.

  Daydream hugged a long dusty curve, and there they were; two state police cars blocking the road, and on the shoulder a big brown canvas-covered truck and jeep. The jeep had a machine gun mounted in the back, Sandy saw, and armed National Guardsmen were crouched on both sides of the road. He heard a shrill whistle and saw a cop waving him over. He braked and swung Daydream off to the side of the road. Popping his seat belt, he opened the door and started to climb out, but someone grabbed him and spun him around hard, shoving him down against the hood of the car. “Assume the position!” a harsh voice barked.

  Sandy spread his hands and legs and held very still while they patted him down. He got a thwack across the ass with a rifle butt when it was over. “All right, move it! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  He turned to confront a short dark Guardsman with NCO’s stripes and hostile black eyes. Sandy was pretty angry himself. “What the hell is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  The Guardsman looked him over, taking in the beard, the longish hair still wet from the shower, the jeans. “Don’t mouth off to me,” he said. “I asked you where you thought you were going. I’m waiting for an answer.”

  “Up to West Mesa. To the concert.”

  The Guardsman was studying the Mazda. He looked at Sandy again. “You got papers on that car?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He held out his hand. “Let’s see ’em.” Another Guardsman had moved around to the hatch. “And open her up.”

  “What for?” Sandy said. He thought of the rifle in back, under those dirty clothes, and for a moment he was close to panic. “You got no authority for a search.”

  The NCO smiled. “You going to argue with me?” He waved, and two more men came over, rifles at the ready.

  This was getting scary, Sandy thought. He backed up a step. “Wait a sec!” he said, holding up his hands. “Let me get my wallet.” Reaching back slowly, he pulled it out of his jeans, flipped it open, rifled through it quickly, hoping like hell the cards were still there. He found one, pulled it loose, proffered it to the Guardsman. “See. I’m a reporter. National Metro News.” He pulled out his driver’s license, too. “See, look, that’s me before I had the beard.”

  The Guardsman glanced at the card, squinted at the license, and studied Sandy’s face. Reluctantly, he nodded. It was a nod Sandy remembered from the old days, a nod he’d tasted more than once before, when his press card won him a grudging change of status from one authority or another.

  He pushed it. “I want to talk to whoever’s in command here.”

  The NCO looked unhappy, but he turned to the Guardsman by his side. “Chavez, get the captain. We got a reporter here wants to see him.”

  Captain Mondragon was a swarthy, heavyset man about Sandy’s age. He studied Sandy’s ID briefly and shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry if my men gave you a hard time,” he said. “We’re not used to this, you have to understand. And they’re young. Boys, really. This is all very exciting to them, and some of them do get carried away.”

  “What’s happening here?” Sandy asked.

  “You don’t know?” the captain said. He seemed puzzled.

  “I got put on this story this morning, flew out from New York. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the wires. Give me a little background.”

  Mondragon was sympathetic. “Didn’t give it much attention myself, until they called us up. Well, not much to tell. After all them hippies ignored the order to break up, the police figured they couldn’t handle it, and we were called up. We closed off the roads, but it hasn’t made much difference. They’ve been coming through fields, over the hills, through the mountains. I hear one bunch even flew in with a balloon. We don’t have enough men to cordon off the whole area. Right now, we’re just waiting for reinforcements. There’s talk of sending us in to disperse the crowd. I guess it’ll come to that if there’s trouble.”

  “Yeah? How do you feel about that?”

  “Some of my men are eager for the chance. There have been some scuffles already. The cops tried to go in and make some arrests and got the hell beaten out of them. Personally, I’d just as soon let ’em play their damned music.”

  “How many are up there?”

  Mondragon shrugged. “Our official estimate is a hundred thousand.”

  Sandy whistled. That was almost twice as many as had come to West Mesa in 1971. “I’m supposed to cover this,” he said. “I have to get by.”

  “I know how it is when you got a job to do,” Mondragon said. He plucked at his uniform unhappily. “Well, go on then. You’ll have to take the car around the shoulder, but if you take it slow you shouldn’t get stuck. I warn
you, get out quick if there’s trouble. I heard there’s talk of sending in tanks, calling up the Regular Army. Things could get nasty real fast, and no one will know that you’re just a reporter. They say they got some guns in there, too.”

  “They say,” Sandy said grimly. He thanked the captain, got back into Daydream, and edged it off the shoulder, over a bumpy, rutted, hard-packed field, until he was past the roadblock. Back on the road, he took off.

  He saw other Guardsmen, patrols sweeping through the surrounding countryside, and once he spotted a man crouched behind a juniper, reporting into a walkie-talkie. He passed an old school bus parked by the side of the road. Then other vehicles; Volkswagens and Cadillacs, pick-ups and panel trucks, vans and campers, more and more until both sides of the highway were lined solidly with them.

  By then he could hear music, the faint but unmistakable sound of “Johnny B. Goode.” It was not the Nazgûl. In 1971, the Nazgûl had come on at dusk, after a succession of lesser bands had played all day; Ananda had no doubt made the same arrangements this time. The road turned to dirt, and Sandy drove more slowly. Couples walked arm-in-arm and moved out of his way, waving cheerfully as he passed, while children careened past on bikes made unsteady by the rocks. The surrounding fields were spotted with tents and sleeping bags and fires and small knots of dancers, although the sound was still weak this far off. Sandy had to swerve around one couple making love in the middle of the road; a minute later he passed through a running swarm of laughing, bare-chested men playing some game with a basketball.

  Finally he could take the car no farther. At the intersection of two dirt roads, a huge semi was parked at an angle, cutting off all access. On top of it stood a woman in a jumpsuit and red armband, directing traffic. She waved him toward the field on the right, a solid mass of parked cars on top of a prairie dog village. As he climbed out, he saw one prairie dog pushing a beer bottle out of its hole. It spied him and vanished. Sandy felt sorry for it. Other vehicles arrived from God knows where, boxing him in. He waited until he was unobserved, opened the hatch, and fit the rifle into the duffle bag he used to carry his dirty laundry. He carried it as he proceeded on foot.