“Identical.”
“Why did you build it?”
“To memorialize the impact of two pivotal moments in my life ... ” His voice faded as he looked around the room, a wistful look on his face, but also the most sane look she had seen yet. “On July fourteenth, nineteen seventy-seven, I came home from school, walked into this room, sat down at this desk, and did my home assignments. It was a day like any other day.” He had moved to a corner desk and was gently stroking its surface.
“I was ten years old,” he continued. “My father arrived home just as I was finishing my work. He seemed happy, buoyant. As I stood up from the desk to greet him, I accidentally knocked over this cup of writing instruments.”
Jana looked at the desk and saw an overturned cup, with five or six assorted pens and pencils strewn around it. Hart stared at them. She said nothing.
“I always held out hope that such a violation might one day be overlooked, but that was a fanciful wish at best, one of many baseless dreams of a naïve child. Such an egregious act could not, of course, go unpunished.”
Hart looked toward Jana, and for a moment she saw the eyes of a terrified child. The look faded. He walked to a waist-high table behind the sofa, gazed down at the table, then placed his hands on it. “This is where phase one of my punishment was administered. Father had a razor strap to which he had fitted a two-handed grip for more efficient delivery. I received fifty-three lashes that day.”
“For knocking over a cup? Good Lord!”
“’Actions have consequences,’ dear Father would say. “After the lashes had been meted out ... ” Hart paused and walked across the room to a vertical wardrobe chest about five feet tall. “I would spend from one to five days inside the chest, reflecting on what I had done. This was a seventy-two-hour transgression.”
Jana shook her head slowly in disbelief, mouth agape. What kind of monster treated a child in such a way?
“Did this happen often?” she said.
“Certainly.”
“What about all the school you missed?”
“Father was one of the community’s—in fact, the state’s—most generous benefactors. Many knew. None interceded. Whatever academic work I missed, I made up to perfection or I was punished for that, as well.”
“That’s horrible.” Jana’s compassion was sincere. Hart was sick, but who wouldn’t be. Sick or not, this was not a place in which she wanted to stay. She brought her mind back on track. “Since this happened all the time, what was special about July-whatever?”
“July fourteenth, nineteen seventy-seven, was the day that everything began to change.”
“In what way?”
“Mother would often turn the volume up on the television during the lashing phase, especially if an interesting program was playing. I never cried, for that doubled the number of lashes, but the sound of leather on flesh could be rather distracting, you see. Anyway, pardon my rambling.
“The salient point is that I learned to escape into the world of the television. I believe psychologists would call that a coping mechanism. This day, the evening news broadcast was on, and they told a most fascinating story.”
“What was it?”
“The night before, a rogue electrical storm near New York produced a number of lightning strikes that eventually caused a blackout across the city. It was really a quite extraordinary chain of events, a domino effect of breakers tripping and distribution components failing.”
Hart’s melancholy mood was gone now. His eyes shone with excitement. “ITV was broadcasting an American account of the story, including a remarkable clip that showed this massive swath of the city going dark in an instant. I thrust myself into that world and roamed those dark streets in my mind. I embraced the darkness, even looked forward to my time alone in here after that day.” He had moved to the wardrobe cabinet and stood caressing its wooden surface.
“Darkness became my friend, my protector, my safe haven. That day also marked the end of my wasting time uttering prayers that were never answered.”
“You stopped believing in God?”
Hart chortled. “Ah, my poor precious,” he said, clucking his tongue the way a kindergarten teacher might do with a student. “Of course I did not stop believing in God. I simply saw the old man for what he was: obsolete.”
“I see.”
“No, I sincerely doubt that you do, because you have not yet heard the entire sequence of events. Shall I continue?”
“By all means.”
“Life went on as normal until I finished my studies in Israel, after which I went away for my time of service in Zahal, what you would call being drafted into the army. It was there that I became enlightened on a few other matters. For example, I learned that my father did not really have remote eyes that could see me no matter where I was. I also came to believe that it was my responsibility to rescue my mother.
“After months of careful planning, I returned home for the first time and told her of my plan; once my time of service was complete, we could both move to another country, perhaps England, where I planned to attend university. Unfortunately, she did not share my enthusiasm. She slapped me for daring to impugn Father. At that moment I realized I was not only sired by a monster, but born of one, as well.” Hart sighed.
“I’m sorry,” Jana said.
“Thank you, but I dealt with the situation quite well.”
“Oh?”
He started toward the facsimile kitchen that lay through the door at the back of the living room. “Come.”
Hart continued to talk but as soon as Jana stepped into the room his voice faded to a distant chatter. She looked around in disbelief at another room locked in the jaws of time. While the living room had held its own horror stories, they were concealed behind a veneer of normalcy. Nothing was concealed here.
What looked like blood was smeared everywhere. Grisly chunks of meat and bone littered the floor and the counters, and on an island bar in the center of the room was the most macabre sight Jana had ever seen. The eyes in a woman’s severed head stared at her, so very real-looking. Beside that was a man’s head, but it did not stare. The eyes were missing.
She felt faint and backed up against the wall to steady herself. Hart kept talking but she didn’t understand what he was saying. Finally he shook her. “There’s nothing to be frightened of, dear. They can’t hurt you. Just like they can’t hurt me anymore. And this is, after all, a re-creation.”
Jana willed herself back into a lucid state. She had to remain in control if she ever hoped to leave this hell alive. She looked at Hart. He was smiling.
“This,” he said as he gestured to the room with a grandiose flourish, “represents the happiest moment of my life, for it was then that I realized that I was the master of my fate. Not only did I not need God. I was God.”
DAY TWO
WEDNESDAY
And there went out another horse that was red:
and power was given to him that sat thereon
to take peace from the earth,
and that they should kill one another:
and there was given unto him a great sword.
Revelation 6:4
14
11:13 AM PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
LAPD HELICOPTER #4
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
“Sure am glad they got the power back on,” Captain Rusty Boskin said to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Hank Starling.
“Amen to that.”
“I can’t believe how quiet it is today after last night. You know, thugs remind me of cockroaches, living it up and raising hell in the dark, then scattering as soon as the lights come on.”
“Never thought of it that way, Rusty, but I guess you got a point. Hey, you want me to take the stick for a while?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Starling took the cyclic control and banked the little Huey west, flying the grids, criss-crossing the city at fifteen hundred feet above ground level while Boskin watched the grou
nd for signs of traffic trouble and monitored the radio for calls from dispatch. Neither man saw the Beech Bonanza single-engine airplane at their six-o’clock high position.
On the bottom of the chopper, attached with two strong magnets to the fuselage just aft of the cabin, was a stainless steel cylinder, eighteen inches long and four inches in diameter. A black box was fitted on the forward end with a short cellular-style antenna angled downward from it. A one-millisecond signal hit the antenna as the Bonanza made a tight right turn and departed the area to the northeast. Inside the black box, a circuit switched modes from receive to transmit, now broadcasting on several frequencies within the 100MHz and 900MHz bands, blocking both police and standard aircraft radio traffic to and from the chopper.
At the same time, another circuit sent a five-volt signal along a red wire that ran from the black box to the rear end of the canister. The current hit an actuator, opening a tiny valve in the tail of the tube. The pressurized aerosol contents sprayed out from the valve in an ultra-fine mist, the wash of the helicopter’s rotor blades blasting it down and out in a reddish plume that spread thinner and thinner as it fell to the ground. Above and for’ard, Rusty Boskin and Hank Starling continued to enjoy an unusually quiet day as they canvassed the skies of Los Angeles, covering the city in the same thorough and conscientious manner that they always did.
On the ground, businesses were again open and Los Angeles was returning to normal. Donna Madsen waited in line at a gas station with Zack and Michelle in the rear of the Dodge Caravan.
“Mommy, Michelle won’t give me back my red crayon.”
“It’s my crayon.”
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
Donna turned around to face them. “If you two can’t play nicely, we’re not going to Disneyland.” The bickering stopped and Donna turned back around. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw four-year-old Zack stick his tongue out at his sister, a year older. Someone at the front of the line finished fueling and the line moved forward one car space. Donna cranked the air conditioning a notch higher and wished her husband Steve could have gotten the day off to go with them.
“Mommy, look at the helicopter,” Michelle said.
“That’s nice, honey.” Donna had seen a million helicopters and had no desire to see another one right now. She just wanted out of this line.
“It’s smoking,” Michelle said.
“That’s not smoke,” Zack said. “Smoke ain’t red.”
“Zack Madsen, don’t let me hear you say ‘ain’t’ again. You’re supposed to say smoke is not red.”
“See, Michelle? Mommy says smoke is not red too. Told you so.”
“Well it looks like smoke. Doesn’t it, Mommy?”
Donna finally looked out the window to see what they were talking about and saw the helicopter flying in a line parallel to the street they were on, about a hundred yards to the left and by now a quarter-mile in front of them. It was leaving what looked like a cloud of red dust in its path that drifted down. The dust was just reaching the ground across the street, where there was a park filled with people enjoying a mild day of Southern California sun.
As the dust settled into the park, people began grabbing their throats. Not just some of the people. All of them. She rolled down her window to get a better view and heard screams. People were rolling on the ground, clawing at their faces, thrashing about in violent spasms. At the front edge of the park, a man on the ground rolled into the street right in front of a car. Kerthump-kerthump. She gasped in horror. Now other people were running out into the street. Cars were shrieking to a stop and the sounds of vehicles hitting each other filled the air along with the screams.
It finally dawned on her that the red dust was causing this. She frantically rolled up her window, turned the air conditioning off, and pulled the minivan out of the gas line. The helicopter was far ahead of them now, but it was turning around and would soon be coming back toward them. She pulled out into the street and weaved a u-turn through the wrecked cars and people who were obviously dying. As she swung into a lane on the far side of the street, a woman ran toward them screaming, “Help me! Oh God, somebody help me!” Her face was covered in grotesque bubbles and blood poured from her eyes, nose, and mouth.
“Mommy, I’m scared!” Zack said. Michelle started crying.
“I need you both to be brave and quiet,” Donna said as she tried to work her way through the horror on the street. “Can you do that?”
“Okay, Mommy.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Donna finally cleared the worst of the congestion and floored the accelerator. They were going to make it. She fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed 911. “There’s a helicopter spraying some kind of poison over Santa Monica!” she screamed when someone answered.
“Ma’am, I need you to calm down. What did you say?”
In the back, as she had done a hundred times before when they were hot, Michelle reached up and turned the switch for the rear air conditioning in the van.
“A helicopter, it’s spraying some kind of red substance that’s killing people! Do something!”
“Ma’am, you’re breaking up. I can’t understand you.”
Donna’s eyes started stinging. Michelle and Zack screamed. “Oh God, no!” Donna said.
“Ma’am, are you there? Ma’am?”
After that, the emergency operator heard nothing except blood-curdling shrieks. Other operators were taking similar calls nonstop. One caller had the presence of mind to note the number painted across the bottom of the chopper. Dispatch tried frantically to reach LAPD Helicopter #4 via radio but got only silence in return.
The department had a number of other choppers, but the crews couldn’t get to them without walking through the outside air. One valiant crew tried and failed. Forty-one minutes after the canister activated, Lieutenant Brian Hallow of the United States Navy arrived in Los Angeles airspace in his F-18A Hornet after being scrambled out of San Diego. Unable to fly at the chopper’s much lower airspeed, the Naval Aviator made three passes across the front of the Huey and tried to get the crew to understand that they needed to follow him.
“What the hell is that showboat pilot trying to do?” Hank Starling said as the Hornet passed in front of them in a blur.
Rusty Boskin shook his head. “Damn Navy jocks.”
Lieutenant Brian Hallow had his orders. He swung hard around and came up on the Huey’s six-o’clock, bit his lip, and blew the chopper out of the sky with a brief burst from his 20mm cannon. “Returning to base.”
LAPD Helicopter #4 had covered an immense amount of ground before the F-18A arrived.
15
2:15 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)
YELLOW CREEK
We stood huddled around the television as a stunned anchorman delivered the news. “The unthinkable has happened. About an hour ago, at eleven-sixteen Pacific Time, a weapon of mass destruction was loosed on Los Angeles, California. The details we have so far are sketchy at best, but the reports we’re getting say that a highly toxic chemical gas, known in military circles as ‘Red Death,’ was somehow discharged into the atmosphere.” He stopped talking and listened to his earpiece for about ten seconds.
“These numbers are certain to increase, but we’re told that as of this moment, based on the population of the areas most affected, officials are estimating that two million Americans have died in the Los Angeles area. That’s two million of our fellow citizens, dead. The number of seriously injured people that were exposed just slightly is estimated to be in the millions, as well. We now have a crew on the ground in Los Angeles, and we’ll go there live.”
The picture on the screen cut to the interior of a broadcast van, its four occupants clad in yellow HAZMAT suits. One of the network regulars was inside one of the suits and began to report. “To say the very least, we’ve never seen anything like this. The streets of Los Angeles are literally filled with dead bodies and wrecked cars. The gas apparentl
y acts so fast that drivers simply died at the wheel of their cars. We’re not going to go outside this van, obviously, but we do have a camera set up to shoot through the windshield so the viewers can get a glimpse of what we’re looking at here. Parents, we strongly advise that you do not let your children watch this footage. Again, we strongly advise that all children be kept away from the television for the next couple of minutes. We’ll start a thirty-second countdown now before cutting to the live camera, to give you time to move your children out of sight of your television sets.”
Thirty seconds later, the picture cut to a shaky view looking out through the windshield of the van. The scene was like something from a disaster movie. As the reporter had warned, dead bodies were everywhere. The sidewalks were filled with them. Wrecked cars filled the streets, most smashed, many sitting at odd angles that they had come to rest at as they stopped, most obviously having stopped only when hitting another car or wall or telephone pole. The reporter kept talking, unnecessarily explaining what we were seeing on the tube. The close-up shots showed the gruesome effects of the Red Death gas; horrendous red sores, each about a half-inch in diameter, totally covered the face of the poor soul whose dead face was being broadcast around the world. His eyes were wide open, the whites replaced by blood red.
The anchor kept a dialogue going with the reporter, getting explanations of how the crew had survived the calamity, what emergency procedures were in place in the city, and so on.
I watched a few minutes more of the broadcast, then followed Abdul back to the control room. Tark and the entire FBI gang stayed in the lounge.
“Abdul, take a break,” I said when we got back to the console.
“I am fine and will continue to work.”
I admire a tireless work ethic but I also needed a few minutes alone to do some snooping. “Seriously, go take a walk, clear your head.”
Seven Unholy Days Page 8
