…and she made one final sound: a dry weak mewling cry not so much of fear as resignation. Deitz looked down, beyond surprise, and saw the other half of her: still on the floor, surrounded by all that wonderful hair. He saw the chalky striations of the break-point, the tender gray mushroom meat of her waist and hips, the rings upon rings upon rings that filled her.
Jennie clutched at him with fingers fragile, her parting sound rustling like dry leaves in his ears.
“Shh-shhhhhh…” Deitz cooed, enfolding her in his embrace.
Little bits of Jennie snapped and tumbled to the floor: fingers and hands and arms and torso crumbling and tumbling, crumbling and tumbling, in a softsoft pattering cascade. Deitz rocked and cooed and held her close. She slipped through his grasp like a fistful of sand, crumbled to nothing in his arms.
Then—only then—did he pick up the pieces. Bring them tenderly up to his broken lips.
And welcome her into himself.
PART SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
After the deluge, the New World rested.
The extent of the slaughter was unfathomable, immeasurable. Not even Overmind was up to the task. Its vision was too fractured and fragmentary now, forced to observe itself from far too many disparate points of view. Over nine hundred square miles, from the Appalachian foothills to the Susquehanna River, were laid to waste in those few short minutes. So many tiny lives subsumed. So small yet substantial a toehold gained.
The effort had been exhausting, leaving even the Overcore tapped and drained. The malaise was contagious, shared in common by all Its creatures, great and small. Dragging them inexorably toward an agonizing, fitful, rejuvenating slumber.
Leaving behind only the slow-metabolizing Plant Spawn, the witless rumbling Machine Spawn, and the handful of mad raw Savage Spawn that were not afterborn with the capacity for sleep.
While the last survivors of the old world calculated the odds.
And found them sadly wanting.
After the deluge, the New World rested. It had, for the moment, no other choice. Soon—very soon—It would inherit the earth.
In the meantime, It slept.
There would be no second chance.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The rain was petering out now.
“Yes,” Gary murmured. “Please, God.” It was all he waited for.
Gary had cursed himself a thousand times in the last few minutes. While he waited in ambush, the world had come to an end, or pretty goddam near. Now they were trapped, all of them, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
Not that there was anything left to do here.
WPAL had signed off. For keeps.
One look at the mad sky above was all it took; sure as shit, the soot from the explosion had knocked out the microwave path from ‘PAL to its transmitter tower. Worse still, nothing else seemed to work, either. The lights were flickering; the phones were garbled; even the AT&T long lines kept as emergency backup didn’t seem like they’d be reaching out to touch someone anytime soon.
Half the monitors in Studio A broadcast only static and snow; the other half picked up intermittent shadowy ghosts, like transmissions from a distant world. On another planet, the Eagles still battled the Rams.
Gary was relieved. It meant that this was a localized phenomenon. For the moment, anyway.
Good for them, he thought. Bad for us.
There was only one thing he knew for certain: the second the rain stopped, he was out the door and heading for home, scooping up Gwen and then getting the fuck out of Dodge. It was simple as that.
He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been: to spend all goddam day here, being manipulated by these people, only to waste even more time on beating up a worthless little asshole like Kirk. He felt guilty, and ashamed. The explosion had rendered a lot of things academic in its wake, his rage first and foremost. He felt like a fool.
He’d have been gone fifteen minutes ago, were it not for the black rain.
And poor John’s bad example.
After the explosion, John Bizzano had decided he couldn’t wait out the storm. He’d made a run for it, shrouding himself in one of the thick waterproof tarps they used for outdoor shots. Gary knew it was a bad idea, but John was stubborn; and for all his smarts, he’d always struck Gary as somewhat bereft in the common sense department.
He was out the door, heading for his car, before Gary could so much as say boo.
John hadn’t make it ten yards before the rain brought him down. It was impossible to see much of anything through that thick black curtain of precipitation, but Gary could have sworn it just ate his legs out from under him. They could hear him screaming, but that died off; and before long, there was nothing but a big dead silent lump, unmoving beneath the slowly melting tarp.
As the rain tapered off, it got easier to see. The lump was dissolving, and the stink was incredible as the pocked, steaming tarp got flatter and flatter. What was left of John sluiced down to the gutter in thick viscid runnels, like molten tallow, like boiling fat, like…
“Umm…Gary?” came Laura’s voice from behind him. He clenched his teeth, got ready for it, turned.
“Now what?” he said.
“We hab’doo ged back on line,” Kirk said, sucking spit back through swollen lips. His face was bloody, beaten so badly that his speech was slurred. Gary didn’t want to look at him, to face the fact that his hands had done that. He looked down at his scraped knuckles, guilty as sin.
Worse still was how Kirk had taken it. Gary’d expected him to fold up like a cheap card table, to whine and cry and piss himself. But he didn’t. In fact, he came back from the beating stronger, somehow. As if it had beaten the bullshit right out of him.
“You know we do,” Kirk urged, following Gary’s every move with his one good eye. Gary watched John run down the gutters and away. “People need do know whad’s going on.” He sucked spit again, and wiped a bloody streamer from his chin.
Laura stood at his side, supporting him; since Kirk had regained consciousness, they’d been pretty much inseparable. She thought about it for a moment, then her eyes widened. “What about the tower?” she asked. “Couldn’t we broadcast from there?”
“Yes,” Kirk said, pronouncing the sibilance with great difficulty. He slurped and looked at Gary. “We could.”
“Aw, Christ,” Gary groaned, bringing one hand up to run through his hair. He could see where this was going already. “Technically, yes. You could take a camera up there and hard-wire it right into the tower. Everything else is there. You wouldn’t have network feed, but you’d be broadcasting at sixty-eight hundred megahertz over the airwaves.”
“Whad range?” Kirk asked.
“A hundred miles, maybe,” Gary shrugged, emphasizing the maybe part. “Minus a big unknown chunk of range due to the storm.”
Laura and Kirk nodded in tandem.
“The only thing that’s missing,” Gary continued, “is the point. I mean, what exactly do we have to say to people right now? ‘This is ACTION-9! Get outta here! Turn off your fuckin’ TV and RUN, stupid!”
“Well, for one thing,” Laura interjected, “we can tell them where to run. We’ve got emergency evacuation plans…”
“Oh yeah, right,” Gary scoffed. “Have you ever actually looked at those things? They’re a joke, okay? We’re not prepared for a mass evacuation! We’re prepared to pretend we’re prepared for emergencies that never happen!”
“Bud like you said,” Kirk cut in, “it’s localized.” The word came out loga-lied. “Whijh means we can still ged away.”
“I hope,” Gary muttered.
“We gotta ged online,” Kirk said.
“Yeah? Who’s gonna do this miracle?” Gary countered. “You?”
“Yeah,” Kirk said. “Me.”
“But he’ll need help,” Laura said. Meaning you’ve got to help him. “It’s on your way.” You bastard.
Gary looked at Laura and Kirk, and at poor running John, then shook his hea
d. Outside, the city burned behind them.
“I don’t believe I’m doing this…” he groaned.
He turned to Kirk; Kirk flinched involuntarily. “Congratulations, kid,” Gary said. “Looks like you get your own show, after all.”
He turned to Laura. “I’ll get it up and online,” he said, then looking at Kirk, “but after that he’s on his own.”
Laura nodded in agreement.
“So what about you?” he asked.
“I’m staying,” she said valiantly. “I’ll keep trying to make radio contact. If we come back online, or the phones work again, I can feed you updates.” Her gaze flitted away, then back to him quickly. “Someone’s got to hold the fort.”
And in that moment Gary understood a little something about Laura Jenson. She was tough as nails in her element; but take her out of it, and she was like a dust mote in a hurricane. No way would she sacrifice that power. She would stay here until she died, or someone came to rescue her.
And she would be able to rationalize it, the same way he had all day. At least they’ll know where to find me.
“Where’s your family?” he asked.
“In Philly,” she flushed. “At the game.”
Gary nodded. “That means they’re probably safe.” She smiled wanly. Safer, he meant. As in “safer than you.”
He resisted the urge to bring up Gwen, his own family. No point. Until he could do something about it, it was dangerous even thinking about it.
“Two minutes,” he said to Kirk. “With or without you.”
Their good-byes were short and to the point.
Kirk got ready, wincing as he slid into his Windbreaker. Laura helped as best she could. When he had it zipped and flipped, he turned to her. There was a terrible sadness in his eyes, standing mute alongside the pain.
“Laura, I…” he began.
“Don’t.” Her eyes were moist and bright. A kiss was out of the question.
So she hugged him instead.
He returned the embrace, holding still for one perfectly elongated moment: smelling her hair, the scent of perfume commingling with her sweat, the faint menthol taint clinging to her clothes.
“Don’t,” she repeated, and squeezed him one more time before letting go. She was afraid to take it any further than that. If they were lucky, they might see each other on the other side of all this. And if not…
Don’t…
But somehow, he couldn’t help himself.
Outside, even the drizzle had tapered down to nothing at last. The clouds remained hanging overhead, made a guillotine’s blade of the sky. The fire to the north was still raging, flickering bright against its razored skyline.
The cold had rolled in now, Gary noted: a good ten-to-twelve-degree drop. A grayish black ash wafted down like snow, hissing as it landed.
Gary kept his bike in the repair bay, which was probably why it survived the storm. He donned his leathers carefully, making sure he was as airtight as possible. Then he put on his helmet, making doubly sure the faceplate was snapped into place. He wasn’t taking any chances.
Once dressed, he took a deep breath and threw open the big bay door. Kirk was there, motor humming, ready to roll. He gave Gary a deadly serious thumbs-up sign.
Gary nodded. “Yeah, fuck you, too,” he said under his breath, as he clambered onto the softtail and started the bike up.
The Harley roared to life.
And, together, they rode off into Hell.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Gary burned down the wide one-way slope of East Market Street, heading for the tower just as fast as Kirk’s cranky six-cylinder would allow. The speedometer nudged eighty; Gary could push it way over one hundred without popping a sweat, but Kirk was already weaving.
C’mon, punch it, he urged. Don’t make me leave you.
Downtown Paradise whipped by in a blur of hellish detail, its middle American quaintness slick with poison rain and backed by a throbbing storm front that glowed a brilliant brimstone hue. It was Nagasaki by way of Love Canal, Dante doing Norman Rockwell doing Bedlam.
Because everywhere lay the chaos and carnage. Crashed auto carcasses rammed through shops’ plate-glass windows, their belly fires feeding ruptured gas mains and stoking a score of conflagrations. Former citizens caught off-guard by the storm and blast lay stiff and silted, stick figures sculpted in blistered ash. A handful of still-living sinners had evidently gone mad and taken to the streets, repressed libidos unchecked in the absence of a just and angry God.
And then there were the creatures, the malformed alien things. They curled up in doorways and vestibules, caught sidewalk shadows that fended off the dancing, flickering fire. Some of them were nearly as big as the buildings they dozed in the shelter of.
He found himself marveling at their slumber, and wondering if they dreamed.
Gary twisted the throttle, slaloming through abandoned and wrecked vehicles, hauling ass for the outskirts of town with Kirk hot on his tail. His hands were tingling: the condensation on his gloves working its way into the seams, trying to find a breach. His mind was a schizophrenic relay race: unable to believe what was happening, unable to deny it. He cursed and sped up, inadvertently opening a gap between the bike and the wagon.
They hit the intersection of Market and Memory Lane with some sixty yards between them; at eighty-six miles an hour, they cleared the intersection less than two seconds apart.
Time enough for Gary to make it.
Kirk wasn’t so lucky.
Dean’s tanker truck passed between them as they barreled through, the remains of Dean at the wheel: a man-sized mass of gristle and tumors. Twenty-five years of bad habits had left him so toxic that when it finally awoke, he promptly exploded. What was left unconsciously manned the helm, skeletal hands dripping chunks as they raked the wheel.
The truck roared through the crossing and blindsided Kirk, catching the wagon just over the right rear wheel well and crumpling it like an aluminum can.
An experienced driver Kirk Bogarde was not. His reaction was instant, and utterly wrong: slamming the brakes and oversteering radically, then countering in a wild seesaw motion. The car responded by spinning into a gut-churning three-sixty.
Gary looked back just in time to catch sight of the wagon hopping the curb near the edge of the K-mart parking lot and broadsiding the concrete retaining wall, spitting sparks and stray metal.
“SHIT!” he cursed, skidding to a halt. He spun the softtail neatly in the middle of Market Street and looked back.
Paradise was doomed; of that he was certain. Kirk’s car was a good three hundred yards behind on the burning street, hugging the low wall, its right side crushed from bumper to bumper. Gary seriously wondered if Kirk was dead, and had no real desire to go and find out.
He gunned the engine, weighing his obligations: to go on, to go back, to just go home and get the hell out of there.
Then Kirk’s headlights flashed pleadingly, over and over and over, going hi lo hi lo hi lo hi lo.
“SHIT!” Gary cried out. He knew he didn’t have any choice. He revved the throttle against every instinct.
And turned the bike around.
“Please…” Kirk worked the headlights desperately and fought the urge to black out. “Don’t leave me!” he said.
Between the blood and the crushed glass, he couldn’t see a goddamned thing. The front windshield was starred from the impact and sparkling; there was a corresponding inch-long gash on his forehead. It felt like his left leg was broken, too. Otherwise he thought he got off lucky.
At least, until he saw the Parade.
It was coming right toward him, from the southeast: sweeping down Memory Lane, spilling across the K-mart parking lot, chewing up everything in its path. It clanged and rasped like a demolition derby show, Vlad the Impaler on a Funny Car Saturday. Eight hundred fresh victims stoked its mass.
Kirk was determined not to be the eight hundredth and first.
“NAHHHH!” he cried, adrenaline
resurging through him as he fumbled with the seat belt. Blood slicked his grip; he couldn’t get it undone.
The Parade rumbled closer. Sixty yards. Fifty. He could see the twitching bits and pieces hanging from its many sharp and whirring surfaces. Forty yards. Thirty. The smell of burning rubber and diesel and flesh flooded his senses.
And that was when Kirk got his first glimpse of the New-Spawn.
It was the size of a cocker spaniel; chunky and malformed, its snout hardened and drawn into a beak of sorts. Its front claws elongated into digits like fingers, like hands. It pounced and skittered across the hood of the car, toward the shotgun-side door…
“NO, GOD!” he screamed, as it weaseled its head in through the crack in the window. His hand flew to the window crank, frantically rolling it shut. The spawn caught, spat black venom blood. Kirk squeezed off its head with his glass guillotine.
Then the driver’s door flew open beside him, and before Kirk could scream, the figure with the knife brought its blade to his chest…
…and Gary was there, saying can you stand? as his Buck knife sawed through the seat belt. Kirk nodded yes and hoped he was right, fighting a wave of vertigo as Gary reached past him to grab the camcorder off the seat…
…just as the first juggernaut loomed before the car, a giant metal scorpion-thing with a crown of steel thorns and a three-year-old blonde girl’s head impaled upon it. Its huge rusted stinger craned slowly up above its own blunt head, creaking as it drew a bead…
…then whipped down, astonishingly fast, dragging a screech from Kirk’s lungs as he threw himself sideways, glass exploding in his face, the taste of metal throbbing in his teeth, the skewer dinging off Gary’s helmet before imbedding in the upholstery, the chassis, the road…
…and then they were running: Gary in the lead, Kirk half-dragged along behind. The Harley was waiting, thank God. Their last friend on Earth, it obeyed their commands, doing a hundred and thirty per down Market Street.
On its way to the tower.
The Bridge Page 30
