She had to be strong, had to keep from being sucked in. She looked back toward the building, toward the classroom. The blinds were closed and she couldn’t tell if Kevin was watching her, if he was even back up there yet, but she surreptitiously waved to him anyway.
She hoped he could see her breast. This was going to be harder than she thought.
She began walking down the sidewalk, away from the burning truck, working on her stagger, prepared to appear drunk if she ran across anyone. She wasn’t sure where the closest fire station was, but she thought it was a few blocks over, toward the downtown area, and she figured she’d head in that direction.
The street was littered with debris. Torn scraps of clothing, newspaper pages, pieces of packages, smashed bottles, and crumpled cans were strewn about the road. On the lawn of one of the houses, a nude man was lying atop the bloody body of an old lady. Penelope wasn’t sure if either or both of them were alive, so she hurried past, walking on the strip of grass next to the street rather than the sidewalk to avoid making noise, her hand on the screwdriver in her waistband, ready to pull it out and use it if either of them moved.
She continued down the street. The overpowering dread she’d felt last night was gone, replaced by a more subtle tension. The light of day had removed her fear of being jumped and ambushed in the shadows, but she was still uneasy, and it still felt to her as if something was waiting to happen. The street was calm, nearly empty, only traces remaining of last night’s debauchery, but it was as if the city was holding its breath—and waiting to exhale.
This felt to her like the calm before a storm.
Or the eye of a hurricane.
She turned the corner, started walking toward the downtown area.
Where was Dion?
Dionysus.
That was the big question. Had he gone back to the winery, to the meadow? Was he crashed out somewhere in the city? Or was he still on the prowl, looking for her?
She shivered. The screams from the north had not stopped, had continued all along as a constant sub-noise that she’d already started to filter out, and she thought that he was probably there, at the winery. Or at one of the other wineries.
She smiled wryly. Maybe he was taking the tourist’s tour of the wine country.
She looked to the right and to the left as she crossed a small street and saw, a block down, a stoplight. Hanging from the light was a red fire xing sign.
A fire station. She was in luck.
She hurried down the street, her right hand clamped against the screwdriver as she ran. She’d try the phone first. If that didn’t work, she’d try to figure out how to work whatever other communication equipment they had.
She slowed as she neared the station. She was not alone. There were other people here as well.
Children.
She stopped on the sidewalk in front of the station. The big doors were open, and ten or twelve kids, all of them preteens, sat or stood atop the fire truck, smoking hand rolled cigarettes, drinking from bottles. A
kid of seven or eight lay passed out on the driveway in front of the truck. On the small lawn in front of the closed office, young boys and girls were loading and unloading guns.
She was not sure what was stronger, her rage or her fear. What the hell was wrong with these kids’ parents? How could they allow this? Even if they had been converted to Dionysus worship, how could they abandon all responsibility for their children?
This was more than merely conversion to a different re-1 ligion, she knew. This was more than simple mass hystej ria. This was something totally different, totally new, ai sea change, a complete shift in the fabric of previously accepted reality. The Judeo-Christian assumptions upon which lives and society had been based were no longer true.
A young girl wearing a visible diaper under her ripped pink dress pointed a handgun at Penelope and grinned as she pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder. The other kids burst out laughing.
Maybe they’d killed their parents.
Penelope turned away hurrying back the way she’d come. Fuck trying to call for help. Fuck trying to contact the outside world. She wasn’t going to sit here like a dummy and wait to be rescued. She’d find a goddamn car, go back for Kevin, and the two of them would get the hell out of the valley and not look back until it was all over.
There were cars in many of the driveways she’d passed on the way over, and though she didn’t think any of them had keys in the ignition, keys were probably in the houses.
It hadn’t looked like any of the owners were home.
She looked behind her. She wasn’t being followed. None of the kids were coming after her. She scanned the driveways in front of her, saw a van at the next house over, saw a Lexus two houses up from that. Glancing across the street, she saw a Toyota of some kind in the driveway directly across from her.
The door to the house was wide open.
She hesitated. If the door was open, something was wrong. Maybe the owners of the house were all dead in there. Maybe they were alive—and waiting.
Fuck it. Something was wrong at the house? Something was wrong all over the goddamn city. She started across the street. She’d rush in, grab the keys, rush out. If someone was inside, she’d run if she could, or, if not, she’d fight.
She pulled the screwdriver from her waistband, adjusted the scissors so she could grab them more easily should the screwdriver be knocked from her hand.
She slowed as she reached the driveway, peering into the open doorway before her, looking for any sign of movement within the dim interior of the house.
Her grip on the screwdriver tightened as she passed the front of the car.
She saw no movement inside the house, heard no sound, and she took a deep breath and forced herself to walk through the doorway.
The house was empty. There were no dead bodies, no attackers lying in wait. She walked from the entryway to the living room to the kitchen, where a ring of keys was lying atop the counter next to the stove. She grabbed the keys, hurried outside.
The first key she tried fit the car door.
She smiled to herself. This must be my lucky day, she thought.
Five minutes later, she drove into the school parking lot. Pulling into the principal’s spot in front of the main building, she was about to honk on the horn when Kevin hurried out the front door. She looked around to make sure there was no one nearby, then pressed the button that automatically flipped open the Toyota’s locks.
Kevin pulled open the passenger door, jumped in, and slammed the door shut behind him.
“Well?” he said.
She locked the car doors again, put the Toyota into gear.
“What’s the plan?”
“We leave,” she said. “We get the hell out of here.”
April awoke on the grass, a rock pressing painfully against her left breast, her mouth tasting of blood. She hurt all over, and it took her fogged mind a moment to remember where she was.
Dion.
She sat up quickly. Too quickly. Agony flared behind her forehead, almost causing her to fall back down. She closed her eyes against the pain, waiting until it subsided to a dull throb, then slowly reopened her eyes.
She was still in the meadow, as were hundreds of other people, but Dion and the other maenads were gone. She remembered them leaving rather early in the proceedings, and vaguely recalled wanting to go with them, but she could not seem to recollect where they had gone or why she had stayed here.
Next to her on the ground was the half-eaten remains of a goat. She stared down at the animal’s bloody chest cavity, at the snaking entrails, the deflated sac-like organs, and felt a warm tingling between her legs. She bent down, picked up a quivery piece of liver, bit into it.
Wine.
She needed to wash it down with wine.
Glancing around, April saw a partially filled bottle clutched tightly to the chest of a sleeping woman. She walked over to the woman, lay down next to her, kissed her on th
e lips, and gently removed the bottle from between her oversize breasts. She finished off the wine, then carefully replaced the bottle.
She sat up, stood up. The headache was almost entirely gone now, and she looked more carefully around the meadow. Her gaze alighted on the altar at the opposite end. Immediately, a sharp stab of guilt shot through her. She remembered the way her son had screamed as the other maenads had anointed him. She should’ve come to his rescue. How could she have allowed them to do that?
How could she not?
Her intellect and her instincts were at odds on this one. Well, maybe not her intellect. Her upbringing. No, not that either, really.
Her sexual desires and her maternal instinct.
That was more like it.
She wondered where Dion had gone.
Dionysus.
It was still hard for her to think of her son as her god. She smiled wryly. Had it been this hard for Mary?
Someone groaned nearby, then started yelling: “My leg! What happened to my leg!”
April turned toward the voice. An obviously hungover man was sitting up on the grass, staring at the bloody, half eaten remains of his right leg. She smiled at him, then walked over, pushed him down, and sat on his face. Immediately, his tongue snaked inside her.
She stared at the red remains of the leg as she squirmed on top of the man’s head. For the first time in her life she felt totally free, totally unfettered.
Happy.
She just wished that it hadn’t come at the expense of her son.
It was again as it should be.
Times had changed, the world had moved on, but he was here, the females were here, the wine was here, the celebrants were here.
Woman and grape.
These things were eternal.
Dionysus strode across the hillside, the dry grass rustling pleasantly beneath his bare feet. His “maenads were singing to him. He could hear them even from this far away, their song a paean to his lust, his power, his generosity, his greatness. They had welcomed him back last night, hosting a celebration that had not stopped until dawn.
It was again as it should be.
But he was not the same as he had been. He had another past now, another history, another life, and it was his as well … only it wasn’t. He shook his head. It was all so confusing, and he didn’t really want to think about it. He wanted to drink again and celebrate Ms. return, wanted to kill some men and rape some women.
But the exhilaration and anticipation he should have felt in contemplating the sating of his desires seemed to be tempered. He felt uncomfortable, ill at ease, not himself, as if his new physical limitations were affecting his thoughts. He was joined with this other, trapped inside this too small form, mired in this overly literal body like an animal trapped in tar. He had never had the freedom of Apollo or Artemis or Hestia, had never been as ephemeral as the others, had always been tied to the flesh, and he had liked that. It was what had set him apart from the others, his ability to enjoy earthly pleasures, and he would not have given it up for anything.
This, however, was different.
He was not himself.
He was himself and this other.
He stopped walking, inhaled deeply. The scent of grape was on the breeze. It permeated the air, the redolent fragrance providing a promise of intoxication, and it made him feel calmer, more relaxed. He strode to the edge of the hill, looking down and surveying his dominion. He could see the burnings at either end of the valley, the crashed cars on the roads, the bands of revelers prowling the city in search of more fun.
Sounds came to him as well, below the singing of his maenads: breaking glass, laughter, cries of joy, cries of terror, cries of pain.
It was a wonderful morning to be alive, the beginning of a beautiful day. There was no reason for him to be brooding on the inconveniences of resurrection.
To his right was a log, and on a sudden whim he strode backward, away from the edge, got a running start, and leaped atop the log. The momentum carried him forward, and then he was surfing down the hillside, laughing with glee as he leaned to the left to steer away from a tree, bumped over a series of half-buried rocks, and then crashed to a halt at the bottom of the hill.
He tumbled head over heels, then stood, brushed the dirt off his body, and willed shut the cuts that he’d gotten from the fall. He was standing before a connected corral and horse stable that backed against the side of the hill, and the sight of the worn wooden fences triggered a memory within him, a memory that despite his best efforts remained naggingly below the surface of his conscious mind.
There was something missing in this new world. He had not been aware of it before, had not had time to be aware of it, but the corral and the stable had A pair of horses wandered into the fenced corral from behind the low building.
Centaurs.
He smiled. Yes, that was it. That’s what he hadn’t been able to remember. Centaurs. He walked forward. He missed those randy creatures. They were a bother sometimes, but they knew how to enjoy themselves, and they were always up for a celebration. Besides, they’d like it here. The cool weather, the plentiful wine. This was their kind of place. He looked back up the hill. He would like centaurs in his new dominion. He strode into the corral, then walked around the side of the stable. A small herd of horses was shying against the opposite fence, and he spotted an acceptable filly and called the horse to him, making her back up against his sex.
“Pretty girl,” he said, grabbing her haunches. “Pretty girl The horse bucked and kicked, trying to get away, but he held tight. She whinnied in pain as he mounted her.
Kevin said nothing as they drove down the empty streets, on the lookout for one of the roving bands. Here and there he saw people packing station wagons in garages and carports, surreptitiously trying to leave. He even saw one man mowing his lawn as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Could it be that some people were totally unaware of the events of the night before? It didn’t seem possible.
There was no sign of the revelers. Nor any sign of their victims. There were broken bottles on the road, torn pieces of clothing, overturned cars and bicycles, occasional dead cats and dogs, but there were very few human bodies on either the streets or the sidewalks.
He supposed he should be grateful for small favors.
Kevin glanced over at Penelope, who stared grimly ahead as she drove. He would have suggested that they stop and get together with some of these other people who were leaving, but he knew that she would not go for it.
Penelope had seen something when she’d gone looking for the car, something she didn’t want to talk about, something that had profoundly affected her, and he knew that she was not in the mood to approach strangers right now, no matter how safe they might be.
He thought about what he had seen last night on Ash Street, and he shivered.
He knew exactly how she felt They pulled onto Third Street. Downtown was a shambles, the destruction more random and wanton than anything he had ever seen in any post-apocalyptic movie, the rubble more awkwardly strewn about and nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing as the precisely arranged disorder found in films. The old building that had housed Phil’s Photo had burned to the ground, and the blaze had spread to the vacant lot next door before apparently burning itself out. Clothes, electrical equipment, and food from the other nearby shops littered the roadway, making it nearly impossible to drive. Penelope slowed to a crawl, carefully maneuvering around the sharper, bulkier objects, trying to drive only on the garments and foodstuffs.
Ahead, Kevin could see that the Mcdonald’s had been razed. And sitting atop the still Ik golden arches were two police lights.
Nipples.
The fast-food joint’s trademark had been turned into a pair of monstrous breasts.
Kevin stared at the upcoming sign. The purposeful vahdalism that it represented scared him far more than, the chaotic destruction around it, and he realized that until this moment he had not entirely believed Penelope�
��s story. He’d bought the specifics of it—he’d seen enough horrors last night to know that what she had described had no doubt happened—but he had not been able to completely buy the idea that Dion had been turned into a mythological god.
The nippled arches somehow brought that truth home to him. He did not know why. The vandalism was certainly no worse than other things he’d seen. He supposed it was the juxtaposition of such a solidly rational symbol, such a perfect example of normal American life, with this lewd sexuality, this drunken crudeness, that made him realize exactly how far things had gone.
And made him realize that Penelope was obviously telling the truth.
He wondered where Dion was now.
He wondered what his friend looked like.
The emotional impact had not yet hit him, and he supposed it was because everything was happening so fast, because he had been simply reacting to everything that was going on and had not had the luxury of reflection.
He would miss Dion, he knew. Although they’d known each other only since the beginning of the school year, Dion was his best friend. It was going to be a hard loss to take.
He was already assuming that there would be a loss.
That Dion would have to be killed.
The street cleared a little past the Mcdonald’s, and Penelope speeded up. Kevin stared out the window, saw an old lady on her hands and knees licking up what appeared to be a puddle of wine on the sidewalk. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? These things always ended that way. If good was to win and triumph and all that good shit, there was no other possible ending to the situation.
He was surprised that he didn’t feel sadder at the thought, more affected, but in his mind Dion was already dead, replaced by this …
god, and so the leap wasn’t that great.
It was amazing how fast the mind could adjust.
They turned onto Monticello, heading toward the highway, and Kevin sat up straighter in his seat. They would be passing his neighborhood, his house. He glanced over at Penelope. Should he ask her to stop?
He had to.
He cleared his throat, spoke. “My house,” he said. “It’s down Oak.”
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