She was intimidated by the enormity of it all. Therel were only four of them. There were hundreds of people ml the mall alone. How many were there in the entire valley?! How could they hope to combat something of this magni-I tude?
Blood.
And how could they hope to combat something froffij which they were not immune? She was frightened of this I force that had turned all of these ordinary citizens into! amoral hedonists, and she hated what was happening, but! … but it called to her. She saw these wild, drunken peo- pie, and a part of her wanted to join them, wanted to be one of them.
Did it tempt the others as well? She glanced surrepti’ tiously at Kevin and Jack, but could not tell what they^ were thinking, what they were feeling.
They sped past the mall. On the other side of the street, the supermarket had been looted, all of the front windows s smashed, food thrown into the parking lot, and even; within the car, the heavy smell of bad wine, spoiled milk,:, and rotting vegetables was strong, nearly overpowering. Ahead, on the right, a fire was burning unchecked at the site of a Shell station, foul black smoke billowing up into the air and blending with the cloud cover.
This might be the end of the world, Penelope thought. Or the end of the world as they knew it. And it had not been brought about by nuclear war or a biological agent or a threat from outer space but by the resurgence of an ancient religion.
And it had been instigated by her mothers.
“We’ll cruise over to a rich area,” Kevin said. “Doctors, lawyers, those guys always have car phones.”
Sure enough, they found an upscale neighborhood and, hidden in the locked garage of a mock Tudor mansion, a Lexus with a car phone. Most of the other cars on the street had been overturned and burned, but this one had escaped the revelers. Jack used the butt of his revolver to smash one of the back windows of the house, and while Kevin and Penelope waited outside, he foraged through the residence until he found car keys.
They hurried back into the garage to try the phone.
The line was jammed.
They moved the car out of the garage onto the driveway, tried again.
Still jammed.
On the next block over, they found another car with a phone. A Mercedes.
Jammed as well.
“Shit!” Kevin slammed the car door. “What the fuck are we supposed to do now?”
“It was a long shot to begin with,” Penelope told him.
“So let’s find a CB,” Jack said.
Kevin nodded, although clearly whatever hopes he’d harbored of finding a way to communicate with the outside world were dashed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They traded their car in for the Mercedes, which had a double gas tank, both of which were full. A gang of small children threw rocks and bottles at the car as they drove up and down streets looking for a semi or a pickup that might have a CB radio. At one point a group of naked, obviously menstruating women, wielding homemade spears constructed of broom handles and trowels, cha them for nearly two blocks before the car finally out them.
After a several false starts they finally found a roofri company truck with keys still in the ignition that hadl CB.
They turned on the power, turned on the radio.
Every channel was filled with the sound of drunke babbling.
“Hello!” Penelope tried. “Is anybody out there?”
“Is anybody out there?” came the mocking reply.
They sat there for a half hour, taking turns, trying eac| channel, hoping against hope that someone some^j where—a trucker out of the valley and on the road haps—would hear them and answer, but the only responses they received were the jeering and increasingly obscene replies of the bacchantes.
Finally Kevin hung up the microphone and turned off! the CB, discouraged. “It’s getting late,” he said tiredly^f “Let’s hit the road.
We don’t want to be caught out her after dark.”
“You’re right about that,” Jack said.
Penelope nodded, starting toward the Mercedes.
How long would tonight last? she wondered. Tell hours? Twenty?
They drove back to Holbrook’s in silence.
April smashed the empty wine bottle against the forehead of the man she was riding, and reached her orgasm as she knocked him into unconsciousness. His fluttering eyes closed, blood gushed from the broken skin, but his organ stayed hard, and she pressed herself all the way down on it until the last shudder of ecstasy passed through her body.
She rolled off him, onto the blood-soaked grass.
The others were going to strike tonight.
She knew of their plans, though they had not told her of them, and while she wanted to be involved, wanted to share in the fun, she did not entirely approve. It was her upbringing, she supposed. She was a maenad, she was one of them, but she had been raised apart, in a considerably stricter environment, and while her true nature had eventually won out, there was still a part of her that sat back and judged, that hated what she had become.
Maybe there was more of her mother in her than her father.
Whoever her mother had been.
Or maybe there really was something to be said for environment in that old environment versus genetics debate.
Of course, everything would have been fine if it had involved only her, if she had been on her own. She would have been having the time of her life, and she’d be jumping into all this with both feet, not looking back, not having any regrets.
But there was Dion.
He’d wanted better.
He deserved better.
She tried to tell herself that there was nothing better, that being a god was the pinnacle, the apex, but she not believe it.
Maybe for her that might be true, but nc for Dion.
She wondered if it had something to do with having given birth. She wondered if Felice felt the same way| about Penelope. She’d have to ask.
If she ever saw her again.
She had not seen much of the other maenads the past! two days. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. She’d felt closer to them before the Resurrection, when they’d been just friends who drank together in bars.
She missed that camaraderie, that feeling that she had finally found soul mates, people who understood her, who had the same needs and desires she did.
But now she felt like an outcast. Ostensibly, she was one of them. Born of the same line and all that. But she felt different from them, apart, and she knew that it was because of what they’d done with Dion.
She wished she’d never been Called. She wished they’d never left Arizona.
She had caught Dionysus sleeping yesterday, lying on the grassy ground between the trees, a huddled group of women acting as his pillow, and she had stood there for a while, watching him. In sleep he looked more like Dion. The changes were still there—the size of him, most obviously —but sleep softened his expression, blunted his intensity. His face was by no means innocent, but his features were relaxed, and she could see in the dozing god her son.
She’d left before he’d awakened.
They’d been avoiding each other ever since the Resurrection. She didn’t think Dionysus observed any taboos regarding incest, but the part of him that was Dion most certainly did and was no doubt responsible for maintaining the distance between them. She, for her part, had been purposely staying away from him, although the reasons were complex. As a mother, she was disgusted and repulsed by the thought of having sex with him. But as a maenad, she … She wanted him.
She closed her eyes, feeling in the back of her skull the dull throb of an oncoming headache.
“Are you going with us?”
She opened her eyes, turned her head, saw Margaret and Sheila walking up to her on the left. Both were bruised and bloody. Bath were grinning.
“You want to be in on the raid?” Margaret asked.
April shook her head.
“You haven’t even fucked him yet, have you?” Sheila said.
“You’re one of us!” Margaret said. “Act like it!”
“I’m his mother!”
Sheila giggled. “Not anymore.”
“Fuck off,” April said. “Both of you.”
“You’re not what we’d hoped,” Margaret said.
“Nothing ever is.”
The two sisters turned away without speaking, walking back through the meadow the way they’d come. April saw a slice of red on Sheila’s right buttock where the skin had been peeled off.
A part of her wanted to join them tonight.
A part of her wanted to kill them.
The man next to her moaned groggily, stirred.
She lay there for a moment, then picked up the bottle, smashed it again against the man’s head. He sank back into unconsciousness.
She climbed back on top of him.
Night.
The four of them lay in silent darkness within the back bedroom of the house. The night outside was filled with cacaphonous noise: the full-volume blast of private stereos defiantly playing their owners’
favorite music, the wailing of high school band instruments, the electrified amplification of amateur and semiprofessional guitarists, the racing of engines, the shouting of celebrants, the screams of victims.
Penelope imagined pockets of people like themselves, throughout the valley, waiting for the raiding parties that would rape them and kill them and tear their bodies apart. At least-the four of them knew what was happening; at least they knew what they were up against. She could not imagine what other people might think.
Jack cleared his throat. “The only good thing about all this,” he said, “is that these bacchanals are very public. It’s not as if they’re sneaking around and we have to worry about where they are and whether they’re going to creep up on us.”
There was a rustling of the sheets on Kevin’s mattress on the floor.
“But it can’t last much longer, can it? I mean, people from outside will find out. They’ll send in troops or something and it’ll all be over.”
Holbrook snorted. “All be over? What are they going to do? Bomb Napa?
Shoot Dionysus down like Godzilla? We’re the minority here. Most of the people are with him. Do you know how long people like that can hold out?
Look at Bosnia The siege of Leningrad. Hell, history is riddled with stories of small groups of true believers who were able to outlast the attacks of the majority.”
“What if my mothers find out we’re here?” Penelope asked. “What if they discover where we’re hiding? Where I’m hiding?”
There was a note of grim satisfaction in Holbrook’s voice. “I’ll blow those bitches away.”
“Why wait for them to come here?” Kevin asked. “Why don’t you go out and hunt them down?”
“I’ve been thinking that’s exactly what we should do,” Holbrook said.
They were silent after that, and Penelope heard first Kevin’s, then Jack’s, and finally Holbrook’s breathing shift into the regular rhythms of sleep.
It was a long time before she herself drifted off.
She woke up thirsty. It was still dark out, still night, and the others were dead asleep around her. Her mouth was dry, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she desperately needed a drink of water.
Carefully, quietly, she drew the covers off her and slipped out of bed, tiptoeing around Holbrook’s sleeping bag and Kevin’s mattress on the floor, using the wall to feel her way out of the room and into the hall.
Still touching the wall, she reached the doorway of the bathroom. She was about to walk in, shut the door, and turn on the light in order to get a drink out of the sink when she heard noises from the front of the house.
Pounding.
And laughing.
People were at the door, trying to get in.
She stopped moving, held her breath. There was no sound from the bedroom, the others were still asleep. She knew she should go back, wake them up, but she thought of Holbrook shooting first, asking questions later, and she decided to take a peek herself first, just in case. Maybe these were people like them, victims.
Then why were they laughing?
Her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, and she walked slowly out toward the living room. She knew she was being stupid. This was what she complained about idiot characters doing in horror movies—going off to search for the monster by themselves—and though logically she knew that it was a foolish thing to do, it seeme normal, felt natural.
The laughter was calling to her, she realized, beckoning her. She should be worried about that, but she wasn’t. She was scared, she was frightened, but she wasn’t worried, j She walked into the living room.
The laughing was! louder here. She could hear the door being pounded uponf by several sets of hands, and the noise chilled her. The! living room was dark, and she could see only the vague? outlines of furniture.
Unthinkingly, almost against her!
conscious will, she walked across the carpeted floor toll the door.
Why weren’t the others waking up?
She thought of screaming to get their attention, but she j didn’t. She thought of picking up the shotgun next to the! door, but she didn’t.
She reached for the first dead bolt.
The laughter was constant, at once feminine and masculine, innocent and knowing, and it remained the same as it traveled from one voice to another. It was like a melody almost, the pounding on the doof like a rhythm.
She opened the door.
She did not even have time to react.
Mother Sheila punched her hard in the stomach as Mother Janine grabbed her by the hair and shoved a hand over her mouth. She was yanked through the doorway and pulled down the front walk to where Mother Margaret waited in front of a brightly painted xvan.
As she was shoved headfirst into the rear of the vehicle, she heard the door to the house slam loudly shut behind her.
Penelope was gone.
Kevin paced the living room as Jack sat silently on the couch. Holbrook remained cross-legged on the floor, cleaning his shotgun.
Where could they have’ taken her?
She had been kidnapped. No doubt about that. Holbrook had started to suggest that she had gone with them on her own, that the acorn doesn’f fall far from the tree, but Kevin had threatened to punch him out if he said anything more, and Holbrook had shut up.
It felt weird threatening a teacher, but any ties Holbrook had to respect and educational authority had long since been worn through, and Kevin felt neither guilty nor regretful.
Jack had stayed out of the confrontation entirely.
They were assuming that Penelope’s mothers had taken her, or, if they had not done so themselves, that they were behind the people who had. It had been a surgical strike; Penelope had been kidnapped and the rest of them had remained untouched. If it had been a random attack, they all would have been taken. Or killed.
Which meant that Penelope was still alive.
He hoped.
He had no idea where they had taken her, though. That was the most frustrating thing. They could be anywhere “The winery,” Jack said.
Kevin stopped pacing, turned toward the policeman. “What?”
“They probably took her home.”
Of course. He should have thought of that himself. He stared at Jack.
Had he been thinking aloud?
Or had the policeman just … known what he was|
thinking? He was being stupid. There was enough to worry about I without reading meaning into coincidence. They had just!
been thinking the same thing at the same time, that’s all.”
Under the circumstances and given the subject, it wasn’t|
unlikely.
“We’ll go there,” he said. “We’ll rescue her.”
“How?” Holbrook asked.
Kevin looked down at the teacher. “What?”
“How are you goi
ng to rescue her? Walk into that crowd, pass by her mothers, grab her by the arm, and walk out with her?”
“I’ll figure out something,” Kevin said defensively. “You’d better figure it out ahead of time or they’ll rip you to shreds.”
“Well, why don’t you help then?” Holbrook grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” Kevin faced him. “You have a plan for once?” Holbrook laughed. “That I do,” he said. ‘That I do.”
Penelope awoke on the grass. Her mothers were nowhere to be seen, and she sat up, stood. Her mouth tasted like wine, but, thank God, she was still fully dressed. And there was no blood on her. Whatever had happened, it couldn’t have been much.
She smelled sex, though. On the air, in the breeze, on the grass.
And it smelled good.
She turned her head, looking around. She was not in the meadow, in the woods behind the winery, as she would have expected. Her mothers had taken her to the field where the fair had been, leaving her at the perimeter farthest from the road.
She yawned, feeling groggy, dumb, slow. She was not sure what had happened. She could not remember being hypnotized or drugged or knocked out, but her memory of last night seemed to have stopped at the point where her mothers shoved her into the van. She could not recall anything after that.
A leather-clad woman rode past on the back of a nude man fitted with a harness and stirrups. The woman carried in her right hand an assortment of paint brushes, and Penelope watched as she galloped over to a man whose skin had been dyed blue. She handed him the brushes, and he passed them out to a group of children who were helping to paint a monstrous stone phallus that had been embedded in the ground.
Penelope looked around the enormous field, her gaze moving from one grotesque tableau to another. He had organized them. The drunken chaos of the previous days was gone, replaced by an institutionalized insanity, a harnessed altered consciousness. The people she saw were obviously intoxicated, obviously behaving crazily, but there was an overriding rationality behind their individually irrational acts.
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