The Scream

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  The message was the medium.

  The message was rock.

  It didn’t matter what style they played: how loud, how fast, how clean, how sweet. Even the lyrical content was secondary. Jackson Browne could fiercely depict the image of U.S. troops in Central America, the battleground of the nineties; Amy Grant could passionately invoke the spirit of a living, loving God; Zappa’s Mothers of Prevention could gleefully trash the rhetoric of tiny thinkers; AC/DC could burn straight down the highway to Hell.

  It didn’t matter. It still came together.

  Because, at root, it was tribal music. It spoke from the heart. It spoke from the glands. It spoke from the visions and aspirations of an often clashing cultural milieu nearly two thousand years removed from the murder of the man called Christ.

  It was speaking now . . .

  6:57 P.M.

  “Listen up, people.”

  A spotlight flashed, arced, and came to rest on Jake Hamer standing center stage. A cheer went through the crowd. “I’ve got some news for you.”

  “As of six P.M. Eastern Standard Time, the pledge count hit five hundred thousand. Counting everybody here”—and another cheer crested and broke—“over one half million people took a stand today. The money raised here today is not unimportant”—scattered laughter—“as ninety percent of it goes into our lobbying efforts and the Rock Aid defense fund for the artists and labels currently under attack.” Another wave of applause crested and fell.

  “But the money is not the most important thing raised here today. The money is only the fruit of this labor.

  “What is most important is the labor itself. The music. And the message.

  “Music reaches people in ways that nothing else on this earth can. It reaches right into people’s hearts, right into their souls, and it touches things that nothing else can reach. Music can work miracles. Music is one of the most powerful vehicles for change that the world has ever known. And one of the most dangerous.

  “Because just as sure as it can build things up, it can tear ‘em down again. But that’s the beauty of it. Music is what dreams are made of, as well as nightmares. You know it.

  “And they know it, too. That’s why they want to control it. They want to own your dreams, people.

  “That’s why we’re up here today, and I hope to God that’s why you’re out there. We’ve got a message to send out, loud and clear. The message that says we are not going to knuckle under to the power-jockeys, the philistines, the congressmen’s wives, or any other self-appointed, gumball guardians of righteousness. The message that says that this—right here, right now—this is not gonna go away! This is AMERICA, dammit!”

  Cheers went up.

  “Land of the FREE! Home of the CRAZED!”

  More cheers.

  “Don’t care WHAT the neighbors say!”

  Still more cheers.

  “ROCK ’N’ ROLL IS HERE TO STAY!”

  The audience flipped, hooting and howling. The applause roared.

  Jake stood there, riding the crest of the deafening energy. Between the twin Rock Aid icons, enormous neon universal forbidden signs with guitars bursting through the center crossbars, glowing in the dusk air. It was a moment that he had been afraid to even hope for. It nurtured his soul. It was a good thing, genuine and real.

  And like all good things, must come to an end.

  “Okay,” he said, “the show’s not over yet. There’s been a slight schedule bump. The Jacob Hamer Band won’t be up next.”

  A few boos and groans spattered within immediate earshot; Jake grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s just a . . . technical problem.” He looked over to Walter, the stage manager, who gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  “In the meantime, coming up next is a band that’s really raised some hell in the last year.

  “Ladies and gents, please welcome . . . THE SCREAM!”

  6:59 P.M.

  There was a single bright moment of illuminated terror that struck Mary Hatch in the moments before The Scream began to play. She stopped in the mouth of the tunnel leading from the second tier near gate number 6 and stiffened as if she’d just grabbed hold of a high-voltage cable.

  Paul Weissman continued on for a few pudgy paces before he realized that she was no longer in tow. He had deemed it more important to go back out on the promenade where the Word could actually be heard over the insidious din of devilry within. Now the girl was actually watching; her shallowness in the Spirit was as plain as her horsey face. It more than concerned him; it just plain peed him off. He turned back in annoyance.

  “Mary!”

  She stood, all trembly and moon-faced, ignoring him.

  “Mary Hatch!”

  She turned then, startled; the eyes that stared back at him were swimming in near hysteria. She said something he couldn’t quite make out over the roar of the crowd, something like Can’t you feel it?

  It was much clearer a moment later.

  When the screaming started.

  7:01 P.M.

  It hit the fan before the stage had even turned all the way round.

  There was a swell of thunderous applause, a blistering boom of megawattage, and there was no turning back.

  Talk about a band that hits the ground running. Jake paused to marvel from the wings. They don’t even wait for the platform to lock. All prior speculation that The Scream were really wimps who relied on lavish special effects and technoflash incinerated in an instant.

  Jake was slightly stunned by the sheer spectacle of it all. It was different from the videos: lean, vicious, stripped down to the bone. The Scream pumped out the first changes of their first tune like a juggernaut. The beat was rock-solid, a classic R&B groove reasserted at maximum overdrive slaughterhouse intensity like some heavy metal hambone. The guitar chugged in, a hyperthyroid harbinger of doom. And when the synthesizers started to wail, Jake felt the pit of his stomach drop like an elevator car with its cables cut.

  Jesus God, he thought, where on earth did they get a sound like that?

  It seemed louder somehow, louder than anything else he’d heard today. It was as if they had tapped some source above and beyond the available power, a source manifested in not just more volume, but more sheer presence. The dusky fabric of the air itself seemed coarser, grainier, like low-light images in a photographic blowup. He felt suddenly exhilarated and fatigued, as though the sound were stealing energy from him.

  Only to feed it back. Slightly, irrevocably, altered.

  Jake felt a dizzying rush. And I’m just on the sidelines, he thought.

  I wonder what it’s like out front . . .

  7:02 P.M.

  Out front, it was madness.

  From an aerial view, or the slightly more rarified view of the press box, the floor of the arena was filled with literal waves of humanity, pressing back and forth insistently until even the most stalwart pockets of resistance were overrun. The images being captured and transmitted nationwide from the outer rim of the arena had a savagely hypnotic beauty: thousands upon thousands, vibrating to the rhythm and the beat like sand crystals in a Chladni figure.

  Down in the throngs, it wasn’t quite so poetic.

  In fact, it was goddamned uncomfortable. It was quite literally thousands upon thousands, from Brenda and Carl Felscher’s point of view, with the former largely comprised of a bunch of asshole metalheads who had pushed their way up front, stomping on cooler chests and blankets and other pieces of queen-sized territory carved out earlier on by the Felschers and a host of others. Carl had stretched his good-natured tolerance to the limits by not hauling off and belting one of them, but it was getting tough.

  The metalheads were just too much. Carl and Brenda both agreed with the spirit of the day and all; hell, Carl even supported the fight to keep bands like the Dead Kennedys from getting the shaft, and he liked them about as much as he liked these guys.

  But their asshole fans were another story. Principles, schminciples: Brenda almost got another elbow in the fa
ce, and he swore the next goddamned arm that knocked him was going to goddamned well go home broken. He looked at his watch. Goddamn. Carl hoped he could hold his temper until Jacob Hamer came on. Maybe then they’d calm down. Or go away, even.

  Though he wouldn’t stake his life on it or anything.

  7:03:10 P.M.

  Rod Royale was pleased. He could feel the Presence mounting steadily, felt masterful in the face of it. Seventy seconds in and his guitar was a demon in his hands, kept in check only by the fluid click of fingertips on steel. It howled with the barely contained abandon of the damned, defiant in the face of Creation. He was in awe of the Presence. It was sweet, so sweet. It was exactly as it should be.

  And what’s more, it was a mere taste.

  Of what awaited.

  Rod strode up to the very lip of the stage for his first solo, leaned back and thrust his hips suggestively at the throng. The throng responded. He swayed back and forth with the rhythm; the crowd rocked back and forth in a surging motion that was half slam dance, half Saint Vitus’ dance. The motion spread. It looked like quite a few people were in danger of being crushed out there.

  Rod Royale smiled. Tara hadn’t even opened her luscious mouth yet, and already It was there. This pleased him greatly. It served to confirm several key things.

  Like Its imminence.

  And her ultimate disposability.

  The first song raged on. Tara was working the other side of the stage, getting ready to sing. Rod glanced back at Alex only once, saw the frail form hunkering behind the massive racks of synthesizers like the high priest of high tech. Periodically Alex would spasm and throw his head back, colored light glinting off the mirrored shades that wrapped so tightly around his skull. Not for the first time, Rod wished that his brother could see the crowd.

  Or anything, for that matter . . .

  7:03:49 P.M.

  No question about it, Jesse was upset. She had already run the emotional gamut from concerned to annoyed to agitated to a state of quiet panic, and the only thing that kept her circuit breakers from shutting down completely was the analytically frantic chore of getting the show ready to go on.

  “If it goes on,” she muttered.

  “Did you say something?” Hempstead asked. He looked concerned. The stress was showing on everyone in the band.

  Jesse tried to fake a genuine smile, failed miserably. “Never mind,” she said, “I’m just tired, is all. The tension must be really getting to me.”

  Hempstead nodded in sympathy. “I hear dat. Did Petey show up?”

  Jesse shook her head, barely holding back tears. His guitar and effects were being laid out in position, ready to go. Seeing them there gave her the willies. What if he didn’t show at all? What then? Go on anyway? Bag it?

  It was impossible to even consider. Where the hell was he?

  Her mind reeled with grim possibilities. Her head ached. Her skin ached. The music from the stage seemed to be penetrating, vibrating in the pit of her stomach, in her very bones. Jesus, she thought, did they have to play so fucking LOUD?

  Stupid question. Of course they did. That was half the point: they pumped out sound waves like a sonic blanket completely enveloping anyone within vibratory earshot. It wasn’t supposed to be mellow or contained or even civilized. It was supposed to rock, shock, shake, rattle, and roll.

  Still, this was different. There was something else present in the sound, something underneath it or inside it or around it that was making Jesse’s belly twist into tight little fists. Her skin felt flushed and goose-bumped. She looked through the translucent backdrop that separated the two halves of the stage, saw the glittering blur that was the band working the masses filling the huge concrete crater beyond.

  And Jesse felt afraid.

  As the music itself seemed filled with things . . .

  7:04:13 P.M.

  Walker and Hook exchanged conspiratorial nods of approval. From the insular nest of the master sound board the effect was crystal clear: they were surrounded by a sea of ululating flesh. The Scream’s first song, “Rip the Veil,” was nearing its climatic wall of white-hot noise. Hook’s finger rested delicately on the sub mixer, right over the slider for channel twenty-three. He looked at Walker. Walker nodded.

  The slider went up. A tiny, tiny bit. But enough.

  For the moment.

  You couldn’t hear even the result, but you sure as hell could see it. A ripple passed through the thrashing waves of humanity; a shudder, almost. Hook smiled.

  They were primed.

  7:04:39 P.M.

  Kyle and Logan stood at the rim of ramp SC, smack-dab in the middle of the arena shell. Just two more guys in rumpled black field jackets and shades, faceless in the massmind of the crowd. The shiny yellow backstage passes, their purpose fulfilled, had been summarily jettisoned into the nearest trash can.

  A pity, Kyle thought. He could easily have parlayed those passes into a blowjob with some succulent ramp rat in the back of Logan’s van. Maybe doubles, go around the world in stereo.

  But no. Business before pleasure. No time for that now. Way too busy.

  And far too dangerous. The passes were for one thing and one thing only: to get them by security. Beyond that, anonymity was the ticket. Besides, there’d be plenty of pleasure later. That, and much, much more.

  Or so they were promised.

  Kyle surveyed the sprawling panorama before him and felt the tiniest twinge of regret. It was nothing personal; he bore ninety-nine percent of these people no ill will at all. He liked the music just fine, and he thought the politics of it all were naive, though heartfelt.

  But that was all neither here nor there. There was a job to be done, and these poor, unwitting motherfuckers had their own part to play in it, each and every one. Just as Logan had his.

  And Kyle had his.

  And as he reached inside his jacket to touch the cool steel case of what nestled there, he felt reasonably sure about which part would last longer.

  And which couldn’t end nearly soon enough.

  7:04:50 P.M.

  Tara’s voice cut through the between-song roar of the crowd like a siren in the eye of a hurricane.

  “DO YOU WANT IT?”

  Applause.

  “I said, DO YOU WANT IT??”

  BAM! The rhythmic section hit a power chord to underscore the emphatic appeal. The audience went nuts; they wanted it, all right. Tara looked back toward Rod and Alex wickedly. Alex was very busy, making microsecond adjustments. Tara turned hack to the crowd to ask the critical question.

  “Yeah, well . . . WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH IT?”

  The answer came back ragged. Stick it in.

  “SAY WHAT?”

  Again, stronger. STICK IT IN.

  Tara looked back; Alex nodded. He got it.

  “And once you got it in, babies. Once you got . . . it . . . in . . .

  “WHAT DO YOU DO THEN???”

  Got it. The Answer.

  Loud and clear.

  7:05:00 P.M.

  The band on the TV screen kicked full tilt no sooner than the words had left their lips. “Stick It In” was always a big crowd pleaser, replete with its follow-the-bouncing-bloody-ball chorus. Alex Royale had captured the audience response on one of his digital samplers, Cody explained, and he boosted it and fed it back into the mix every time Tara sang the fateful chorus.

  The band overdrived through the first verse . . .

  “Cold steel, hot slice

  feel the edge of my

  my strange device”

  Tara drew a dagger from the slit suede folds of her waistlet and traced it suggestively up her inner thigh.

  “It’s real, it’s right

  it’s gonna be

  my baby tonight”

  Blood tracked in close-up on the screen, shiny rivulets down to the muscular curve of her calf.

  “Holy shit!” Madeline cried. “How does she do that?”

  “Special effects,” Rachel said. “Cody told me
it’s rigged with a hollow handle that has a squeeze-bulb filled with stage blood. Isn’t that right. Cody?”

  “Yipper,” barked the little speaker over the set. “That blade prob’ly couldn’t cut Cheese Whiz.”

  “It’s certainly realistic,” Sheri said.

  “It’s disgusting,” Lauren added.

  On screen, Tara sang:

  “When you lay down

  on my wedding bed

  we won’t get it up

  till the night runs red

  and you

  STICK IT IN!

  (TWIST IT!!)

  STICK IT IN!!

  (TWIST IT!!)

  STICK IT IN!!!

  (TWIST IT!!)”

  “Gak,” Madeline sputtered.

  “Disgusting,” Lauren sneered. And they all laughed. It was strangely funny.

  For about another thirty seconds.

  7:05:29 P.M.

  Now. Walker sensed it in the way the shadows shifted, in the way a child senses the advances of a funny uncle. The song had reached its big crowd-call breakdown; time to get over to the Eastern parking apron, to the makeshift heliport.

  To get things warmed up.

  “STICK IT IN!!!”

  (TWIST IT!!)

  He cast one last glance at Hook; one micro-flicker of optic musculature that said it all.

  Crank it.

  Hook beamed.

  And did as he was told.

  7:05:58 P.M.

  In the hive-mind: a spark, burgeoning to overglow. The perfect pitch, accomplished. The fuse, ignited.

  The moment.

  At hand.

  7:06:00 P.M.

  It was a six-inch blade with a bone-white pearlite handle, and it flicked open easy as pie. Dickie dug it out of his right engineer boot and brought it to glistening life in a second. Ker-snick. A whisking arc of stainless steel perfection.