The Scream

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  There was a pudgy guy in a white T-shirt in front of him. Dickie picked a spot just below the ribs and maybe an inch to the right of the spine. The point of the blade slid in smoothly, sunk as deep as the hilt would permit, then withdrew. The guy started to sink. His scream was drowned in the sound.

  “EEYAAOW!” Dickie howled. All over the stadium, he knew, the same thing was going on. Fifty, maybe sixty of the Faithful, stickin’ it in.

  And twisting.

  It was like a dream. So easy. So cool. Wolves among sheep, doffing the wool and letting it fly. Snap snap. Heave ho. As Pudgo collapsed, Dickie moved to the next in line. She was a tiny chick, maybe 5’3”, and she went down silently when he slit her windpipe and sunk a boot into the backside of her knees.

  And the blade was red. And the moment was hot. Two dripping dumbfucks down, and nobody had any idea what was going on. They were all facing forward, engrossed in the spectacle. They had no idea what was coming up behind or around them.

  The next guy was huge, maybe six foot six. Dickie brought his hand up and buried his switch in the soft spot at the base of his skull, prying Heaven’s Gate wide open. The dweeb beside him saw Goliath fall as the blade came out, half-turning in recognition that something had gone woefully amiss. No biggee.

  Dickie stuck it in his eye.

  Withdrew it.

  And then turned.

  He had a neat little swath behind him, and nobody even seemed to fucking notice. It was beautiful. So beautiful. It was just like the Plan had said it would be . . .

  7:06:23 P.M.

  . . . and the music raged . . .

  7:06:24 P.M.

  . . . as an MTV cameraman named Robert Harmon, in the midst of a crowd shot, found himself staring through his lens at the murder of a man named Carl Felscher and then broadcasting it live into millions of homes . . .

  7:06:26 P.M.

  . . . and the music howled . . .

  7:06:27 P.M.

  . . . and in the last fifteen seconds of Chris Konopliski’s life, time careened out of control: stopping entirely, speeding crazily ahead, slowing to a terrible, terminal crawl.

  It began the moment that the knife punched in through the shirt on his back, the back of his skin, the latissimus dorsi muscle and soft bowels beyond. It was a swift, sudden, and startling violation that was four inches long, one eighth of an inch high, and three quarters of an inch thick at its widest point. It came from out of nowhere. And it hurt like a motherfucker.

  Chris had been in the process of letting out a whoop. It turned instantly into something worse and far more deeply felt. When the blade began to twist within him, he lurched forward and away and let out a squeal that rivaled the three octaves above middle C that Rod Royale’s guitar was violently proclaiming in that moment.

  At that point the endorphins kicked in: the body’s own natural opiates, racing in response to the suddenly savaged area, numbing the slit and severed nerves, trying desperately to bring the pain under control. He felt the blade start to slide out of him, but not the way he’d felt it slide in. It was God’s way of buying him retaliation time, if he had it within him to act.

  He did. In fact, he was amazed by the force of his own outrage. IN THE BACK! screamed a voice in his mind. IN THE FUCKING BACK! He whirled then, and the motion slid the invading steel out of him clean as you please. He barely even felt the lifeblood spritzing out through his brand-new hole as he turned to face his assailant.

  But five of his life’s last fifteen seconds were already over.

  The guy who had stabbed him was a little weenie who was dressed like a Screamer, but that wasn’t the only thing wrong about him. This was not a person who admired the fine points of rock ’n’ roll; this was a person who was rotting from the inside. In those last dying seconds, his night vision was acute.

  The guy who had stabbed him was no longer a person at all.

  It was at that point that life began to drastically slow down: current experience and memory mingled. It was unfortunate, because it muddied his ability to deal with the last few seconds he had. Some candy he had stolen as a fifth-grader impinged on his awareness of the grasp that he laid on the lace of the bastard who was killing him, fingers curling around the wafer-thin Mylar shades . . .

  . . . and he felt his hand yanking downward, but it was weirdly abstracted by the face of his mother . . .

  . . . and as the Screamer’s left ear sliced off and fell, he felt the blade plunge into his heart, and there were not enough endorphins in the world to muzzle that pain, so he screamed and yanked harder on the flesh and Mylar Band-Its in his hand . . .

  . . . as a notch in the ridged cartilage of the Screamer’s nose gave way, removing the knob at the tip as the Band-Its dropped beneath the chin . . .

  . . . and the red wormy emptiness of the Screamer’s sockets came clearly into view . . .

  . . . and there were less than five seconds left, his heart having exploded in a burst of steel, and it was hard to believe that he was still aware of anything at all. But he glanced to the right and saw his friend Ted’s screaming face, found no comfort there, felt himself helplessly vomit blood in its direction.

  Then his gaze returned to the death-grip he had on the face of his murderer. His hand was yanking downward, and the flesh was giving way: peeling back like thick wet indoor/ outdoor carpeting, revealing the rancid meat and muscle beneath, exposing the greasy skull.

  “EEYAAOW!” screamed the late, great Perry Dempsey.

  Then time ran out for both of them, and they fell . . .

  7:06:45 P.M.

  . . . and the music shrieked . . .

  7:06:46 P.M.

  . . . as Kyle and Logan exchanged nodding glances, pulled the pins, and heaved their willie peters into opposite sections of the crowd. There was a five-second delay before the white phosphorus grenades exploded outward in a shower of thick white flaming tendrils; plenty of time for them to retreat down the ramp and blend into the masses cruising the promenade. The screams of incinerating agony blended very nicely with the general reverie . . .

  7:06:50 P.M.

  . . . and The Scream wailed on . . .

  7:06:51 P.M.

  . . . as Jake paused in mid-harangue to stare, dumbstruck with horror, at the chaos blooming at the back of the arena. All shout-fests with Jesse, all thoughts of Pete, all concern for the welfare of the band and the doomed next set were rendered suddenly, pointlessly, academic.

  All that registered was the dawning, acrid memory of scorched earth, seared flesh and white-hot fire that wouldn’t, couldn’t be put out. Not until it had run its terrible, chemical course.

  “Jesus, no,” he whispered. “No . . .” It was too much to consider, that some lunatic had lobbed willie peters into a crowd of people. But there it was, sending out tentacles of blistering death in a dozen different directions. It was sheer insanity. It was happening. Jake felt his heart leap straight into his throat . . .

  7:06:52 P.M.

  . . . and on . . .

  7:06:53 P.M.

  . . . as Carol Macon screamed like a baby, her moussed and streaked blond hair a mass of wafting cinders, her pouty lips stretching in agony and running like tallow as the incendiary shrapnel etched charcoal fissures into the soft flesh of her face on its way to the bone. She ran blindly, clawing and stumbling up the steps, sucking in air and getting smoke and flame until the tiny air pockets deep in her lungs collapsed. And she mercifully fainted from oxygen deprivation and shock, a microsecond before her blazing corpse hit the concrete railing that marked the topmost edge of the stairs . . .

  7:06:54 P.M.

  . . . and on . . .

  7:06:55 P.M.

  . . . as Brother Paisley turned from his up-to-the-minute newscast to behold the sight of prophecies fulfilled, praise God, as there came a great weeping and gnashing of teeth and some poor sinner was quite literally cast into the lake of fire, just a little ahead of schedule . . .

  7:06:56 P.M.

  . . . and on . . .


  7:06:57 P.M.

  . . . as Rod Royale felt a sense of absolute elation, transported in the power and the passion of the moment. People were rioting before him: visibly, tangibly at each other’s throats. It was glorious.

  Right up to the moment that Alex keeled over.

  He leaned back in his signature Ray-Charles-from-Hell stance, just like he did a hundred times a night. Only this time he just kept going.

  Ker-splat.

  It was a first. Rod was stymied. The keyboards dropped out immediately, leaving a gaping hole through which the amassed power of the preceding moments seemed to drain. The impact was gone; the band deflated like the Hindenburg aflame.

  The audience didn’t appear to notice; they seemed hell-bound on a momentum all their own. Rod watched as a fat chick down in front smacked another kid in the head with a bit of lead pipe; two security types leapt into the fray.

  Rod cast around in the escalating confusion, searching both sides of the stage for some type of visual cue as to what the hell was going on here. On the one side of the stage he saw Jacob Hamer and his sax player, arguing with one another. Hamer was pointing at the rising trails of smoke from the back of the arena, where moments ago Rod had seen the flashpot-bright arcs of light go off.

  Hempstead was shaking his head and pointing at the other side of the stage. Rod looked.

  Walker was there. Making a swift slicing motion across his throat. Repeatedly.

  Kill it.

  Rod nodded and brought the song down as quickly and gracefully as possible. Which wasn’t very.

  The music stopped. The screaming went on.

  And they were already carrying Alex off . . .

  7:06:59 P.M.

  All the while, Lenore Kleinkind had suffered quietly as the jostling mob of misguided youngsters careened to and fro. Her ears were packed with two Pamprin bottles’ worth of cotton, and still the pounding had gotten through.

  Not to worry, though; she was willing to endure even greater indignities, if need be, to ensure that her cause—correction, not her cause, God’s cause—was clearly heard. Not my will, but Thine, be done. Amen. She’d said fourteen Hail Marys, twenty-two Our Fathers, and a novena in preparation for this and felt her loins to be sufficiently girded to breach any barrier to this, her coming out.

  But now, things were getting entirely out of hand; several fights had broken out, and the music—if you could call it that—had only seemed to make things worse. Now even that was disrupted; the band had stopped playing, and one of the youngsters appeared to have actually fainted. Lenore was starting to have serious fears that her purpose might be thwarted. She was frightened.

  Still, there was hope. And God’s will.

  And where’s there’s a will . . .

  Lenore started edging her way to the far, far corner of the stage, where the privileged ones were allowed access to the back. She clutched her little red Igloo closely, lest she spill a single drop. And she prayed.

  And when another fight broke out before her, this time between a pair of broken-bottle-wielding thugs and the strapping security men guarding the gate, it appeared that her prayers were truly answered.

  Knock, and it shall be opened unto thee . . .

  Amen.

  7:07:00 P.M.

  Rachel, Lauren, Sheri, and Madeline were all staring in wide-eyed shock at the melee playing across the screen. Things had degenerated in rapid succession. Cameras that had only moments before been blending one slick stage angle after another were now scrambling to lend some sense of visual coherence to what looked like Beirut on a bad night. Lurching friezes of frantic, blurred action bleeding into screaming sirens, screaming feedback and just plain screaming.

  “Ohmigod,” Rachel whispered. “CODY!!” Natalie looked up at her mother, face screwing up with a contact rush of dimly comprehended terror, and started to mewl.

  “CODY!!! What’s going on?!!”

  “I dunno! Hang on a sec—”

  The screen blipped harsh static between channels as Cody scanned the dial, looking for something solid, and . . .

  CLICK

  . . . an ambulance screamed by on its way to Gate Six, as NBC correspondent Glenn Javits interrupted the evening news to hunker into a mike and shout something about “a massacre,” and . . .

  CLICK

  . . . a prerecorded telecast of the Of Time Gospel Hour o’ Power Ministries showed a red-faced Reverend Jimmy howling into his lapel mike about the ravages of Rock Music upon the Youth of Today, and . . .

  CLICK

  . . . a Channel Four SkyEye copter banked into a sweeping shot of the JFK playing field, with a distorted voice-over barking about the blazing pyre at one end and the sweeping stage at the other and the stampeding dots of humanity in between, and . . .

  CLICK

  . . . roving MTV correspondent Big Al Belsen tucked his neck into his Banana Republic safari vest and scuttled away from the departing whirlybird, having found The Scream utterly unresponsive to him. He and his crew were trying gamely to keep a handle on the situation. They collared the very next people they saw, and . . .

  “Oh, no,” Rachel cried, very nearly bolting out of her seat to touch the screen. Natalie started to bawl. The images that filled the camera’s eye were simultaneously familiar and utterly alien.

  “Jake, Jesse,” Big Al hollered, “is it true that Jerry Crane has just suffered a heart attack in the wake of the Rock Aid Riot?”

  Jake paused to glare at him, and for a microsecond it appeared that he might bash in Big Al’s bridgework. Instead he wheeled and pushed his way through the scrambling crews. The look in his eyes, though, would remain with Rachel for the rest of the sleepless night. The look that said it all in a word she had never truly understood.

  Incoming.

  And Jake was gone.

  Jesse remained behind, looking shell-shocked and ill. Rachel felt her heart skip a beat as Big Al’s big mike shoved toward her face. She recoiled slightly as Al said, “Can you give us any insight . . .”

  . . . and another voice came from the sidelines, saying, “Miss Malloy?” and Jesse half-turned to meet it . . .

  . . . and the thick red gouts hit her full in the fare, splashing across her chest and even spackling a horrified Al Belsen . . .

  . . . and Rachel cried out . . .

  . . . as Jesse stood, the eyes of the global jukebox fully upon her, clotted blood dripping from face and hands and breast and hair . . .

  . . . and a triumphant Lenore Kleinkind stood, emptied mason jars in each hand, hollering something about the sanctity of human life as two security men grabbed her and wrestled her down . . .

  . . . and in front of an estimated sixty million viewers . . .

  . . . Jesse screamed.

  * * *

  * * *

  TWENTY

  Alex was still delirious when the chopper arrived at the band’s Staten Island estate. For forty-five minutes he had been going back and forth between babbling and whining and moaning and writhing. Somewhere over Jersey, he had emptied his bladder.

  The rest of the passengers were silent, Rod particularly so. Walker could understand that. He was scared out of his mind. Every bit of triumphant glee they’d earned through the trashing of Rock Aid had been sucked right out by Alex’s collapse. Now they were trapped in a howling machine with a dying man, their future uncertain and their own mortality shoved right in their faces.

  It would have been nice to sedate little Alex. It would have been nice to shut him up. Under the circumstances, unfortunately, it was out of the question. Any more drugs in that boy and they might as well bag him. He was that close to the other side.

  It took Walker back. Oh, yes, it did. Took him back to the war that had made him what he was. There had been lots of chopper rides like this in those halcyon days. And screams galore.

  But it took him back.

  Yes, indeedee-doo.

  To one place in particular.

  November, 1967. In the Centra
l Highlands near Dak To. Some seven months before the real madness began.

  In the days before Momma.

  One of the many bloody firefights surrounding Hill 875 had taken down eight of his men, and he was feeling pretty fucked up about it. Corpsmen were running all over the place, trying to patch up the casualties. There was hope for a few. But only a few.

  There was one kid, a green little piece of shit who he’d known would never amount to anything; and as it turned out, he was right. Something had come from out of the darkness to take a football-sized chunk out of his innards.

  And the kid was screaming.

  It occurred to Walker that the kid needed morphine. It wouldn’t save him—the odds were good that nothing would—but it would spare him some pain, and sometimes that was the best you could do. The kid had no tag—one of those little manila fuckers that reminded Walker of those DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW tags they hung off the sides of mattresses—so it was clear in his mind that it hadn’t been done yet. You always got tagged. It was the name of the game.

  Walker had cornered his corpsman and secured the necessary ampules and works. Then he had returned to the site where the kid still lay, screaming out his heart. You’re gonna be okay, Walker remembered saying.

  Then he stuck the needle in.

  It couldn’t have been more than two or three seconds later that the kid jerked to agonized attention: eyes bugging out, mouth yawning wide, body rigid and twitching. It was like someone had stuck a high-tension power cable up his ass. And he was stiff like an ironing board.