The Scream

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  “Into temptation, but . . .”

  A blue-red glow washed across the stage.

  “THE BETTER HALF.”

  And Pastor Furniss saw his devil made flesh.

  It was all he feared it would be.

  “But deliver us from Evil!!” he cried, and turned to run.

  Something grabbed him by the arm.

  “DELIVER US FROM EVIL, LORD!” Furniss screeched, wheeling around. Paul Weissman had already run, but the pastor was not alone.

  A bony face smiled at him.

  “EEYAOW!” it cried. “TOO LATE!”

  Another one appeared behind him, grabbing him roughly by the shoulders. Furniss screeched again as they twirled him about like a squeeze toy and thrust him down into a ringside seat. He grabbed the armrests instantly, trying to vault back out and away. He would have done it, too.

  But the Screamers put an end to that rather abruptly.

  They both had knives with sharp steel blades.

  Two swift and brutal motions and his hands were pinned to the wood.

  The shock of pain eluded him at first, so sudden was the impact. They held his wrists firmly the whole while, as if to ensure his continued cooperation. He realized the full implication of the action at roughly the moment the pain slammed in. “JEEEEEEESUS CHRIST!” he squealed, his baser self going haywire.

  “Showtime, dude!” one of the creatures croaked. His breath stank of the pit. Furniss’s fingers spasmed in purely biological comprehension.

  And he stared, wild-eyed, the blood running between his fingers, as the curtains opened . . .

  . . . and he saw the thirty-foot-high voluptuous monstrosity kneeling on the stage: its head bent forward, its knees spread twenty feet wide. It was nearly naked, skin glistening in the hot glow of the floodlights. Its hips were lewd and wide as the Great Whore herself, its belly taut and round, its fat-nippled breasts full as sacks of ripe fruit.

  It was the Song of Solomon, the Whore of Babylon, magnified a millionfold. It was Ishtar and his and Aphrodite, feral fecund idolatry incarnate.

  It was the biggest obscenity he had ever seen.

  She abased herself in a posture of depraved surrender against the backdrop of an endless Gothic cathedral; the vaulted ceiling extended out into infinity, and at the apex of each razor sharp arch there was hung an inverted Christ, cruelly nailed to an inverted cross; and from the Christ directly above her head, the blood of sacrifice rained endlessly down . . .

  Furniss squirmed, awestruck and terrified. He couldn’t see the face, obscured as it was by thick coils of hair that draped all the way to the floor. Neither could he fully view the temples behind her veil, their halves ripe as rotted pomegranate, secreted behind the sprawling mass of gleaming chromed-and-blackened drums.

  But something told him that that was all about to change.

  . . . because her arms moved then, he saw that now, she wasn’t real, not real at all, just a trick just sinful hollywood special effects those were cranes moving toward the ceiling.

  Furniss’s senses were swimming. The physical shock was wearing off, hot sticky agony burning red in the center of his crucified palms. But the other shock—the wrenching expansion of boundaries forever exploded—that just went on and on.

  The crescendo reached its zenith. The stage glowed. The arms of the stage prop raised with it, hands clawing toward the cathedral arches. Furniss’s face was bathed in sweat; his hands twitched against the blades, drawing fresh blood. He was afraid to look down. He was afraid to look up.

  And as the head came up, hair falling away to reveal the face, he was most afraid to look there . . .

  . . . because it wasn’t a human face at all, it was part human and pan goat and mostly bone, ash-skin on a horned savaged skull but with human jaws and pointed ears and eyes of smoking embers . . .

  . . . and the face raised up with mouth falling open and howling.

  And the lights came up to reveal the band in position.

  And the crescendo screamed down.

  And the rhythm section kicked in.

  And sixteen thousand souls entered Stage Two.

  En masse.

  * * *

  8:03:30 P.M. DEVELOPMENT

  Hook spiked it up another notch.

  They had never gone this high in any performance, anywhere. It was a calculated risk. If they could handle it, they push it further in Stage Three, and Four.

  And more.

  He beamed. They could do it; he had faith in them. Momma had faith in him. Seeing was believing, and they so wanted to believe, and why the hell not?

  They were begging for it.

  His hand was a five-fingered flurry, each digit articulating the incremental increase of a different instrument’s blend. His assistant scrambled behind him, tending the mounting storm.

  “What’s the pheromone status?” Hook yelled over the din, looking back.

  “Six point three oh and counting!”

  “Tell me when it reaches the magic number!”

  “You got it!”

  Hook cranked the levels. A visible shudder passed through the crowd, like the rippling shock wave on a lake when you lob a stone in.

  He smiled.

  And lobbed another.

  8:04:00 P.M.

  Buzz couldn’t believe his good luck.

  He no longer mourned the loss of his mystery date. So what if she had ditched him. In a big way it was for the best; he could get closer rogue-style than he ever could towing any girl he ever met.

  Even so, he hadn’t expected this. Right the fuck up front.

  And the band was wailing, live.

  Before his very eyes.

  “EEEEEAYOWW! YEAHH!!” He screamed till he was hoarse. It sucked right up out of his lungs and on into the full gestalt of the arena. He felt great. The stage was fucking great. The band was fucking great. Tara was fucking great, dressed to slay in very fucking little.

  And God, were they tight.

  Buzz had seen The Scream exactly six times: Philly, Jersey, Jersey, Long Island, Pittsburgh and tonight. But tonight was by far the best. He wasn’t even stoned or anything and it seemed more fun, more intense, than he could ever remember.

  Every sound had an edge on it. The drums pounded against his rib cage, regulating his breathing; the cymbals cut through his head like satin buzz-saw blades. The bass was so viciously crisp that his brain bled in joy at every popping speed-run.

  And the keyboards.

  God.

  The record paled in comparison. Reality paled in comparison. Nothing sounded that good; life didn’t get that good. It made cranking the volume to eleven on the CD with the headphones strapped on seem like elevator music from a Soap ’n’ Sing. Alex was on fucking fire; Alex hunkered in his elevated niche, which was built to look like Victor Frankenstein’s castle after the peasants had trashed it, and he burned.

  And Buzz burned right along with him.

  The intro power-shifted into the groove-proper of the song: a steady, crazed four/four chug with a half-time backbeat. And while the sixteen thousand Buzzes in the audience might not have understood the musical particulars of the structure, they recognized the effect at once. Years of inculcation, from Jerry Lee to David Lee, had imbedded it in their goddamn DNA.

  It was cruise music. It was the heart of rock and roll.

  It was their lifeblood. And it was pumping.

  Just in time, too.

  Because Tara had started to sing.

  8:04:30 P.M.

  . . . and this was sweet, oh, momma, sweet power and freedom, the calves lining up to eat from Her hands, unaware of the hammer, focused in on her as She swayed and She cooed and dripped black honey in their ears . . .

  “You need to believe, and

  You believe what you hear.

  Lord, I won’t interfere with that.”

  . . . and Tara felt the Presence in her, delighting in the feel of her body as She flowed through her veins, made that perfect body arch and writhe and d
ance and drive them all to madness . . .

  “You mean what you say, but

  You don’t know what you’re saying,

  I won’t interfere with that.”

  . . . and the world was so close now, go close She could taste it as they sang . . .

  “Babes of the Modern Age

  Got such a killing rage.

  Twisted by lies and deceivers.”

  . . . and they sang . . .

  “Babes of the Modem Age

  Waitin’ to set the stage

  Ready to be the believers.

  . . . and Rod stepped up to the mike to join her, as they sang . . .

  “All that we ask

  Of the Critical Mass

  Is believers . . .

  All that we ask

  For the Critical Mass

  Is control . . .”

  8:05:00 P.M.

  And the solo flew off his fingers like lightning, skewering the hearts of all who stood before him. He could see the impact, he could feel the impact of the notes striking home, hammering down to the bone.

  He hoped that Walker was paying attention.

  This was, without a doubt, the performance of his life.

  It was beautiful, now that he’d gotten beyond the terror. It was everything that his little heart could desire. Could there he any doubt that he was born for this moment: death thrumming through his strings, twisted and bent to magnificence, presided over and delivered by the grace of the sovereign Rod Royale?

  The band was pumping behind him. Dead or alive, they sure kicked ass. He fired off a spitfire flurry of thirty-second notes that left the audience aaahhhing at his technical virtuosity, then he leaped three feet in the air and came down in a perfect split, let them aaahhh again, pulled some screaming harmonics off the top of the neck and rose to his feet, twirling, wailing, letting the awe and acclaim slide over him as he put the finishing touches on his solo, melodic now, slipping gracefully into the primal pulse that bespoke that most critical part of the first movement of the Mass.

  The altar call.

  Already, another pisshead was scrabbling toward the stage. Evidently he hadn’t spent enough time with the album. Everybody knew it took at least three minutes of pumping and chanting for the sacrifice to begin. Some people just couldn’t wait for a beautiful woman to sit on their face.

  Well, here comes one asshole who will never get the chance, he mused, as Keynes and Locke intercepted like pit bulls and Keynes whisked him away, and Rod couldn’t resist grinning into the polished snoot of the camera as he began to chunk along with the heartbeat of the ritual, power chords punctuating the rhythm. He knew that his fans wouldn’t mind. They lived for his smile.

  It was the least he could do.

  For all those little people . . .

  8:06:00 P.M.

  The guy was maybe thirty-five, but he sure enough had the spirit. Too much, in fact. He was up and over the hurricane fencing before Locke or Keynes could so much as whistle, clambering toward the stage.

  This was not the first time. In point of fact, it was the fifth time tonight. It had been a while since they’d been on the road with the band, what with taking care of the home front and all, but they remembered very well what to do.

  When the kids went nuts and tried to make the stage, the name of the game was Scoop and Sling.

  Of course, tonight they were doing it somewhat differently.

  The aging kid was four feet from Tara. Keynes was closer. He closed in fast. He was six foot two with eyes of blue, and they sized up the interloper lickety-split.

  Brown hair, longish and thinning and scraggly. A black, inch-thick headband, knotted into place at the back. Dark eyes, drunk and swimming. Weathered and unshaven pretty-boy face. Small-bodied—five foot six at the max—but lithe and powerful, given the shortage of mass and the obvious drunkenness governing it. He had a muscle shirt under his oversize army field jacket, and the muscles were pretty self-evident.

  In the hands of Keynes, the boy was cake.

  He hoisted Lil’ Rambo up onto the stage by the armpits and started hauling immediately to the left. The cameraman danced around him, going for Tara’s profile. Locke nodded, resumed his vigil. Lil’ Rambo made one last desperate outreach for Tara before his feet disappeared offstage. “LEEB ME ‘LONE! I GOTTA FUCKER NOW, MAN!”

  “I bet you do,” Keynes responded, dragging the little man down the backstage steps. “But tell me, what do you think the odds really are on that?”

  His captive hollered something unintelligible about vaginal penetration. Keynes nodded his head and maintained his pace, heading back toward the pile behind the stage. Lil’ Rambo would look very nice on top.

  Until the next one came along.

  “Hey! Where the fuck you takin’ me, man?” the guy wanted to know. “Hey!”

  Keynes shrugged and quickly assessed his surroundings. The corridor leading out to the loading ramp was empty. Kent and Barryman were nowhere to be seen. And of course Spectrum security had already been dealt with. The little pile was to his right. His Beretta was in its holster, waiting.

  “It’s time to go now.” Keynes let go of Lil’ Rambo’s armpits, reaching for the gun, but the words didn’t quite come out because suddenly there were a pair of very hard elbows jamming into his solar plexus from either side, and in the second it took to whoof out air Lil’ Rambo had spun and withdrawn a knife in what Keynes would have to say was a very professional move.

  One second later, his throat was slit. There was another second lost as he reached up to meet the outgoing blood. Pennycate made good use of the three seconds following, grabbing the big man by the hair and driving the blade through the temple. Death was instantaneous. He let the body slump down on the top of the pile and wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s clothes.

  “OKAY, MAN! OKAY!” he bellowed, backing off and slipping the knife back into its sheath. “OKAY, SO I’LL JUST LEAVE, MAN! I’M SORRY! JESUS CHRIST!” He turned and staggered briskly down the loading dock corridor, noting the position of the generator room before heading past the enormous stacks of road cases, seeing the two men that he’d expected at the end of the hallway, their backs to him. There was no longer any point in shouting. From this moment on, surprise and silence were the ticket.

  He had seen what he needed to see. He knew all that he needed to know. The implications bespoke something far worse than he’d expected, but it wasn’t the first time.

  Though it was probably the weirdest.

  He was twenty feet from the mouth of the exit now. There were two ways to go out: staggering or lethal. He decided on staggering. Every moment from this point on was critical. If he made decent speed and kept his corpses to a minimum, the whole thing would go down clean and in less than five minutes.

  Ten feet now, and closing. He thought about what their reactions would be when he pushed between them. As crazy as they were, it was entirely possible that they’d gun him down on the ramp. On the other hand, that would be a remarkably stupid move, given that the outside had no idea what was going on inside. So the odds were technically, if you were dealing with even reasonably sane insane people, in his favor.

  Six feet, the hilt of the knife never more than a split second from his hand. There was the tall one with the ponytail and the greasy little lump. Pennycate estimated that the skinny one would be tougher to tangle with but would go down easier if caught from behind, if only because there was less meat in the way, and as he closed in to three feet his hand was wavering in the direction of the hilt of the blade, but at the last moment he chose not to draw it because there was a very good chance that he’d be five feet past them before they knew what to do and ten feet past before one of them started to pursue him, barring an instant death by gunfire that the odds were against, and by that time Heimlich would have signaled the van, which would pull up to the lip of the loading ramp and surprise the shit out of them, at which point the door would be open for them to roll right in.

  All this
trundled through his mind in the moments before he pushed between the guards, saying, “’Scuse me, this place sucks, you people give me the shite,” and started meandering at a considerable rate up the ramp, counting the seconds, waiting for the holes to open up in his head or his chest or his belly, clenching his teeth right up until the moment that he heard the word “HEY!” and the footsteps slapping their way up behind him, at which point he knew that he was home free, because even though he couldn’t see Heimlich he knew that Heimlich was there and the van was coming so fast that it was not to be believed and all he had to do was keep walking, arms swinging free, giving no indication whatsoever that he was counting the footsteps behind him and waiting for just the right moment to strike.

  And all of this was fine, right up to the point that the footsteps started closing in severely and the van was nowhere fucking in sight, at which point Pennycate allowed his all-or-nothing philosophy to prevail, measuring the millimeters between his pursuer and himself and his hand and the hilt of the blade as he reached upward with practiced speed and took the hilt and withdrew the blade and turned just in time to set the process of gutting the ponytailed man in motion, driving in and lifting upwards, feeling the soft organs give and the fluid pour forth while he waited for the sound of gunfire to interrupt his reverie, and when it came it was from somewhere above and behind him, which was good, because the greaseball at the bottom of the ramp had his gun out now and would have gleefully fired were it not for the phut phut phut that made his face evaporate with barely a sound.

  Thank you, man, Pennycate psychically sent to Heimlich as he finished up with the ponytailed man and let the wet husk collapse to the pavement.

  Then the van pulled up, and the doors flew open, and the men in black ski masks came running down the slope. One of them came up beside him, handing off the Uzi, the ammo and a ski mask he could keep all for his own.

  “Everybody’s bacon is crisped in there if we don’t move right now.”

  “So get your mask on, you beautiful little motherfucker,” Heimlich said, smiling. “And lead the way.”