The Scream

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  “This. . . is our . . . last,” her voice halted and stammered, “con. . . versation . . . till . . . we meet . . .face . . . to face.”

  “Yes, I know,” Walker replied. Strange. She sounded perfectly lucid for whole minutes, then contact would suddenly frazz out. It was happening in cycles, the last two of which he’d actually timed. It was happening.

  “Every three minutes now,” he said.

  “DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?”

  He turned toward Debbie Goldstein, who was standing beside him in the narrow confines of the press box. He shook his head and said, “No, dear. Nothing.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I SAID, NOTHING!”

  “OH.”

  At one hundred and twenty-five decibels conversation was reduced to its most fundamental building blocks. She nodded, and Walker watched as her head kept right on nodding with the beat.

  She was enjoying herself: apparently she’d loosened up a little as the evening wore on. He was surprised; he would have thought her too delicate to appreciate the grotesquerie that played simultaneously across the full view of the hall and in excruciating close-up on the giant ArenaVision screens. The cameramen were doting alternately on Tara’s crotch and Momma’s face, with only the occasional reference to Rod or Alex or the rhythm section tossed in as a sweeping blur of sound and color and motion.

  And everyone was eating it up, dear sweet Debbie included. He found himself seriously contemplating letting her live, which might not be the kindest thing in the end and was at the very least out of character.

  But he was thinking about it, all the same.

  “MY GOD,” she yelled into his ear from a foot away; he could just make it out. “THEIR SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE WONDERFUL! THEY’VE GOT A BIGGER PRODUCTION THAN DISNEY ON ICE!”

  Walker smiled grimly and nodded. “It gets better.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I SAID, IT GETS BETTER!”

  “I CAN’T WAIT!” She nodded and turned her attention enthusiastically back to the show.

  “She’s . . . adorable . . .” Momma hissed, burning coals that gave off no heat in his brain. “You can have . . . her by the end of the night. You can have a hundred like her.” He winced; it would be a kindness, after all.

  “AFTER . . .”—another spasm—“After. You take . . . care . . .”

  “. . . of me.”

  Walker nodded, deliberately out of pace with the music. The enormous squatting harlot on the stage turned at that moment, leaning back on its haunches and twisting its grotesque head until it seemed to be looking right at him. The jaw snapped open and shut several times. Snap snap.

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise,” he whispered.

  * * *

  8:09:33 P.M. RECAPITULATION

  “YEAH! GO, BABY!”

  Hook clicked in, on cue, with the taped effects. Stage Three slid effortlessly into the mix: a thousand voices in a digitally enhanced altar call, going, “Magdhim DIOS! Satanas DIOS! Asteroth DIOS! Ellylldan DIOS!” in dreadnought-class counterpoint to the established beat. The effect was like the sound of continental plates shifting: huge and grindingly majestic and deadly.

  The response was as immediate as it was gratifying. Sixteen thousand voices joined in. The pheromone level skyrocketed on the meters. They were almost there.

  “ALL RIGHT!!” Hook laughed like a fucking maniac and slipped on his gas mask.

  He never knew sonata form could be so much fun.

  8:10:14 P.M.

  The four of them were gathered at the mouth of the corridor, hidden behind the piles of road cases. It was Hempstead, Heimlich, Pennycate, and himself. The two dead guys were there as well, but they weren’t saying much.

  And it was time to talk.

  “Very quickly,” said Pennycate. “Aside from those two clowns, I saw nobody backstage.”

  “What does this mean?” Jake asked.

  “It means there could be any-fucking-body there,” Pennycate elaborated. “The one thing I know is that I saw nobody, and nobody saw me. They got some men up on the front and at the sides of the stage. Lots of techies, but they don’t matter. They’re busy. Except . . .”

  “Except what?” Heimlich said.

  They got three guys up on these things above the stage. It looks like they’re running the lights, but they’ve got some things mounted up there that look like fucking M60s to me.”

  “Maybe special effects?” Heimlich suggested.

  “Uh huh,” Hempstead said. “Jes like our buddies here.” He jabbed the ponytailed stiff with the suppressor at the end of his Uzi’s barrel.

  It was hard for Jake to tell his friend from the others, what with their ski masks and all. Just one happy gang of terrorists, invading the local rock concert. He was all too aware of how important it was to keep his head on straight—he was the payroll man, he called the shots—but it was getting pretty hard for him to cope right now.

  They had killed two people. That was for starters. They had lifted this operation straight out of trespassing and into Murder One. There was no going back. Only forward and through. To the end.

  That rated a big number one.

  Then there was the absolute fucking insanity of the situation, which was no small change and so ranked number two. Then there was the very real possibility of failure, the possibility that Jesse was already dead, which wasn’t bad as number three . . .

  . . . except no, wait, scratch all of the above, there was one little soul-blasting realization he’d neglected to mention, which was that he had brought this war onto himself and now he was here and he didn’t like it a bit, which led to the biggest realization of all, which was that he might very well be sitting on the last two or three minutes of his life . . .

  “Shut up,” he said, and instantly knew it was wrong, because suddenly everybody was looking at him, and he didn’t need to see their faces to know what they were thinking. He’s losing it.

  Which, in battlefield vernacular, amounted to Well, he can kiss his ass good-bye.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m back.”

  “Does that mean we can go now?” Heimlich inquired.

  Fuck you, Jake thought, then said, “Let’s do it.”

  And then they were up and running, silence not being the issue now, The Scream were making more than enough noise to cover any sound they could possibly make as they ran down the corridor, toward the back of the stage . . .

  . . . and they were a death machine, yes, they were, the old feeling was back and Jake felt himself a cog in a larger device that was intrinsically self-contradictory, you were fighting for life and therefore you would kill, you would kill anything that got in your fucking path, you would do anything to save yourself and the ones you love . . .

  . . . and the ones he loved the most had already been taken to death’s door, it wasn’t an abstraction, it was a fact of life, he could still see the faces of Rachel and Natalie and, yes, even Ted, see the terror there and think I will not be able to rest until I know for a fact that these people are dead, I don’t have to look over my shoulder and wonder if one of them is sneaking up behind, they’re dead and I’m safe and my people are safe and I never have to worry about them dying again . . .

  . . . and then there was no time to think about it, because they were at the end of the corridor, the music thundering in their ears, and Hempstead went to the right and Pennycate went to the left and Heimlich hung back, guarding the exit, and Jake went straight for the stage. There was scaffolding to either side, scaffolding that held the tons of sound reinforcement equipment aloft. It would do the same for him, give him a bird’s-eye view of the stage.

  Quickly, silently, he moved to the left.

  And began to climb . . .

  . . . as the music downshifted into the tightest pocket Ted had ever heard, and everybody around him started bouncing like rubber room rejects, chanting like they meant it, like they were really fucking buying whatever the band was selling.

  And it wa
s scary. He didn’t like the edge they were walking one bit. He didn’t like the look on Tara’s face or the way the slash of Mylar across her eyes reflected the lights back at him. He didn’t like the huge hulking thing behind her, which was looking less and less like a great stage prop and more like something sentient and predatory with eyes that followed his every move.

  And he especially didn’t like the hole that was opening up ominously in the floor of the stage right behind Tara’s widespread legs. Opening like some secret missile silo.

  Or a mouth preparing to scream . . .

  “AAHHHHHH!!”

  Jesse cried out, as the cross tipped back and sent her swinging. It was lost in the pounding of the stage above them, lost in the roar of the show. “NOOOAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

  The pain was beyond all comprehension. Her whole being strained against the onslaught from the weight of her body sliding down as they hoisted the prop into place. The ligamentous destruction in her wrists and ankles raged against the ropes until the blood ran. They had crucified her, while her own beloved watched, and they had hauled her into a gravitationally excruciating position of blasphemy.

  Amazingly enough, she was still lucid. She had remained so throughout the kidnapping, the stripping and the shaving and the insane violation, and remained so right up to this moment.

  But she didn’t know how much longer she could fight.

  “PEEETE!!” she shrieked, hands clawing into utterly useless fists. “PETE, MY GOD!! HELP ME!!”

  “Yeah, babay! EEEAYOW!!” he shouted. “Dontcha just love SHOWBIZ???”

  The blood pounded in her head like air-sledges to the temples; her arms felt ready to dislocate any second. Her beloved was also shaved and wired at the temples, only he was dressed in a rotted cassock, holding a lethal-looking ceremonial dagger. And he was laughing, alternately cooing and stroking her. And he was rotting, fingers leaving little fleshy smears wheresoever they roamed.

  And he was going to kill her. He said so, repeatedly.

  Once the platform had fully risen.

  “PETE, PLEASE!!” Jesse tried to see his face, but she couldn’t orient herself to the sensory overload. She was clad only in a gauze winding sheet, with her breasts and belly exposed and quivering. Sticky white electrodes stuck painfully to the side of her head where the hair had been sheared away for better adhesion, corresponding to points along the cerebral cortex meridian.

  Jesse dry-heaved as an entire reality map overturned, internal gyroscope spinning in a mad dash to reassert itself, the data of dissociation being funneled live to the computers below and the keyboards above.

  And the platform rose.

  Light and color and sound and heat and death flooded the world into which she was rapidly ascending. I WILL NOT LOSE IT! She screamed internally. Externally, it came out a much more fundamental “EEEIYIAAAHHH!!”

  She strained against the bonds, feeling the pinch of rope and Pete’s dead hand crawling across her exposed flesh. NOOOO!! NO!! I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN! I WILL NOT GIVE UP I WILL NOT GIVE IN!!

  As vows went, it was downright commendable.

  But it didn’t slow her ascent one iota.

  She felt the sickening lurch of vertigo as the platform edged up. The music punched through to the cochlea of her inner ears with all the finesse of a coping saw. The dread inch-by-inch ascent into madness continued, as Pete cackled and fingered the blade and the platform slid to a pneumatic whooshing halt and Jesse stared in wholehearted bug-eyed disbelief.

  Into the faces of sixteen thousand faithful . . .

  8:10:23 P.M.

  . . . and Tara went into what looked like a trance.

  The cross had erected at the apex of the Momma’s thighs, just ahead of the drummer and about a dozen feet from the lip of the stage in what was a truly lewd effect, and the naked form writhed under the grasp of a rotting priest that leered like an undead game show host and wielded a knife that made the one in Ted’s boot look like a goddamned potato peeler. The priest turned to face Ted’s way.

  Ted shrieked. He had seen the priest before.

  And it didn’t take much to figure out who the woman on the cross was.

  The music went through a wild series of shifts right then, mutating from Gothic phantasmagoria into lunatic heavy metal power-dirge, as Rod strode purposefully up to Tara’s mike and boomed, “IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN!! The rhythm section kicked in agreement. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ONE AND ALL, COME ON DOWN TO THE ALTAR CALL!”

  Ted started half-pushing, half-bashing his way over the hurricane fence on the side of the stage as Rod scanned the waiting hordes and cried—

  “When we all come together in blood and bone

  In flashing light, in crumbling stone . . .

  The Father will spit on all their fears

  As the Mother slits the veil of tears . . .”

  The audience couldn’t agree more. Rod’s face screwed up in melodramatic intensity, and he bellowed, “YOU ARE CHOSEN! YOU ARE CALLED! SHE IS RISEN! SMASH THE WALL!”

  The chosen responded . . .

  “SMASH THE WALL!”

  The chosen adored . . .

  “SMASH THE WALL!”

  All storming the fences . . .

  “SMASH THE WALL!”

  And climbing on board . . .

  8:10:45 P.M.

  . . . and in the hive-mind, the bright spark flared: signaling the end, the opening of the Way, and the last great task remaining . . .

  8:10:46 P.M.

  . . . and Mary Hatch could feel the dark thing moving, moving in a hundred different directions at once. From her seat at the top of the balcony, she could taste the frenzy . . .

  . . . the feeding frenzy . . .

  . . . and she fell to her knees as the first supplicant fell to the stage at Tara’s feet. She would not watch the obscenity. She would not take it into her eyes. She would not become a part of it. She was praying like crazy to Father and Son and sweet Holy Spirit to save her.

  To please, God, save them all . . .

  . . . but Buzz Duffy wasn’t worried about salvation just then. He was having a blast.

  There had been some confusion on the stage for a second: one bouncer in the trough, tripping over the cameramen and looking around confused and screaming for backup, the backup slow enough in coming for ten guys plus Buzz to get over the fence and move in, forcing Tara back as the altar call chant built in intensity; the naked chick—naked, fer Chrissakes—upside-down on the cross and screaming her head off, the dude in the robes holding the knife up in front of her and laughing, Tara holding her knife up as she motioned them forward, the enormous Momma looming above him and watching it all, and the Buzzer up and over and smack in the middle of it . . .

  But then the most incredible thing had happened, because Momma had seemed to look right at him, real personal; and before he knew it, a big guy in sunglasses was dragging him forward while three other guys tossed the rest of them back over the side.

  It was then that he realized the awe-inspiring truth.

  Out of all the limp dicks that had crawled to the stage, he alone had been Chosen . . .

  And it was the most wonderful moment of Buzz Duffy’s brief life. The taste of victory lay sweet in his mouth. He gave it voice with a full-throated, “EEAYAAOW!”

  And they ushered him forth.

  He didn’t begin to feel the terror until he was nearly two feet from Tara. Only then he could really see what was happening to her belly, and that gave him serious second thoughts. He started to turn, but the guy in the suit had a crusher grip and before Buzz knew what was happening he was flat on his back, pinned on the stage, staring up as Tara moved toward him.

  Buzz had time for one last look at the audience. A sea of squirming faces gleamed back.

  They certainly seemed to be enjoying the show.

  Then Tara was astride him, her ankles to his ears, and she was saying something that he vaguely recalled as being like the wine-and-biscuit shtick from his family’s church, the y
ewka—Eucharist, that was it—and he could see up her skirt that she wore no panties, he could see her belly bulge and squirm as she plunged the blade into it, he could see the trails of red worms oozing down her inner thighs as she lowered herself right onto his face.

  “TAKE THIS AND EAT,” she sang.

  He screamed.

  “FOR THIS IS MY BODY . . .”

  Behind and above them, Alex engaged the digital sequencers.

  The last phase of the Great Passage had begun . . .

  8:11:13 P.M.

  . . . and Pete was just beginning to slit her throat, the silver chalice steady beneath her jugular, the words “THIS IS THE BLOOD POURED OUT IN THE NEW COVENANT” booming in her ears, when he jerked and dropped and Jesse never even saw the top of his head exploding . . .

  8:11:14 P.M.

  . . . and Jake said Good-bye, Pete from his awkward, precarious sniper’s position on the scaffolding, and he began to aim again before his late friend even hit the floor . . .

  8:11:15 P.M.

  . . . and Hempstead crashed through the door of the press room and found no Walker and everyone dead, and he knew the sonofabitch was backstage somewhere and they hadn’t found him downstairs and he must be here, and he yanked back the goddamned door to the press box and jumped out into the dark and the noise and there was a six-foot insect turning toward him with a walkie-talkie in its hands, only it wasn’t an insect at all, it was Walker with a goddamned gas mask on, pressing the call button like crazy, sending a signal to someone somewhere, and Hempstead raised the Uzi to blow his miserable fucking ass away . . .

  . . . and then the whitelight wall of heat slammed home, scorching and blinding him as just under two hundred gallons of homemade napalm went off on the floor of the arena, sending a solid wall of fire rocketing toward the ceiling in great smoking sheets, throwing Hempstead hard against the door and into the black silence of oblivion.