He shook his head.
The woman touched her belly and whispered, "Is this one even going to see the light of day?" More tears traced paths down her cheeks.
How can anyone answer that question? Tasha wondered, even as instinct told her that she’d bargain with God for the lives of her children, too, if she had any. She glanced at the two boys as they walked the wall. If their mother’s offer didn’t fall on deaf ears, and the children survived, who would care for them? It was unthinkable that they and their unborn sibling should be punished for something that wasn't their doing. And even if their mother was imperfect, and Tasha wasn't judging—she tried not to after a decade of working in an emergency room—wouldn't taking their mother from them be a punishment too?
The boys jumped down and ran back to wrap their arms around their mother.
"Don't cry, Momma," said the eldest while his younger brother pulled a lint-covered Jolly Rancher from his pocket and handed it to her.
"It's watermelon flavor. It'll help you feel better."
She smiled and took the candy. "Does the lint give it special powers, Gabe?"
The littlest boy nodded. "Those bits are the medicine."
She popped the linty candy into her mouth and hugged her sons.
Tasha touched the woman's hand. "Do you need help getting home?"
She shook her head. "It's kind of you, but we’re going to catch the bus. I'm heading up to the hospital."
Peter said, "A bus should be by soon."
Tasha helped the woman to her feet, wishing there was more she could do.
"Thank you both for being good to me. There aren’t a lot of kind people left in the city."
While they waited at the bus stop with her and her sons, Peter pulled the little paper boat out of his pocket.
“Here,” he said, giving it to the boys.
They thanked him, grinning like he’d offered them treasure. A bus arrived a few minutes later—a sign in Tasha’s mind that civilization hadn’t completely crumbled. They saw the woman and boys aboard, and then Peter and Tasha continued their westward journey.
Their reflections followed them, flitting across storefront windows and skipping over those that had been boarded or busted. Tasha hadn’t realized that she’d missed seeing him walking beside her until she saw him mirrored in the windows.
“When we were married,” she said, “I would've given anything to make you whole and happy.”
“I know. But some things couldn't be bargained or bullied away.” He scuffed the stained sidewalk. “Except you.”
She cocked her head and considered him from the corners of her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be trying to convince me to forgive you?”
“I am, I hope.” His shoulders hunched. “By confessing.”
Ahead of them, a large crowd had gathered at the foot of the red-brick YMCA building, peering up and pointing toward the roof. Sirens wailed in the distance and people shouted.
Tasha stopped. "Goddammit. Not again." She scanned up and down 4th Avenue.
Peter looked from the crowd to her. "What?"
“Are there any cabs still running?”
“Yeah. I saw one while we were talking to that woman by the library. Why?” She pointed to the top of the seven-story YMCA building, and he said, “Oh, no.”
A pair of young men embraced upon the edge of the building’s roof. They rocked with the breeze. Red rain discolored their jeans and gray jackets and streaked their faces.
“I don’t want to see this.” She tugged on his arm. “I can’t stomach another suicide.”
The sirens grew louder. He covered her hand with his. “It’ll be okay, Doc. The firefighters are coming.”
“Maybe.” She pressed her palm to her chest and swallowed. “You don’t know how much death I’ve seen since those things appeared in the sky.” She clutched his fingers and whispered, “You don’t know.”
But Peter did know how hard suicides were on Tasha. He’d helped her settle her mom’s affairs after the woman had turned her maroon Corolla into a gas chamber in their garage. His gaze jerked away from hers.
“There’s a cab. C’mon.” He waved at an orange Prius as it slowly turned toward them from Marion Street. They ran to the curb and the car pulled over.
As they scrambled into its dark red interior, the driver peered up through the windshield at the building and asked, “Think they’ll jump?” His accent was soft but foreign.
“Yes,” Tasha said through clenched teeth.
The thin black man turned to look at them over the seat. “Where to?”
“I don’t know,” she snarled. “Please, just drive.”
The cabbie frowned. “Be more specific, lady.”
“Discovery Park,” Peter answered.
Tasha gawked at her ex. He’d asked her to marry him in front of the park’s abandoned chapel. She hadn’t been back since long before their divorce.
The man nodded and put the silent Prius into drive. He pulled away from the curb, but not quickly enough. There was no missing the screams, the horrible thuds, and the sound of shattering glass behind them as the cab accelerated.
Tasha chewed a cuticle and said, “That much desperation is so damned depressing.”
Peter put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her a little closer. "Don't be sad, Tash. They made their choice. That’s one of the consequences of free will."
She looked at the cracked red leather of the seat in front of her. "Like freely choosing to destroy a marriage?"
His other hand made a fist in his lap, his knuckles showing white against his skin. "Freedom to make mistakes means accepting some really crappy consequences."
She whispered, “But you didn’t give me a choice, just the crappy consequences.”
Peter squeezed her shoulder and nodded.
“Suicide isn’t sad, it’s a waste,” the cabbie interjected, talking around a wad of gum. “Young fellas like that throwing everything away, and the whole world going to hell. You think that bastard”—he jabbed his thumb skyward—“gives a crap about what’s going on down here? No. God sent those damned Watchers to terrorize us. That’s what all this is, what we’ve always been to him. A game.”
Tasha looked up. The man was watching her and Peter in the rearview mirror even as he accelerated through Seattle’s eerily empty streets. She bit her tongue not to snap at him to pay attention to his driving. Why was she worried about getting killed in a car crash anyway?
The cabbie’s focus returned to the road. “All these people flipping out and killing themselves and each other, and not a goddamned thing is gonna happen. It’s all a big joke. God’s proving a point.” He swept his hand across the car to indicate the smashed windows and burned buildings they were passing. Belltown and Lower Queen Anne had taken a beating during the last outbreak of rioting. “Believe me, I lost my wife and kids, my whole family, when he destroyed Haiti with that last earthquake. God will squash this world and not blink an eye.” He leaned back and added, “Or he’ll do nothing at all.”
He unwrapped another stick of Juicy Fruit, shoved it in his mouth, and added, “I wish he’d stop screwing around. People gonna change for him? Hell no!” He thumped the steering wheel with his fist. “Makes me so damned mad, the way he toys with us. Mice for a cat. You ever seen that? A cat messing with a mouse until the poor thing dies from fear? That’s what we’ve become, the mouse. It’s all bullshit!”
The cab sped past the twisted remains of a gas station. Looters and rioters had set it on fire and the tanks had exploded. A crater was all that remained of the red-white-and-blue building. The fire had blackened the face of the Pacific Science Center, reduced trees and grass to ash, and scarred the white legs of the Space Needle. There were burned and damaged buildings just like it throughout the city.
The car’s tires splashed waves of blood-red rain across the sidewalks. To their right, the Queen Anne Greenbelt was nothing but blackened tree stumps. Above it slumped the charred skeletons of million-dollar home
s, their brick chimneys leaning askew and their empty windows staring out to sea, wounded, forlorn, and abandoned.
Tasha stared at her face reflected in the car’s red-streaked window.
Seattle’s been smashed and burned, and what remains standing is stained by—what? Sin? Do you believe that, Tash? she asked herself. Peter’s face was reflected in the window, too. He believed he was damned without her forgiveness because he’d sinned against her. She stared at him. Is he right?
The cab sped past the Fishermen’s Terminal. Its buildings had been burned to the ground, and the trees that had fronted it were splintered ruins, their obliterated trunks stabbing at the sky. Most of the docks were empty, though the masts of a few sunken boats jutted from the water. Where were the rest? Had their owners fled out to sea or died at the hands of desperate men? There’d been rioting all along Salmon Bay, fighting for passage away from the city.
The area stank of burned wood, acrylic, and plastic. Oil and fuel rainbow slicks plumed on the water, undispersed by the rain. Worse was the stench of death that lingered like invisible fog. She cleared her throat and pulled her shirt collar over her nose.
“You okay?” Peter asked.
Tasha shrugged. “My sinuses are burning.”
Finally, the cabbie turned from Government Way into Discovery Park and stopped in the park’s shuttered learning center. Though soaked in red, the pristine land’s towering pines and lush maples were untouched by violence.
“That’ll be $26.56,” the driver said.
“Keep the change.” Peter gave him thirty dollars and followed Tasha as she climbed from the orange car.
She opened her umbrella as the cab accelerated out of the small parking lot. “Let’s go to the field.” She suddenly craved its wide-open space and unobstructed views of Puget Sound, the shush of the cool, steady breeze blowing through the grass and the feel of it lifting her hair.
Red mud and dead leaves squelched under their feet as they followed a dim, tree-lined path. It led to a large, open field that once had been part of the Fort Lawton military base. The forest loomed all around them, shadowy and dripping. The air was heavy and still.
Like lost souls, people meandered—singly, in pairs, and in groups—through the trees and along the trails. No one spoke. No one smiled. The whole world seemed haunted by the looming unknown.
Tasha and Peter emerged from the forest to follow a paved road. It served a small enclave of yellow-and-white private homes that overlooked the park.
“Whoa. Look at all the tents,” she said and stopped. Hundreds were pitched all across the open field below the homes. But the people were quiet there, too. The wind that usually blew in from the Sound had died. No crows cawed. No dogs barked. No gulls circled overhead. The trees and grass were still.
Even the rain had ceased.
“This is creepy.” Tasha shivered.
“It’s like the whole world is holding its breath.” Peter was looking at her, but she stared at the luminous Watchers instead of returning his gaze. “Tash,” he said, “can we talk about what happened to us?”
Her gaze went to the trees and tents. "What’s there to talk about? You threw away our marriage like God's throwing away this world."
"I didn't throw it away, Doc."
"You’re right.” She finally faced him. “You burned it to the ground."
"Yes." He didn’t shy away from her anger even as he added, “And you with it.”
She hugged herself. "Jesus, Peter. Why?"
"Because you’re a better person than I am.”
“What?” She squinted at him, confused.
“You save people, Tasha. You heal them or help them move on." Peter raised his hands, palms up and empty. “I never had anything like that to give. The closest I got was with my music. But when these failed…” He curled his fingers to make fists. “I had nothing.” He lowered his hands until they hung limp at his sides.
She opened her mouth to reply when a woman spoke from behind them.
“Will you join us for some chocolate chip cookies?”
Tasha and Peter turned.
A gray-haired woman and an elderly man stood upon the covered porch of the closest colonial revival home. She held up a plate of cookies and nodded. They wore matching blue windbreakers. They were the kind of couple that Tasha had thought she and Peter would become—friends and friendly.
“Come on up,” the man said, waving them toward the house’s front steps. “You look like you could use something sweet.”
Peter and Tasha exchanged looks, and then veered back across the paved road. They collapsed their umbrellas and left them beside the steps, then joined the man and woman on the cheery yellow porch’s white wicker furniture.
The woman passed the warm plate around as her husband handed out light blue cloth napkins.
“Take as many as you like,” she said. “I’ve got another two dozen baking. When the end comes, I intend to die with a belly full of warm chocolate chip cookies.”
The man leaned a cane against the side of a small table and piled three cookies on his napkin. “I’m Ambrose Stillman and this is my wife, Evelyn.”
Tasha and Peter introduced themselves.
The cookies were heaven on earth. “These are the best cookies I’ve ever eaten,” Tasha said as she licked melted chocolate off her thumb.
“Maple extract is the secret,” Evelyn replied. She shoved half a cookie into her mouth as she sat on the sofa beside her husband. She closed her eyes and hummed as she chewed.
"So you believe the Apocalypse is here?" Tasha asked, gesturing toward the field and the red-hued ocean beyond.
Ambrose nodded. "Yes.”
Tasha chewed her lip, then said, “You’re not afraid?”
He rested the plate of cookies on his lap, and then took his wife's hand. “No reason to be. We've made peace with ourselves and the people in our lives." He looked from Peter to Tasha with sharp green eyes. “Said we’re sorry and meant it."
Tasha nibbled another cookie and glanced at her ex-husband. Is it really that simple? She hated Peter for cheating on her. Or she had hated him. Now, with his confession, she wasn’t sure how to feel.
Evelyn's blue gaze slid from Peter’s face to Tasha's. She took the plate from her husband, leaned forward, and proffered the cookies. Peter took two more, then looked out at the Sound.
Tasha took two more as well. They were just what she’d needed. "What do you think the end of the rain means?"
Evelyn's hands were spotted with age, her skin wrinkled and sunken between fine bones. She was tiny, and her hands trembled as she held the plate. "We've seen sores, the waters turning to blood, searing heat, and earthquakes," she replied. "There’re only two signs left."
Peter said, "Darkness will fall, then God’s army will come.”
Chills crawled up Tasha’s spine and across her scalp as she met her ex-husband’s haunted gaze. His mouth was pressed into a straight line, and he was twisting the blue napkin.
His time is running out. And maybe mine, too.
She turned to the Stillmans. "Is the old fort chapel still standing?"
They nodded. She rose, shoved the rest of her cookies into her coat pockets, and said, "Come on, Peter, I want to see it again."
He stared up at her with a mouthful of cookie, swallowed, and stood.
Evelyn and Ambrose reached up and they all joined hands, strangers connecting at the End of Days.
"Thank you for your hospitality," Tasha said as Peter nodded.
Ambrose replied, "It was our pleasure."
Evelyn smiled, squeezed Tasha's hand, and said, "Do right by each other."
Tasha and Peter headed across the field and skirted the two-story, decommissioned radar antenna dome. Round and stained red, it resembled a blood moon and was the last vestige of the military presence that had long guarded Seattle’s shores against invasion.
Peter looked back at the house. “We left the umbrellas.”
“It’s okay. We ca
n get them later.”
He nodded and jammed his hands into his pockets.
They wove through the silent sea of blue, green, yellow, and orange camping tents, and within minutes, they’d reached the chapel’s open doors. Singing drifted out from its depths. They stared into a building that had sat empty and boarded up for over forty years. Now it welcomed those who were penitent and afraid, echoing with songs and sorrow.
Peter grabbed her hand. “Is coming here your way of forgiving me?”
Tasha met his gaze, but her answer died on her lips as the world changed from a gray day to a dark night. It happened fast, like God had lowered a dimmer switch on the sky. She looked up and gasped as Peter whispered, "No."
No longer luminous, the Watchers had turned charcoal black. Merging and swelling, they blocked the sun’s light as they bulged and distorted.
Oh, hell.
Tasha tugged Peter’s hand until he looked at her. “Your betrayal still hurts. But I don’t want to die bitter and angry.” She lifted his palm to her cheek.
He pulled her into his arms and whispered against her hair. “I thought I was a failure and hated that you weren’t. I wanted you to hurt, too, and that wasn’t right, Doc. It wasn’t right.” He shook his head. “I'm so sorry."
She closed her eyes and held onto him. He smelled of rosemary and mint, and he felt like safety. Warm tears slid down her cheeks. Tasha nodded and looked up at him. “I forgive you, Peter.” She meant it.
He smiled, and it was the brightest and most beautiful smile she’d ever seen.
Wind lifted a whorl of leaves around them. It whipped her hair and snapped at their clothes. It gained power, grew warm, but made Tasha shiver. A sonorous sound, like a foghorn, trumpeted from all directions. It sounded long and loud, made the ground shiver, and raised an enormous murder of crows from the forest.
Fear wrapped its fingers around Tasha’s chest and squeezed the breath out of her.
Peter’s smile dissolved. “Oh, God.”
She looked up in time to see the Watchers—now a single, black, swollen behemoth—explode, like a giant, blooming fireworks show. A hundred thousand points of shimmering light arced out and away. But, unlike a Fourth of July display, these lights didn’t fall gently or fade quickly. They brightened and winked like glass shards, gained speed, and twisted and turned to avoid midair collisions.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 26
