Something banged–
(a gun, Mommy had a gun once and Daddy had many)
–and light flashed through the broken body of the SUV.
Then silence.
Darkness.
Mist.
And now she waits.
She is afraid.
She sings.
ʺJesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so….ʺ
The mist curls on her. Cool on her forehead, clinging to her like gossamer strands that caress then flee.
A shape appears. She hopes for the dark face, the sad eyes.
The mist parts. A face does appear, but no sad eyes shine, bright with half-hidden tears and regrets even less buried. No, these eyes are hooded, viperous…enraged.
It is the elegant man. The one who was in the car with her, whose presence exerted such power, caused such terror.
It still does. The fear she had felt alone is suddenly doubled, trebled. She wishes for the solitude of curling mist, the company of none but the dead.
The man stands outside the door. His fists balled at his sides, fingers curled in so tightly upon themselves it looks as though they are bloodless.
ʺStop singing,ʺ he whispers.
She did not realize she had continued singing. She does not stop now. She cannot. There is a part of her that worries if she stops here, now, in the presence of this man, she will never regain the voice lost so long.
ʺJesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so….ʺ
She does not know the rest of the song. Perhaps she has forgotten. Perhaps the woman with no face never sang more than that. Either way, she sings it over and over. The elegant man grows angrier and angrier. Face redder and redder until it nearly glows in the mist.
ʺStop. SINGING. THAT. SONG!ʺ He takes a step toward the broken SUV and the broken body within. She thinks he will tear the door off and tear her body out of its shell, then perhaps her soul from her body and her sanity from her mind.
What sanity she has, at least.
His hand reaches for the door. Fingers stop only inches away from metal. He looks even angrier. A wrath so pure that she cannot look at it. She closes her eyes, if only for a moment–and is surprised she can even do that. She never knew how to blink at her own command before.
Just an open and a close. The time a star takes to twinkle in a cloudless sky. But when she opens her eyes, another person has come from the mist, another member in this strange convocation of living and dead, mobile and motionless.
ʺDonʹt you dare!ʺ
She cannot see a face or features, but she sees a hand stretching out, hears the voice of a woman, strong and unafraid and somehow wise.
The elegant man is stopped cold. He stares at the woman who has dared step between him and the thing he wants to have, the thing he wants to destroy.
ʺGet out of my way.ʺ
The woman crosses arms in front of her. She laughs. The laugh is joyous, a laugh that comes of many years well-lived. ʺDonʹt think so, old man. You got no backup here, no nothing here at all but you and me.ʺ
The elegant man snarls, somehow still seeming opulent, a red jewel flashing in reflected flame. Another step toward the woman.
In the car, she watches. She fears. The woman cannot stand before the elegant man. She believes that nothing can.
But the woman does not move. She stands firm. Arms crossed. She laughs again.
The tapered fingers of the elegant man hook into claws, the manicured nails seem talons as they move toward the womanʹs throat.
Then his visage changes. Gone is the rage.
He is wrath no longer. Now he is only fear. Head moving back and forth, then he turns a fast circle, looking around at things she cannot see. Perhaps the faces she thought she saw once upon a time, the things in the gray?
The elegant man coughs out a sound half whimper, half gasp. He spins one more time, ignoring the old woman, facing her, leaning toward her.
ʺI donʹt have time for you,ʺ he whispers, the sound a saw hacking through her last vestiges of courage.
ʺJesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so….ʺ
ʺYouʹll sing again, but a different tune. Youʹll scream my songs.ʺ
ʺGo ‘way, old man.ʺ The old womanʹs voice is a whisper. But another sound joins it. A yawning moan that makes the skin stretch and shrink at the same time. Different than the coughs and screams that came with the crash she just experienced, but related somehow. Perhaps not born of the same parents, but in the same neighborhood of a very bad place.
The moan comes again. And a roar this time. So loud she cannot hear her own newfound song.
The elegant man runs away. He disappears in the mist.
The old woman stands still, head slightly cocked as though listening to make sure the elegant man is truly gone. Then turns to look at the people in the car.
She sees the old womanʹs face. Black skin creased with wrinkles. Each line the tale of a day lived in laughter or tears, together a weathered book easily read by any who care to look. The old woman has been happy, the old woman has done right and done well. She is beautiful.
The old woman does something odd. She squats down, then rises again. ʺHavenʹt been able to do that in decades,ʺ she says with a laugh. ʺSo used to bad hips I almost donʹt know what to do with myself.ʺ Another squat, another laugh. ʺGotta run,ʺ she says. ʺGotta find my man and then we got mountains to climb.ʺ
Then the old woman laughs and runs with the awkward grace of a foal and, like the elegant man, disappears into the mist.
The strange moan writhes through the air a moment later.
She is alone again.
Then not alone.
Darkness looms beside her. Something so big it blots out the mist, the last strains of light, the world.
She sees things writhing beside the door. Things that are flesh, but not. Things that are both separate and joined forever.
Each has eyes. Snakes joined at the base. They scream as one, the strange moan she heard.
Then the roar.
The thing moves. A huge eye looks at her. It is bigger than the bent window frame. Like the rest it is not a single thing, but a thing made of other things. Writhing, whining things that look like yellow maggots surrounding a dark hole to–
(darknesses and nothingtime)
–places unknown and perhaps unknowable.
The roar again. The SUV rocks with its force. And she hears it not only beside her, but behind and before. All around.
This thing is not alone.
She is not alone.
She blinks again, but this time there is no fear that overcomes this great beast. No salvation suddenly appears. The eye still glares when the twinkle-time of her eyes is over.
She is not alone. The beast is not alone. Something more powerful and so more fearful is astride the beast. A rider atop the darkness.
Something reaches through the window.
It touches her.
ʺJesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so….ʺ
This will be her last song.
four:
ASYLUM
STRANGERS WE COME
From: POTUS
To: Anton Koikov
Sent: Friday, May 31 6:32 PM
Subject: RE: FW: RE: Proposal etc.
My Dearest Anton,
I appreciate your email of a few moments ago. But considering that I am in a bunker several hundred feet below ground, my options are a bit limited.
Also, given your attitude to my previous post and our personal relations in general, and especially given the present situation and its ever more likely outcome which likely means that this will be one of the final communications you and I must endure with each other, Iʹd like to take this opportunity to very cordially invite you to suck my big one and then go sodomize yourself on one of those ICBMs you are so ridiculously proud of.
Yours sincerely,
Richar
d Peters
PS Your Minister of Internal Affairs has been feeding us information for years.
***
Isaiah drove the long, lonely road and couldnʹt decide whether to rejoice or despair.
The world was dying, of that there was no doubt. The information given him in the envelope at the beginning of all this was definitely true. John had been a soldier, voluntarily infected with some sort of disease that had been intended to lead to world safety but instead maddened him beyond reason. Now he carried a virus that adapted nearly infinitely, that had a ninety-eight percent mortality rate, and that could be communicated and run its course in anything from minutes to a day. The only hope was to kill him, to retrieve his body, to bring it in for testing.
Isaiah had started this journey bent on saving Katherine, then following salvation with revenge–his usual practice and pattern. Those motivations remained, but there was also the larger reality that the deaths of millions–billions–might be in his hands.
What about this damn fog?
That was something he didnʹt understand. It was everywhere, as though the world itself was sweating out the last moments of humanityʹs existence. Sometimes thin enough that he could push the SUV up to ninety or ninety-five miles per hour, sometimes so thick the only way to make sure he didnʹt run off the road was to slow down and stick his head out the window so he could watch the highway lines running beside him.
He didnʹt know where it came from, and neither did Melville. He didnʹt have to ask the scumbag to know this–it was apparent from the way the gaunt man kept staring out the window, shaking his head and looking lost.
They passed through Las Vegas. It was dark. The fog had claimed it. The strip was black and unmoving, no illuminated fountains or world-renowned architecture attempting to gild the desert temple to hedonism, no frenetically flashing billboards inviting passersby to come inside and lose themselves and their money. Just quiet. Just dead.
Once past the strip Isaiah did spot one oasis of light. He turned off the freeway. Melville protested. Isaiah ignored him. He had to see what was left.
It was a hospital.
Isaiah veered into the parking lot.
The hospital was dimmer than it should have been: probably running on emergency generators. But bright enough for the windows to shine like the many eyes of a block-bodied monster half-hidden in the haze.
He pulled in close. There was no movement. A large sign, written with thick scrawls of black marker across a series of blue hospital sheets, stretched across the doors.
NO ROOM
Underneath it, someone had placed another sign. A white sheet this time, a different color pen. Information that had been added later:
OnLY DEaD inSIDe
A crumpled form in a white coat lay at the bottom of the doors. His hand reaching toward the parking lot as though he had died turning the last cars away.
Isaiah honored the dead manʹs entreaty. He thought he glimpsed movement as he left, a quick flash of a white face in a window. But when he turned his head to look it was gone. Still, his skin prickled as he drove away, the creeping feeling that he was being watched.
Were there any alive?
Perhaps.
Yes. There had to be. The alternative would mean a barren world for Katherine.
If Katherine hasnʹt died in the outbreak as well.
ʺI want to talk to her,ʺ he said.
ʺNot how it works,ʺ said Melville. ʺI can call for support, but I donʹt call Mr. Dominic. He calls me.ʺ
Isaiah drove on.
The fuel indicator on the dashboard dipped slowly. Either the truck had the best mpg Isaiah had ever seen, an enormous gas tank, or some kind of magic was at work.
He thought of the bible story of the widowʹs oil. A woman who fed a prophet in a famine and as a reward was blessed that her small vessel of cooking oil and her tiny store of flower never ran out.
Only this is the story of the killerʹs gas.
He almost smiled. It had been a long time–years–since he had thought of a bible story. Longer since he had likened it to anything happening in his life. This version was hardly a good topic for a Sunday sermon, of course, but it still felt oddly comforting to return to the old stories.
They drove.
Through Mesquite, then St. George. He worried that they might lose their way; that the mist would obscure their path or make them miss turnoffs. But the line was a straight one after Las Vegas. Just miles of emptiness, swallowed by mist that silvered, then grayed, then darkened.
Night. Or perhaps only a dusk whose last light was blanketed by the fog. Either way, full dark surrounded them.
ʺHow close are we?ʺ he said. It was hard to speak: Melville had been quiet the last few hours and Isaiah preferred it that way, so opening the door to conversation was loathsome. But the fuel gauge was finally dropping to the ʺEʺ and he needed to know when they would hit Cedar City and could find gas.
Melville consulted the map the old man had given them in a place that seemed another part of a strangely disjointed dream. ʺUh, looks like it should be any time now.ʺ He looked at the trip odometer Isaiah had zeroed out at the beginning of the expedition. Did a calculation in his head. ʺAw, dammit.ʺ
ʺWhat?ʺ
ʺI think….ʺ He looked at the map again. ʺI think we might have passed it.ʺ
ʺWhat?!ʺ
ʺHey, donʹt blame me. Who uses frigging maps anymore? That old queer could at least have given us a GPS or something.ʺ
Isaiah rolled his eyes. ʺWell, if we donʹt find somewhere to get gas weʹll be walking soon. And chances are no one is going to come along to pick us up again.ʺ
The prospect scared him. This stretch of road was lonely at the best of times. Now…they could die walking along its edges and waiting for another person to come by and save them. And that meant not only his own death, not only the death of everyone else, but–most important–that of Katherine.
Is this even worth it? Is there anything left to save?
Yes. There has to be.
The fog swirled in front of him. For a moment the headlights actually made some headway into the water droplets. A sign lit up.
GAS–FOOD–LODGING
NEXT RIGHT
ʺThank you, God,ʺ said Melville. He wiped his brow. ʺThat was close.ʺ He winked at Isaiah, like a good prank had just been played on him. ʺGood one, Batman.ʺ
Isaiah didnʹt answer. He took the turnoff. Signs led them to the location where they could find gas.
He turned into the lot. The SUV died suddenly as he did. A single cough, then nothing. Empty. Good timing for an empty tank, he supposed.
The mist parted, revealing the building that had been hidden.
Melville screamed and slammed his hand on the dash over and over again. ʺWhat the shit is this?ʺ
Isaiah almost didnʹt notice. The sound of Melvilleʹs palm slapping the plastic dash had drawn his eye. But then he saw something else.
Melvilleʹs neck glistened.
Scales. The beginnings of spines.
ʺYou got that shot, didnʹt you?ʺ said Isaiah.
Melville didnʹt look away from the building ahead of them, the building that was most definitely not a gas station, though it was a building of a type just as familiar to Isaiah.
ʺYeah, we both did, moron,ʺ said Melville. He looked at Isaiah and said through gnashed teeth, ʺWhat? Did you forget? Did you catch a case of retard from your girlfriend?ʺ
He looked back at the building. The spines on his neck shifted.
ʺWe both got the shots, weʹre both safe,ʺ he said.
ʺYeah,ʺ said Isaiah. His mouth was dry.
God, itʹs been a while. And I donʹt deserve to ask for anything. Itʹs okay that Iʹm going to die–Iʹve been more or less dead for a long time. But let me finish this. Let me save whatʹs left of the world.
Let me save Katherine.
ʺWell, letʹs see if thereʹs any gas around,ʺ said Melville. He opened the door. ʺLetʹs go.ʺ
Isaiah nodded. ʺYeah. Letʹs go.ʺ
EDGE OF REVELATION
From: POTUS
To: FLASH, CABINET, HOUSE, SENATE, JOINTCHIEFS, PRESSCONTACTS, NATGOVASS, DNC, RNC, MAJORDONORSGROUP, …[42 more]
CC: FLASH, CABINET, HOUSE, SENATE, JOINTCHIEFS, PRESSCONTACTS, NATGOVASS, DNC, RNC, MAJORDONORSGROUP, …[42 more]
Sent: Friday, May 31 7:58 PM
Subject: RING AROUND THE ROSIE
POCKET FULL OF POSIE ASHES ASHES WE ALL FALL DOWN ANYONE OUT THERE
From: X
To: Dicky
Sent: Thursday, May 31 7:58 PM
Subject: RE: RING AROUND THE ROSIE
I will cut you off if you keep on doing this. You want to know what alone really feels like? Pull yourself together.
From: POTUS
To: 'X'
Sent: Friday, May 31 7:59 PM
Subject: RE: RE: RING AROUND THE ROSIE
Look what I learned how to do!
(o)(o)
Itʹs boobies!
***
ʺWhat now?ʺ
The words were loud in the confines of the SUV. Louder still in Johnʹs head. They sounded like an accusation, though he knew Serafina didnʹt intend them that way. Still….
What now?
What do we do now?
Where have you taken me?
What now?
Where is this?
Where are we going to die?
ʺMaybe there are some gas pumps in back,ʺ he said. The words fell limp from his lips, born and dying in the same instant. Serafina nodded. Though what else could she do?
This Darkness Light Page 26
