Fire

by Alan Rodgers

  The thing that made them look strangest of all was the way they were dressed.

  Or not dressed, when you got right down to it.

  Which was to say that for the most part they were naked.

  Oh, most of them had clothes — some clothes, at least. Fancy stuff, like you’d wear for a wedding, or to go to church or to the theater.

  The kind of fancy clothes people get buried in. (Which made Andy think: Hey, what are those undertakers trying to do — turn heaven into some kind of an opera? And he got a good chuckle out of that, even if it did make Christine look at him pretty funny.) Fancy coffin clothes, only they’d all gone to rot, and they were falling off of all of them — all except that man over there, who’d got himself buried in a polyester leisure suit. Andy made a note to himself about that: when the time came for him to get himself buried — if it ever did come, what with death turning so transient lately — when his time came, he’d make sure they buried him in something plastic. No way he was going to come back to this earth buck naked. Not Andy Harrison, no sir.

  Andy scratched his head, tried to figure if there was anything he could do about the problem. Realized that there wasn’t, because they were in the middle of nowhere, and Luke was the only one who’d brought any clothes, and his were all used and seriously sweaty. Shrugged, and turned his attention to something else.

  Which, as it turned out, was the dog.

  That dog was pretty all right, Andy had decided. Tom was his name, wasn’t it? Yeah, Tom — though to Andy’s way of thinking, all dogs were named dog, first name, middle, last. Tom the dog was staring at Andy. Which meant, Andy guessed, that the dog had finally got bored with watching holes in the ground dig themselves.

  Well, then, heck. If the dog could stare at him, Andy could stare back at the dog. Which he did: stared at the dog wide-eyed and intense, and tensed up his body like he was about to pounce.

  “Dog,” he said, pretending like he was some kind of a snarling cat, or maybe just an angry squirrel. “Dog — I’m gonna getcha!”

  That set Tom the dog off real good.

  Real good. The dog barked loud and high, half in challenge and half in fear. And took off running toward Andy about as fast as Andy had ever seen a dog run. Not to say that Andy had seen that many dogs, growing up in Bed-Stuy and all. Andy turned and ran from him, dodging between the gravestones and changing direction just enough to throw the dog off. And when, in spite of his ducking and dodging, the dog was almost right behind him, Andy stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, lunged toward the dog. Shouted “Boo!” and the dog shrieked in terror — shrieked, yelped, and took off in the opposite direction.

  Andy laughed and laughed and laughed — doubled over laughing and finally lost his balance completely. Fell onto the ground with its broken dirt and holes that had mostly filled back up with dirt as the dead people crawled out of them. Still rolling with laughter and now the dog was on top of him, licking his face, and rolled into one of those half-open graves, trying to get away from the dog’s too-long slimy tongue. Which left him covered with dirt that caked up where the dog’s licking had wet his face.

  Looked up, and saw the monster staring down at him.

  A look on his face. . . . A puzzled look, Andy thought it was. Like he was stretching inside, trying to think in a way that he didn’t usually think.

  Andy stood. Brushed away some of the graveyard dirt that covered him. Looked around, and every grave that he could see was a pit of sifted earth, and behind that a headstone. Which meant that the monster was done — he’d done it. Actually gone and woke the dead. Or at least every one of them that he could find.

  The monster was still staring at him — his strange, alien face all scrunched-up and intent.

  Ron . . . Hawkins? Ron Hawkins? Made a sound that was like a sigh, but wasn’t a sigh at all. The one who traveled with me.

  A pause. The monster was waiting for an answer, Andy thought. As though he didn’t really know what a name was, and wanted Andy to let him know if he’d got the concept right.

  “Yeah,” Andy said. “That’s his name. He told me.”

  Where has he gone? Has something happened to him? He isn’t nearby.

  Andy frowned. “He went off with Luke Munsen, a long while back. When you were still sick — but not too much before you woke up.” He pointed. “Went that way. Don’t know how far. Didn’t say. Though maybe it couldn’t have been all that long a way. Luke took off at such a pace that there wasn’t any way he could go too far before they both ran out of steam.”

  The monster shook his head; he looked grim.

  No. Not far. I know where they’ve gone.

  ³ ³ ³

  When the last of the dead had risen from his grave, the creature turned to Christine and she heard his voice inside her head again.

  It’s time, he said. We need to go.

  She didn’t know exactly what he meant. She could guess; they’d been traveling purposely for days — moving steadily toward something only Luke had been able to see. It didn’t surprise her that the creature could see it too. It made sense that the creature was drawn to whatever it was; Christine had enough sight to know when others had true vision. She’d seen it in Luke from the moment she’d first set eyes on him. Seen it in spite of the fact that Luke was unable to see it himself.

  And she could see vision in the creature. Great, powerful, consuming vision.

  Andy Harrison and the dog were standing just behind the creature, and beyond them was a small army of men and women only just reawakened to the world.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. Asked it not so much because she had any doubt as because she was afraid.

  The creature nodded, and Christine turned to the car, to try to remember if there was anything she needed that was still inside it — but there wasn’t, of course. She’d brought nothing with her, at least partly because she owned nothing in this life.

  I don’t want to go with them, she thought. There’s something wrong here, something dangerous and wrong and inevitable. Something’s going to happen.

  And she thought of her grave again, dark and warm and suffocating like a womb that had turned itself into a prison. And wanted to scream, but stopped herself because life was frightening enough without admitting fear out loud. “Where. . . ?” she asked the creature, but she knew as she asked where they were going.

  An ending, the creature told her. An ending for the world. He shrugged. Or perhaps a rebirth.

  Christine bit her lower lip.

  And suddenly the boy was running toward her, laughing. Grabbing her hand. The dog, three steps behind him, barking and wagging his tail.

  “Come on,” Andy said. “You can’t miss this! It’s important. Probably going to be fun, too.”

  And before she knew what she’d done, she’d let him pull her a dozen paces down the road. And then it was too late to turn back or even hesitate a moment longer.

  ³ ³ ³

  The dirt road went on for miles: long, flat, dry miles of land that seemed empty of everything. No trees. No houses, let alone buildings of any other sort. Nothing but fields of high green grass that might have been wheat and might have been something similar; never any sign of a soul besides themselves. In the distance, consuming the horizon, was a lake of fire. Mostly Christine kept her eyes away from that; it gave her deep chills to even think of it.

  All the while no one said a word — not the creature, who had no voice for the ears to hear, nor the legion of those no longer dead but neither yet entirely alive. Certainly not Christine, afraid as she was because her heart was certain that she’d reopened her own coffin — and certain that soon it would close again around her, and leave her trapped forever.

  Maybe the boy spoke. If he did there was no way to know it; Andy and the dog were always somewhere in the near distance, sometimes in front of them, sometimes behind, playing
a game that looked a lot like tag. If he ever said anything to the dog or to anyone else, he was never near enough for Christine to hear it.

  The quiet and the lonesome emptiness were what made it strangest of all when Christine saw the bag lady standing, watching them from the field on their right — standing in the open not far away at all, and no one but Christine seemed to notice her.

  The same woman who’d woke them from their stupor, back at the edge of the destroyed city.

  The same woman who’d found her the dress that she still wore. And given her the pendant that hung hidden from her neck. (Even now she could feel its stone warm against her breast.)

  Very strange. Strange even in a week filled with resurrection and impossibility.

  Christine paused, and stood there on the road staring back at the woman, and no one noticed that, either; first the creature and then the half-alive who followed him stepped around her, moved by, and kept going as though she were invisible or unreal.

  The old woman was staring at her.

  “Who are you?” Christine asked the question without realizing that she’d spoke — and asked it quietly enough that there was no way the woman could have heard it.

  Whatever the distance was between them, the old woman smiled at her coy and knowing, as though she’d heard the question and didn’t mean to answer. And continued to stand there, on a small rise in a gold-green wheatfield. Waiting, Christine thought — waiting for what? She knew the answer to that question, just as she’d known the answer to all the questions she’d asked that day.

  Waiting for me to come to her. But why? What did the woman want from her?

  Christine didn’t want the answer to that question. It was buried in her past, in the life she’d lived and died so long ago, and the thing she wanted most of all in this life was to leave that life behind.

  The old woman wouldn’t allow that, Christine thought. Or couldn’t, maybe — maybe that was a better word.

  There wasn’t any avoiding it, or any sense in trying to avoid what was coming. So Christine crossed the road, strode across the field through its wheat like a shallow sea, waist-high and powdery. Until she stood only a few feet from the old woman, looking up at her because she stood on the rise.

  “Let it be,” Christine said. “All of that is dead and buried. Let it sleep with all the other things that died when I did.”

  The old woman smiled. As she did the wind shifted — it was a breeze, really, not a wind at all — and Christine caught the scent of her again. A foul scent; filth and decay and fermentation. And death — ever so faintly. The smell that Christine had woke to in her coffin. “The dead have risen,” the old woman said, “and you among them.”

  “No,” Christine said. “I left that life behind me, in my grave.”

  Even as she said the words she knew there was no way to defend them.

  ³ ³ ³

  Chapter Forty-Six

  LAKE-OF-FIRE

  It was a good five minutes before Luke even noticed that Ron wasn’t behind him any more. By then he was already walking through the service door, unchallenged because the man who ought to have been there to stop him was off in the wrong part of the woods with every other guard who was on duty, hunting for him and Ron in a place where neither one of them was.

  Luke pushed through the spring-hinge door behind the loading bay, and once he was inside he turned to hold it open for Ron — and that was when he saw he was alone.

  It didn’t matter. He couldn’t let it matter. Ron was necessary here, somehow. Luke knew that.

  He frowned.

  Luke didn’t know that part — he didn’t know any of the hows or the whys.

  Whether Ron was necessary or not, there wasn’t time to turn back and search for him. The situation was too urgent to turn back, even for a moment. And besides, Ron wasn’t a boy; he could take care of himself. Or take care of himself, at least, as well as the circumstances would allow.

  Luke still didn’t know where he was going. Didn’t know why he was going there. He only knew from step to step where he needed to be next, and knew that whatever it was that directed him hadn’t lied to him yet. Not for a moment.

  And it was urgent — it burned at him, pressed him to hurry —

  Toward what?

  Wait. There, right there in the hallway, standing in front of him and not standing there, too. An image, like a ghost or a memory that called itself. The image of a man, who he’d known for a long, long time.

  He’d seen that man, in New York, when the fundamentalists had stormed the network building. Seen him in that strange dream, too — the dream he’d had the second time he’d died.

  Herman Bonner.

  That was the man’s name.

  There were words that went with the image, too:

  Herman Bonner wants to kill the world.

  In New York, when Bonner had seen Luke, he’d looked as though he’d been the one seeing the ghost. Looked . . . afraid of Luke.

  Luke felt a chill he didn’t understand. He kept going anyway, and after a moment the vision faded.

  He had to kill that man.

  Kill? Was that even possible? The only people he’d seen honestly die — and stay dead — since he’d first woke in Bedford-Stuyvesant were the people in St. Louis, where the bomb had fallen. He wasn’t even absolutely sure about them; he hadn’t seen them die, and there weren’t any bodies to examine. But he couldn’t imagine that anything could resurrect men and women who’d been reduced to light and subatomic dust.

  No, killing him wouldn’t be possible. Luke Munsen didn’t have an atom bomb, and anyway even if he’d had one he didn’t have the heart for murder. But what do you do with a man who wants to sterilize every bit of life on the face of the world — a man who might well be able to accomplish the task?

  Bury him under a mountain, maybe?

  It was a silly idea. But there was something, something he had to do. And maybe whatever it was he had to do, maybe it wouldn’t be enough by itself to stop the man. Luke knew with an absolute faith that whatever he’d do was necessary. Not sufficient, maybe, not by itself. Necessary, all the same.

  Here, on the left. A stairwell. In, through the fire door.

  Up.

  Up until there wasn’t anyplace else to go — five flights of stairs, concrete steps with textured steel reinforcing plates set into their edges.

  Out through another fire door, into a hallway.

  Toward the end of the hall. A door — heavy, made of wood by the look of it. Luke knew before he touched it that the door was locked and bolted; knew that turning the handle wasn’t any use. He also knew that heavy as it was the door was made of flawed wood — knew, impossibly, that there was a fault in the woodgrain that ran from just below the lower bolt, on the right side of the door, up to the top-center.

  Luke stepped back six paces. Ran toward the door, leading with his shoulder. And hit it square, all his weight and momentum slamming dead into the weakest spot in the wood-fault —

  And the door burst, and shattered around him.

  And there, sitting stunned in front of a computer console, was Herman Bonner.

  Cursing. Getting up out of his seat. Coming toward Luke furious and angry, and if there was fear in his eyes Luke couldn’t see it.

  No — not fear. Murder.

  Herman Bonner’s eyes were warm and hungry with bloodlust.

  And suddenly Luke realized that the thing that had guided him was gone — all his conviction, all certainty evaporated. He was alone and he was fighting for his life and he didn’t know why or how or what he should do.

  Herman Bonner leaped at him, laid into him with a flying tackle that sent them both flying back out into the hall where they landed with Luke’s back pounding hard into the smooth, hard tile, and the air gasped out of him and Bonner was on top of him and pounding Luke’s
face with his fists, and it finally occurred to Luke that he had to fight back if he was going to get away, and he threw up his hands to protect his face.

  And that helped, some; anyway it made a couple of punches go flying off in the wrong direction. Luke grabbed one of the man’s wrists as he pulled back to strike again. Grabbed the other — with a little more effort, since Bonner knew to expect it — used the arms like levers to try to throw the man off of him.

  Which wasn’t any use. Herman Bonner wasn’t going anywhere — not unless he wanted to go there himself. And even if Luke had his hands by the wrists, he wasn’t strong enough to control them. Strong enough to keep the man from striking him, maybe.

  Barely.

  And maybe not.

  Certainly not strong enough to keep Herman Bonner’s hands from pressing steadily toward his throat. Toward his neck. Down in toward the soft skin and flesh and the delicate conduits of air and blood that carried Luke Munsen’s life.

  And slowly, firmly, gently, Herman Bonner strangled Luke to death.

  As he died, Luke heard the sound of gunfire in the distance.

  ³ ³ ³

  Ron Hawkins wasn’t alone on the runway.

  It took him a while to realize that. There were planes — big, hulking, empty planes — everywhere, and at first their presence masked away the three men at the far end of the field with their fuel truck and its hoses.

  And after he got used to the idea it was even more striking: how could a single truck fuel all these planes? Well, it could, he guessed. Of course it could. One at a time, slowly, steadily. Of course a single truck could fuel an army of planes. If it had a year to fuel them! Why on God’s earth would they use just one truck? And the answer to that was obvious, too, when he thought about it. They were only using one truck because they only had one truck; if the base had others they’d somehow been destroyed, or maybe abused beyond their ability to function. That sounded likely. A real army depends as much on its mechanics as on its soldiers, and Ron couldn’t imagine that any of the fundamentalist irregulars who’d tried to kill himself and the creature — couldn’t imagine that any of them would make much of a mechanic.