Fire

by Alan Rodgers

  Missed, and buried themselves in the creature’s shoulder instead.

  And ghost jaws or not, the creature’s blood was everywhere.

  Not that the fight seeped out of him with his blood. The creature wrapped his hands around that ghostly neck, and strangled, and Luke saw the great muscles of his arms bulge as he twisted and heaved —

  — and wrenched the head clear off its shoulders.

  The ghostlike thing sagged, and Luke saw Herman Bonner stumble. He thought for a moment that it was all over, that whatever ectoplasmic substance a ghost had would flow from it like blood until it died.

  Until he saw the wound heal itself

  Saw a new head grow where the old one had been.

  It only took an instant. And once that instant had passed, and the wound grown whole, the Ghost-Beast set into the creature with an entirely new frenzy, claws ripping down into the creature’s flesh again and again and blood everywhere and even when the creature’s feet fell out from under him the Herman Bonner-thing didn’t stop; it knelt and beat and tore and ripped —

  And Luke thought Oh dear God it’s going to kill him, need to stop it need to do something — but he knew he wasn’t any match for Herman Bonner, let alone the Beast now visible that had been hidden inside him, and he thought he ought to run and get away with his life, at least, while he could —

  Ron Hawkins didn’t know any such thing. And, knowing Ron, wouldn’t have paid it any mind, even if he had. He launched himself at the ghostlike Beast still savaging the creature —

  And sailed right through it.

  Into Herman Bonner himself.

  Caught him in a flying tackle, which sent both of them tumbling into the grass. Got up so that he knelt astride Bonner’s chest, and started pounding the man with his fists. The ghost-Beast was struggling, and Bonner was struggling, but Bonner was pinned and nothing the ghost did left a mark on Ron, and after a while Herman Bonner and the ghost-beast were both still as the dead.

  Maybe they were dead.

  The creature, over there on the grass, sure looked dead. When Bonner was still Luke saw Ron steal a glance over his shoulder, at the creature, and when he saw the damage that had been done him he screamed all fury and mourning —

  And stood.

  And lifted Herman Bonner up over his head.

  And cast him, unconscious, over the bluff and into the Lake of Fire.

  When he was gone Luke felt relief wash over him like a wave that very nearly took his legs out from under him. It was over, and they were safe, and soon enough the creature would recover from its wounds —

  ³ ³ ³

  No, Leigh thought. No, no, no.

  It was the wrong thing, throwing the Beast from Revelation into the Lake of Fire. Couldn’t they know that? Couldn’t they see? The Lake was an evil horror on the face of the earth, and the Beast was an evil horror on the face of the earth. And drowning in it couldn’t possibly destroy him.

  No.

  The Lake of Fire would only make the Beast from Revelation stronger.

  Without even thinking about it, she got into the car. Started the engine. And headed off toward the other plane as quickly as she could.

  ³ ³ ³

  Or, at least, that was what Luke thought until he saw the Beast from Revelation crawl up out of the Lake of Fire.

  “There is nothing you can do that will harm me,” the Beast said. And Luke knew that it was so. There was nothing of Herman Bonner left in that voice. Nothing even remotely human.

  ³ ³ ³

  Christine said, “It’s true.”

  She was standing at the edge of the lake, not more than a dozen yards from them. The bag lady was beside her, calm, pensive. . . .

  “There isn’t anything any of them can do to you,” she said. “But I gave birth to you, damn you. And there’s something I can do.”

  The Beast lunged toward her.

  Christine didn’t move a muscle.

  At first Luke thought that might mean the Beast couldn’t harm her — that its claws and its fangs would be as insubstantial against her as they had been when Ron had attacked Herman Bonner. That Christine stood there, unmoving, because she knew there was no harm it could do her. If those were her reasons, she was mistaken; the first swipe of its massive foreclaw sent her flying through the air, and she landed at the edge of the bluff above the Lake of Fire.

  The Beast walked to her. Stooped to look down into her eyes.

  “And what is that?” the Beast asked. “What is it you can do to me?”

  Christine smiled a little, in spite of the fact that she was clearly in pain. Smiled gently and genuinely, and sat up and wrapped her arms softly around the foremost of its massive heads.

  Hugged the Beast.

  “You’re my child,” she said. “I can love you.”

  And she kissed him a mother’s kiss, kissed the forehead just above the eyes.

  And the Beast from Revelation screamed.

  And it grabbed its mother by the throat.

  And threw her into the Lake of Fire.

  ³ ³ ³

  The quarter of a mile between Leigh Doyle and the scene of carnage disappeared in slow motion. In spite of the fact that she had the gas pedal pressed to the floor.

  A man’s voice, from the back seat: “Who are you? Where is this? What are you doing?”

  “I’m Leigh Doyle,” she said. “And we’re at the gates of hell. And I’m trying to save the world. Trying to save you, too.”

  And then suddenly they were only a dozen feet from the Beast from Revelation as he grabbed that woman by the throat, threw her out into the Lake of Fire —

  She was going to run him down. Run him over. Without even thinking about it, Leigh knew that that was the only thing she could do, if she didn’t want to go flying into the Lake of Fire, the same way that other woman was flying —

  A man jumped into the inferno after her, like a lifeguard diving toward a rescue —

  As Leigh braced for the thud of impact and the crush of soft flesh under the bumper of a car —

  It wasn’t like that at all when it happened. More like hitting a brick wall, hard and fast, and the front end of the rent-a-car crumpled under the force of the crash, and Leigh felt the steering wheel punch up into her abdomen, and in the seat beside her the boy she’d taken from the plane was screaming.

  Things got a little grey for Leigh after that. The force of the steering wheel had broken or bruised or injured something up inside her, and most of what she knew while the Beast lifted the car and tore it open was a fog made of confusion and hysterical pain.

  ³ ³ ³

  Luke’s voice was the first thing Christine heard besides the sound of her own flesh cooking on her bones.

  “Don’t die, Christine,” he said. He was sobbing. She thought of dying, thought of resurrection. And with half her heart she wished for the release that death would give her. With the other half she knew that dying here in a place so like the gate to hell meant dying forever. “I love you, Christine. Don’t die.”

  He’d pulled her up out of the inferno, onto the thin shore of the Lake of Fire.

  “I love you too,” she said. The words hurt her throat, only partly because of the destruction that the fire had done her.

  Above them was the sound of chaos, of violence.

  Unconsciously, she reached for the pendant that hung form her neck. The pendant that the bag lady had given her. And she rubbed it between her fingers.

  ³ ³ ³

  Leigh came to in time to hear the young man speak.

  “That’s enough, Dr. Bonner,” he said. “Let them go. Put them down.”

  She opened her eyes, and saw all of them climbing on the Beast from Revelation, trying to subdue a creature out of hell with nothing but the force of their arms and legs. So foolish. They w
ere only mortals, mortals like Leigh. There was nothing they could do to him, nothing but give him the joy of destroying them. Didn’t they know that, just looking at him? No; they must not. All of them were there, climbing on his mighty frame — both of the men she’d rescued from the plane, and the boy and the woman. Another child, and two men — that was the Vice President, wasn’t it? It was. She recognized him. Even that dog. And the strange, magical creature caked in its own blood. None of them knew.

  “Put them down, Dr. Bonner. Let them go, or I’ll shoot.”

  And the Beast spoke. “You Tim? You betray me, too?” His voice was almost sad, and that was a strange thing indeed. “Put the gun down, Tim. Cast it into the Lake of Fire, and run from this place. Do this now and I may forgive you.”

  When the man spoke his voice was shrill and frightened. “Put them down, damn it.” And he fired a round into the air.

  And the Beast lifted the boy — the dark-skinned one, not the one Leigh had pulled from the wreckage of the plane — lifted the boy perched on his fourth neck, pounding at that head. Lifted him by the scruff of his neck, and threw him at the young man with the gun.

  Who ducked aside, only barely in time. And as the boy screamed at the agony of his broken, twisted arm, the man with the gun opened fire.

  The first two bullets took out a pair of the Beast’s eyes. Not that it mattered, especially. There were many others. Other bullets did more damage; two of its heads blew away at their necks, and great geysers of black blood shot up from the wreckage.

  And the Beast screamed, in anguish and rage. And with his mighty legs he stamped his pain against the earth.

  And the earth gave way under the force of those blows.

  Not that the Beast was really hurt. He was healing even as the bluff slid away into the Lake of Fire, taking with it the car and the jet and the Beast and Leigh and the man with the gun and everyone else.

  ³ ³ ³

  ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF FIRE

  Yeah, Bill thought. This was why they were here. Why that dream had sent them half-way around the world.

  What was it they were supposed to do, now that they’d got here? Oh, sure, they were supposed to fight with this . . . thing. Hadn’t the President — the real, dead President, not this live, Vice-President-type President they had here — had the President called it Herman? Or had he called it Beast? Beast was what the thing looked like, if anybody was asking Bill. Beast as in Beast out of Revelation, as in something out of a fire-and-brimstone preacher’s nightmare.

  Even if they were supposed to put a stop to this Beast thing, it didn’t seem to Bill like fighting it head on was an especially intelligent thing to do. He was doing it, all right. Wasn’t like there was anything else he could think of to do. But it wasn’t making a damn bit of difference, and Bill knew it. Even if there were ten of them here, or twelve, or whatever it was, they weren’t any match for a Beast that could tear cars apart with its bare hands, or shake the ground apart with its footsteps, or grow back heads that’d been blown off with a machine gun.

  So what were they supposed to do? Hold hands in a circle that surrounded the thing, and sing pretty songs at it? Oh, right. That’d make a lot of difference. About as much difference as it did when that half-burned-to-death woman over there told it she was its mom and gave it a kiss.

  Shit, Bill told himself. He wasn’t ever going to think of a way for them to beat up this Best-thing. He wasn’t stupid, exactly, but Bill knew he didn’t have the kind of special, extraordinary brain-power kind of thinking that the problem called for.

  So Bill did the only thing he could think of: the same thing he done to that junior-high bully back in the fifth grade. Bill walked right up to that Beast from Revelation, who was in the middle of taking that machine gun out of the hands of that Tim guy. Bill walked up to the Beast from Revelation, and he kicked him in the balls.

  Got his attention real good, too.

  For a while.

  Then he stood up again and started throwing everybody into the burning lake. And Bill got to go first.

  ³ ³ ³

  Christine was the last to go. Partly because she lay on the shore, a dozen yards from the spot where the bluff had collapsed onto the Lake of Fire. Partly because the plane, which had fallen with the bluff, shielded them from the Beast’s line of sight.

  Most of all, though, Christine was last because when the Beast finally did turn his attention in her direction, Luke had shielded her. All while the others had fought the Beast, Luke had knelt beside her, holding her hand. And when it had come for them, Luke had attacked the Beast to protect her.

  It was futile, of course. The Beast threw Luke into the inferno before he could even as much as land a blow.

  And then it came for Christine. And threw her into the same spot where it had thrown everyone else. Where in an instant her flesh began to burn and fuse into the mass of the dying and near-dead.

  That was when she remembered the pendant, and remembered what it was for. And she sat up as best she could, and took the pendant from her neck, and with what was left of her hand she held it out toward the Beast.

  And something began to happen.

  A light came from the stone that hung in the pendant. A light like the light that had come from the creature when it first reached the edge of the lake. And not like that light at all. Brighter, and more intense; and it drank in the glow of the glow that came from the burning lake, made it dim all around her.

  When the Beast saw the pendant it screamed. Screamed unhumanly in rage and fear and in frustration. Christine half expected it to wade into the Lake of Fire and seize it from her.

  It even started to come for her — it took three steps into the Lake — and stopped when it reached the edge of the bright shadow that the pendant cast. Cringed, as though it could not bear the touch of that dark light. And screamed again.

  Something strange was happening; Christine could feel the burning soothe down in her legs.

  “No!” it shouted. “Not now! Not here!”

  And it reached back with its great arms, and seized the missile strapped to the top of the fallen plane. Tore it away. And, wielding it like some gargantuan club, the Beast swung it at Christine.

  Reflexively, she raised the hand that held the pendant, trying to shield herself from the warhead’s sharp tip.

  Christine never really understood what happened next. Oh, she knew well enough that the warhead made contact with that strange pendant. And that making contact, the pendant ignited some potential at the missile’s heart.

  But the idea of an atomic implosion was alien to her; she didn’t really understand how the force of the nuclear blast drank in through the strange gemstone. And through it, into Christine and the others whose flesh mingled and fused with hers in the molten rock.

  And the force transformed them all.

  Transformed them into something.

  Into a single something that was all of them and none of them.

  And more than the sum of them.

  And not the sum of them at all.

  ³ ³ ³

  Bill’s mind rose up out of the cloud of the agony of the incineration of his body as the change began.

  First came the fusion of his heart and his mind with the hearts of the others. The woman he loved who he didn’t understand — the secret history she kept locked in her heart, amazed and astounded him. A man named Luke Munsen who Bill might have been if he’d lived a different life. Ron Hawkins — till now Bill hadn’t even recognized him! — whose life more nearly was Bill’s, and would have been if the world had been more harsh. A woman named Leigh Doyle, who burned with the need to be heard and be loved, and knew in her heart that the world would give her neither. Knew in Bill’s heart, now, as all of them melded. A man named Graham Perkins, whom fate had made a leader of men in spite of the fact that it had taken from him the will to le
ad. Andy Harrison, Jerry Williams; both of them young and mostly innocent — though the first was impish where the second tended shy. A dog named Tom, whose heart was made of broad, simple strokes of the brush . . . but even so it was a noble heart, full of love and determination and loyalty. A woman named Christine, who’d spent most of a century mouldering in a crypt. A man named Tim, full of fear. George Stein, full of guilt. A strange creature born in a laboratory, a creature whose sense of the world and the hearts of others went deep. . . .

  And when their hearts had fused and together they were all of them and none, their bodies too transformed — into a single being. In the shape and proportion of a man, but far taller than a man, and stronger. When he — who was they — opened his eyes he saw that he was cloaked in the armor that Bill’s lover had worn in his dream; impossibly sleek black steel that wore light as silk. Silver trim that shone like fire in the strange light. A helmet shaped like no helmet any of him had ever seen.

  Most of all was the fiery sword, the sword made of the stone that the bag lady had given him as a pendant. And larger than that stone could ever have become. As the gem had drunk in the light and heat of the Lake of Fire, so did the sword. More: it drank so much, so hard, as to cool and congeal the magma that surrounded him. When he stepped toward the Beast, soft rock crumpled away from his feet.

  The Beast’s eyes were wild, fearful — but not cowed. There was still that hunger in them — the blood-hunger that excitement always brought to Herman Bonner’s eyes. Looking at the Beast, he knew that that hunger ran so deep that the only satiation it could ever find was the destruction of every man, woman, and child on the earth. More than that, perhaps; perhaps the end of all life.

  “Surrender, Herman,” he said. “Surrender now. Your time will come. In its course. It isn’t now.”

  “No,” the Beast said. “This is my day. I won’t allow you to steal it from me.”

  And the Beast lunged at him. Threw him off balance, and the Beast’s weight took him down, onto the lake that now was stone.