Part 4 (1/2)

”What?”

”I said... Doom City.” The young man stood up; he was about six feet, thin and lanky. His workboots crunched leaves as he crossed the street, and Brad saw that he had a patch on the breast pocket of his s.h.i.+rt that identified him as a Sanitation Department workman. As the young man got closer, Kelly pressed her body against Brad's legs and tried to hide behind the Smurf doll. ”Let it ring,” the young man said. His eyes were pale green, deep-set and dazed. ”If you were to pick that d.a.m.ned thing up... Doom City.”

”Why do you keep saying that?”

”Because it is what it is. Somebody's tryin' to find all the strays. Tryin' to run us all down and finish the job. Sweep us all into the gutter, man. Close the world over our heads. Doom City.” He blew a plume of smoke into the air that hung between them, unmoving.

”Who are you? Where'd you come from?”

”Name's Neil Spencer. Folks call me Spence. I'm a...” He paused for a few seconds, staring along Baylor Street.

”I used to be a garbage man. 'Til today, that is. 'Til I got to work and found skeletons sitting in the garbage trucks. That was about three hours ago, I guess. I've been doin' a lot of walkin'. Lot of pokin' around.” His gaze rested on the little girl, then back to Brad. The payphone was still ringing, and Brad felt the scream kicking behind his teeth.

”You're the first two I've seen with skin,” Spence said. ”I've been sittin' over there for the last twenty minutes or so. Just waitin' for the world to end, I guess.”

”What... happened?” Brad asked. Tears burned his eyes. ”My G.o.d... my G.o.d... what happened?”

”Somethin' tore,” Spence said tonelessly. ”Ripped open. Somethin' won the fight, and I don't think it was who the preachers said was gonna win. I don't know... maybe Death got tired of waitin'. Same thing happened to the dinosaurs. Maybe it's happenin' to people now.”

”There's got to be other people somewhere!” Brad shouted. ”We can't be the only ones!”

”I don't know about that.” Spence drew on his cigarette one last time and flicked the b.u.t.t into the street. ”All I know is, somethin' came in the night and had a feast, and when it was done it licked the plate clean. Only it's still hungry.” He nodded towards the ringing phone. ”Wants to suck on a few more bones. Like I said, man... Doom City. Doom City here, there and everywhere.”

The phone gave a final, shrilling shriek and went silent.

Brad heard the child crying again, and he put his hand on her head, stroked her hair to calm her. He realised he was doing it with his b.l.o.o.d.y hand. ”We've... we've got to go somewhere... got to do something...”

”Do what?” Spence asked laconically. ”Go where? I'm open to suggestions, man.”

From the next block came the distant sound of a telephone ringing. Brad stood with his b.l.o.o.d.y hand on Kelly's head, and he didn't know what to say.

”I want to take you somewhere, my friend,” Spence told him. ”Want to show you something real interestin'. Okay?”

Brad nodded, and he and the little girl followed Neil Spencer north along Dayton Street, past more silent houses and buildings.

Spence led them about four blocks to a Seven-Eleven store, where a skeleton in a yellow dress splotched with blue and purple flowers lolled behind the cash register with a National Enquirer open on its jutting knees. ”There you go,” Spence said softly. He plucked a pack of Luckies off the display of cigarettes and nodded towards the small TV set on the counter. ”Take a look at that, and tell me what we ought to do.”

The TV set was on. It was a colour set, and Brad realised after a long, silent moment that the channel was tuned to one of those twenty-four-hour news networks. The picture showed two skeletons-one in a grey suit and the other in a wine-red dress-leaning crookedly over a newsdesk at centre camera; the woman had placed her hand on the man's shoulder, and yellow sheets of the night's news were scattered all over the desktop. Behind the two figures were three or four out-of-focus skeletons, frozen forever at their desks as well. Spence lit another cigarette. An occasional spark of static shot across the unmoving TV picture. ”Doom City,”

Spence said. ”Not only here, man. It's everywhere. See?”

The telephone behind the counter suddenly started ringing, and Brad put his hands to his ears and screamed. The phone's ringing stopped.

Brad lowered his hands, his breathing as rough and hoa.r.s.e as a trapped animal's.

He looked down at Kelly Burch, and saw that she was smiling.

”It's all right,” she said. ”You don't have to answer. I found you, didn't I?”

Brad whispered, ”Wha-”

The little girl giggled, and as she continued to giggle the laugh changed, grew in intensity and darkness, grew in power and evil until it became a triumphant roar that shook the windows of the Seven-Eleven store. ”DOOM CITY!” the thing with pigtails shrieked, and as the mouth strained open the eyes became silver, cold and dead, and from that awful crater of a mouth shot a blinding bolt of blue-white lightning that hit Neil Spencer and seemed to spin him like a top, throwing him off his feet and headlong through the Seven-Eleven's plate-gla.s.s window. He struck the pavement on his belly, and as he tried to get up again Brad Forbes saw that the flesh was dissolving from the young man's bones, falling away in chunks like dried-up tree bark.

Spence made a garbled moaning sound, and Brad went through the store's door with such force that he almost tore it from its hinges. His feet slivered with gla.s.s, Brad ran past Spence and saw the other man's skull grinning up at him as the body writhed and twitched.

”Can't get away!” the thing behind him shouted. ”Can't! Can't! Can't!”

Brad looked back over his shoulder, and that was when he saw the lightning burst from her gaping mouth and hurtle through the broken window at him. He flung himself to the pavement, tried to crawl under a parked car. Something hit him, covered him over like an ocean wave, and he heard the monster shout in a voice like the peal of thunder. He was blinded and stunned for a few seconds, but there was no pain... just a needles-and-pins p.r.i.c.kling settling deep into his bones.

Brad got up, started running again. And as he ran he saw the flesh falling from his hands, saw pieces drifting down from his face; fissures ran through his legs, and as the flesh fell away he saw his own bones underneath.

”DOOM CITY!” he heard the monster calling. ”DOOM CITY!”

Brad stumbled; he was running on bones, and had left the flesh of his feet behind him on the pavement. He fell, began to tremble and contort.

”I'm cold,” he heard himself moan. ”I'm cold...”

She awakened with the memory of thunder in her bones.

The house was quiet. The alarm clock hadn't gone off. Sat.u.r.day, she realised. No work today. A rest day. But Lord, what a nightmare she'd had! It was fading now, all jumbled up and incoherent. There'd been thunderstorm last night-she remembered waking up, and seeing lightning flash. But whatever the nightmare had been, she couldn't recall now; she thought she remembered Brad saying something too, but now she didn't know what it was...

That light... so strange. Not like June light. More like... yes, like winter light. Sarah got out of bed and walked across the room. She pushed aside the white curtain and peered out, squinting. A grey fog hung in the trees and over the roofs of the houses on Baylor Street. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Sarah Forbes said, ”Brad? Honey? Take a look at this.”

He didn't reply, nor did he stir. She glanced at him, saw the wave of his dark hair above the sheet that was pulled up over him like a shroud. ”Brad?” she said again, and took a step towards the bed. And suddenly Sarah remembered what he'd said last night, when she'd sat up in a sleepy daze to watch the lightning crackle.

I'm cold, I'm cold.

She grasped the edge of the sheet and pulled it back.

Copyright 1987 by Robert R. McCammon. All rights reserved. This story originally appeared in the anthology Doom City, edited by Charles L. Grant, Tor Books, New York, 1987. Reprinted with permission of the author.

THE NIGHT I KILLED THE KING.

by Robert McCammon and Paul Schulz Ten o'clock on a Friday night. Nasty rain comin' down, like silver needles. Miralee and me were sittin' in the parkin'

lot of the Kentucky Fried Chicken place in Eustace, Arkansas, our windows rolled up and steam on the gla.s.s. ”Oh Lord!” she said suddenly. ”Oh Lord, that's him! Look at the way he walks!” She sat up straight, and I picked the gun up from the floorboard.

Me and Elvis, we were one of a kind.

I always got mistook for him, even before Miralee dyed my hair black and froze it in the pompadour and I started wearin' the Elvis outfits. I'm talkin' about the real Elvis, of course, when he was somebody worth lookin' at and he hadn't lost the Tupelo snarl, not when he was big as a whale's belly and-G.o.d forgive me-all used up. I weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds soakin' wet, so my Elvis is the King of Dreams, back before he made them dog-a.s.s movies and carried his soul in his wallet.

I'm not knockin' money now, hear? Money is the green grease that runs this world, and you gotta have a wad of it to get by in this day and age. I used to do all sorts of things; I've been a truck driver, a mechanic, a coffin polisher in a funeral home, a used-car salesman, and a bartender in a country-western joint. You do what you have to do to get by, am I right? And n.o.body ever said Dwayne Pressley wasn't one to grab hold of an opportunity when it come a'knockin'. That's why I started wearin' the Elvis outfits, doin' the makeup and all, and Miralee and me went into the soul-channelin' business.

Templin is a quiet town. h.e.l.l, Arkansas is a quiet state. Miralee, my girlfriend goin' on six years, works at the Sophisticated Lady Beauty Shoppe on Central Street in Templin. She can tell you right off: people in Templin have been starved for entertainment for years. Last entertainer who pa.s.sed this way was Joey Heatherton, and her bus was lost on the way to the National Guard Armory in Eustace, forty miles south of us. Anyway, Miralee knew about my Elvis impressions. When you kinda look like the King and your last name is Pressley, you go with the flow, know what I mean? I can sing some, and it ain't hard to find somebody who can play a guitar. Miralee got the band together for me. She's a smart little lady, and ambitious to boot. She went right out and bought some Elvis tapes for the VCR, and I started studyin' 'em. This was right after I got fired from the Templin Tap Room for sellin' liquor to minors under the table. Man's got to make a profit, don't he? h.e.l.l, that's the American way! So, anyhow, I had plenty of time to lay in bed and study ol' Elvis in them concert videos. There were tapes of him just talkin', too, about his life and everythin', so I could get the tw.a.n.g of his accent Memphis-perfect. Then I started practicin' with the band. You know the songs: ”Hound Dog,” ”Burnin' Love,” ”In the Ghetto,” ”Jailhouse Rock,” all those tunes that make the memories glow like barbecue coals on a summer night. I was better at the motions than I was at the singin', but then again you might have to say the same thing about the King, too.

Miralee got the costumes for me, all them black leather and high-collared jobs covered with rhinestones. She talked Mr. Riggston at the Tap Room into lettin' us do a show there on a Sat.u.r.day night, and if I said I wasn't sweatin' bullets I'd be a d.a.m.n liar. The first few numbers were pretty bad, and I split my tight britches, but I just kept on goin' cause some woman screamed ”ELVIS!” and it kinda fired me up. I found out later that Miralee gave her five dollars to do it. But we did good. So good Mr. Riggston wanted us back the next weekend, and he even put an ad in the Templin Journal. About a month after that, you couldn't stir the folks in the Tap Room with a thin stick. Like I say, people were starved for entertainment.

”Ain't no way!” I told Miralee, as I watched the fella go into the Kentucky Fried Chicken place. I was wearin' a cap to hide my pompadour, and I didn't have my Elvis makeup on. I put the pistol down again. ”That can't be him. Fella's as big as a barn door.”

”I say it is him!” Her eyes, blue as Christmas, locked on me in that way she has that'd make a pit bull turn tail.