Part 66 (1/2)

”That was instinct.”

”And what do your instincts tell you now?”

”That I haven't got the power left in me,” he said. He raised his broken hands. ”I ate it up and spat it out.”

”It was all in your hands?”

”I think so.”

She remembered the night at the Mall: the Jaff pa.s.sing poison into Fletcher's system from fingers which seemed to be sweating potency. Now those same hands were decaying wreckage. And yet she couldn't bring herself to believe power was a matter of anatomy. Kissoon had been no demiG.o.d, but his scrawny body was a reservoir of the direst suits. Will was the key to authority, and Jaffe seemed to have none left.

”So you can't do it,” she said simply.

”No.”

”Then maybe I can.”

He narrowed his eyes. ”I doubt that,” he said, with the faintest trace of condescension in his tone. She pretended not to have noticed.

”I can try,” she said. ”The Nuncio got into me too, remember? You're not the only G.o.d in the squad.”

This remark bore the fruit it had been planted to produce.

”You?” he said. ”You've not a hope in h.e.l.l.” He looked down at his hands, then back up at the schism. ”I'm the one who opened it. I'm the only one who ever dared do that. And I'm the only one who can seal it up again.”

He walked past her towards the schism, that same lightness in his step as she'd noticed when they were climbing out of the caves. It allowed him to negotiate the uneven floor with relative ease. It was only when he came within a yard or two of the hole that his pace slowed. Then he stopped completely.

”What is it?” she said.

”Come look for yourself.”

She started across the room towards him. It wasn't simply the visible world that was twisted and dragged towards the hole, she realized; so was the invisible. The air, and the minute particles of dust and dirt it carried, was hauled out of true. s.p.a.ce itself was knotted up, its convolutions pliable enough to be pressed through but only with the greatest difficulty. The effect got stronger the closer to the hole she went. Her body, already bruised and battered within an inch of its Lazarite life, was barely equal to the challenge. But she persevered. And step by step she achieved her goal, coming close enough to the hole to see down its throat. The sight was not easy to take. The world she'd a.s.sumed all her life to be complete and comprehensible was here undone utterly. It was a distress she'd not felt since childhood when somebody (she'd forgotten who) had taught her the trick of looking at infinity by putting two mirrors face to face, each staring into the other's reflection. She'd been twelve, thirteen at most, and completely spooked by the idea of this emptiness echoing emptiness, back and forth, back and forth, until they reached the limits of light. For years after she'd remembered that moment, confronted with a physical representation of something her mind revolted at. Here was the same process. The schism, defying her every idea about the way the world was. Reality as a comparative science.

She looked into its maw. Nothing that she saw was certain. If it was cloud, then it was cloud half turned to rain. If it was rain, then it was rain on the verge of combusting, and becoming a falling fire. And beyond the cloud, and rain, and fire, another place entirely, as ambiguous as the confusion of elements that half hid it: a sea that became a sky with no horizon to divide or define them. Quiddity.

She was seized by a fierce, barely controllable desire to be there, to climb through the schism and taste the mystery beyond. How many thousands of seekers, glimpsing in fever dreams and drug dreams the possibility of being where she now stood, had woken wanting to die rather than live another hour, knowing they could never have that access? Woken, mourned, and still gone on living, hoping, in the agonized, heroic way her species hoped, that miracles were possible; that the epiphanies of music and love were more than self-deception, were clues to a greater condition, where hope was rewarded with keys and kisses, and doors opened to the everlasting.

Quiddity was that everlasting. It was the ether in which being had been raised, as humanity had been raised from the soup of a simpler sea. The thought of Quiddity tainted by the Iad was suddenly more distressing to her than the fact of their imminent invasion. The phrase she'd first heard from Kissoon revisited her. Quiddity must be preserved. As Mary Muralles had said, Kissoon only told lies when he needed to. That was no small part of his genius: to hold to the truth as long as it served his purpose. And Quiddity did need to be preserved. Without dreams, life was nothing. Perhaps it would not even have come into being.

”I suppose I must try,” Jaffe said, and took one more step towards the maw, bringing himself within touching range of it. His hands, which had seemed completely devoid of strength a minute before, had a lick of power about them, all the more visible because it oozed from such wounded flesh. He raised them towards the schism. That it sensed his presence and purpose became apparent before he'd even made contact. A spasm pa.s.sed out from its lips, running up through the room it had hauled into itself. The frozen distortions shuddered, softening once again.

”It's wise to us,” Jaffe said.

”We've still got to try,” Tesla replied. The floor beneath their feet was suddenly jittery; pieces of plaster dropped from the walls and ceiling. Inside the maw the clouds of fiery rain bloomed towards the Cosm.

Jaffe laid his hands on the softening intersection, but the schism was having no truck with undoers. It threw a second spasm off, its violence sufficient to throw Jaffe back into Tesla's arms.

”No good!” he said. ”No good!”

Worse than no good. If they'd needed evidence of the Iad's approach they had it now, as the cloud darkened, its motion unmistakable. As Jaffe had guessed, the tide had changed. The throat of the schism was not concerned with swallowing, but with vomiting up whatever was choking it. To do so, it started to open.

With that motion the beginning of the end began.

VII.

The book in Hotchkiss's hands was called Preparing for Armageddon, and it was a manual instructing faithful brethren on how to do just that, a step-by-step guide to surviving the imminent Apocalypse. There were chapters on Livestock, on Water and Grain, on Clothing and Bedding, Fuel, Heat and Light. There was a five-page checklist ent.i.tled Commonly Stored Foods that ran the gamut from Mola.s.ses to Venison jerky. And as if to whip up fear in any procrastinators who might be tempted to put off their preparations, the book interspersed these lists with photographs of calamities that had occurred across America. Most of them were natural phenomena. Forest fires raging, unchecked and uncheckable; hurricanes laying towns flat in their pa.s.sage. There were several pages given over to a flood in Salt Lake City in May of 1983, accompanied by pictures of Utahans building walls of sandbags to contain the water. But the image that loomed largest amid this catalogue of final acts was the mushroom cloud. There were several photographs of that cloud, underneath one of which Hotchkiss found the simple legend: The first atom-bomb was detonated at 0530 hours July 16, 1945, at a location named Trinity by the bomb's creator, Robert Oppenheimer. With that detonation, Mankind's last age began.

There was no further explanation. The purpose of the book was not to explain the atomic bomb and its construction, but to offer guidance on how the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints might survive it. No matter. He didn't need details. All he needed was that one word, Trinity, in some other context than Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Here it was. The Three-in-One reduced to a single place- a single event, indeed. This was the Trinity that superseded all others. In the imagination of the twentieth century the mushroom cloud loomed larger than G.o.d.

He stood up, Preparing for Armageddon in his hand, and crossed through the chaos of discarded books to the front of the store. Awaiting him outside was a sight that stopped him in his tracks. There were dozens of animals running free in the lot. Puppies rolling around, mice running for cover with kittens on their tails; lizards basking on the hot asphalt. He looked along the row of store-fronts. A parrot flew out through the open door of Ted Elizando's store. Hotchkiss didn't know Ted at all, but he knew the stories about the man. As a source of gossip himself he'd always attended closely to what was said about others. Elizando had lost his mind, his wife and his baby. Now he was losing his little ark in the Mall as well; setting it free.

The task of getting the information on Trinity to Tesla Bombeck was more important than offering words of comfort or warning to Elizando, even if he'd had any words to offer. The man clearly knew what danger he was in or he wouldn't have been releasing his stock. And as to comfort: what words were there to offer? Decision made, Hotchkiss started across the lot to his car, only to be stopped again, not by a sight this time but by a sound: a short, anguished human cry. Its source was the pet store.

He was at the open door in ten seconds. Inside there were more animals underfoot, but no sign of their liberator. He called the man's name.

”Elizando? Are you OK?”

There was no answer, and it occurred to Hotchkiss that the man had killed himself. Set the animals free then slit his wrists. He picked up his speed, weaving through the displays, the perches and the cages. Halfway down the store he saw Elizando's body slumped on the far side of a sizeable cage. The occupants, a small flock of canaries, were panicked, fluttering back and forth, feathers dashed from their wings against the wire.

Hotchkiss dropped the book and went to Ted's aid.

”What have you done?” he said as he approached. ”Jesus, man, what have you done?”

As he got closer to the body he realized his error. This was no suicide. The wounds on his face-which was pressed against the wire-were not self-inflicted. They were traumatic; cobs of flesh torn out of his cheek and neck. The blood had spilled through the mesh and covered the bottom of the canaries' cage, but it had ceased to pump with any gusto. He'd been dead for several minutes.

Hotchkiss stood up, very slowly. If it hadn't been Elizando's cry he'd heard, what had it been? He took a step towards the book to reclaim it, but as he stooped to pick it up a motion between the cages distracted him. What seemed to be a black snake was gliding across the floor just beyond Elizando's corpse. It moved quickly, its clear intention to come between him and the exit. Had he not had to pick up the book he might have outrun it, but by the time he had Preparing for Armageddon in his hand it was at the door. Now that it was in full sight several facts became clear. That this was no escapee from the store (no household in the Grove would have given it a home). That it bore as much resemblance to a Moray eel as it did to a snake, but even that likeness was vague: it was, in truth, like nothing he'd seen before. And finally, that it had left smears of blood on the tiles to mark its advance; and that the interior of its mouth was also wet with blood. This was Elizando's killer. He retreated in front of it, evoking the name of the Savior he'd long ago forsaken: ”Jesus.”

The word brought laughter from somewhere at the back of the store. He turned. The door to Ted's office was wide open. Though the room beyond had no windows, and the lights weren't on, he could make out the figure of a man sitting cross-legged on the floor. He could even make a guess at his ident.i.ty: the misshapen features of Tesla Bombeck's friend Raul were unmistakable, even in the gloom. He was naked. It was that fact-his nakedness, and therefore his vulnerability-that tempted Hotchkiss into taking a step towards the open door. Given the choice between fighting the snake or its charmer-and they were surely in league-he chose the charmer. A naked man, squatting, was not much threat.

”What the f.u.c.k's going on here?” Hotchkiss demanded as he approached.

The man grinned in the murk. His smile was wet and wide.

”I'm making Lix,” he replied.

”Lix?”

”Behind you.”

Hotchkiss didn't need to turn around to know his exit was still blocked. He had no choice but to stand his ground, even though he was increasingly appalled by the sight in front of him. Not only was the man naked, but his body, from the middle of his chest to the middle of his thigh, was swarming with bugs, the store's supply of lizard food and fish food, here a.s.suaging another appet.i.te. Their motion had him hard, his crooked member the focus of their endeavors. But there was a sight as repulsive or worse on the ground in front of him: a small heap of animal excrement, droppings gathered from the cages, in the midst of which a creature was nesting. No, not nesting, being born, swelling and unknotting itself in front of Hotchkiss. It raised its head from the s.h.i.+t, and he saw it was another of what this monster-maker had called Lix.

Nor was it the only one. Glistening forms uncoiled in the corners of the little room, all lengths of featureless muscle, malice in their every squirming motion. Two emerged from behind their maker. Another was climbing up the counter to the right of Hotchkiss, and wriggling towards him. In order to avoid it, he took a backward step, and realized too late that the maneuver had put him within reach of another of the beasts. It was at his leg in two beats, ascending it in three. He dropped Armageddon a second time and reached down to strike at the thing, but its gaping mouth struck first, the twin motions throwing him off balance. He staggered back against a shelf of cages, his flailing arms bringing several of them down. A second s.n.a.t.c.h, this time at the shelf itself, was just as fruitless. Built only to bear kittens and their cages, it gave way beneath his weight, and he fell to the ground, the shelf and its load coming down after him. Had it not been for the cages he might have been slaughtered on the spot, but they delayed the Lix converging on him from front door and back. He was granted ten seconds' reprieve while they tried to worm their way between the cages, during which he managed to roll over and prepare to get to his feet, but the creature fixed to his leg brought such hope to an end, its jaws sinking into the flesh of his hip. The pain took his sight for a moment, and when it returned the other beasts had found their way to him. He felt one of them at the back of his neck; another wrapped itself around his torso. He started to yell for help, before the breath was squeezed out of him.

”There's only me,” came the reply.

He gazed up at the man called Raul who was no longer squatting in ordure, but standing over him-still hard, still swarming-one of the Lix draped around his neck. He had the first two fingers of his hand in its open mouth, stroking the back of its throat.

”You're not Raul,” Hotchkiss gasped.