Part 14 (1/2)

Peter frowned, took his foot off the brake, and put it down on the accelerator. ”Now I drive.”

He floored it. Father Jack shouted an objection but Peter barely took note of the words. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nikki brace herself on the dashboard with one hand, but in the other she held one of the HKs Jack had given her.

Keomany said nothing.

The blue sky disappeared above them. Peter took one look in the rearview mirror and spotted several of the cops he had knocked unconscious getting to their feet. One of them had drawn his weapon and was brandis.h.i.+ng it, shouting after the Navigator, but one of his fellow officers reached out and grabbed his arm, pus.h.i.+ng it down.

Then the Navigator was bathed in that vile orange light. The vehicle shuddered and Peter kept both hands locked on to the wheel. He had torn a portal through realities but it was still not a smooth transition. The Navigator jerked as though they had burst through some invisible membrane and a hairline crack spiderwebbed across the winds.h.i.+eld.

The light dimmed and the engine whined as though it struggled against something, and then they were through, driving beneath a filthy orange sky through air thick with heat and a charnel house stink that made Peter begin breathing through his mouth.

”We're through,” Father Jack whispered. His words were barely audible over the hum of the engine.

Peter drove slowly. Cars were stalled or parked or crashed at intervals and he had to weave around them. Some were turned over, others merely had the windows shattered. One had been wrapped around a telephone pole at high speed and had collapsed in upon itself like an accordion.

The road was littered with human corpses, or what remained of them. The dead were mostly bones and dry s.n.a.t.c.hes of parchment skin and sun-bleached clothing. He spotted two smaller skeletons with tufts of fur stuck to their bones and thought they were too small to be dogs. Cats probably. Things that might have been this world's version of carrion birds picked at some of the cadavers, but Peter paid them no mind. The scavengers weren't the real evil here.

”Keomany,” he said, ”show me the way. Let's check the downtown, where you were before you left. I want to find the things responsible for this. It's the only way to reverse it.”

”My parents,” she said softly, gazing out the window and studying each of the corpses they pa.s.sed.

”We'll check on them soon,” Peter told her. He glanced in the rearview and she met his gaze. ”But you should be prepared.”

In her reflection he could see the glow behind her eyes grow brighter, as though each were its own tiny eclipse.

”Drive,” Keomany told him.

Peter avoided colliding with the stalled or wrecked cars but he no longer bothered going around the remains of the dead. The wheels of the Navigator crunched bone and b.u.mped over those who had had the misfortune to be caught out here upon the road by the sleek black demons Keomany had described, or by whatever else now infested Wickham.

All four of them were on guard. The windows were rolled down and Father Jack and Nikki held their nine-millimeter semiautomatic weapons in their laps, but there was nothing casual about this. There had been few buildings where they had entered the displaced area, but now as he followed Keomany's direction, Peter drove them into a more closely settled area of Wickham. Many of the homes had been burned out, some still smoldered. Others had been caved in from outside or had picture windows that had been shattered. The dead littered lawns and in one place the skeletal upper torso of a man lay upon a s.h.i.+ngled roof with absolutely no evidence as to how it had come to be there. A picket fence had been turned into a thicket of spikes adorned with the impaled bodies of a dozen dead cats.

”Left,” Keomany said, a hitch in her voice as though she were trying not to be sick. ”That's Currier. It leads into the downtown.”

Peter turned, but as he did, a motion off to his left caught his eye. He glanced in that direction, at a house that was seemingly untouched, and saw a heavy curtain fall back to cover an upstairs window, as though someone had been watching their progress and had ducked back so as not to be seen. Dimly he heard the barking of a dog.

Demon or human? he wondered, wis.h.i.+ng he had gotten a closer look at the figure behind that curtain. It would have been good to know that there were at least some who had survived this horror. he wondered, wis.h.i.+ng he had gotten a closer look at the figure behind that curtain. It would have been good to know that there were at least some who had survived this horror.

”Where are they all?” Nikki asked, as though echoing his thoughts.

”The people or the monsters?” Father Jack replied.

Nikki sighed heavily, anxiously. ”Either. It's like it's been abandoned.”

”No. It's not abandoned. I'm sure we've been noticed,” Peter said. ”My guess is they're taking our measure.”

There was no response to that. He turned onto Currier Street and in the back seat Keomany cursed loudly in astonishment. Peter did not need to ask her what had affected her so deeply. They were rapidly approaching what had clearly once been a lovely shopping district, a cla.s.sic downtown New England street full of boutiques and restaurants. The entire east side of Currier Street had been put to the torch, leaving nothing but blackened and charred remains smoldering where businesses had been. At the far end of the devastation, a small fire still burned.

”Your shop?” Nikki asked, her pain for her friend's loss evident.

”No. I'm on the other side,” Keomany replied.

Peter had known from the moment he had heard her story that Wickham itself might be rescued, lives might be saved, but the village would never be the same again. Despite however well she might have prepared herself, he understood that Keomany was only now beginning to realize the truth of it.

As he drove, Peter glanced from side to side, watching both the ruins and the hollowed faces of the remaining stores for some sign of an enemy. Something he could fight against. He knew he could get them out-tearing another hole in the displacement field was not going to be difficult-and it might be possible to collapse part of it as well, but without figuring out the source of this magick, there was no way he could return Wickham to its rightful place in the world.

A p.r.i.c.kling sensation went up the back of his neck and he glanced sharply to the left. In the darkness within a restaurant something s.h.i.+fted, quickly seeking cover in the depths of the ravaged business. Peter said nothing to the others.

”Here,” Keomany said.

But he had already seen it. Sweet Somethings. The sign was still hung in front of it, though the windows were gone. Broken gla.s.s lay scattered across the sidewalk. Peter pulled the Navigator up in front of it, put it in park, and glanced over his shoulder.

”Do you need anything from inside? I can go in for you.”

She shook her head.

Father Jack raised one finger. ”Peter? I know you say they're watching us, but it looks like they don't want to be found. Can you track them?”

Peter frowned. ”We won't need to. Look around, Jack. It's only a matter of time before they come after us. In the meantime, we're going to keep poking around, kicking the bees' nest, trying to get a reaction. They're here, all right. And now that we're in, they're not going to let us out without a fight. But while they're leaving us alone, let's go look for Keomany's family.”

In the back seat, Keomany said something so quietly Peter did not hear her.

”What?” he asked.

In the rearview mirror he saw her staring out the window and looked to see what had drawn her attention. A postal truck had crashed through the front of a bakery and what remained of the postman hung out the door, his chest torn open, ribs split, a gaping cavern where his organs ought to have been.

”Bobby Donovan,” Keomany said, staring at the dead postman. ”He was two years behind me in school. He asked me out once, when he was a freshman. It must have taken guts. I wish I'd gone.”

Once more they all fell silent and Peter turned the Navigator around and drove back the way they had come, more vigilant than ever. Several blocks up Currier, Keomany told him to turn. Instantly the area became more residential and again most of the homes had been burned or ravaged. There were more cars wrecked or overturned or simply abandoned, and there were more bones.

Peter was focused on a house up on the left that was untouched. In the filthy orange light that seemed to envelop every structure, to fill their lungs with its stink, he could not be sure at first what it was that he saw on the lawn. A body, to be sure, but as he drove nearer, he saw that this corpse was not wisps of hair and flesh on a withered, skeletal frame. He put on the brakes and stared at the dead man who sprawled on the lawn, limbs jutting at odd angles, head caved in.

The corpse was fresh.

Somewhere nearby a dog was barking, its anger m.u.f.fled by windows and doors and walls. He glanced up at the house with the dead man sprawled on the lawn and he knew the sound was coming from within. A dog, alive, barking angrily.

From the garage.

Peter stared at the garage door, which was one of those with a row of square windows along the top. In the gloom within he thought he could see a human face illuminated by that sickly orange light. Possibly more than one.

The dog kept barking.

Dead cats impaled on a picket fence.

But no dead dogs.

On the other side of the street, two houses up, was another home that had been untouched. Peter sped up, came to a sudden stop in front of the house.