Part 12 (2/2)

”If we don't leave now, we're all dead. Something's happened to c.u.mmings. He's . . .”

He stopped dead as Neville's eyes widened in fear and wonder at something behind McNeely. He knew what it was even before he turned, and saw the huge twisted body of Seth c.u.mmings in the doorway to the cold cellar.

Its arms and legs were still, but its shoulders vibrated up and down with a life of their own, sympathetically shaking the entire frame. McNeely realized it was laughing.

Then it spoke. ”You were never close, Mr. Neville. Never even remotely. Your wife was right. The Master doesn't want you. It's me he wants. You're dying even now. I'm healthy, and strong. I'm going to live a long, long time. But you? And you, McNeely? Oh, no, I'm afraid not.”

It moved then, shuffling raggedly across the stone floor. ”You have to die, both of you. And Wickstrom too. I'll let the woman live. I need her. For this . . .” He thrust a sausage-fingered hand between his legs, ripping away the last vestiges of cloth. ”And for when we leave. I'll have all you had, Mr. Neville, but I'll use it more wisely than you ever did. I'll use it for the Master.”

It was about twenty feet away. When it came closer, perhaps ten feet, McNeely intended to charge it and quickly veer to its left and up the stairs.

But then he remembered his job.

It seemed like years ago, but he'd been hired to protect the Nevilles, and right now David Neville was within several yards and several seconds of having his head ripped off. The soldier took over then, with never a thought as to whether or not Neville was worth saving. McNeely edged closer to Neville and whispered. ”When I say, run up the stairs.”

Now stall. Relax him. Off his guard.

”Who is this Master?”

c.u.mmings laughed gutturally. ”Me to know, you to never find out.” He came closer. It looked to McNeely as though the creature was ready to take them both. The mammoth arms were coming up and out, blocking their way to the stairs. One man, fast and agile, might be able to get past. But two? Never.

McNeely let his voice go softer. ”Why kill us, c.u.mmings? What's the point?” His voice cracked on the last word, so that a slight sob echoed and reechoed in the dismal room.

”Look at me!” c.u.mmings boomed out. ”The point is power! And I will have it all! Here first, then . . . ' He gestured with an arm like a railroad tie, ”Out there! Out in the world.” His voice dropped to a whistling husky sibilance. ”The power to take those like you and crush you like bugs.” He looked from McNeely to Neville and back again. Then he split the twisted clay of his face in a parody of a smile.

”Who's first?”

”Please ...”McNeely choked out. ”Please let us live. . . .”

”McNeely!” c.u.mmings crooned in mock surprise. ”I never thought you'd beg ... such a strong man, a soldier, a man of such...”

”Don't kill us.” McNeely's head drooped like a whipped dog, but his eyes still watched.

”... of such power! What a liar!” c.u.mmings started to laugh, great dry heaving laughs that shook his body, relaxed the bunched, corded muscles. ”What a liar!”

And McNeely moved.

”Now!” he shouted to Neville as he feinted right, then twisted left as if to run past c.u.mmings's right side. But instead of das.h.i.+ng past, he threw himself into the air and lashed out with his right leg at the spot where c.u.mmings's right ear pressed against his shoulder.

It was intended as a delaying maneuver. McNeely had hoped at best to stagger the behemoth, throw him off balance, perhaps with luck even to topple his top-heavy body so that there would be time for both him and Neville to get by and up the stairs. So it was a surprise to him when what happened, happened.

It began when he was in the air, drawing his leg back to lash out. It was as if time suddenly slowed for him, as if he had all the time he wanted to hang there in the air, measure his goal, take the move only when it felt absolutely, perfectly right. When that moment came, he unleashed all the power of his hip and thigh muscles, with the whole weight of his body behind it.

Then suddenly, terrifyingly, there was more.

He felt absurdly enough like a flyswatter made of iron. An unknown hand took him and wielded him and thrust him against his enemy so that his foot hit the hollow of c.u.mmings's neck with pile driver force, ramming the head to the left, compressing the thick neck muscles so quickly and powerfully that they exploded outward through the leathery skin, spraying a wet fog of blood and tissue into the air.

Neville had hesitated when McNeely had attacked. Instead of das.h.i.+ng past c.u.mmings immediately, he had watched as McNeely had made his leap. Only when McNeely's foot smashed against c.u.mmings did Neville start to run, just in time for c.u.mmings to collide with him and bring him solidly up against the rough brick wall. Neville cried out at the pain, and in response c.u.mmings's head swayed up on his ruin of a neck and turned almost completely around until it saw the man crumpled at the base of the wall. McNeely could scarcely believe that something that had taken a blow that had nearly decapitated it was capable of such blinding speed.

c.u.mmings sought to cry out in anger and pain, but there was nothing left to scream with, and the air still in his lungs brought forth only a b.l.o.o.d.y froth that bubbled from his tattered throat. Then suddenly his arms were around David Neville.

Neville's face became a palette. It went from pink flesh to the white of shock to the gray of understood terror. Then the redness began, all in the time it took McNeely to cross the room. When he arrived at Neville's side, the man's eyes were already beginning to bug from the sockets.

McNeely grasped c.u.mmings's arms, which embraced Neville's trunk just under the heart at the bottom of the rib cage. That some ribs were already broken McNeely knew. He'd heard them snap like dry sticks when c.u.mmings had 'made his grab. But Neville was still alive, and McNeely intended to die himself to keep him that way. He tried to dig both hands around c.u.mmings's left forearm, but could not find a hold. c.u.mmings's arms seemed one with Neville's midsection, as if whatever warped alchemy that had changed c.u.mmings was now exerting its force upon both attacker and victim, merging the flesh of the two men in a deadly union.

Neville's face was beyond red to purple now, and the whole upper half of his body seemed bloated with the lower organs that c.u.mmings's arms were displacing. McNeely thought involuntarily of a tube of toothpaste squeezed in the middle, then of a balloon twisted tighter and tighter in the center until just a touch light of.

Bursting.

A hiss left c.u.mmings's lungs, and a new smile contorted the face on the head that dangled from a few strands of flesh and stringy muscle, and McNeely knew with queasy certainty that if the throat had been whole, he would have heard a laugh.

Bursting ...

Neville's tongue protruded farther than McNeely had thought possible, and blood began to arc from his nose, stream from his ears.

And still McNeely could not break c.u.mmings's grasp.

McNeely went berserk then. He smashed at c.u.mmings's back with fists clenched together, hammer blows that might have splintered the spine of any other human, but c.u.mmings squeezed on.

McNeely kicked with the sharp edge of his shoe, taking running starts that crunched against c.u.mmings's forearm and elbow like the blade of a pickax, but c.u.mmings squeezed on.

Then McNeely wrapped his arms around c.u.mmings's body and sought to lift him by brute force, to pick up both men if necessary and fling them to the stone floor in the hope of dividing them. But it was like trying to move Pine Mountain itself.

c.u.mmings squeezed on . . . pressed on.

Press on! Press on, men!

(Colonel Ortega . . . the only English he knew) Press on! Press on!

(he called, just before the sh.e.l.l hit him full in the chest, turning him into a pink cloud in the jungle) Press on!

McNeely screamed and grasped c.u.mmings's head, jerking and wrenching again and again until the few shards of tissue ripped loose and he fell over backward, striking the base of his skull on the stones, as the head rolled into darkness and monstrous arms tightened in a final spasm and the upper half of David Neville's body did what the balloon and the toothpaste tube and everything that can hold no more always has to do.

Part III Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Chapter Eight.

George McNeely was swimming.

He knew it was a dream, but that didn't keep him from enjoying it. He needed something like this after what he'd been through. Though he couldn't remember what it was, he did know it had been very unpleasant, it had made him hurt, and it had made him think he might be crazy.

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