“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she declared, smiling back. “Since this is your first visit, let me make a suggestion. Order the hash. It’s my own recipe. You won’t be sorry.”
“All right. Your own recipe, is it?”
“Yep. This is my place.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Josie Jackson.”
“John Ross.” He took her hand in his own and held it. Her hand was cool. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too. Nice to meet anyone who still calls me ‘miss’ and means it.” She laughed and walked away.
He finished the Cherry Coke, and when the hash arrived he ordered a glass of milk to go with it. He ate the hash and drank the milk without looking up. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Josie Jackson looking at him as she passed down the counter.
When he was finished, she came back and stood in front of him. There were freckles on her nose underneath the tan. Her arms were smooth and brown. He found himself wanting to touch her skin.
“You were right,” he said. “The hash was good.”
She beamed, her smile dazzling. “Do you want some more? I think the house can spare seconds.”
“No, thank you anyway.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
“No, that’s fine.” He glanced over one shoulder as if checking something, then looked back at her. “Can I ask you a question?”
Her mouth quirked at the corners. “That depends on the question.”
He glanced over his shoulder again. “Is that Robert Freemark sitting back there with those men?”
She followed his gaze, then nodded. “You know Old Bob?”
Ross levered himself off the stool with the help of his walking stick. “No, but I was a friend of his daughter.” The lie burned in his throat as he said it. “Will you hold my bill for a minute, Josie? I want to go say hello.”
He limped from the counter toward the table in back, steeling himself against what he must do. The men sitting around it were telling stories and laughing, eating doughnuts and pastries, and drinking coffee. It looked like they felt at home here, as if they came often. Bob Freemark had his back turned and didn’t see him until some of the others looked up at his approach. Then Old Bob looked around as well, his big, white head lifting, his piercing blue eyes fixing Ross with a thoughtful look.
“Are you Robert Freemark, sir?” John Ross asked him.
The big man nodded. “I am.”
“My name is John Ross. We haven’t met before, but your daughter and I were friends.” The lie went down easier this time. “I just wanted to come over and say hello.”
Old Bob stared at him. The table went silent. “Caitlin?” the other man asked softly.
“Yes, sir, a long time ago, when we were both in college. I knew her then.” Ross kept his face expressionless.
Old Bob seemed to recover himself. “Sit down, Mr. Ross,” he urged, pulling over an empty chair from one of the adjoining tables. Ross seated himself gingerly, extending his leg away from the table so that he was facing Robert Freemark but not the others. The conversations at the table resumed, but Ross could tell that the other men were listening in on them nevertheless.
“You knew Caitlin, you say?” Old Bob repeated.
“In Ohio, sir, when we were both in college. She was at Oberlin, so was I, a year ahead. We met at a social function, a mixer. We dated on and off, but it was nothing serious. We were mostly just friends. She talked about you and Mrs. Freemark often. She told me quite a lot about you. When she left school, I never saw her again. I understand she was killed. I’m sorry.”
Old Bob nodded. “Almost fourteen years ago, Mr. Ross. It’s all in the past.”
He didn’t sound as if that were so, Ross thought. “I promised myself that if I was ever out this way, I would try to stop by and say hello to you and Mrs. Freemark. I thought a lot of Caitlin.”
The other man nodded, but didn’t look as if he quite understood. “How did you find us here in Hopewell, Mr. Ross?”
“Please, sir, call me John.” He eased his bad leg to a new position. The men at the table were losing interest in what he had to say. A fourteen-year-old friendship with a dead girl was not important to them. “I knew where Caitlin was from,” he explained. “I took a chance that you and Mrs. Freemark were still living here. I asked about you at the hotel where I’m staying. Then I came here. Josie told me who you were.”
“Well,” Old Bob said softly. “Isn’t that something?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where are you from, John?”
“New York City.” He lied again.
“Is that so? New York City? What brings you out this way?”
“I’m traveling through by bus to see friends in Seattle. I don’t have a schedule to keep to, so I took a small detour here. I suppose I decided it was time to keep my promise.”
He paused, as if considering something he had almost forgotten. “I understand that Caitlin has a daughter.”
“Yes, that would be Nest,” Old Bob acknowledged, smiling. “She lives with us. She’s quite a young lady.”
John Ross nodded. “Well, that’s good to hear.” He tried not to think of the dreams. “Does she look at all like her mother?”
“Very much so.” Old Bob’s smile broadened. “Having Nest helps in some small way to make up for losing Caitlin.”
Ross looked at the floor. “I expect it does. I wish I could see her. I think often of Caitlin.” He went silent, as if unable to think of anything else to say. “Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate having had the opportunity of meeting you.”
He started to rise, levering himself up with the aid of his staff. “Please give my regards to Mrs. Freemark and your granddaughter.”
He was already moving away when Old Bob caught up with him. The big man’s hand touched his arm. “Wait a minute, Mr. Ross. John. I don’t think it’s right that you’ve come all this way and don’t get to talk about Caitlin more than this. Why don’t you come to dinner tonight? You can meet Evelyn—Mrs. Freemark—and Nest as well. We’d like to hear more about what you remember. Would you like to come?”
John Ross took a long, deep breath. “Very much, sir.”
“Good. That’s good. Come about six, then.” Old Bob brushed at his thick white hair with one hand. “Can you find a ride or shall I pick you up?”
“I’ll manage to get there.” Ross smiled.
Robert Freemark extended his hand and Ross took it. The old man’s grip was powerful. “It was good of you to come, John. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you this evening.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ross replied, meaning it.
He moved away then, back toward the counter, listening to the conversation of the other men at the table trail after him. Knew Caitlin, did he? At college? What’s his name again? You think he’s one of those hippies? He looks a little frayed around the edges. What do you think he did to his leg? Ross let the words wash off him and did not look around. He felt sad and old. He felt bereft of compassion. None of them mattered. No one mattered, in truth, besides Nest Freemark.
He came back to the counter and Josie Jackson. She handed him his bill and stood waiting while he pried loose several dollars from his jeans pocket.
“You knew Caitlin, did you?” she asked, studying him.
“A long time ago, yes.” He held her gaze with his own, wanting to find a way to take something of her with him when he went.
“Is that what brought you to Hopewell? Because the fact of the matter is you don’t look like a salesman or a truck driver or a bail bondsman or anything.”
He gave her a quick, tight smile. “That’s what brought me.”
“So where are you off to now?” She took the money he handed her without looking at it. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mind. To tell you the truth, I thought I’d go back to my room for a bit. I’m a little tired. I just came in on the bus, and I didn’t sleep much.” The word “sle
ep” sent an involuntary chill through his body.
“Are you staying at the Lincoln Hotel?” she asked.
“For a few days.”
“So maybe we’ll see some more of you while you’re here?”
He smiled anew, liking the way she looked at him. “I don’t see how you can avoid it if everything at Josie’s is as good as the hash.”
She smiled back. “Some things are even better.” She kept her gaze level, unembarrassed. “See you later, John.”
The Knight of the Word turned and walked out the door into the midday heat, riddled with shards of confusion and hope.
Seated at the table in the back of the café with Old Bob and the others, an invisible presence in their midst, the demon watched him go.
CHAPTER 10
It is night. The sky is clear, and the full moon hangs above the eastern horizon in brilliant opalescence. Stars fill the dark firmament with pinpricks of silver, and the breeze that wafts across his heated skin is cool and soft. He stands looking upward for a moment, thinking that nothing of the madness of the world in which he stands reflects in the heavens he views. He wishes he could find a way to smother the madness with the tranquillity and peace he finds there. He remembers for a moment the way things were.
Then he is moving again, jogging steadily down the concrete highway into the city, hearing already the screams and cries of the captives. The pens are two miles farther in, but the number of prisoners they contain is so vast that the sounds travel all the way to the farmlands. The city is not familiar to him. It lies in what was Kansas or perhaps Nebraska. The country about is flat and empty. Once it grew crops, but now it grows only dust. Nothing lives in the country. All of the fields have dried away. All of the animals have been killed. All of the people have been hunted down and herded into the pens by those who were once like them. In the silence of the night, there is only the buzzing and chirping of insects and the dry, papery whisper of old leaves being blown across stone.
Feeders peer out from the shadows as he passes, but they keep their distance. He is a Knight of the Word, and they have no power over him. They sense this, and they do not offer challenge. They are creatures of instinct and habit, and they react to what they find in humans in the way that predators react to the smell of blood. John Ross knows this about them. He understands what they are, a lesson imparted to him long ago when there was still hope, when there was still reason to believe he could make a difference. The feeders are a force of nature, and they respond to instinct rather than to reason. They do not think, because thinking is not required of them. They do not exist to think, but to react. The Word made them for reasons that John Ross does not understand. They are a part of the balance of life, but their particular place in the balance remains a mystery to him. They are attracted by the darker emotions that plague human beings. They appear when those emotions can no longer be contained. They feed on those emotions and in so doing drive mad the humans who are their victims. Given enough time and space and encouragement, they would destroy everything.
The Knight of the Word has tried hard to determine why this must be, but it requires a deeper understanding of human behavior than he possesses. So he has come to accept the feeders simply as a force of nature. He can see them, as most cannot, so he knows they are real. Few others understand this. Few have any idea at all that the feeders even exist. If they knew, they would be reminded of Biblical references and cautionary tales from childhood and be quick to describe the feeders as Satan’s creatures or the Devil’s imps. But the feeders belong to the Word. They are neither good nor evil, and their purpose is far too complex to be explained away in such simplistic terms.
He passes through what was once an industrial storage area of the city, and the amber eyes follow him, flat and expressionless. The feeders feel nothing, reveal nothing. The feeders have no concern for him one way or the other. That is not their function. The Knight of the Word has to remind himself of this, for the glimmer of their eyes seems a challenge and a danger to him. But the feeders, as he has learned, are as impervious to emotion as fate is to prayers. They are like the wind and the rain; when conditions warrant, they will appear. Look for them as you would a change in the weather, for they respond in no less impersonal and arbitrary a way.
Nevertheless, it seems to him, as he passes their dark lair, that they know who he is and judge him accordingly. He cannot help himself, for they have been witness to his every failure. It feels as if they judge him now, remembering as he does the many opportunities he has squandered. Tonight provides another test for him. His successes of late might seem to offset his earlier failures, but it is the failures that matter most. If he had not failed in Hopewell with Nest Freemark, he thinks bitterly, there would be no need for successes now. He remembers her, a child of fourteen, how close he was to saving her, how badly he misjudged what was needed. He remembers the demon, prevailing even in the face of his fierce opposition. The memory will not leave. The memory will haunt him to the grave.
But he will not die tonight, he thinks. He carries in his hands the gleaming, rune-carved staff of magic that the Lady gave him all those years ago, wielding it as Arthur would Excalibur, believing there are no numbers great enough to stand against him or weapons strong enough to destroy him or evil dark enough to expunge the light of his magic. It is the legacy of his failure, the talisman bequeathed to him when nothing remained but the battle itself. He will fight on because fighting is all that is left. He is strong, pure, and fixed of purpose. He is a knight-errant adrift on a quest of his own making. He is Don Quixote tilting at windmills with no hope of finding peace.
He slows now to a walk, close enough to the pens to be able to see the smoky light of the torches that illuminate the compound. He has never been here before, but he knows what he will find. He has seen others of the same sort in other cities. They are all the same—makeshift enclosures into which humans have been herded and shut away. Men, women, and children run to ground and enslaved, there to be separated and processed, to be designated for a purpose, to be used and debilitated and ultimately destroyed. It is the way the world is now, the way it has been for more than seven years. All of the cities of America are either armed camps or ruins. Nuclear missiles and poison gas and defoliant were used early, when there were still governments and armies to wield them. Then the missiles and gas and defoliant were discarded in favor of more personal, rudimentary weapons as the governments and armies disintegrated and the level of savagery rose. Washington was obliterated. New York City tore itself apart. Atlanta, Houston, and Denver built walls and stockpiled weapons and began systematically to annihilate anyone who came close. Los Angeles and Chicago became killing grounds for the demons and their followers. Sides were chosen and battles fought at every turn. Reason gave way to bloodlust and was lost.
There are places somewhere, the Knight has heard, where the madness is still held at bay, but he has not found them. Some are in other countries, but he does not know where. Technology is fragmented and does not function in a dependable manner. Airplanes no longer fly, ships no longer sail, and trains no longer run. Knowledge dissipates with the passing of every day and the death of every man. The Void has no interest in technology because technology furthers progress. The demons multiply, and their purpose now is to break down what remains of human reason and to put an end to any resistance. Little stands in their way. The madness that marked the beginning of the end continues to grow.
But the Knight fights on, a solitary champion for the Word, shackled to his fate as punishment for his failure to prevent the madness from taking hold when he still had a chance to do so. He goes from city to city, from armed camp to armed camp, freeing those poor creatures imprisoned by the slave pens, hoping that some few will manage to escape to a better place, that one or two will somehow make a difference in the terrible battle being fought. He has no specific expectations. Hope of any sort is a luxury he cannot afford. He must carry on because he has pledged to do so. There is nothing els
e left for him. There is nothing else that matters.
John Ross slows to a steady walk, holding the staff crosswise before him with both hands. He remembers what it was like when the staff was his walking stick and gave support against his limp. But his dreams have ended and his future has become his present. Tomorrow’s madness has become today’s. The limp has disappeared, and he is transformed. The staff is now his sword and shield; he is infused with its power and made strong. The magic he had feared to use before is now used freely. It is a measure of his service that there are no longer any constraints placed on him, but it is also a mark of his failure.
Ahead, the torchlight grows brighter. The tools of living have become rudimentary once more. There is no electricity to power streetlamps, no fuel for turbines or generators, almost no coal or oil left to burn. There is no running water. There is no sewage or garbage disposal. There are few automobiles that run and few roads that will support them. The concrete of the streets is cracked and broken. Patches of grass and scrub push through. The earth slowly reclaims its own.
He slides to one side to keep within the shadows. He is not afraid, but there is an advantage in surprise. The feeders peering out at him draw back, wary. They sense that he can see them when most others cannot—even those who have fallen victim to the madness and serve the demons, even those the feeders rely upon to sustain them. Their numbers are huge now, grown so vast that there is not a darkened corner anywhere in which they do not lurk. They have bred in a frenzy as the madness consumed mankind, but of late their breeding has slowed. Some will begin to disappear soon, for the dwindling population of humans cannot continue to support them. With the passage of time the balance will shift back again, and the world will begin anew. But it is too late for civilization. Civilization is finished. Men are diminished, reduced to the level of animals. Rebirth, when it comes, will be a crapshoot.
He wonders momentarily how bad it is elsewhere in the world. He does not know for certain. He has heard it is not good, that what began in America spread more quickly elsewhere, that what took seed slowly here finds more fertile soil abroad. He believes that every country is under assault and that most are overrun. He believes that the destruction is widespread. He has not been visited by the Lady in a long time. He has seen no evidence that she still exists. He has heard nothing from the Word.