What happened later he remembered with eidetic clarity, but from the moment the Beech skidded to a stop on the taxiway, ass-end to the Lear and tilted to one side, to the moment he heard the first screams from the terminal, all he remembered for sure was swinging back to get his camera. He couldn't leave the plane without his camera; the Nikon was the closest thing Dees had to a wife. He'd bought it in a Toledo hockshop when he was seventeen and kept it with him ever since. He had added lenses, but the basic box was about the same now as it had been then; the only modifications had been the occasional scratch or dent that came with the job. The Nikon was in the elasticized pocket behind his seat. He pulled it out, looked at it to make sure it was intact, saw that it was. He slung it around his neck and bent over the hatch.
He threw the lever, jumped out and down, staggered, almost fell, and caught his camera before it could strike the concrete of the taxiway. There was another growl of thunder, but only a growl this time, distant and unthreatening. A breeze touched him like the caressing touch of a kind hand on his face. . . but more icily below the belt. Dees grimaced. How he had pissed his pants when his Beech and the Piedmont jet had barely scraped by each other would also not be in the story.
Then a thin, drilling shriek came from the General Aviation Terminal--a scream of mingled agony and horror. It was as if someone had slapped Dees across the face. He came back to himself. He centered on his goal again. He looked at his watch. It wasn't working. Either the concussion had broken it or it had stopped. It was one of those amusing antiques you had to wind up, and he couldn't remember when he had last done it.
Was it sunset? It was fucking dark out, yes, but with all the thunderheads massed around the airport, it was hard to tell how much that meant. Was it?
Another scream came--no, not a scream, a screech--and the sound of breaking glass.
Dees decided sunset no longer mattered.
He ran, vaguely aware that the genny's auxiliary tanks were still burning and that he could smell gas in the air. He tried to increase his speed but it seemed he was running in cement. The terminal was getting closer, but not very fast. Not fast enough.
"Please, no! Please, no! PLEASE NO! OH PLEASE, NO!"
This scream, spiraling up and up, was suddenly cut off by a terrible, inhuman howl. Yet there was something human in it, and that was perhaps the most terrible thing of all. In the chancy light of the emergency lamps mounted on the corners of the terminal, Dees saw something dark and flailing shatter more glass in the wall of the terminal that faced the parking area--that wall was almost entirely glass--and come flying out. It landed on the ramp with a soggy thud, rolled, and Dees saw it was a man.
The storm was moving away but lightning still flickered fitfully, and as Dees ran into the parking area, panting now, he finally saw the Night Flier's plane, N101BL painted boldly on the tail. The letters and numbers looked black in this light, but he knew they were red and it didn't matter, anyway. The camera was loaded with fast black-and-white film and armed with a smart flash which would fire only when the light was too low for the film's speed.
The Skymaster's belly-hold hung open like the mouth of a corpse. Below it was a large pile of earth in which things squirmed and moved. Dees saw this, did a double-take, and skidded to a stop. Now his heart was filled not just with fright but with a wild, capering happiness. How good it was that everything had come together like this!
Yes, he thought, but don't you call it luck--don't you dare call it luck. Don't you even call it hunch.
Correct. It wasn't luck that had kept him holed up in that shitty little motel room with the clanky air-conditioner, not hunch--not precisely hunch, anyway--that had tied him to the phone hour after hour, calling fly speck airports and giving the Night Flier's tail-number over and over again. That was pure reporter's instinct, and here was where it all started paying off. Except this was no ordinary payoff; this was the jackpot, El Dorado, that fabled Big Enchilada.
He skidded to a stop in front of the yawning belly-hold and tried to bring the camera up. Almost strangled himself on the strap. Cursed. Unwound the strap. Aimed.
From the terminal came another scream--that of a woman or a child. Dees barely noticed. The thought that there was a slaughter going on in there was followed by the thought that slaughter would only fatten the story, and then both thoughts were gone as he snapped three quick shots of the Cessna, making sure to get the gaping belly-hold and the number on the tail. The auto-winder hummed.
Dees ran on. More glass smashed. There was another thud as another body was ejected onto the cement like a rag doll that had been stuffed full of some thick dark liquid like cough-syrup. Dees looked, saw confused movement, the billowing of something that might have been a cape . . . but he was still too far away to tell. He turned. Snapped two more pictures of the plane, these shots dead-on. The gaping belly-hold and the pile of earth would be stark and undeniable in the print.
Then he whirled and ran for the terminal. The fact that he was armed with only an old Nikon never crossed his mind.
He stopped ten yards away. Three bodies out here, two adults, one of each sex, and one that might have been either a small woman or a girl of thirteen or so. It was hard to tell with the head gone.
Dees aimed the camera and fired off six quick shots, the flash flickering its own white lightning, the auto-winder making its contented little whizzing sound.
His mind never lost count. He was loaded with thirty-six shots. He had taken eleven. That left twenty-five. There was more film stuffed into the deep pockets of his slacks, and that was great . . . if he got a chance to reload. You could never count on that, though; with photographs like these, you had to grab while the grabbing was good. It was strictly a fast-food banquet.
Dees reached the terminal and yanked open the door.
9
He thought he had seen everything there was to see, but he had never seen anything like this. Never.
How many? his mind yammered. How many you got? Six? Eight? Maybe a dozen?
He couldn't tell. The Night Flier had turned the little private terminal into a knacker's shop. Bodies and parts of bodies lay everywhere. Dees saw a foot clad in a black Converse sneaker; shot it. A ragged torso; shot it. Here was a man in a greasy mechanic's coverall who was still alive, and for a weird moment he thought it was Ezra the Amazing Gin-Head Mechanic from Cumberland County Airport, but this guy wasn't just going bald; this guy had entirely made the grade. His face had been chopped wide open from forehead to chin. His nose lay in halves, reminding Dees for some mad reason of a grilled frankfurter, split and ready for the bun.
Dees shot it.
And suddenly, just like that, something inside him rebelled and screamed No more! in an imperative voice it was impossible to ignore, let alone deny.
No more, stop, it's over!
He saw an arrow painted on the wall, with the words THIS WAY TO COMFORT STATIONS below it. Dees ran in the direction the arrow pointed, his camera flapping.
The men's room happened to be the first one he came to, but Dees wouldn't have cared if it was the aliens' room. He was weeping in great, harsh, hoarse sobs. He could barely credit the fact that these sounds were coming from him. It had been years since he had wept. He'd been a kid the last time.
He slammed through the door, skidded like a skier almost out of control, and grabbed the edge of the second basin in line.
He leaned over it, and everything came out in a rich and stinking flood, some of it splattering back onto his face, some landing in brownish clots on the mirror. He smelled the takeout chicken Creole he'd eaten hunched over the phone in the motel room--this had been just before he'd hit pay dirt and gone racing for his plane--and threw up again, making a huge grating sound like overstressed machinery about to strip its gears.
Jesus, he thought, dear Jesus, it's not a man, it can't be a man--
That was when he heard the sound.
It was a sound he had heard at least a thousand times before, a sound that was
commonplace in any American man's life . . . but now it filled him with a dread and a creeping terror beyond all his experience or belief.
It was the sound of a man voiding into a urinal.
But although he could see all three of the bathroom's urinals in the vomit-splattered mirror, he could see no one at any of them.
Dees thought: Vampires don't cast reflec--
Then he saw reddish liquid striking the porcelain of the center urinal, saw it running down that porcelain, saw it swirling into the geometric arrangement of holes at the bottom.
There was no stream in the air; he saw it only when it struck the dead porcelain.
That was when it became visible.
He was frozen. He stood, hands on the edge of the basin, his mouth and throat and nose and sinuses thick with the taste and smell of chicken Creole, and watched the incredible yet prosaic thing that was happening just behind him.
I am, he thought dimly, watching a vampire take a piss.
It seemed to go on forever--the bloody urine striking the porcelain, becoming visible, and swirling down the drain. Dees stood with his hands planted on the sides of the basin into which he had thrown up, gazing at the reflection in the mirror, feeling like a frozen gear in some vast jammed machine.
I'm almost certainly dead meat, he thought.
In the mirror he saw the chromed handle go down by itself. Water roared.
Dees heard a rustle and flap and knew it was a cape, just as he knew that if he turned around, he could strike the "almost certainly" from his last thought. He stayed where he was, palms biting the edge of the basin.
A low, ageless voice spoke from directly behind him. The owner of the voice was so close Dees could feel its cold breath on his neck.
"You have been following me," the ageless voice said.
Dees moaned.
"Yes," the ageless voice said, as if Dees had disagreed with him. "I know you, you see. I know all about you. Now listen closely, my inquisitive friend, because I say this only once: don't follow me anymore."
Dees moaned again, a doglike sound, and more water ran into his pants.
"Open your camera," the ageless voice said.
My film! part of Dees cried. My film! All I've got! All I've got! My pictures!
Another dry, batlike flap of the cape. Although Dees could see nothing, he sensed the Night Flier had moved even closer.
"Now."
His film wasn't all he had.
There was his life.
Such as it was.
He saw himself whirling and seeing what the mirror would not, could not, show him; saw himself seeing the Night Flier, his batty buddy, a grotesque thing splattered with blood and bits of flesh and clumps of torn-out hair; saw himself snapping shot after shot while the auto-winder hummed . . . but there would be nothing.
Nothing at all.
Because you couldn't take their pictures, either.
"You're real," he croaked, never moving, his hands seemingly welded to the edge of the basin.
"So are you," the ageless voice rasped, and now Dees could smell ancient crypts and sealed tombs on its breath. "For now, at least. This is your last chance, my inquisitive would-be biographer. Open your camera . . . or I'll do it."
With hands that seemed totally numb, Dees opened his Nikon.
Air hummed past his chilly face; it felt like moving razor blades. For a moment he saw a long white hand, streaked with blood; saw ragged nails silted with filth.
Then his film parted and spooled spinelessly out of his camera.
There was another dry flap. Another stinking breath. For a moment he thought the Night Flier would kill him anyway. Then in the mirror he saw the door of the men's room open by itself.
He doesn't need me, Dees thought. He must have eaten very well tonight. He immediately threw up again, this time directly onto the reflection of his own staring face.
The door wheezed shut on its pneumatic elbow.
Dees stayed right where he was for the next three minutes or so; stayed there until the approaching sirens were almost on top of the terminal; stayed there until he heard the cough and roar of an airplane engine.
The engine of a Cessna Skymaster 337, almost undoubtedly.
Then he walked out of the bathroom on legs like stilts, struck the far wall of the corridor outside, rebounded, and walked back into the terminal. He slid in a pool of blood, and almost fell.
"Hold it mister!" a cop screamed behind him. "Hold it right there! One move and you're dead!"
Dees didn't even turn around.
"Press, dickface," he said, holding up his camera in one hand and his ID card in the other. He went to one of the shattered windows with exposed film still straggling from his camera like long strips of brown confetti, and stood there watching the Cessna accelerate down Runway 5. For a moment it was a black shape against the billowing fire of the genny and the auxiliary tanks, a shape that looked quite a lot like a bat, and then it was up, it was gone, and the cop was slamming Dees up against the wall hard enough to make his nose bleed and he didn't care, he didn't care about anything, and when the sobs began to tear their way out of his chest again he closed his eyes, and still he saw the Night Flier's bloody urine striking the porcelain, becoming visible, and swirling down the drain.
He thought he would see it forever.
Popsy
Sheridan was cruising slowly down the long blank length of the shopping mall when he saw the little kid push out through the main doors under the lighted sign which read COUSINTOWN. It was a boy-child, perhaps a big three and surely no more than five. On his face was an expression to which Sheridan had become exquisitely attuned. He was trying not to cry but soon would.
Sheridan paused for a moment, feeling the familiar soft wave of self-disgust . . . though every time he took a child, that feeling grew a little less urgent. The first time he hadn't slept for a week. He kept thinking about that big greasy Turk who called himself Mr. Wizard, kept wondering what he did with the children.
"They go on a boat-ride, Mr. Sheridan," the Turk told him, only it came out Dey goo on a bot-rahd, Messtair Shurdunn. The Turk smiled. And if you know what's good for you, you won't ask any more about it, that smile said, and it said it loud and clear, without an accent.
Sheridan hadn't asked any more, but that didn't mean he hadn't kept wondering. Especially afterward. Tossing and turning, wishing he had the whole thing to do over again so he could turn it around, so he could walk away from temptation. The second time had been almost as bad. . . the third time a little less . . . and by the fourth time he had almost stopped wondering about the bot-rahd, and what might be at the end of it for the little kids.
Sheridan pulled his van into one of the handicap parking spaces right in front of the mall. He had one of the special license plates the state gave to crips on the back of his van. That plate was worth its weight in gold, because it kept any mall security cop from getting suspicious, and those spaces were so convenient and almost always empty.
You always pretend you're not going out looking, but you always lift a crip plate a day or two before.
Never mind all that bullshit; he was in a jam and that kid over there could solve some very big problems.
He got out and walked toward the kid, who was looking around with increasing panic. Yes, Sheridan thought, he was five all right, maybe even six--just very frail. In the harsh fluorescent glare thrown through the glass doors the boy looked parchment-white, not just scared but perhaps physically ill. Sheridan reckoned it was just big fear, however. Sheridan usually recognized that look when he saw it, because he'd seen a lot of big fear in his own mirror over the last year and a half or so.
The kid looked up hopefully at the people passing around him, people going into the mall eager to buy, coming out laden with packages, their faces dazed, almost drugged, with something they probably thought was satisfaction.
The kid, dressed in Tuffskin jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins tee-shirt, looked for help, looked for someb
ody to look at him and see something was wrong, looked for someone to ask the right question--You get separated from your dad, son? would do--looking for a friend.
Here I am, Sheridan thought, approaching. Here I am, sonny--I'll be your friend.
He had almost reached the kid when he saw a mall rent-a-cop ambling slowly up the concourse toward the doors. He was reaching in his pocket, probably for a pack of cigarettes. He would come out, see the boy, and there would go Sheridan's sure thing.
Shit, he thought, but at least he wouldn't be seen talking to the kid when the cop came out. That would have been worse.
Sheridan drew back a little and made a business of feeling in his own pockets, as if to make sure he still had his keys. His glance flicked from the boy to the security cop and back to the boy. The boy had started to cry. Not all-out bawling, not yet, but great big tears that looked pinkish in the reflected glow of the red COUSINTOWN sign as they tracked down his smooth cheeks.
The girl in the information booth flagged down the cop and said something to him. She was pretty, dark-haired, about twenty-five; he was sandy-blonde with a moustache. As the cop leaned on his elbows, smiling at her, Sheridan thought they looked like the cigarette ads you saw on the backs of magazines. Salem Spirit. Light My Lucky. He was dying out here and they were in there making chit-chat--whatcha doin after work, ya wanna go and get a drink at that new place, and blah-blah-blah. Now she was also batting her eyes at him. How cute.
Sheridan abruptly decided to take the chance. The kid's chest was hitching, and as soon as he started to bawl out loud, someone would notice him. Sheridan didn't like moving in with a cop less than sixty feet away, but if he didn't cover his markers at Mr. Reggie's within the next twenty-four hours, he thought a couple of very large men would pay him a visit and perform impromptu surgery on his arms, adding several elbow-bends to each.
He walked up to the kid, a big man dressed in an ordinary Van Heusen shirt and khaki pants, a man with a broad, ordinary face that looked kind at first glance. He bent over the little boy, hands on his legs just above the knees, and the boy turned his pale, scared face up to Sheridan's. His eyes were as green as emeralds, their color accentuated by the light-reflecting tears that washed them.