“Come on, come on, I ain’t got all night. Manchester United’s on the telly in”—the driver checked the wristwatch on his beefy, hairy forearm—“half an hour and I got a ways to travel to get home.”
The Angel jumped into the cab after John Fortune, and the wheels started rolling as Ray leaped up and slammed the door shut.
“Scoot over,” the trucker said. “There’s room for all.” He concentrated on negotiating the downhill ramp back to the highway and had his rig going eighty by the time they hit the main road again.
He glanced over at the Angel and John Fortune, grinning around his foul-smelling cigar. “I’m John Bruckner,” he said by way of introduction, “Order of the Silver Helix and freelance lorry driver. The call me the Highwayman. I bet you thought we were in for it when those yobbos started shooting?” He patted the dashboard lovingly. “Nah. Not to worry. This is my special rig. All tricked out for those ‘difficult’ deliveries. Hang on, now,” he warned.
The Angel was too dazed to comment as the speedometer crept up to one twenty and then passed it effortlessly.
“Here comes the short cut,” Bruckner called out, and everything shimmered and they were suddenly someplace else
The landscape through which they passed was bizarre. The color of the ground, the quality of the light, the very angles of the cliff-faces and rock formations they flew by were utterly alien. When she saw some of the rocks move as if they were living things, she had to look away. The Angel glanced up at the sky. The sun was green.
“It’s kind of freaky,” Billy Ray said in a low voice, “but don’t worry. Bruckner will get us through.” His hand rested lightly on her left thigh. She put her own down on his, not to remove it, but to enjoy its warmth. Ray smiled crookedly. There was blood on his face, possibly his. She touched his cheek, wiping it away. She laughed.
“What?” Ray asked, frowning.
The Angel shook her head. “I—” It was hard to explain. She gestured all around, at the bizarre landscape, at her companions. “I haven’t felt so good in a long time,” she finally said. “Have I gone crazy?”
Billy Ray grinned. “You think I’m qualified to pass judgement on someone else’s sanity? Me?”
“We’ll see,” she promised.
“Do me a favor, Digger?” Fortunato asked. He and Digger had left Barnett’s headquarters, Fortunato excusing himself with the explanation that he had to get ready for his son’s imminent arrival. But something else was also on his mind.
The reporter looked up from his laptop where he’d been plinking out the latest chapter in the story of Fortunato’s return, using only approximately three fingers on each hand, but still making pretty good time. He was sitting at the desk in their suite in The Angels’ Bower. Fortunato was reclining on one of the semi-comfortable sofas.
“Sure.”
“Keep an eye on me. If it looks like my heart has stopped beating, call for help.”
Digger frowned. “Okay.”
Fortunato went slack as he used almost the last bit of energy stored in his body to go astral. He hovered above his unconscious form for a moment as Downs went quickly to the sofa. The reporter grabbed Fortunato’s wrist, frowning as he felt for a pulse. He released it after a moment, seemingly satisfied but still looking a little shaken, and moved the ace into a more comfortable position on the sofa, with his legs straight out, his head on a pillow, and his hands placed loosely in his lap. Though the result looked like a corpse waiting for a coffin, Fortunato was touched by Downs unexpected solicitousness, and he smiled as he flew through the closed window and out above the Peaceable Kingdom.
Fortunato had never been to a theme park before, so he had no idea how the Kingdom compared to, say, Disneyland. He suspected that they had the same kind of layout. He went a little higher so that the land below him looked like a Monopoly board, the various properties organized to allow for a smooth flow of people from one part of the park to another.
He’d glanced through the Kingdom’s brochures to familiarize himself with the lay of the land, so at least he knew what he was looking at. In front, to his right, was New Jerusalem, Barnett’s somewhat sanitary reproduction of a portion of that ancient city, containing all the locales relevant to Christ’s life and death—the Via Dolorossa, the Plain of Golgotha, even the rock-hewn Tomb of the Sepulcher—but condensed for the tourist’s convenience. There were also plenty of souvenir shops where T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and necklaces of rough-forged nails like those that pinned Christ to the cross could be purchased.
To his left was Rome of the Martyrs, including a scaled-down version of the Coliseum where various amusements were held, though no Christians were thrown to lions. All entertainments, the brochures said, were in good taste with no blood spilt, but one could still get an idea of the decadent and debauched practices of the pagan Romans. The underground Catacombs, which were obviously not visible from Fortunato’s viewpoint, came complete with grisly scenarios depicting the lives and deaths of the Martyrs, and were also quite popular.
Behind him was Medieval Land and the Vault of Heaven, all with attendant stores, restaurants, amenities, shops, and rides, but something drew Fortunato forward, to the Coliseum-dominated Rome of the Martyrs, as if what he needed could be found there.
He flew between the guardian statues of the Apostles, three each guarding a quadrant of the Kingdom. Something was calling him. It wasn’t the sounds made by the five thousand people attending the revival or seminar or whatever was taking place in the scaled-down Coliseum. It was the promise of energy that saturated the air. As he hovered over the center of the open-roofed structure, he was astonished to see that everyone, all five thousand or so attendees, were women. They ranged from the young to the old. They were all fairly well if not fairly tastefully dressed. They were virtually all white, but Fortunato could remember few Asian faces among the tourists, and even fewer Black. The fact that they were all women seemed somehow appropriate, as if he’d come full circle. Once he’d derived all his power from women. Now perhaps he would again.
His astral form hovered in the air above the Coliseum. A wooden platform below him bore a podium draped with banners proclaiming MAGOG—Mothers Against Gods or Goddesses—in intricate letters. A woman stood behind the podium, leading them all in song. She was flanked on either side by delegates in folding chairs. He didn’t know what the song was, but by its lugubrious tones and solemn, dirge-like beat, he assumed that it was a hymn. After the song ended, the woman standing behind the podium spoke, but Fortunato didn’t listen to her. He had other concerns.
He assumed the lotus position above the platform as currents of energy roiled below him like a tsunami starting to build in some far corner of the Pacific. Passion rose up among the five thousand. Their thoughts were chaotic, their need great. They wanted so badly to belong to something all important and good. They wanted so awfully to give of themselves to something greater, so he let them.
He accepted what they offered.
Energy flowed up to him like manna in reverse. It came in through the pores of his astral body, soaked into his insubstantial capillaries, was gathered into his veins and sucked into his invisible heart. Like a great explosion of terrifying light it burst into his brain and Fortunato was glad that his actual physical brain was safe on the couch in The Angels’ Bower, because his material organs could not have withstood the energy that pulsed like miniature bombs to every beat of his insubstantial heart.
It was too much. He couldn’t contain it all. He knew he had to give some back, and besides, it was the polite thing to do.
He looked at the woman behind the podium. She gripped the sides of the pulpit with an almost stricken look on her face, her teeth clenched, her hair, once so sensibly coifed, now disheveled in wild disarray, her very posture pleading and yet giving at the same time. Fortunato had seen that pose many times in the past. It required very little to push her over the edge, so he did.
A low, unbelieving moan growled out of her t
hroat. She shook as if in an invisible wind, her eyes screwed tightly shut, her mouth slack and panting.
She wasn’t the only one in that condition. They all were. Some screamed, some laughed, some cried. Some fell out of their chairs, some leaped out of their seats. For some the sensation was nothing they’d ever felt before in their lives, for some it was as familiar as Saturday night. Some called on Jesus, some their husbands, some a boy nearly forgotten over the years. Some a girl. Some wanted a cigarette, but this was a non-smoking facility.
Fortunato shared it all while siphoning the maelstrom of energy that they’d released. The crush of emotion would have killed many men, but his ace-enhanced mind and his Zen training pulled him through, though it was the wildest experience he’d ever had in the course of a wild life. He basked in a glow of warm satisfaction for a moment, but suddenly he burned with his own need to go, to do, to find again his son.
His eyes opened and focused on Digger Downs, who was standing over his body sprawled on the couch, staring down at him with concern.
“It’s all right,” he told the reporter. “I’m back.”
“I guess you are,” Downs said. “Where the Hell have you been?”
Fortunato shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not the kind who kisses and tells.”
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
The Short Cut
“What is this place?” John Fortune asked. He was flushed with excitement. Sitting next to him, Ray could feel the heat flowing off of him in waves.
“The Short Cut, lad,” Bruckner said expansively, as if that explained everything.
It was good enough for Ray. He looked out the windshield. The green sun was moving slowly but perceptibly across the sky. Soon it would set, though “soon” in this place seemed a concept hard to define. The road was flat, straight, and well-maintained, though the plants crowding its verge were like nothing Ray had ever seen. They were like trees, but their branches had no leaves. The trunks were bulbous, fleshy things, in shades of green, violet, and vermilion, shot through with scarlet veins which circulated a fluid which Ray was uncomfortably sure resembled blood. He watched them suspiciously as they whizzed by in Bruckner’s lorry, something bothering him. He realized that their branches were moving, though not in a wind. They writhed in several different directions at once, as if at their own volition.
He was about to point this out to Angel when something, suddenly and out of nowhere, hit their windshield with a horrific splat, squashed against it and spattered like a water balloon tossed out of ten story building. A wash of purplish goo instantly covered the windshield. Bruckner clenched his teeth on his cigar as he turned on the windshield wipers.
“This could be a problem,” he said, downshifting as the wipers and the windshield glass itself started to smoke.
“This ever happen before?” Ray asked.
“Rarely,” Bruckner said, “sometimes the locals raise a bit of a tussle.”
“This place has locals?” Angel asked.
Bruckner grinned without humor. “Oh, yes. Best if we stay clear of them, but sometimes we don’t have much of a choice. They used to be real quiet. Never bothered me. But in recent years... something’s stirred them up. It’s like, sometimes, they want my truck.” The lorry braked to a halt, and he looked over at Ray, Angel, and John Fortune. “We’d better get that windshield off before the acid eats all the way through. But not to worry. I carry spares.”
“And the locals?” Ray asked.
“Figger you and the lady can handle them, me lad. That’s why you’re here, after all. The boy can help me replace the windshield. You two guard our flanks, front and back.”
“Guard them from what?” Angel asked.
Bruckner grinned again. “Anything that looks strange.”
Ray and Angel exchanged glances. Ray nodded, and she put her hand on the door handle.
“Oh, one more thing,” Bruckner said.
“What?” Ray asked, starting to get annoyed.
“Funny thing, but guns don’t work in this place.”
Ray shrugged.
Angel said, “I’m covered.” She paused for a moment, frowning. “At least, I hope so.”
“I carry some stuff in the back you can use.”
Ray nodded. “All right. I’ll go to the back, with you. Angel, watch the front.”
“All right,” she said.
“All right,” John Fortune said.
They all looked at Bruckner.
“All right,” the Brit said. “Let’s do it.”
The air, like everything else in this place, was strange. It felt odd on Ray’s tongue. It had a bite to it, like a summer night after a lightning storm. The quality of light was also odd, probably because of the different colored sun, now hanging on the horizon.
Bruckner rolled up the trailer’s rear door, and for all his size, lightly leaped up into it. A weapon rack was bolted on one side of the wall. Swords, spears, bow and arrow.
Too bad Yeoman isn’t with us, Ray thought.
“What do you fancy?” Bruckner asked.
Ray decided to keep it simple.
“Those.” He nodded at the brace of morningstars.
“Good choice,” Bruckner said. “But watch out for splatters of what passes for blood among these boyos. Sometimes it can be corrosive.”
Ray nodded, and Bruckner tossed him the weapons. Their handles were black iron, as long as his forearm. Their heads were the size of Texas grapefruit, spiked. The chains attaching handle to head were about two feet long. Ray swung them once or twice to get their feel. He nodded to himself, and ran through an extemporaneous kata as John Fortune watched with his mouth open. Like all weapons, they felt like he’d been born with them in his hands.
“Right, me lad,” Bruckner said, clapping John Fortune on the shoulder. “Ever change a windshield before?”
“No,” the boy said.
“Nothing to it,” the Brit said cheerfully. “Give me a hand with these suction cups.”
Ray turned his back to the truck, scanning the land. It was flat and relatively featureless. If there’d be trouble, it would come from the weird forest a dozen yards from their flank.
Bruckner and John Fortune got the spare windshield from the case where the trucker kept it among a plethora of other spare parts, and part of Ray listened as they went to the front. Bruckner greeted Angel, who answered in a steady voice, and then issued a stream of commands as he and the boy attacked the ruined windshield.
Thoughts of Angel slipped languorously through Ray’s mind, though most of it was focused on the odd-moving trees, if that’s what they were, bunched by the side of the road, if that’s what it was.
Suddenly it became darker, almost without a sense of transition. Ray looked back to the horizon, and saw that the green sun had gone under. The light took on a quality that Ray had once seen while snorkeling in the Bahamas at a depth of thirty feet. It seemed denser, darker, and somehow a lot less friendly. A full moon rose rapidly on the other side of the horizon, splotched and diseased looking, shining with a greenish, almost phosphorescent light the color of gangrenous flesh.
As if the rising of the leprous moon was a signal, things started coming out of the oddly moving trees.
They were many-legged, spider-like creatures whose bulbous bodies were held high off the ground by too many skeletal legs. Big spiders were one thing, Ray thought, but these had heads and features that were disturbingly human. Except for their protruding fangs which dripped ichor which steamed when it spattered on the ground. They scuttled like crabs, moving fast. Their bodies, white and bulging and hairless, were the size of large dogs.
“Angel,” Ray called out. “You’d better get over here. Quick.”
There were twenty or so in the pack, and they didn’t seem to be afraid of Ray.
Ray whirled at a sudden sound at his side, but it was only Angel. She looked as if she were about to make a remark, then saw the spider-things. “My God!” she said.
“Don’
t blaspheme,” Ray reprimanded.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t blaspheming. I was praying.”
“Pray harder,” Ray said, “because here they come.”
The arachnids were on them, tittering like high school girls as their fangs clacked together, dripping steaming ichor.
“Save my soul from evil, Lord,” Angel said, “and heal this warrior’s heart.”
Ray caught a burst of light in his peripheral vision, and the arachnids reared back, screaming, as Angel plunged into their midst, her flaming sword held high. She screamed. Ray couldn’t tell if it was from anger, fear, or revulsion, as she swung her sword and sheared through the front set of legs of one of the things. It collapsed, grimacing ferociously. Angel lunged. Her sword speared the thing’s body, white and hairless like a dead fish, and it burst like a balloon, spattering her with droplets of ichor that steamed as it ate into her fighting suit.
“Watch out for their blood!” she shouted in warning, pirouetting to cut the legs out from under two others that were trying to circle them.
Ray realized that they were in a bad spot. He danced into the midst of their attackers, swinging right and left with the morningstars. One missed, the other crunched an all-too human-looking face. The spiders’ titters changed to disturbing high-pitched screams, but they still came.
Ray turned and twisted like a dervish. He saw Angel shouting wordlessly as she held off half a dozen of the things with long sweeps of her sword. Thankfully, the spiders seemed more afraid of her, or perhaps it was the light emitted by her weapon, than they were of him. So many gathered about him that he had to shift constantly to avoid their lunging, clacking jaws. Luckily they couldn’t spit venom, but it was only a matter of time before they’d both be splattered with enough of the poison to do some serious damage.
The pack was all around them as Ray caught something out of the corner of his eye—a human figure, talk and bulky, dressed in a long leather duster that swept to the ground, standing and watching.
Perhaps, Ray thought, directing.
Ray moved in a seemingly random pattern as he attacked the hunters, taking off a leg here, battering a head there, pulping a squishy abdomen, clenching his teeth as venom spattered, clinging to and eating away his fighting suit. It soon looked as if gigantic destructive moths had been at it.