Bill lowered his head and pressed a hand over his eyes.
“What do you want us to do, Ba?” Jack said. “You name it, we’ll do it.”
A good friend, this Jack. They had met only a few days ago and already he was acting like a brother. But nothing could ease the pain in Ba’s heart, the growing grief, the bitter self-loathing for leaving the people he loved—his family—unguarded. Why had he—?
He whirled at the sound of a car engine starting in the garage at the rear of the house. He knew that engine. It belonged to the 1938 Graham—the Missus’s favorite car.
Fighting a surging joy, afraid to acknowledge it for fear that it might be for nothing, Ba stumbled into a run toward the rear. He had gone only a few steps when the Graham’s shark-nosed grille appeared around the corner of the house. The Missus was behind the wheel, Jeffy beside her. Her mouth formed an O when she saw him. The old car stalled as she braked and then she was out the door and running across the grass, arms outflung, face twisted in uncontrollable grief.
“Oh, Ba! Ba! We waited all day for you! I thought we’d lost you too!”
And then the Missus did something she had never done before. She threw her arms around Ba, clung to him, and began to sob against his chest.
Ba did not know what to do. He held his arms akimbo, not sure of where to put them. As overjoyed as he was to see her alive, it certainly was not his place to embrace the Missus. But her grief was so deep, so unrestrained … he had never seen her like this, never guessed she was capable of this magnitude of sorrow.
And then Jeffy ran up, and he too was crying. He threw his arms around Ba’s left leg and hung there.
Gently, gingerly, hesitantly, Ba lowered one hand to the Missus’s shoulder and the other to Jeffy’s head. His elation at seeing them was tempered by the slowly dawning realization that the picture was incomplete.
Someone was missing.
“The Doctor, Missus?”
“Oh, Ba,” she sobbed. “He’s gone. Those … things … killed him and dragged him off! He’s gone, Ba! Alan’s gone and we’ll never see him again!”
For a moment Ba thought he glimpsed the Doctor’s face peering at him from the shadows in the backseat of the Graham, thought he felt the warmth of his easy smile, the aura of his deep honor and quiet courage.
And then he faded from view and something happened to Ba, something that hadn’t happened since his boyhood days in the fishing village where he was born.
Ba Thuy Nguyen wept.
As the Change progresses above, so progresses the Change below.
Rasalom revels in his new form as it grows ever larger. Suspended in its cavern, he is the size of an elephant now. To make room for him, more earth drops away into the soft yellow glow of the bottomless pit below.
With his senses penetrating deep into the earth, Rasalom sees the Change progressing unimpeded, far ahead of schedule. Chaos reigns above. The sweet honey nectar of fear and misery, the ambrosia of rage and ruin continues to seep through the strata of the earth to nourish him, help him grow, make him ever stronger.
And in the center of the dying city, Glaeken’s building stands unmolested, an island of tranquillity in a sea of torment. Members of his pathetic little company now rush back from trips here and there around the globe with their recovered bits and pieces of the first and second swords. All of them still clinging so doggedly to their hope.
Good. He wants to let that hope grow until it is the last great hope left for all humanity. Let them think they’ve been doing something important, something epochal. The higher their hope lifts them, the longer the fall when they learn they’ve struggled and died for nothing.
But Rasalom senses them taking comfort in their relative safety, drawing strength from their comradeship. Their peace, uneasy though it may be, is a burr in his hide. He cannot allow this to continue unchallenged. He does not wish to destroy them—yet. But he does wish to breach their insulation, unsettle them, vex them, start them looking over their shoulders.
One of them must die.
Not out in the streets, but in the heart of their safe haven. It must be an ugly death—nothing quick and clean, but slow and painful and messy. And to make the death as unsettling as possible, it must befall a dear member of their number, one who seems the most innocent, the most innocuous, one they never would expect him to single out for such degradation.
The new lips gestating within the sac twist into a semblance of a smile.
Time for a little fun.
In the tunnel leading to the cavern, Rasalom’s skin, shed days ago, begins to move. It ripples, swells, fills out to living proportions. Then it rises and begins its journey toward the surface.
As it walks, it tests its voice.
“Mother.”
Queens, New York
Ba should be driving, Bill thought as he raced along the deserted LIE, aiming the big Crown Vic for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel like a bullet from a gun. He glanced at his watch: 3:32. Less than forty minutes of light. He would have preferred the Queensboro Bridge but remembered that was impassable due to a gravity hole.
Jack rode shotgun—literally. He sat high in the passenger seat with this huge short-barreled thing—he’d called it a “Spas”—held up in plain sight. An exotic Indian woman was squeezed between them. Ba sat behind Bill with a similar shotgun in plain view. The two warriors were sending a message: Don’t mess with this car. Nick sat behind Jack, Sylvia and the boy were squeezed in the middle, their cat on the boy’s lap, their one-eyed dog panting on the floor.
That left the driving chore to Bill. He knew he wasn’t the greatest driver, but if they ran into one of the roving gangs that had taken over the city during the day he figured he’d do better with a steering wheel than with a shotgun.
He glanced at Jack, who’d been withdrawn since their reunion at the airport. He was definitely on edge. Something eating at him, something he wasn’t talking about.
Bill guessed if it concerned them, they’d find out soon enough.
The farther he drove into Queens, the more obstacles on the expressway; he wove as quickly as he dared around and through the litter of wrecked or abandoned cars. They slowed him and he wanted to fly.
Carol … he hungered for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand. She consumed his thoughts, his feelings. He wished he could have got a call through to her from the airport, just to let her know he’d made it back and was coming home.
“Better hurry,” Nick said from the back.
“Going as fast as I can, Nick.”
“Better go faster.” His tone was as flat as when he’d told Ba he had no need to hurry. They’d learned what that had meant. What did this…?
“Faster why?”
“It’s Carol.”
The car swerved slightly as Bill’s fingers tightened on the wheel.
“What about Carol?”
“She’s in trouble.”
WNYW-TV
Manhattan
Carol found the head waiting in the kitchen.
She was on her way back from Magda’s room, carrying her lunch tray, worrying about Bill and why she hadn’t heard from him yet. She screamed and dropped the tray as she rounded the corner and saw it floating in the air. She recognized the face.
“Jimmy!” she cried, then got control of herself.
Not a head, just a face. And not Jimmy. Not her son. She’d almost stopped thinking of him as her son.
Rasalom. This was Rasalom.
The face smiled—an Arctic gale registered greater warmth. Then its lips moved, forming words, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere. Or was it inside her head?
“Hello, Mother.”
Carol backed out of the kitchen. The face followed.
The tone turned mocking. “Mommy, don’t leave me!”
Carol stopped retreating when her back came up against the dining room table. She looked around for Glaeken but knew he wouldn’t be t
here. He’d gone out hours ago while she’d stayed to watch over Magda.
Carol swallowed and found her voice. “Don’t call me that!”
“Why not? That’s what you are.”
She shook her head. “No. You grew inside me for nine months, but you were never my child. And I was never your mother.”
Another smile, as cold as the first. “I sympathize with your efforts to dissociate yourself from me. I understand them because I’ve tried to do the same in regard to you. Perhaps you’ve had more success than I.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The bond of flesh. Since the day I was conceived within you, I’ve worn the flesh you gave me. It links us. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it is a fact, one that won’t go away. One we both have to deal with.”
“I’ve learned to deal with it—by not thinking about it.”
“But that doesn’t cancel it. I’ve given this a lot of thought and there’s a better way to deal with it, a way that allows me to come to terms with my fleshy link to you. A way that can benefit you as well.”
The voice in her head was so calm, so soothing. Almost mesmerizing. Carol shook herself.
“I—I don’t want anything from you.”
“Don’t think just of yourself. Think of your friends. I’m offering you and some of them a safe harbor, a haven, a chance to survive the endless night.”
“I don’t trust you.”
The smile again, rueful this time. “I wouldn’t trust me either. But hear me out. You have nothing to lose by listening to my proposal.”
Carol remembered what Bill had told her about a woman named Lisl who’d lost her soul and her life by listening to Rasalom. But what, besides sanity and dignity, did Carol have left to lose? Unless a miracle occurred, tomorrow would hold the world’s last daylight. After Thursday’s sundown she’d be in the same leaky life raft as the rest of the world.
“What do you mean by ‘a haven’? And how many of my ‘friends’ can I take there?”
“A reasonable number.”
“Glaeken among them?”
The face rotated back and forth, the equivalent of a headshake.
“No. Not Glaeken. Anyone else, but not Glaeken. I’ve waited too long to even my scores with him.”
Carol didn’t know what to think, what to do. If Rasalom had agreed to allow Glaeken safe harbor, she’d have known he was lying. No rivalry, no enmity in human history was as long and as bitter and as deeply ingrained as theirs. But he had excluded Glaeken. What did that mean? Could his offer be genuine? If she could save Bill and a few of the others …
“Come downstairs and we’ll discuss it.”
“Downstairs? Oh, no. I’m not leaving this building.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m one floor down. In your apartment.”
“How—how did you get in?”
“Come now, Mother dear. I can do anything I wish. Anything. Come visit. We’ll talk. I’ll be there until darkness falls. After that I’ll have other matters to attend to.”
The face grew dim, became translucent, then disappeared. Gone as if it had never been.
Carol sagged back against the table. Expect the unexpected. Wasn’t that what Glaeken had told her? Easy enough to say, but Rasalom’s face—floating in the air, talking to her as casually as if they’d bumped into each other in an aisle at the A&P.
The ease with which he seemed to have entered the building was bad enough, but knowing he was waiting down in her apartment tied her in knots.
Should she go? That was the question. And what was this all about? Was she supposed to haggle with him? Barter for lives? The responsibility was numbing.
She had to risk it. If she could save even a few people …
But she didn’t want to go alone. She knew she had to, but she didn’t like it. She didn’t have much time, either. If only she had a weapon of some sort. But what could she use against someone who could change the course of the sun and anything else he pleased?
As Carol picked up the broken dishes from the kitchen floor and threw them away, she spotted the knife rack over the sink. She pulled out the wide-bladed carving knife and tucked it into the folds of the old cardigan she’d borrowed from Glaeken. A laughable weapon, considering who she’d be facing. But the weight of the blade in her hand offered some tiny comfort.
She peeked in on Magda and found her sleeping soundly. Carol guessed it would be all right to leave her for a few minutes. Glaeken would be back soon, and Rasalom had said he’d wait only until dark.
She hurried downstairs.
Her apartment had an empty feel. The drapes stood open but because the windows faced north, the light was dusky.
Was he here? What was she supposed to call out? Jimmy? Rasalom? Certainly not son.
“Hello?” she said, settling on that. “Are you here?”
She walked through the living room and down the hall. Why didn’t he answer? Was this some sort of a joke?
Suddenly he stepped out of the bedroom not three feet in front of her. In the flesh.
Naked flesh.
Carol cried out in shock and jumped back.
“Hello, Mother.” His voice was coarse, raspy, more dead than alive.
He stepped toward her as she backed away. His left hand was missing. His slim body seemed faintly luminescent, and his genitals … he was hugely erect, pointing directly at her face. Suddenly he darted by her and positioned himself between her and the door.
She turned and faced him, her heart thudding, her palm slick on the handle of the knife in her sweater.
“Wh-what’s this all about? I thought you wanted to talk.”
He smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful what desperation does to people? It paralyzes some, makes others brutish, and makes others stupid. You fall into that final category, Mother.” He spat the last word. “What’s this about? It’s about a love note to Glaeken and the rest. It’s about defilement and slow, painful death, Mother. Incestuous rape and matricide. In other words, you and me.”
He leapt at her. Reflexively Carol pulled out the knife and held it before her with both hands. She felt the impact as Rasalom’s body struck it, felt the skin part before the point, felt the blade sink deep into his flesh. He grunted and stepped back. He looked down in wonder at the knife handle protruding from his upper abdomen, just below the breastbone. He touched the handle with a finger, then looked up at her.
“Mother … you shock me. I guess there are still a few surprises left in this world.”
“Oh, God!”
“He won’t help you. He was never there. But I am here now. And I am your God. Think of it, Mother. You are about to be raped by God. And afterward…” He caressed the handle like a priapic tool … “I shall use this to skin you alive. Won’t that be a nice gift to hang in Glaeken’s closet? Your skin.”
Carol screamed and tried to dash past him but he caught her with his only hand and slammed her back against the wall. The breath whooshed out of her with the impact. As she tried to regain it, the door burst open.
“Carol!”
A group of men—some of them armed—burst in, with Bill in the lead. He leapt to her side and Carol clung to him, sobbing.
“Oh, Bill, oh, Bill, thank God you’re here!”
“You!” Bill glared at Rasalom, who had stepped back and appeared to be surveying the scene with amusement.
Jack stepped forward and faced Rasalom, a shotgun of some sort cradled in his arms. Ba stood by the door, similarly armed, while Nick stood behind him in the hall.
“Who the hell are you?” Jack said.
“I once knew him as Rafe Losmara,” Bill said. “But his real name is Rasalom.”
Rasalom bowed, unfazed by the intruders. “At your service.”
Jack’s expression was skeptical as he glanced at Bill, then back to Rasalom’s slim, naked figure.
“Doesn’t look like the Rasalom I’ve met.”
“I am many things to many people.”
Bill was staring at the handle protruding from Rasalom’s abdomen.
“Is that a knife…?”
The sight of the knife seemed to unsettle Jack. “I’ve just been through this movie.”
As Carol wondered what Jack meant, Rasalom smiled at him and said, “Have much success on your trip to Maui, Heir?”
Heir? What was happening here? Jack looked ready to explode as Rasalom turned to Bill and yanked the blade free.
“Please don’t be concerned, Father. I’m a rapid healer.”
“Yeah?” Jack’s face was tight with rage. In a single smooth, swift motion he had his shotgun extended to arm’s length, its muzzle inches from Rasalom’s face. “Heal this.”
The explosion was deafening. Close against her Bill cried out in shock as Carol screamed and turned away, but not before she saw Rasalom’s head disintegrate behind the muzzle flash.
A moment later, Bill’s hushed, awed whisper slipped past the ringing in her ears.
“Look at that!”
Carol turned and saw Rasalom’s headless body lying on the floor. It seemed to be shrinking, deflating. And then she saw why. Loose soil was pouring from the stump of his neck.
“Dirt,” Jack said. “This wasn’t him, just skin filled with dirt.” His eyes were more than a little wild as he gave the remains an angry kick. “Dirtbag.”
Glaeken hobbled through the doorway then.
“What has happened here?”
Carol quickly ran over the events of the past twenty minutes. Glaeken nodded with slow resignation.
“Leave your skin in my closet, he told you?”
Carol felt Bill tighten his grip around her shoulders.
“Why?” Bill said. “What does it mean?”
“More of his games. A diversion while he waits for the Change to be complete. One more thing to confound, confuse, sicken, and terrify us. He probably meant to leave Carol’s skin and his own. A grisly reminder to me that his Change is far along to completion.”
Glaeken went to Rasalom’s remains and lifted the skin by both feet. Jack helped. Together they shook the last of the dirt from within. It felt dry and light, almost like an oversize set of a child’s footed pajamas. Glaeken rolled it up, then tucked it under his arm and started for the door.