“What is it, Vicks?”
“I drew you a picture.”
Vicky had inherited her mother’s artistic abilities and was increasingly into drawing. Jack took the proffered sheet of paper and stared at it. A swarm of tentacled things filled the air over the Manhattan skyline. It was … disturbing.
He smiled through his discomfiture. “It’s great, Vicks. Is this from War of the Worlds?”
“No. It’s raining octopuses!”
“Yeah … I guess it is. What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “It just came to me.”
“Well, thanks,” Jack said, rolling it up into a tube. “I’ll add it to my Victoria Westphalen collection.”
She beamed and flashed him that smile. “Because it’s going to be worth a lot when I’m famous, right?”
“You got it, kid. You’re gonna help me retire.”
Jack gave her a kiss and a hug, then another quick kiss for Gia.
“Be back later.”
Gia gave his hand a squeeze of thanks, then he was out on the street, walking west.
As he headed up 58th, Mr. Veilleur’s final words of the afternoon echoed in his head.
Do not go out after dark, especially near that hole.
Why the hell not? The warning was like a waving red flag. And since he’d have to pass the park on his way to Julio’s …
Ernst Drexler smiled as he turned off Allen Street toward the Order’s downtown Lodge.
The last twenty-four hours had been quite entertaining. Quite entertaining indeed. Not if you didn’t understand the portent of the events, of course. Then you were baffled, perhaps even frightened. As well you should be.
No doubt about it—the Change had begun.
Ernst had been anticipating it since the death of the Lady. Two uneventful months had passed, leaving him wondering at the delay. But he supposed these things took time. The One had to give the Enemy time to conclude that sentience here had died and to move on to greener pastures, so to speak. Maybe the stars had to align or the spheres of the multiverse had to rotate into a certain configuration. Who knew? All that mattered was that it had begun.
The One’s time, the Order’s time, and most important, Ernst’s time was at hand.
He just wished he’d been given some warning.
He’d consulted the head of the High Council as soon as he heard about the late sunrise. But the Council had been given no prior notice either.
Despite the One’s saying he would not be contacting him if his plans bore fruit, the lack of warning bothered Ernst.
He replayed the moment on that frigid night back in March when he had dropped off the One in midtown, near Central Park. He remembered his words exactly.
Events will reach a head in the next few hours or days or … they will not. If they go our way, phones and money will be irrelevant. If they do not, you will hear from me.
If they go our way … Ernst had spent the ensuing weeks clinging to that pronoun.
The brothers of the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order had spent millennia manipulating people and events to maintain a certain level of chaos to pave the way for the Change. Ernst’s own father had been instrumental in fomenting much of the turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century. Of all living brothers, certainly no one had provided the One more personal service toward bringing the Change than Ernst Drexler. He’d been the One’s go-to guy, as Americans liked to put it.
Ernst hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart. He and the upper echelons of the Order expected to be rewarded in the world that followed the Change.
If they go our way …
Our way …
Yet not one word from the One since that night. He certainly hadn’t been shy about contacting Ernst before that. Oh, they’d had a minor falling out, but that fence had been mended. He’d—
A bird buzzed past his ear.
Buzzed? Since when do birds buzz? It was sailing down the street toward the Lodge, and he got a better look at it as it slowed and banked around a streetlight. Not a bird. Something else, something insectoid, with four diaphanous wings and a pendulous translucent sack for a body.
When it completed its turn he realized it was coming back his way, heading straight for his face. Ernst ducked to the right and swung his cane as it passed. He might be well into his seventh decade, but he’d remained trim and agile. The silver head made a direct hit on the middle of the thing’s back, damaging two of its wings with a satisfying crunch.
It caromed off a nearby car and dropped to the sidewalk where its remaining wings buzzed in a furious attempt to fly again but succeeded only in propelling it off the curb. Ernst stepped closer but couldn’t make out more details in the shadowed gutter.
Nasty, aggressive thing. He stabbed it with the end of his cane, puncturing its sack. Clear fluid oozed from the wound. Ernst was about to stab it again when another buzzed past.
Deciding he might be better off inside, he hurried the rest of the way to the Lodge. As he neared he was surprised to see the front steps deserted. Ever since the Order had allowed Hank Thompson to use it as a headquarters for his Kicker movement, the front steps had become the smoking area for his followers, giving the stately, granite-block building the appearance of some sort of halfway house for paroled felons rather than a branch of the world’s oldest fraternal order. Ernst didn’t like Thompson, loathed his scruffy retinue, and had been opposed to allowing them use of the downtown Lodge.
He had to admit that the group had come in handy at times, but still …
When he reached the steps he glanced up at the second floor and noticed that the hurricane shutters Thompson had installed a couple of months ago on the windows of his quarters had been lowered. Another reason to dislike Thompson: He’d defaced this historic building.
As Ernst hurried up the steps he noticed a splash of fresh blood on the stone balustrade. And below that, among the cigarette butts littering the steps, a trail of blood leading to the heavy front doors. He pushed through them into the marble foyer.
“Close it!” said a familiar voice. The man himself, Hank Thompson, stood to his right, peering through one of the doorway’s narrow sidelights. “Close it right now!”
Ernst ignored him, of course. Instead he strode a few steps farther into the lobby. The trail of blood led to a dreadlocked Kicker sitting on the floor against the far wall while a couple of his fellows ministered to him.
An entry door slammed behind him. He turned to see Thompson staring at him. Tall, lean, and shaggy-haired as usual, but his customary insouciance had vanished. He stood there tense, pale-faced, and wide-eyed.
“What’s it like out there?” he said, pointing to the doors.
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“The birds! They’re attacking!”
Ernst assumed he was referring to that thing that had come at him. A bit unsettling, yes, but Thompson looked nearly unhinged.
“Well, I saw some strange-looking—”
Thompson stepped closer. “You weren’t attacked? Kewan was out there on a cigarette break, minding his own business, when this thing swoops down and takes a chunk out of his shoulder.”
Ernst had had to deal with Kewan from time to time, and had found him brighter than he looked, despite his ridiculous hair.
Thompson leaned even closer and lowered his voice. “You think this is how it starts, with the birds turning on us?”
“Are you referring to that du Maurier story?”
Thompson made a face. “Who’s that?” He shook his head. “Whatever. You think this is it? I mean, first that hole, now—”
Ernst nodded. “Yes, I believe the Change has begun.”
Thompson kept his voice low but was speaking through his teeth. “Then what’s the idea of attacking us? We’re on his side! We helped him get here!”
Yes, Thompson and his Kickers had been useful in bringing down the Internet, but the end result had fallen
short of everyone’s expectations. Especially the One’s.
“You didn’t really believe your followers would get a pass, did you?”
“Well…”
“Only you and I and a few others will be exalted. The rest…” He shrugged.
Ernst doubted that Hank Thompson himself would be spared, but didn’t say that. He still might have his uses.
“It’s just like that dream I’ve been having. But I’m prepared. I’m protected. Ain’t no birds getting to me.”
With that he turned and hurried up the stairway to the upper floors. To his quarters, no doubt, to huddle behind his storm shutters and steel door.
They won’t save you, Ernst thought.
Only those selected by the One to assist in his domination of the post-Change world would avoid the coming horrors. Ernst would be in that number. He had to be. How many people in this world did the One know by name? Barely a handful. And Ernst was one of them.
He glanced down and noticed something different about the distal end of his cane. He raised it for a closer look. The black rhinoceros hide that wrapped the shaft was missing near the tip—right where it had been splattered by fluid from the ruptured sack of that strange insect. It appeared to be eaten away, as if by acid. How odd.
He headed toward his office to call his car. The One might know his name, but Ernst did not want to venture unprotected into this night.
The party was over.
The area around the Sheep Meadow looked virtually deserted. Only a few workers and security people about.
Maybe it was the smell.
Jack caught his first whiff as he passed the Plaza. Something rotten, putrid. He wasn’t the only one. The hotel guests emerging from their cabs and limos, or strolling down the steps from the entrances, wrinkled their noses as it struck them. He’d thought maybe a nearby sewer had backed up, but the odor had grown stronger as he entered the park.
It lay thick in the air of the Sheep Meadow.
Banks of floodlights lit the hole and the surrounding area like home plate at Yankee Stadium. As he watched he thought he saw something like a pigeon fly up from the hole, darting through the light and into the darkness beyond. But it moved awfully fast for a pigeon.
Jack spotted a middle-aged woman crossing the grassy buffer zone that had been cordoned off to separate officialdom and the hoi polloi; he moved laterally to intercept her.
“Is that stink coming from the hole?” he said as she ducked under the barricade. The answer was obvious but it was a good opener.
She wore a plastic badge that flopped around as she walked. Her first name looked like “Margaret”; he couldn’t make out her last but he caught the words “Health” and “Department” above it. Her tan slacks and blue blazer had a distinctly masculine cut.
“It’s not coming from me.”
Ooh, a friendly one.
“I hope not. Smells like something crawled into my nose and died.”
She smiled. “That pretty well captures it.”
“Seriously.” Jack matched her stride as she headed toward the street. “When did it start? There was a downdraft into the hole last night.”
She glanced sideways at him. “How’d you know about that?”
“I was here when it opened.”
“We already have plenty of witnesses. If you want to make a statement—”
“I’m just curious about the stink.”
“Oh. Well, the downdraft became an updraft shortly after sunset. We started noticing the odor about an hour later. It’s almost unbearable at the edge.”
“I thought I saw something fly out of there a few moments ago.”
Margaret nodded. “There’ve been a few. We’re toying with the idea of trying to net one. We think they might be birds that flew in during the day. Maybe the smell is driving them out. But don’t worry. It’s not toxic.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Believe it. We’ve checked it out eight ways from—”
Screams and shouts rose from behind them. They both turned. Jack saw a flock of birdlike things swarming in the air over the hole. No … not just swarming—swooping and diving at the people working along the perimeter.
“Oh, my God!” Margaret said and started running back toward the hole.
Jack kept pace. He wanted to get a closer look—but not too close. Those birds appeared to be going crazy, like something out of the Hitchcock movie.
When they got to within fifty yards of the hole Jack realized they weren’t birds.
“Whoa!” He grabbed Margaret’s arm. “I don’t like the looks of this.”
She pulled away.
“My reports! All my test data! They’ll be ruined!”
Jack slowed his pace and hung back as she ran off toward one of the control tents. His gut crawled as he remembered another hole, in the Everglades, and what had flown out of it.
So he stood in the shadows and tried to identify these things filling the air … more like insects than birds. They must have come out of the hole. He sure as hell hadn’t seen anything like them around New York.
Two kinds darting around on dragonfly wings. Both had strips of neonlike dots along their flanks. They looked like those weird deep-sea fish that show up every so often in National Geographic, the ones from miles down where the sun never shines. Only these were right here in Central Park.
One sort looked like a balloon filled with clear Jell-O, and appeared too heavy and ungainly for flight, the other—
“Oh, Christ!”
The things from the Florida cenote … that young girl Semelee had called them chew wasps—mostly mouth, little more than giant, fanged jaws attached to lobster-sized, wasp-waisted bodies.
Screams of pain and terror snatched his attention from the air to ground level. Suddenly everything looked red in the false daylight of the lamps. Jack dropped to a frozen crouch when he saw what was happening along the periphery of the hole. The things weren’t just buzzing the folks stationed there, they were on the attack. People scattered in all directions, swatting at the air like picnickers who’d disturbed a hornets’ nest.
But hornets would have been a blessing. The jawed things were like airborne piranhas, swooping in, sinking their teeth into an arm, a leg, a neck, an abdomen, ripping a mouthful of flesh free, and then darting away. Blood spurted from a hundred wounds.
Amid the melee Jack saw a bald-headed man go down kicking and screaming under a dozen chew wasps; a second dozen joined the first, and then more until they covered him like ants on a piece of candy.
Instinctively, Jack pulled his Glock and stepped forward to help, then stepped back. He’d seen those things in action before—nothing he could do. He watched helplessly as the man’s screaming and kicking stopped, but the feeding went on.
He turned, ready to head for the street, when he noticed a bloated, distorted, vaguely human shape stumbling through the shadows in his direction. It gave off hoarse, high-pitched, muffled noises as it approached, its arms outstretched, reaching for him. At first Jack thought it was another sort of monstrosity from the hole, but as it drew nearer he noticed something familiar about the swatches of tan fabric visible on its legs.
Shock slammed him like a truck. Margaret—from the Health Department. But what—?
The other things from the hole, the ones with the Jell-O sacks—she was covered with them. Wings humming, sacks pulsating, a good thirty or forty of the creatures clung to every part of her body. Jack leapt to her side. The Glock was useless—might do as much damage to her as the things stuck to her—so he holstered it and began tearing at the things, grabbing them by their wings and ripping them off, starting with the pair that clung to her face.
Her scream of agony tore through the night and he stared in horror at the bloody ruin of her face. What was left looked melted, or corroded by acid. Her cheeks were eaten away, so deeply on the right that he spotted the exposed white of a tooth poking through.
He stepped back and looked at the two
creatures squirming and writhing in his grasp, raking at his hands with their tiny claws. Their sacks were no longer clear, but red—with Margaret’s blood.
He hurled them to the ground and stomped on them, rupturing their sacks. Crimson mucus exploded, smoking where it splattered his pants and sneakers, eating through the fabric and bubbling the rubber. Jack danced away from the mess and turned back to Margaret.
She was gone. He looked around. She couldn’t have got far. Then he saw her, a still form facedown on the grass. He crouched beside her. As he reached toward her, one of the sack things lifted off her back, leaving a bloody patch of exposed ribs, denuded of flesh and muscle, and fluttered toward Jack. He tried to bat it away but it latched onto his forearm like a lump of epoxy glue. And the pain! Scalding—like boiling acid poured on his skin. It took Jack by surprise and he shouted with the sudden agony. He ripped it off his arm and as it came free he felt a layer of his skin peel away.
The pain drove him nearly to his knees, but he straightened up when he saw one of the chew wasps winging toward him. He swung the sack thing at it, right into its jagged-toothed maw. The pair left a trail of steaming red as they went down in a tangle and rolled along the grass.
Jack glanced back at the perimeter of the hole. Nothing moving there but flocks of chew wasps and jelly sacks swarming in the air. Many of the sacks were bloodred. As he watched, a new drove rose from the hole and circled for a moment, then massed into a rough V-formation and took off toward the East Side like a flying arrowhead.
East! Gia and Vicky were on the East Side.
As the remaining creatures spread out, some heading Jack’s way, he took one last look at Margaret. The sack things were still massed on her. What he could see of her looked deflated, like a scarecrow with the stuffing pulled out.
He headed for the trees, removing his shirt and wrapping it around the raw patch on his left forearm. He spotted the lights of the Tavern on the Green visitor center and veered in that direction. When he reached the driveway, he saw a cab pulling away from the entrance. He flagged it down and hopped in the back.