“Mr. President—”
“Of course I’ve gone mad, Tom. For God’s sakes, in this situation, madness is sanity. Millie, where are you, baby, are you out there walking the dark path with all the others? Oh, Millie. Forty-four years she walked beside me, fellas. Forty-four years. She gave it all. Everything she had to give. And I can’t even think about Mark. Somewhere, I trust. My poor boy.” He picked up the gun. “Gentlemen, would you like to join me in a bite of bullet?”
“Mr. President!”
“Al, you know what? You are the nicest man I have ever known.” He laughed. “That’s why I gave shitheel here your job. He can do it, he’s a real bastard. I’m sorry, Al, but you came along at the burnt-out end of the age. No more room for good men.” He sighed. “‘What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem…’ I had a great-uncle who knew Yeats. Met him by simply going up to his door in Dublin and knocking. Oh, my God, the voice of the man! The voice of Yeats!” He wept, and Al almost wept with him.
There came, then, a sort of chuckling sound. It was really a very strange sound, so strange that Al knew at once that it was no noise ever heard on this earth before—at least, not in this cycle of history.
The president’s head snapped to the left. He stared at the wall. Then he turned back, his eyes liquid with pleading. “Why?”
He was pleading with Tom. But Tom didn’t need to be pleaded with, he was an underling.
Something then happened that must have looked to Al like the arrival of the Spaniards on their horses must have looked to the Aztecs. Something was in the room that could not be there, that had come from nowhere—not out of the wall, but out of the sound in the wall. He could not say exactly what it looked like—a shell so black that it absorbed light, or a machine propelled on enormous legs, or a gigantic spider, even. The sort of thing that comes out of the closet when you are four, and eventually recedes on the expiring tide of childhood.
He heard a voice, “Agnus dei,” Lamb of God, sounding so pure that it was as if sounded from the highest, the farthest of all voices—a voice beyond telling. Wade ascending.
“Qui tollis peccata mundi,” the president whispered, “who takes away the sins of the world.”
The roar of the gun was like a blast of Satan’s breath, so ferocious that it made Al cry out, so enormous that it seemed to gather the whole bunker in its strength and crush it to rubble.
Al had him in his arms before his body, which had slapped into the wall, had even begun to slide to the floor. He stank of raw blood, his left eye was shuddering like the wing of a wounded fly, then green and bloody vomit pumped out of him with a furious, questing seizure that parodied sexual passion.
Secret Service poured into the room. One of them lifted his machine gun, braced it at Tom, who stood quite calmly, the very least of smiles on his face. He did not even glance at the young man with the gun, or any of the young men frozen in the doorway.
“I have a mission for you, Al,” he said. “Put him down, you’ll need to leave at once.”
Al laid the president—Jimmy—on the thinly carpeted floor. He went to attention. “Yes, sir,” he said. He saluted his superior officer, now the leader of the free world.
SIX
DECEMBER 3 WANTED
MARTIN DROVE HARD, IGNORING THE thudding of his tires and the screech of harvest stubble scraping the sides of his truck. In the east, dawn burned orange, so he didn’t have much time before the lights of followers would become invisible and he’d lose his chance to catch up, maybe forever.
Last night, he’d driven out to his house to be in their path, but hadn’t been able to find his family. Wanderers had gone past, but there had been so many of them, far more than he’d realized, and his family had escaped him.
He consulted his compass. He was no navigator, but was trying to drive as straight in a north-northwesterly direction as he could. Wanderers went in straight lines, so people said.
At first, he’d tried to reason with Lindy. He had picked up Winnie and carried her to the car—and been bitten for his trouble. He had not been able to find Trevor at all, which had only added to his sorrow.
All around him, there had been screaming people, begging their loved ones not to go, trying to wake them up.
They’d gone off down Third Street and between two boarded-up stores. Behind those stores was Oak Street, then behind it Linnert Lane, then the plains, and ten miles out, the Smokes, and beyond them the high plains, then Canada. And somewhere, he felt sure, whatever fate was in store for them.
Martin had trotted over to his jeep and got in—and then Bobby was there. “Hey, guy, we need to do this another way.”
Martin had looked at him, and it was like looking across a great, black river to a man whose life was unfolding on a better shore. He fought the tears down, but when his friend reached in and put a hand on his shoulder, he broke down. Bobby stayed with him until there were screams, then shots, off in the direction of Oak Street. A follower was killing a wanderer, probably based on an agreement. It was a common thing, these days, not considered murder. “Gotta go,” Bobby said. “You stay right here, you’re comin’ home with us.”
Martin had waited for a couple of minutes, but then he had turned on his car and moved off toward Linnert Lane. He had seen, out in the fallow fields, a slowly moving cluster of lights, disappearing into the night. There were voices, too, cries and pleas echoing in the silence, and then a voice, high and full of something Martin guessed must be faith, “Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” then lost to an errant wind and long thunder out of the west.
Martin had not returned to Third Street Methodist. He had not been able to face going home with the Chalmers family.
Instead, he had driven out into the night, going up 1540 into the Smokes. He knew every inch of the hills where he lived. As a boy, he’d hunted the Smokes with his dad, taking whitetail deer and turkey. He’d hunted across the very land where he’d built his house. Nowadays, he didn’t hunt, largely because Trevor wasn’t interested. He preferred the intricacies of fishing, and just Saturday before last they’d driven over to the Kaw River and fished for cats with cut shad and done well…except, of course, Lindy and Winnie had thought them insane to use shad as bait in order to eat catfish, but they were women and—oh, hell, he’d had to pull over, he was just plain overcome.
By the time he’d gotten home, he’d known that he was in serious shock. He needed medical attention. But Willerson was the only doctor in town and hadn’t he gone out with the wanderers? Martin had taken a couple of the Xanax he used to mainline during bill-paying time.
He’d wandered his own home like a ghost, pacing from room to room, hugging Winnie’s beloved stuffed elephant she had named Bearish and burying his face in Trevor’s pillow. He had ended up in his own bed clutching one of Lindy’s nightgowns to his face, and had stayed there until the sun was well up.
There had come a buzz from the front door. It was Rosie with food, the sort of casserole you brought to the bereaved.
“Harrow’s formed a committee,” she had said. “Followers. You’re welcome to join. They’re going to be taking food and water. Some plan on going all the way.”
“Do we still know where they are?”
“Helen’s out there with a walkie-talkie. They’re about twelve miles out, moving at three miles an hour. North-northwest, just like all the rest. They’re about a mile from Holcomb’s wanderers, and it looks like the two groups’re gonna meet up about noon. That’ll put it up to about two thousand people.”
“Two thousand!”
“Hon, there’s just eighteen intact families in Harrow. None in Holcomb. In fact, Bobby drove over there and he’s telling us the place is entirely empty.”
Then she added, “We also lost some kids. Children of folks who got hit. The little ones stayed around, but a lot of the older kids—fifteen to twenty or so—we can’t find them. They aren’t wandering and they aren’t here anymore.”
Another u
nknown was a cold, frightening thought.
Rosie had helped him pile the jeep with every bit of everything edible and drinkable in the house—a six-pack of Dr Pepper, two bunches of celery, beer, milk, half-and-half, orange and cranapple juice, Winnie’s soy milk, all the cereal, the Lean Cuisines, everything he could find, even unbaked refrigerator cookies, and seeing the Pillsbury Doughboy on a half-used tube of cookies had brought more tears, angry tears.
He had driven out just after noon, going down 205 to the Holcomb crossroads and then out into the fields. He’d crisscrossed the countryside for hours, finding not a sign of anybody. Increasingly afraid and frustrated, he’d driven harder and harder, bounding through fields, screaming around bends, and in all that time not come upon a single human being, wanderer, follower, or free.
Now he was here, sitting on a bare quarter of a tank of gas with the sun going down. He realized that he was at Dennis Farm, one of the places that had been hit before the strike on Harrow. Well, he knew the Dennises, and he decided that he could go ahead and borrow some of their tractor gas. He drove the jeep over to the pump and tried to turn it on. No good. He went around the side of the barn and fired up the generator, then returned and filled his tank. He looked across at the dark house, and after he’d cut off the pump and the generator, got in the jeep to continue his quest.
He thought he heard something, though, and went over to the house. He approached it warily, not sure what to expect. The Dennises had raised about ten kids, but they were all gone, doctors and lawyers and corporate executives and other things that were not farmers.
He heard it again, a sort of mechanical chuckling sound. Was it coming from inside? He couldn’t be sure. Could be around the side of the house. “Hello? Anybody there?”
No response. Then the sound returned, more distinct this time, and he realized that it was coming from two directions, out behind the low hill that separated the house from their north fields, and then again from down near the pretty little stream that was one of the reasons they’d put the house here.
For all the world, it sounded like two dirty old men chuckling at him over his plight. “Hello?”
Then he heard something in the sky, whoosh…whoosh. He looked up, but clouds were coming in and it had turned inky black.
His mouth went dry, his heart began the peculiar, twisting beat that came when his fear increased. He ran to his car and jumped in and locked the doors. Who knew what might be out there? Aliens, even, the concealed architects. What was it some old scientist had said, “Aliens when they come will be stranger than anything we have ever imagined, or can possibly imagine.” Words to that effect. Beings from a parallel universe might be even stranger…or strangely similar.
He got out of there fast, driving as close to northwest as he could, blasting his way through the stubble-choked, furrowed fields. How very ordinary it had all seemed just a month ago. Driving out this way to pick out a Thanksgiving turkey at Smeal’s, he had seen Old Man Dennis working his harvest, thought how sad it was that, out of all those kids, he couldn’t find a single one willing to continue the tradition. Word was they were going to sell out and move to Florida, but he’d thought at the time, No, the Dennises are gonna die on that land.
The sun slid behind the clouds, and with night came an increase of loneliness that was so deep it amounted to a new kind of emotion for him.
He drove on, searching blindly, trying his best to stay on course.
It was some moments after he’d seen the glow on the horizon that he realized that it meant headlights in the distance. He stopped the jeep, got out, and clambered up on the roof. About two miles ahead, there was a slowly moving cluster of lights—the cars and trucks of followers. Couldn’t be from Holcomb, they had all been disensouled. So that had to be the Harrow contingent.
Lindy was out there somewhere, his Lindy and his Winnie and maybe Trevor. He looked up into the black sky and wondered if those were dead bodies out there, and if his family’s souls had gone somewhere better. Oh God, please help them. Help me help them, God. If only you’re there, we need you. We need you.
He got down and drove ahead, keeping his own lights off so he could see the caravan. He closed quickly. They weren’t going fast, obviously. Soon, he was in among them, about five vehicles. It had been more. The wanderers had lost many followers.
“Hey, bone collector,” a woman’s voice yelled.
“Helen!”
She leaned out the back of the Turpins’ mangled Buick. “Got supplies?”
“I got ’em!”
“My Reg likes Oreos, you got Oreos?”
“I’ve got some Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie mix.”
“Well, hell, I’ll try it on ’im. I think he sorta recognized John Twenty-four by the way, so I’m lookin’ for a comeback.”
“You folks seen Lindy?”
Another voice called, “Sure thing, Martin. We fed your family twice. Your girl’s happy when she gets soy milk.” That was right, oh God, that was Winnie’s favorite.
He scoured the backs that were visible in the car lights, but there were so many of them, it wasn’t a small crowd, it was enormous, it stretched on and on.
He stopped and got out. He grabbed soy milk and orange juice, they would need strength and fluids, they would be in shock and they’d been walking continuously now for close to twenty hours.
“Be careful, there,” a voice said as he sprinted among the vehicles, then out into the darker crowd of wanderers. “Winnie,” he called, “Soy milk, soy milk! Trevor Winters, Dad’s here, Dad’s got cranapple.”
Then he saw a back, familiar hair. He doubled his speed, pushing past people who were breathing hard, who were staggering. What was going to happen, would they be walked to death? Why not kill them outright and save everybody this terrible, terrible suffering?
“Lindy! LINDY!”
A head turned, and he found himself looking into the empty grin of Beryl Walsh, the local bank manager. He went on. “Lindy! Trevor! Winnie!”
There was her hair again, and this time he was sure. “Oh, Lindy, hey, hey, it’s me, babes, I’m gonna take you home, I’ve got the truck, I’m gonna take you guys home!”
He came up beside her, and it was definitely Lindy of the green eyes and the straight, proud nose, Lindy of the bobbing blond hair. “Oh baby, I got you. Thank the Lord.” He looked around. “Where are the kids? Winnie? Where’s Winnie?”
Not a glance, not a word. He sprinted in front of her, walked backward as he talked. “The kids, Lindy, where are the kids?”
She came straight on, her face expressionless. Unlike some of them, she didn’t even have a smile left in her. She strode like a Valkyrie, though, a powerful, healthy woman…whom, he thought, was going to make an excellent slave.
Would they be taken to another world, like the slavers took people from Africa? How similar that must have felt to this, to the people who watched the ships sail away. It had been history to him before, but those millions of lost families were now part of his heart.
And he thought, the Nephilim, those strange rapists mentioned in Genesis, called the fallen ones, they had enslaved us before biblical times, had they not? Enslaved us, and then gone. Mysteriously.
In recent years, as his data piled up, he had become more and more willing to entertain the notion that there might have been some sort of human-alien interaction in the distant past, which had led to the catastrophe of 12,000 B.C., when the makers of the great stone monuments had abruptly vanished.
Had it been a war? Had it been, perhaps, something like this? And therefore were these people going to some far place destined to suffer a fate that maybe not even God could know?
Then, a miracle. He saw Winnie. She was trundling along, she had a bit of a limp. He ran to her, swept her up in his arms, cried out, buried his face in her little-girl sweetness—and then realized that her legs were still moving. She was still walking, in fact, she hadn’t stopped walking even when she was picked up.
Poin
ting her back toward the car, he put her down. She took a few steps, then, as if she was controlled by some sort of inner gyroscope, she turned abruptly and continued on with the others. He hurried along beside her. “I’ve got some soy milk for you, honey,” he said. He fumbled in his pocket for a box of it and held it out to her. She took it and drank it down. “Thank you, baby,” he found himself saying, “thank you.” Then he cried out, “Trevor! Trevor Winters! Dad’s here, I’ve got cranapple. Dad has cranapple.” His throat constricted and he had to stop. He controlled his emotions, fought them back, and kept on. “Trevor Winters, Trevor Winters.”
He moved back and forth in the crowd, and suddenly there was a light in his eyes. “Martin! Hey, buddy!”
“Uh—you’re—”
“George Matthews, I’m that damn plumber.”
“Oh, George, for the love a—yeah!”
“You’re looking for Trevor?”
“Yeah, actually. I got Winnie to drink some soy milk.”
“That ain’t Winnie anymore, and Trevor’s not here.”
“Not here?”
“Nah, Trevor’s not wandering.”
He grabbed the man’s shoulder. “George! George, are you sure!”
“There’s something else going on. There’s kids gone.”