2012 (42 page)

They talked, then, about the state of the pheasant population, which was excellent. “Matt wants to hunt tomorrow,” Wylie called to Nick, “you game?”

Nick looked at him. “He doesn’t remember a thing, does he?”

“You want to go or not?”

” ‘Course I do.”

Wylie made plans to meet with Matt before dawn, and go to some of the walk-in land over in Smith County. “You sure there’s been nothing odd, Matt? No cars stolen around here, say?”

“In your neck of the woods? There hasn’t been any crime of any kind over there at all, ever. What the hell’s the matter with you today, anyway? Is this some new insanity? I don’t hunt with crazy people.”

“Read me the blotter for last night.”

“The blotter?”

“Look, it’s not gonna kill you, now read the damn thing!”

“Okay! 16:32, Miss Wicks’s chickens are in Elm Street again. Ticketed. 18:05, car fire, put out by occupant. 20:22, kids smoking and playing loud music behind Wilson’s Feed and Seed, sent home.”

“That was it? That was what we paid you for last night?”

“We got a possible stolen truck. Jim Riggs can’t find his farm banger. But it’s probably gonna be that Willie of his, hid it for a joke. That kid’s got an unfortunate sense of humor.”

So nothing strange had happened in this quiet little corner of Kansas for a long time, unless it was Samson who had gotten that truck, of course.

Or no, there was one thing: the miserable accident that had befallen poor William Nunnally.

“So, what’s new in the Nunnally case?”

“Nothin.’ Coroner’s report says it was exposure. He was high, it seems. Got a lotta meth heads down that way. Damndest thing. The family’s not gonna sue you, for some strange reason, going down there and terrorizing them like you did.”

“So it was just one of those things?”

“That would be true, crazy man.”

The night passed uneventfully, Wylie and Nick got up at four-thirty, and as the sun rose, they were hunting. True to form, Wylie over-or undershot every rise he got, and all his pheasants lived to see another day.

Nick, however, bagged Christmas dinner.

EPILOGUE

THE INHERITORS

NEW WORLDS ARE MADE IN two places: the ruins of the old and the minds of the survivors.

The captured souls had instantaneously returned to their wandering bodies-all but those of the dead, who had begun another kind of journey.

Those who returned to life found themselves waking like sleepwalkers are known to do, in unaccustomed and impossible places. Lindy discovered herself riding in a jammed truck that was being driven by people who were equally mystified by where they were going and why.

At the first town they came to, they stopped the truck. Everybody was thirsty and hungry, and many of them were hurt, mostly with injured feet, which Lindy certainly had. They pulled over in Lora, Colorado, which they found empty. There was no power. All phone lines were dead.

Lindy remembered up until they had entered Third Street Methodist. The rest-she just had no idea. None at all. But she knew who she was and where she was from, and she also knew that she was going home. No matter what, she was returning to Harrow and to Martin and Trevor and her dear little Winnie.

This was far from impossible, as there were abandoned cars and trucks everywhere. She found a serviceable-looking hybrid that was full of gas. Her idea was that she was about three hundred miles west of home, so the hybrid would get her there with gas to spare.

She and some of the others from the Truck Gang, as they called themselves, broke into a place called the Lora Cafe. The milk was rotted, the eggs were higher than a kite, and there was no gas to cook with, so she contented herself with Cheerios washed down by water. They shared out the breakfast cereals, the cans of beans and soup, and took off in their various directions, all of them obsessed with the same thing: home.

Lindy did not care to travel with anybody else. She wasn’t sure what might happen. The world had collapsed. Then, for whatever unknown reason, her coffin nightmares had ended and here she was. She had obviously been walking for miles and miles, but she had no memory of it at all.

The car had a GPS but it didn’t manage to pick up any satellites, so she simply drove east on 70. Frequently, she had to go around abandoned vehicles, some of them in lines miles long, and travel cross country in the bounding car. It held together, though, well enough, and soon she was heading into familiar little Harrow.

There were people here and there, looking for the most part like they’d just come up after a tornado had passed, to see what was left.

Winnie said, “I can come back.”

The voice was so clear that for a moment she thought that her daughter was sitting in the backseat. She shook her head. Seeing Third Street Methodist, she experienced a surge of terror so great that she had to stop the car right there in the middle of the street.

“Mom?”

She did not open her eyes. She’d lost her kids, her husband, everything. There was no more Winnie and that voice had not been Trevor.

Then the car door opened.

She looked up into the smiling face of the most beautiful, most wonderful man in the world. She could not get out of the car. She tried, but she was shaking too hard, her hands just went out and went clutching toward her Martin, and then his arms were coming, they were strong around her, they were taking her and lifting her, and she felt his lips upon her lips and heaven came and lifted her.

There were a thousand whispered words, but no words could express the meaning of this meeting. Her husband’s and her son’s eyes were strangely dark, and hers were, too, they told her, and they told her that this was good, it was a miracle, it was the future of mankind in their eyes, dark still, but there would be light.

“What happened to us?” she asked as they drove out toward the Smoke Hills and home.

“There was an earthquake,” Martin said at last. “That affected the entire planet. And we’re not out of the woods yet. But we’re learning how to work in new ways. How to fix things.”

“A lot is wrong,” Trevor said.

Home was one of them, she soon discovered, and it was very wrong, so wrong that when she saw it, she burst into tears. “We can’t clean this up,” she wailed. She looked in disbelief at the melted, crazy furniture, at the twisted ruins of her kitchen. “What did this? This was no earthquake.”

“2012 came and went,” Martin said at last. “It turns out that the old Maya knew a lot. They calculated the return of-well, of-“

“Evil,” Trevor said simply. “Evil was here, but it failed.” He paused. “And it had a good effect, because fighting it transformed us. I guess that’s why you’re supposed to love your enemy.”

He fell silent, then, and in his silence and with it, she could hear something that was a voice and yet not a voice. It was more than a voice. She could hear engineers and physicists like herself and architects and workmen all gathered in a great chorus of plans and work and effort. “We’re going to put the world back together again,” she said.

Martin said, “We’ve changed. The human mind is not the same, and a lot of people-the bad ones, I guess-are they gone? Could they be gone?”

They knew, then, that this terrible attack had also been a cleansing, because they could feel by its absence that the weight of wicked souls had been lifted.

Lindy was the first to utter the words that had been on all of their lips unspoken, from the moment they had found each other. “What about Winnie?”

Martin shook his head. “We believe that she didn’t make it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mom, you just need to let yourself happen. Don’t think. Just-be with us. Part of us.”

“My daughter is missing! Where’s Bobby? Where are the state police, the FBI? The FBI gets involved in child disappearances. And what about our Jenny Alert? Where’s our Jenny Alert!”

He came to her and she didn’t want to do it, but she let him hold her because she had spent what seemed like an eon trapped in that strange somewhere-or-other tying to find him and to feel him where he ought to be and wasn’t. “My baby’s not bad, there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s hardly had a chance to live!”

She had to accept. But it wasn’t going to be easy, because it was unfair that her dear little girl suffer the same fate as the wicked, it was just really, really unfair!

Night fell, and Trevor made a place for himself on the floor of their little office, because his room was destroyed, and they did not want to disturb Winnie’s room.

It was cold and without electricity it got dark early on the twenty-second of December, and as it got dark, Lindy agonized over her lost child. But under their quilt that she had made when she was first married, it was wonderfully warm. They were dirty, though, and the warmth was ripening them. There was no water to wash but that, also, did not prevent her from being Martin’s wife again, and their bodies in the night were glad.

Mommy?

Lindy’s eyes flew open. She cried out. Martin’s hand caressed her cheek. “Sleep, my love.” He came close and kissed her. “From hell to heaven,” he murmured. Her whole heart, her blood, her soul took deepest joy in those words.

Mommy?

She leaped from the bed, ran to the window. “It’s her!”

Martin came to her, put his arms around her waist from behind. She pulled away from him. “Honey-“

“Shut up!”

Hi, Mommy.

“Oh, baby, my baby, I hear you! Where are you?”

Silence.

“She’s out there somewhere! Martin, she’s out there and we have to find her. Martin, the nighthawks-“

“Sh! Sh! There are no nighthawks, they’re gone.”

“How in hell do you know?”

Martin tried again to hold her, but she pulled away. “Listen!”

“Lindy, love…” She was hurt. Everybody was hurt. So hurt.

Then Trevor was there. Listen to her, Dad.

He turned around. Trevor came to them, nodded toward the window.

Then Martin heard it, the ticking of an engine out in the dark. An electric surge of fear went through him. They had no gun. They still had no gun!

Then he saw it, moving slowly closer to the house, a rattling old car with only the single light.

“That’s Bobby,” he said.

Then she was running, Lindy was running, and Martin, and behind them Trevor.

The car stood in the driveway, its engine guttering. Then the driver’s door opened, and Martin saw in the light from within a tiny form prim in the passenger’s seat.

Lindy leaped at Bobby’s car, threw the door open and there was her little girl, who came out into her arms, and Lindy danced, whirling round and round with her child silent in her arms, her child smiling a soft smile.

“Baby, baby, baby,” Lindy cried, then cradled her and covered her with kisses.

Hi, Winnie said, and it echoed like a song in them all.

“Buddy, she came in half an hour ago.”

Martin looked at him. Embraced his old friend. “I thought you were a goner for sure.”

“I thought you were.” He looked at Lindy and Winnie. “I don’t know how to tell you this, or even exactly what I am telling you.”

“I know she’s dead,” Martin said. “I saw her body.”

Daddy, it’s all changed. Winnie and Trevor’s thoughts echoed as one.

He had a son who could read minds, now a daughter returned from the dead. They took her inside, loving her, touching her, and she was full and normal flesh in every way.

Bobby lingered. “Boy, they did a number around here.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I don’t know quite what happened, but I know you were a big part of it. I can hear people thinking. Thinking about what happened, and a lot of them are thinking about you, Martin.”

We can all hear each other, Trevor said in their minds.

Gonna be interesting times for cops, Bobby thought. He glanced around, then laughed a little. He took Martin aside. “She isn’t the same,” he whispered.

I’m all different, Winnie added. Then, This house is a mess!

They-Lindy threw a picture of the glaring reptilian features of Mazle into their minds-did it.

Winnie reached into the air, and her old friend Bearish came flopping into her hands. He was soaked and crusted with ice and mud. You got lost.

As she moved through the house, everything she touched came back to its previous condition. She opened the fridge. We still have to go to the store. Then, in words, “Except for these apples. I din steal ‘em. They were grounded.”

She brought out five small apples. They were cold, a little old, obviously falls. Martin was famished, they all were, and they ate silently. He wondered where they’d come from, and saw in his mind a picture of the Wright’s apple tree, it’s fruit all fallen.

She came and hugged his legs. He lifted her and thought that she was not quite as heavy as she had been, not quite as solid. He knew that he held a great miracle in his arms, and that there must be millions of such miracles over all the earth right now. He kissed his miracle and she laughed, and he thought he was holding the promise of the whole future in his arms.

You are, Trevor said as he crunched into his apple.

The little family was taking a journey into a new world, and this journey was being repeated all across the planet, as a new mankind rose up from the ruins of the old, and the risen and the living joined together in a new chorus, and the long ages of illusion that there is a curtain between the living and the dead were ended.

The undiscovered country had been discovered, and the explorers were returning.

Winnie settled into the deep comfort of her father’s arms. Bobby reached out and touched her, and she felt the energy in him that was a little sharp in places, and smoothed it out. Tears came to his eyes. He stared at her, drank her in. She let him clutch her, she laughed, she had been on such a long journey. “You smell like roses,” he whispered.

She ate her apple, thinking of what life is-what it really is. She thought of her old body still lying where it had fallen, giving itself back to dust and memory. Life is the mystery of the world, she told them.

The minds around her fell silent.

Death had ended, they just didn’t know it yet. She understood what had really been done here, and who had done it, and the real reason, that only the good remained, because only the good could find the next secret, the true meaning of life without death.