Fire (29 page)

“He’s awful special, I just know he is. Don’t even have to look at him to know that. If there’s anything or anyone in this world that can fix my leg, I know it’s him.”

“I —” Ron choked on his words, and lost them. He looked at the creature, but his animal face was unreadable. Then two things happened, both at once: a woman came from the far side of the room, calling, “Jerry!” —

And the creature reached out for the boy, and he hugged him, plain and simple hugged him, and there wasn’t anything that looked like cure in the hug, but there was love, and sympathy, and gentleness. And then the woman was there with them, and she was crying, whether from hurt or from frustration Ron couldn’t say, but she was saying “I’m so sorry,” with a deep drawl, and the creature pulled her into his hug and they just stood there like that for the longest time. After a while she sniffed and took her son by the hand and said that she thought she should leave them to their breakfast, and she went away, the boy limping beside her. Ron almost expected to hear her scold the boy, but she didn’t.

Then the waitress came out of the kitchen with their food, and when the creature saw what was on his plate he didn’t seem to have much stomach for it. He picked a little at the toast and the potatoes, and he drank the juice, but he left the eggs and bacon alone. He didn’t make any special show of distaste, though, and Ron ate his own breakfast with a great deal of pleasure.

When he was finished eating and sipping at his coffee, the old man at the table beside them — the one who’d invited them to breakfast — offered Ron a cigarette, and he took it and thanked the man, and that cigarette and that cup of coffee were just about the best Ron had ever had in his whole life. As he smoked and sipped he and the old man talked quietly about nothing at all.

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Chapter Twenty

WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, JOHNSON COUNTY, MISSOURI

The base commander, General Simpson, wasn’t happy to see him. Not even remotely.

He gave Bill time to clean himself of the scent of embalming fluid and get himself a uniform, and then the commander sat him down in his big office with its furniture that was nice enough that it might have been civilian.

And he frowned. And went back to the paperwork on his desk, leaving Bill with nothing to do but sit there upright in his wooden chair and stare at the wall. For most of half an hour, or maybe longer. It was still hard for Bill to say about time; being dead all that while had left him disoriented.

However long it was, it was long. Longer than an airman can wait comfortably. Which is pretty darned long, when you consider that to Bill’s way of thinking most of what the whole darned Air Force does most of the time is wait for there to be somebody who needs shooting at or shooting down or to have a bomb dropped on him. And most of the time there’s nobody around who fits that particular description, so most of what the Air Force does to earn its keep is standing around and looking tough and waiting. Bill thought. Of course, he also thought he was pretty good at sitting around and waiting himself, and even if he was waiting now pretty successfully, he wasn’t very comfortable about it.

“Son,” the general said, finally — pushing aside the papers on his desk, folding his hands. Frowning again, like an uncle who was disappointed in his favorite nephew. “Son, I don’t rightly know what you’re doing alive right now. I don’t know how it is that you’re healthy and whole when two days ago we had to pour what was left of you into that coffin. I do know one thing: you’d’ve done all of us a big favor if you’d managed to keep yourself dead.”

He paused, as though he wanted to hear what Bill had to say for himself. Which he didn’t have a thing to say, of course.

“Yes sir.” Which wasn’t precisely — or even remotely — anything like what Bill had to say about the subject. He wasn’t one to address a general otherwise.

“You know, when you were dead, you were a hero. Not a hero like we could tell anybody about it. Or even admit it to ourselves out loud — officially you had to be a criminal. After all, you were responsible — deliberately responsible, and we knew it — for the murder of President Paul Green of these United States.

“We also knew that you did us all a favor. More than a favor: you gave your life to save the world from a holocaust. So long as you were dead, we could all live with those contradictions; vilify you at the same time we very quietly buried you with your own flag, which is a fitting thing at a hero’s funeral.”

Bill could feel himself blushing. Partly because he was touched and honored; partly because he was ashamed and embarrassed. Also because he wasn’t quite sure what it was that the general was about to drop on him, but he knew that whatever it was it didn’t sound as though it were likely to be altogether pleasant.

“But you are alive, and if God knows why or how, He isn’t telling. And because you’re alive we’ve got to do something with you. The obvious thing is to let you stand trial for murder. We can’t, of course. The Air Force and the country owe you something for what you’ve done; and putting you on trial would give the Air Force an even larger black eye than the one you’ve already given it. We can’t very well just leave you here, either — if word got out. . . .” The general coughed. Pushed a thin manila file-folder across his desk, toward Bill. “These are your duty papers, son. In your own way, you turned out to be an easier problem to solve than I might have expected. As soon as the brass in Washington got word about your unlikely resurrection, they had plans for you. Apparently you aren’t the only . . . phenomenon of this type that’s out there right at the moment. And just as you might guess, it’s a phenomenon they find themselves quite concerned over. To put it a little more bluntly: they’re doing research, and you’ve been drafted as a guinea pig. Go ahead. Take a look at your papers.”

“Yes sir.” Bill reached tentatively forward, took the folder gingerly from its place on the general’s desk. Opened it. And saw that a man with another name was being reassigned to a research project.

In the demilitarized zone.

In South Korea.

Bill was amazed, unsure of how he ought to react, even half in doubt as to whether the general had given him the right folder. He stared dumbfounded at the paper in front of him for a time that was long enough that the general probably took it as a sign of disrespect. Which wasn’t by any stretch a thing that he’d intended.

“Yes, Private. We’ve changed your name. And we’re sending you to Korea. That’s where the Pentagon is having the research done: the political situation here in the States at the moment — well, let’s be frank. Unstable is a mild word for it. The Brass doesn’t want to take the chance of civilian government stumbling into this project. So they’re putting it in a place where we don’t have any civilian government. And if you don’t like having your name taken away, my apologies. There’s no room in this Air Force for PFC Bill Wallace any more; your name is Ted Roe for the duration. And if you have any sense you’ll use it for the rest of your life.”

Bill wasn’t altogether certain that he’d be able to answer to somebody else’s name — he’d spent too many years answering to his own already to get used to another. He said as much to the general, who scowled and slapped his hand down hard on the wooden surface of his desk.

“Take a good look at that name, Private. No, not Private: you’re Corporal Roe, now. And your middle name is William. You’re Theodore William Roe, and if need be you can tell people you answer to your middle name. And that’s the long and the short of it. When you leave this office you are to go directly to the airfield. Because you are now a highly classified property of the Air Force, between here and there you are to hold your head low, so as to avoid being recognized, and you will speak to no one. You will board your plane — it will be the only plane on the runway — and once aboard you are to speak to no one until you reach your destination, where appropriate personnel will be waiting to escort you. The only exception to any of this will be that you may speak once en route, but only to the extent that is absolutely necessary to avoid attracting undue attention to yourself. Are you clear on this?”

Bill was clear, all right. Though he wasn’t especially enthusiastic. “Yes sir.”

“In that case, Corporal Roe, you’re dismissed.” He stood up, reached across his desk to shake Bill’s hand. “It’s been my pleasure to be your commanding officer.”

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NORTH-CENTRAL TENNESSEE

All told, they spent a little more than an hour in the roadside café. As Ron sipped at his coffee the people of town began to come up to them and ask them questions; not that he or the creature had any of the answers. Some of them asked about their future, or about the future of the world, and more than one asked them if God was still alive and if he loved the world. Ron was certain that he was and that he did, but not nearly sure enough to say so from the position of authority that they saw him in.

The creature didn’t take it well at all. Not that he treated the townsfolk badly, or acted anything but a saint. But the fact that they needed and there was nothing he could do for them wore hard on him; Ron didn’t need any special vision to see that. They’d ask their questions and he’d touch their arms or hold them, and eventually they’d go away not knowing a damn thing they didn’t know before, or at least nothing they wouldn’t have known if they’d given it a little thought. They’d be happier, at least, anyway. After a while Beast began to cry — not pointedly histrionically sobbing or heaving or anything like that, just tears seeping kind of gently from his eyes in a way that didn’t seem to affect his behavior or his dignity especially.

When the last of them had come and gone, the creature stood to leave, and Ron went to pay the check. Before he could even lift it from the table the old man had picked it up himself, and he refused to let Ron have it. He’d invited them, after all, the old man said. So Ron let it be, and the old man paid for them.

Almost everyone who’d been in the restaurant followed them as they walked to the far edge of town. For a while Ron began to wonder if they’d all be coming with them, but when they’d passed the last house the creature turned back and looked at them, and suddenly there wasn’t any doubt in anyone’s heart, not even Ron’s, that the three of them had to travel on alone.

Over the heads of the townspeople Ron could see that the helicopter was still on the far hill, watching them. Trouble, he thought. What did those people want with them? Were they going to keep following them?

As he watched, the helicopter took off and began to move toward them.

It was only a moment before it was passing low overhead; as it passed Ron saw a video camera mounted on its side swivel to watch him. And then it just kept going, northward, over the horizon.

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NEW YORK CITY

Luke and Andy ate in a place that called itself a café, too. But the place where they ate was a much more expensive one — even if the food was not one whit better — and there was no one volunteering to pick up the check for them. Not that it mattered; Luke had plenty of money. By Andy’s lights, or anyone else’s, damn near. All his life Luke had worked, and worked hard; he’d never spent money as quickly as he’d made it. Even young as Luke had been when he’d died, he’d left two full years’ income in the bank.

Not that Luke understood what he had. All he knew was that the money he had in his pocket was plenty as far as the prices on the menu were concerned.

They ate in the restaurant that called itself the Bistro Café, a strange place with floor-to-ceiling windows that faced out onto a concrete grotto of some kind; from where they sat and ate it almost seemed like a giant aquarium, filed with air. That’s what Andy said, anyway: he told Luke that it reminded him of the Brooklyn aquarium, out at Coney Island — only instead of watching a bunch of fish swim around, you got to watch people shopping at the tables they had set up, or watch them staring at the fountain that spattered water all along the far wall. In winter, the boy said, the whole place outside there was a great big ice-skating rink.

Toward the end of the meal the boy disappeared for a long while — he had to go off in search of a men’s room, finding which, apparently, was no small matter — and Luke was left alone at the table for most of twenty minutes. When half the wait had passed, Luke remembered the pamphlet that the strange, vile-smelling old woman had given him, and because there was nothing else to do he took it from the pocket where he’d put it and began to read.

It was strange stuff; fascinating and vile all at the same time. A comic book about the end of the world, and at the same time not a comic book and not about the end of the world at all. It was identical, in fact, to the comic book that the same old woman had given to Ron Hawkins several days before and thousands of miles away. Even as off balance as Luke was, he could see the . . . derangedness of the pamphlet’s author. Of course, he had an advantage that the comic book’s intended audience could not have had: he’d already died, and lived through it, and he knew that death wasn’t something he had to live in fear of. He thought about that a little more, and decided that it was exactly true: the comic book was playing on the fear of death in its readers. Took the idea one step farther . . . and almost began to wonder if all religion was playing on the fear of death. Maybe it was, in fact. And yet . . . there was something wrong in that thought, too. There was a deep feeling about God in Luke’s gut, a reverence, and he didn’t think that reverence had anything at all to do with death, or with being afraid of it.

“What you reading?” Andy asked him, plopping himself back down into his seat.

“Uh?” Luke blinked, pulled himself up out of his fugue. “Comic book. Something someone gave me while I was waiting for you back at McDonald’s.” He tossed it to the boy.

The boy opened the pamphlet, flipped a few pages. “I’ve seen these before,” he said. “Those cross-and-circle people are always handing them out. Or trying to sell them to you.” Handed it back to Luke as though it were nothing at all. “So,” he said, “let’s go get you some clothes. You can’t wear my Daddy’s shirt forever — not just that one, anyways. You’re going to start to smell like a derelict if we don’t get you something to change into soon.”