Fire (55 page)

He told himself these things, but he didn’t believe them for an instant. Something was wrong, and Luke knew it.

He looked down at the gas gauge, saw that it read less than a quarter of a tank. It would be a good idea to stop for gas. That, at least, was true. It wasn’t exactly necessary, not yet, but it would be soon.

He was arguing it back and forth with himself when the other thing happened to him, and one that was a lot worse than just the loss of purpose.

It was a vision, a vision of pure and complete horror, absolute and total destruction. And for the longest moment he didn’t even realize that it was a vision. It was that strong, that real — all but indistinguishable from the truth.

It started as a glow, up ahead of him on the highway. A powerful and blinding glow in the shape of a low dome that gradually bulged and turned in on itself. And finally grew upward and straight, a wide column, and billowed into a mushroom cloud.

An atom bomb.

A memory — of a film back in grade school. Grey, scarred footage projected onto the pull-down screen at the front of the classroom, the one that doubled as a map of the world when the teacher flipped it around and let them see the back side. A film projector in the half-dark aisle beside Luke’s desk, going sprok-sprok-sprok like a dying metronome not quite in time.

A film of Hiroshima, in Japan, where they dropped the atom bomb back in World War II, and there on the classroom wall had been a mushroom cloud exactly the mate of this one. After a while the film cut away from the mushroom cloud, and it showed them other things, more intimate ones. Small children with oozing sores and swellings that looked impossible. Amputees. Shadows of terrified men and women, etched into the walls of buildings by the atomic light, and the voice on the film told him that those shadows were the only traces of the dead that remained.

And an explosion just like that was waiting for Luke. He knew it with an absolute and unshakable conviction. Somewhere up ahead, somewhere soon. Or maybe it waited for them in this very spot.

The only hope, he knew, was to keep going. To keep going and never slow down, not even for an instant.

So he did exactly that. Drove and drove hard and fast, and didn’t hesitate or pause for anything. Not even later on, crossing the Mississippi River bridge into St. Louis, when the helicopter passed over them twice, and then shadowed them from above for the longest while.

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ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF ST. LOUIS

Ron tried to sleep again after the creature died for the second time that night, but he didn’t have much luck. Instead of sleeping, he sat for most of an hour staring out the door as countryside rolled by too dark to focus on.

He didn’t even notice, at first, when the creature started bleeding again. Partly that was because it started so gradually — to begin with the bleeding was slow and slight, welling up out of the mutilated leg instead of gushing as dramatically as it had before. He might not have noticed at all if the creature hadn’t started making gentle writhing movements, and he might even have failed to notice the movement — it was that slight — if it hadn’t been for the sound.

Small, mewling sounds. The kind of sound he’d have expected from a small animal that had been abused to within an inch of its life. Maybe the sound of a dog mewling because it was about to die.

Tom was still over in his corner, wide-eyed and fearful.

He crawled back over toward the creature, to see if there was anything he could do, and saw him clutching at his chest. And his face — a mask of incredible agony, even though he wasn’t yet conscious. Ron looked down at the creature’s leg. It was growing back together, but it was growing all wrong. At a weird angle. That’d take care of itself, he thought, but there was still a big gouge covered with something that looked like bloody mucous membrane. And the fat artery was right there pointing out of the gouge instead of growing in to make its connections; it looked almost like the business end of a garden hose.

As Ron watched a pulse of blood welled up out of the artery. The bleeding stopped, and Ron thought he heard a sucking sound, but it was hard to be certain with all the noise of the train’s motion. And then blood was coming out again. Bubbling out, literally — there were glassy, beady bubbles in the blood.

And that was when Ron understood.

Understood why the creature was mewling in pain. Understood why no matter what Ron did now the creature was about to die again. And understood why the creature’s vision the evening before had been so bleak and hopeless.

Ron didn’t know anything about medicine. Honestly didn’t. He’d heard horror stories about junkies who shoot air into their veins, and about divers who come up from the deep too quickly and get the bends. He knew that was one of the most horrible ways that anyone could possibly die.

And the creature’s veins and arteries had to be all but filled with air by now. If the wide-open vein wasn’t enough by itself to let air leak into him, every time his heart started beating — every time he began to come back to life — his heart drew air right up into him. Ron took off his shirt, tied it around the creature’s leg to make a tourniquet. If Ron could stop any more air from getting in, eventually the creature’s blood would absorb the air that was already inside him. Or Ron hoped it would. He wasn’t sure, and anyway it wouldn’t be absorbed all at once; likely it’d kill him a dozen more times — whenever a bubble reached his heart, his brain, even his kidneys — before it was gone.

No wonder the creature had been so dispirited and afraid. It wasn’t just his own death that he’d seen looming in front of him. It had been — would be — horrible, excruciating death over and over again.

They were rolling into St. Louis, now; over there Ron could see the arch, lit up and beautiful. The train would probably stop here — St. Louis was a major railroad city, wasn’t it? He thought about that for a moment. The train was moving, and that was good, but it was moving north where the creature had been guiding them west. When they stopped it’d be best if they got off of the train and found a more sedentary hiding place until the creature was recovered.

The sound of a helicopter overhead. Ron’s heart surged with fear to hear it, but when he craned his head toward the door to get a glance at it he saw that it wasn’t a military helicopter, but one of the smallish ones used for commercial purposes. He sighed, felt his heart slow, felt his shoulders relax. Soon they’d be pulling into the railroad yard, and Ron could get himself and the creature both away from this damned place. That would be a very good thing.

Even as he thought it the train began to speed up dramatically, and as a bubble reached the creature’s brain, and he began to convulse and die for the third time in less than a day, Ron watched the train roar past the railroad yard and just keep going.

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Chapter Thirty-Seven

LAKE-OF-FIRE, KANSAS

George was never quite certain how he managed to survive Herman Bonner’s attentions that night. There were things Herman did to him that should have killed him, he thought. And there was worse, too — worse than the abuse and the beatings. Worse than that half hour when Herman strapped him to the bed, turned off the lights, and carved shallow patterns in his skin with a blade so sharp that it almost seemed to whisper as it touched his flesh. No: the worst was just before Herman Bonner left the room at two or maybe three in the morning, when he was straddled over George and pounding on his skull with something that might have been a pipe. And suddenly Herman lurched, and groaned, and whispered something passionate that George couldn’t understand. . . .

And when it was done George thought he knew how a woman feels when she’s brutalized and raped. The horror of it left him numb and dead inside; unable to sleep but too still inside to really be awake. After an hour or two the pain in his body was gone, and he could feel from an incredible distance that the microbes that had brought him back to life and made him physically whole again. The wounds in his heart weren’t a thing that anything but time could heal, and they were deep enough that they wouldn’t ever heal completely.

He was still staring mindlessly at the window at five in the morning, when Herman came back, wearing pajamas and slippers and smiling an easy, self-indulgent smile.

“It’s morning, George. Glorious morning. So much is happening! In a moment the missile-plane will rise up into the heavens. And that train — even as I speak that train is coming into St. Louis. Soon we’ll have those two in our hands, to dispose of forever!”

He sighed, contented — almost blissful.

“Come, George — come to the window. You have to see.”

George was too dead inside to respond, even if it’d been a thing he’d been inclined to respond to.

“Ah. Your chains. How can you possibly come to the window when your chains won’t let you move that far? Here. Allow me to —” he reached into a pocket, fished out a set of keys. Stooped, and unlocked the shackle that bound George’s leg. Took his hand, pulled him up from the bed, led him half-forcibly to the window. George was too numb to resist. “Allow me to assist you.”

The plane was taxiing on the runway, building velocity toward flight.

“Sodom and Gomorrah shall perish,” Herman said. “Glorious, isn’t it, George? Glorious.”

George heard himself grunt — not just grunt; there were words, trapped in his throat. Something he was trying to say. Whatever it was, he didn’t have a hint of it. The words came from a part of him hidden too deep for him to know. The two of them stood watching as the plane reared up and raised itself into the sky. And kept watching for a long time after.

They’d been standing there for the better part of an hour when Herman left him standing by the window, turned on the television. “We have people at the railroad yard, waiting for the train to arrive. And one of the network’s helicopters watching to be certain that it does. Come — stand beside me. You must see this for yourself.”

George heard those words, just as he’d heard all the others. He had no more will or desire to respond to them than he had to respond to anything else. Eventually Herman came to him again, and took his hand, led him to the bed where he could watch the screen.

The image of a train, moving through an industrial park at the edge of a city. Day just beginning to break. George recognized that train from somewhere . . . but where?
PACIFIC-SOUTHWESTERN
. Yes, that was it. From last night. This was the train, the car, where the young man and the Beast had taken refuge. Herman had found it, and he was having it followed.

Then the camera swept across the industrial park; in a moment they were moving with the helicopter over a vast river — the Mississippi? George wasn’t sure, everything was too vague. It had to be the Mississippi, didn’t it? Or did it even matter?

“It’s better,” Herman said, “that we don’t follow them too closely. It might make them wary.”

Up ahead were bridges, three of them, at least. It was hard to be certain from this angle, but there might have been a fourth. The helicopter rose, so as to give itself enough altitude to clear them, and their view improved. George could see traffic moving across the bridges. Not much traffic — it was too early for there to be much traffic — but there was some.

And Herman Bonner gasped. Stood up from the bed where he sat beside George, and disappeared into the other room. He left the door ajar behind him; after just an instant George could hear him speaking over the phone. “That car —” he said “— an old Dodge, crossing the I-70 bridge. Have it followed. Closely. I must see.”

And then he was back in the room, closing the door behind him. After just a moment the image on the screen shifted again, to show an old car crossing one of the bridges. George almost felt himself recognize the driver, but then the sensation slipped away from him. Maybe he had seen the man before, but it couldn’t have been more than once.

“I knew,” Herman said. “I knew.” He was hunched over, watching the screen carefully as the car finished crossing the bridge and bore right, to stay with I-70, the signs said. “It is him — that Munsen man. He’s coming for us, just as I knew he would. We will have him too, I think.”

The phone was ringing in the other room; Herman left to answer it. This time he closed the door behind him completely, but even so George could hear him. These rooms were soundproofed from the rest of the building, not from each other.

“What do you mean the train isn’t stopping where you expected it to?” A pause. “What do you mean our people aren’t certain whether or not it will stop in St. Louis at all?” Another pause; this one much longer. And then Herman sighed, and George could hear in that sigh a powerful, barely-contained rage. “We must have them,” he said. “We must destroy them. All of them. Divert the plane from its journey toward New York. Do it immediately. Have the pilot detonate his missile over St. Louis. . . . Don’t argue with me! Do this now!”

George heard all of it very clearly. Partly because he was standing just behind the door, waiting for Herman to return. And when Herman did, just a moment later, George Stein strangled him to death.

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Chapter Thirty-Eight

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

All through St. Louis, Luke Munsen worried over the needle of his gas gauge. Somewhere in the thirty miles before the river it had plummeted down from a quarter of a tank, toward empty. It was time to stop and get gas, time to stop and get gas this very instant, if they didn’t want to get stuck on the shoulder of the Interstate.

He bit his lip.

The urgency that had taken hold of him told him that he didn’t dare stop, not yet. On the other hand, if he got stuck out here they wouldn’t be able to move at all any more. Maybe. That was thinking ahead, and the urgency in his gut was too demanding to allow for foresight.

The need to move finally relented, just a little, as they crossed the Missouri River into a suburb call St. Charles. It was a good thing that it did, too; as Luke pulled the car off the interstate, around the clover-leaf, and into the gas station, the car began to cough with the need for fuel. Maybe, he thought as he eased the car to a stop and turned off the engine, the urgency had relaxed exactly because it was the last possible moment. The idea was a little too unsettling for Luke to accept, but even if he couldn’t accept it, he couldn’t dismiss it, either.