Garden of Evil (28 page)

‘W
hat are we going to do now, man?' shouted Ricky. He twisted around to look through the Mercury's rear window, and already the white-robed figures were pouring down the driveway toward them. ‘Coupla seconds and they're going to be climbing all over us!'

Jim slowed down for a moment. Bethany said, with her voice rising almost to a squeak, ‘We can't just run them down, Daddy, they're living people!'

‘I know they are, sweetheart. But what do you think they're going to do to us, if they get hold of us?'

‘They'll tear us in to pieces!' said the African-American student. ‘They tore off Maria's arms! They did it right in front of me! They tore off her arms!'

‘The Reverend Silence promised me that I would get my life back,' said Bethany, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘They wouldn't hurt me, would they? They wouldn't dare.'

‘Maybe they wouldn't dare to hurt
you
, girl,' said the student, ‘but nobody made no promises like that to me.'

Jim said, ‘He's right. Hold on. Hold on
tight.
We're going to get ourselves out of here.'

Three of the white-robed figures flung themselves on to the trunk, drumming on it furiously with their fists, but Jim slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the car surged forward with its tires skittering on the blacktop and its tail sliding from side to side. The white-robed figures tumbled off on to the ground, but they were immediately swallowed up by the hundreds more who were still running after them.

By now, the white-robed figures who were coming up the hill had reached the college gates. Jim kept the gas pedal flat on the floor and the Mercury was doing fifty miles an hour when it hit the first of them. The multiple collisions were thunderous, like an artillery barrage, one body bouncing off the hood after another. All Jim could see was white-robed figures, flying and spinning and flinging up their arms. Some of them came hurtling right into the windshield, and over the roof. Some were thrown to the side of the road. Others disappeared underneath the front bumper and the car rocked and swayed as its wheels ran over them.

‘This
is
a nightmare, Jim,' William Rook repeated, over and over. ‘My God, son, this
is
a nightmare.'

Bethany laid her hand on Jim's shoulder, as if to support him and reassure him, but all the same she kept saying, ‘Please forgive us, please forgive us, please forgive us.' Jim couldn't tell if she were praying to God or to Ba'al, but then he thought:
Maybe it doesn't really matter.

Santana had his eyes tightly closed and was gabbling Hail Marys in Spanish and repeatedly crossing himself. Ricky was still turned around, keeping his eye on the white-robed figures who were chasing them from behind. ‘Bastards still comin', Jim!' he called out. ‘Bastards still comin' thick'n'fast!'

No matter how many white-robed figures they knocked down, more came running toward them. But Jim kept his foot pressed hard down and the Mercury continued to plow through them –
thump
!
thump
!
thump
! – its engine roaring and its tires slithering on torn shrouds and skin.

As they forced their way further and further into the thick of the crowd, however, he began to realize that the white-robed figures were not only blurry, and that it was difficult to focus on them, they were not as solid as ordinary men and women. He had hit a deer once, when he was driving at night through the mountains, and the impact had broken his front tooth and wrecked his beloved Chevy Impala beyond repair. But although these white-robed figures were slowing them down, and they were jouncing wildly up and down as they ran over them, they weren't substantial enough to bring them to a stop, which the sheer weight of ordinary human bodies would have done.

‘Keep going, man!' Ricky urged him. ‘I think I see light at the end of the zombies!'

He was right. The crowd of white-robed figures was beginning to thin out, until there were only a few of them running up the road, and these few ignored them, or didn't see them, or maybe they had seen the slew of bodies that they had left behind them, and didn't want to end their lives so soon after they had been resurrected.

They reached Sunset, and Jim spun the wheel so that the Mercury did a sideways slide and headed east. He handed his cellphone back over his shoulder to Ricky and asked him to call 911. Ricky tried again and again, but there was no signal. The car radio was the same as before, nothing but the endless shushing of white noise.

Jim was surprised how little traffic there was, although it was crawling along even more slowly than usual. West Grove college campus was mainly hidden now by buildings and trees, but when Jim turned his head and looked back, he could see that the main building was on fire now, as well as all of the trees around it, including the giant cypress to which Santana had been nailed. A thick column of whitish-gray smoke was climbing hundreds of feet up into the sky.

‘Looks like you'll be teaching in a tent for a while, dude,' Ricky remarked, dryly. ‘That's if there's anyone left alive to teach.'

Bethany squeezed Jim's arm, and said, ‘Daddy?' When he turned to her, she tried to give him a comforting smile, but he couldn't begin to tell her how remorseful he felt. What was that old saying about ‘he who sups with the Devil'?

‘I'm OK,' he told her. ‘Everything's going to work out, you'll see.'

But they had only just passed the intersection with North Canon Drive when Jim's father pointed southward, toward Beverly Hills, and said, ‘Would you look at that! The whole darn city's burning!'

Palls of smoke were rising up everywhere, from Culver City in the south-west, from the downtown area, from Huntington Park, from Montebello. Helicopters were circling around, glinting in the sunlight, and when Jim put down his window they could hear the wailing and warbling and honking of sirens.

‘I sincerely trust and hope that this is nothing to do with us, man,' said Ricky.

As if to answer his question on cue, over a hundred figures in shrouds and white robes came running down Benedict Canyon Drive, from their left, and poured across the road in front of them, before disappearing down North Rodeo Drive. They rushed so fast, and they were so indistinct, that Jim felt as if he had dreamed them, rather than seen them for real, but he knew that they
were
real, and that it was his fault that they were here.

‘You think these dead-live people are only here, in LA?' asked Santana. ‘You think maybe all over the world? Maybe Mexico? I have family in Rosarita, my mother, my grandmother. My two sisters.'

‘I have no idea, Santana,' said Jim. ‘The only thing we can do is try to find a way to send them all back where they belong.'

‘
Love
to know how you're going to do that, man,' said Ricky. ‘When I was at college, we just about managed to squeeze seventeen people into a Volkswagen. How do you squash millions of people back into some freakin' three-inch medallion?'

‘I don't know, Ricky,' Jim told him. ‘But let's get back to my place and try to work it out.'

With that, he pulled out into the center of the road and put his foot down. Other drivers blew their horns at him, but he took no notice, weaving in and out of the creeping line of traffic at nearly forty miles an hour. Torn shrouds were still fluttering from underneath his car, caught on the muffler.

A Highway Patrol car flashed past them on the opposite side of the road, with its lights flashing and its sirens howling and whooping and wibbling, but the officers inside it didn't even look at them.

‘I think they chase after dead-alive people,' said Santana, ‘not us alive-alive people.'

But then it must have occurred to him that he, too, had been brought back from the dead, and he stayed silent until they reached Briar Cliff Apartments.

Nadine was so shocked when she opened the front door of her apartment and saw Ricky standing there that her knees buckled, and both Ricky and Jim had to grab her elbows to stop her from falling.

They helped her inside and sat her down on the couch. She couldn't stop reaching up and touching Ricky – his hands, his face – and saying, with tears running down her cheeks, ‘It's not possible. It's not possible. It's a miracle.'

Ricky sat down beside her. ‘Nadine, sweetheart, I've learned today that a whole lot of things are possible that I didn't believe was
possibly
possible. I always thought that the world was full of weird shit before but it's weirder and shittier than I ever could have imagined. Haven't you heard what's happening?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Didn't you see the news or nothing?'

‘No. The TV's been on the fritz for most of the day, and I haven't been out.'

Jim said, ‘I'd better get upstairs. I think I hear more of my class arriving.'

‘OK, Jim. I'll tell Nadine all about it and then we'll come up to join you. I could really use a smoke.'

Jim left the Kaminsky apartment and climbed the steps up to the next landing. He stopped at Summer's door and rang the bell. He had rung it before, when he had first arrived back here, but there had been no answer. He guessed she must have gone for an interview, or down to Clawz to have her nails polished. There was still no answer, so he continued up to his own apartment. A large black crow cawed at him mockingly from the rooftop opposite. He didn't like crows. They reminded him of demons, and bad luck.

Apart from his father and Bethany and Santana, Joe Chang had made it here, with Hunni Robards and Jordy Brown. Jim had only just gone into the kitchen to get them all some drinks when there was a rapping at the front door and DaJon Johnson came in with Rebecca Teitelbaum. After another ten minutes, Al Alvarez and Jesmeka Watson appeared, and then Tommy Makovicka, carrying a motorcycle helmet with the red, white and blue flag of the Czech Republic on either side.

Soon, the whole of Special Class Two had turned up, with the exception of Simon Silence. Jim gave them all beers or sodas and filled three bowls with Doritos and giant pretzels and Dakota Farm potato chips.

Tibbles had come out of hiding and appeared to be enjoying this unexpected company. He went around sniffing at each of them, and graciously accepting strokes and tickles under the chin. In the end, he walked across to the couch and jumped into Hunni's lap.

Before he talked to his students, Jim went out to see his father, who was sitting on the balcony, still looking edgy and disorientated.

‘See that smoke behind the trees, son? Another house burning, by the look of it.'

‘How are you feeling, Dad?'

William Rook gave him a quick, sideways glance, almost as if he were embarrassed to be here. ‘I don't know yet. Glad to be back, I guess. But it doesn't feel like any time has passed at all.'

‘Thirty-three years, Dad. That's a long time being drowned.'

His father reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘I know. But the trouble is, I still feel the same way I did when I walked into the ocean. I still miss your mom.'

‘I still miss you, Dad. But that's Old Father Time for you. Old Father Time is the meanest sneak-thief there ever was. Takes things away from you and won't give them back, no matter what.'

‘You got
me
back. You got your Bethany back. Can't believe I'm a grandfather with an eighteen-year-old granddaughter! You got your friends back, too.'

‘I know. But what has it cost? How many of those kids got ripped apart back there? How many more innocent people are going to get killed?'

His father shook his head, emphatically. ‘That wasn't your doing, son. You were acting in good faith. You weren't to know what those Silence people really were, or what they were really after.'

‘I should have. I didn't like them, I didn't trust them, and I had my suspicions right from the moment I met them. But I was only thinking of myself – of what
I
wanted. How selfish is that?'

‘You don't have to talk to me about selfish. I left you alone on the beach, Jim, and walked off into the ocean.'

Jim laid his hand on his father's narrow shoulder. ‘I know, Dad. But it's forgotten now. I have something more important to worry about now. Sending those dead-alive people back to dead-dead land.'

‘Jim,' said his father.

‘What is it, Dad?'

‘If you find out . . . well, if you find out that
I
have to go back there, too, then so be it. You know and I know that I shouldn't really be here.'

‘I lost you once, Dad. I don't want to lose you a second time.'

A long moment of father-and-son silence passed between them; and then Jim went back inside his living room and smacked his hands together for attention.

‘Listen up! I know how anxious you all are to get back home and reassure your parents that you're OK – and also to check that
they're
OK. But what happened today happened because of all of us, because of me.

‘We were tempted into thinking that we could have everything that we had ever wanted, without working for it, and with no regard for the effect that it would have on other people. And we gave in to that temptation – me, just as much as you. In fact I'm far more responsible for what happened than you are, because I'm older, and I'm supposed to be wiser, and it's my job to take care of you.'

‘You still a human bean, man,' said DaJon Johnson. ‘You wanted your dead dad back and your dead daughter back. We can dig that. We ain't blamin' you or nothin'. We should never of listen to that wanksta.'

‘I
believed
him,' protested Jesmeka Watson. ‘And why shouldn't I? I got the voice, I got the looks, I got all the moves. All I needed was the breaks.'

Kyle Baxter put up his hand and said, ‘I believed him, too, sir. When somebody tells you that he can give you happiness and bliss and contentment and good fortune and felicity and fulfillment, what are you going to say to him? You're not going to say “no, thanks,” are you?'