Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (27 page)

The pain is gone. Only the ecstasy remains. And it grows. The night things run rampant in the dark sectors above. Rasalom senses the delirium of fear and pain and grief and misery they leave in their wake.

And then came the convulsion of death and horror when the Pacific volcanoes roared back to life. The surge was almost unbearable.

As a result, the pace of the Change has picked up. He is so much larger now, and his granite womb has grown to accommodate him. The chips of sloughed stone have disappeared down the hole that opened in the bottom of the chamber. Like the other holes that have opened around this globe, it, too, is bottomless. But it leads to a different place. A place of icy flame. Even now, a faint glow creeps up from the depths.

And the Change … his limbs have thickened, hardened to a stony consistency. His head has drawn into his trunk, concentrating his essence in a soft, bulbous core, a fleshy center in the hub of a four-spoked wheel.

He spreads his intangible feeders farther and farther afield, seeking more nourishment. He can never get enough.

SUNDAY

Sunday in New York

WNYW-TV

And now the news: The sun rose late at 7:10
A.M.
this morning and found not only a devastated New York City but the entire world reeling from the events of last night …

Manhattan

What a night.

Jack stood yawning in the chilly dawn outside Gia’s town house. He shivered and tugged the zipper on his jacket a little higher.

Almost June. Wasn’t the weather supposed to be getting warmer?

Across the East River the sun was rising red and quick over Queens. He thought he could almost see it moving. Around him, Sutton Square had never looked so bad. The little half block of town houses hanging over the FDR Drive had been spared Friday, but last night more than made up for it. Shattered glass on the sidewalks, lacerated screens hanging in ribbons from the windows.

The chew wasps and belly flies had been back, but other things—bigger, heavier things—had come as well. Luckily, the louvered wooden shutters flanking the windows of Gia’s town house hadn’t been merely ornamental. They were hung on real hinges and able to swing closed over the windows. The night had been long and tense, filled with hungry, predatory noises, but they’d passed it in safety.

Other places hadn’t been so lucky. Jack was wondering whether he should check out some of the neighboring town houses to see if anybody needed help when he noticed something hanging over the arm of the streetlamp on the corner. Something big and limp.

He took a few steps toward it and stopped when he realized it was a corpse. Female, maybe, but so torn up and desiccated it was hard to tell.

But how had it got there? Twenty feet up. Was there a hole creature big enough to fly off with someone?

Things were worsening faster than he’d imagined.

Jack checked the Glock at the small of his back and the extra magazines in his pockets, then went to check his car. The Vic’s black paint had bubbled off in spots as if it had been splashed with acid, and the windshield was fouled with some putrid-smelling gunk that Jack wiped off with a rag from his trunk.

“Eeeeuuuu! What happened?”

Jack turned and saw Vicky standing in the town house doorway, dressed in bib-front overalls, a flannel shirt, a jacket, and her green-and-white Jets cap. With the little suitcase in her hand, she looked like a country cousin arriving in the big city for a visit. But her blue eyes were wide with shock as she stared at the car’s ruined finish.

“The things from the hole,” Jack said, waving her forward to distract her from the corpse on the lamppost. “That’s why I want you and your mom to leave.”

“Mom still doesn’t want to go.”

“I know that, Vicks.”

Jeez, do I know.

Gia didn’t want to leave the city, thought she and Vicky could weather the wolf just fine in their brick house here on Sutton Square. Jack wasn’t having any of that. He was willing to let her have her way in most anything unless he thought she’d be in danger. He’d been relentless last night, wearing her down until she’d finally agreed to leave the city with Abe first thing this morning.

“Is that why you and Mom were yelling last night?”

“We weren’t yelling. We just had a … difference of opinion.”

“Oh. I thought it was a fight.”

“Your mother and I? Disagree? Never! Now come on, Vicks. Let’s get you settled in the car.”

As Vicky stepped down onto the sidewalk, Gia emerged behind her. She was dressed in jeans and a navy-blue V-neck sweater over a white T-shirt. Her eyes, the same shade of blue as Vicky’s, went as wide as her daughter’s when she saw the street. She ran her fingers through her short blond hair.

“Oh, Jack!”

“I’ll bet this is nothing compared to the rest of the city.”

He put his index finger to his lips and pointed to the body on the lamppost. Gia started and staggered back a step when she spotted it.

“Dear God!”

“Still think you’ll be safe here?”

“We did okay last night.”

Stubborn to the end.

“But it’s going to get worse.”

“So you’ve said—a thousand times.”

“
Two
thousand times. I get paid to know these things.”

“And you’re sure Abe’s place is better?”

He mimicked Abe’s accent. “Like a fortress it’s built.”

She shrugged resignedly. “All right. I’m packed. Like I promised. But I still think this trip is overkill.”

Jack ducked past her into the house to grab the suitcases before she changed her mind. Everything fit in the trunk with plenty of room to spare. He wondered about the toddler accessories he’d be packing if Emma were with them. A high chair probably. And what else? Toys. Yeah, toys. Toys in a survival bunker.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and climbed behind the wheel. He zigzagged down to 57th Street and started up the long incline toward Fifth Avenue.

Bad, but not as bad as yesterday. Most people—the sane ones, at least—had stayed in last night. Early Sunday morning was about the only time midtown Manhattan could be called quiet, but even fewer cars than usual roamed the streets today. Most of those were either police or emergency vehicles of one sort or another. All the streets were littered with sparkling glass fragments. Here and there along the way he spotted an occasional shrunken husk that had once been a human body. One or two dangled from high places, as if they’d been dropped or thrown there after being sucked dry. Jack kept glancing back at Vicky but she was slumped down in the backseat, engrossed in one of her
Nocturnia
books, oblivious to her surroundings.

Good. He kept an eye on Gia, as well, watching her expression grow tighter, her face grow paler with each passing block. By Madison Avenue she was ashen. As he pulled to a stop at a red light, Gia looked at him with eyes even wider than before. Her voice was barely audible.

“Jack … I’m … what…?”

She closed her mouth and stared ahead in silence.

Jack said nothing, but he was sure he wouldn’t have any more resistance to the idea of getting out of town.

From the right came a sudden explosion of glass as a display case crashed through a corner jewelry store’s only unbroken window to land on the sidewalk.

A guy with glazed eyes and lank, oily brown hair, sporting a stained black T-shirt and torn jeans, followed it through the hole, laughing as he landed and rolled on the pavement. He was white but wore enough tats and gold chains to qualify as a charter member of the Lil Wayne wannabe club. His fingers were stacked with so many rings he couldn’t bend them. Another guy, heavier but dressed identically and sporting an equal amount of gold, made a more traditional exit through the door. They gave each other a metallic high five. Then they spotted the Vic.

“Hey, man!” the first one said, smiling as he approached the car. Jack spotted the Kicker Man tattoo on his right hand. “It’s a ride!”

The heavier one followed him. “Yeah! Want some gold? We’ll give you some gold for a ride downtown. We got plenty!”

Jack couldn’t help laughing.

“Yeah, right. And like maybe I’ll let you hold my wallet while I drive you around.”

As the looters’ disarming grins twisted into rage, he gunned the car and pulled away through the red light.

Trouble was, Vicky was now sitting up and alert to her surroundings.

“Why didn’t you give that man a ride, Jack?”

“Because he’s one of the bad guys, Vicks. What’s called a looter.”

“But he just wanted a ride.”

“I don’t think so, Vicks. You know those silverfish we find crawling in the bathroom every so often?”

Vicky made a face. “Yuck.”

“Yeah, well, looters are lower than silverfish. When the good folks are occupied fighting fires or helping earthquake or storm victims, looters sneak in and carry off anything that’s not nailed down. Those guys didn’t want a ride; they wanted our car.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Fair’s not a word they care about, Vicks.”

“Look!” she said, pointing to her left as they crossed Fifth Avenue. “More looters!”

She was right. Knots of people were jumping in and out of the broken windows all along Fifth, scampering off through the dim dawn light with jewelry, leather, anything they could carry. Someone had pulled a panel truck up on the sidewalk in front of Bergdorf ’s and was loading it with dresses. As Jack was pulling away, he saw a bearded, professorial type step through the open space that had once been the big front window of a bookstore balancing a two-foot stack of books against the front of his tweed jacket.

“Everybody’s getting into the act,” he said.

Gia looked around. “Where are the police?”

“Stretched pretty thin, I’d guess. At least when the sun’s all the way up these cockroaches will crawl back under the floorboards.”

“It’s been only two days. I never dreamed…” Her voice trailed off.

“What? That things could fall apart this fast? This city’s become a sewer, Gia. During the past year all the garbage wandering around this half of the country seems to have got themselves a Kicker tattoo and ended up here. Its veneer of civilization is now about as thick as the layer of gold on the jewelry they hawk on the streets. A couple of good rubs against your jeans and the base metal shows through.”

“What about neighborliness and hanging together in times of trouble?”

“Maybe they’ll have some of that out in Iowa where you grew up, and maybe there’ll be pockets of it around here, but not enough to matter. The good folks will be driven into hiding and the slime will be free to do whatever they damn well please.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t
want
to believe that. And it disturbs me to know you believe that.”

Jack shrugged. “In my work, you get to spend a lot of time hip-deep in slime. You—”

“Oh, my God!” Gia cried, craning her neck and staring up through the windshield.

Jack slowed and glanced up. Something bright in the sky. He stuck his head out the window—and stopped the car to stare.

Vicky popped her head out behind him. “Ooooh neeeeat!”

“Jack! What’s happening? What
is
that?”

“Looks like an apartment building,” Vicky said.

Half a mile up, probably over the West Side Highway or the midtown piers, a building floated in the air. It hung as if suspended on an invisible wire, rotating slowly, its roof canted slightly eastward, its torn underside westward. Light from the rising sun flashed off the few intact windows. Broken-away masonry floated around it. Tiny figures leaned out the windows, waving shirts and towels in panicked attempts to attract the attention of the police helicopters that circled it like flies around a corpse.

“Jeez!” Jack said as he stared upward at the slowly dwindling shape. “It’s still rising.”

Those poor bastards trapped up there were doomed unless they could find a way of transferring to one of the helicopters.