The Scream (32 page)

. . .
and on
. . .

. . . as Rod Royale felt a sense of absolute elation, transported in the power and the passion of the moment. People were
rioting
before him: visibly, tangibly at each other's throats. It was glorious.

Right up to the moment that Alex keeled over.

He leaned back in his signature Ray-Charles-from-Hell stance, just like he did a hundred times a night. Only this time he just kept going.

Ker-
splat
.

It was a first. Rod was stymied. The keyboards dropped out immediately, leaving a gaping hole through which the amassed power of the preceding moments seemed to drain. The impact was gone; the band deflated like the
Hindenburg
aflame.

The audience didn't appear to notice; they seemed hell-bound on a momentum all their own. Rod watched as a fat chick down in front smacked another kid in the head with a bit of lead pipe; two security types leapt into the fray.

Rod cast around in the escalating confusion, searching both sides of the stage for some type of visual cue as to what the hell was going on here. On the one side of the stage he saw Jacob Hamer and his sax player, arguing with one another. Hamer was pointing at the rising trails of smoke from the back of the arena, where moments ago Rod had seen the flashpot-bright arcs of light go off.

Hempstead was shaking his head and pointing at the other side of the stage. Rod looked.

Walker was there. Making a swift slicing motion across his throat. Repeatedly.

Kill it
.

Rod nodded and brought the song down as quickly and gracefully as possible. Which wasn't very.

The music stopped. The screaming went on.

And they were already carrying Alex off . . .

All the while, Lenore Kleinkind had suffered quietly as the jostling mob of misguided youngsters careened to and fro. Her ears were packed with two Pamprin bottles' worth of cotton, and still the pounding had gotten through.

Not to worry, though; she was willing to endure even greater indignities, if need be, to ensure that her cause-correction, not her cause,
God's
cause-was clearly heard.
Not my will, but Thine, be done
. Amen. She'd said fourteen Hail Marys, twenty-two Our Fathers, and a novena in preparation for this and felt her loins to be sufficiently girded to breach any barrier to this, her coming out.

But now, things were getting entirely out of hand; several fights had broken out, and the music-if you could call it that-had only seemed to make things worse. Now even that was disrupted; the band had stopped playing, and one of the youngsters appeared to have actually fainted. Lenore was starting to have serious fears that her purpose might be thwarted. She was frightened.

Still, there was hope. And God's will.

And where's there's a will
. . .

Lenore started edging her way to the far, far corner of the stage, where the privileged ones were allowed access to the back. She clutched her little red Igloo closely, lest she spill a single drop. And she prayed.

And when another fight broke out before her, this time between a pair of broken-bottle-wielding thugs and the strapping security men guarding the gate, it appeared that her prayers were truly answered.

Knock, and it shall be opened unto thee
. . .

Amen.

Rachel, Lauren, Sheri, and Madeline were all staring in wide-eyed shock at the melee playing across the screen. Things had degenerated in rapid succession. Cameras that had only moments before been blending one slick stage angle after another were now scrambling to lend some sense of visual coherence to what looked like Beirut on a bad night. Lurching friezes of frantic, blurred action bleeding into screaming sirens, screaming feedback and just plain screaming.

"
Ohmigod
," Rachel whispered. "CODY!!" Natalie looked up at her mother, face screwing up with a contact rush of dimly comprehended terror, and started to mewl.

"CODY!!! What's going on?!!"

"
I dunno! Hang on a sec
-"

The screen blipped harsh static between channels as Cody scanned the dial, looking for something solid, and . . .

CLICK

. . .
an ambulance screamed by on its way to Gate Six, as NBC correspondent Glenn Javits interrupted the evening news to hunker into a mike and shout something about "a massacre," and
. . .

CLICK

. . .
a prerecorded telecast of the Of Time Gospel Hour o' Power Ministries showed a red-faced Reverend Jimmy howling into his lapel mike about the ravages of Rock Music upon the Youth of Today, and
. . .

CLICK

. . .
a Channel Four SkyEye copter banked into a sweeping shot of the JFK playing field, with a distorted voice-over barking about the blazing pyre at one end and the sweeping stage at the other and the stampeding dots of humanity in between, and
. . .

CLICK

. . .
roving MTV correspondent Big Al Belsen tucked his neck into his Banana Republic safari vest and scuttled away from the departing whirlybird, having found The Scream utterly unresponsive to him. He and his crew were trying gamely to keep a handle on the situation. They collared the very next people they saw, and
. . .

"Oh, no," Rachel cried, very nearly bolting out of her seat to touch the screen. Natalie started to bawl. The images that filled the camera's eye were simultaneously familiar and utterly alien.

"Jake, Jesse," Big Al hollered, "is it true that Jerry Crane has just suffered a heart attack in the wake of the Rock Aid Riot?"

Jake paused to glare at him, and for a microsecond it appeared that he might bash in Big Al's bridgework. Instead he wheeled and pushed his way through the scrambling crews. The look in his eyes, though, would remain with Rachel for the rest of the sleepless night. The look that said it all in a word she had never truly understood.

Incoming
.

And Jake was gone.

Jesse remained behind, looking shell-shocked and ill. Rachel felt her heart skip a beat as Big Al's big mike shoved toward her face. She recoiled slightly as Al said, "Can you give us any insight . . ."

. . . and another voice came from the sidelines, saying, "Miss Malloy?" and Jesse half-turned to meet it . . .

. . . and the thick red gouts hit her full in the fare, splashing across her chest and even spackling a horrified Al Belsen . . .

. . . and Rachel cried out . . .

. . . as Jesse stood, the eyes of the global jukebox fully upon her, clotted blood dripping from face and hands and breast and hair . . .

. . . and a triumphant Lenore Kleinkind stood, emptied mason jars in each hand, hollering something about the sanctity of human life as two security men grabbed her and wrestled her down . . .

. . . and in front of an estimated sixty million viewers . . .

. . . Jesse screamed.

Alex was still delirious when the chopper arrived at the band's Staten Island estate. For forty-five minutes he had been going back and forth between babbling and whining and moaning and writhing. Somewhere over Jersey, he had emptied his bladder.

The rest of the passengers were silent, Rod particularly so. Walker could understand that. He was scared out of his mind. Every bit of triumphant glee they'd earned through the trashing of Rock Aid had been sucked right out by Alex's collapse. Now they were trapped in a howling machine with a dying man, their future uncertain and their own mortality shoved right in their faces.

It would have been nice to sedate little Alex. It would have been nice to shut him up. Under the circumstances, unfortunately, it was out of the question. Any more drugs in that boy and they might as well bag him. He was that close to the other side.

It took Walker back. Oh, yes, it did. Took him back to the war that had made him what he was. There had been lots of chopper rides like this in those halcyon days. And screams galore.

But it took him back.

Yes, indeedee-doo.

To one place in particular.

November, 1967. In the Central Highlands near Dak To. Some seven months before the real madness began.

In the days before Momma.

One of the many bloody firefights surrounding Hill 875 had taken down eight of his men, and he was feeling pretty
fucked up about it. Corpsmen were running all over the place, trying to patch up the casualties. There was hope for a few. But only a few.

There was one kid, a green little piece of shit who he'd known would never amount to anything; and as it turned out, he was right. Something had come from out of the darkness to take a football-sized chunk out of his innards.

And the kid was screaming.

It occurred to Walker that the kid needed morphine. It wouldn't save him-the odds were good that nothing would-but it would spare him some pain, and sometimes that was the best you could do. The kid had no tag-one of those little manila fuckers that reminded Walker of those DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW tags they hung off the sides of mattresses-so it was clear in his mind that it hadn't been done yet. You always got tagged. It was the name of the game.

Walker had cornered his corpsman and secured the necessary ampules and works. Then he had returned to the site where the kid still lay, screaming out his heart. You're gonna be okay, Walker remembered saying.

Then he stuck the needle in.

It couldn't have been more than two or three seconds later that the kid jerked to agonized attention: eyes bugging out, mouth yawning wide, body rigid and twitching. It was like someone had stuck a high-tension power cable up his ass. And he was stiff like an ironing board.

Like a tombstone.

And Walker realized that the kid had already been goosed, he already had as much as his system could bear, but some asshole had fucking neglected to tag him . . .

. . . and all Walker could do was watch him die . . .

It was like that again, right down to the screaming; only the kid in question was clearly marked this time. Not with a tag; he didn't need one. It was all written down in the dissipation of his features, the slow but steadily quickening erosion of his body, mind, and soul.

Momma
, he silently lamented.
All these years, all this trouble . . . why did it all have to come down to one goddamn blind dying genius-junkie?

Then the chopper landed, and the door flew open, and Locke and Keynes were there. There were no smiles or exchanges of greeting, though they hadn't seen each other in nearly nine months. Walker had radioed ahead. They knew what was going on.

In less than a minute the nurse and the gurney bearing Alex Royale were being shuttled back to the mansion. Walker and the rest filed out solemnly, hoofed it the rest of the way. Out across Richmond Terrace, the oily waters that spared them from the Jersey chemical vats gleamed like black glass.

The Scream was, at long last, home.

And, for better or worse, the waiting was almost over.

Little brother
. . .

Alex heard the voice, but faintly. A whisper through the screams. There was little in the room that he was aware of: the rustle and creak of the bed as they laid him down, the clink and tinkle of the IV, the prick of the needle, the soft murmur of voices and gently bleeping monitors. Even the warbling sounds he made were background noise to him now.

What senses he had left were directed inward, pulled into the dark place that his soul had become.

And the even deeper darkness on the other side.

Little brother, listen to me
. . .

It was Rod. Close now. Waves of warm breath brushing his ear.

You have to be strong, Bucky. You have to. We're right at the palace gates now, and there's nothing to stop us but ourselves
.

He wanted to cry out, to cry out warning. But he had no will, no control over his body, the cold and the dark were sucking him down . . .

If you give up now, it will all have been for nothing. Do you understand me?

Down to the place where the hell-thing waited . . .

Can you hear me, little brother?

I need you.

Waited with its cold dark constant smile . . .

Shit
.

And then the voice and the breath pulled away, and the sound of his brother's suddenly furious shouts blended in with the beeps and the clinks and the rest of the fog on the outside.

Leaving the inside free.

For the screams to resume.

Rod was royally fucking pissed. It went very well with his terror. The two emotions danced together divinely, a swirling performance at the core of his being. So much for equilibrium. So much for being able to think.

Oh, yes, he was here at the mansion. Oh, yes, he had money and power and freedom falling out of his asshole. Oh, yes, he was the bloody Crown Prince of Darkness he had always envisioned himself to be.

But things were going on that he had no knowledge of. That he had no control of. Behind his back.

And Alex was dying.
Really
dying, this time.

So where did that leave him?

I don't know
, he told himself.
But it feels like nowhere
. He credited himself with having that much perception.
If Alex goes, my bargaining power is out the window. They'll be on me in a second. They will fucking eat me alive
.

And I can't let that happen
.

I
won't
let that happen
.

Rod thundered down the upstairs corridor, away from the room where his brother's life was being held in tender abeyance. It was long and dark, and its pale white walls were sumptuously attired with great bleak antique portraits in massive oak antique frames. Ordinarily he would have loved to linger with the old dead farts; it had been so long, and his soul had been hungering for a deep quaff of the mansion's deliciously sinister atmosphere.