The Scream (49 page)

How much choice do you think you have?

"All the choice in the world, man. Anything I want." Rod laughed as he said it, the sound unconvincing. "I play my cards right, and the kingdom is mine. You promised me that.

"You promised me."

This was all true, so far as it went, but the creeping doubt remained intact. For one startling second, it occurred to him that he was an absolute and thoroughgoing chump; that Walker and Tara and Momma Herself were luring him onward with a carrot on a stick, only this one was fourteen karats, har, har, promise him riches and he'll follow us anywhere, even down to the mouth of Hell . . .

. . . and this was not a good thought, it did nothing for his confidence and control, and if there was one thing he knew it was that he dare not screw up, therefore this line of thought was anathema and he'd better straighten up. There were other quotes from the Walker litany that served him much better, and he brought them to mind.

She needs warm bodies
.

She needs us to pave the way and guard it
.

That was better, yes. That was much more helpful. Put that together with a farewell to Tara, and he could almost cheer up, see the end of the rainbow.

"Okay." He addressed the room. "Let's do it. Let's kick some ass." He grabbed his guitar off its stand, strapped it on, wiped his sweaty left palm against his pantsleg before bringing it up to hold the neck. It was time to go out there and meet his destiny.

If only he could make his hands stop shaking . . .

Heimlich hung up the payphone, wandering gradually back toward the jet-black van, He took his time, pausing to light an unfiltered Camel, watching the last thousand kids or so straggle in toward the gates and the cops and vendors cruise the lot like sharks when the fish leave town. It was still way too hot to make a move. Now that he knew they'd be waiting awhile, the important thing was to stave off boredom. That meant staying out of the van as long as possible.

Heimlich's eyes were dark and impenetrable. There was little that they missed. His hair was dark and cropped close to his skull. His skin was the color of bronzed, cracked leather.

He was a big man, and he moved big. Air got out of his way when it saw him coming. So did people, unless they were very drunk or very stupid. Few people were good enough to stay in his way for long.

Heimlich was a professional, a warrior for hire. He was working right now. A very strange job indeed: hired by a rock star to blow the tits off of some
other
rock stars and to rescue some bimbo in front of over fifteen thousand people.

The job was so strange, in fact, that he had almost considered turning it down. Instead, he'd simply doubled his price: two men, two thousand smackers apiece. Plus expenses.

When Hamer had made the first payment in cash-half the money right there on the spot, with no hesitation-Heimlich had called it a deal.

And the real craziness had begun . . .

They had run a recon on The Scream's Staten Island stronghold at eleven-thirty this morning. They had found it abandoned. That had been a bad sign. Whatever the twisted fucks were up to, it was clear that they had no intention of coming home again.

It didn't take long to figure out why.

The inside of the mansion was bad enough. The torture chamber. The recording studio. Heimlich didn't know shit about music, but it was clear from the reactions of Hempstead and Hamer that you didn't need blood gutters and drains in the floor of your average recording studio.

But the best part, without a doubt, was the garage.

It was roughly the size of a small airplane hangar. Parts and tools and garage-style detritus lined the walls. There were no vehicles parked inside.

But there were lots of bodies. Maybe a hundred. Mostly goats; but that still left thirty or more dead people.

All of them, ex-goats and humans alike, dangled naked by their hind legs from the rafters. Their throats had been slit, the blood drained and removed from the premises. There were children in there. Babies.

There were also a couple of women strung up that made Hamer's olive skin blanch. Upside down like that, with dried blood on their faces, they were hard to recognize. He'd had to wipe one of them down before he knew that, no, she was not the bimbo they sought after all.

But that didn't mitigate the extent of the slaughter.

Or the carelessness
. . .

"Sloppy," he muttered. It was the only word that fit. Heimlich hated slovenliness, especially in killers, especially in
butchers
who made such extravagant overtures to style. Rich fucking rock stars making big-budget mayhem with a Z Grade mentality, playing a man's game by Little League rules . . . killing them would accord him a depth of pleasure his line of work rarely permitted.

They thought they were good. That was the big thing. Going public like this, not even covering their tracks . . . it was clear that they thought they were pretty goddamn special. Either they had one motherfucking ace in the hole or one motherfucking case of diarrheic self-esteem. In which case they were cake.

And Heimlich could practically taste the frosting.

The van was parked ten feet from the exit of parking section S6, maybe two hundred yards from the lip of the backstage loading ramp. That was far enough away from The Scream's vehicles to avoid detection, close enough to get there quickly when the time came.

The van was ten feet away from him now. Heimlich could feel the tension radiating through the sealed steel doors. He dragged, exhaled, took a deep breath of air. Sloppy target or not, if this was going to work, they would have to wait a little longer. Pennycate, his trusty pard and currently their man on the inside, had made that exquisitely clear.

Jake wouldn't like it, but he'd better get used to it.

When you hired the best, you were best advised to listen.

There were two unsavory-looking types at the bottom of the loading ramp, pacing back and forth like bored guards in a prison camp movie. They both appeared unarmed, an illusion largely due to the combination of bold-print Hawaiian shirts and figure-flattering belt clips. Either one was actually packing enough firepower to make an intruder do the Big Shoe, if need be. And neither of them was above using it.

Their names were Dingo and Slick, and they were disposable. They both scored low on the placement exams of life. They asked very few questions. They did largely as they were told. They were told to keep out all creeps.

And it looked like two were on their way now.

Dingo scritched at the stubble on his long-chinned face. His ponytail swished as he turned toward his shorter, grungier companion. "Hey, Slick." He nudged. "You see what I see?"

Slick smiled and crossed his hands behind his back, palms grazing the button of his weapon. "I dunno. Whadda you see?"

"I see two creeps coming down the ramp."

"Me, too."

The creeps waddled closer. Dingo and Slick watched impassively. When they were about twenty feet off, Dingo squinted and said, "Oh, shit, man. Walker ain't gonna believe this."

"What?" Slick squinted harder; his night vision was for shit. "B'lieve what?"

"Oh, man, this is too much!" Dingo laughed. "The big guy? I seen him last week, on the tee-vee. On Dick Moy-neehan."

"No shit." Slick seemed genuinely impressed. "Is he famous?"

"He's an asshole."

"Oh." Slick was dumb as a pie tin. "So what do we do with him?"

"See what he wants, I guess."

"I guess."

Dingo laughed again. It lent a false sense of good fellowship to the approach of the famous asshole and his roly-poly pal.

The old guy hastened to explain his situation in nervous, earnest tones: sometimes real man-to-man like, sometimes calling on the spirit of brotherly love to open their hearts to his plight. He smiled a lot. He called on them to do the right thing.

Dingo and Slick smiled, too. He really
was
an asshole. And certainly a creep.

But in truth, this was too good to dismiss outright. Dingo knew for sure that Momma would appreciate the humor. "You just hang on there a second, sport. I'll have to ask permission." Then with a nudge in the ribs to Slick, Dingo turned and ran back to find Walker.

It only took a minute. He was right backstage with the band, who were about to go on. Walker looked annoyed for a second, then listened; and after a moment's thought, did a rare and wondrous thing.

He laughed.

"Oh, that's beautiful. They need passes. Here." Walker dug into his pockets, then threw back his head and yelled, "Hoo, Lawd!
Thank
ya, Jeezus!"

When he laughed again, Dingo joined right in.

It was good to have done the right thing.

There was a moment-a split second, really, hardly worth bringing up-in which Rod Royale felt the sudden, desperate urge to bolt, just hang it up and head full tilt for the exit ramp. It was especially strange in that it didn't quite connect with the moments before or after: it just hung there by itself, flashpot-bright and compelling, then blanked out and was gone.

What it left him with was aftershock, confusion. It was, after all, the dumbest flash he'd ever had or probably ever would. This was
it
, this was the
big
one, the moment they'd all been waiting for. The gates of the Kingdom were opening now. He was gonna run away from all that? Was he crazy?

And besides, there were all those guys with guns. . . .

Shut up
, he told himself. Walker was talking.
When Walker talks, people listen
. He knew that with his shades on nobody could tell if he was listening or not, but that wasn't quite the point.

Then the second flash of dread went off, and he realized that, yes, maybe that
was
the point, because everybody in the band was wearing their shades and he couldn't see their eyes. Alex always wore his, of course; besides, Rod had already checked. And with the guys in the rhythm section, Gene and Terry, it hadn't mattered since Phoenix, when they'd tried to jump ship and wound up, no-eyed, on Tara's team.

So maybe it was Tara that made him want to run, but he didn't think so. She was acting the same as ever: cool, silent, oozing dark wet serpentine power. She looked at him, as Walker talked, with the same superior smile he'd seen a million times.

Maybe it was the fact that they were all smiling like that. As if they weren't even listening. As if Walker's words were for him alone.

Because they already know
. . .

He glanced at the exit again.

And the third flare ignited, but there was no time to think about it, because Walker was in front of him now, holding him by the collar, with his lone eye visible and eloquent as hell, so eloquent in fact that the words from his lips were like foreign language subtitles as they spoke to Rod's ears.

"Don't even think about it, boy." The eye, the voice, in perfect accord. "All you have to do is get through the first movement. That's four simple stages.
Tick tick tick tick
. You pull that off, and everything will be gravy.

"And you will do it. Right?"

Rod nodded his head, and the band smiled winningly. As one. A fourth warning flare tried to spark in his brain, but the humidity was such that it never got off the ground.

Little brother
, he thought, as Alex tossed him a sparkling smile that was not his own and control flitted irrevocably away like tweetie-birds from a magician's top hat.

Then he turned to where the stage awaited.

And began the long walk up to his rightful place.

At the opening of the Way.

Kyle looked at his watch and felt a thin trickle of sweat roll down the back of his neck. They were scrambling in the throes of last-minute prep. It had been hyped as the most elaborate show ever taken on the road. That was total bullshit.

He knew exactly where this show was going. And it wasn't on the road.

Kyle rapped nervous little rhythms on the big metal drums stacked on the pallet before him and watched as the crew hustled like Olympic speed-freaks, running on too little sleep and too much adrenaline and the promise of the payoff at the end of the line.

It was risky, he thought, to be pushing them so hard.

But it couldn't be helped.

There were sixty-three men in the crew. Seventeen of them were actively involved in running the lights, the sound, and the standard special effects that The Scream toured with, which included the giant inflatable claws, which included the laser-cannons and the Cobra, which included the smoke guns and strobe lights and all the other bells-and-whistles they fed the kiddies to get them nice and lubed and make them think they were getting their twenty-bucks-a-pop worth of showbiz.

Another fourteen were required to work in tight-knit synchronization on the computer-controlled hydraulics that animated the humongous articulated stage prop they'd set up, plus the crane operators for her arms. Knock off four to guard the front of the stage, another four for the rear, and that left him two dozen warm bodies with which to take care of his end of things.

Of course, he could have as many
cold
bodies as he desired. Momma had made that very clear. But he couldn't trust them.

Not anymore.

They were too fucking weird. Unstable, and getting worse the closer things got to the end. Kyle didn't like playing nursemaid to a roomful of psychotic budget cuts anymore. There was too much at stake. They had to play things too close to the vest. When the shit hit the fan he had to get his men deployed and hold the fucking perimeter, until Momma was strong enough to hold it herself. They had the goods to do it-M-60's, M79 grenade launchers, RPG7s, a regular smorgasbord of death-but manpower was critical.

"I don't want any of those fuckers out on the concourse," he had said.

And Walker had said
no problem
.

His men dragged the great flaccid sections of fire hose into position and connected them; assembled, they formed an enormous loop that filled the center of the arena floor and completely encircled Hook's five columns. Before him sat a hand pump and the fifty-five-gallon containers that housed Hook's special sauce.