New Title 1 (18 page)

“So we’re back to aliens,” Jack muttered.

“Whatever they are, they’re certainly alien. And if they followed Amon back, we’re all in danger.”

Jack instinctively looked up, the way Amon had, then scowled and dragged his gaze back to Todd.

“Does Amon know how they’re linked to the snakes?”

Todd didn’t bother asking the quaking devil at his side. “No.”

“I think our next step is to find Penemue,” Andy declared, gazing around the empty, torn-up field. “If he’s a Watcher, he’ll have some answers.”

“Yes.” Todd stood. His fine wool sweater hung in ravels and rags, and the shirt beneath it was ripped in several places. Despite that, he didn’t seem to notice the December cold. “The most likely place for Penemue to be is....” He reached out, then dropped his hand as Amon hissed. Jack saw an uncharacteristic uncertainty on the big man’s face. “It may be safer to walk.”

“Where?”

“To the chapel.” Todd looked at them, his face impassive. “The most likely place for Penemue to be is in the chapel. And I think there may be lives involved.”

“Aw, shit,” Jack said, reaching out a hand and hauling Andy to his feet. “Let’s go.”

XXV

“We’ve been trying to call the hospital, but all we get is a recording that all ambulances have been sent out,” the administrator said, one hand resting on his coat sleeve.

Gregory Penemue nodded absently, studying the students lying on the floor of the chapel foyer. More were huddled in the chapel proper, praying or hugging each other.

“Everyone here was in the library?” he asked, cutting through the briefing. The administrator shook her head.

“No—no, most have come in from other parts of campus. They saw the headlights we shined on the rubble, so we’ve pulled up a few more cars and turned on the lights to make the beacon clearer. I think it’s a good idea to get as many students in one spot as possible.”

“Yes.” The students around him were so pale, so colorless, against the rich tapestry of divinity that formed the unseen backdrop to their lives. Penemue grieved for them. If only they’d open their eyes and see what they were missing, all the brilliant colors: the purifying whites and seductive blacks, the passionate reds and spiritual blues, the celestial golds and fiery coppers. But so very few ever paused in their pursuit of social acceptance and material success to appreciate the greater things in life.

It was a waste. A true waste.

However, it would be an even greater waste to lose their souls to the eternal void.

Penemue had hoped that stilling Duncan Graeme and removing the old records of the Gudrun scandal would keep history’s secrets safe. He’d hoped that, despite the bones’ appearance, the goetic seals would hold fast and the skeletons would be written off as a historical mystery. But the seals had been broken by the forensics team, and the dragons of the abyss had awakened, and now he would have to take more drastic measures to close the breach and save these souls from the emptiness.

That was his job. To watch and defend.

“Your name is Sarah Cristol, isn’t it?” he asked suddenly, turning. The woman nodded, brightening. Her look of gratitude at his remembering her name was yet another note in the perpetual grief Penemue felt for the human race. Didn’t they realize that each of their names were engraved on the hands and heart of God?

“Come here, Sarah.” He held out a hand. She took it, looking trustfully at him. “Don’t be afraid.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, drawing out her breath. She collapsed. He caught her with his free hand and lowered her to the ground, then tilted his head back and breathed out, a long, slow exhalation that sent her soul to the security of its final judgment.

“What—what happened?” a student asked, staring. “Did she faint?”

“She was working really hard,” another volunteered, as if to defend the fallen woman. “It’s not her fault.”

“There’s nothing to fear,” Penemue said, his voice calm. “We’ll let her rest. I’m going to preach a sermon. Will you help me bring everybody into the chapel?”

“Well, I’m not really Lutheran, you know,” the second student said, balking. “I’m kind of an atheist.”

Penemue sighed. So sad.

“Your support would still be reassuring to your peers in this troubling time.”

“Well...I guess.” Embarrassed, the student stood. “I mean, I can help move people, as long as you don’t expect me to, like, pray or anything.”

“Thank you.” Penemue looked around the room, battered by a sense of loss.

The curse of the Watchers was that they saw too much. The Celestial War would be much easier to wage if its collateral damage were as invisible to him as it was to the nephilim and b'nei elohim.

XXVI

Getting the gasoline out of the tanks was harder in real life than it looked in the movies. They ended up siphoning it through a hose Peter chopped up with a pair of gardening shears, and instead of proper gasoline containers, they filled a bunch of empty water bottles dug out of the recycling bins scattered around campus. The only advantage, as Jarret pointed out, was that a lot of the bottles had squirt nozzles.

“It’ll be easier to hit the snakes with these,” he said, wiping another bottle clean and dropping it into a backpack.

“We’re going to kill ourselves,” Peter grumbled.

“Well, if you have any better ideas, I’m waiting,” Ally snapped. She was getting annoyed that nothing was working out the way it was supposed to. The earthquakes hadn’t stopped—they still felt them intermittently, and sometimes they heard crashing, like another building collapsing. About ten minutes earlier the earth had really rocked, right after a bunch of engines had started up all at once. Ally knew it had been the distraction for the runners, and she hoped they’d gotten through the perimeter all right. But after that, everything had fallen silent, and she was terrified that the snakes had killed more people.

“That’s it,” Jarret said, pulling the hose out of a Honda’s gas tank. “We’ve got three backpacks’ full now. How much do we need?”

“That’s all we can carry,” Ally said. She rubbed her feet and gathered her thoughts. “Um, so now we have to find out where they’re hiding?”

“Jeez.” Peter leaned his head back against the Honda’s side panel. “You know, it’s fine for you. You’re a girl, and girls always live in the horror movies. It’s the guys that get slaughtered.”

“Girls don’t always live.”

“Name one horror movie where the girls die and the guys live.”

“Uh,” she hesitated. “Zombie movies.
Everybody
dies in zombie movies. And bad girls die all the time.”

“You’re not bad.”

“Thanks.” She gave him a quick smile. “Look, we’ll be okay. We’re smarter than any of those people in the movies.”

“And we have faith,” Jarret added, arranging the bottles in his backpack. He looked up. “I like the idea of taking the fight to the monsters. We’ve been called to be warriors in Christ. We have to face the Devil to defeat it.”

“Oh, Lord, now it’s a holy war.”

“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Jarret pointed out. “It’s a sin.”

“Ally—”

“I think he’s right.” She remembered her first conviction that the snakes were a sign of the end times. “It can’t hurt to be safe, can it?”

Peter laughed humorlessly and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.

“Okay. Whatever. So we got our holy gasoline and our holy lighters. What next?”

“Where are the deepest holes and basements on campus?” she asked.

For a moment, all three of them were silent. Basements weren’t common in Southern California.

“There’s a storage space under the cafeteria,” Jarret said after a moment. “It’s not really a basement, but it’s a room built into the side of that hill.”

“And I think there’s a crawlspace under the art trailer,” Ally added.

“They’ve been digging holes in north campus, although I don’t think they’ve poured any concrete yet,” Peter said.

“Well, the social sciences building is almost complete,” Ally said, “and the hole they dug for its foundation is pretty deep.”

“Isn’t there a basement in the science building, too?” Jarret asked.

“Okay, so where do we start?” Peter ticked off the list. “Caf, art trailer, north campus, social sciences, and science.”

“There probably isn’t much under the art trailer. If it’s even still standing,” Jarret said. The building was a temporary unit that had been kept in use twenty-five years longer than it should have, much to the art students’ chagrin.

“Well, from this parking lot, we could make a big circle.” Ally said. “Nordberg Road to north campus, the sidewalks to the caf, and then around to the art trailer, social sciences, and science. They’re all clustered together, so they’ll be easy to search.”

“If the snakes sense vibrations, we shouldn’t take the truck,” Peter said. “I don’t really want to walk around campus in the cold, but my SUV’s not exactly quiet.”

“Too bad none of Facilities’ electric carts are around,” Jarret said.

“Bikes?” Ally suggested. “There’s a rack by the dorms.”

“Yeah, that might work.” Peter nodded. “If they aren’t locked up.”

“Aw, c’mon.” Ally stood. “This is Vista Hills, the nation’s safest city. Nobody locks their bikes.”

“Nation’s safest city, my ass.” Peter scowled as he stood. “My mom is
so
gonna sue Cal Hills if I get killed.”

XXVII

“It is a sad fact of human life,” Penemue said, standing at the oak podium and looking out at the boys and girls in the chapel, “that our thoughts often turn to God only in times of trouble.”

About thirty students were listening, filling the front part of the chapel. Many of them were holding hands or had their arms wrapped around each other in that regrettable monkey-need for contact. Such an odd quirk of evolution, that of all the creatures that might have developed sentience, it had been the soft-skinned, vulnerable primates who had come to understand God.

Had matters been left to him, Penemue would have chosen to grant that revelation to the cetaceans. He still had hope for them, if humanity managed to kill itself off before it finished poisoning the oceans.

“And God is there, to be sure,” he continued. “The Divine is always there, waiting for you. But at such a late date, will you be ready for God? God is the perfect mother. You can ignore your mother, forget to talk to her or write to her, even argue with her or hate her. But when you’re in trouble, you turn to her, and the perfect mother is always there, her love steady and incorruptible despite all your shortcomings. But what about
your
love? After years of scorning her counsel, will you, even in your time of need, be able to humble yourself enough to take her advice? Or will your old habits reassert themselves? Even though you might be comforted by her love, will your pride keep you from doing what she says?”

The students were growing restless. They had come hoping for comfort, and he was pressing them on their religious observance. Penemue let a little of his illusion slip. He wanted their attention. He
needed
their attention.

“When you were a child, your mother made you do things that you didn’t want to do, but they were for your own good. So also does God ask you to do things you don’t want to do, for your own good.