Psychlone (27 page)

“Before it happens, they try to warn. Name, rank, serial number. Friends will hear. Must hear. They guide it into the towns and cities they knew. They can't do otherwise. Those who die in the cities are sucked up, used, and when these targets are gone, they will provide others. The rage will force them.” His voice changed subtly. “Thirty-five years to cross the sea, blind, this way and that. No marks on the sea, only boats and tiny islands. The currents cause them pain, but they must cross. Thirty-five years. Then up through Mexico, the pilots recognize the border, and in to the first town. Shimpu."

“What?” Jacobs asked.

“Divine Wind,” Davies said. “It's Japanese."

Thesiger became rigid. His arm muscles knotted, and Tim winced at the pressure on his hand. “Jesus,” Trumbauer said, stepping back from the old man in the chair. Miss Unamuno opened her mouth in a silent wail.

“Look what they have done to me,” Thesiger moaned. “This body, my servant, is ash and vapor, leaving only the unvoiced scream. They do not even know me! My pain is nothing to them. My end is not important. My children are flying rags and dust. My spirit's torment is unimagined. As I am damned, so shall they be. The Shimpu shall be felt in their land, and they shall wither, and when all is done, I shall have them."

Tim jerked loose and backed away. Jacobs took the boy in his arms and held him. Thesiger stood up like something on wires, jerking this way and that. Jacobs suddenly realized how thin the man was, how frail. His white hair streamed as if a wind was radiating from his body. “Incomplete. Shattered. Even together, they aren't whole. The upper ranks are shorn, the lower splintered and cracked. Only the pain, not the dignity. No understanding is left. It is here with nothing but vengeance and no mind. The memory is in fragments, it remembers only the last moments. The buzzing of a mosquito, high overhead, a single aircraft. The light. Bones show like X rays and then flesh is gone and then bones are gone and shadows remain against the walls. And then the walls are gone. A man on a horse, pounded into a crack in the ground like a stake hit by a hammer. The blood fountains and glows in midair and is gone. Children play on a roof and a mile away their toys come to earth. In the castle, the walls are topped with broken glass. The glass catches the light of hell and rays it into the yard. The walls seem to have their own sunrise, on all sides, and the air glows purple above. The men in the yard are smashed by the fists of air. The walls come down. In the purple cloud, faces fly. All the guardians withdraw, all the angels and ancestors and kami leave. Those who die are on their own. They are sucked into the fireball and dismembered, flies with wings plucked, already dead and now killed again. In the middle, a new death is spawned. Days later, the two cities join. They whirl and examine. So many have died, but this cloud of souls is familiar, fragmented. Together they will seek."

Miss Unamuno was sobbing silently. Machen was still as stone except for one hand, which was shaking. Trumbauer leaned against a wall, nodding his head. “That's it,” he said. “That's it."

Then Thesiger slumped. Jacobs smelled burnt metal.

There Feel Tim?

The strength was gone. Tim could feel the sudden sweep of probing fingers, hands, eyes. They were all directly above. They knew he was in the house. He had to leave. Outside, soldiers were shouting.

While Jacobs and Machen went to help Thesiger, Tim stood beside the door. It was very dark outside, but if they knew he was in the house, then he had to go somewhere else. Maybe Thesiger had taught him something. Maybe he could have his own shield now.

A soldier came in through the door and Tim slipped around him, then outside. No one noticed.

“He's still alive,” Machen said, holding Thesiger's wrist. “Simons, get the medical team in here. Davies, water and a wet towel.” Jacobs looked down on the old man. He looked very fragile, like the body of an incorruptible saint, preserved in the earth for years.

Then Jacobs felt the pressure himself. It was like a prickly blanket, demanding some foul action. He tried to subdue it.

Tim stood on the porch, watching the soldiers across the grass, watching the snow fall. The big flakes clung to his skin and melted. His feet crunched the frozen grass. His nose tickled and smelled the cold. He looked up.

Through and around the clouds, faces moved. His father and mother were there, but he couldn't see them clearly.

He passed the harvester on the way to the barn. In the barn, the empty stalls and concrete floor were vague squares of light and dark. Sparkles moved in the dark. A circle of hands formed above the center aisle, glowing green. These were the fringes. There were no faces here. He could hide and perhaps not be noticed.

He tried out the shield—

Join

And hid in a stall, shivering.

The wind rose outside. In the house, the candles dimmed. Jacobs held a towel on Thesiger's forehead while the doctor checked blood pressure, pulse, and reflexes.

Simons suddenly lifted his head and asked, “Where's the boy?” He looked in the kitchen and called up the stairs. “Did anyone see him?” They all shook their heads. “Damn!” He ran across the front porch, calling for Tim.

Jacobs stood. “Arnold, can you feel anything?"

“I'm...” Trumbauer shook his head. “I'm shut. I don't dare open up now.” In the yard, a man screamed.

“Not even a crack?"

Trumbauer was shaking. Jacobs turned to the woman.

“And you?"

“It's here. Not completely. An arm, a fringe, a tentacle. I'm closed but I know that."

“Is Thesiger dying?"

“No,” Trumbauer said. “We would see a change."

“I'm going to help look for the boy,” Jacobs said.

Tim huddled closer into the corner. It wasn't working. The faces were in the air over the center aisle now, circles of faces, wheels without hubs.

“You already got my town,” he said aloud. “Go away!"

Unto the generations

Then Tim knew it was over for him. In his talks with Thesiger, there had always been left open the possibility that something would fail and he would be where he was now. The old man had never deluded him about it. Even in Salt Lake City, when he had wanted to return to Lorobu, he had considered meeting the faces and voices again, up close, and dying. He looked down and saw the blood glowing on his hands. The inner glow was red, but the outer halo was becoming green. He was going to be Carrying the Fire soon. He could feel the voices gathering around the barn.

He bolted from the stall and ran for the ladder on the far end. Maybe the others would get here and stop him, lock him up. If they didn't, it would happen all over again. The memories were coming back sharp now and anything was better. He grabbed the ladder with his hands and wondered they didn't leave stains on the rungs. Somewhere, he knew, his parents would exult for him, but in the open, where the others could see, they told him to

Join

He reached the top and crawled over the lip of the bare loft. Piles of burnt beef were laid along the floor—no, that couldn't be right. They weren't beef.

He shut his eyes and screamed. “I'm not a grownup! I don't know anything about this! Leave me alone, please, leave me be!"

Join

His parents were weeping. He could feel them. The others were so full now, so busy handling the captives, that some could weep and not be kept in line. But their strength was too much even still. Beyond the weeping, none could deviate.

Hands tried to grip him but he broke loose. In one corner of the stall, he heard derisive voices and saw Cynthia and Michael, naked, standing as though for a portrait, unmercifully illuminated. This angered him so much he howled. “Let them alone! Leave all of us alone!"

For a moment, something happened, a reprieve. The faces vanished. He almost fell over. The wind outside was still strong, but the concentration was not on him. The hands were gone but they would be back. He only had a few seconds.

In the house, a long, long time ago, they had gotten to him and he had picked up the knives like all the others. That could never happen again. It was a very grown-up decision to make. “I am, right now, grown up,” he told himself. “I have control and I'm not a little kid."

The loft was twenty feet above the concrete.

It was a very big responsibility. Maybe God would understand.

He leaned into the air and felt his feet rise free. In the barn door, Simons ran with arms held out, but he was too late.

Thesiger jerked up. Trumbauer and the doctor helped him sit with his back against the chair. Jacobs opened the front door and came inside, letting the wind howl through the living room.

“Have you got a pistol?” the old man asked Machen.

“No,” Machen said.

“Then a knife."

“No."

“Doctor—do you have poison?"

The doctor shook his head. “I can't administer anything—not like that. Why? You want us to—"

“The boy is out. All the guardians are gone, all the angels gone."

“Please settle back, sir. I have something here..."

“No sedative. I must not sleep. I promised to protect him."

“Tim's dead,” Jacobs said.

The doctor prepared his syringe. Thesiger looked at Machen. “You have all you need,” he said, “and God forgive us all.” He closed his eyes. On the floor next to him, the doctor's machines began to beep.

The convoy of trucks had been stalled for the night five miles outside Dayton. A steady stream of automobiles blocked both inbound and outbound lanes, ignoring direction signs. Wrecks littered the sides of the roads. National Guardsmen were being airlifted into the center of town from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, but they weren't connected with Silent Night. A special helicopter was coming, Colonel Silvera said.

A small truckstop cafe and service station squatted empty less than a hundred yards from where the convoy had pulled off the road. Fowler examined it closely, and found what he was looking for—a pay phone. He climbed down from the van, not looking at Prohaska or Burnford, and approached Silvera. The Colonel was talking to a cluster of drivers. Fowler waited until he was noticed, then spoke up.

“I have to make another call or my fiancée is going to be worried,” he said. “I told her I'd check in frequently."

Silvera sighed. “Jackson, are the field telephones still out?"

“Yessir. All communications are tied up."

“There's a pay phone booth at that diner,” Fowler suggested.

“Please be circumspect, Mr. Fowler. Jackson, go with him and see he doesn't get hurt."

“I'll need change, lots of it,” Fowler said. “I only have a dollar and a half. It's to California."

Silvera jingled his pockets and found another dollar in change. Jackson came up with fifty cents. “It'll have to be brief,” Silvera said. Fowler nodded.

The Major followed him across the grassy knoll to the diner and stood outside the phone booth as Fowler dialed and pushed in quarters. The phone rang five times before it was answered.

“McKinley residence, Thomas DeCleese speaking."

“Tom, this is Larry Fowler. Is Dot there?"

“No, Larry. I'm caretaking. She's gone off to Ohio. Said she was going to find you. Where are you?"

“Where was she going?"

“Dayton. She's been half-crazy the past few days, regretting things right and left. You two must have had some spat."

“Tom, how did she know about Dayton?"

“Last night, in the news about the panic. She tried to call somebody ... Sheila, I think—"

“Yeah, Sheila Burnford."

“And she said she thought you and her husband would be working together. That made Dorothy suspicious. I don't follow her chain of reasoning, but she says you have to be in Dayton."

“Did she say where in Dayton?"

“She sure did. She has a friend who lives near the art museum there—here's the note. Louise Muhler, M-U-H-L-E-R. And a phone number.” Fowler jotted the number down.

“God bless female intuition,” he said.

“You two must have had quite a spat."

“I don't know what we had, Tom. This is all crazy."

“What's going on with this country, Larry? I thought you two were good for each other. Now everyone's flying all over the place, and people are panicking. She said something about Lorobu. This have anything to do with Lorobu?"

“She's a very smart woman, Tom. I can't say any more—have to call this number.” He glanced at the Major, who stood outside the booth with his coat collar raised against the cold. “Thanks for everything."

“You treat her right, you hear?” Tom said.

“I hear. Good-bye, Tom.” He put the receiver on the hook and felt a rush of exultation. Something had cracked through her crazy reaction. All the same, he would downplay what was happening. He hoped and prayed there was a line clear to Dayton. “Major, I have to make another call. I've got enough change, I think."

Jackson nodded. “We have time. Just be mindful of security, Mr. Fowler. That's why we're in this mess."

Fowler looked at his watch. The event was due at nine in the morning and it was now seven-thirty. He had to get her out of Dayton, or at least out of the area where the concentration was expected. He dialed the new number. A woman answered, quiet and tense.

“I have to speak to Dorothy McKinley."

“Who are you?"

“Larry Fowler."

“She's been waiting—"

Dorothy grabbed the phone and he heard her sudden rush of nervous laughter. “My God, Larry, I've been going out of my mind! I didn't know how I was going to find you once I got here, and now everybody's leaving. The airports were jammed when my plane came in last night. Where are you? When can you be here?"

“I can't talk, Dot."

“The government has you?"

“Yes."

Her voice tightened. “You're helping them on something, aren't you? Something to do with the cabin and Lorobu."

“Yes."

“Larry, I can't take that now any more than I could."

“I can't either, honey."

“They're holding you against your will?"

“Something like that."

“Goddamn them. I had to make up my mind and I couldn't think about just giving up on you, you know, just going away because you were weird."