Psychlone (28 page)

“I don't want you to go away."

The Major glanced at him apprehensively. Fowler held up his hand and shook his head. “Dot, I can't talk."

“Can you get away?"

“I can try."

“Escape?"

“I suppose that's what it will take."

“Christ, I feel like a fucking spy. Larry, are you in any trouble or danger?"

“No."

“Am ... are we?"

“I don't know."

“I'm just a poor little rich girl. I can't take this. Let me think. If you're with the government, they probably flew you in to a military base."

Jackson stuck his head into the booth, putting his hand on the mouth-piece. “Come on, Mr. Fowler. That's enough."

“Just a few seconds,” Fowler said. “This is very important. We had a fight. I have to settle things, settle her mind, or she'll cause all sorts of trouble. For you, for Silent Night. She knows congressmen and stuff."

Jackson shrugged and backed off, but left the booth door open all the way.

“They flew you in to Wright-Patterson.” Dorothy said. “Louise tells me that's the Air Force Base here. Are you there?"

“No.” He lowered his voice. “Four."

“What?"

“Four."

Dorothy muffled the phone and talked with Louise. “Louise says you must be on Highway Four. Is she right?"

“Yes."

“Can you get to the intersection of Valley Street and Four?"

He tried to remember the streets they had passed. “Yes,” he said. “I can."

“Then I'll be there to pick you up. Is that all right? In a blue Rabbit—a VW."

“Yes."

“Louise wants to know if it's safe where we are."

“I don't know. I don't think so."

“I've got to go. I'll meet you there. Louise will be with me. She knows some back roads that shouldn't be too crowded. In an hour?"

“Fine. I love you."

“Oh, Larry ... I'm glad you're where I thought you'd be. Thank God for everything ... almost everything."

He hung up and stepped out of the booth. “She's still mad at me,” he told Jackson, “but I don't think she'll cause any trouble. I have to use the restroom. I'll be back at the van in a few minutes."

Jackson looked at him sharply.

“Jesus Christ, Major, I'm not going to do anything stupid. Where the hell would I go around here? I know next to nothing about Dayton."

The Major nodded. He had been given no specifics about the civilians they were escorting; it was reasonable to assume they were reliable, or else they wouldn't be on the project in the first place. He turned and walked back to the convoy.

Behind the diner, out of view of the highway and the trucks, was a thick patch of trees and brush. The trees were skeletal, but the brush was still fairly dense. He could run up the low hill and, with some luck, not be noticed for a few minutes. He did have to urinate, but it would have to wait.

Behind the diner, by the men's room door, he wondered what the hell he was doing. He had never been so foolish and irresponsible in his life. Then again, he had never been held against his will before. He had always disliked government security. In his youth, he had had leanings toward libertarianism. Now, spurred by Dorothy, it was all welling up and he had to leave.

He made a dash for the brush. From behind a tree, he looked at the convoy. No one was pursuing—he hadn't been spotted. The intersection was about half a mile east.

As he walked, he wondered what penalties he'd be subject to. So far as he knew, martial law hadn't been declared in Dayton. As long as he kept details about Silent Night to himself—and he didn't know that much in the first place—he couldn't see any serious legal problems. If he kept quiet, he fulfilled the provisions of the paper he had signed. The ethical question was something else again. If the government really did know what was happening, and how to solve the problem, wasn't he obligated, as a citizen, to help them any way he could?

There was the crux. He could think of no possible use for his expertise. He knew next to nothing about psychic phenomena, and his experience at the cabin had been limited. Clearly, the psychlone was not an elemental. He couldn't shake the suspicion that his usefulness on the project was nil, that he was being held only for security reasons.

* * * *

The intersection of Highway 4 and Valley Street was as much a mess as any other stretch of the road, but Valley Street itself was reasonably clear.

He suddenly felt very, very lost. If something went wrong, he was in deep trouble. His position was untenable.

“Stop it,” he told himself. He sat on the cold ground to wait. He was partly hidden by a concrete wall, but there was no way to avoid being seen by serious searchers. He hoped they'd be too busy with other matters to give chase.

The ribbon of cars seemed to stretch on forever. Overhead, a helicopter with Air Force markings whickered noisily toward the convoy.

“Best of luck,” he said.

Air pressure changed across a square mile of the city and windows blew outward with sounds like rifle fire. The forces rolled across the house tops, caving in shingles and beams.

The cloud spread out, a pearly umbrella which gave the sun a faint blue halo. The cloud descended, and shadows marched down the streets, melting the asphalt behind them.

“It's in Dayton now,” Machen said, listening to the phone report. Jacobs nodded, too numb to respond with words. They had been awake all night. “Apparently it's in the evacuated area, just as we predicted. But its influence is spreading beyond."

Trumbauer and Miss Unamuno sat on the couch, holding each other lightly. “More power, more will,” Trumbauer said.

Jacobs picked up his steno pad and tried to record some of last night's impressions. The psychics had had a rough time of it. Trumbauer and Miss Unamuno had become feverish, then incoherent—even though both stoutly maintained they were “closed tight as clams."

Thesiger's body was in an Army truck, alongside Tim's. Jacobs wished them luck. His heart seemed to flood when he thought of Thesiger's last moments. Even if he was given a chance, he doubted if he could write about what had happened.

Helicopters were coming for them. They would be transferred to Siloam Springs for this evening's event. The equipment, Machen said, was already in place.

Jacobs looked out the window into the yard. The trucks were packed and ready to leave. The barn was clear in the white light of the overcast sky. The wind was cold and the snow was staying on the ground.

“They're starting fires,” Machen said.

Fowler smelled the smoke, but he had seen it several minutes earlier. It was thick and oily, lying close to the ground, climbing over the buildings and flowing onto the highways. In minutes, the sun glowed orange through it, then deepened into red. He had never seen anything like it, even in the middle of a brush fire. The odor was faintly nauseating. It was like a pork roast, but subtly, horribly different.

The smoke was purple, A pall rose over the city, white and red. Then he could see the flames. They towered much higher than ordinary flames should.

The psychlone was changing its pattern. The central pillar of smoke was moving back and forth like something alive. It seemed to be moulding itself to a particular shape, yet the winds were steadily westward.

It looked as if a bomb had been dropped on the city. He stood and brushed his pants off. If the smell was what he thought it was, thousands of people were burning to death in the city. But that hardly seemed likely. By now, most of the downtown area would be clear. Silvera had said everyone in the area of concentration, except for the experimental subjects, would be evacuated by ten last night.

So it was most likely an illusion. The psychlone was creating a psychological atmosphere of terror and destruction, just as the elemental had at the cabin.

Join

He shook his head. The voice was dull but insistent. He didn't know what it meant. Without thinking, he started walking away from the highway toward Valley Street. He'd meet Dorothy before she could get to 4.

At the first crash, he turned around. One by one, the cars were jamming into each other and angry motorists were climbing out. Overhead, the helicopter—now carrying Burnford, Prohaska and the others—hesitated, hovered, then flew on. He almost regretted leaving them—but if something was happening even this far out, how could the areas in Dayton be considered safe?

The smoke was thick and cloying. He watched its rolling progress along the freeway. The level was rising and now the sky was almost black. A dull red sun peered through weakly and a pall of purple ash fell like snow in Hell.

Feel Join

The crashes were supplemented by screams. For a moment he thought they were animals, then he realized it was people screaming. He clenched his fists and ran stiff-armed. Valley Street was less crowded, but clusters of people still wandered away from their cars, stopping occasionally to stare up, mouths agape.

Desolation

It was more an image than a word; an image, and a command. He remembered the elemental's attempts to influence him, to influence Jordan and Henry. That must not happen again.

He followed Valley Street under the darkness. Car headlamps shone faintly through the haze. He began to wander from car to car, peering through the windows, staying away as people leveled pistols and knives at him. Their faces were fearful, malevolent. They didn't seem to be killing each other, just milling around or staying in their stopped cars, some groups fighting and screaming, but none trying to kill—yet. On the highway things might be different, he thought. Avoid the highway. More people concentrated there, more flash powder to ignite.

In the murk ahead there was a resounding whang and the sound of tearing metal and shattering glass. Cars bounded off the road, narrowly missing him. One rolled over and caught on fire, its rear exploding and throwing hot shrapnel. A piece nicked his arm. He was tossed on his butt by the force of the blast. There was nothing he could do.

Nothing he wanted to do.

Let them burn

Most of the cars were off the road now. People were shambling down the center of the street, four and five abreast, clutching their coats and skirts about them, leaden-eyed, faces smudged. They looked like they were in line for Charon's boat ride. He smiled at that. Such comparisons proved he was sane. They warded off his urge to go down among them and...

Fowler shook his head. “Look for Dorothy. She'll get us away from here. Look for Dorothy."

It had been over an hour. The smell was growing more intense, maddeningly sharp and cloying. It was a smell of burnt metal and citrus fruit—oranges or tangerines. It made him want to retch. It wasn't unlike the smell of the elemental, but it wasn't the same, either.

For a brief moment—it had to be brief, but it seemed to last for hours—he thought he saw people walking on the air overhead. Their clothes and flesh hung from them. Their bones stuck out. Some were moving without legs, others crawling with barely a body. He shut his eyes and the vision disappeared in a whirl of—green hands? Yes. Green. Glowing. Dissipating wheels.

An eternity later—though his watch said it was only ten o'clock—he came across a tangled wreckage of cars. He frantically searched through them, but none of the bodies within were Dorothy. Then he looked up and saw another car. It had run off the road, perhaps trying to avoid the wreckage. It was wrapped around a tree, steam still escaping in spurts from the radiator, one half-deflated tire hanging from an upthrust axle.

The mangled car was blue. It was all he could do to approach the solitary pile.

There were two people in the car. One—Dorothy's friend, he guessed—had gone through the windshield and then fallen back. Dorothy lay half out of one door.

He bent down to look at her face closely. Her scalp was cut and blood soaked through the clothes around her stomach. Fowler reached for her wrist.

Her eyes opened slowly, then widened. “Larry,” she said. Blood dribbled out of her mouth.

“Shh,” Fowler said softly. “You're hurt. Don't move."

“We have to get out of here,” Dorothy said.

“I don't know how I'm going to move you, honey."

“I don't feel anything. Move me now."

“You don't understand—"

“Larry.” Her tone was steady. “I can feel them up there."

“If I move you now, I'll hurt you more."

“I can't die here,” she said. He tried to wipe away the blood around her mouth with one hand, but there was too much. She began to cry. “Larry, Larry, they'll get me. I can't die here."

“You're not dying, honey."

“I'd be dead already, but I can't die here."

“Shh,” he said, helpless. She tried to say something but coughed.

She moaned after the fit was over. “Get me away,” she said again, almost inaudibly. She stopped breathing, but her body didn't relax.

He held her for what seemed an endless time, then let her fall back. He didn't remember picking her up to hug her, but he had, and there was blood all over his clothing. He didn't know what to do. Nothing mattered now. Everything was over. He had forsaken any hope of ... anything.

He walked a few yards away from the wreck and sat. His eyes stung, but not with tears. He was too numb.

Feel

“I know, damn you,” he said, choking on the smoke.

Know

Whatever the psychlone was, it was having its revenge now. Great waves of simple, derisive messages flowed from the city, exulting. Animal exultation, lion over its kill, wasp over the paralyzed spider. Merciless. Dead. Beyond hatred.

There was blood on his hand. He wiped it on the grass. There was nothing left to do but try to sleep until it was all over. He felt very tired. Of course, the dreams wouldn't be pleasant....

Dorothy opened her eyes. Fowler took one last look at her, saw her eyes were open, and stood. He would have to close them. That was the thing to do.

Her hand moved. The arm came down like a mechanical limb, searching. It found a piece of window glass and slowly, easily tore it from its frame. Her face was expressionless, eyes focused intently on Fowler. The other body jerked against the restraining seat belt.