2012 (9 page)

Nobody made a sound now, nobody dared. But every single one of them hoped in his heart that this would be enough for it, this would be an end of it, after Reg it would go.

Reg began to physically distort, his face growing long, his eye sockets stretching into bizarre vertical ovals, his lips opening, mouth gaping-and then all over the room others did the same, their faces twisting, colors oozing like gorgeous pus out of their bodies. They pissed and shat and howled and writhed, sinking down, tearing at their throats.

There was a deafening wham as Milly Fisher blew her boy Tim’s head apart.

“Mother,” Winnie shouted into Lindy’s face, “what is this, what is this?”

Crackling became screeching became sucking, deep, the sucking of a chest wound, of a woman of the night, and the congregation became a blur of light and struggling, writhing people, some of them clawing at themselves and howling, others with guns in their shaking hands, trying to kill the ones who were being destroyed-as if it mattered, as if it would help.

It remained like that, people crawling, leaping over one another and running for the light-choked doors, wading in it, pushing against the warmth of its ghastly fleshiness.

Then came darkness, then silence, broken by a single wracking sob.

The chandeliers flickered, and with their return came the sense of a storm having passed.

The minister still stood in his pulpit. From a middle pew somebody asked, “Reg? Reg are you okay?”

The Bible dropped from Reg’s hand, hitting the floor beside the pulpit with a crack like a shot. In the pews, some people shook others, calling into blank faces, shaking them until the spittle flew.

“Angie, honey, Angie, you’re okay! She’s okay, it didn’t do her-“

Martin saw Angie Bright, Carl Bright’s wife of thirty years, looking at him with the blank innocence of a newborn.

Others began to growl, to laugh, to back away toward the walls. As the minister did this, he laughed softly. His face was still his own, but it was empty, the eyes glassy, staring.

Bobby came to the center aisle, then trotted up to the pulpit. “Okay, we have the law on our side, we need to do this, people.”

“My baby, my baby is fine. Lucy, you’re fine. She’s fine!” Becky Lindner shook her twelve-year-old. “Lucy! Lucy, don’t you playact!”

The girl, who had been plastic like a catatonic, lunged at her mother, biting as a dog bites when it is cornered and cannot get away. Becky cried out, falling back into the Baker family, and young Timothy Baker caught her in his arms.

Then Carl Bright screamed as he realized that his teenage son Robert, also, was among the wanderers. Martin’s heart was torn by all he was seeing, but the families like this one were the hardest. The Brights lived back in the hills in a comfortable house. In fact, it was only a few miles from their own place. He was a technical writer, she ran an online crafts business.

Without so much as a murmured warning, Mrs. Haggerty leaped on Lindy’s back like a lioness leaping on a wildebeest, and she lurched forward into Martin, and the three of them went down with Mrs. Haggerty ripping Lindy’s hair out in handfuls while her husband, crying out, dragged her off and took her into the aisle.

“Kids, don’t look,” Martin shouted as young Haggerty shot his mother dead.

Lindy and Winnie and Trevor turned and moved to the back of the church. Martin was confused by this. “Lindy? Hey.”

Another shot from the back of the sanctuary, and one of the Desmond boys stood over his father’s body, looking down out of tear-flooded young eyes. “Momma, I did it, I did it,” he cried, and his mother took him to her, and buried him in her embrace.

Phil Knippa, whose wife was gathering at the back of the church with the others who had been ruined, asked Martin, “What happens?”

Martin ran to his family. “Hey, this-“

His Lindy had reached the door. She stood with the others. “Lindy? Oh, no!”

Bobby came up to him. “Hey, come on, guy.”

“But they didn’t-nothing happened to them!” He laughed. “She’s in shock. Hey, Lindy!” He went down to his kids. “See, they’re fine, Bobby, they’re just following their mother. Winnie! Trevor! Stop this! Stop this!”

Phil said, “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”

The new wanderers crowded the entrance, pressing against the doors, slapping them and Lindy and Trevor and Winnie were doing it, too, and then Bobby put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. Martin turned, and when he saw the gun that his dear old friend was offering him, the anguish that ripped his heart caused him to throw his head back and cry out, and in that quiet part of him that is in us all and sees and knows all, a voice said, “This has happened. This is what you have, now.”

Lovers, wives, husbands, children-all circulated among them, trying to communicate with them, and the church was filled with their tears.

Bobby got the door open for them, and they went out into the street…and joined many others, a shocking number, all walking away into the night. Martin thought that it was more than half the town. Three quarters.

They shuffled silently off toward the low water crossing and the back roads that led up into the Smokey Hills, hardly hills at all, but wilder than they looked from a distance.

A few people ran after them, two husbands, a wife, some others who had exchanged death promises. “If it happens to me, don’t let me be like that.” Pacts made in blood and love.

Martin ran, too, touching his love, calling to her, calling to his babies, “Kids, come back here, this is Dad, this is an order!” And to his wife, “Oh, Lindy, wake up, love, wake up, love.”

But they did not wake up, none of them woke up. An arm came around Martin’s shoulder, the arm of somebody he knew vaguely but who now seemed like a savior, and he leaned against this man and wept, and in the street the little clusters of those left behind wept, and the wanderers went on down the street, disappearing into the dark.

Martin ran after them again, and then he stopped, and he went to his knees and he howled her name, “LINDY!” He cried in rage and in anguish as she went off without even a backward glance, taking his babies and his love and all that meant anything to him with her into the night.

The shattered town sank away into the horrible small hours, with weeping in the churches, and the bodies of the destroyed dead lined up with what little dignity could be managed on the lawns. Most of the ruined, though, were not killed, because people did not have it in their hearts to rip the life out of the familiar and the beloved, no matter their state. So they went away, absorbed by the night. When daylight came, people would seek them out, taking water and food to the empty shells of their loved ones, trying to feed them, to talk to them. And they would smile, the wanderers, or sometimes lash out like scared animals, but the followers would stay with them, begging, pleading, praying, trying anything to bring them back. It is an extraordinary anguish to say good-bye to your dead while they are still alive, and many, many people could not do it.

Martin went to his feet. He would not be a follower. He vowed that. He would be a fighter. Somehow, he was going to rescue his love and his children, he was going to go out there into that darkness, and whatever it took, whatever was needed, if he give his blood or his life or his own soul, it mattered not a bit, he would rescue his family.

Toward dawn there was a fall of dew, and morning came pearled with it, on the leaves of autumn and the yellowing late grasses, on the neat houses, the empty streets, and on the wanderers, too, far out in the rustling fields, shining on their pale skin, pearl upon pearl.

FOUR

DECEMBER 2 

THE POISONER

WILEY LEAPED UP FROM THE computer, threw open the bottom drawer of the desk, grabbed the booze he kept in there, and just plain poured it down. “Christ, you dummies, can’t you see it’s a damn trick?”

But they had not seen, not even Martin and Lindy. They’d gone to the church, too, they’d made themselves sitting damn ducks and they’d-oh, God, the poor Winters family, and poor Harrow. All those good, decent people.

Wanderers. It was worse than dying. But why was this being done to them and where were they going? He thought that Martin was right about one thing-they were certainly on their way to designated locations. Collection points, though-he was just guessing about that. Maybe they were going to gas chambers or something, God forbid that such a fate would befall Lindy and Winnie. He was crazy about them, that sweet, bright little girl, her mother so full of love and brilliance.

“This is not real,” he said, “I refuse to let this be real.”

Maybe he wasn’t recording events in the other human universe, but creating them. Maybe he was an instrument of the reptilians, and maybe that was why they had came into his life five years ago. They had done something to him. Prepared him. But how?.

He knew that supple movement between parallel universes was involved with belief and the lack thereof. By continuing to deny that UFOs were something real, our own version of NASA had saved us-at least, so far. But not him. Maybe not him.

Thing was, the closer we got to December 21, the easier it became to get through the gateways. And on that day, all hell was going to break loose in the other human universe. That had to be what this was all about. Preparing for the invasion…and maybe here, too, no matter what our version of NASA denied or did not deny.

He clicked through the pages he had written. He knew both more and less than was in the laptop. For example, he knew what was happening in the Far East in Martin’s world, which was a catastrophe so vast that it was, quite simply, unimaginable. He knew, but he couldn’t access any detail. Couldn’t see much. Could feel it though, the terror being experienced by billions.

What would happen if everybody became a wanderer?

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Damn Brooke and her rules. A cigar would go very, very well right now.

Maybe Martin was right and it was a harvest of slaves. Might not six billion slaves be worth something in the parallel earth of the reptilians? But if the souls were being taken out, then what was happening to them? Martin thought they were just disintegrating, but Wiley wasn’t so sure of that. He had no idea what to think. He’d never really believed in the soul or God or any of that stuff. Like Martin, he’d been to Stanford, and had come away, also, with a strong rationalism and fundamental disrespect for unprovable assertions.

Those monstrous creatures wanted the bodies, he was convinced of it.

Unless…how many parallel universes might there be? If the Many Worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett was correct, then this oppression could be coming from any one of literally uncountable numbers of parallel universes.

He thought not, though. He thought that the reptilian forms that the people in the church had glimpsed were the final telltale. He was right about the creatures and he was right about their world. He could feel their need, could see their glaring, relentless eyes the same way he had on that night five years ago when they’d tried to-what had they tried to do? Had they really somehow captured him?

No, something was wrong with that picture. He’d written a whole book about it, but he was increasingly aware of a missing element. Because what had happened to him on that night had been hard, but-there was just something missing. Tip of the tongue. Couldn’t quite remember.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that there were three earths involved. A triad.

Buckminster Fuller had called the triangle the building block of the universe because of its structural integrity. There was a reason in conscious life, also, that notions of trinity made structural sense. A triad had a positive side, a negative side, and a balancing side. If the two-moon earth was the positive side, then the negative side was the reptilians with their evil hungers.

Oh, Christ, he was not the balancing factor. I mean, well, let’s face it, a middling writer with a burr up his ass about aliens is not the right guy to bring things into balance.

In other words, not up to the job of-what? So far, he wasn’t really doing a whole lot beyond writing a history that his world would take to be fiction. He wasn’t helping anybody.

He closed his eyes. If there was a god anywhere out there, may he now deliver his servant Wylie Dale from the curse of this writing.

But even as he tried to push away the other human world, his mind slipped back toward its suffering. There, this house was now cold and dark, not nicely heated and cozy with a lovely family inside.

As dawn broke here, the phoebes started their sweet calling, the very essence of peace in the country. Over there, though, the people left alive were crying together, their sorrow unspeakable. Wylie was crying, too-in silence, though. Brooke and the kids mustn’t hear.

Then Brooke was there. She had come quietly and he had not heard her, but she was there, standing in the door of his office, and he thought she was an angel come down, and he turned to her in his creaky old chair, and slid out of it and to his knees, and embraced her waist, and buried his face in the sweet and sour scent of her.

Her hands came around his head, and he felt cradled. She said, “You need to come to bed, love.”

“What time is it?”

“The phoebes are starting.”

He’d been in here for close to twenty-four hours. “Oh, man.”

“Wiley?”

He looked up at her in her nightgown, so pale in the thin light that she might have been a ghost or a memory. “We’re travelers on the long water,” he muttered, “you and me, sweets, you and me.” Her hand came into his and it was warm, and he kissed it and it smelled like sweat and remembrance.

He went to his feet and took her into his arms, and she settled there. He closed his eyes and sailed in the comfort of her closeness.

“You were crying,” she said.

“Mm. My story.”

“It’s really getting to you, Wiley.”

He nodded against her shoulder.