19
Charley Wilson raced his stolen pickup truck around the last bend on South Main, heading for the border, when he suddenly saw people at the end of the road. The rear wheels of the truck fishtailed in the thin layer of snow, as he brought the truck to a halt.
Son of a bitch. Literally. That’s my kid.
Radar—Joshua—and his girlfriend sat on a hot rod motorcycle. A truck with two guys riding standing in the bed drove past, heading back to town. The guy behind the wheel, Chuck Preston, nodded at him. Charley nodded back, and the truck moved onward. Joshua advanced the motorcycle up to the open window, and stopped.
“Dad? What are you doing out here?”
“I was looking for you,” Charley lied. “I heard what happened. You okay?”
The boy nodded. Lisa avoided his gaze. Charley knew she was terrified of him. Besides being shouty when he was drunk, he’d never really given her a reason, but whatever.
Then Joshua leaned toward him. Looking deeper into the cab of the truck. “Dad, you’re bleeding all over. Are you okay? What happened?”
Charley waved it off. “Was some of those flying things. Nothing to worry about. I got the bastards. They don’t like bullets none.” He wasn’t going to mention anything about how he couldn’t stop the bleeding from the claw and bite marks, or the fact that he still felt drunk, despite never having taken a drink. It was hard enough for him to speak without slurring. It took all his concentration.
“Are you taking her back into town?” he asked.
Joshua nodded. “It’s the doctor’s bike. I’m taking it back into town for Griffin.”
“Where is he?”
Radar nodded toward the distant hell. “He went out to get Avalon.” The boy explained, full of guilty looks, as if he had done something wrong.
“He’s a brave man,” Charley said, peering out into the smoke and flame. Then he turned back to his son. “You are too, Joshua. You done good. Get Lisa back to the Sheriff’s station now, and stay inside. Stay safe. I’ll wait here for Mr. Butler to come back.”
The boy looked at him as if he’d suddenly delivered the Gettysburg Address after a lifetime of being a lush, which he supposed wasn’t far from the truth. “Go on, now. Love you.”
Charley turned his head back toward the distant city, so Joshua wouldn’t see the tears welling in his eyes. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear in the tone of his son’s voice that the boy had started the water works, too.
“Love you, too, Dad.”
Then the slick bike’s engine roared, and the kids raced away, leaving Charley Wilson alone with his thoughts, and the realization that his son had finally called him ‘Dad’ again. It had been a long time. Well, there had been that one time, that first night at the station when he’d drunkenly killed that insect thing that was attacking Joshua and Lisa and Avalon. But then the boy had said it out of plain old shock. This time it was said with a tinge of love.
It was all the tonic he needed to summon the last of his courage and bravery. He gunned the battered truck’s engine and slapped the transmission into drive.
The truck bumped off the last of the asphalt and onto the rocky slope of the new world. The shocks on the truck were shot, and Charley felt the rattle in his bones. Clutching the steering wheel, he repeated a single mantra over and over again. It was the same message that had gotten him through the tunnel, beating the shit out of the flying terrors with his bare hands after his .38 had run out of bullets.
Gonna make you proud.
20
“What on Earth do you think you’re doing?” Frost shouted.
The room was a state-of-the-art, high-tech control center, with electronic monitors covering most of the walls. There were tall, potted plants in the corners, helping to oxygenate the room. Computer desks and terminals lined the far wall. Near the center of the room was a digital conference table—the glass surface of the table doubled as a computer monitor. Seated in an electric wheelchair at the table, and raising a champagne flute in toast to Julie Barnes, who stood nearby with her own glass of bubbly, was Renford Ellison.
The bottle of Champagne sat on the electronic surface of the table, its contents having spilled over the edge of the bottle’s narrow neck, the fluid running jauntily off the edge of the table to the floor. The man paused in his toast, a frown creasing his face at the interruption.
“We are toasting the start of a business arrangement, Sheriff Frost,” Ellison said. He looked far older than his years, with a head withered of hair and covered in dark blotchy liver spots. The flesh of the man’s face hung loose in folds, as if it was about to slide off into his lap. But his eyes were a piercing light green, showing a penetrating intelligence.
Frost raced around the table toward the two of them and pulled her pistol.
Julie Barnes reacted in a flash, grasping Frost’s wrist and twisting it, while tugging her arm upward and spinning Frost around and down onto her knees.
“Let go of her!” Dodge had leveled his rifle at Barnes, and Frost was delighted to see Turkette had taken up a bead on Ellison. Barnes released her and took a fluid step back. Frost scrabbled to her feet and whirled back around on Barnes and Ellison, gun still in hand.
“You will have to forgive Ms. Barnes, Sheriff. She is, after all, performing her new position, as my bodyguard.” Ellison spoke nonchalantly, as if nothing much had happened. Then he looked across the room to the others. “Ms. Turkette, you will understand, of course, that your employment is terminated. No hard feelings, but Ms. Barnes can provide a better service, and at a better rate.”
“No, I understand,” Turkette said. Then she fired a round into Barnes’s leg. Barnes flew backward across the room, crashing into a bank of monitors, shattering glass and causing a shower of sparks. “You went with the lowest bidder. But you get what you pay for.”
Barnes was on the floor, howling in pain from the bullet wound, which passed through the meat of her thigh. She was bleeding, but not profusely, so all major veins and arteries had been missed.
Ellison chuckled. “Really, Ms. Turkette. How very gauche.”
“Gauche?” Frost shouted. She raised her pistol at Ellison’s face “You’re lucky the next one doesn’t go through your head. People are dying out there, and you’re in here drinking champagne?” She swept her arm out, smashing the bottle off the table. It toppled to the floor and shattered.
Dodge moved around to the sprawled form of Julie Barnes. The woman was cursing under her breath, her hand over the wound. “Is there a first aid kit here somewhere?”
“In the back room, Pastor Dodge,” Ellison called from his chair, ignoring Frost and the gun in her hand.
Frost leaned on the glass tabletop, glowering at Ellison. “What is wrong with you?”
The man turned his green eyes up at her, and there was a fire in them. “I am dying. What is your excuse?”
Frost was flabbergasted. “My…my excuse?”
“Yes, Sheriff. Your excuse. You, like almost everyone else, were supposed to be in Ashland for the fireworks. But, as I understand it, you were put on shit detail because you slugged a kid. Apparently you and Ms. Turkette share some of the same impulse control issues.”
“You’re telling me it’s our fault we’re stuck with you on this joyride through time and space?”
“Not exactly through time, nor even space. But dimensions? Yes. Oh, I knew a few people would end up stuck here in town, but there were far more of you than I ever anticipated. Must be the lowest attendance of Refugers to the fireworks in the last five years. But yes, basically, I was hoping most of you would be away.”
“And that would give you the right to take the entire town with you on your crazy quest for Heaven?” Frost lowered the gun, but she was still fuming mad.
That got Ellison’s attention, but he quickly crushed the startled look out of his eyes. “Who figured that out? Mr. Herman?”
“You have your secrets,” Frost said. “I have mine.”
Dodge returned from the back room with the first aid kit. Barnes tore it from his hand and went to work on her own leg.
“It won’t work,” Dodge said, looking back at Ellison. “There’s only one way to reach Heaven, and this isn’t it.”
“Oh yes?” Ellison raised an arch eyebrow. “Do tell us, Pastor.” In a sing-song voice, the old man crooned lyrics from
Jesus Loves Me
, “For the Bible tells me so.” After a brief laugh, he continued. “I have sat in on a few of your services. I noted you used the New King James Version of the Bible. Are you prepared, as a God-fearing Baptist, to fully put your faith in the works of a drunk Frenchman, who as a former Roman Catholic, decided to print his Greek version of the Bible in Paris on a shoddy press? Because
that
version was used to translate to the original King James Version, among others. Are you prepared to believe that one hundred and thirty Christian pastors and scholars gathered in an auditorium in the 1970s, were able to agree
on absolutely everything
, and spend seven years recrafting that text into what you use on Sundays? Really? Can you find me a hundred Christians today who can come to an agreement on a single sentence?”
Dodge looked at the man with his mouth open, unable to form a reply.
Ellison reversed his wheelchair back and arced it in a semi-circle so he was facing the pastor. “You read the NKJV. I have read all the versions of the Bible in English. I have read it in Aramaic and Hebrew and Greek, too. Have you? Your argument is invalid. You know as well as I do, even from your flawed translation of the Good Book, there are many references to Heaven as a material place.”
Finally Dodge found his voice. “You’re forgetting that Grace is always conferred by God upon man—not the other way around. You can’t just barge your way into Heaven, even if you could find its correct dimension. And I’m led to believe you’re playing cosmic Russian Roulette just to find it!”
Ellison smiled slowly. “Ephesians 2:8 says you might be wrong about that.”
Dodge paraphrased. “By Grace you’ve been saved through faith—not of yourself, but by God.”
Ellison nodded.
“2:9, the very next line, reminds you it’s impossible through your own works, and not to be a smug prick.”
Ellison laughed. “Hah! Well phrased. I bet that drunk Estienne wished he had translated it that way. But you misunderstand me, Pastor. I
do
have faith. I am humble about my scientific achievement, and the works are not mine at all. I am following the very instructions of God.”
21
Griffin raced the ATV along the wide lanes of the labyrinth, keeping the quad close to the left wall, and making turns to the right when he saw a dead end ahead. If there was the chance to go left, he took it. Radar’s unusual advice was the secret to how to navigate a maze—follow one of the walls, and not the paths between the walls. Eventually, you’ll find the exit. Griffin was grateful and would remember the advice when it was time to try to find his way out of here.
The lanes stretched ten feet wide between the soaring high walls of skulls on either side. Occasionally the walls would be interrupted by a door shaped opening, but these were never flush with the ground, and they were always covered by a sheet of hanging skin, each one punctuated in the middle by a dark tattoo of a skull, sitting on a wooden table, a candle burning behind it. In the skull’s eye sockets were smaller human skulls. Inside the eye sockets of those skulls were yet more.
It was the same tattoo Griffin had seen on his savage twin. The same one he had drawn and had done on his right delts. It had been a year before Jess had died, when he had had the dream of this place. He had been wandering—on foot, not an ATV—through the labyrinth and eventually faced the massive creature with the skull helmet and the smaller skulls for eyes. He had seen this world, and the only explanation he could think of was that somehow, while his mind wandered in sleep, he had caught a glimpse through the eyes of some closely parallel Griffin already lost in the maze, and now hanging as a sheet, holding together a wall, or fueling a fire.
The confrontation with the skull-eyed creature had not gone well in the dream. Griffin had died. At the time he had chalked it up to a fear of Jess eventually losing her battle with the disease that ate her up. His subconscious had anthropomorphized the cancer, and had substituted him for Jess. He had designed the tattoo as a way of refusing that outcome. He had substituted the weird dragon skull of the creature with a normal human skull, and the human-sized, ocular-implant skulls with smaller skulls in the tattoo, no larger than marbles. The entire piece sat on a table near a candle, indicating his and Jess’s victory over the disease.
But now here he was, going through the maze again, Jess had already succumbed to the disease, and an entire town was poised to plummet into a cosmic abyss if he failed. Skull-Eyes had taken Jess, and now had taken his daughter. He’d found love again—he believed—with Helena, and this creature, this whole damn world, threatened that, too.
In the dream he had lost the fight.
This time it would be different. He had an ATV, a jerry can of extra gas on the back, a pistol, a knife, a weird javelin in a backpack and a twisted version of himself as an ally. Maybe. It wasn’t much, especially with darkness coming in less than two hours. But maybe it would be enough to avoid an outcome millions of other Griffins had failed to avoid.
The ATV bounced over the uneven path. Griffin refused to look too closely at it. He knew if he did, he would see that the rounded cobbles between the gritty dirt under the gently falling snow were yet more of the skulls.
His
skulls.
Rounding a corner to the right, the next lane had something new. Spaced evenly every fifty feet were tall gray street lamps like Griffin had seen in Boston. The old kind he associated with the seventies and early eighties—long curving arms ending in flatish sodium lamps, shaped loosely like a cobra’s head.
The lamps were not lit. Hanging from the first four poles were dead black cats, tied on to the poles by white string, which was knotted in several places. The dead felines dangled from a rear leg or from their tails. The fur looked matted and old.
The fifth pole had something else hanging from it. A human body, hung from a noose around its neck. The corpse was on fire, and swaying slightly back and forth, with large snowflakes landing on the licking flames.
The smell was overwhelming, and smoke from the blaze was pushed down by the air current above the labyrinth. Griffin held his breath and raced the quad under the corpse as quickly as he could. He approached one of the massive towers of flesh. Like a sweeping tidal wave had crashed into the side of the structure, long strands of stretched flesh arced up and over walls, and into the next alley. The one ahead had such a gentle slope he could probably ride it to the top of the wall.
He contemplated the path. It would give him a better view of the whole labyrinth, and possibly point him in the right direction. But he decided against it. He’d save that as an escape option, once he had Avalon. Besides, he was pretty sure the burning bodies were for him, lighting his way, like sign posts, deeper into the abyss.
That decision made, he sped up, taking turns as fast as he dared, and driving ever deeper into the heart of the maze. On the straightaways, he brought the quad close to its top speed. The jolting of the low PSI tires on the cobbles under the snow nearly rattled the rib cage out of him.
After another thirty two burning bodies, he exited the endless lanes and entered a huge circular clearing, a couple hundred yards across. Several other alleys led to this central space, but each was currently blocked by twenty-foot-high metal gates with crisscrossing bars, each as thick as Griffin’s arm.
A booming crash came from behind, and Griffin skidded the ATV to a stop, the rear wheels spinning him around.
Another gate had dropped into place, sealing Griffin in. He hadn’t seen where it had been concealed above the walls, as he’d come in. His eyes had been captivated by the clearing. He knew he was being led, but he had continued to believe—perhaps foolishly—that he was the hunter, not the hunted.
Behind him came another crashing noise, this one softer than the falling gate. Griffin turned to see that Skull-Eyes had leapt from the top of the wall and into the arena, landing in a crouch on his reptilian, clawed feet, his long tapering tail extended backward for balance. In his massive snake-armored hand, he held a long black lance, which he let fall to the ground behind him, as he stood to his full height. He was easily twice as tall as Griffin, his white dragon skull stretching out in front of him and casting his neck in shadow. As he stood and stretched, the skull’s long teeth slipped out of the giant’s chest with a slurp, oozing blood. Then he relaxed, and the massive canines slipped back into place, stemming the blood flow and holding the skull in place. Just like in Griffin’s dreams and paintings, the creature had human skulls placed where his pupils should have been.
Griffin stepped off the ATV, and reached back, into the backpack, his eyes never wavering from the towering foe in front of him. His hand found the collapsible javelin and he pulled it out. In seconds, the javelin expanded to its full five foot length, wickedly sharp metallic tips snapping into place at either end.
With a degree of practiced calm that would unnerve most foes, Griffin strode toward the monster.