Carrion Comfort (69 page)

A bullet tugged at the hem of my robe.

I fell to all fours and clawed my way along the slope forty feet under the bridge. The helicopter dipped lower and followed.

It was not Nina in the he li cop ter. Then who? I crawled behind a rotting log and sobbed. Two bullets struck the wood. I tried to curl into myself. I had a terrible headache. My robe and nightgown were soiled.

The helicopter hovered almost level with me, thirty or forty feet out, not quite under the bridge. It pivoted on its own axis, playing with me, a hungry predator, almost ready to end the game.

I raised my head, focused all of my attention on the machine and its passengers. Through the agony of my headache I extended my will farther and harder and with more finality than ever before.

Nothing.

There were two men in the machine. The pilot was a Neutral . . . a hole in the fabric of thought. The other man was a User . . . not Willi . . . but as willful and intent on blood as Willi ever was. Without knowing him, seeing him, confronting him, I could never override his Ability sufficiently to Use him.

But
he
could kill
me
.

I tried to crawl forward, toward a stone archway support twenty feet away. The bullet slammed into the earth ten inches from my hand.

I tried to back up the narrow trail toward a thick bush. The bullet almost grazed the sole of my foot.

I pressed my cheeks against the ground and my back against the rotted log and closed my eyes. A bullet tore through pulped wood inches from my spine. Another thudded into the dirt between my legs.

Anne had been struck by four bullets. One had passed through her stomach and just missed her spine. One had struck her third rib, ricocheted out her chest wall, and shattered her left arm. The third one had passed through her right lung and lodged in her right shoulder blade. The final bullet had struck her left cheek, removed her tongue and most of her teeth, and exited through her right jawbone.

To Use her I had to experience all of the pain she was feeling as she died. Any buffer at all would have been enough to allow her to slip away from me, from everything. I could not allow her to die yet. I had a final use for her.

The ignition was on. The automatic transmission was set in park. To shift into drive, Anne had to lower her face through the broken steering wheel and wedge the metal lever with what remained of her front teeth. She had set the parking brake out of decades of habit. We used her knee to pull back and trip the brake release.

Her vision grayed and faded to nothing. I forced it back through the strength of my will. Bone fragments from her jaw clouded her right eye. It did not matter. She levered her shattered arms onto the metal horn ring, and hooked her clenched right hand onto the broken plastic of the wheel.

I opened my own eyes. A red dot danced on the dead grass near me, found my arm, traveled to my face. The rotted log had been shot away to nothing.

I tried to blink away the red beam.

The sounds of the DeSoto accelerating and crashing through the railing high above was audible even over the rotor noise. I looked up in time to see the twin headlights stabbing out and then down. There was a glimpse of dark transmission and oil pan as the 1953 DeSoto fell almost vertically.

The pilot was very, very good. He must have glimpsed something above him in his peripheral vision and reacted almost instantaneously. The helicopter’s engine screamed and the fuselage pitched forward steeply even as it turned toward the open river. Only the tip of one rotor contacted the falling car.

It was enough.

The red beam was gone from my eye. There was an almost human scream of tortured metal. The helicopter seemed to transfer all of its rotational energy from the rotors to the fuselage as the sleek cabin whipped around counterclockwise once, three, five times, before slamming into the stone arch of the railroad bridge.

There was no fire. No explosion. The shattered mass of steel, Plexiglas, and aluminum fell a silent sixty feet to splash in the water not ten feet from where the DeSoto had disappeared not three seconds earlier.

The current was very strong. For several bizarre seconds the he li copter’s searchlight remained on, showing the dead machine sliding deeper underwater and farther downstream than one could imagine in so short a time. Then the light went out and the dark waters closed over everything like a muddy shroud.

It was a minute before I sat up, half an hour before I tried to stand. There was no sound except the soft lapping of the river and the distant, unchanging susurration of the unseen expressway.

After awhile I brushed the twigs and dust off my nightgown, tightened the belt of my robe, and began walking slowly up the trail.

T
he children had been allowed to leave the house to play for an hour before breakfast. The morning was cold but very clear, the rising sun a distinct orange sphere struggling to separate itself from the innumerable bare branches of the forest. The three children laughed, played, and tumbled on the long slope that led to the woods and to the river beyond that. Tara, the oldest, had turned eight just three weeks earlier. Allison was six. Justin, the redhead, would be five in April.

Their laughs and shouts echoed on the forested hillside. All three looked up as an elderly lady emerged from the trees and walked slowly toward them.

“Why are you still in your bathrobe?” asked Allison.

The woman stopped five feet from them and smiled. Her voice sounded strange. “Oh, it was such a sunny morning, I didn’t feel like getting dressed before I took a walk.”

The children nodded their understanding. They often wanted to play outside in their pajamas.

“Why don’t you have any teeth?” asked Justin. “Hush,” said Tara quickly. Justin looked down and fidgeted. “Where do you live?” asked the lady. “We live in the castle,” said Allison. She pointed up the hill toward a tall old building made of gray stone. It sat alone amid hundreds of acres of parkland. A narrow ribbon of asphalt wound along the ridge into the forest.

“My daddy is assistant grounds superintendent,” intoned Tara. “Really?” said the lady. “Are your parents there now?”

“Daddy’s still asleep,” said Allison. “He and Mommy were up late at the New Year’s Eve party last night. Mommy’s awake, but she has a headache and she’s resting before breakfast.”

“We’re going to have french toast,” said Justin. “And watch the Rose Parade,” added Tara.

The lady smiled and looked up at the house. Her gums were pale pink. “You want to see me do a tumblesalt?” asked Justin, tugging at her hand. “A tumblesalt?” said the lady. “Why yes, I do.”

Justin unzipped his jacket, squatted on his knees, and rolled awkwardly forward, landing on his back with a thud of sneakers slapping the ground. “See?”

“Bravo!” cried the lady and applauded. She looked back at the house.

“I’m Tara,” said Tara. “This is Allison. Justin’s just a baby.”

“Am not!” said Justin. “Yes you are,” Tara said primly. “You are the youngest so you are the baby of the family. Mom says so.”

Justin frowned fiercely and went over to take the elderly woman’s hand. “You’re a nice lady,” he said.

She idly stroked his head with her free hand. “Do you have a car?” asked the lady.

“Sure,” said Allison. “We have the Bronco and the Blue Oval.”

“Blue Oval?”

“She means the blue Volvo,” said Tara, shaking her head. “Justin calls it that and now Mommy and Daddy do too. They think it’s
cute
.” She made a face.

“Is anyone else in the house this morning?” asked the lady. “Uh-uh,” said Justin. “Aunt Carol was coming, but she went to somewhere else instead. Daddy says it’s just as well ’cause Aunt Carol’s a pain in the ass.”

“
Hush
!” snapped Tara and aimed a slap at Justin’s arm. The boy hid behind the lady.

“I bet you get lonely in the castle,” said the lady. “Are you ever afraid of robbers or bad people?”

“Naw,” said Allison. She threw a rock toward the distant line of trees. “Daddy says the park is the safest, best place in the city for us kids.”

Justin peeked around the bathrobe, looking up at the lady’s face. “Hey,” he said, “what’s wrong with your eye?”

“I have a bit of a headache, dear,” said the lady and brushed at her forehead with shaking fingers.

“Just like Mommy,” said Tara. “Did you go out to a New Year’s Eve party last night too?”

The lady showed her gums and looked up at the house. “Assistant grounds superintendent sounds very important,” she said.

“It is,” agreed Tara. The other two had lost interest in the conversation and were playing tag.

“Does your father have to keep something to protect the park from bad people?” asked the lady. “Something like a pistol?”

“Oh yeah, he has one of those,” Tara said brightly. “But we aren’t allowed to play with it. He keeps it on the shelf in his closet. He has more bullets in the blue and yellow box in his desk.”

The lady smiled and nodded. “Do you want to hear me sing?” asked Allison, pausing in her hectic game of tag with Justin.

“Of course, dear.”

The children sat cross-legged on the grass. The lady remained standing. Behind them, the orange sun fought free of morning haze and bare branches and floated into a cold, azure sky.

Allison sat upright, folded her hands, and sang the Beatles’ “Hey, Jude,” canella, three verses, each note and syllable as clear and sharp as the frost crystals on grass that caught the rich morning light. When she finished, she smiled and the children sat in silence.

Tears filled the lady’s eyes. “I believe I would like to meet your father and mother now,” she said softly.

Allison took the lady’s left hand, Justin took her right, and Tara led the way. Just as they reached the flagstone walk to the kitchen door, the lady put her hand to her temple and turned away.

“Aren’t you coming in?” asked Tara. “Perhaps later,” said the lady in a queer voice. “I suddenly have a terrible headache. Perhaps tomorrow.”

The children watched as the lady took several hesitant steps away from the house, let out a small cry, and fell into the rose bed. They ran to her and Justin tugged at her shoulder. The old woman’s face was gray and distorted in a terrible grimace. Her left eye was completely closed, the other showed only white. The lady’s mouth gaped open, showing blood-red gums and a white tongue curled back like a mole burrowing toward her throat. Saliva hung from her chin in a long, beaded string.

“Is she dead?” gasped Justin.

Tara had her knuckles in her mouth. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’ll go and get Daddy.” She turned and ran for the house. Allison hesitated a second and then turned and followed her older sister.

Justin knelt in the rose bed and pulled the unconscious lady’s head onto his knees. He lifted her hand. It was cold as ice.

When the others emerged from the house, they found Justin kneeling there, patting her hand gently and saying over and over, “Don’t die, nice lady, OK? Please don’t die, nice lady. OK?”

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

—GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

T
he World Bible Outreach Center, five miles south of Dothan, Alabama, consisted of twenty-three glaringly white buildings spread over 160 acres. The center of the complex was the huge granite and glass Palace of Worship, a carpeted and curtained amphitheater that could seat six thousand of the faithful in air-conditioned comfort. Along the half mile curve of the Boulevard of Faith, each gold brick represented a five-thousand-dollar pledge, each silver brick a one-thousand-dollar pledge, and each white brick a five-hundred-dollar pledge. Coming in from the air, perhaps in one of the Center’s three Lear executive jets, visitors often looked down at the Boulevard of Faith and thought of a huge white grin emphasized by several gold teeth and a row of silver fillings. Each year the grin grew wider and more golden.

Across the Boulevard of Faith from the Palace of Worship, the long, low Bible Outreach Communications Center might have been mistaken for a large computer factory or research facility except for the presence of six huge GTE satellite broadcast dishes on the roof. The Center claimed that its twenty-four-hour television broadcasting, relayed through one or more of three communications satellites to cable companies, television stations, and church-owned earth stations, reached more than ninety countries and a hundred million viewers. The Communications Center also contained a computerized printing plant, the press for records, recording studio, and four mainframe computers hooked into the Worldwide Evangelist Information Network.

Just where the white, gold, and silver grin ended, where the Boulevard of Faith passed out of the high security area and became County Road 251, were the Jimmy Wayne Sutter Bible College and the Sutter School of Christian Business. Eight hundred students attended the two nonaccredited institutions, 650 of them living on campus in rigidly segregated dormitories such as Roy Rogers West, Dale Evans East, and Adam Smith South.

Other buildings, concrete-columned, granite-facade, looking like a cross between modern Baptist churches and mausoleums with windows, provided office space for the legions of workers carrying out duties of administration, security, transportation, communications, and finances. The World Bible Outreach Center kept its specific income and expenses secret, but it was public knowledge that the Center complex, completed in 1978, had cost more than forty-five million dollars and it was rumored that current donations brought in around a million and a half dollars a week.

In anticipation of rapid financial growth in the 1980s, the World Bible Outreach Center was preparing to diversify into the Dothan Christian Shopping Mall, a chain of Christian Rest motels, and the 165-million-dollar Bible World amusement park under construction in Georgia.

The World Bible Outreach Center was a nonprofit religious organization. Faith Enterprises was the taxable corporate entity created to handle future commercial expansion and to coordinate franchising. The Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter was the president of the Outreach Center and currently the chairman and sole member of the board of directors for Faith Enterprises.

The Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter put on his gold-rimmed bifocals and smiled into camera three. “I’m just a country preacher,” he said, “all this highfalutin financial and legal stuff just passes me by . . .”

“Jimmy,” said his second banana, an overweight man with horn-rimmed glasses and jowls that quivered when he got excited as he was now, “the whole thing . . . the IRS investigation, the FCC persecution . . . is just so
transparently
the work of the Enemy . . .”

“. . . but I know
persecution
when I see it,” continued Sutter, his voice rising, smiling ever so slightly as he noticed that the camera had stayed on him. He saw the lens extend as three moved in for an E.C.U. The director up in the booth, Tim McIntosh, knew Sutter well after eight years and more than ten thousand shows. “And I know the stench of
the Devil
when I smell it. And this
stinks
of the Devil’s work. The Devil would like nothing
better
than to block the Word of God . . . the Devil would like nothing
better
than to use Big Gov’ment to keep the Word of
Jesus
from reaching those who cry out for His help, for His forgiveness, and for His salvation . . .”

“And this . . . this
persecution
is so obviously the work of . . .” began the second banana.

“But Jesus does not abandon His People in time of need!” shouted Jimmy Wayne Sutter. He was standing and moving now, whipping the traveling mike cord behind him as if he were tweaking Satan’s tail. “Jesus is on the
home team
. . . Jesus is calling our plays and
confounding
the Enemy and the Enemy’s players . . .”

“Amen!” cried the overweight ex-TV actress in the interview chair. Jesus had cured her of breast cancer during a live television crusade broadcast from Houston a year earlier.

“Praise Jesus!” said the mustached man on the couch. In the past sixteen years he had written nine books about the imminent end of the world.

“
Jesus
takes no more notice of these . . . Big Gov’ment bureaucrats . . .” Sutter almost spit the phrase, “than a noble lion notices the bite of an itty bitty flea!”

“Yes, Jesus!” sighed the male singing star who had not had a hit record since 1957. The three guests appeared to use the same brand hair spray and to shop in the same section of Sears for double-knit bargains.

Sutter stopped, tugged on the microphone cord, and swiveled to stare at the audience. The set was huge by television standards— larger than most Broadway stages— three levels, carpeted in red and blue, picked up here and there by arrays of fresh, white flowers. The upper level, used primarily for song numbers, resembled a carpeted terrace backed by three cathedral-style windows through which an eternal sunset— or sunrise— glowed. The middle level held a crackling fireplace— crackling even on days where the temperature in Dothan was 100 degrees in the shade— and was centered around a conversation/interview area with imitation-antique, gold-filigreed couch and chairs, as well as a Louis XIV writing table behind which the Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter usually sat in an ornamented, high-backed chair only slightly more imposing than the throne of a Bogie pope.

Now the Reverend Sutter hopped down to the lowest set level, a series of carpeted ramps and semicircular extensions of the main set that allowed the director to use angles from the recessed camera positions to show Sutter in the same shot as the six hundred members of the audience. This studio was used for the daily “Bible Breakfast Hour Show” as well as the longer “Bible Outreach Program with Jimmy Wayne Sutter” now being taped. Shows requiring the larger cast or bigger audience were taped in the Palace of Worship or on location.

“I’m only a modest, backwoods preacher,” Sutter said in a sudden shift to a conversational tone, “but with
God’s
help and
your
help, we’ll put these trials and tribulations behind us. With
God’s
help and
your
help, we will pass through these times of persecution so that God’s Word will come through LOUDER and STRONGER and CLEARER than ever before.”

Sutter mopped his sweaty brow with a silk handkerchief. “But if we are to stay on the air, dear friends . . . if we are to continue bringing
you
the Lord’s message through
His
gospels . . . we need
your
help. We need your prayers, we need your defiant letters to those Big Gov’ment bureaucrats who hound us, and we need your love offerings . . . we need what ever you can give in Christ’s name to help us keep the Word of God coming to
you
. We
know
that
you
will not let us down. And while you are calling in those pledges— addressing those love-offering envelopes that Kris and Kay and brother Lyle have sent to you this month— let’s hear Gail and the Gospel Guitars along with our own Bible Outreach Singers reminding you that— ‘You Don’t Need To Understand, You Just Need To Hold His Hand.’ ”

The floor director gave Sutter a four-fingered countdown and cued him with a flick of his baton when it was time to come back from the pledge break. The Reverend was seated at his writing table; the chair next to it was empty. The couch was beginning to look crowded.

Sutter, looking relaxed and somewhat buoyant, smiled into the lens of camera two. “Friends, speaking of the power of God’s love, speaking of the power of eternal salvation, speaking of the gift of being born again in Jesus’ name . . . it gives me very great plea sure to introduce our next guest. For years our next guest was lost in that west coast web of sin we have all heard about . . . for years this good soul wandered far from Christ’s light into the dark forest of fear and fornication that lies in wait for those who fail to heed God’s Word . . . but here to night to witness to Jesus’ infinite mercy and power, His infinite love that allows no one wishing to be found to remain lost . . . here is the famed filmmaker, Hollywood director and producer . . .
Anthony Harod
!”

Harod crossed the wide set to the sound of enthusiastic applause from six hundred Christians who had not the faintest idea of who he was. He held out his hand, but Jimmy Wayne Sutter jumped to his feet, embraced Harod, and waved him to the guest’s chair. Harod sat down and crossed his legs nervous ly. The singer grinned at him from his place on the couch, the apocalyptic writer looked coolly at him, and the overweight actress made a cute face and blew him a kiss. Harod was wearing jeans, his favorite snakeskin cowboy boots, an open red silk shirt, and his R2-D2 belt buckle.

Jimmy Wayne Sutter leaned closer and folded his hands. “Well, Anthony, Anthony, Anthony.”

Harod smiled uncertainly and squinted out toward the audience. Because of the bright television lights, only an occasional glint of glasses was visible.

“Anthony, you have been a fixture on the tinsel town scene for . . . how many years now?”

“Ah . . . sixteen years,” said Harod and cleared his throat. “I started there in 1964 . . . uh . . . I was nineteen. Started as a screenwriter.”

“And Anthony . . .” Sutter leaned forward, his voice managing to be both jovial and conspiratorial, “is it true what we hear . . . about the sinfulness of Hollywood . . . not all of Hollywood, mind you, not everyone there . . . Kay and I have several good Christian friends there, yourself included, Anthony . . . but generally speaking, is it as sinful as they say?”

“It’s pretty sinful,” said Harod and uncrossed his legs. “It’s . . . ah . . . it’s pretty bad.”

“Divorce?” said Sutter. “Everywhere.”

“Drugs?”

“Everyone does them.”

“Hard stuff?”

“Oh yes.”

“Cocaine?”

“Common as candy.”

“Heroin?”

“Even the stars have track marks, Jimmy.”

“People taking the name of the Lord God in vain?”

“Constantly.”

“Blaspheming?”

“It’s the in thing to do.”

“Satan worship?”

“So the rumors say.”

“Worship of the Almighty Dollar?”

“No doubt of that.”

“And what about the Seventh Commandment, Anthony?”

“Uh . . .”

“Thou shalt not commit adultery?”

“Ah . . . ignored completely, I’d say . . .”

“You’ve seen those wild Hollywood parties, Anthony?”

“I’ve gone to my share . . .”

“Drug abuse, fornication, blatant adultery, pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, worship of the Evil One, defiance of God’s Laws . . .”

“Yeah,” said Harod, “and that’s at just one of the duller parties.” The audience emitted a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a stifled gasp.

The Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter steepled his fingers. “And Anthony, tell us your story, your history, your descent and ultimate elevation from this . . . this . . . mink-lined
pit
.”

Harod smiled slightly, the corners of his mouth flicking up. “Well, Jimmy, I was young . . . impressionable . . . willing to be led. I confess that the lure of that life-style led me down the dark path for some time. Years.”

“And there were worldly compensations . . .” prompted Sutter.

Harod nodded and found the camera with the red light on. He gave the lens a look both sincere and slightly sad. “As you’ve said here, Jimmy, the Devil has his levers. Money . . . more money than I knew what to do with, Jimmy. Fast cars. Big houses. Women . . . beautiful women . . . famous stars with famous faces and beautiful bodies . . . all I had to do was pick up the telephone, Jimmy. There was a sense of false power. There was the false sense of status. There was the drinking and drugs. The road to hell can run straight through a hot tub, Jimmy.”

“Amen!” cried the overweight TV actress.

Sutter nodded, looked earnest and concerned. “But, Anthony, the really
frightening
part . . . the fact we have most to
fear
. . . is that these are the people who are producing films, movies, so-called
entertainments
for our
children
. Isn’t that right?”

“Exactly right, Jimmy. And the movies they make are ruled by only one consideration . . . profit.”

Sutter looked into camera one as it zoomed in for a close-up. There was no levity in his face now; the strong jaw, dark brows, and long, wavy white hair might have been that of an Old Testament prophet. “And what our children get, dear friends, is
dirt
. Dirt and garbage. When I was a boy . . . when most of us were children . . . we saved up our quarters and went to the moving picture show . . . if we were allowed to go to the moving picture show . . . and we went to the Saturday matinee and we saw a cartoon . . . What ever happened to cartoons, Anthony? And after the cartoon we saw a Western . . . remember Hoot Gibson? Remember Hopalong Cassidy? Remember Roy Rogers? God bless him . . . Roy was on our show last week . . . a fine man . . . a generous man . . . and then perhaps a John Wayne movie. And we would go home and know that the good guys win and that America was a special place . . . a blessed country. Remember John Wayne in
The Fighting Seabees
? And we would go home to our families . . . remember Mickey Rooney in
Andy Hardy
? Go home to our families and know that the family was important . . . that our country was important . . . that goodness and respect and authority and loving one another was important . . . that restraint and discipline and self-control was important . . . that GOD WAS IMPORTANT!”