End Time (57 page)

The three soldiers were upon him now.

“Sir!”

Cheryl powered down the passenger window. Her voice controlled, terribly controlled. “Bhakti. Get back in the car. Bhakti, get in now!”

The Punjabi scientist didn't listen.

“Hey!” Beatrice barked into the walkie-talkie. “Somebody grab his ass.” Too late; guns pointed at them. “The rest of you, stay in your vehicles.”

Bhakti tried to push through the three soldiers blocking his path, shouting at them, “Let me through. That's Maria the little girl who helped me find my daughter. That's Lila who lives across the street!” He thrust against them. “Get out of my—”

One of the troopers struck him a right across the jaw with the butt of an M16; you could hear the thunk of composite plastic hitting Bhakti's cheek.

Bhakti dropped to his knees holding a bleeding face.

“Get back in the car, sir.”

At first everyone thought he would do it.
Obey the trooper. Be sensible. Get back in the car
.

Bhakti slowly rose from the pavement, holding his jaw. His whole head rang, yet through the blinding pain something terribly unexpected happened. A
thought
struck him—
a realization.
For suddenly he understood that dream he'd had so long ago—the one of the temple, the cripple, and the rupee, with the terrible heat blasting down from above, the sun beating down like a white-hot cap on his head as he stood on the high platform of the nameless ziggurat. The realization struck him through and through.

The cripple in rags with the twisted ankle who climbed the endless steps; this was not a dream of two people, but of only one person. Him. The cripple was
really him,
and the steps of the forgotten temple were the steps of life—his life, all the days of his life. And what you did during your life—crawling on broken feet to a distant summit to reach the figure above, which shone in the light—your perfect self. Forever visible, and yet forever beyond mortal grasp. With only the ancient steps, your rags and human wounds, the sum total of existence.

Now, standing in this hard city street beside a grand park under a tall building, another figure stood high upon the stepped pyramid. A figure in the window of a modern ziggurat. A figure reachable. Touchable.
Right here. Right now.

His soft Indian voice slurred through his bruised jaw, “Get out of my way.”

He took a step, and all three troopers backed up, giving him room, triangulating on target. Bhakti took a step, and then another. Two rifles swung up to the ready.

“Last warning, sir.”

No one could believe what they were seeing; there wasn't even enough time to shout his name. He lurched one more step.

The guns fired, and the Punjabi scientist dropped for good, crumpled on the asphalt, like a person who never was. Special Locator Troopers appeared at each car window. Each man giving the same order: “Move along.”

The last thing Cheryl saw before slamming the yellow 4Runner in gear were the figures of Lila Chen and Little Maria—Bhakti's Lila, Bhakti's Maria—staring down at her from the sixth-floor window. Then a much taller figure approached the two girls from behind. One moment Lila stared down; one moment Little Maria stared down—

And then they were gone, swept away by dark wings.

 

PART THREE

Weather

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

31

Janet's Ashes

A piece of Cheryl tore inside when Bhakti fell, a wound that never really closed. Worse than when she learned Rachel was gone, maybe because she saw Bhakti shot down before she could tell him what he meant to her: cottage cheese with peach halves, singing “Waheguru” to “Silent Night,” explaining, “We go from Darkness to Light. In English you might say, the
wondrous destroyer of darkness.”

And to think she'd called him a gorp. If she ever heard that word again, she'd begin to sob and never stop.

Plan A had been to grab the Lila Chen girl and fly out of town to Bhakti's white-bread relatives in Connecticut. Get the girl; run like hell. Then spring Mrs. Singh, Eleanor, from the sanitarium. Hole up somewhere safe and assess the situation. So far, the get-out-of-town bit was the only part of the “plan” left intact. They didn't need to discuss it. Like Big Bea said,
Shove off. Regroup.
Lucky to get away at all.

The Special Locator Team directed Cheryl and the others out the perimeter with glowing red marshaling wands, dragging the accordion wire for the cars to pass. Icy rain began to
tick-tick-tick
on the windshields. The vehicles rumbled toward the Museum of Natural History, then headed across town toward the West Side Highway.

At 79th Street they merged into very thin northbound traffic and left the icy rain behind. The lights of the George Washington Bridge dangled brightly before them as they roared up the Henry Hudson Parkway, first under the trees of Washington Heights and then sweeping past the Greek columns of the pergola at Inspiration Point on the edge of Manhattan.

The road swept them onward, but as the cars rolled toward Fort Tryon Park, Cheryl looked up to see the Romanesque arches of the Billings Road Viaduct, one of those strange and haunting architectural curiosities of upper Washington Heights. The spooky stone arches stared down at the parkway, watching the would-be rescuers' flight from the city. Cheryl got the distinct impression of dangling bodies in the darkness—women's bodies dangling from hangman's ropes. She counted four, the roadway making them jerk like frames in a silent movie.

Women hanging by their neck, each in their own dark arch—

In a peculiar writhing dance three of the women wriggled off their nooses and dropped to the ground—
plop-plop-plop
—while the last one kicked her feet, unable to escape.
Didn't anybody else see?
None of the cars slowed down even for a moment. A flock of pigeons burst from under the arches, hurtling over the highway like a rush of lost souls.

Four women. Three escaped. One hung.

Cheryl knuckled the wheel. What a strange, cold feeling, as if she'd been looking at their own future. But who was the unlucky one? She picked up the walkie-talkie, pressed the transmission button, and then stopped. What the hell was she going to say?
I saw four women hanging—

The walkie-talkie went back on the dash.

Past Inwood Park, the highway rose to the Henry Hudson Bridge toll plaza and the Dutch-named Spuyten Duyvil, “Spinning Devil,” the treacherous narrows at the tip of Manhattan. Suddenly Beatrice hit the brakes and the Gran Torino swerved; the cars behind screeched to a halt. Cheryl stared at the tollbooth plaza, maybe a hundred yards off. Big Bea's anxious face was framed in her driver's window; she whispered into the walkie-talkie.

“Whattaya think?”

Two large vehicles—one red, one white—blocked the toll plaza; they were bloodmobiles channeling three lanes of traffic into a single tollgate. One bloodmobile was a bright red school bus—one of those old-fashioned WWII antiques, like the fire engines that got rolled out at Independence Day. The other bloodmobile was a white, state-of-the-art, extra-large Winnebago; patriotic red, white, and blue stars danced across the side of the RV and across the familiar American Red Cross. Five-foot letters encouraged
GIVE BLOOD PLEASE
.

Ambulances from across Upper Manhattan waited for consignments, their lights flashing: Harlem Hospital, Mount Sinai, Columbia-Presbyterian, Bronx-Lebanon, even St. Joseph's in Yonkers. On the far side of the tollbooths, two Riverdale Police cruisers idled on the Henry Hudson Bridge. So that was the gig; emergency services had gone on a twenty-four-hour-a-day blood drive, right at the chokepoint for vehicles leaving the city heading north.

“I'm not crazy about this,” Billy said into his walkie-talkie. “I'm sure the hospitals are short on plasma, but my feeling is I gave at the office.”

Beatrice agreed, whispering loud enough for her mike to pick it up and everyone to hear, “Nobody is sticking me with anything today.”

Cheryl pressed the transmission button. “Those two cop cruisers on the other side of the booths say different.”

“Doesn't look like they're going to take no for an answer,” Beatrice agreed. “And I'm in no hurry to find out what yes entails.”

Billy weighed all this for a moment, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I'll go in easy. Just be ready to step on it.”

“What's going to stop them from following us all the way to Fairfield?” Bea blatted back. Silence again as they pondered the problem of pursuit. Nobody wanted to get into a shoot-out with Bronx coppers and desperate hospitals dying for blood.

Cheryl hit the transmission button. “I have an idea. I can loosen the trailer and the safety straps. If somebody's tailgating … well, it'll be an awful mess.”

Cheryl went to the rear of the 4Runner, unlocked the linchpin from the trailer hitch, and unplugged the brake lights. Then she loosened the straps on the bike and unlocked the wheel chocks. Not exactly tire spikes, but better than nothing. Sooner or later the whole trailer rig, motorcycle and all, would jerk free—a very nasty accident waiting to happen.

Billy Shadow slowly approached the Henry Hudson toll plaza in the white minivan; next came Beatrice in the Gran Torino. Cheryl pulled up the rear with the shaky motorcycle trailer.

The door to the fancy Winnebago opened on a hydraulic sigh, and a clean-cut, pleasant fellow in pale blue hospital scrubs stepped down. CliC magnetic reading glasses hung from his neck on an orange cord, and he gave off a whiff of impartiality, concern, and fairness. The clipboard didn't hurt either.

As the pleasant fellow came closer he offered a business card, explaining, “American Red Cross of Greater New York.” Billy took the card and examined it. “As you're probably aware, the run on plasma and blood products has been staggering the last couple of months. Our bloodmobiles were getting hijacked in the neighborhoods. At this point the hospitals aren't too choosy about where they get their V8.”

The fellow looked around the toll plaza and grinned sheepishly at the red bus bloodmobile parked for show like antique cars at hot-wheels rallies. “Commuters have to slow down anyway. If you donate there's no toll. We even have Girl Scout cookies and orange juice.” Mr. Scrubs was just the kind of guy that made you want to say yes to anything.

Billy got out of the minivan; the large .357 Magnum in the cowboy holster clunking on his thigh. Not a look you see often in New York, but the gun and leather holster didn't seem to faze the efficient fellow in the pale blue scrubs with the clipboard, who followed him to the door of the Winnebago.

“Mind if I take a look?” Billy asked.

Nope, he didn't mind at all, more than pleased and proud of the spanking big Winnebago. “Help yourself.”

Billy looked back at the other cars, his own expression clear enough:
Hit the gas if anything happens.
The Winnebago's hydraulic doors whooshed open, and he poked his nose inside.

A clean antiseptic smell filled the coach; three shiny, pale blue reclining couches with head- and armrests lined either side of the main aisle; a utility counter at the back, a sink, overhead cupboards, and a large refrigerator. The lighting subdued but pleasant, and a large flat-screen TV ran a Discovery Channel loop of playful jackrabbits hopping about a desert, eating leaves off scrub and boldly sticking their cute faces into thorny cacti to drink the pulp. The whole setup very relaxing, very peaceful and inviting, Girl Scout cookies and orange juice included.

“I see.”

“Can't we get one or two of you in for a pint? It would be so helpful.”

It all made a kind of sense. A ton of sense, actually.

Except it was 2 a.m. in the friggin' morning
!
Who in their right minds—?

Billy backed silently out of the trailer, not answering one way or the other. He glanced at the Gran Torino and the yellow Toyota 4Runner; the plaza lights fragmented the women's faces behind the windshields, a puzzle of doubt. Then Billy noticed the strangest thing. Off to the side of the parkway in deep shadow, four rabbits had come out of the brush and twitched their sensitive noses at the weird scene in the toll plaza. They wrinkled their whiskers, getting a better scent, then pointed their smart little faces at the blood-red school bus.

Get a load of those rabbits. Just like back at the Dugway Proving Ground, making him almost laugh at the little critters.
Ah, the protector rabbits. How good of you to join us.

His eyes strayed to the antique bloodmobile. The interior lights within the long red school bus gave off a sickly incandescent glow that illuminated very little: double-decker cots for donors, hanging tubes and plasma bags, ancient hardware. It seemed the blood drive already had some takers this time of night, or more accurately
givers,
the cots occupied with mouth breathers and opium dreamers.

A male nurse glided past the bus windows wearing 1930s doctors' whites that buttoned up the shoulder to the neck, a fly-specked lab coat. The male nurse tapped the yellow rubber tubes snaking from the plasma bottles to dislodge any clogs.
Damn, if this weirdo didn't look like Flattop right out of the Dick Tracy comics.
No, Billy didn't need any Skin Walker bliss to tell him this wasn't about blood for hospitals.

This was much darker.

A cult had risen up from the skank corners of the city, the dregs of hospital staff going rogue. Doing their own blood harvesting, maybe even drinking it on the sly like urban vamps used to do in those after-hours Goth clubs. The lump on one cot slowly rolled over; the sheet fell away from its face, and Billy got a good look at the donor. A young woman around eighteen or twenty, not much older than Lila, nearly bled white. She smiled wanly at him through the glass. She was okay with that. Bleed her white, fine by her.