End Time (62 page)

The captain made the men put hand on shoulder to tramp through the front door. They found the couch or sat cross-legged on the floor. Mr. P. strode down the hall toward the children's rooms, the doors ajar, the lights on. And in one sweeping glance the Piper thought he might have undergone an attack of hysterical blindness himself. The kids' rooms were empty.

The kids' rooms were empty
.

Silently he cursed leaving the Kit-Cat clock in charge. Plugged or unplugged it should have warned him. Maybe Kid's bashing it had compromised Kit-Cat's integrity; in any event, never let a plastic cat do a grown man's job. He noticed the girls' open clothes drawers, the scattered shirts and socks, the missing JanSport packs. He looked wildly about in the connecting bathroom, and then to Kid's torn-up bedroom. He thrust his head out the boy's open window and saw the mess of stuff below.
Oh, so that's how it is.…
Total rejection.

Ungrateful brats.
How dare they run away?

After all the care, the loving, after all the—

The Pied Piper could feel a holy rant coming up his throat. Oh, we're gonna have some fun tonight. Just you wait, my pretties. Snarling damnation to the empty room, unforgiving as the blowhole of a furnace.

“First, we're going to fix you, lil' rat-girl. The fish doctors at Pi R Squared are gonna peel back your skull and wire your brain to a Ouija board to see if it moves the pointer up and down. And if we don't like the answer, oh, if we don't like the answer, we'll push a pain button right into your folded pudding—”

He took a breath; there was so much vengeance to go around.

“Lila, my most beautiful creature, we're gonna use you for body parts,
my very own Piper Youth Movement
; keep you alive in a big glass test tube and take a few cells at a time. You'll never die, and you'll never grow old, and you'll
never
get out of that tube.”

Last of all, a special, special venom for his firstborn: “For you, Kid, my greatest creation, we're gonna do
performance art
. Ever hear the old joke about the traveling salesman, the farmer's daughter, and the buttered corn? No? Well, I'll leave that to your imagination. In the end, Bub, we're gonna enjoy some very special Room Time. We're going in that room with the traveling salesman and a bushel of buttered corn, and we're never coming out!”

The Piper raged back down the hall and stormed into the living room. The men sitting on the couch or squatting on the floor held their heads, some openly weeping.

“Okay,” he shouted. “No more slacking.” He smacked one on the head. “C'mon! Get up, let's go!” Magically the men's sight returned, to gasps of gratitude.

Mr. P. strode into his study in a slathering rage. The lava lamp had burst; a pool of lava spread across the desk. The sounds of explosions erupted outside, up and down Central Park West, manhole covers leaping into the air on columns of underground steam. The metal lids clanged against the buildings.

In three shakes of a lamb's tail Mr. P. raced out the lobby and into the street. The rain of ice slackened, leaving scattered diamonds everywhere. In his temper tantrum the Piper had blown a steel manhole cover at the helicopter too, snapping a rotor blade. The officer and his troopers stumbled out the building after Mr. P. and stood about idiotically, not thinking too clearly—just happy to see again. Mr. P. almost slaughtered every single one there and then, but managed to restrain himself. He went to where the shattered Kit-Cat clock lay on the pavement coated in fallen ice.

The long, gaunt man stared down as the busted Kit-Cat clock grinned back. He whispered to it and asked it questions, and it told him what he wanted to know. How far the children had gone. And where.

“
You should have warned me of this!” he snarled. “
What do you think I keep you around for?”

Then he kicked the kitty clock into the gutter.

 

34

Hippety-Hop

After the Danbury Mall, Beatrice drove grumpy. The bulky pockets in her tactical vest rode up her midriff like a bad girdle. Stomping around a saloon for a year picking French fries off customers' plates had ruined her girlish figure. Now she was paying for it.
Sigh
 … Nothing worse than a dumpy dame you might mistake for a Polish goalie on a women's hockey team. Feeling slightly sorry for herself, Bea shrugged.
Well, yeah, things could be worse.
Then she tried to think of exactly how.

A creeping cloud of the vapors washed over her. The package of Dramamine jiggled in her shirt pocket. No point adding sleepy to pukey. In a Dramamine haze all she'd think about was poor Webster—bad bugs, galloping disease … Too much in a claustrophobic car with a long hood and a low roof. But it bothered her. How'd they all gotten so lucky?

Beatrice took a breath, gripped the wheel, and pressed the pedal down. Her leg throbbed and the little punctures by her ear burned, morphing to a mysterious ache. Those pain clusters always heralded a change in the forecast. As the barometer dropped, the side of her head ached. Weather heading their way—maybe that icy rain chasing them up from the city.

So get here, already.

In the white Dodge minivan, Billy watched the highway roll under him, a gray treadmill devouring the miles. With the whole world dead or dying wherever you looked, at least in the white minivan you sat up high. It felt so much better, easier to breathe.

Suddenly the walkie-talkie squawked, Beatrice's voice barging out of the box,

“How come we didn't get sick like everyone else?”

Billy took a moment. Then, “Not everybody's sick.”

Beatrice again: “
Almost
everybody. You know what I'm asking.”

Billy sighed and kept looking straight ahead. He knew what she meant. It troubled him too. How had the bunch of them gotten to skip study-hall punishment and a trip to the principal's office? A mosquito must have bitten them at least once this summer. He kept staring at the gray interstate. His mind went back to Major Todd, the same confusion before he and his men succumbed.
Why you? How'd you get so lucky?

“I'm not sure,” he finally admitted. “Maybe it's like Major Todd back in Vandalia thought. Natural immunity? Maybe touching the evidence bag did it for me, and I passed it on to Cheryl and Bhakti. They touched the baggie too. Maybe you were unexposed. Unavailable. Use much bug spray this summer?”

The walkie-talkie went silent for a few seconds.

“Well, I tended a lot of bar when Webster was away. Lived at the saloon.”

Another few moments passed; then the tinny voice came out of the radio. “Still, Cheryl and I were smacking mosquitoes like crazy in that holding tent. Love to get you two in an immunology lab. Do a blood work-up. Check your DNA against that baggie.”

Billy nodded, bewildered; no logical answer.

“That leaves fate. Magic. The hand of God.”

Silence for a few more moments. Then Cheryl's voice came over the walkie-talkie. She'd been listening. “Better than nothing, right? I'll take fate, magic, or God every time.”

Cheryl rode with Janet's ashes for company.

No Rachel. Where was she?

Did she do right by Bhakti, putting the Nambe urn in the front seat? Would it make any difference? She almost started fiddling with the radio tuner as Bhakti used to, trying to find a sing-along, but she didn't know if it would make him angrier. Better to leave bad enough alone. She reached across to the passenger seat to touch the metal urn with Janet's ashes. Not cold, like before. A good sign? Maybe it pleased him.

The big Honda Pilot wasn't too hard to find in deserted Middletown, Connecticut. She spotted the big SUV, flashers on, parked on empty Main Street. The would-be rescuers pulled up behind and shut off their engines. Cheryl got out of the yellow Toyota 4Runner with a heavy heart and walked up to the SUV driver's window. Two adults dressed up as beekeepers sat in the front seats. She heard barks from the back of the Pilot, but the tinted glass kept her from seeing much. The two beekeepers stared at her through the mesh of their bug hats.

“Lauren?”

The smaller beekeeper nodded yes. “Cheryl?”

The breath caught in Cheryl's throat; what else was there to say? She couldn't think of anything. Neither could Lauren. On the phone, Lauren seemed more worried about her sister, Eleanor, than she was for herself. Being half-crazy, how would Eleanor take the news? Would this be the last straw of sanity? The thought grew on Cheryl as the convoy traveled the last lap; grew to the point of dry-mouthed panic—for she suddenly realized even Eleanor's in-laws in that big Honda Pilot
wanted her
to explain about Bhakti. In the wan morning light, the four cars drove down the sanitarium drive under rattling autumn leaves. A woman stood on the porch of a gabled house in a housecoat.

Eleanor.

Dreading the worst, Cheryl unlatched the door of the yellow 4Runner, clutching Janet's ashes in her arms. Her feet felt leaden and watery at the same time. Awkward words came out of Cheryl's mouth. “You're still walking. That's good. I'm glad you're still walking.”

She watched the woman's face collapse from within, grasping and yet not grasping. Eleanor held a ridiculous pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol replying stiffly, but sensibly, back, “One of the bugs bit me back in Van Horn and made me walk.” She took the urn with Janet's ashes and cradled it gently in her arms. After some moments Eleanor snuffled a little; she clutched her housecoat together. Slowly she sank to the porch and held herself, quietly asking over and over, “Where's Bhakti? Where's Bhakti?” And already knowing the answer, she began to sob.

In a horrible flash, Cheryl saw something she was never supposed to see: Eleanor with a rope around her neck, a hangman's noose, the tail draped into her lap. Just like those women at the gloomy arched viaduct as they'd raced from Manhattan. A foresight? A premonition? The vision went away. No rope, just a poor lady in a housecoat sobbing on the porch.

At length Eleanor brushed the tears from her face and looked at her sister and brother-in-law standing there in their grand beekeepers' outfits. “I don't think you need that stuff,” she told them. “They spray here. Haven't seen a bug since the end of September.” She acknowledged the goofy pink bottle in her hand and glanced over her shoulder into the house. “Mr. Washington doesn't feel well.”

*   *   *

After having been cramped up for hours, Corky and Peaches bounded out the back of the large Honda and shook themselves. As Guy and Lauren fussed over the two dogs, Cheryl begged to take them for a walk—anything to get away from death talk—and Big Bea offered too, her face gray. She could use some air. “Really, it's no trouble.”

At first the dogs were reluctant to stray very far with new handlers, but soon graciously allowed the two strangers to hold their leads when mommy Lauren told them, “It's all right. You go explore. We'll be right here.” Then after a few strides, Corky and Peaches dragged Cheryl and Beatrice hither and yon over the manicured lawn, not caring a fig who held the leash, snuffing under fallen leaves and happy just to be alive on an autumn morning.

They came at last to a spectacular red maple in the middle of the lawn. The morning sun lit up the tree like a lantern; the deep scarlet foliage was bright enough to radiate off the ground thirty feet away. Two large dead birds lay at the bottom of the tree, partly covered in leaves. They looked like ravens or crows, but a breeze rattled the branches overhead and exposed the birds' heads and beaks. Woodpeckers: two large black woodpeckers with brilliant red crests and white racing stripes along their faces under the tree.

“Think they ate the wrong mosquitoes?” Cheryl asked out loud.

Beatrice had been wondering the same thing; she shrugged and leaned heavily on her cane. Peaches pulled on her leash to investigate, then Corky, but the women held them a dozen feet back. Peaches looked up at her handler with doleful eyes. “Better not, Girlie,” Bea cautioned. “Might be contagious.”

Another movement caught the dogs' eyes, and they shivered as one. A passel of rabbits crept out of the bushes and cautiously hopped toward the two dead birds at the foot of the maple. Cheryl counted six or seven more nearby, but gave up as another wave of bunnies poked their way out of an enormous gorse bush. In a few seconds, a score of rabbits had gathered in a loop about the fallen birds. The two women and the two dogs stood transfixed at the spectacle of normally shy rabbits making a fairy circle around the woodpeckers. No, not normal, not by a long shot.

“Those are some brave rabbits,” Cheryl whispered, fearing that if she raised her voice the whole crew would scatter into the brush.

“Looks like they're having a prayer meeting,” Bea chuckled.

Corky and Peaches stopped shivering and sat on their haunches, no longer eager to chase—more like a couple of pious parishioners sitting in a pew.

Then something even stranger occurred. Two of the more courageous rabbits broke from the circle of their friends and bunny-hopped closer to the fallen birds. Now three feet away. Now one foot. The two big, brave bunnies were right on top of the dead woodpeckers when they began to nose the birds' black lifeless wings, sticking their rabbit faces right up close and pushing a little. They paused to examine the black woodpeckers, then went back for more, nudge-nudge with their cute, twitching noses. One bunny patted the stiff wing of the dead bird with his front paw. Pat, pat:
Hey, wake up
. The other rabbit patted his bird too.

Slowly a taloned claw unclenched.

Cheryl pressed a hand to her mouth.

Beatrice could not believe what they were seeing. The women stood stock-still, hands on the dogs' heads. One of the large black woodpeckers twitched his neck. Then the second woodpecker opened its eyes and looked around, brushing away some fallen leaves. The two grand birds sprang to their feet and ruffled their feathers. Their sharp beaks darted from side to side, eyes like lasers. A heartbeat later, the woodpeckers leapt into the air and vanished into a copse of trees. The two dogs barked, and the bunnies scattered in every direction.