F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (41 page)

           
 
He stumbled forward and threw his arms around
her.

           
 
"Carrie!" he croaked. "You're
alive! Thank God, you're—"

           
 
She stood stiff and unresponsive in his
embrace; her skin was cold against his cheek. Her chill transmitted to him.
Spicules of ice formed in his blood as she spoke again.

           
 
"No, Dan. I'm not."

           
 
Dan released her and backed away. She was
staring at him with her bright blue eyes, but they were her only lively
feature; the rest of her face was slack, and her voice . . . hollow. Not
movie-zombie dead and robotic. It had timbre and tone, but there was something
missing. Emotion. She was like some of the guests at Loaves and Fishes who came
in stoned on downers.

           
 
An inane question popped out of his reeling
mind: "How did you get here?"

           
 
"I walked."

           
 
He noticed Kesev had risen and was standing
beside him.

           
"Carrie . . ." Dan said,
his mind whirling, refusing to accept what he was seeing. "I . . .you . .
.the doctors said you were dead."

           
 
She reached forward and took his hand—her
touch was so
cold.
She freed his
index finger from the others and pulled the front to her lab coat open. She
pressed the tip of Dan's finger into the small round hole along the inner
border of her left breast.

           
 
"He killed me, Dan."

           
 
Dan cried out in anguish and revulsion as he
tore his hand free. The room dipped and veered to the left, then the right. The
Scotch, the concussion, seeing Carrie murdered, getting her back but not
getting her back because she wasn't really back . . . it was all too much.
Unable to stand any longer, he sank to his knees before her.

           
 
"Oh, God, Carrie! What is this? What does
it
mean?”

           
 
"I have to go to
California
, Dan. Please help me get there."

           
 
"
Calif
—?"

           
 
Kesev stepped forward. "Why
California
? Is that where the Mother is?"

           
 
Carrie turned and stared at Kesev as if seeing
him for the first time. She took a step backward and something twitched in her
expression. Dan tried to decipher it: Surprise? Wonder? Fear?

           
 
"You . . . I know who you are."

           
 
"The Mother?" Kesev said quickly.
"She's in
California
now?"

           
 
"Yes. I have to be with her."

           
 
"Can you take us to her?"

           
 
"I need help. We have to hurry. We have
to fly."

           
 
"Yes, yes!" Kesev said excitedly.
"We will leave immediately!"

           
 
"Now just a damn minute!" Dan said,
struggling back to his feet. "We're not going anywhere until I know—"

           
 
"The Mother is there!" Kesev said,
eyes bright as he leaned into Dan's face. "The sister will lead us to
her."

           
 
"No! This is crazy! I'll call the police.
Detective Garner—"

           
 
As Dan turned to reach for the phone, Kesev
grabbed his arm. His fingers cut into him like steel cables.

           
 
"She came to
us,
Father Fitzpatrick. Was
sent
to us. Not to the police.
Us!
That
means that
we
are meant to go with
her. It is not our place to involve the police. Do you understand what I am
saying?"

           
 
Dan nodded. He was beginning to understand—at
least as much as someone could understand something like this. He realized
Kesev had his own agenda here. He wanted the Virgin back. If what he'd said was
true, he'd been guarding the Virgin for two thousand years and wasn't about to
quit now. In the face of Carrie's reanimated corpse standing here before him,
Dan found that relatively easy to accept.

           
 
But who
was
Kesev?

           
 
Carrie was the other mystery. Had she been
brought back from death for a purpose, or had her desire to be with the Virgin
overcome death itself?

           
 
Dan could find little comfort in either
alternative. But it didn't matter. Carrie was here, asking for his help. Dan
would do everything in his power to give her that help. "All right,"
he said. "Let's call the airlines."

           
IN
THE PACIFIC

           
30°
N, 122° W

           
 
As its fringe winds begin to brush the coast
of southern
California
, the storm veers sharply north.

           
 
Captain Harry Densmore stares bleary-eyed
through the windshield and adjusts 705's circular course along the eye wall.
They should have been out of fuel long ago, but the needle on the gauge hasn't
budged since they entered the eye. So they keep on flying. They've
got
to keep on flying.

           
 
But what are the engines running on?

           
HURRICANE
WARNING

           
 
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A

           
 
HURRICANE WARNING FOR
SANTA CRUZ
,
MONTEREY
,

           
 
AND SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTIES. HURRICANE
LANDFALL

           
 
IS EXPECTED BY 9:00 A.M. EVACUATION OF
OCEANFRONT

           
 
AND LOW-LYING AREAS SHOULD BEGIN IMMEDIATELY.

           
 
THE WEATHER CHANNEL

           
Paraiso

           
 
Emilio fought through the horizontal sheets of
rain assaulting the ambulance as he wound up the road through the woods to
Paraiso. Bolts of lightning lanced the sky, clearing the way for the
ground-shaking thunder, but the heavy vehicle hugged the road.

           
 
When the storm changed course and it became
clear that it would strike
Monterey
County
, the
senador
had sent him to find an ambulance for Charlie, to take him inland out of
harm's way.

           
 
But there was no ambulances to be had. The
city had placed every available ambulance, public and private, on standby
alert. Emilio had stopped by a few services personally, contacted many more by
phone. No matter how much he offered, they would not risk their licenses by
hiring out for a private run during the emergency.

           
 
Call the
county
Civil Defense
, they said. All you've got to do is tell
them it's an emergency, that you need an ambulance immediately to remove an
invalid from an evacuation area, and they'll okay it. No problem.

           
 
No problem? Not quite. Emilio could hardly get
Monterey
County
officialdom involved in moving an AIDS
patient who happened to be Senator Arthur Crenshaw's son. The word would spread
like the wind from this storm. He couldn't even allow a private ambulance
company to know who it was transporting. He wanted to rent a fully-equipped rig
and drive it himself. The answer everywhere was the same: Nothing doing.

           
 
After the last call, Emilio had torn the pay
telephone off the wall in a blind rage. He could not let the
senador
down on this. He'd already
suffered the withering fury of his anger after he'd learned about the nun. The
senador
had been quiet at first, then
he'd exploded, calling Emilio a murderous fool, a ham-handed incompetent, a
dolt who had jeopardized a lifetime of effort. The
senador
had turned away in disgust, telling him to see if he could
do something as simple as hiring an ambulance without screwing that up.

           
 
Hurt, humiliated, Emilio had vowed never to
fail the
senador
again, but events
continued to conspire against him. He
had
to get an ambulance. To return to Paraiso without one was unthinkable.

           
 
So Emilio stole one.

           
 
Quite easy, actually. He'd parked his own car
at an indoor garage, then walked two blocks to the lot of one of the ambulance
services. Amid the tumult of the storm, they never heard him jump start the
engine and drive away.

           
 
A particularly violent blast of wind buffeted
the ambulance as it crossed the one-car bridge over the ravine. The top-heavy
vehicle lurched and for an instant—just an instant—Emilio lost control as it
seemed to roll along on only two wheels. It slewed and skidded and veered
toward the guardrail, but before he could panic there came a thump and it
rocked back onto all four wheels again.

           
 
And then a deafening
pop
and a sizzle as a blinding bolt of lightning wide as a man
arced into the base of a huge ponderosa pine on the far side of the ravine.
There was no pause between the flash and the thunder. The ambulance, the
bridge, the entire ravine shook with the deafening crash.

           
 
Emilio slowed as he blinked away the purple
afterimage of the flash. Through the blur he saw flames licking at the
blackened trunk of the pine. The whole tree was swaying wildly in the wind . .
. seemed to be moving toward him.

           
 
He blinked again and cried out in terror as he
saw the huge pine toppling toward him. He floored the accelerator, swerving the
ambulance ahead on the bridge. The right rear fender screeched against the
metal side rail. Emilio bared his clenched teeth and let loose a long, low howl
as he kept the pedal welded to the floor. Had to move, had to get this huge,
filthy
puerco
going and keep it
going, couldn't go back, couldn't even
look
back, straight ahead was the only way, even if it looked like he was
driving into the face of certain death, his only hope was to get off this
bridge and onto the solid ground straight ahead on the far side of the ravine.
Because this bridge was a goner.

           
Branches slashed, crashed, smashed
against the roof and windshield, spiderwebbing the glass in half a dozen
places. It held, though, and Emilio kept accelerating. He heard the flashers
and sirens tear off the roof as he slipped the ambulance under the falling
trunk with only inches to spare. But he wasn't home yet. He heard and felt the
huge pine's impact directly behind him. The ambulance lurched sideways as the
planked surface of the span canted right and tilted upward ahead of him. He
fought to keep control, keep moving, keep accelerating, because he knew without
looking that the bridge was going down behind him. The wet tires spun and
slipped on the rapidly increasing incline and Emilio filled the cabin with an
open-throated scream of mortal fear and defiant rage.

           
Emilio Sanchez refused to die here,
smashed on the rocks a hundred feet below. His destiny was not to meet his end
as a storm victim, a mere statistic.

           
 
The tires caught again, the ambulance lunged
forward, its big V-8 Cadillac engine roaring, pushing the vehicle up the
tilting incline and onto the glistening asphalt and solid ground.

           
 
Emilio slammed on the brakes and sagged
against the steering wheel, panting. When he'd caught his breath, he held his
hands before his face and watched them shake like a palsied old man's. Then he
stepped out into the wind and rain and looked back.

           
 
The bridge was down. The giant pine had broken
its back, crashing through the center of its span and dragging the rest of it
to the floor of the ravine.

           
Emilio began to laugh. He'd stolen
an ambulance and now he couldn't use it. No one could use it. And no one would
be leaving Paraiso, not Emilio, not the
senador,
and certainly not Charlie.

           
Prisoners in
Paradise
.

           
His laughter died away as he
remembered the fourth occupant of Paraiso. That ancient body. He'd have to do
something about that. It was evidence against him. He had to find a way to
dispose of it. Permanently.

           
 
“Turn here."

           
 
Dan sat behind the wheel of their rented
Taurus and stared at the electric security gate that stood open before them.
Through the wind-whipped downpour he made out identical red-and-white signs on
the each of the stone gateposts:

           
PRIVATE PROPERTY

           
NO TRESPASSING

           
VIOLATORS WILL BE

           
PROSECUTED

           
 
"Are you sure?" Dan said. "This
is a private road." "Turn here," the voice from the backseat
repeated. Dan glanced at Kesev in the front passenger seat.

           
 
The bearded man nodded agreement that they
should proceed through the gate.

           
 
"Yes. The feeling is strong. The Mother
is near."

           
 
Dan then turned to look at Carrie where she
sat in the back seat, staring up the private road.

           
 
She wore one of Dan's faded plaid flannel
shirts over his oldest pair of jeans, and a pair of dirty white sneakers they'd
found in the housekeeper's closet. She looked like a refugee from a
Seattle
grunge band.

           
 
Once again Brad's AmEx card had come in handy
for the tickets and the rental car agency. They'd drive south from
San Francisco
, following Carrie's directions as she took
them deeper and deeper into increasingly severe weather. Now they were
somewhere near the coast in
Monterey
County
.

           
 
Dan faced front and did as he was told.

           
 
He was on autopilot now. His head throbbed
continually, but it had been aching so long now he barely noticed anymore. The
post-concussion dizziness and nausea were what plagued him physically.
Emotionally and intellectually . . . he was numb.

           
 
With no sleep for thirty-six hours, with the
woman he loved murdered but sitting in the backseat giving him directions
toward the corporal remains of the Virgin Mary, what else was there to do but
shut down his emotions, turn off his rational faculties, and become some sort
of servo-mechanism?

           
 
Go through the motions, follow instructions to
get to where you're going, do, do, do, but don't think, don't question, and for
God's sake, don't feel.

           
 
Because mixed with the guilty joy of having
Carrie back was the horrific realization that she wasn't really back . . . not
really back at all. And Dan knew if he unlocked his emotions he'd go mad, leap
from the car, and run screaming through the trees.

           
 
So he kept everything under lock and key,
turned the car onto the narrow asphalt path, and kept his eyes on the road.

           
 
Water sluiced down the incline toward the
Taurus but the front-wheel drive kept them moving steadily. Pine needles, pine
cones, leaves, and fallen branches littered the roadway. Dan drove over them,
letting them snap and thud against the underbelly of the car. He didn't care.
Didn't care if they punctured the oil pan or the gas tank. All he wanted was to
get where he was going. Somewhere ahead was the Virgin, and with her maybe the
man who shot Carrie.

           
 
And then what will I do? he wondered.

           
 
Whatever he did or didn't do, Dan sensed that
he was on his way toward a rendezvous with destiny . . . or something very much
like it. Whatever it was that lay ahead, he wanted to confront it and have done
with it. Things had to change.
Something
had
to give.

           
 
Because he couldn't go on like this much longer.

           
 
The trees thinned as they came to the top of a
rise. It looked open ahead. And then Dan saw why it was open: a deep ravine lay
before them.

           
 
"Keep going?" Dan said.

           
 
"Straight ahead," Carrie said.

           
 
"I see a bridge," Kesev said,
pointing.

           
 
Dan gunned the engine. The car accelerated.

           
 
"And so,
Senador,"
Emilio said, spreading his hands expressively,
"I'm afraid we are stuck here."

           
 
Arthur Crenshaw nodded slowly, amazed at his
own serenity. Here he was, trapped in a house that was little more than a giant
bay window set in a cliff overhanging the ocean, looking down the barrel at the
most powerful Pacific storm on record. He'd watched the front steamroll in, the
lightning-slashed clouds sweep past, blotting out the rest of the world as the
storm launched its assault on the coast—his
coast.
And every time he'd thought he'd seen the peak of the storm, it got worse.
The ocean below churned and frothed like an enormous Jacuzzi; thirty-foot waves
lashed at the rocks, hurling foam a hundred feet in the air; wind and rain
battered the huge windows, warping and rattling the glass, and yet he was not
afraid.