F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (42 page)

           
 
That amazed him.

           
 
Perhaps he was too drained to be afraid.

           
 
Charlie was worse.

           
 
Arthur didn't need a CD-4 count to know that.
Instead of falling, Charlie's fever had risen through the night. He was now in
a coma.

           
 
His son was dying.

           
 
Arthur moved to Charlie's side, passing the
so-called miraculous relic as he did. He was tempted to boot the piece of junk
off the table, even drew his foot back to do so, but for some reason changed
his mind at the last moment. Why bother? Just another in a long line of fakes.
And to think a young woman had been killed in order to bring it here.

           
 
And then it occurred to Arthur that perhaps
that was why Charlie had not been healed. An innocent life had been snuffed out
in order to save Charlie's, and so Charlie could not be saved. Because a life
had been taken on one end of the country, another life would be allowed to burn
out on the other. A balancing of the scales.

           
 
Rage flared. Damn Emilio!

           
 
But he'd only been following orders. Arthur
remembered his own words:
Bring me that
body
—
no matter what the cost.

           
 
But he'd meant money and effort and
expense—not life.

           
 
Hadn't he?

           
 
Not that it mattered now. The inescapable reality
of Charlie's impending death was truly hitting home for the first time.

           
 
"He's going to die, Emilio," he
said, staring at Charlie's slack features. "Charlie . . .my son . . .
flesh of my flesh and Olivia's . . . the last surviving part of Olivia . . . is
going to be gone. Why didn't I appreciate him while he was here, Emilio? When
did I stop thinking of him of a son and start seeing him as a liability? That
never would have happened if Olivia were still here. She was my heart, Emilio.
My soul. When I lost her, something went out of me . . . something good.
Charlie was harmless but I came to loathe him. My own
son!
And that loathing infected Charlie, causing him to loathe
himself. That's when he stopped being harmless, Emilio. That's when he started
becoming harmful to himself. His self-loathing made him sick so he'd end up
here in this pathetic miniature intensive care unit in the big gaudy showplace
of a home where he was never really welcome when he was well."

           
 
Arthur bit back a sob.

           
 
"I've got so much to answer for!"

           
 
And unbidden, unwelcome, another thought
slithered out of the darkest corner of his mind, whispering how if Paraiso were
damaged by the storm . . . if, say, some of the windows were smashed and
Charlie's terminally ill body were washed out into the Pacific, he'd be listed
as a storm victim instead of an AIDS victim, wouldn't he?

           
 
Arthur shook off the thought—though,
despairingly, not without effort—and shoved it back down the dank hole it had
crawled out of.

           
 
Is this
what I've come to?

           
 
He backed away from the windows as the wind
doubled its fury, battering those floor-to-ceiling panes until he was certain
one of them was going to give.

           
 
Emilio watched the
senador
retreat from the storm, but he stood firm. He felt no fear
of wind and rain. What were they but air and water? And even if he were afraid,
he would not show it. He feared nothing . . . except perhaps that body he'd
brought back from
New York
. He had to get rid of that.

           
 
An idea formed . . . put the body in the back
of the ambulance . . . send them both over the edge of the cliffs into the
wild, pounding surf far below . . .

           
 
And as the plan took shape . . .

           
 
The storm stopped.

           
 
The thunder faded, the wind died, the rain
ebbed to a drizzle. Suddenly there was only swirling fog beyond the windows.

           
 
"Senador?”
Emilio said. He rested his hands against the now still windows and stared
out at the featureless gray. "It is over?"

           
 
"Not yet," the
senador
said, his voice hushed. "I've read about this type of
thing. I believe this is what they call the eye of the storm, the calm at its
center. It won't last long. But why don't you hurry up topside and take a look
around, see how much damage we've got up there. Don't get too far from the
door. As soon as the wind starts to blow again, get back inside, because the
back end is going to be just as bad as the front, maybe worse."

           
 
Emilio nodded. "Of course."

           
 
He hurried up the stairs and stepped outside
into a dead calm.

           
 
The still, warm air hung heavy with moisture.
Fog drifted lazily around him, insinuating through his clothes, clinging to his
skin. So strange to have no wind. Emilio could not remember a time when a
breeze wasn't blowing across the cliff tops.

           
 
And silent . . . so eerily silent. Like cotton
wadding, the fog muffled everything, even the sound of the surf below. No
birds, no insects, no rustling grass . . . silence.

           
 
No, wait. Emilio's ears picked up a hum,
somewhere down the driveway, growing louder. It sounded almost like . . .

           
 
A car.

           
 
Emilio gasped and took a hesitant step toward
the noise. He glanced at the carport. The
senador's
limousine and the ambulance were where he'd left them. And still the sound
grew louder.

           
 
No! This
is not possible!

           
 
Instinctively he reached for his pistol before
he remembered that he'd left it downstairs in the great room when he went into
town. He hadn't retrieved it because what need for a pistol with the bridge out
and Paraiso isolated from the outside world?

           
 
The bridge was
out!
He'd seen it fall. He'd almost gone down with it. How could—?

           
 
Emilio stood frozen as a Ford sedan rounded
the final curve in the rain-soaked, debris-littered approach road and pulled to
a stop not a hundred feet in front of him. Normally Emilio would have rushed
forward to confront any trespassers, but this was different. Something was
wrong
about this car.

           
 
A short, bearded man stepped out of the
passenger side and glanced around before staring at Emilio.

           
 
"The Mother," he said in an
unfamiliar accent. "She is here. She
has
to be here. Where is the Mother?"

           
 
The Mother? Emilio wondered. What is he—? He
was jolted by a sudden thought: Can he be talking about the ancient body below
in the house?

           
 
But Emilio had questions of his own.

           
 
"How did you get here?"

           
 
"In the car," the man said with
ill-concealed impatience. "We drove up the road."

           
 
"But the bridge—!"

           
 
"Yes, we came over the bridge."

           
 
"The bridge is
out!
Down!"

           
 
The bearded man looked at him as if he were
crazy. "The bridge is intact. We just drove over it."

           
 
No! This couldn't be! This—

           
 
The driver door opened then and out stepped a
familiar figure. Emilio steeled himself not to react, to hide the sudden mad
thumping of his heart against the inner walls of his chest.

           
 
The priest! Father Daniel Fitzpatrick!

           
 
The priest looked Emilio square in the face
but there was no recognition there. Without the hat, the mirrored glasses, and
the phony beard he'd worn that night in the church, Emilio was a different
person.

           
 
But if he hadn't come looking for Emilio, if
he hadn't brought the police to arrest him for the murder of the nun, why was
he here?

           
 
"Where are we?" the priest asked.

           
 
Emilio was about to answer, to tell them both
to get back into their car and get off the
senador's
private property, when the rear door opened and out stepped a dead woman.
He knew she was dead because he'd killed her himself.

           
 
"You," she said softly, staring at
him levelly. "I know you. You murdered me. Why? You didn't have to kill
me. Why did you do that?"

           
 
Something snapped within Emilio. He could
stand no more. He turned and fled back inside, slamming the door behind him. As
he turned the deadbolt, he leaned against the door, panting and sweating.

           
 
This was
loco
A
car carrying a walking, talking dead woman drives across a bridge that is no
longer there. He was going
loco.

           
 
He turned and shut off the power to the
elevator.

           
 
Good. If they were real, they now were locked
outside and would be at the mercy of the second half of the storm. If they were
not real, what did it matter?

           
 
Emilio pulled himself together, took a deep
breath, and descended to the great room.

           
 
"All is well topside,
Senador.'"

           
 
But the
senador
did not seem to hear. He stood by Charlie's bed, staring out through the
windows, a mix of awe and terror distorting his features.

           
 
Emilio followed his gaze and cringed against
the stairway when he saw what was taking shape out over the Pacific and racing
toward them.

           
 
"Madre!"

           
 
Everything had happened so fast.

           
 
You
murdered me.

           
 
Dan had been momentarily stunned by Carrie's
words. His mind whirled, adding a beard, hat, and glasses to the mustachioed
face staring at Carrie in horrified disbelief, comparing this voice to the one
he'd heard in the church, and then he was sure: This was the motherless scum
who had put a bullet in her heart.

           
 
Before he'd been able to react, the man had
turned and dashed back to the hemi-dome behind him and vanished through a
doorway. And then a Navy reconnaissance plane had swooshed overhead. He'd just
started wondering what sort of idiot would be flying in this hellish storm when
another sound captured his attention.

           
 
A dull roaring filled Dan's ears. At first he
assumed it was enraged blood shooting through his battered brain, then he
glanced beyond the hemi-dome and saw something impossibly tall, incalculably
huge looming out of the foggy distance and hurtling toward them.

           
 
"Oh, my
God!"

           
 
Nearly a half a mile wide and God knew how
tall, it stretched—swirling, twisting, writhing—from the dim, misty heights to
the sea where it terminated in an eruption of foam on the wave-racked surface
of the Pacific. Water . . . an angry towering column of spinning water. . . all
water . . . yet bright lights flashed within it.