What, for instance, had happened to Boone? How had the scapegoat filled with bullets and filed as dead become the ravening monster he’d almost lost his life to the night before? Boone had even claimed he was dead, for Christ’s sake – and in the chill of the moment Decker had almost shared the psychosis. Now he saw more clearly. Eigerman was right. They were freaks, albeit stranger than the usual stuff. Things in defiance of nature, to be poked from under their stones and soaked in gasoline. He’d happily strike the match himself.
‘Decker?’
He turned from his thoughts to find Eigerman closing the door on the babble of journalists outside. All trace of his former confidence had fled. He was sweating profusely.
‘OK. What the fuck’s going on?’
‘Do we have a problem, Irwin?’
‘Shit alive, do we have a problem.’
‘Boone?’
‘Of course Boone.’
‘What?’
‘The doctors have just looked him over. That’s procedure.’
‘And?’
‘How many times did you shoot him? Three, four?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Well the bullets are still in him.’
‘I’m not that surprised,’ Decker said. ‘I told you we’re not dealing with ordinary people here. What are the doctors saying? He should be dead?’
‘He is dead.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t mean lying down dead, shithead,’ Eigerman said. ‘I mean sitting in my fucking cell dead. I mean his heart isn’t beating,’
That’s impossible.’
‘I’ve got two fuckers telling me the man is walking dead, and inviting me to listen for myself. You wanna tell me about that, doctor?’
XVII
Delirium
Lori stood across the street from the burnt out restaurant, and watched it for five minutes, to see if there was any sign of activity. There was none. Only now, in the full light of day, did she realize just how run down this neighbourhood was. Decker had chosen well. The chance of anyone having seen him enter or leave the place the night before was most likely zero. Even in the middle of the afternoon no pedestrian passed along the street in either direction, and the few vehicles that used the thoroughfare were speeding on their way to somewhere more promising.
Something about the scene – perhaps the heat of the sun, in contrast to Sheryl’s unmarked grave – brought her solitary adventure in Midian back to her; or more particularly, her encounter with Babette. It wasn’t just her mind’s eye which conjured the girl. It seemed her whole body was reliving their first meeting. She could feel the weight of the beast she’d picked up from beneath the tree against her breast. Its laboured breathing was in her ears, its bitter sweetness pricked her nostrils.
The sensations came with such force they almost constituted a summoning: past jeopardy signalling present. She seemed to see the child looking up at her from her arms, though she’d never carried Babette in human form. The child’s mouth was opening and closing, forming an appeal Lori could not read from lips alone.
Then, like a cinema screen blanked out in mid-movie, the images disappeared, and she was left with only one set of sensations: the street, the sun, the burnt out building ahead.
There was no purpose in putting off the evil moment any longer. She crossed the street, mounted the sidewalk, and without allowing herself to slow her step by a beat stepped through the carbonized door frame into the murk beyond. So quickly dark! So quickly cold! One step out of the sunlight, and she was in another world. Her pace slowed a little now, as she negotiated the maze of debris that lay between front door and the kitchen. Fixed clearly in her mind was her sole intention: to turn up some shred of evidence that would convict Decker. She had to keep all other thoughts at bay: revulsion, grief, fear. She had to be cool and calm. Play Decker’s game.
Girding herself, she stepped through the archway.
Not into the kitchen, however: into Midian.
She knew the moment it happened where she was – the chill and the dark of the tombs was unmistakable. The kitchen had simply vanished: every tile.
Across the chamber from her stood Rachel, looking up at the roof, distress on her face. For a moment she glanced at Lori, registering no surprise at her presence. Then she returned to watching and listening.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lori said.
‘Hush,’ Rachel said sharply, then seemed to regret her harshness and opened her arms. ‘Come to me, child,’ she said.
Child. So that was it. She wasn’t in Midian, she was in Babette, seeing with the child’s eyes. The memories she’d felt so strongly on the street had been a prelude to a union of minds.
‘Is this real?’ she said.
‘Real?’ Rachel whispered. ‘Of course it’s real …’
Her words faltered, and she looked at her daughter with enquiry on her face.
‘Babette?’ she said.
‘No …’ Lori replied.
‘Babette. What have you done?’
She moved towards the child, who backed away from her. Her view through these stolen eyes brought a taste of the past back. Rachel seemed impossibly tall, her approach ungainly.
‘What have you done?’ she asked a second time.
‘I’ve brought her,’ the girl said. ‘To see.’
Rachel’s face became furious. She snatched at her daughter’s arm. But the child was too quick for her. Before she could be caught she’d scooted away, out of Rachel’s reach. Lori’s mind’s eye went with her, dizzied by the ride.
‘Come back here,’ Rachel whispered.
Babette ignored the instructions, and took to the tunnels, ducking round corner after corner with the ease of one who knew the labyrinth back to front. The route took runner and passenger off the main thoroughfares and into darker, narrower passages, until Babette was certain she was not being pursued. They had come to an opening in the wall, too small to allow adult passage. Babette clambered through, and into a space no larger than a refrigerator, and as cold, which was the child’s hideaway. Here she sat to draw breath, her sensitive eyes able to pierce the total darkness. Her few treasures were gathered around her. A doll made of grasses, and crowned with spring flowers; two bird skulls, a small collection of stones. For all her otherness Babette was in this like any child: sensitive, ritualistic. Here was her world. That she’d let Lori see it was no small compliment.
But she hadn’t brought Lori here simply to see her hoard. There were voices overhead, close enough to be heard clearly.
‘Who-ee! Will you look at this shit? You could hide a fuckin’ army here.’
‘Don’t say it, Cas.’
‘Shittin’ your pants, Tommy?’
‘Nope.’
‘Sure smells like it.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Shut up, the both of you. We’ve got work to do.’
‘Where do we start?’
‘We look for any signs of disturbance.’
‘There’s people here. I feel ’em. Decker was right.’
‘So let’s get the fuckers out where we can see ’em.’
‘You mean … go down? I ain’t going down.’
‘No need.’
‘So how the fuck do we bring ’em up, asshole?’
The reply wasn’t a word but a shot, ringing off stone.
‘Be like shootin’ fish in a barrel,’ somebody said. ‘If they won’t come up they can stay down there permanent.’
‘Saves digging a grave!’
Who are these people? Lori thought. No sooner had she asked the question than Babette was up and clambering into a narrow duct that led off her playroom. It was barely large enough to accommodate her small body; a twinge of claustrophobia touched Lori. But there was compensation. Daylight up ahead, and the fragrance of the open air, which, warming Babette’s skin, warmed Lori too.
The passage was apparently some kind of drainage system. The child squirmed through an accumulation of debris, pausing only to tur
n over the corpse of a shrew that had died in the duct. The voices from overground were distressingly close.
‘I say we just start here and open up every damn tomb till we find something to take home.’
‘Nothing here I wanna take home.’
‘Shit, Pettine, I want prisoners! As many of the fuckers as we can get.’
‘Shouldn’t we call in first?’ a fourth speaker now asked. This dissenting voice had not so far been heard in the exchanges. ‘Maybe the Chief’s got fresh instructions for us.’
‘Fuck the Chief,’ Pettine said.
‘Only if he says please,’ came the response from Cas.
Amid the laughter that followed there were several other remarks exchanged, obscenities mostly. It was Pettine who silenced the hilarity.
‘OK. Let’s get the fuck on with it.’
‘Sooner the better,’ said Cas. ‘Ready Tommy?’
‘I’m always ready.’
The source of the light Babette was crawling towards now became apparent: a latticed grille in the side of the tunnel.
Keep out of the sun, Lori found herself thinking.
It’s all right, Babette’s thoughts replied. Clearly this wasn’t the first time she’d used the spy hole. Like a prisoner without hope of parole she took what entertainment she could find to ease the passage of time. Watching the world from here was one such distraction, and she’d chosen her vantage point well. The grille offered a view of the avenues but was so placed in the mausoleum wall that direct sunlight did not fall through it. Babette put her face close to the grille, to get a clearer grasp of the scene outside.
Lori could see three of the four speakers. All were in uniform; all – despite their brave talk – looked like men who could think of a dozen better places to be than this. Even in broad daylight, armed to the teeth and safe in the sun, they were ill at ease. It wasn’t difficult to guess why. Had they come to take prisoners from a tenement block there’d be none of the half glances and nervous tics on display here. But this was Death’s territory, and they felt like trespassers.
In any other circumstances she would have taken some delight in their discomfiture. But not here, not now. She knew what men afraid, and afraid of their fear were capable of.
They’ll find us, she heard Babette think.
Let’s hope not, her thoughts replied.
But they will, the child said. The Prophetic says so.
Who?
Babette’s answer was an image, of a creature Lori had glimpsed when she’d gone in pursuit of Boone in the tunnels: the beast with larval wounds, lying on a mattress in an empty cell. Now she glimpsed it in different circumstances, lifted up above the heads of a congregation by two Breed, down whose sweating arms the creature’s burning blood coursed. It was speaking, though she couldn’t hear its words. Prophecies, she presumed; and amongst them, this scene.
They’ll find us, and try to kill us all, the child thought.
And will they?
The child was silent.
Will they, Babette?
The Prophetic can’t see, because it’s one of those that’ll die. Maybe I’ll die too.
The thought had no voice, so came as pure feeling, a wave of sadness that Lori had no way to resist or heal.
One of the men, Lori now noticed, had sidled towards his colleague, and was surreptitiously pointing at a tomb to their right. Its door stood slightly ajar. There was movement within. Lori could see what was coming; so could the child. She felt a shudder run down Babette’s spine, felt her fingers curl around the lattice, gripping it in anticipation of the horror ahead. Suddenly the two men were at the tomb door, and kicking it wide. There was a cry from within; somebody fell. The lead cop was inside in seconds, followed by his partner, the din alerting the third and fourth to the tomb door.
‘Out of the way!’ the cop inside yelled. The trooper stepped back and with a grin of satisfaction on his face the arresting officer dragged his prisoner out of hiding, his colleague kicking from behind.
Lori caught only a glimpse of their victim, but quick-eyed Babette named him with a thought.
Ohnaka.
‘On your knees, asshole,’ the cop bringing up the rear demanded, and kicked the legs from under the prisoner. The man went down, bowing his head to keep the sun from breaching the defence of his wide brimmed hat.
‘Good work, Gibbs,’ Pettine grinned.
‘So where’s the rest of them?’ the youngest of the four, a skinny kid with a coxcomb, demanded.
‘Underground, Tommy,’ the fourth man announced. ‘That’s what Eigerman said.’
Gibbs closed in on Ohnaka.
‘We’ll get fuckface to show us,’ he said. He looked up at Tommy’s companion: a short, wide man. ‘You’re good with the questions, Cas.’
‘Ain’t nobody ever said no to me,’ the man replied. ‘True or false?’
‘True,’ said Gibbs.
‘You want this man on your case?’ Pettine asked Ohnaka. The prisoner said nothing.
‘Don’t think he heard,’ Gibbs said. ‘You ask him, Cas.’
‘Sure enough.’
‘Ask him hard.’
Cas approached Ohnaka, reaching down and snatching the brimmed hat from off his head. Instantly, Ohnaka began to scream.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Cas yelled at him, kicking him in the belly.
Ohnaka went on screaming, his arms crossed over his bald head to keep the sun off it as he clambered to his feet. Desperate for the succour of the dark he started back towards the open door, but young Tommy was already there to block his way.
‘Good man. Tommy!’ Pettine hollered. ‘Go get him Cas!’
Forced back into the sun, Ohnaka had begun to shudder as though a fit had seized him.
‘What the fuck?’ said Gibbs.
The prisoner’s arms no longer had the strength to protect his head. They fell to his sides, smoking, leaving Tommy to look straight into his face. The boy cop didn’t speak. He just took two stumbling steps backwards, dropping his rifle as he did so.
‘What are you doin’, dickhead?’ Pettine yelled. Then he reached and took hold of Ohnaka’s arm to prevent him claiming the dropped weapon. In the confusion of the moment it was difficult for Lori to see what happened next, but it seemed Ohnaka’s flesh gave way. There was a cry of disgust from Cas, and one of fury from Pettine as he pulled his hand away, dropping a fistful of fabric and dust.
‘What the fuck?’ Tommy shouted. ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’
‘Shut up!’ Gibbs told him, but the boy had lost control. Over and over, the same question:
‘What the fuck?’
Unmoved by Tommy’s panic, Cas went in to beat Ohnaka back down to his knees. The blow he delivered did more than he intended. It broke Ohnaka’s arm at the elbow, and the limb fell off at Tommy’s feet. His shouts gave way to puking. Even Cas backed off, shaking his head in disbelief.
Ohnaka was past the point of no return. His legs buckled beneath him, his body growing frailer and frailer beneath the assault of the sun. But it was his face – turned now towards Pettine – that brought the loudest shouts, as the flesh dropped away and smoke rose from his eye sockets as though his brain were on fire.
He no longer howled. There was no strength in his body left for that. He simply sank to the ground, head thrown back as if to invite the sun’s speed, and have the agony over. Before he hit the paving some final stitch in his being snapped with a sound like a shot. His decaying remains flew apart in a burst of blood-dust and bones.
Lori willed Babette to look away, as much for her own sake as that of the child. But she refused to avert her eyes. Even when the horror was over – Ohnaka’s body spread in pieces across the avenue – she still pressed her face to the grille, as if to know this death by sunlight in all its particulars. Nor could Lori look away while the child stared on. She shared every quiver in Babette’s limbs; tasted the tears she was holding back, so as not to let them cloud her vision. Ohnaka was dead, but his execution
ers were not finished with their business yet. While there was more to see the child kept watching.
Tommy was trying to wipe spattered puke from the front of his uniform. Pettine was kicking over a fragment of Ohnaka’s corpse; Cas was taking a cigarette from Gibbs’ breast pocket.
‘Gimme a light, will you?’ he said. Gibbs dug his trembling hand into his trouser pocket for matches, his eyes fixed on the smoking remains.
‘Never saw nothin’ like that before,’ Pettine said, almost casually.
‘You shit yourself this time, Tommy?’ Gibbs said.
‘Fuck you,’ came the reply. Tommy’s fair skin was flushed red. ‘Cas said we should have called the Chief,’ he said. ‘He was right.’
‘What the fuck does Eigerman know?’ Pettine commented, and spat into the red dust at his feet.
‘You see the face on that fucker?’ Tommy said. ‘You see the way it looked at me? I was near dead, I tell you. He would have had me.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Cas said.
Gibbs had the answer almost right.
‘Sunlight,’ he replied. ‘I heard there’s diseases like that. It was the sun got him.’
‘No way, man,’ said Cas. ‘I never seen or heard of nothin’ like that.’
‘Well we seen and heard it now,’ said Pettine with more than a little satisfaction. ‘It weren’t no hallucination.’
‘So what do we do?’ Gibbs wanted to know. He was having difficulty getting the match in his shaking fingers to the cigarette between his lips.
‘We look for more,’ said Pettine, ‘and we keep looking.’
‘I ain’t,’ said Tommy. ‘I’m calling the fuckin’ Chief. We don’t know how many of these freaks there are. There could be hundreds. You said so yourself. Hide a fuckin’ army you said.’
‘What are you so scared of?’ Gibbs replied. ‘You saw what the sun did to it.’
‘Yeah. And what happens when the sun goes down, fuckwit?’ was Tommy’s retort.
The match flame burnt Gibbs’ fingers. He dropped it with a curse.
‘I seen the movies,’ Tommy said. ‘Things come out at night.’