The pedicab stood in the living room, beside the recliner-the one Mr. Schenk had sat in a millennium ago yesterday morning. Cal had known of the stashed cycle three doors down, one of David Abramson’s failed summer jobs, and had traded the NYU student his law books, stereo and coffee table for the bike, some food and water, and containers to hold them. Bedrolls and provisions were stacked neatly around it. It would be a bitch to wrestle the thing down the stairs in tomorrow’s pre-dawn darkness, but only an idiot left things outdoors unwatched.
When he straightened up from stowing the knives and arrows, he saw Tina watching from the archway into the hall, leaning against the frame for support. She held out her music box, tilting it questioningly toward him.
“Sure,” Cal said lightly, taking it. He pressed it between the folds of one of the bedrolls, made sure it was secure. The basic frame of the pedicab was a mountain bike with a wide range of gears: it would stand up to hard traveling, but every ounce of weight would tell.
“Funny how little you really need, when you think about it,” Tina said. “It’s like we’ve been carrying all this stuff on our backs; now it’s just shedding away.” She stepped a little shakily to the sofa and sank down with a ragged exhalation.
She’s not well, not at all. He had been so relieved when her fever had broken, when she had come back to him, but the illness was still in her, still working, he could sense that. He sensed, too, her fear, her horror at what was happening to her. He wondered if she had, after all, seen the bands of slouched pale-eyed creatures that he’d glimpsed near the hospital.
“You’re not gonna leave me, are you, Cal?”
“What? No. What makes you think that?”
“When I was little,” she began quietly, “and they told me something had happened to Mama, I tried to imagine the worst thing that could happen, and the worst I could imagine was she had a broken arm.” The light from the blinds cast shadow striping across her face, rendering her expression unreadable. “But she was dead.”
Cal nodded, remembering the day, the helplessness he had felt. Tina reached out and grasped his sleeve, peered up at him with her cobalt gaze. “Sometimes things happen, and it doesn’t make any difference if you’re good or not.”
Cal peered into her strange, troubled eyes. “I’m not gonna leave you.”
A tapping sounded at the front door, and they both froze. Cal had given Doc his duplicate key, and neither he nor Colleen would have bothered to knock. Wordlessly, Cal motioned Tina toward her room. She rose and quickly moved to her door, slid out of sight behind it.
The tapping continued, insistent, as if sharp nails were drumming on the door. Cautious, Cal unzipped one of the packs, withdrew the buck knife Colleen had given him. He unsheathed it, crossed the room in a few soundless steps.
He was almost to the door when there was a harsh thud and the door exploded inward, fragments flying like shrapnel. With a cry, he stumbled back, shielding his face, wood shards bouncing off him. Dimly, he could perceive something squeezing through the ragged hole in the door, dark as some vast insect.
Cal gasped. The intruder was a monstrosity, reptilian and manlike at the same time, standing on two legs that bent in more places than a man’s. It towered over him, head nearly grazing the high ceiling as it leaned forward, stalking toward him, elephantine footfalls shuddering the floor.
It paused and tilted its head, its yellow eyes considering him. Then the creature’s long, projecting face split in a ghastly grin that revealed twin rows of steak-knife teeth.
“This is not Woodstock,” the monster said. “I am not Mother Teresa.”
Cal gaped, recalling the words, hearing in the thunder of that dragon voice a tone familiar from days and months and years endured. Now he could see, unmistakably, in the rough saurian planes of that face, the remnant-no-the essence of the man. “Mr. Stern. .”
Stern nodded, pleased. He wants me to know it’s him, Cal thought. Whatever he’s going to do, he wants it personal.
Stern took another lumbering, gliding step toward him, relishing it. “I told you if you left, you’d be terminated.” He belched, and, incredibly, a tendril of gray vapor curled out the side of his mouth. “Mind if I smoke?”
A nearby gasp drew both their attention. Cal saw that Tina was standing in the doorway of her room, jewel-blue eyes riveted on Stern, vertical-slit pupils staring.
Stern regarded her with his own changed eyes, identical pupils. “Lord of exiles and miracles,” he whispered, voice trembling. “I thought I was the only butterfly in this brave new world.”
He took a step toward her, one razored hand extended. She shrank back. “Don’t be scared, honeylamb. You’re looking at your future.”
Cal flung himself between them, thrust Tina behind him. “Stay away from her!”
Stern paused, firelight eyes raking Cal. “I will, if you introduce us.”
“She’s my sister.”
Stern weighed it, then flashed an obscene Cheshire grin. “Well, Mr. Griffin, may I have permission to take out your sister?”
Stern lunged with crocodile speed.
“Run, Tina!” Cal shouted, shoving her away. She darted into her room, slammed the door. Cal wheeled on Stern, the long knife blade gleaming.
Stern batted Cal aside like wadded paper. Scrambling to his feet, Cal saw Stern rip the door apart with two quick slashes of his monstrous hands, tear through the bookcase Tina had overturned within as a barricade.
Cal sprang after Stern into the bedroom, leapt on him from behind, bringing the knife down hard. He felt the blade jar aside on bone and gristle, saw Tina shrink back in terror, trying to wedge herself in the corner. Stern roared, more in outrage than pain, threw Cal off and spun on him, claws sweeping across Cal’s abdomen in a wide arc. Cal sprang back and felt his shirt rip, the dagger points lightly scoring the skin of his stomach, just enough to draw blood.
Stern closed on him, and he stumbled back, knife leveled, desperately searching for some soft place under leather hide and bony plate.
A boxy object flew through the air, struck Stern on the back before crashing to the floor. Stern yelled, spun to face Tina. The night stand. She threw the night stand. But now she had nothing close to hand as Stern rushed at her. She fell back between the bed and wall, cowering. He bent over her, reaching out nightmarishly long arms.
Cal dove forward, but Stern twisted, gripped him and sent him flying across the room. Cal’s head hit the wall with a terrible, resounding crash.
Tina screamed as he hit the floor, splayed limply. Oddly, his mind felt clear, but he couldn’t see the room anymore, only a flat grayness. He struggled to rise, to move his arms and legs, but it was as if the strings to them were all severed.
He heard the crack of the big window shattering, then a strange sound as of a great bedsheet unfurling, followed by a rhythmic whooshing of air that filled the world, then diminished, punctuated by the fading keen of Tina’s screams.
In the last moment of awareness before the gray darkened and was all, Cal recognized that sound.
It was the sound of wings.
OUTSIDE D.C.
“You could have said you were sorry,” said Czernas, after about two and a half miles.
Riding ahead, Shango was watching the cars on his left like a hawk, watching the trees that fringed the parkway, planning what he’d do if someone lunged at them from either direction. The bikes were thin-tired touring models, not mountain or hybrid. If they were forced off the pavement, they couldn’t maintain escape speed.
Shango said nothing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re dying, Mister. I’m sorry you’re screaming in pain, sweetheart.