Fred Wishart ran distracted starry fingers through firelight hair, and his wild desolate eyes shifted-boring into Tina.
AND IT TAKES HER.
Cal couldn’t move. He felt as if he were falling away from himself. TAKE HER. Tina. Into the monster’s maw.
Bob’s eyes were on him. Waiting. While, in an instant that would, in the future, seem to stretch on for an eternity, Cal’s voice was still.
Suddenly, the far window exploded inward and a small gray body flung itself through the opening, landing with a springy lightness. It whipped its big head around and spotted Bob, hurled itself toward the bed with a chunk of concrete raised high in its hands.
Cal screamed, “No!” as Fred Wishart’s head snapped up, eyes no longer human, no longer of the living earth at all, a blazing blue horror of darkness. Wishart opened his mouth, and fire poured out, light streamed from his eyes. The whole fabric of the house wrenched and twisted, crushing inward, and the grunter was hurled to the floor, swept into a corner like a bug by a broom.
Glass shattered and more grunters were pouring in, through both windows now. Wishart swung his glare around to them, and they were caught and smashed back, cracking the walls, their necks snapping as they slid limply down.
But now the first grunter was back up, launching himself toward Bob. A heavy respirator lurched from its base, flew killingly through the air at him.
“Hank!” Cal saw that Wilma Hanson had burst in through the hall door. She dove between Hank and the respirator. It caught her hard, driving her back into Hank, ramming them against the wall, both of them splaying unmoving on the floor.
And now Cal was aware of another, oppressive presence tearing into existence in the room, engulfing the air and his mind, a conquering, clamorous disputation of voices.
Fred Wishart cried out, a wail of despair, hands thrashing in denial, refusal, but his concentration had been broken. Shining chaos, darkness that blazed like fire, seized him, collapsing him and capturing him and spinning him away into a whirlpool of nothingness and everything. And in the same unreal, horrific instant Cal saw Bob collapse like a marionette with its strings cut.
“Cal!” Tina tried to cling to him.
He reached frantically for her, but he was hurled back, stunned, into the wall. He saw her swept away, whirling like a glowing milkweed pod, twisting in the air, helpless in the clutch of remorseless power. He thought he screamed her name, later his voice was hoarse from shouting, but he had no recollection of any sound coming out. His whole soul screamed NO! NO! NO! and he reached for her in a nightmare.
And in a nightmare she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lantern light wavered over the broken ceiling, showing where plaster and lathe had been blown upward, darkness gaping overhead.
Tina, thought Cal. Oh, Tina.
He closed his eyes. “He’s breathing,” said Doc.
Of course I’m breathing. It was only then he became aware that his head was being supported, something cold pressed to the back of his neck.
“Can you hear us?” came Doc’s voice, and Cal realized the physician wasn’t speaking to him.
He cracked open his eyes. A dim dawnlight showed through the shattered windows and ceiling, though most of the light came from the lantern.
“He’s coming around.” It was Colleen’s voice. It was she cradling him.
Cal turned his head slightly, saw Doc crouched by the far window, just turning toward him. Before him lay Hank’s crumpled form, Wilma bent on Hank’s far side, grasping his hand. To Goldie, who stood behind him, Doc said, “Bring the lantern.”
Doc limped to Cal and lowered himself stiffly, scrutinizing Cal’s eyes. Then he nodded toward Hank. “He’s going to be all right, thanks to her.” He smiled wearily. “A broken shoulder in trade for a life.” Cal squinted against the glare of the lantern in Goldie’s hand, saw Hank stir. Then he became aware of another figure emerging from shadows.
It was Bob Wishart.
Goldie stepped aside as Bob neared. And in a voice surprisingly strong, with no hint of disorientation or weakness, Bob said, “I’m so very sorry.”
Cal’s focus shifted again to the blown-out ceiling, to the memory of Tina being ripped screaming away.
“She’s alive; I can feel it,” Bob said. “And my brother, too.” His voice turned angry. “But I can’t tell where.”
Cal struggled to sit up, gasped as a fist of pain struck his ribs. Doc said, “No quick movements till those are taped.”
Bob looked to the floor. “Maybe that thing changed him. Or maybe he was someone I never knew.” His eyes were glistening. “His hold on the town is broken. But he-it-he was willing to kill people. A piece of that poison is in me. . keeping me alive.”
Cal closed his eyes. Fred Wishart, willing to sacrifice anyone, anything to save the one he loved. And Cal had seen an identical capacity in himself.
Colleen brushed the hair from Cal’s face, saw the anguish there. “We’ll find her.”
Unwilling, unable, to share his thoughts, Cal looked away toward the shards of glass that glinted, irreparable, across the floor.
“Mr. Shango.” General Christiansen rose from behind the enormous cypresswood desk in the Health Building office as Shango was shown into the room. He held out his hand; his khaki uniform was neat, but like everyone else in Washington he smelled, water being at a premium now. Cisterns stood in every courtyard, on every roof, to catch the rain; half the trees on the Mall had already been cut, to boil it and to cook. Shango wondered what the city would do when winter came-if there would be a city, then. The screened and iron-barred windows were thrown wide, and the sounds of horses, and the jangle and creak of the few National guardsmen passing back and forth in the courtyard, sounded loud against the deathly silence.
“I apologize most sincerely that you had to wait so long,” the general said as Shango shook his hand. “Since the government moved up to Camp David, there’s only been a skeleton force here in town. I was in Arlington, getting records into storage. We have to work with the daylight, as I’m sure you know.”
The mouth moved but the pale eyes studied him, reading his face. All the other functionaries who’d handed Shango along that day had just looked tired, incurious. Too beaten-down to care about anything except getting a loose end tied up and maybe too hungry, too.
Christiansen was wary.
Shango wondered why.
“Everyone’s up at Camp David now?” he asked.
The general nodded. “Once cholera broke out, we didn’t really have any choice. We did what we could, but without med support-without sewage treatment or even any viable means of securing adequate drinking water-there wasn’t much we could do. Shortly after martial law was declared, all key government personnel were evacuated.”
Leaving the rest to die, thought Shango. If not of cholera, of those other sewer-borne plagues like typhoid, or of the yellow fever that almost certainly hummed on the mosquito-ridden air the moment the sun went down. Walking through the silent, stinking streets, past block after block of empty apartment buildings, of cars that had even yet not been hauled away, Shango had seen the rats coming and going on steps and through the half-open doors and windows with fat, saucy impunity. He knew why they looked so well-fed. One of the secretaries who’d showed him into or out of an office earlier in the day had mentioned that in many places the living had simply abandoned the dead where they lay. Cleanup crews were still being drafted but the work was slow. There were whole neighborhoods untouched after the cholera had swept through.
They’re still dyin’ out there, more every day, she had told him, handing him a small cup of flat-tasting water. Hospitals and clinics are packed, and you can’t get in most of ’em. You be careful what you drink.