7th Sigma (35 page)

By the time he neared the opening he was also hearing better: the scuffing of his feet on rocks, the running water, and, as he crouched a few yards from the opening, thousands of airborne bugs.

It was the huge pit, the one he'd looked down into, the one with the eroded passage under the road into the adjoining pit. It had been mostly in shadow before, but now the sun was higher and he could see more than the suggestions of shadows. Even from back in his passage he could see that the trail into the tank no longer bridged the tunnel between the two pits—it had collapsed, mostly intact. The far side, leading back toward the cedar grove, tilted down, not quite a cliff, but a very steep climb.

The swarm of bugs was the largest he'd ever seen, but it was oddly unfocused. Usually, when bugs swarmed, they made a beeline for the site of their crushed fellow, rising up in the air initially, and then cutting through anything in their path. This was more like confusion. The vast cloud was spinning counterclockwise, and it brought to mind the swirling funnel of bugs descending into the hole made by the not-steer.

Kimble edged forward again. With that many bugs in the air, he thought there couldn't be any left on the ground, but he was wrong. The bottom of the pit glittered like the thieves' cave in
The Arabian Nights
, like piles of coins—copper and silver, bronze and iron—only the coins in Ali Baba's cave didn't shift and crawl.

The very bottom of the pit, just downslope from Kimble, was a dark pool of water, silty gray, with only the lightest sheen of oil. It was being fed by the icy water rushing around his ankles. Before, when he'd looked down into the pit, he hadn't seen any water and, even though his glimpse had been brief, he should have—it was reflecting the sky clearly.

So maybe it wasn't there before.

Which certainly would account for some of the swarm, displaced by water. Kimble felt sure, though, that some bugs had to have been crushed when the trail collapsed.

Every experience he'd ever had with flying bugs told him to find a hole and hide in it, but he wanted to know what happened to Pierce and his captors. The bugs that were flying were at least ten feet above the ground. Kimble cautiously stood, ready to drop and spin the minute a bug headed his way.

The collapsed trail overlapped the edge of the pool near its far end and Kimble could follow his own little cataract down to where it dropped over a ledge and splashed a few feet into the water below. Looking at the shore, Kimble could see lines of calcium marking where the water level had been in previous times: up from rains, down with drought. He was very cautious as he stepped into the greater pool. He didn't want to find some piece of metal eaten jagged sharp by the blind mouths of bugs.

The water was not as cold as the stream had been, but cold enough. Near the shore the bottom was very irregular, but as he walked out it became smoother—rubble, gravel, and silty sand forming a slightly bumpy aggregate. It deepened as he went, so he skirted the edge, far enough out to avoid the ragged rubble, but still no more than waist deep.

His lips were dry and he was thirsty, but he would have to be severely parched before he tried the water he was wading through; at least it gave him a bug-free path. He felt better in the water. If the swarm above dropped, he would, too, lowering himself into the water.

A few bugs had settled on the collapsed trail, but the fissured earth and grass stretched over whole sections of intact limestone substrata, dropped in situ. The collapsed dirt and rock leading up to the trail was a challenge, sliding down a foot for every two gained. Kimble made it halfway up before a seemingly solid ledge dropped out from underfoot and he slid all the way back down to the water's edge and then fell over backward. The water hit his torn ear and he made an inarticulate roar, deep in his throat, without opening his mouth.

“What was that?”

Kimble, about to splash forward to attempt the ascent again, lowered himself slowly back into the water, and crouched until he was neck deep. He wasn't sure whether to go completely under, hiding, or stay up and keep his sight. The thought of putting the cut underwater again was enough to tip the balance.

It was Deacon Rappaport and Ronson. They still had Pierce, too, hands still tied behind his back. Ronson was bleeding from his mouth—a pulped lip, it looked like. Rappaport's pristine uniform was disarrayed, but he was otherwise intact. Ronson had one of the gyro rifles and he was holding it against Pierce's back. They came closer to the edge. Pierce and Ronson both walked hunched over and, at first, Kimble thought they'd been injured, perhaps their backs or hips, but then he realized that the bugs were buzzing overhead and the men were closer to them than Kimble was. Rappaport walked upright, smiling, as if the bugs were a million miles away.

“And see what I said?
Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee.
” He frowned at Ronson and tapped his arm. “Straighten up, man. This isn't
our
plague.
In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee.
”

Kimble shuddered.
The man's insane.

“He's the bastard who blew up the rifles! That didn't happen by accident!” Ronson did straighten up, but Kimble had the feeling that it was more about anger than faith. Ronson raised the rifle and shifted his aim from Pierce to Kimble's head. “Which eye, Deacon?”

Deacon Rappaport stepped over to him and faced away from Kimble. He must've imagined he was speaking privately, but the curved wall of the pit beyond focused the sound. It was as if he was whispering in Kimble's ear. “No! We have questions for him. We must know who he works for and what he has told them.” He turned around, crooked his finger in a come-hither motion at Kimble, and said in a loud voice, “Come on up, young man. I assure you, Brother Ronson could hit a fly at this range. And you wouldn't want us to hurt your friend, here, would you?”

Kimble didn't trust himself to speak, but he tried anyway. “
Thou shalt
”—he emphasized the “t,” almost making it a second syllable—“
not bear false witness
.”

Rappaport dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “And when the devil tempted our Lord in the wilderness he
also
quoted scripture.”

Kimble's fear faded under a wave of anger. “I'm not the murderer. I'll believe you when you let him go.”

Rappaport looked offended. “
You
dare to judge
me
?”

“Think you're the chosen one, do you? I can't quote the Bible as well as you, but I do recall something about false prophets. You really think this is your promised land?”

“Soon, yes.” He gestured overhead at the bugs buzzing through the open space and covering the walls. “
And there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt: the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies.
”

“I read Exodus, once. Your people are in bondage? I'm not seeing that. Ask the guys in the shantytown who the local pharaoh is.”

Rappaport's smile faded. “Ronson, if he doesn't start moving, shoot him.”

Kimble shifted back. “That will answer your questions, won't it?
Who do I work for? What did I tell them?
”

Rappaport took a sudden step back, his eyes widening.

Kimble added, “Maybe you're not the only one God speaks to.”

“Deacon?” Ronson lowered his rifle and looked over at Rappaport.

Rappaport drew a ceramic knife from his belt and took a long step over to Pierce. He grabbed Pierce's hair and kicked him in the back of his knee, dropping him into a kneeling position, and pressed the edge to Pierce's throat. “You want me to let him go? How about I release him to
his maker
. Get up here!”

Kimble's stomach churned. Pierce
had
betrayed him but …

“Do you want his death on
your
conscience?” asked Rappaport. He pointed the knife at Kimble as he said this and Pierce, desperate, threw himself to the side, wrenching his hair out of Rappaport's grip and falling to the ground. He rolled away and Rappaport took a step after him. Pierce reversed direction, suddenly, trapping Rappaport's foot and locking his knee. Rappaport squawked and fell backward, sitting down hard. He raised the knife and slammed it, hilt down, two emphatic thuds.

Rappaport pointed back down toward the lake. “That way, dammit.”

Ronson turned back to Kimble and raised the rifle again. He twitched the barrel slightly to the side and fired. Water fountained beside Kimble's shoulder. “That was a deliberate miss,” Ronson said. He slid the fore stock, chambering another round. “Next one goes into your body.”

Kimble sank straight down. He heard the splash as a gyro went into the water and the bubbling hiss of its rocket exhaust for a few seconds more. He'd taken in a large breath of air, but now he blew it out, making his body negatively buoyant. He turned and pulled himself across the bottom toward deeper water.

He twisted around to his left, the way he'd come.
Maybe I can make it to the tunnel.
He ran out of breath and, rifle or not, he had to come up. He drew a deep breath and ducked. Two gyros in quick succession hit the water as he went under, one of them tugging at his shirt collar.

He didn't see any way he could make it from the shore's edge up to the passage. He didn't exhale this time, keeping all the air, but he had to keep from floating up by actively paddling with his hands. He felt around for something to grab, something to anchor him to the bottom. He went closer to the shore, remembering the tangle of material he'd waded through, his hands reaching out in front. He felt something cut the back of his wrist and he felt around carefully. It was a chunk of rebar sticking out of the silt, its end coming to the jagged point that had cut him. He grabbed it farther down, to anchor himself, and it shifted, then pulled completely free of the muck.

Damn.
The recoil brought him to the surface. A gyro went through his left bicep, spinning him around. He saw the blood in the water but it didn't hurt as much as he thought it should, like someone had hit his arm with a club.

“Next one goes through your head!” Rappaport yelled.

Kimble froze. In his effort to find something to hold on to, he'd swum closer to the fallen trail, and Ronson and Rappaport had just run sideways fifty feet to close with him again. They were only thirty feet away, looking down over a ten-foot drop.

Kimble stood up, waist deep in the water, arms hanging at his sides, his hands trailing beneath the water. The entire left side of his shirt was stained red and he felt faint looking down at it. If he hadn't known where the wound was, he would've thought he'd been shot in a lung.

Ronson lowered the rifle, apparently convinced he wouldn't have to fire again. He gestured with the barrel back toward the slope where Kimble had tried to climb up onto the trail. “Come on, before you pass out from blood loss and drown. 'Cause I'm not going in after you if you do.”

The cloud of bugs overhead buzzed louder and Kimble wondered if he was passing out. It seemed as if his vision was darkening, but it could've been that the cloud was thickening.

Ronson glanced up and ducked. “What's got into them?”

Rappaport still stood upright. “Faith, Brother.
The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.
”

Kimble lifted his right hand out of the water and threw the rebar as hard as he could, flinging himself forward, full length, to splash down in the water. Rappaport jumped to the side and the jagged point of the rebar struck Ronson instead, stabbing into his uniform blouse under his left armpit, where it hung, tangled in the cloth.

“Hah! Missed,” Ronson said, ripping the rebar out of his shirt and holding it up triumphantly.

The bugs fell on him like hail,
like locusts
, and the screaming began.

Even at the water's surface, the bugs whirled through the air, and Kimble stayed down, despite the searing pain he felt from the submerged gyro wound. He pressed his right hand against the torn flesh and lay back in the water, only his face above the surface. He took shallow breaths and tried not to pass out.

Using his feet, Kimble scooted across the shallow water, pushing himself out from under the concentrated cloud of bugs. He floated parallel to the collapsed trail back to where they'd left Pierce. There, at the base of the slope, he crouched in the water for another twenty minutes, waiting for the air around him to clear of bugs. Then it took him a good ten minutes to get up the slope without sliding back down. His head was spinning as he dropped to his knees by Pierce. The man was still unconscious but he was alive, two massive bumps on his forehead.

“Proud of yourself?”

Kimble spun around. Rappaport was climbing up the far side of the collapsed ridge, bleeding nearly everywhere, hundreds of bug cuts, and his uniform was in tatters, but he still had his ceramic knife clenched in his left hand. He reached the top and stood, then walked forward slowly, but steadily.

“Looks like the Plague of Boils,” Kimble said. “Are you sure you're the chosen one and all that? I mean, if you are, I'd seriously consider asking the Lord to go choose someone else for a while.” He stepped toward the middle of the trail, putting some distance between himself and Pierce.

Rappaport kept walking. “He tests me,” he said, his voice hoarse from screaming. “But my faith is strong. It's my time in the wilderness, but I will cast Satan down.” He turned slightly, tracking Kimble.

Kimble shook his head. “I'm not Satan. And you're no prophet. But bring it on, Deacon. Let's see if the Lord is with you.”