AfterAge (45 page)

~ * ~

"It's hard, isn't it?"

Perlman glanced up as Calie sat beside him on the curb just outside the open door to Water Tower Place, little Beau snuggled in her arms. The late afternoon sky had turned cloudy and dull, but the temperature was a prelude to warmer weather. It was a sign of faith that McDole had left the doors to Water Tower Place wide open. Perlman grimaced. "I beg your pardon?"

"Don't pull that polite baloney on me, Doc." She gave him a sidelong look. "You're forgetting the most important thing you've said today."

"What's that?"

"You're forgetting to forget the 'what ifs.'" She scratched Beau's ears. "You're moping and feeling sorry for yourself, thinking about your wife and son, C.J. and Louise, and Deb, too." When he didn't answer, she continued. "She's the worst, isn't she? Because you never expected to think of one of those monsters as a human being."

He sighed, then frowned. "I don't recall telling you I was married," he said, "or that I had a son." He turned to face her.

Calie smiled. "It's time to start looking
forward
instead of backward, Bill. Time for a new life." She stood, then bent and kissed him briefly on the lips, her brown eyes twinkling. "Remember, there is life after death."

REVELATION 19:2

For he hath judged that which did corrupt the earth . . .

and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.

~ * ~

There were sounds of dying in the Mart tonight.

Rita didn't want to hear them. She couldn't find Anyelet and guessed that the Mistress hadn't woken yet; lately it was safer to let Anyelet alone than disturb her anyway. She put her hands to her face and they came away covered with gray-green globs of melting flesh, and Rita frowned at the mess dripping from her fingers and shook it off. Why did she have such a headache? Was it even
possible
for her to be
sick
? Everything about her hurt—her face since the gunshot wound, her arms since that weird teenager had burned her last night and been gutted for her punishment, leaving the hand that had wielded the knife blackened and peeling. There was a smell in this place, too, the smell of tainted meat left too long in the warm air. Beneath the baggy sleeves of the stained copper robe, her skin itched ferociously, as though it were alive with a million invisible insects. She stumbled past the currency exchange in the first-floor ball and thought longingly of plumbing and hot water; the was so dirty and—

She tripped over something on the floor and sprawled facefirst. Was Howard's body still here? She tried to stand, but her bones and muscles hurt horribly, and finally Rita just sat next to the body, ignoring the smell and squinting in the darkness, her vision gone the way of her beauty but not so much that she didn't detect traces of life within the smelly, blackened pile next to her. She leered at it curiously, couldn't stop her finger from giving it a tentative poke.

It groaned, then raised a head in which the only recognizable things were the leaking, reddened eyes belonging to Gabriel. A few seconds later he hauled himself up and grabbed the doorframe, his body making sucking, liquid noises when the flesh pulled away from the floor. A hole that might have once been his mouth opened and he gurgled.

Rita screamed and fled, the skin of her own arms sloughing away beneath her clothing. In her haste she toppled against the opposite wall, then backed away in revulsion when she realized the viscous mass slipping down its surface was part of her own skin. She careened out the front doors and fell, the sidewalk's rough surface shaving away most of her palms and fingers, leaving exposed bone to gleam in the wan moonglow. Shrieking, she scrambled up and ran, into the darker streets of downtown and away from the Mart and its infestation of death.

At Wells and Lake, Rita collapsed, her strength gone. The shadowy refuge of a diagonal doorway on the corner beckoned and she dragged herself toward it. She shouldn't be out here by herself and in this condition, so close to the subway entrance only a few yards away. But she couldn't go back to the Mart, she couldn't—

They came up the stairs like moist, deadly spiders to drag her down and into the tunnels, a new and private hell.

REVELATION 10:9

Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter,

but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.

REVELATION 18:14

And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee.

~ * ~

Try as she might, Anyelet could not drive the beast from her dreams. It wrapped rotting arms around her with a lover's intimacy as she whipped her head from side to side in a vain attempt to escape the fetid kiss of its lips against her neck.

Then it
was
gone, driven away by that girl, the one with the silken, silver hair whose blood had splattered everyone last night and blistered their flesh like fire, leaving them all screaming and sick. And having this Child-woman in her mind, her gaze burning with holy fever, was far, far worse than the nightbeast who lusted after Anyelet with a Hunger that eclipsed even her own.

~ * ~

She woke in Stephen’s arms, not knowing how he'd found her room or why he would return after so effectively slipping away the night before. The feel of his flesh should have stirred her dark need immediately, and yet . . .

There was no Hunger.

Anyelet tried to sit up and found she couldn't. The hand she brought to her face was wretched and stank of decomposing flesh. She stared at it in horror, then shrank away from Stephen, but he seemed unperturbed by the smell or sight of her. "What's happening?" she croaked. He looked at her in pity and pulled her back against his chest, smoothing her hair and cradling her gently.

"It's time to die, Anyelet."

~ * ~

How strange, Anyelet thought blearily, to lie next to the body of the white-haired girl who had brought destruction down upon them all. Stranger still to be moving and thinking, yet so resemble the girl's quickly disintegrating corpse next to which Stephen had placed her on the Franklin Street Bridge; now he leaned against the railing somewhere off to the side like a silent, ancient sentinel. She could hear the water lapping sweetly below, feel the breeze on her burning skin. The sun, she knew, would find her in the morning.

No matter. She would be dead by then.

Death, a concept she had not considered applying to herself since . . . when? Something else that didn't matter. All that did was
now
, on the ground with her cracked, oozing lips drawn in pain as her body ate itself away. Not long ago she had stood on the other bridge and laughed at the stars; in the morning the sun would laugh at her. What would its golden rays feel like upon her flesh? She would never know.

She closed her eyes and let the true darkness take her.

REVELATION 17:14

These shall make war with the Lamb,

and the Lamb shall overcome them.

The lake under the morning sun was stunning, an undulating sea of fire stretching to the horizon. Stephen had never been to the southern shoreline before, and he had started this trek hours ago to put distance between himself and the silent bodies of Jo and Anyelet. He would have liked to have buried them, or even spilled their remains into Lake Michigan and let the cleansing waters absorb both good and evil. Instead, he'd had to leave them on the bridge for the scavengers—the birds, the insects, and yes, the rats—and this was not something he wanted to stay and see.

Stephen turned south and began walking, barely noticing the sparrow that flitted around his head and finally ended on his shoulder for a free ride. The weather in the mouth was warmer, the daylight more intense; it was a climate where the smallest things of the earth might flourish that much faster. There were still darker things and frightening times ahead.

But not for long.

REVELATION 21:23

And the city had no need of the sun,

neither of the moon, to shine in it;

for the glory of God did lighten it.

REVELATION 21:25

for there shall be no night there.

~ * ~

"Beautiful, isn’t it?"

Calie smiled her agreement as Perlman pulled her into his arms and hugged her. "Yes." She studied him for a moment. “Are you happy now, Bill?"

He glanced at her, then nodded. “As happy as I'll ever be," he said finally. "More than I would've thought possible."

"We are, too," she said. “And it’s because of you and all your work."

Perlman rubbed a thumb along her shoulder. "Not just me," he reminded her.

"But impossible without you." She looked at him seriously. "I always wondered, what
really
made you so determined to develop that bacteria? Was it Mera? Your son?"

Perlman shook his head. "They were gone months before I got the idea." He smiled dreamily and Calie followed his pointing finger across Michigan Avenue, then up to the sky and its vivid sprinkling of tiny lights.

"I just wanted to see the stars again at midnight."

REVELATION 20:3

And cast him into the bottomless pit,

and shut him up . . . till the

thousand years should be fulfilled:

and after that he must be

loosed a little season.

REVELATION 20:5

But the rest of the dead lived not

again until the thousand years were finished.

This is the first resurrection.

REVELATION 20:7

And when the thousand years are expired,

Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.