Bad Radio (43 page)

“Even you?”

“Just because I can see clearly doesn’t mean I’m any better. There was a time, before I received guidance, when I thought I was righteous, that I was going to punish the wrong in the name of the right. But Abe gave me the gift of time. I came to understand that the problem wasn’t the men who killed my family, or the nation that spawned them, or their allies. It was just their nature. Our nature. They did what they did because they were in a position to do so, not because they were special in any way. They did it because they could, and given the chance, any one of us would have done the same. All it takes is the tiniest reassurance that we’ll be praised for doing the right thing, the acceptance of those around us. And we’re able to kill and mutilate with the worst of them.”

Harsh squealing echoed down to us from the ceiling as a sliver of the night sky became visible overhead. A rectangle of sheet metal as long as the roof and forty feet wide began to slide away, grinding harshly across the top of the building.

The sky that was revealed was wrong. The relentless cloud cover was still overhead, but now the faint corpse-light illuminating it was laced with vast shadows that curled and writhed so slowly you had to look away and back again to see it. The lower surface of the cloud cover was uneven, like the surface of the sea, and roiling in slow motion.

Anne was still trying to talk Piotr off the proverbial ledge, something that I knew was futile, just as I knew she had to try. “But what about the innocent? Even if it were possible to kill everyone, you’d be killing the victims of humanity’s crimes at the same time.”

He shrugged. “Innocent just means you haven’t had a chance to express yourself yet. We’re all monsters here.”

The roof section came away from the building and landed on the ground outside with a crashing racket. Light stronger than a full moon flooded the gym, revealing what the camp lanterns on the floor could not. The bleachers on the left and right walls were packed with worm-filled townspeople, sitting shoulder to shoulder the length of the building on both sides. Their hands were clenching and unclenching and their jaws were working and chewing on nothing as they stared upwards, towards the sky.

I felt despair so sharp that it could reach me even through my rage as I looked out into that vast crowd of lunatic husbands and wives, schoolteachers and shop clerks, all straining and shuddering in their seats. I wondered if Mazie’s father was in there somewhere.

Piotr gave us a moment to appreciate his accomplishment, and then climbed up the ladder. After everyone had followed him up and onto the catwalk, Piotr took Anne’s leash and pulled her away from the others. Chuck and Henry were left at the top of the stairs with their keepers.

Piotr led Anne and myself across the outer catwalk, which thrummed under our feet as we moved. Now that there was more light, we could clearly see the blood pit through the steel mesh of the catwalk’s floor, at least two stories below us. Being able to see through the floor, combined with the narrow three-foot width and a complete lack of handrails, made it a harrowing, dizzying experience.

The three of us walked down the right side of the outer perimeter without speaking. Anne glanced back at me repeatedly, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I was still unable to touch Piotr, and running away didn’t appear to be an option. Even if I could somehow get her free of the cord before Piotr could crush her windpipe, below us was a sea of hundreds of bags under Piotr’s control. I just met her eyes helplessly and kept walking. Being Anne, of course, she was having none of that.

“You know,” she said loudly to Piotr’s back. “It seems to me that you need Abe’s cooperation to pull this off for some reason, and you’re only getting that because you have hostages. Guess where you fucked up?” My heart stopped as she calmly turned and stepped off of the platform, cord still tied firmly around her neck.

56

H
er face showed no fear and no regret as she stepped off the platform to her death, her courage and her spirit expressed in one magnificent frozen moment.

I want to say that as she stepped into open space, I weighed her life against all others, against the world itself. I want to say that I set her aside for the greater good and that I watched the cord slice through her flesh until it met bone, jerking her to a stop in mid-air, savior of us all.

But the truth is that I didn’t. It never even occurred to me. I ran for her, arms outstretched in front of me, while her hair floated in place around her face as she began to fall. The world could go straight to hell for all that it crossed my mind. But I wasn’t going to make it. Not even close. Her head dropped below the level of the walkway even as I threw myself down onto the catwalk, my hands grasping empty air.

But Piotr wasn’t going to be beaten like that. That same wispy, foggy tendril that protected him and snatched bullets out of the air snapped out and arrested her fall just before the cord pulled taut.

He laughed and clapped his hands together in delight. “It appears that Abe doesn’t share your views on self-sacrifice, but he certainly shares mine on sacrificing the rest of the world.” Anne floated gracefully up over the catwalk, and then gently down again. “Don’t worry, there will be plenty of sacrifice to go around soon enough, and I promise that I won’t save you when it’s time.”

Tears were running down Anne’s face as she balled her fists up and screamed, “What do you want from me? You won’t let me die, but you say that you’re going to kill me. You won’t say what this is all about except for some bullshit about justice and revenge and whatever the fuck else. What. Do. You. Want?”

Her head rocked back and blood flew from her mouth as Piotr’s hand smashed across her face. His voice, when he spoke, was dinner-party calm and reasonable. “I want you to remain alive until it’s time for you not to be alive, and to be quiet until then. Is that so much to ask?”

Her knees went slack and her eyes glazed over, but instead of hitting the ground she rose up a few inches instead, floating in place. Piotr turned around without another word and began walking, towing her behind him on a misty tether.

I stormed past her and slammed my fist with all my strength into the back of his eighty-year-old neck in a killing blow. My fist stopped, halted by my own arm, inches before it touched him. I tried again. And again. I knew before the first swing that things would be no different than the last time I tried attacking Piotr, but I couldn’t stop myself. I hammered down with both fists, breath hissing out from between my clenched teeth and spittle flying with every forced exhalation.

Piotr kept walking. “You’re ready. Come.” My arms dropped to my sides, but I couldn’t unclench my fists, impotent rage burning hotter with every step. Helpless, I followed at Anne’s side until we reached the point where the center catwalk that ran directly over the pool touched the outer ring of walkways. We turned onto it and walked out until we reached the middle.

Here there was another plywood sheet attached to the catwalk, about five feet by ten feet, with the long side attached to the catwalk by steel supports. This created a platform five feet wide that paralleled the catwalk for ten feet. Directly across the catwalk from that platform was a metal ladder, crudely welded together, that reached all the way to the surface of the blood pit below.

Piotr and Anne stepped onto the narrow wooden platform. As they did so, my eyes were drawn to the catwalk beyond that was revealed when they stepped aside. An object lay on it, almost at Piotr’s feet.

I froze. A longing rolled through me with an intensity that I would never again experience or be able to fully recall. My feet shuffled as I took a stunned step forward, and then another, and then two more quick steps before I snatched up my prize.

It was dull gray, smooth but not slick, and warm to the touch. The shaft was a cylinder a little over two feet long and two inches thick, and a third of the way down a shorter cylinder stuck out at a right angle. I gripped it, and it flexed in my hand with what felt like a muscular contraction against my palm, for all the world like gripping a snake or an eel in your fist and feeling it twist and squirm.

After the spasm, the dimensions and heft were different. The circumference had slimmed slightly and the handle sticking out of the body moved further down and shortened. It was now an exact copy of my baton in every respect except for the color and unnatural warmth.

I gripped it hard, reveling in the way it fit my hand, and savoring the sense of power and control I had when simply holding it.

“Interesting that you created this very weapon out of scraps after I helped you become reborn in blood,” said Piotr. “All this time you’ve yearned for something that you never knew existed. The human part of you, anyway. The part that belongs to the Devourer knew, of course, already shaping you, forcing your spirit to fit its container, like water in a cup. Your mind is only human, after all, so what chance does it stand against the body of a god? Even now, do you know where your anger comes from? Your lust to bash my skull open and scream your victory into the sky? Was it even your idea to come here in the first place? To get everyone captured, and moved docilely into this place where they could be used to rationalize your cooperation with me?”

I turned and looked at him, at the sly certainty on his face. I couldn’t have known that Piotr needed me to finish summoning his god. And I had to avenge Patrick’s death. I had to come here to end this, didn’t I? Some of my anger faded and I hesitated, thoughts chasing themselves in a circle.

“What matters, Abe, is that we’re here together now. The Avatar of the Devourer and his priest. And now there’s one last thing to do in order to throw wide the gates and let him inhabit the body that is rightfully his.”

He paused and looked me in the eyes, all signs of mirth draining out of his face. “In one minute, I’m going to kill this woman. She will die in agony, torn to pieces as I rip off her limbs, one by one. Unless you kill me first.”

And then a misty tendril whipped out and knocked me off the catwalk.

I barely registered the fall as terror clawed up from my belly and out of my mouth in a shriek. I would not go back into the blood. I couldn’t. The endless nights I spent over the last sixty years reliving that nightmare bloomed in my mind, forcing me to remember suffocating at the bottom of a black lake of thick, choking blood as fire burned away my skin and muscles and bones.

I hit the surface screaming. Every minute of the last sixty years vanished as I burned, the two experiences merging into one. The pool sucked me down into the dark as thick coppery blood forced its way into my nose and down my throat. My lungs spasmed as I choked, flooding them with heavy liquid. I drowned and burned until there was nothing left inside of me but pain and mindless terror as the blood finished what had been interrupted by Henry a lifetime ago.

When the last of me was burned away, the fire went out and the blood went cold. All of my fear vanished, swallowed by a rage so vast that I could scarcely contain it. No thought existed within me, save one, ripping the life from Piotr.

I swam to the surface and found the ladder. Clotting blood fell away from me in thick clumps as I climbed, the stench of the rapidly rotting fluid irrelevant and unnoticed. The baton, which I knew instinctively to be called Hunger, clunked dully against the rungs as I pulled myself upwards. I surged up and over the edge of the catwalk effortlessly, my eyes seeking only Piotr.

His shirt was open, revealing a gray-green lump on his chest thinly veiled in fog, directly over his heart. At his feet was Anne, slumped over, head bowed, bloody wrists still zip-cuffed together in front of her.

His face was exultant and his eyes blazed. He put one hand on the green lump. “It’s time to have your vengeance so that I can have mine. My death by your hand will power the altar and open the way! I give my life so that all others may die.”

With one convulsive yank, he tore the fist sized lump away from his chest, revealing irregularly spaced holes in the raw and decaying flesh beneath. The bottom of the lump was alive with dozens of legs, insectile and spiny, grasping frantically at the air, strings of flesh waving and snapping like pennants from their tips. He threw it to the ground, where it broke apart with a sickening crunch. The legs quivered and went still.