Fire (42 page)

His mother was awake; he could hear her in the kitchen banging pots very pointedly. Since he’d decided he was in love, Luke’s mother made him even more uncomfortable than she usually did. She’d always asked questions about him and girls, and right then those questions seemed even more of an intrusion than they usually did.

The fog outside made Luke feel strange and magical, almost as though he’d found himself on some kind of an enchanted alien planet. If he had to talk to his mother that magic would dissipate as quickly and as thoroughly as the fog itself.

So he took his shower quickly, and dressed and grabbed his books, and left without breakfast or good-bye.

And that was how he came to be on the path to school half an hour earlier than he ought to have been, when the fog was still settling out to fat diamonds of dew on everything, and before anyone else had tracked through and turned the sparkling beads into an ordinary slickness of water.

It was also why he saw the spider web. No spider web that big and intricate and silvery could have survived the passage of a dozen children; someone would have destroyed it with a rock or a stick or a tight-packed clot of dirt. If there was destruction like that in Luke, though, that morning it was drawn up into him so far that he’d never have found it if he’d known to look.

He saw the web when he turned that fifth bend in the path. And in the peculiar bent of his mind that week, that morning, the spider web shining silver dew in the morning sun was the most incredible and beautiful thing the world could possibly have offered him. He stepped off the path, closer to it — afraid to touch the web for fear he’d harm it, afraid not to touch it because it was too beautiful a thing not to take into his hands and savor.

And then he saw the spider.

And seeing that thing turned the entire experience on its ear.

The spider wasn’t just ugly and menacing, the way all spiders are.

It was malign.

Small, impossibly small for a creature that had built that large and perfect web. And it didn’t even look like a spider — it was tiny and crablike, black as pitch except for a bead of blood-red on its carapace.

And as he looked at it, the thing turned toward him and stretched its maw hungrily at him — almost the way a dog bears its fangs at a thing it wants to kill.

And Luke ran, ran the whole half-mile to the school yard, and when he got there he went to the deserted place along the back side of the boys’ gym, and sat on the concrete stoop of the back door that no one ever used. And spent the half an hour he had to himself shivering with a fear he didn’t understand.

That was the first part of the dream: a memory, vivid as though he’d relived it.

The second part was harder and meaner and less real.

More immediate, too: in the dream he was himself and it was the present, and the only confusion he had was over what he was doing in the place where he was.

Which was an enormous room, a room the size of four city blocks. It was crowded with seats, arranged like a theater’s rows. And all of those seats were filled with sweating, shouting bodies.

The shouting was all in unison and in time; if it hadn’t been so raucous and so loud he might have thought of it as chanting. Far away, in the center of the front of the room, was an elevated podium; as Luke watched a man stepped up to it, and he began to speak into the microphone.

Luke recognized that man. For a long while he couldn’t place the memory — where had he seen him before? When? And then it came to him: the bus. Luke had been standing on a side street in Manhattan, watching the carnage at the ABC building. Terrified. Guns everywhere, going off in directions no one intended. And that man had stepped out of a bus, and he’d seen Luke, and he’d turned white as a sheet.

An echo in Luke’s head:

Herman Bonner.

Herman Bonner wants to kill the world.

Yes, Herman Bonner — that was who it was. Who was he — besides just a name? Luke had known that man, once; known him more intimately than was comfortable. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became.

Herman Bonner was talking, now, speaking cryptically with an accent that was unplacably alien. Strange, senseless talk — something about . . . Rapture, and something else about an Apocalypse to come. What was all of this? And why would anyone want to kill the whole world? Luke shook his head, trying to clear it.

There was only one way to find out what it was all about, he decided. The way to find out was to ask.

He stepped out, into the aisle, and shouted, so that the man would hear him so far away.

“Herman! Herman Bonner!” And the man stopped dead in the middle of his speech.

The crowd went silent, too.

And he looked afraid.

“Why do you want to destroy the world, Herman? I don’t understand.”

And Herman Bonner went white as a sheet, and his jaw hung slack for a long moment. And finally he said into the microphone, “This is a heathen — an infidel. Kill him if you can. Be certain that he does not escape us.”

And suddenly there were angry bodies everywhere rising out of their seats, coming toward Luke, and before anything else could happen the dream went black, blacker than night.

And there were words.

West. West toward Kansas, and beyond the lake of fire.

And Luke woke. And waking, he knew what he had to do.

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WEDNESDAY

July Twentieth

From the Good News Hour,

broadcast on The Voice of

Armageddon Television Network,

7:00 a.m., Wednesday, July 20.

This morning, unfortunately, my Good News Hour friends, the news is not as Good as we’d like it to be. The truth is, in fact, that it’s not good at all. Sinister things are happening in this world you and I share, and it is perhaps time for all good Christians to be putting the affairs of this life in order. If those words sound discouraging, take heart: It’s a better life that waits for you on the far side of the Rapture.

Cut to a tape of Vice President Graham Perkins, recuperating in a hospital room.

Not all the news is bad, my friends: The Vice President of this nation has been found, alive and well, and he’s now safely in the arms of good, God-fearing Christians. As you all know, this nation has been without a leader for most of a week now, since our beloved President Paul Green died in a tragic aviation accident. Mr. Perkins suffered grave abuse for several days at the hands of left-wing terrorists, but with the help of the forces of righteousness he managed to escape from their hands. The Vice President is recovering from his injuries quite rapidly, and is expected to be well enough to take the oath of Presidential Office early this afternoon.

That historic ceremony will be televised live from the revival center here in Lake-of-Fire, Kansas. At the moment it’s scheduled for two o’clock, but that may change, depending on Mr. Perkins’s condition.

And in Washington this morning, more violence: two low-level members of Congress held a news conference to assert their supposed claim to the Presidency and Vice Presidency of the United States.

Footage of a mob attacking a podium; if one looks closely it’s possible to see that the rioters all wear arm bands emblazoned with a cross, a circle, and a dove.

The two pretenders were quickly and spontaneously put in their place by an angry crowd of righteous Americans.

In the sodomistic State of California, where the ongoing crisis has as yet had no direct effect, business has ground to a halt. People aren’t showing up for work — or very few of them are.

Where is everybody, you ask?

Well, the truth is, no one’s sure. At first it was suspected that the people had evacuated the cities, as they had in most of the Northeast and Midwest. That doesn’t seem to be the case — rural areas aren’t being overrun; desert resorts aren’t reporting much more business than they do during the height of the tourist season. And in cities like Los Angeles consumption of power and water are at ordinary levels.

So where is everybody?

Cut to a shot of a bearded man with blood-shot eyes and greasy, stringy, shoulder-length brown hair. In the foreground is a microphone bearing a circle of cardboard marked with the symbol of a cross, a circle, and a dove. If one looks closely it’s possible to see that the side of the microphone still bears the embossed-plastic
ABC
logo.

Where is everybody? the man asks. Where the
bleep
do you think everybody is? It’s the end of the world. They’re all out getting high, getting laid — partying. It’s all one big orgy out here, man. What do you geeks think about that, huh?

Return to studio.

Shades of Sodom and Gomorrah, eh, my Good News Hour Friends?

We’ll be right back with more Good News after this message from the Reverend George.

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BBC shortwave broadcast

15.070 mHz.

13:00 UTC, Wednesday, July 20.

This is London calling.

The nuclear disturbance in the atmosphere has cleared enough today that we’re beginning to receive scattered reports from the United States on the amateur bands, and the news we’re receiving is nothing short of incredible. Literally, as it happens: the reports are more than a bit hard to believe.

We have badly confirmed stories, to begin with, of dead persons reanimated — stories that would be discounted completely if not for the fact that there are so many of them.

Religious fanatics — apparently zealots of the same stripe as the nation’s late president — are on the move throughout the States. A group that calls itself “The Voice of Armageddon” has commandeered the ABC radio and television network, at gun point. And earlier today, when the American Speaker of the House and President Pro-Tempore of the Senate held a news conference to announce that they were reorganizing the nation’s government, an angry mob, apparently made up of people from the same organization, tore the two quite literally limb from limb. In process, several reporters attending the conference were also killed. Reporter Jim Burns, who covered the event for the BBC, is now in critical condition in a Washington-area hospital.

It’s rumored that these radicals will be announcing a provisional government of their own some time late today, which may explain the recent incident in Washington. We do have confirmed reports that they’ve managed to get control of at least a portion of the US nuclear arsenal.

The American military is still keeping a low profile, as it has throughout the crisis. The Pentagon has a deep-seated tradition of bowing to civilian authority, and with no such authority available to defer to, it’s been unable to act — or unwilling to do so. And what of American forces in Europe and Far East? Here in Britain and on the continent they’re keeping an even lower profile than they are in their own country; all American soldiers have been confined to their bases since last Friday, when two young men on an overnight pass were found by an angry crowd, doused with gasoline, and burned alive.

In Asia, it’s another story altogether. Late Monday evening the communist dictatorship in North Korea launched an attack on the South, intending to take advantage of the confusion. The Americans stationed there and their South Korean allies have been fighting tooth and nail to repulse the invaders; other Asian nations, afraid that they, too, will be attacked, are treating their American bases with considerable reverence.

The Canadians still aren’t having much luck with their attempts to close off their border with the United States. The Canadian government admitted today that while they’ve managed to keep the border crossings shut in the more developed parts of Ontario and Quebec, refugees are still getting through from the US in great numbers — in the west, principally, but in eastern Quebec and the Maritime provinces as well. The rumor in Ottawa is that the border will reopen officially in a day or two if tensions continue to ease.

In other news, the French Premiere spoke in public today, without incident — which marks the first public appearance of a head of state in the EEC since the current global crisis began.

Currency markets reopened in Bonn, London, and Tokyo today, to light trading. Officials in New York hinted that that city’s financial markets may reopen before the end of the week.

There is, as yet, no verifiable news from Russia. All reporters and foreign personnel are still being held in “protective custody” at the Hotel Intourist; they have been allowed to use the telephones, but only to make monitored calls to their embassies and nations of origin. All foreign embassies are similarly quarantined.

At the United Nations today Secretary General William San Juan called on the United States to provide increased security personnel for UN headquarters in Manhattan. New York City officials were quick to point out that in spite of all the disorder in the city, the UN and the area surrounding it has been relatively quiet. Former New York mayor Edward Koch added that he didn’t think the UN was important enough to draw much attention during a real crisis. The American State Department, which has been answering its telephones since Monday, refused to comment —

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Chapter Twenty-Eight

LAKE-OF-FIRE, KANSAS

The Reverend George Stein turned off the monitor abruptly. He’d heard enough, and more than enough; there wasn’t anything substantial in the BBC report that hadn’t been in the network news from CBS and NBC. None of it was pleasant to hear. It needed paying attention to, anyway; and he’d gone to no small trouble to be able to listen to it. Radio signals didn’t travel well here so close to the Lake of Fire that the missile had created. Just the opposite, in fact. If they hadn’t managed to get control over that satellite, had it picking up signals and beaming them down, there’d be no way to receive any news at all, bar the telephone.

George Stein was sick of the news. He was sick of the news and uneasy and since last night a lot more than that; since last night he’d begun to be afraid. Not terrified. Not scared out of his wits. Honestly, plainly worried and afraid. Something was wrong, dead wrong. Things were happening that Herman Bonner had never told him to expect. And even Herman himself had seemed surprised at them.