Spin (49 page)

“Tyler? Tyler, there
is
no way past. You have to—”

But Simon’s voice was drowned in a burst of static. The full light of the sun must have reached the aerostat that was relaying the call, washing out the signal. I hit redial instinctively, but the phone was useless.

I crouched there until the sun was three quarters up, glancing at it and glancing away, as mesmerized as I was frightened. The disc was huge and ruddy orange. Sunspots crawled over it like festering sores. Now and again, gouts of dust rose from the surrounding desert to obscure it.

Then I stood up. Dead already, perhaps. Perhaps fatally irradiated without even knowing it. The heat was bearable, at least so far, but bad things might be happening on the cellular level, X-rays needling through the air like invisible bullets. So I stood up and began to walk down the pressed-earth road toward the farmhouse in plain sight, unarmed. Unarmed and unmolested at least until I had nearly reached the wooden porch, until Brother Sorley, all three hundred pounds of him, came hurtling through the screen door and levered the butt of a rifle against the side of my head.

Brother Sorley didn’t kill me, possibly because he didn’t want to meet the Rapture with blood on his hands. Instead he tossed me into an empty upstairs bedroom and locked the door.

A couple of hours passed before I could sit up without provoking waves of nausea.

When the vertigo finally eased I went to the window and raised the yellow paper blind. From this angle the sun was behind the house, the land and the barn washed in a fierce orange glare. The air was already brutally hot, but at least nothing was burning. A barn cat, oblivious to the conflagration in the sky, lapped stagnant water from a shady ditch. I guessed the cat might live to see sunset. So might I.

I tried to lift the ancient window frame—not that I could exactly leap down from here—but it was worse than locked; the sashes had been cut, the counterweights immobilized, the frame painted in place years ago.

There was no furniture in the room apart from the bed, no tool but the useless phone in my pocket.

The single door was a slab of solid wood and I doubted I had the strength to break it down. Diane might be only yards away, a single wall separating us. But there was no way to know that and no way to find out.

Even trying to think coherently about any of this provoked a deep, nauseating pain where the butt of the rifle had bloodied my head. I had to lie down again.

By midafternoon the wind had stilled. When I staggered back to the window I could see the edge of the solar disc above the house and the barn, so large it seemed to be perpetually falling, almost near enough to touch.

The temperature in the upstairs bedroom had climbed steadily since morning. I had no way of measuring it, but I would have guessed at least an even hundred Fahrenheit and rising. Hot but not enough to kill, at least not at once, not immediately. I wished I had Jason here to explain that to me, the thermodynamics of global extinction. Maybe he could have drawn a chart, established where the trend lines converged on lethality.

Heat haze quavered up from the baked ground.

Dan Condon crossed to the barn and back a couple more times. He was easy to recognize in the sharp intensity of the orange daylight, something nineteenth-century about him, his squared beard and pocked, ugly face: Lincoln in blue jeans, long-legged, purposeful. He didn’t look up even when I hammered on the glass.

Then I tapped the joining walls, thinking Diane might tap back. But there was no answer.

Then I was dizzy again, and I fell back on the bed, the air in the closed room sweltering, sweat drenching the bedclothes.

I slept, or lost consciousness.

Woke up thinking the room was on fire, but it was only the combination of stagnant heat and an impossibly gaudy sunset.

Went to the window again.

The sun had crossed the western horizon and was sinking with visible speed. High, tenuous clouds arched across the darkening sky, scraps of moisture drawn up from an already parched land. I saw that someone had rolled my car down the hill and parked it just left of the barn. And taken the keys, no doubt. Not that there was enough gas in the car to render it useful.

But I had lived through the day. I thought:
We
lived through the day. Both of us. Diane and I. And no doubt millions more. So this was the slow version of the apocalypse. It would kill us by cooking us a degree at a time; or, failing that, by gutting the terrestrial ecosystem.

The swollen sun finally disappeared. The air seemed instantly ten degrees cooler.

A few scattered stars showed through the gauzy clouds.

I hadn’t eaten, and I was painfully thirsty. Maybe it was Gondon’s plan to leave me here to die of dehydration… or maybe he had simply forgotten about me. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Pastor Dan was framing these events in his mind, whether he felt vindicated or terrified or some combination of both.

The room grew dark. No overhead light, no lamp. But I could hear a faint chugging that must be a gasoline-power generator, and light spilled from the first-floor windows and the barn.

Whereas I owned nothing in the way of technology except my phone. I took it out of my pocket and switched it on, idly, just to see the phosphorescence of the screen.

Then I had another thought.

“Simon?” Silence. “Simon, is that you? Can you hear me?”

Silence. Then a tinny, digitized voice:

“You nearly scared the life out of me. I thought this thing was broken.”

“Only during daylight.”

Solar noise had washed out transmissions from the high-altitude aerostats. But now the Earth was shielding us from the sun. Maybe the ‘stats had sustained some damage—the signal sounded low-band and staticky—but the bounce was good enough for now.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” he said, “but I warned you.”

“Where are you? The barn or the house?”

Pause. “The house.”

“I’ve been looking all day and I haven’t seen Condon’s wife or Sorley’s wife and kids. Or Mclsaac or his family. What happened to them?”

“They left.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Am I sure? Of course I’m sure. Diane wasn’t the only one to get sick. Only the latest. Teddy Mclsaac’s little girl took ill first. Then his son, then Teddy himself. When it looked like his kids were—well, you know, obviously really sick, sick and not getting better, well, that was when he put them in his truck and drove away. Pastor Dan’s wife went along.”

“When did this happen?”

“Couple of months ago. Aaron’s wife and kids took off by themselves not long after. Their faith failed them. Plus they were worried about catching something.”

“You saw them leave? You’re certain about that?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Trench by the barn looks a lot like something’s buried there.”

“Oh, that! Well, you’re right, something
is
buried there— the bad cattle.”

“Excuse me?”

“A man named Boswell Geller had a big ranch up in the Sierra Bonita. Friend of Jordan Tabernacle before the shake-up. Friend of Pastor Dan. He was breeding red heifers, but the Department of Agriculture started an investigation late last year. Just when he was making progress! Boswell and Pastor Dan wanted to breed together all the red cattle varieties of the world, because that would represent the conversion of the Gentiles. Pastor Dan says that’s what Numbers nineteen is all about—a pure red heifer born at the end of time, from breeds on every continent, everywhere the Gospel’s been preached. The sacrifice is literal and symbolic, both. In the biblical sacrifice the ashes of the heifer have the power to clean a defiled person. But at the end of the world the sun consumes the heifer and the ashes are scattered to the four compass points, cleansing the whole Earth, cleansing it of death. That’s what’s happening now. Hebrews nine—‘For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’ So of course—”

“You kept those cattle
here
?”

“Only a few. Fifteen breeders smuggled out before the Department of Agriculture could claim them.”

“That’s when people started getting sick?”

“Not just people. The cattle, too. We dug that trench by the barn to bury them in, all but three of the original stock.”

“Weakness, unsteady gait, weight loss preceding death?”

“Yes, mostly—how did you know?”

“Those are the symptoms of CVWS. The cows were carriers. That’s what’s wrong with Diane.”

There was a long ensuing silence. Then Simon said, “I can’t have this conversation with you.”

I said, “I’m upstairs in the back bedroom—”

“I know where you are.”

“Then come and unlock this door.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? Is somebody watching you?”

“I can’t just set you free. I shouldn’t even be talking to you. I’m busy, Tyler. I’m making dinner for Diane.”

“She’s still strong enough to eat?”

“A little… if I help her.”

“Let me out. No one has to know.”

“I can’t.”

“She needs a doctor.”

“I couldn’t let you out if I wanted to. Brother Aaron carries the keys.”

I thought about that. I said, “Then when you take dinner to her, leave the phone with her—your phone. You said she wanted to talk to me, right?”

“Half the time she says things she doesn’t mean.”

“You think that was one of them?”

“I can’t talk anymore.”

“Just leave her the phone, Simon. Simon?”

Dead air.

I went to the window, watched and waited.

I saw Pastor Dan carry two empty buckets from the barn to the house and travel back with the buckets full and steaming. A few minutes later Aaron Sorley crossed the gap to join him.

Which left only Simon and Diane in the house. Maybe he was giving her dinner. Feeding her.

I itched to use the phone but I had resolved to wait, let things settle a little more, let the heat go out of the night.

I watched the barn. Bright light spilled through the slat walls as if someone had installed a rack of industrial lights. Condon had been back and forth all day. Something was happening in the barn. Simon hadn’t said what.

The small luminosity of my watch counted off an hour.

Then I heard, faintly, a sound that might have been a closing door, footsteps on the stairs; and a moment later I saw Simon cross to the barn.

He didn’t look up.

Nor did he leave the barn once he’d arrived there. He was inside with Sorley and Condon, and if he was still carrying the phone, and if he’d been idiotic enough to set it for an audible ring, calling him now might put him in jeopardy. Not that I was especially concerned for Simon’s welfare.

But if he had left the phone with Diane, now was the hour.

I pecked out the number.

“Yes,” she said—it was Diane who answered—and then, inflection rising, a question, “Yes?”

Her voice was breathless and faint. Those two syllables were enough to beg a diagnosis.

I said, “Diane. It’s me. It’s Tyler.”

Trying to control my own raging pulse, as if a door had opened in my chest.

“Tyler,” she said. “Ty… Simon said you might call.”

I had to strain to make out the words. There was no force behind them; they were all throat and tongue, no chest. Which was consistent with the etiology of CVWS. The disease affects the lungs first, then the heart, in a coordinated attack of near-military efficiency. Scarred and foamy lung tissue passes less oxygen to the blood; the heart, oxygen-starved, pumps blood less efficiently; the CVWS bacteria exploit both weaknesses, digging deeper into the body with every laborious breath.

“I’m not far away,” I said. “I’m real close, Diane.”

“Close. Can I see you?”

I wanted to tear a hole in the wall. “Soon. I promise. We need to get you out of here. Get you some help. Fix you up.”

I listened to the sound of more agonized inhalations and wondered if I’d lost her attention. Then she said, “I thought I saw the sun…”

“It’s not the end of the world. Not yet, anyway.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“Simon,” she said.

“What about him?”

“He’ll be so disappointed.”

“You have CVWS, Diane. That’s almost certainly what McIsaac’s family had. They were smart to get help. It’s a curable disease.” I did not add,
Up to a certain point
or
As long as it hasn’t progressed to the terminal stage
. “But we have to get you out of here.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready to leave?”

“If the time comes…”

“The time is pretty close. Rest until then. But we might have to hurry. You understand, Diane?”

“Simon,” she said faintly. “Disappointed,” she said.

“You rest, and I—”

But I didn’t have time to finish.

A key rattled in the door. I flipped the phone closed and pushed it into my pocket. The door opened, and Aaron Sorley stood in the frame, rifle in hand, huffing as if he’d run up the stairs. He was silhouetted in the dim light from the hallway.

I backed away until my shoulders hit the wall.

“Tag on your license says you’re a doctor,” he said. “Is that right?”

I nodded.

“Then come with me,” he said.

Sorley marched me downstairs and out the rear door toward the barn.

The moon, stained amber by the light of the gibbous sun, scarred and smaller than I remembered it, had risen over the eastern horizon. The night air was almost intoxicatingly cool. I took deep breaths. The relief lasted until Sorley threw open the barn door and a raw, animal stench gushed out—a slaughterhouse smell of excrement and blood.

“Go on in,” Sorley said, and he gave me a push with his free hand.

The light came from a fat halide bulb suspended by its power cord over an open cattle stall. A gasoline generator rattled from an enclosure out back somewhere, a sound like someone revving a distant motorcycle.