Virgin (44 page)

Maybe Charlie
and the object should be closer. And since it was such a major task to move
Charlie's setup
with its IVs and oxygen tank, Arthur figured the easiest way to get the two
together was to move the body.

If Mohammed
can't come to the mountain . . .

He turned to
Emilio. "Let's move her over by Charlie, table and all."

Emilio held
back a moment. He'd seemed to be keeping his distance from the body. Strange .
. . Arthur had always thought of Emilio as the least superstitious man he'd
ever met. When he finally approached, they each took an end of the coffee table
and, carrying it like a stretcher, moved the table and its burden around the
couch and set it down next to Charlie's hospital bed.

Arthur then
said a prayer, asking the Lord to forgive Charlie for his past and to allow the
healing powers in this relic--be it the remains of His earthly Mother or some
other holy person--to drive the infection from his son's wasted body so that he
might continue his life and have an opportunity to make up for the evil ways of
his past.

As he finished
the prayer with a heartfelt recital of the "Our Father," Arthur
slipped Charlie's painfully thin, limp, clammy arm through the guardrail and
guided it toward the body on the table. He pressed the back of Charlie's hand
against its dry cheek and held it there.

Arthur wasn't
sure what he'd expected, but he was hoping for more than what he got, which was
nothing.

He swallowed
his disappointment. He had to keep in mind that there'd been no pyrotechnics
associated with the Manhattan healings, so the lack of them here didn't mean
that nothing had happened.

He held
Charlie's hand against the skin for a good fifteen minutes, all the while
praying for mercy for his son, then he replaced the arm under the bedsheet.

He noticed
Emilio standing off to the side, staring out at the darkness. He seemed
preoccupied.

"Well,"
Arthur said, "all we can do now is watch and wait."

Emilio nodded
but said nothing.

Arthur shrugged
and turned on the TV to check out the latest on the big Pacific storm. The
Weather Channel
said it was still headed for the southern part of the state. Paraiso would get
only the fringe winds.

Good. In the
morning he'd have some blood drawn on Charlie for a stat CD-4 count. If this
relic had done its work, the count would be up and Charlie's fever would break.

Please, God.
Not for me . . . for Charlie.

He switched to
CNN in the middle of a story about the theft of a religious object from a
Manhattan church. Film showed close-ups of enraged faces and crowds tipping
over police cars and smashing store windows.

Arthur's
stomach lurched and he glanced back at the body on the table next to Charlie's
bed.
That
was the only object they could be talking about. But why such coverage--on CNN
of all places? He hadn't expected this kind of commotion. He'd have to have
Emilio drop it off someplace where it could be "discovered" tomorrow.

And then the
screen showed the newswoman at a desk with the face of a young nun superimposed
over her shoulder. Arthur leaned forward, straining his ears because what she
was saying could not be true. The young nun had been murdered during the theft
of the object.

Murdered!

Arthur swiveled
in his seat and tried to rise to his feet but his legs wouldn't support him.

"Emilio?"
he gasped. "You didn't . . . you couldn't have . . ."

But the look in
Emilio's eyes told him more than any words could say.

"Dear God,
Emilio! Dear
God!"

Manhattan

As Dan watched,
a pale, dark-haired woman in a long white coat stepped inside the rectory side
door.

Dan
dropped
his
drink.
His knees
buckled
and he
clutched the back of a chair to
keep from falling. He opened his mouth to speak but his voice wasn't there.

Carrie!

"I have to
go to California, Dan," she said evenly as she entered the front room.

He stumbled
forward and threw his arms around her.

"Carrie!"
he croaked. "You're alive! Thank God, you're--"

She stood stiff
and unresponsive in his embrace; her skin was cold against his cheek. Her chill
transmitted to him. Spicules of ice formed in his blood as she spoke again.

"No, Dan.
I'm not."

Dan released
her and backed away. She was staring at him with her bright blue eyes, but they
were her only lively feature; the rest of her face was slack, and her voice . .
. hollow. Not movie-zombie dead and robotic. It had timbre and tone, but there
was something missing. Emotion. She was like some of the guests at Loaves and
Fishes who came in stoned on downers.

An inane
question popped out of his reeling mind: "How did you get here?"

"I
walked."

He noticed
Kesev had risen and was standing beside him.

"Carrie . . ." Dan said, his mind whirling, refusing to
accept what he was seeing. "I . . .you . . .the doctors said you were
dead."

She reached
forward and took his hand--her touch was so
cold.
She freed his index
finger from the others and pulled the front to her lab coat open. She pressed
the tip of Dan's finger into the small round hole along the inner border of her
left breast.

"He killed
me, Dan."

Dan cried out
in anguish and revulsion as he tore his hand free. The room dipped and veered
to the left, then the right. The Scotch, the concussion, seeing Carrie
murdered, getting her back but not getting her back because she wasn't really
back . . . it was all too much. Unable to stand any longer, he sank to his
knees before her.

"Oh, God,
Carrie! What is this? What does it
mean?"

"I have to
go to California, Dan. Please help me get there."

"Calif--?"

Kesev stepped
forward. "Why California? Is that where the Mother is?"

Carrie turned
and stared at Kesev as if seeing him for the first time. She took a step
backward and something twitched in her expression. Dan tried to decipher it:
Surprise? Wonder? Fear?

"You . . .
I know who you are."

"The
Mother?" Kesev said quickly. "She's in California now?"

"Yes. I
have to be with her."

"Can you
take us to her?"

"I need
help. We have to hurry. We have to fly."

"Yes,
yes!" Kesev said excitedly. "We will leave immediately!"

"Now just
a damn minute!" Dan said, struggling back to his feet. "We're not
going anywhere until I know--"

"The
Mother is there!" Kesev said, eyes bright as he leaned into Dan's face. "The
sister will lead us to her."

"No! This
is crazy! I'll call the police. Detective Garner--"

As Dan turned
to reach for the phone, Kesev grabbed his arm. His fingers cut into him like
steel cables.

"She came
to
us,
Father Fitzpatrick. Was
sent
to us. Not to the police.
Us!
That means that
we
are meant to go with her. It is not our place to
involve the police. Do you understand what I am saying?"

Dan nodded. He
was beginning to understand--at least as much as someone could understand something
like this. He realized Kesev had his own agenda here. He wanted the Virgin
back. If what he'd said was true, he'd been guarding the Virgin for two
thousand years and wasn't about to quit now. In the face of Carrie's reanimated
corpse standing here before him, Dan found that relatively easy to accept.

But who
was
Kesev?

Carrie was the
other mystery. Had she been brought back from death for a purpose, or had her
desire to be with the Virgin overcome death itself?

Dan could find
little comfort in either alternative. But it didn't matter. Carrie was here,
asking for his help. Dan would do everything in his power to give her that
help. "All right," he said.
"Let's call the airlines."

IN THE PACIFIC

30deg N, 122deg W

As its fringe
winds begin to brush the coast of southern California, the storm veers sharply

north.

Captain Harry
Densmore stares bleary-eyed through the windshield and adjusts 705's circular

course along
the eye wall. They should have been out of fuel long ago, but the needle on the

gauge hasn't
budged since they entered the eye. So they keep on flying. They've
got
to
keep on

flying.

But what are
the engines running on?

24

HURRICANE WARNING

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED
A

HURRICANE WARNING FOR SANTA CRUZ, MONTEREY,

AND SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTIES. HURRICANE LANDFALL

IS EXPECTED BY 9:00
a.m.
EVACUATION
OF OCEANFRONT

AND LOW-LYING AREAS SHOULD BEGIN IMMEDIATELY.

The Weather Channel

Paraiso

Emilio fought
through the horizontal sheets of rain assaulting the ambulance as he wound up
the road through the woods to Paraiso. Bolts of lightning lanced the sky,
clearing the way for the ground-shaking thunder, but the heavy vehicle hugged
the road.

When the storm
changed course and it became clear that it would strike Monterey County, the
senador
had sent him to find an ambulance for Charlie, to take him inland out of
harm's way.

But there was
no ambulances to be had. The city had placed every available ambulance, public
and private, on standby alert. Emilio had stopped by a few services personally,
contacted many more by phone. No matter how much he offered, they would not
risk their licenses by hiring out for a private run during the emergency.

Call the county
Civil Defense, they said. All you've got to do is tell them it's an emergency,
that you need an ambulance immediately to remove an invalid from an evacuation
area, and they'll okay it. No problem.

No problem? Not
quite. Emilio could hardly get Monterey County officialdom involved in moving
an AIDS patient who happened to be Senator Arthur Crenshaw's son. The word
would spread like the wind from this storm. He couldn't even allow a private
ambulance company to know who it was transporting. He wanted to rent a
fully-equipped rig and drive it himself. The answer everywhere was the same:
Nothing doing.

After the last
call, Emilio had torn the pay telephone off the wall in a blind rage. He could
not let the
senador
down on this. He'd already suffered the withering
fury of his anger after he'd learned about the nun. The
senador
had been
quiet at first, then he'd exploded, calling Emilio a murderous fool, a
ham-handed incompetent, a dolt who had jeopardized a lifetime of effort. The
senador
had turned away in disgust, telling him to see if he could do something as
simple as hiring an ambulance without screwing that up.

Hurt,
humiliated, Emilio had vowed never to fail the
senador
again, but events
continued to conspire against him. He
had
to get an ambulance. To return
to Paraiso without one was unthinkable.

So Emilio stole
one.

Quite easy,
actually. He'd parked his own car at an indoor garage, then walked two blocks
to the lot of one of the ambulance services. Amid the tumult of the storm, they
never heard him jump start the engine and drive away.

A particularly
violent blast of wind buffeted the ambulance as it crossed the one-car bridge
over the ravine. The top-heavy vehicle lurched and for an instant--just an
instant--Emilio lost control as it seemed to roll along on only two wheels. It
slewed and skidded and veered toward the guardrail, but before he could panic
there came a thump and it rocked back onto all four wheels again.

And then a
deafening
pop
and a sizzle as a blinding bolt of lightning wide as a man
arced into the base of a huge ponderosa pine on the far side of the ravine.
There was no pause between the flash and the thunder. The ambulance, the
bridge, the entire ravine shook with the deafening crash.