That brought an uneasy murmur. Of course, the kid was worrying about Mack"s own code bursts, but no way could he say that.
"Those are probably just signals to their rich families, arranging for more supplies. Now listen to me, I know the place from the inside out and I"ve got the kind of training you need for an op like this. Special Forces. Afghanistan. Pakistan."
"Unit?" the guy with the rifle asked.
He"d done this sort of thing many times before, and it actually felt good to do it again. "Night Stalkers," he replied easily. "160th SOAR." One of the many answers he had to the many questions a CIA field officer gets about his ident.i.ty. You always lie, even to your friends. SOAR." One of the many answers he had to the many questions a CIA field officer gets about his ident.i.ty. You always lie, even to your friends.
The guy started to be impressed, but then he asked another question. "How"d you end up in the kitchen?"
"Oh, I was on security, all right. But we got shoot-to-kill orders last week and I told Glen MacNamara that I could not do that." He looked around the room. "You all know who Glen is?"
They knew. Like any town living beneath the walls of a castle, they were obsessed with what went on inside it. Except they did not know about this food, of course. Naturally not, because it didn"t exist. But their imaginations and their eagerness to hate the palace made them believe it in without question. In truth, the clinic was just about stripped of food like everyplace else-except, of course, for the redoubts. If he had wanted to be straight with them, he should tell them how to get to the Blue Ridge underground facility, but he had no intention of doing that. There, they would find food enough to carry this town for five years. Yeah, and give the food of the pure of blood to this gaggle of human trash? Not gonna happen. The pure of blood were the future of the world, or it had no future.
"What I need to do is for you folks to get me the building and ground plans for the clinic from the buildings department, then I can lay out a professional plan of attack for you."
"Mister, they"ve got SOPMODs in there, I"ve seen them. And bigger stuff. Lots of it. Plus those cannons that make you feel like you"re on fire. The best we can do are a couple of a.s.sault rifles and this kinda stuff." He ported his deer rifle.
"Except you"re gonna have me in there, and you"re gonna have a Ranger plan." He addressed them all. "I can"t tell you that n.o.body"s gonna go down, because that"s not gonna happen. There will be casualties. But you will win. That I can tell you, because that"s what"s gonna happen."
And when they couldn"t find the food, they would first slaughter the bosses, and when they still couldn"t find it, they would fall victim to their own rage, and they would lay waste to the place.
They got the blueprints he needed, and together they laid out a good plan of attack, one that would actually work. "This gate," he said at last, pointing to the disused back gate on the grounds plan, "will be unlocked. After your feint draws them to the front of the grounds-and they"ll all come running, they"re not that well trained-then you just send your main force right through that gate. You get inside the grounds, they are toast, people."
They worked out a schedule, and at midnight, he began his journey back. Crazy ole Mack was just about done in, starving and filthy. Mack was sorry. Mack was coming home.
14.
THE HAND OF DARKNESS.
On the night side of the earth, most of the lights-the cities of New York and London and Paris-had gone dark, and the atmosphere glowed softly purple against the strangling void. The International s.p.a.ce Station swung through its...o...b..t in darkness. Inside, the bodies of the crew floated, one or two hands fisted, most touching the air as if it was something miraculous, their fingers carefully extended. The bodies appeared old, the hair gray with frost from the suffocating carbon dioxide of their own breath, which is what had-mercifully and gently-killed them.
Along the face of the night far below moved the great, glowing objects, working faster now, sliding just a few hundred feet above the suffering land, seeking with probes beyond human knowing, signals from our souls.
They had an enormous task before them, because one of the most improbable truths about mankind is that the vast majority of people are good, and would not need to sink away into the long contemplation that draws the evil, ever so slowly, to face themselves.
Had we not been rendered soul blind by the catastrophe that destroyed our pre-Egyptian civilization, the coming of the great objects would not have been mysterious to us. But it was mysterious, it was very mysterious, and the immense, drifting shapes only added terror to terror, and people hid, and hid their children, and dared not look upon these machineries of rescue.
Aboard, this caused neither surprise nor concern. If you looked into the workings of these machines, you would find that they were old and worn, full of humble signs that they were somebody"s home.
In this immense universe of ours, worlds die every day, so the objects and their crews were always busy, flashing from one catastrophe to the next, harvesting the spiritual produce of planets in cataclysm with the industry and care of the good farmers that they were.
David had been watching these objects in his mind"s eye, when he heard screams.
They were not cries of madness but of pain-no, agony. Terrible human agony was involved.
"Katie," he called as he went through the outer office, but she was already far along the hall. As he reached the top of the grand staircase, he saw her at the bottom, turning toward the back of the building and the patients" activity area.
He slid along the broad mahogany planks of the priceless floor of the front hallway, his stomach churning and congealed. Was there fire down there, or somebody being torn apart by some escaped jacket case, or had one of the dociles suddenly gone berserk?
He went through the empty dining room with its splendid crystal and silver laid out already for tomorrow"s breakfast, and then to the steel door that led into the patient wing.
The uproar was coming, as he had antic.i.p.ated, from the activity area, which was filled with a white, chalky light unlike any he had ever seen before. Was it radiation from the sun? But why only these windows? So, no.
Katie stood in the doorway, and David stopped beside her. For the first moment, a scene of true terror often makes no sense to the eyes, and that was the case here. What David saw were crowding black silhouettes, all pressed up against the barred armor-gla.s.s windows that, at better times, let sunlight flood this s.p.a.ce. Then he realized that they were patients, all peering out the windows.
In among the figures was somebody moving quickly, racing back and forth and screaming, and then he saw her run like a mad thing through the parted crowd and leap at least six feet into the air, hurling herself against the outside doors with a horrible crunch.
"Let me through," he shouted as he went toward her. Katie remained standing, transfixed.
As the crowd parted, David saw two injured people on the floor, Sam Taylor and Beverly Cross. Sam cradled his right arm. Beverly looked up from a swollen face as he pa.s.sed.
"Careful, David," she said, "she"s real bad."
It was Linda Fairbrother.
Caroline was near her. "She"s breaking herself to pieces. David, help her!"
She leaped at the door again, then bounced back and hit the floor with a sickening slap and lay still, a lovely woman covered with bruises, her nose a ma.s.s of purple flesh, one eye swollen closed, in the glaring white ocean of the light that shone through the windows and the gla.s.s of the door.
"Linda," he said, kneeling beside her shattered body, "Linda, I am here to help you. I can help you."
"Let her out," Caroline cried.
From outside, there rose another sound, low at first, then gaining strength, finally becoming the enormous howl of what must be the largest siren in the history of the world.
As it grew louder, Linda"s body stiffened. Then her good eye swam to the front and stared up into the light.
"David, get back!" Caroline drew him away from Linda.
As if being drawn by some sort of invisible rope, she rose up, knocking him aside in the process. Then she ran toward the door, gathering speed fast. He leaped at her, felt his head and shoulders connect with her body, noted the rigor of extreme panic, then felt himself thrown aside like a rag.
While he tumbled helplessly against Caroline, Linda slammed against the door, hammering it with her hands and shrieking, then leaping against it again and again, so fast that the sound of her body hitting the thick gla.s.s was like a series of cannon blasts.
Dear heaven, he had never seen a symptom like this, never in his life.
"Hurry," Caroline snapped.
If she was going to survive, he saw that he had to open the doors, but if he did, other patients would certainly go out into that light and G.o.d only knew what it was.
"All right," he shouted, "everybody across the room. Staff, help me here-get them back-all of you, get back, give her s.p.a.ce."
Caroline made a gesture, and everybody moved back. David made note of this. Even the staff were watching her for instructions.
Linda leaped up and began slamming against the door again, jumping four or five feet into the air each time.
"Do it, David! Let her out!"
A haze of blood appeared around her, and as the air filled with the smell of it, he went close, shielding himself as best he could, and finally managed to swipe the fingerprint reader.
It didn"t work.
"Keys, my G.o.d, I need keys!"
Again Linda hit the door, again and again. Caroline and Linda"s desperate, tear-streaked lover, Tom Dryden, tried to control her.
"Glen! Glen MacNamara, I need keys!" David looked desperately around the room. "Get Glen, somebody!"
The siren came again, rising, wailing, a soul-whipping sound that turned Linda into a human piston, driving her again and again and again into the thick, unyielding door.
"Doctor," Tom shouted, "sedate her! Get a d.a.m.n shot in her!"
Then Glen was pushing through the crowd, his dirty white shirt soaked with sweat. "I was afraid we"d lose that d.a.m.n locking system," he said as he thrust a key into the door and threw it open at last.
Linda went racing out, her body lurching from broken bones, her face now a purple blotch, unrecognizable. Tom followed her into the light, laughing and eager, and both seemed almost to be dancing, their anguish transformed in an instant to lilting joy.
David followed them, and when the light struck him he was suffused with an exquisite sensation, at once physical and emotional, a surging shiver of delight that was coupled to poignant nostalgia, and he thought, This is how we"re meant to feel, this is the aim of life. This is how we"re meant to feel, this is the aim of life.
He saw in the light a ladder hanging down-and it was old, with bent rungs, but made of silver metal that gave off a gorgeous glow.
He remembered his grandfather"s friend"s description of the thing that Father Heim had seen at Fatima, and knew that, even then, they had been preparing.
Linda dragged herself, a white ma.s.s of bone protruding from her left leg, her fingers crazy from breaks, her breath coming in warbling sighs as she sucked air past swollen lips and broken teeth. Tom a.s.sisted her, an arm around her waist.
"You look to the injured in there, David," Caroline said. "We"ve got this under control."
As Linda was flooded by the light and her body became white with it, she began to reflect its whiteness. He saw her bones melt back into her skin and her face grow normal again-but then more, it was a shining face, full of the joy and energy of some higher world, and David had the sense that he was in the presence of a great and dignified being that was returning home.
Before his eyes, this ordinary, humble patient was transfigured into a being of grandeur, naked in her physical perfection, ascending in the healing flood of light.
An obscure sort of sorrow flickered in his heart then. Caroline"s hand slipped into his, and he knew that she had the same question, Why not me?
Other patients came out like pilgrims to a shrine, wandering as people do in fog, blinded by the light, calling out, their voices echoing dully. Some of them raised their arms as if asking for deliverance.
In the next moment Linda, the light, the great object that had produced it-all were gone, a majesty ascended into the turmoil of the sky.
An instant later, there was a devastated, earsplitting shriek and Tom Dryden collapsed in a heap in the gra.s.s.
More groans filled the silence, sounds of deep human misery and despair.
"Don"t," Caroline called out to them. "It all balances out."
Tom got up and came shuffling closer. "We were going together," he muttered. "Together!" He jumped a couple of times, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the air.
The others were milling now, peering into the violet sky, still calling to the emptiness.
"Please," David said, "we need to get inside, this is not safe."
As they went back in, he said to Glen, "If this recurs, let any patient out who wants to go. I don"t want them beating themselves to death against the walls."
Glen nodded.
Most of the patients were cl.u.s.tering in small groups in the activity area, talking among themselves. Tom Dryden cradled his chest and swayed back and forth, his eyes closed.
David said to Claire Michaels, "Can you attend to him, please?"
"Of course, Doctor," the resident replied. "Tom, do you want some Xanax? You can have a dose, Tom, if you need it."
"The sins of the world belong to us," he said, "the sins of the world."
"Why do they belong to us?" Claire asked him as she gently led him away. If the world ever returned to what it had been-if that was possible-she was going to develop into an excellent clinician.
David approached Katie, who was wiping blood off Sam Taylor"s forehead.
"I"m sorry, Sam," David said.
"I"m the one who should be sorry, Doc. I lost my patient."
He was referring to Mack, of course. Frankly, David was glad.
"That guy was no loss. Katie, how"s Bev Cross?"
"All right," she said, as he moved deeper into the recreation area, then the art room.
Caroline was sitting under the light of a lamp she had pulled close to her easel, once again painting with quiet concentration.
Going toward her, he caught sight of Katie following him with her eyes.
"I"m fine," he said to Katie.
"I know you"re fine."
He heard anger and stopped. He went to her.
"I am. I"m fine."
"We"ve now lost two patients, first Mack leaves and then this. That"s the sort of operation you run, Doctor." She turned away from him, started toward the hallway.
He caught up with her.
"Katie, you need to pull yourself together."
She froze, her head bowed.