After the Dark (21 page)

. . . and yank.

She did know that White's head disappeared from her view, and the weight of him lifted off her.

She was on her elbow, propping herself up, when she saw White—or anyway, White's body—on the ground next to her, red pumping out of the pipelike opening of his neck, a wide geysering spigot where his head had been.

And when Max sat up, she saw where that head was now—six and a half feet above her, where Joshua held the detached cranium, by the hair, at eye level, staring into White's lifeless face.

“You shouldn't have done it,” Joshua said, and his voice was strangely gentle, scolding the blood-dripping head, as if warning a child. “You shouldn't have killed Annie.”

Annie . . . the ordinary Joshua had loved, and who loved him, a gentle blind girl who White had slain out of sheer meanness.

Joshua was staring at White's head, as if waiting for an apology.

Then, when no apology came, a cry of anguish rose from deep within the leonine figure, and he swung his arm, like an airplane propeller, and cast the head into the dark night, where it landed with a distant plop.

Suddenly Joshua was leaning down over her, saying, “Sorry, Little Fella. Kinda lost my head.”

She just looked at him, wondering if he knew what he'd said. Then Joshua was pulling her up to her feet, and she inspected her wound—the shoulder was stiff, but the bullet seemed to have gone on through, and her transgenic body was already working at repairing itself. Rolling the shoulder a little, she said, “Gonna be all right.”

Joshua helped up Logan, too.

She quickly surveyed the battle—transgenics outnumbered Familiars now—looking for that silver-haired ghost, Matthias.

She spotted him, on the run, the long robe flowing behind him, the tippet flapping, as he headed up the stairs and back inside the asylum.

“Stay out here,” she told Logan and Joshua, “till the building's secure . . . Alec! Mole! Follow me!”

Chapter Eleven

THE END

THE CONCLAVE STRONGHOLD
DECEMBER 25, 2021

Max waded into the sea of robed Familiars. Behind her, in an impressive display of martial-arts prowess, Alec was handily dealing with a pair of the cultists. Mole was off to the one side, taking care of another of the armed three-man TAC patrols, blasting away at them mercilessly, and they fell like camouflaged bowling pins.

But soon the two warriors—in answer to her call—were at her back, as she plowed her way toward the steps to the front entry of the hospital.

The tide of the fight had turned decisively toward the transgenics. Those Familiars who weren't already lying in broken heaps on the ground were taking flight, a few literally heading for the hills, others around the building, presumably for another way inside or perhaps to make it to the parking lot—and, in either case, the ragtag transgenics gave chase.

Once they were up the short flight of steps, Max, Mole, and Alec went inside unimpeded. For all the frenetic and violent activity outside, the asylum itself seemed deserted. Initially, they found themselves in what had once been a reception/waiting room area, with a double-door elevator, but no chairs lined the walls, and the nurse/receptionist window was vacant; otherwise, it was just a big empty slab room, cut through the middle by a long hallway.

Though voices could be heard, the cries of prisoners, these did not emanate from this floor—in fact, they sounded more like they were coming from the walls. The effect was ghostly, troubling, but this floor was clearly administrative, small tidy offices with computers and desks and chairs and files, as you might find in any institution of this type. The thought of the inhabitants of these neat offices being cultists with pagan facial markings, parading in flowing hooded robes, chanting ritual gibberish, seemed utterly absurd . . . or would have, if they hadn't just pushed their way through a throng of them out on the battlefield that the asylum grounds had turned into.

The building was old and badly in need of renovation, yet the place was neat, floors dust-free, no cobwebs, the walls and ceilings clean, the entire facility smelling of pine cleaner and disinfectant.

Moving cautiously, Max signaled for them to split up, Alec and Mole each taking one of the side halls while Max went down the middle.

Max found fire stairs at the end and started up.

The second floor was cells—cries for help, shouts for attention, echoed down the hallways. No guards were around, no robed Familiars—no one home but the inmates. She had a good idea who they were: prisoners of the Conclave, perhaps ordinaries who'd tipped to the evil practices and intentions of the Familiars, or betrayers among their own ranks, possibly even transgenics—mixed with the real mental patients who'd provided the cover.

On the third floor landing she found another small reception area, this one not so spare—nicely paneled, with comfortable chairs and magazines on end tables, another window (empty, of course) where a nurse and or receptionist could sit.

She pushed through double doors down a short corridor of examination rooms and more small tidy offices. The medicinal scent was strong, making her nose twitch, but that was well in keeping with what seemed a clinic of some kind. This section of the building seemed to her a facade designed to fool state inspectors and those families who really were committing their loved ones (unwittingly) to snake-cult care.

At the end of the short hall was a windowless metal door, with no knob—just a slot for an ID card. In bold red letters on the gray door it said:

NO ADMITTANCE

Well, surely
somebody
could go in there, she thought. What was the point of a place that no one could be admitted to?

So she kicked the door down. It was solid and took two tries, but on the second it went flying and clattered to an obsidian floor.

She got a quick look at the room—a large rounded chamber, with a planetarium-type dome, a vast curved viewing window that made the starry sky, in effect, the room's ceiling. The circular room, dimly lighted by recessed fixtures, was wall-to-wall stacked monitors; a dozen seats—empty at the moment—faced these monitors, with computer stations at each post. About a third of the monitors were security cams—showing inmates in their cells, views of the grounds and hallways and stairs and the downstairs reception area, and the area she'd just come through, for that matter.

The rest of the monitors were satellite images from all around the world, each boldly labeled with a red-letter readout that identified the city shown, as well as the local time—she glimpsed Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, Toronto, Moscow, London, Lisbon, Sydney, and on and on. On the screens were live pictures of the cities, in populous areas—Chicago's cam was on Michigan Avenue, near the Water Tower, and New York was, of course, Times Square, where Christmas Eve had turned into something approaching New Year's Eve, people with little glowing candles in hand, watching the sky, waiting for the comet to come.

And in the center of the room, raised up on a five-foot platform, was a molded black chair, strangely like a human hand rising to caress the person perched there, with controls built into the wide flat armrests—Captain Kirk's chair, revised by Salvadore Dali. In this chair, this throne, his hood back, sat silver-haired Matthias.

All of this she took in, in a moment, which was all she had before a figure flew at her, snarling, a priestess with a ceremonial dagger in one hand and long clawed nails ready with the other. Rather lost in her robe, the priestess was slender and lovely, or would have been if her face had not been covered in ritual tattoos, and she took Max down in a diving roll, one powerful arm and hand slipping around Max as the knife rose.

But before the blade fell, Max grasped the arm hugging her and snapped it like a twig, then flung the woman off—the priestess, Familiar or not, was feather light.

One arm dangling, useless, the priestess hissed and came at Max low, charging, knife again raised; and Max sidestepped her, latching onto the flowing robes and running her headlong into one of the monitors, crashing the woman's head through the screen in a shower of glass and an eruption of smoke and flame.

“So much for monitoring London,” Max said to Matthias as the priestess shuddered and shivered, literally jolted as electrocution won out over centuries of selective breeding.

Matthias swiveled toward Max. He seemed not at all concerned, certainly not a whit distraught over the loss of the priestess.

“In the pre-Pulse world,” Matthias said to her, his voice rich, strangely soothing, with a faint Teutonic lilt, “such demonstrations of your mutant powers might impress. Now . . . as we await the momentary arrival of the Coming, seeing such a childish display on your part, 452 . . . seems almost nostalgic.”

She kept her distance from him, for the moment; his hands were on controls on those armrests, and she had no idea what he could do from his perch.

She heard something behind her, whirled, and it was Alec, with Mole bringing up the rear.

“Whoa,” Alec said. “Dude's got
some
home entertainment center . . .” He nodded toward the slumped, smoking priestess hanging out of the London monitor. “But y'know, it's dangerous, if you sit too close to the screen.”

Mole, glancing around, said, “So who's this character? Blofeld? . . . Building's clear of snake suckers, except for this guy. Lots of inmates, though, on the second floor.”

Matthias seemed bored with them. But he granted them this observation: “The Coming is inevitable. Your efforts . . . They are small, pitiful attempts, small boats hoping to ride out a typhoon.”

Hardly listening, Alec was staring at the ceiling. “Now,
that's
a skylight . . .”

Matthias gestured toward a bank of monitors—in the hooded, loose robe, it was like the specter of death, pointing.

“We flee into the night, and you cannot stop us,” he said.

Among the monitors were views of the parking lot, where robed Familiars were frantically getting into their cars and booking.

“Where do you keep your car keys in those cloak things?” Alec asked.

Max shot him a look.

“Just wondering,” Alec said.

“Some of our brothers have fallen tonight,” Matthias said. “But these others will go out into the world and spread the word . . . and our seed . . . even as the ordinaries wither like unpicked fruit on the vine.”

Alec, still chatty, asked, “So in a few minutes, when this biotoxin hits . . . How long's it take to kick in?”

“Many will die in moments,” the silver-haired Familiar said. “Others, the strongest of a weak species, will cling to life.”

“And Max here,” Alec said, “can give 'em a clean bill of health, once we get the vaccine goin' . . . Mole, you're a businessman. How much do you think we can get, for a shot of Maxine?”

Max arched an eyebrow. “Maxine?”

“Vaccine . . . Max . . . get it? We'll have to trademark it.”

Mole was not amused. “Let me ice this sucker, and let's be home for Christmas.”

Matthias stood, looming over them.
“Kon'ta ress! Ken'dra hiff!”
He was staring at the sky—the stars—and, seemingly, speaking to them. His arms outstretched. He continued the ancient incantation:
“Adara mos rekali . . . konoss rehu jek!”

Mole, raising his pistol, said, “Nobody can make me listen to this crapola . . .”

“The future!” Matthias's voice echoed through the dark, dim chamber, the monitors glowing like small fires. “The future . . . arrives!”

The trio of transgenics followed the Familiar's finger to the glass dome . . .

. . . and saw a streak of silver and gold, appearing in the sky, a fiery Christmas ribbon flung across the heavens, its tail a shimmering scattering of white sparks.

“Cool,” Alec said.

Max had never seen anything quite so beautiful, nor so breathtaking. And still she shuddered: was that stardust trail the bearer of the biotoxin—the beginning of the end for mankind . . . ?

Matthias stood on his roost, his eyes going from one monitor to another . . .

On some of the screens, faces shone with delight from the sight of the Christmas comet. In some locales, a sea of small candles glowed, as if at a church service; in others, gay streamers of silver shook in upraised hands, in happy imitation of the remarkable event they'd just seen. Though there was no sound from the monitors, it was clear cheers and hoops and hollers and whoops of Yuletide joy were ringing in the air at the various locales. And then, slowly, spectators began to filter off, into their own lives, their own celebrations of the holiday . . .

. . . and they all looked just fine.

Matthias stared with an astounded expression—Max had never seen a longer puss on a guy. He kept shifting his vision from one monitor to another, and all he could see was ordinaries having a good time . . . clearly feeling hunky-dory.

“Maybe it takes a while to kick in,” Alec said. He seemed vaguely disappointed. “An hour or so.”

“Or maybe a thousand years,” Max said.

Matthias sat—heavily—in his black chair; it was as if the hand shape of it was trying to crush him.

“Hey, don't be down in the dumps,” Mole said, stepping up to him. “Do what the other end-of-the-world cults do, when the big day craps out on 'em. Pick a new one! Revise and move on.”

“We . . . are . . . superior,” Matthias said, dazed.

“Sure you are,” Max said. “I read about this cult . . . before the Pulse? A comet was coming to take them to outer space, where God was waiting for 'em. First the men had to castrate themselves . . .”

“Ouch,” Alec said.

“. . . and then take poison. Purify themselves—y'know, you don't want to meet God without sprucing up a bit. But they just
knew
that comet was gonna take 'em to outer space. Guess what? They're still waiting.”

Matthias looked directly at Max, his expression haunted. “It was predetermined thousands of years ago. We
shall
prevail—”

“Maybe next comet,” Alec said. “When's that, 4006?”

Max stepped nearer to Matthias. “Can you control the facility from where you sit?”

Matthias turned his gaze upon her. “Of course.”

“Then unlock all the cells . . . Cooperate, and we'll spare you.”

Mole said, “Hey! I say we—”

“It's not a democracy,” she reminded him. Then to Matthias she said, “Well?”

Matthias's ice-blue eyes fell to the computer screen built into the armrest—he touched the screen, in a “button” at the upper right . . .

. . . and the monitors changed image.

All of them the same.

All, in huge red numbers, reading:
5:00
. For one second, that is; then they read:
4:59 . . . 4:58 . . . 4:57 . . .

Max jumped onto the perch and grabbed him by the front of his robe. “What the hell—”

“This facility will self-destruct in five minutes. More or less. Less, now.”

She put her hands on either side of his face and looked at him, as if she were going to kiss the silver-haired leader. “You won't have to wait,” she said.

And broke his neck.

Hopping down, she said, “Alec—take a look at those controls. We got
minutes
to clear this place and get our people off these grounds!”

Mole pitched what was left of his latest stogie and grumbled, “Why can't these megalomaniac meatheads be satisfied with killin' themselves? Why do they gotta take a bunch of people with 'em?”

“We'll break up into discussion groups later,” Max said, unceremoniously pulling the corpse of Matthias by his feet down off the throne onto the black floor, while Alec scrambled up in his place.

She looked at him, hopeful. “Think you can unlock 'em?”

“No problem.” Alec touched a button.

The explosion rocked the building and knocked Max on her butt.

She sat there, next to dead Matthias, and again looked up at Alec. Not so hopeful.

Alec gave her half a grin and half a shrug, and said, “I seem to have blown up one of the outbuildings.”

Getting on her feet, she said, “Don't just go touching any more buttons, until you're sure, okay?”