Dark Advent (51 page)

He laid Erika back on her side, patting her on the shoulder, understanding none of what had happened to her but comprehending the principle of what Solomon must have done. Taking her life through the very
source
of life. Yeah, he knew how that game worked. He’d seen it almost work on Emily, so long ago. And now, another young woman he loved as well wasn’t going to be so lucky as to escape with her life spared. History repeating itself, only worse.

Caleb looked up to see the great fissure ripping open the ground before them, saw Peter Solomon standing regal and bloody on their side of it, defying the quake and moving with relentless determination precisely in Erika’s direction. He fired random bursts from the Uzi he was waving about. Luck was the only thing that would let him hit anything.

“You can’t do it!” he was shouting to the sky. “None of you can! YOU CAN’T KILL A GOD!”

“Naw, but it’s about time someone took care of
you
,” Caleb muttered.

He doubled over again, carrying his weight low to the ground, sprinting forward, slipping and righting himself, feeling suddenly in sync with the pitching of the earth. He moved past the truck where Jason and Diane still lay sprawled, pushed himself farther, harder, legs aching, joints pounding, bullets kicking up dirt around his feet…

At peace within.

Decades of life on a farm had toughened him as nothing else could have. He may have been up there in years, and the past one had been a softer life in many ways, less strenuous, but his arms were still as stout and as hard as a pair of hickory branches.

He bore down on Solomon, catching a backhand that filled his mouth with blood even though it had been poorly aimed. Caleb didn’t stop, sweeping Solomon over his shoulder and locking both arms around him. He felt a crushing blow slam onto his back, cracking ribs, then another, and finally his legs gave out.

They collapsed, poised on the brink of the fissure. Its brown throat yawned before them, waiting.

No, not now, damn it…lemme…lemme get…

No way could he fall short here, on the threshold of repaying the earth for all her favors, lifetimes of food and water. He couldn’t believe that the earth would not be just as offended by the likes of Peter Solomon as were decent folk. He’d chased this moment all the way from Ohio, and damned if he was going down two feet from it.

Lungs afire, Caleb gulped air and drove in with his heels, keeping his arms locked around Solomon with both hands gripping the opposite wrists. He felt Solomon wriggle, maneuvering the gun, felt the thing stuttering between them. A chunk of Caleb’s side was blasted away just as he gave one final heave with jittering legs.

They balanced, teetering on the edge for an eternity.

“Lessee you get outta
this
one,” he wheezed into Solomon’s ear.

Falling.

Landing moments later, brownish-black walls towering over them, Caleb and Solomon were wedged into the bottom of the fissure with a ribbon of sky visible far above. Caleb coughed, retching, broken ribs tearing his lungs, and he could no longer breathe. Just as well. Another few seconds and he figured all they’d have to breathe was dirt.

The earth gave another rippling shudder and he looked up to see an avalanche bearing down on them. He welcomed it as he would welcome the sight of his wife, his long-dead daughter. Surely they would not be far away, ready to guide him the rest of the way home, ushering him to a place far better than what he was leaving.

The soil felt blessedly cool and soothing…just as he figured a grave
should
feel.

* *

Solomon lay at the bottom of the trench, the heavy weight of the crazy old bastard squashing down atop him. A minor setback, he was down but not out—gods always rose above their blackest trials. And
then
his wrath would burn the world.

Light seeped from above, looking surprisingly like the last glimpse of the light in his childhood room, just before the closet door swung shut for hours and hours and hours. Hello darkness, my oldest friend. In the end there was darkness, and funny thing, it wasn’t so good anymore. Truth be told, it looked downright lethal.

With a roar, the darkness descended, crushing and absolute.

He couldn’t move, except to open his mouth to scream. He first tasted Caleb’s oily white hair, and then the soil.

He felt an overwhelming sense of failure, of losing to insects, betrayed by peons and weaklings who hadn’t even understood enough to serve him better. Hatred radiated out in a sphere, hot enough to melt earth to glass. The utter isolation of it was like the condemnation of the universe.

And then he felt nothing. The closet door had latched for good.

* *

How long had the earthquake lasted? Jason had no idea, knowing only that it had felt like hours.

When at last the ground stilled beneath them, Jason latched onto the truck and pulled himself to his feet. It took a couple of tries. He never thought he’d need sea legs in the Midwest. Beside him, Diane rolled over, sat up, rubbing her forehead and pushing her hair out of her eyes.

He looked around, reorienting himself to an entirely new landscape. Like the old saying: When the smoke clears and the dust settles…

Jason gazed toward the truck that Travis and the last of his ragtag army had barricaded themselves behind, finding that it had overturned. Overturned
toward
them, he was pleased to note. All he could see was its undercarriage. That, and at least one pair of legs poking out from underneath. Maybe more, fingers crossed. He could always hope.

A shadow moved out from behind the truck there. Red hair followed, then a big belly. Hagar, stumbling and disoriented. Jason retrieved Caleb’s rifle from the ground, bolted it, took his time bracing it on his own truck and putting a single bullet through the center of the man’s chest.

He bolted it once more, ejecting the spent cartridge and finding no more. He dropped the gun to the ground. Pulled Diane to her feet, holding her hand until she was steady.

“Anybody left?” she asked.

He watched for a moment, saw another hint of movement, then pointed. No need. Travis stepped into plain view, facing them across a field littered with bodies, slashed with the bare earth of the fissure that had opened up, then closed in again. Moans still drifted over from the carnage strewn across the highway, audible over the crackling fires, but Jason didn’t think anyone hanging on over there was in much shape to cause much of a problem anymore.

Just Travis. Looking as mean as ever.

“Ah hell, wouldn’t you know it,” Jason said wearily.

Even as he watched Travis charge across the field, hating him for it, Jason had to admire the reserves of energy within the man. You just couldn’t wear him down. He had the durability of iron. Jason was still fumbling around, looking for a weapon, when Travis arrived, roaring and red-faced and as unstoppable as a bull.

He remembered how hard Travis could hit from the day Billy Strickland had betrayed him. The months since hadn’t changed a thing. Travis nailed him in the gut and drove every bit of air from his lungs. The next two punches, he wasn’t even sure where he’d been hit. It was like getting worked over with an anvil. The world was gray and brown, and he felt himself landing in the truck bed, his legs dangling over the side, blood dribbling from his mouth.

The fact that Diane had leapt onto the man’s back didn’t seem to mean a thing to him.

* *

The bitch couldn’t hit very hard, but what she lacked in power she made up for in persistence. Travis figured she must have rained about a dozen fists down onto his head and face, shrieking in his ear the whole time.

He latched onto her wrist and jerked forward, flipping her onto the ground in front of him. She landed with a loud thud. He let her have it across the face a couple times to shut her up. Her head snapped one way, then another, sweaty locks of hair clinging around her face, a trickle of blood threading down her chin from a swelling lip.

Once she was docile enough to suit him, he began dragging her toward the highway.

“Remember how your little friend ended up?” he asked. “Huh? You remember that?” He yanked her roughly along at his side, not giving her a chance to get to her feet. “You know, I didn’t even want to do that. But you
made
me do it. You. Made me. Do it. I’m standing there after, and I’m looking at this girl, and I’m thinking, look what that fucking Diane made me do.” Travis looked down at her in disgust. “But this one I do for me. The other, that was just a warm-up.”

He’d start out on the highway. No soft cushion of earth and grass underneath her, oh no. He was going to strip her down and pound her right on the asphalt, let it burn right through her hide. Hot as that sun was, she’d think he’d tossed her into a frying pan.

He dragged her past the Sunbird, now canted to one side and pointing away from I-55. Dragged her along the white line, let her feel the heat baking up. Dragged her until her jeans were ripped through and her knees were bleeding. Dragged her…

Holy shit.

He’d dragged her until there wasn’t any more highway.

Travis kept her wrist clamped tight as he looked over the precipice. The huge slab of highway just
ended,
that’s all there was to it. Either the portion of land they were on had risen or the other had lowered. A steep incline, nearly vertical, led down to the rest of the highway, the median strip. It looked to be a good fifteen feet down the slope, the gradient rolling with pebbles and black chunks of asphalt and loose dirt.

They might as well be standing on a cliff. Lover’s leap. As good a place as any to toss her once he was finished.

“Yeah,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “That poor girl, that was just practice. You’re gonna wish you were that lucky.” He dropped to his knees beside her, wrestled with her, grabbing both struggling wrists. “’Cause I promise you this is gonna take a while.”

“Having trouble getting it up
these days?” she spat through clenched teeth.

He swung an open hand at her and she bit the meat under his thumb. He drew back to swing the other, this time a closed fist.

Travis never got the chance to follow through.

* *

Jason felt like one good breeze and he would go over for good.

He’d hobbled after Travis and Diane, found his cane in the Sunbird. Stumped over to them as quietly as he could while they struggled on the asphalt.

As he approached from the back, Travis hit her once and was getting ready to do it again. Jason gripped the cane like a ball bat, ready to nail one over the center field wall. He swung, felt an immensely satisfying crack as the handle connected with Travis’ elbow.

The man was up and on him before he could manage another swing, but this time Jason pressed close, grabbing and holding on like a boxer in a clinch. Give Travis room to tag him with one good punch, and that would be it, he’d be done.

As Diane scrambled away, his hopes were buoyed, maybe he’d bought enough time for her to do something. Find a loaded gun, maybe. Something, and fast.

He swayed with Travis, desperately hugging close, letting his legs do most of the work. First one way, then the other, they pushed and pulled at each other, finally toppling over as one. They hit the pavement and rolled, just as the highway shuddered beneath them. Aftershock, maybe. Jason felt the slab of asphalt tilt, tipping toward the drop-off. Travis’s weight, atop him, gave an abrupt shift, and Jason knew he’d never get another chance. He jackknifed up to lean into Travis with his shoulder, throwing the man’s weight off-balance…until he toppled over the edge.

OH SHIT!

All of Travis had gone over except his arm, still reaching up and over the rim and clamping onto Jason’s wrist in a vise-grip. Jason was flat on his back, trapped arm caught at the worst angle imaginable, twisted back past his head. Travis’s weight slipped down the incline and he felt it drag him headfirst across the asphalt. He could see only sky, clouds, smoke. Could feel only the numbing pressure on his forearm, the scorching asphalt at his back. They slipped an inch or two with a jolt; another one like that and he was sure his arm would break over the edge of the drop-off.

Jason frantically clawed his free fingers across the asphalt alongside his body, finally finding the broken segment near his hip. He dug his fingers into the crack and held tight. It hurt like hell, but it beat slowly slipping over the edge.

Standoff,
he thought.

Neither of them could go anywhere.

* *

Diane got back to the highway just in time to see Jason’s face contort with the anguish and effort of keeping himself on the highway. She watched his fingers gouge into the small crevice of broken asphalt. Safe for a moment.

“Hang on, Jay,” she said, and he gave her the dirtiest look she’d seen all day.

Diane knelt at the cliff’s edge, peering over at Travis as he struggled in vain to clamber up the almost-sheer drop. His breath came in harsh gulps, every muscle bunched and trembling; sweat and dirt and blood grimed his face; tangles of wet hair curled over his forehead. He was looking straight up at her.

Diane stared down, her face oddly placid for the rage she felt boiling inside. She wanted to savor the moment, to see him sweat, see him squirm. She wanted him to think of everything he’d done to Farrah, every last detail, and regret each moment of it. A thousand times over. She wanted him to regret the day he’d been conceived.

His eyes bored up at her, his teeth clenched as he fought an inch up the slope.

“That’s right, keep trying, keep hoping,” she said quietly, and then showed him what she’d been holding behind her back.

Travis’s eyes widened as she swung it at him, hard and vicious, slamming it onto the arm he was holding Jason with. The carpet tacks studded around the pipe bomb punched a golf course of little holes into his forearm. He screamed, letting Jason go and beginning to slip down the incline. But Diane was faster, catching his wrist and straining to hold him in place for just another moment or two.
Not yet, not yet…