Darkly The Thunder (30 page)

They looked up, hope springing in them as Al Watts and Mack walked up. “Can you get us out of here?” one asked.

“Not a chance,” Watts told him.

FOUND YOU, YOU GODDAMNED OLD MEDDLESOME COPS.

Watts and Mack ducked back into the smoke and disappeared.

“Who are you?” a reporter screamed the question.

MY MY. WHAT HAVE WE HERE?

“We're members of the press,” a woman said, her voice very shaky.

DO YOU LIKE MUSIC FROM THE FIFTIES?

“What?” she asked.

TRY THIS: DO BOP DE DO BOP DE DO BOP, DE DO.

“What are you, some kind of a nut?” she asked.

She melted in front of the others.

They went running and screaming into the smoke.

“Step in here,” the voice came out of a shimmering mist in the alley. “Do it. Step in here. Quickly.”

Taking a deep breath, Dean grabbed Howie's hand and stepped into the mist, Sunny and Angel right behind them.

The head of a deputy – mouth open in a silent scream – bounced off a wall and fell with a wet smack onto the dirty alley floor.

Lt. Kathy Smith, Sgt. Maj. Christensen, Sgt. Dixon, and Sgt. Preston stepped into the mist and vanished.

Maj. Claude Jackson tossed one too many smoke grenades. The Fury found him and tore him apart, scattering his guts up and down Main Street and sticking his head atop a light pole.

Megan LeMasters stepped into the mist.

“Where's Gordie?” Bergman yelled at his partner.

“Right behind you. Come on.”

The two state investigators stepped through the mist and into the door, followed by the college kids and Robin and Ricky.

Lee Evans grabbed Jill Pierce by the hand, and together they disappeared into the mist.

Two deputies, Alan Hibler and Duane Hunt, dragging the two badly frightened convicts, walked through the mist.

Gordie looked at his watch. They were running late. The bomber would be dropping its payload in three minutes.

“I'm not going into the unknown!” Dr. Shriver shouted. “No. I won't.”

He turned and ran into the street.

“Come back here, you fool!” Anderson yelled, as he pushed two nurses into the mist.

“Hurry!” Sand's voice sprang out of the world beyond. “The door is about to close.”

Anderson and Gordie stepped through, just as Shriver was spun around like a mad top in the middle of the street. The doctor was picked up and hurled through a department store window; hurled all the way through the store, exiting out the back door, headless, his torso dripping blood.

“Over target in one minute,” the navigator radioed the pilot of the bomber.

The bomb bay doors were opened.

Al Watts and Mack stood in the center of the smoky main street, each with an arm around the others' shoulders. They began singing.

“Bomb is clear,” the navigator radioed. “Let's get out of here.”

“... Forward into battle . . .”

SHUT UP, YOU GODDAMN BASTARDS!

“... See his banners go!”

I'LL MAKE YOU BOTH MY SLAVES AND TORTURE YOU TO DEATH. I PROMISE YOU IT'LL TAKE CENTURIES.

“Like a mighty army, Moves the Church of God . . .”

STOP THAT SINGING. I COMMAND YOU BOTH TO STOP THAT DRIVEL.

“. . . Brothers we are treading, Where the Saints have trod . . .”

DO BOP DE DO BOP DE DO BOP, DE DO.

“We are not divided, All one body we, All in hope and – ”

The explosion tore the tops off of mountains twenty miles away. Fire leaped into the sky so high that residents of Denver, seventy-five miles away, could clearly see the flames. Thunder Mountain exploded, sending huge boulders flying for several miles in all directions. The electrical storm that followed the merging of the two energy masses knocked out power for fifty miles.

The lightning storm that came seconds after the twin explosions was unmatched by anything ever seen by human eyes. Pilots as far south as New Mexico, as far north as Wyoming, as far west as Utah, and as far east as Kansas – who had been bitching about being grounded without explanation – stood in awe and wonder, their mouths open, and watched the lightning that ripped the skies.

The mountains trembled, and avalanches rumbled down both sides of the mountains surrounding the valley of fire.

“Holy Mother of God,” Martin Tobias muttered. He could feel the heat from the blasts from his position more than thirty miles from the site.

Larry Adams, avowed nonbeliever, fell to his knees and began praying. Not for any worldly possessions, but for the strength to hold onto God now that he had found Him.

Where Willowdale had once been, there was a very large hole in the ground, more than five hundred feet deep and over one mile across. At the bottom of the hole, objects were moving about, beginning their climb upward and out.

 

THE DOOR

 

The light on the path was so bright, it hurt the eyes of those who had entered through the door. On both sides of the path, objects staggered about in a swirling gray fog. Millions of voices babbled in a thousand dead languages.

Sand stood at the head of the column and counted.

“Uncle Sand!” Robin called from the rear of the column.

He smiled and waved to her.

“Where are mother and daddy?” she called. “Ahead of us, baby Guarding the door with some others. Come on, people. Remember, don't leave the path.”

They began their walk, the sparkling mist that was Sand leading them.

Fingers that looked like sparklers jabbed out of the fog and plucked at the sleeves of those who walked on the path.

“What . . . who are these people?” Bos called.

“Lost souls,” Sand told him. “Don't be afraid. They can't hurt you. They gather every time the door opens, even though they know they can't get out.”

“Can they enter the path?” Howie called.

“No. That is forbidden.”

“Where are they?” Angel yelled to be heard over the enormous din of voices.

“At a very low level.”

“Hell?” one of the convicts yelled.

“No.”

“Then that's for me,” the second con yelled. Both jumped off the path, into the swirling fog.

Their screaming was a hideous thing to hear.

“It doesn't work that way, partner,” Sand said, looking to his right.

The screaming of the cons faded away.

“Where are they, Sand?” Jill asked the sparkling mass at the head of the column.

“Ten billion miles in space, spinning through galaxies and past worlds that no human eye has ever seen, or ever will see.”

“Dead?” Dean asked.

“No. You can't die in here. You live forever. They will spin for all eternity.”

“That makes my head hurt, just thinking about it,” Angel said.

“That's right, Angel. This is no place to make a mistake.”

“How long is this path?” Hillary called.

“In my world, thousands of miles. In your world, and you are still a part of that, not far.”

“What has happened back . . . in our world?” Kathy Smith asked.

“Willowdale is no more. But the merging of the energy masses has left some rather unpleasant visitors behind, I'm afraid. You were right, Howie.”

“Can you tell me what they are, and where they came from?” Gordie asked.

“No. I am not permitted to do that.”

“I guess we'll find out soon enough.”

“If the door has not moved, and you don't get deposited in the middle of Gettysburg during the Civil War.”

 

 

Martin had asked for, and was receiving, a division of troops from Texas. They had touched down in Colorado just moments before the bomb was dropped.

The force of the explosion had torn the bomber into shreds, scattering the pieces for hundreds of miles around.

“When the additional troops arrive,” Martin told the commanding general of the troops already in place, “have them completely encircle the blast area. People are going in now, to check radiation levels.”

“Yes, sir. The president is going to speak in a few minutes, sir. Do you want to listen?”

“No,” Martin said.

 

 

“End of the trail,” Sand said. “People, meet my friends. Joey, Tuddie, Morg, Jane. Sunny, you have already met Richard and Linda Jennings. And this is my wife, Robin. Our son is being looked after in a more secure place.”

“Our computations were correct, Sand,” the misty sparkling figure that was Joey said. “The door is open to within thirty miles of Willowdale, and right to the second of Central Standard Time.”

“When can they pass through?”

“In about three minutes.”

“What will we remember of this, Sand?” Sunny asked.

“Everything.”

“How much of it can we tell?”

“As much as you want. But your president, at the urgings of his advisors, is now speaking to the world, telling a pack of lies about what happened. The story will be that there was a huge spaceship that landed in Willowdale. It's so absurd that most will believe it. The ship, from some far-off world, carried disease. That is what killed the citizens of Willowdale. The ship exploded, causing all the damage. The bomber was lost during a storm, and fell into the sea. It's a stupid story, but many Americans are very shallow and stupid people. The truth does not interest them. Foolish games and mindless pleasures interest them. They'll believe it. Then, after awhile, everyone will believe it. And that's the way history will write it.”

Bos said, “These tapes of your story?”

“They will be taken from you by government agents. Give them up without a struggle. You all know the truth, and Sunny will write the truth about what happened. That is enough for me.”

“Sand,” Megan asked. “How much of the history we were taught in school is truth, and how much is fiction?”

“That I cannot tell you.”

“Can't, or won't?” Howie asked.

“Can't.”

“Two minutes,” Joey said.

“When you step through the door,” Sand told them, “you will be slightly disoriented for a moment. It will pass.”

“Then you've done this before?” Howie asked.

“That I cannot tell you.”

Howie laughed, and Sand joined in the laughter.

“What would happen to you if ... God found out you were doing this?” Hillary asked.

“Oh, He knows. He knows everything. He knows the beating of a sparrow's heart before some kid kills it with a BB gun. He knows the pain of the homeless and the unwanted. He hears the cries of the innocent who are in prison. He knows the pain of the starving. The helplessness of the abused children. He knows it all.”

“But He won't help stop it,” Leon said.

“He helps. He gives you brains that could solve the problems. But few care that much. He gives you the intellect to know that to demand more from animals than you do from humans is folly. He gives you all compassion, but most lose it—willingly. He gives you a mind to absorb knowledge, but most stop learning at age twenty. The list is endless and depressing.”

“He's giving us another chance, isn't He, Sand?” Howie said.

“Yes.”

“And we'd better not blow it,” Angel added.

Suddenly, Sand and the others were gone. The sky above the little group was clear and star-filled. Gordie looked into the very startled face of Martin Tobias.

 

FREEDOM

 

Gordie and the others had been hustled out of the area, surrounded by government agents and soldiers. They had been taken to Colorado Springs and put aboard a plane and flown to Andrews AFB just outside of Washington. There they had been given physical examinations, hot food, clean clothing, and a place to sleep for the night.

Late the next afternoon, all of them rested and finally able to cope with the knowledge that they were alive and safe, they were taken to a huge meeting room, where they were sat down at a long table, across from the president of the United States.

“You're certainly looking well, Megan,” President Marshall said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Sheriff Rivera, members of the military, children, ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem,” the president said.

“We sure do,” Angel said. “I read in the newspaper all that crap you told the world the other night. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for telling lies, Mr. President.”

The president chuckled while Howie gave his sister a disgusted look.

“You're quite right, Angel,” the president said. “And I am ashamed for telling stories.”

“Then why did you?” Angel pursued it with the honesty of the young.

“It's a long and very complicated matter, Angel. And I'm not trying to be evasive . . . sidestep your question.”

“I know what evasive means, sir,” she told him. “Just answer me this: do you believe in your heart that you did the right thing?”

The president was a long time in replying. Finally he nodded his head. “Yes, I do, Angel. When the plan was first presented to me, only an hour or so before the bomb was to be dropped, I didn't like it. Didn't like it at all. And I'm still not at all sure that God will forgive me for lying to the people. But, yes, considering all the circumstances, I believe I did the right thing.”