Fire (17 page)

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The pain in Tom’s leg began to ease when the dog was a couple of miles from the spot where he’d woke. A few minutes after that he realized that he wasn’t certain why he was still running, and his run faded down toward a trot and finally a walk.

Tom was confused. There was something. . . . A truck. . . ? A car, maybe. . . ? A road. . . ?

The dog wasn’t even altogether certain where he was; the long, hard run had taken him in a direction he’d never explored before. The whole world, it seemed to Tom, was strange and unsettling.

Then he remembered.

The smell of cat. It was a cat that had caused all of this. All the pain. All the confusion. The scent of cat was overlaid in Tom’s brain with the scent of his own death.

Cat.

Tom wanted to kill him a cat, and Tom the dog had never killed anything in his whole life. The truth was that he wasn’t even completely certain how to go about killing, though at the moment that absence of knowledge didn’t seem to Tom to be terribly important.

Even if he had no idea how to go about accomplishing it, it was there and then, in that strange and alien knot of woods, that Tom the dog was imbued with his sense of mission. He was going to kill him a cat. He was going to kill him every damned cat in the world.

By noon he’d forgotten cats, and forgotten exactly what his mission was. But the sense of mission stayed with him, and the determination it gave him guided the dog as long as he lived.

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Similar things were happening not far from where Tom the dog stood, in the ruin that had been the Mountain Institute. The bacterial strain that infected Tom festered and fermented in the corpses of the Beast and Ron Hawkins — where it found human flesh even more to its liking than dog meat. But their bodies were buried deep, under tons of rubble, and the weight of that rubble crushed the life from them even as the microbes worked to reconstruct the two.

The infection was spreading, too — through the wind that blew over the still-warm wreck of the institute. In the water that ran through the stream half a mile away. Everywhere that Tom the dog walked.

But the worst infection — the most powerful by far — was in Brooklyn, in New York City. In the ash that the weathered junkie had ground into Luke Munsen’s face — and scattered into the soil of the graveyard around them. The ash was alive and teeming with the bacteria. That was the thing Luke had missed, the thing that his dream had tried to drive home to him: the trilobite wasn’t impervious to fire. The consuming heat had, in fact, destroyed every microscopic trace that ever the trilobite had existed.

But the flame didn’t sterilize the microbes.

Nothing could sterilize them.

Luke Munsen had brought a plague onto the face of the earth. And the plague was so powerful, so inevitable, that not even the fires of hell would drive it away.

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SATURDAY

July Sixteenth

Leigh Doyle’s dispatch

from Moscow,

as transmitted by modem

to the offices of the

National Interlocutor.

MOSCOW, WAITING FOR THE END —

They rounded us up today — every American man, woman and child they could find in the city of Moscow. Only excepted were those already inside the gates of the Embassy. The Russians have treated us with civility and grace. Invading the United States Embassy would have been a violation of that civility, and no one here expects that of them.

They keep us in an Army barracks, but they do not keep us badly. There are telephones here, at least a dozen of them. No one has had trouble getting through to the States. Nor Europe. There have been two meals since first we were arrested. Both of them at least as good as the questionable fare served in Moscow hotels. The room where they keep us is big, well-lit, well ventilated; bunks line its northern wall.

Windows line the wall opposite.

I have spent these hours since my arrest watching Moscow through that window as I listen to my fellow detainees talk to one another behind me. Occasionally I look back to see them. For all that we are held prisoner and those out on the streets still walk free, the sight of them is grimmer. All of them out there are frightened, running; they walk as though the weight of the death of the world rested on their shoulders.

Perhaps it does. There are rumors here that nuclear war has begun. They are only rumors. The only hard and fast clue we have is the vague brightness on the east and south horizons. And the fact that this brightness has not dimmed as the day has worn toward evening.

Late in the afternoon I began to see something new about the furtive men and women who passed outside. Something more alarming than fear or dread: blood. Not one who passed after three looked untouched by violence. By four the sound of gunfire could be heard plainly in the distance. By five, when it drew dusky, I thought that I could see the edge of a riot spilling out into an alley not far from our barracks.

Moscow is waiting for the end of the world. It is not waiting quietly.

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Leigh Doyle’s dispatch

from Moscow,

as it appeared

(after editorial alteration)

in the National Interlocutor.

Exclusive to the National Interlocutor!

REDS RIOT OUTSIDE THE KREMLIN

Those Godless commies are at it again — trying to beat each other’s brains out at the worst possible moment.

Incredibly, when our nukes took off for Moscow, red workers in Moscow took to the streets, where they may well have thrown their no-good leaders out onto their rears!

Our own National Interlocutor reporter, Leigh Doyle, was in Moscow just in time to see the commies pull out their guns and start shooting their own people dead. “We could see a vague brightness on the horizon,” said Doyle, “as though a nuclear bomb had exploded. And then there were mobs rioting in the streets.”

Leigh watched the riot from the window of the building where the Russians are holding her prisoner. The commies arrested her, along with every other American in Moscow, right about the time our missiles first went up.

(continued on page 46)

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Chapter Fourteen

WASHINGTON

Vice President Graham Perkins was an uneasy man.

He was in a small, nondescript car, on the Beltway, and he was afraid for his life. He had reason to be afraid; early that morning the riot had found two congressmen and a Senator hiding in an obscure hotel, and the mob had torn them limb from limb. There’d been a camera crew on hand to record the scene in gory, colorful detail.

Graham had watched the tape three times now.

There were three men in the car with him. Secret Service men. They were taking him from Blair House, which had been his home for the last eighteen months, to a place so hidden that they wouldn’t tell him where it was, or even mention it by name. Blair House, they said, wasn’t safe any more. Now that Paul Green was dead, now that the people knew Paul Green was dead, the mob was looking for Graham. They were taking him to a place where he’d be safe until the nation calmed. A place where the Speaker of the House would give him the oath of office. Graham knew the Secret Service people were right to be so careful, but still, he wasn’t comfortable with the way they’d taken possession of him. Wasn’t comfortable with the fact that the car they took him in wasn’t a limousine, but a weathered-looking Toyota with a sun roof. And most of all he wasn’t comfortable with the fact that they wouldn’t tell him where they were going.

The car, at least, they had a sensible explanation for: a limousine would be much too conspicuous. If one of the mobs found them in the streets, it might well rip a limousine to shreds on principle. A car like this one, the driver had said, would be noticed by no one. Graham was inclined to agree.

It wasn’t just the riots or the coarse Secret Service men that left Graham Perkins ill-at-ease. He’d been uneasy for two years now, since the summer when Paul Green had chosen him for a running mate. And with good reason.

Two days ago that crazy man had pressed a button, and before anyone had been able to stop him two counties in western Kansas had disappeared in a cloud of light and subatomic dust. And Graham knew that, as much as any one man could be, he was responsible for the fact that the lunatic had been in office in the first place. That responsibility, and the guilt that came with it weighed on Graham in the worst possible way.

Then, yesterday, Paul Green had died in some kind of an accident on Air Force One. The details weren’t clear yet — the truth was that the whole situation looked pretty damned suspicious, even from this distance — and that meant that Graham was President. Or would be, once he took the oath of office. There were parts of Graham that thought he should feel — something. Happy? Excited? No; neither of those. A man had to die for him to become President. Graham could admit it to himself when he saw he’d been a coward, but there wasn’t enough ghoul in him to be happy or excited at another man’s funeral. He should feel some sort of a thrill, at least, he thought. What he felt was dread, ordinary, everyday, terror-struck dread. The nation was a wreck. The world was a wreck. Washington was still swarming with riots; last night both the White House and the Capitol had burned to the ground.

This wasn’t a time when any sane man would want to be President. But now more than ever, the country needed the order and continuity — the sanity — that only the Presidency could give it. It was a matter of duty. Graham had done the nation a serious disservice two years ago, and he knew it, and his conscience demanded that he do what he could to amend the damage he’d done. Even if that meant risking his life — not just risking it; throwing his life away, like as not. Paul Green was already dead. So were the legislators that the mob had found this morning.

The Beltway took a deep, broad curve, crested a hill so steep that there was no way to see beyond it until they were on its far side —

— and the highway up ahead was blocked, clotted solid with cars and people. It made no sense — had the mobs gone suicidal? What were so many people doing here on the highway, where the traffic moved fast enough that it was hard for a car not to kill a man on foot? Someone — maybe one of the leaders of the riot — must have been in an accident. That had to be it. Or maybe they’d found another congressman.

Graham shuddered, tried to calm himself. He had to try to be inconspicuous — if he let himself be afraid it was certain that someone would recognize him. He had to hide his face. There — beside him on the seat. A newspaper. Today’s newspaper. Irony, there; an almost surreal irony. The whole world was coming apart at the seams, and the newspapers were still coming out on time. More than on time — yesterday afternoon the Post had published an extra edition. The radio and television stations were all doing fine, too. And hadn’t he heard today on the radio that the National Interlocutor had gone to a daily publication schedule for the duration of the crisis? The same way Nightline had got its start a few years ago, when the Iranians had taken the embassy hostage. Well, let the press make hay out of tragedy. Sooner or later, Graham thought, the riots would find their way to the papers and the stations. It was a matter of time — and not very likely all that much time, either.

The car was at the edge of the mob, now. Still moving, but moving slowly; no one was trying to stop traffic, but the crowd wasn’t trying to get out of harm’s way, either.

Someone was going to spot him, recognize him. He was sure of that. He buried his face deeper in the newspaper. Tried to read, in spite of the fact that it was impossible to concentrate. The front page was all full of the news he’d been living for two days; vanished counties in the state of Kansas, President Green dead in a fiery accident. Russia half destroyed by its own missiles, and crumbling politically. He opened the paper, partly to run from news he didn’t think he could stand to read again. Flipped the page, and turned it again — there were strange headlines on page seven. Headlines like something out of a bad novel. Or, for that matter, out of the pages of the National Interlocutor.

A photograph that looked as though it were a still from a low-budget film.

There were people all around them now, so close that as the car passed their arms all but touched the Toyota’s windows. Why were they all here, on the highway? Twice Graham felt himself beginning to look up, trying to see what the commotion was all about; he only barely managed to catch himself before it was too late.

BIBLICAL NEMESIS CREATED IN GENETIC LABORATORY,

the headline said. Yes, it was the sort of headline he’d have expected to see if he’d picked up the National Interlocutor in a supermarket checkout line. It certainly didn’t belong in the Washington Post. Had the paper’s editors lost their minds? The crisis was bad enough that everyone was coming unhinged. Still, Graham expected better from the people at the Post. The photo beside the story was . . . well, it made Graham feel ill to look at it. Disgusting. A creature of some sort, covered with grey, patchy fur. Several heads grew from its neck; only one of them looked alive. There were peculiar growths on the face of the living head — Graham thought they looked like misshapen, misplaced teeth.

The sound of the crowd outside the car was softer, now . . . or did it just seem that way? He wasn’t sure. He felt calmer, less threatened; almost as though the crowd were less frightening a presence. It was the thing in the paper, he thought. There was something absorbing about the strange creature in the photograph. Captivating enough to pull his mind away from the crowd. Soon they’d be past it, and he could relax. To a degree, at least.

The article was from UPI, and it was very carefully worded — full of “reported”s and “according to”s, very careful to avoid stating anything as a fact. Apparently a newspaper reporter down in Tennessee had actually seen the thing, and photographed it. Police had been on the scene, and UPI had direct quotes from them.