Fire (18 page)

The Toyota wasn’t moving any more.

Speculation was that someone had created the creature in purposeful imitation of the creature from the Book of Revelation, but no one from the laboratory would speak on the subject. Or wouldn’t speak on the subject when there was still a way to get in touch with them — two nights ago the building that housed the laboratory had been bombed, and now the whole place was closed indefinitely.

Something heavy thunked on the window not far from Graham’s head.

Was the story real — or was it some sort of a hoax? It sounded as though it might have been real. And there was the photograph. It could have been faked. Graham had certainly seen more fantastic — and more realistic-looking — things in movie theaters. Certainly the Post wasn’t trying to start a hoax itself; the way the story was couched made it all too clear that the editors found the story as incredible as any sensible reader would. Conceivably it was a practical joke on the part of a few Tennessee police and newsmen. Good sense said that it wasn’t just possibly a joke, but likely one. He squinted at the grainy photograph . . . there was something about it. Something that nagged at him.

Graham knew what the nagging was, even if he didn’t want to admit it. It was real. His intuition was sure of it. It was absurd, but he believed the story.

But if it was real, what did it mean? Was the creature actually the Beast from the Book of Revelation? Was it a sign that the beginning of the end of the world was at hand? Graham thought about the events of the last few days, and had to admit to himself that it was a real possibility. Still, it didn’t ring true. It was almost as though . . . as though someone were trying to make the world believe that the events described in the Book of Revelation were about to take place.

“Keep your head down,” the driver said quietly, casually, almost in a whisper. “Relax, keep reading the paper, and whatever you do, don’t look up.”

Graham’s heart lurched.

There was a sidebar to the article — more a list of facts and figures set off in a box than a sidebar, really. A list from the NIH (amazing, Graham thought, that they were still functional enough to be handing out lists), of projects currently underway at Tennessee laboratory. He scanned the list, trying to spot the project that had produced the creature. None of them seemed very likely — but there was one project that caught Graham’s attention: something funded by the Museum of Natural History, up in New York, for rebuilding prehistoric creatures from fossil traces of DNA. Fantastic stuff; it stirred Graham’s imagination.

The car was beginning to move again, but ever so slowly now — barely even moving at all. Then, suddenly, it came to a dead stop again, and Graham realized that there was a terrible silence all around them.

Before he could stop himself, before he realized what he was doing, Graham stole a glance upward — and gave himself and his life away.

There were faces all around them, staring in at him. Watching him.

“It is him,” someone shouted. “Get him — drag him out of there.”

And everything went mad.

Someone tried to open his door, but it was locked, of course. Others were pounding on the glass, trying to break it.

“Don’t worry, sir. This car is armored. The glass is specially reinforced.”

It was true, Graham realized. Half a dozen people were pounding on the window beside him; one man had already got himself up on the trunk, and he was trying to kick in the rear windshield. But the glass held.

The driver began to force the car forward, gently, steadily, through the crowd. He’s going to kill somebody, Graham thought. More than one of them, if he doesn’t stop. He was about to tell the driver to stop when he realized how absurd the idea was — the mob outside meant to kill him. There wasn’t any question in his mind about that. Let the man do his job, if you want to get out of this alive, he told himself. The idea of killing other people so that he could live himself left Graham sick with himself, but not sick enough that he wanted to give himself up to the mob.

He looked out his window, into the eyes and faces of the crowd; as he did he could feel the fear showing in his own eyes. That was dangerous, he thought; showing his fear would only excite them. There was nothing he could do about it; just then there was no way he could have hid the fact that he was scared, no matter how hard he’d tried. And he had to see their faces, had to see for himself what it was that drove the riot.

What he saw surprised him, and unsettled him even more deeply. There was hatred in the eyes of the people outside. And powerful lust for blood. Both those things he’d expected; they were conditions necessary to bring ordinary people to riot. The thing that shocked him was the fear — absolute, stark terror hiding just behind the fury in their eyes. They’re even more frightened than I am, he thought. Of course they’re frightened. It’s the end of the world, and they think that I’m to blame for it.

Something hard and dense hit bottom in Graham’s gut. He looked away from the window, toward the floor, and covered his eyes. And maybe they’re right. Maybe I am to blame. As soon as he’d thought it, he wanted to shout No! I’m not to blame! It’s not my fault! I didn’t elect that man — you did! Still: he didn’t shout, he didn’t even open his mouth, because he knew he’d had his place in bringing Paul Green to power.

The sound of hard-metal cylinders clanking together, inches away from Graham’s ear — so sudden, so unexpected in a moment so tense that he nearly screamed in surprise. Clenched his teeth, to keep his quiet, to keep from completely losing his self-control. Turned his head, too fast, too hard, and saw that the Secret Service man beside him was holding a machine gun.

They all had machine guns.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

It was going to be a bloodbath. People — hundreds of people — were going to die horribly. Because of him. In front of him. Graham pictured them, bodies burst by machine gun fire, bones and sweetbreads open to the air, blood all over everything oozing. Gushing.

A bloodbath.

Their blood would be on his hands, he realized. Literally. So much of it would get on everything.

The car was moving more quickly, now — grinding and thumping over the bodies of the people who’d been in front of them. Even with the car’s windows closed, even with all the other noise, Graham could hear their screams as the weight of the car crushed the life from them. It wasn’t clear up ahead, though. There were plenty more people to replace the ones that the Toyota’s tires crushed.

How, he wondered, could he live with himself after this? How could he show himself in public?

He couldn’t, he realized. Even if he got out of this alive — and he was going to, he was pretty sure of that — his career in politics was over. He couldn’t live with this. He didn’t want to live a life that could ever bring him to this ever again.

The man beside him unhooked the latches that held the Toyota’s sun roof, began to stand.

My God. He’s going to start shooting people. Wasn’t it bad enough that they were crushing people wholesale under the car’s tires? Bad enough they were killing people with the car, but there was no need, no call for gunfire.

“No,” Graham said. “Don’t do that.”

The Secret Service man ignored him.

“God damn it, stop.” Graham grabbed hold of the man’s belt, tried to yank him back down into his seat. For all the difference it made he might as well have been trying to force a bronze soldier to sit; the Secret Service man was in much better shape than he was.

The sound of the machine gun was deafening. The man fired at the rioters all around them, but most of all he fired at the ones in front of the Toyota, and they picked up a little speed as that part of the crowd fell more easily under their tires.

Tiny spatters of blood began to land on the car’s windows as the bullets sprayed out into the mob.

A scream welled up, somehow, from directly beneath Graham’s feet.

No more killing, please, God. Just let me get out of here without killing anyone else.

The man who’d been standing through the sun roof ducked back into the car.

“The road is blocked up ahead,” he said. “Looks like a big pile-up, maybe an accident that brought the mob here in the first place. We’ll have to go around to the shoulder.”

“Right.”

The driver bore gently to the right; a moment later the man beside Graham was standing up through the sun roof again, blasting away at the crowd with his machine gun. The shooting seemed to Graham to go on forever, and while it was obvious that they were moving, if they made any progress Graham couldn’t see it. Eventually he began to feel numb and out of phase with the horror around him. The only event that stood out in all of it was the once when the man with the gun came down to change ammunition clips.

Then, suddenly, it was almost clear up ahead of them. They were at the shoulder of the highway, which wasn’t much of a shoulder at all — six, maybe seven feet of gravel, and then the land seemed to sheer away from them. Almost more a grass-covered cliff than it was a slope.

Off to what was now their left, beyond the wrecked cars, Graham could see that the highway was clear — wide open and empty of chaos. A moment, now. Just another moment and we’ll be free. Praise God.

Then, just as they were getting around the smoldering Dodge that jutted furthest out into onto the shoulder, both of the Toyota’s right tires lost their grip on the cliff-edge of the shoulder, and suddenly they weren’t moving at all any more. The driver floored the accelerator, shifted into reverse, and floored it again, but it barely even caused the Toyota to budge.

We’re going to die, Graham realized. There was a tiny, guilty part of him that was resigned to the fact — that part of him almost welcomed dying. But the loudest thing in his heart was a desperate need to live, to let out the scream of horror that he kept sealed inside him.

In that moment, if Graham had had a gun in his hand, he’d have rolled down the window beside him and started firing out into the crowd.

And he would have enjoyed it.

The driver was cursing, trying and trying to rock the car into motion. It made no difference, and it was even making matters worse; each time the driver tried it, the car seemed to rock a little less than it had the time before. The man beside him was on a cellular telephone, calling for help that couldn’t posibly reach them in time.

Up above, the man who’d sat beside Graham was still shooting out into the crowd, almost but not quite managing to keep them at bay. When he ducked back down into the car to refill his clip again, the mob surged forward — so many of them, so fast, so hard that just the weight of them was enough to tilt the Toyota so that it balanced on the cliff-edge.

A moment later the man beside Graham was standing, blasting away at the crowd again, but by then it was already too late. The mob could see what it had done. In spite of the gunfire they pressed the car further off balance. It didn’t make any difference that they were dying; the ones behind huddled with the dead before them, shielding themselves and pushing.

The Toyota tipped, and tipped, lost balance and fell down the almost-sheer slope. It landed hard, upside down, crushing the head and torso of the man beside Graham.

His blood was everywhere, thick and wet and warm all over Graham, who hung by the waist from his seat belt. Blood in his hair, his face, soaking through his shirt and jacket, plastering them to his skin. Worst was the blood that kept seeping into his eyes. He tried to blink it away, but when he did the stuff dried so quickly that it glued his eyelids to themselves, and wiping away the blood with the backs of his hands only made things worse because there was gore on them, and something rough and gritty, too, and he had to pull his hands away because the gritty stuff burned the delicate skin of his eyelids, and scraped them like sandpaper. It left his eyes sealed shut completely, and Graham couldn’t see at all.

A moment; two, and then the sound of the front doors opening. A breath after that and there was gunfire again — from the two men who’d been in the front, Graham assumed. The seat belt cut into Graham’s waist terribly, but blinded as he was he didn’t dare try to release it.

Not that it mattered. It was only a few moments later that the sound of machine guns went silent, and then the mob was yanking off his seat belt and dragging him out through the open driver’s side door.

He forced his eyes open in spite of the burning and the tearing of dried blood.

And saw people, furious people, crowding all around him. Pounding on him. Someone had found a rope somewhere — no, not a rope, a thick, strong nylon cord. And someone tied a loop and a slip knot in the rope, and wrapped it around Graham’s throat.

They dragged him back up the hill by that rope, strangling him with his own weight and with the friction of his clothes against the grass. Deep into the soft flesh of his neck as the cord dug, it didn’t dig deep enough to black him out. Because the tightness of the cord pressed and crushed away his voice, he watched and listened in silent horror as they finished hauling him up the hill. Threw the loose end of the cord up into the air three times, until it caught on a spike that protruded from high up on a concrete pillar. And used that spike as though it were a pulley.

To hang him.

What kills a man quickly and mercifully when he’s hung from a noose and scaffold isn’t the choking and strangling of the rope. Even a heavy man suffocates from his own weight so slowly that his death is cruel and long and hard. No — compassionate headsmen make great effort to avoid that sort of execution. The thing that actually kills a hanged man is the snapping of his neck as he drops and then his fall stops sudden as the rope and the fine bones beneath his skull absorb the full impact of his descending bulk. It’s a fast death, and a kind one, as executions go.

Graham Perkins was not a heavy man. Just the opposite, in fact — he was a spare man, and his bones were especially fine and thin. It would have needed a skillful executioner and a high scaffold to hang him properly. And the men and women who hanged him were not experienced, and even had they known of the need to use a scaffold, there was none available for them to use.