Fire (59 page)

George Stein might have answered if it hadn’t been for the pain. Pain so intense that he could barely hear through it, let alone speak.

“Exactly because they have been there for two days. Something in the Pentagon has gotten stuck, George. Jammed so thoroughly that no one there can act — only watch. Watch as they wait for me to bring on the end. Not that I’m relying on them to be such fools, you understand. Not for a moment. I’ve called our own people in from all over the nation. We’ll have more than enough to match them, man for man.”

And then the agony was too much, and George blacked out, and though that should have given him some relief, what it gave him instead was an hour of nightmares.

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CHEYENNE COUNTY, KANSAS

They were a million miles from nowhere on a dirt road in Kansas when the tires finally began to go. Ron had listened to Luke Munsen worry about those tires for at least five hundred miles. He kept wondering why Luke didn’t just pull into a gas station and get them replaced. Ron had even come out and said it to him directly, once: “Why don’t we pull over and have somebody take a look at them? I’ve got my credit cards, if money’s a problem.”

Luke hadn’t quite ignored him. His answer wasn’t anything that Ron could parse, though: “There isn’t time,” he’d said. Said it so quietly that Ron’d had to listen hard to hear him. “They’ll hold out long enough. They’ll have to.”

Loud, harsh sounds were coming from the tires. Especially the left rear — the tire all but directly under Ron’s seat. Luke was driving too damned fast for these dirt roads. That was part of it, at least.

The car didn’t have a spare. If he didn’t slow down soon the tires would blow, and then they’d be slowed down permanently. Slowed to a walk.

Andy Harrison and Tom the dog were getting out of hand again; there wasn’t room in this car for that boy and that dog and Ron’s peace and quiet, too. Ron wasn’t sure there was room enough in the whole world.

Christine, up in the front seat, smiled ruefully and sighed, as though she were thinking exactly the same thing. The creature seemed to grin in his sleep, which had grown a lot less fitful over the last hour or two. Luke Munsen didn’t seem to notice — the boy, the dog, the creature, or anything else.

Luke had been like that, all urgent and bothered, ever since that bag lady had woke the lot of them, back on the edge of the ruin of St. Louis. She’d woke them like some fairy godmother in a fable Ron had long since forgotten, using her grungy cane like a wand to touch each of them gently, just above the eyes.

“Wake up,” she said again and again as she woke them, “time to wake and face the world. There isn’t time to be a layabout!”

The bag lady. The same one who’d handed him the comic book in the parking lot of the Burger King a week and a half — and a couple of lifetimes — before. Ron was the first she woke, and he watched rheumy-eyed and confused as she moved among them. It was as strange a sight as any he could think of seeing: a strange, mottled, filthy old woman who was somehow at the same time some kind of an angel. Ron Hawkins didn’t understand it, and he didn’t for a moment pretend to himself that he did.

She came to the creature last of all, and she hesitated beside him. “You,” she said. “You’re the special one. The one who’s hurting so.” Her voice was sad, almost defeated. “There’s nothing I can do to help you. Nothing I can do to ease your sleep.” And she bent down to kiss him on the forehead. Stood, sniffled, and turned to head away.

It was Luke who tried to get her to stop; he had more of his wits about him than anyone else.

“Hey,” Luke called, “wait. Who are you?” He stood and tried to follow the woman, but he was still too groggy; he stumbled over his own feet. “Why are you here? Why did you hand me that comic book, back in New York?”

The woman didn’t answer him. Not really. She turned back for a moment, looked at them, shook her head with an expression that might have been sadness mixed with faint reproach. “You need to go west. Much farther west — to the Lake of Fire, and on beyond it.” Coughed, long and hard, as though she were bringing up a lot of mucus. “You’re safe, for now at least. They think you’re dead.” Sighed. “None of them really know very much about the size of an atomic blast.”

Then she turned again, and continued away from them across the scorched grass, toward the bluff covered with withered trees. Ron watched her, dumbstruck, until she disappeared from sight at the top of the bluff; in the corner of his eye he could see Luke watching her, too.

When she was gone Ron turned and looked at Luke. “She gave you one of those comic books too?” Luke was still staring up at the top of the bluff, even though the old woman was no longer anywhere in sight.

“Uh.” Luke blinked. Turned toward Ron. “Yeah. She did. You too? One of those strange little comic books from the people who took over the network?”

Ron nodded.

A long, quiet space. “I wonder how in the hell she gets around. Can’t imagine her driving, and there hasn’t been time for her to have walked here from New York City.”

Ron shrugged.

The young, dark-skinned boy was on his feet now, standing in front of them. “So, Mister Luke Munsen,” he said, “we going to get on the road like the lady said, or aren’t we?”

“Andy. . . !” Luke sounded more than a little annoyed. Exasperated might have been a better word. He seemed to catch himself, and when he spoke again his calm seemed forced. “Yeah. You’re right. We ought to get going.” He looked around, counting heads. “There’s room in the car — just barely, but there’s room. If it’s still in one piece, that is.”

Andy was staring at Ron. “Who’re you?” he asked. “You were that guy up there with the creature, weren’t you? I saw you on TV.”

Ron didn’t know what to say, exactly; the question threw him off balance and embarrassed him a little — not that he could think of any reason why it should embarrass him. “I’m Ron Hawkins, and that was me inside the train. Why — ?”

Andy cut him off, which was just as well, since Ron didn’t have any idea what the rest of the question was supposed to be: “I’m Andy Harrison, and I’m here to keep an eye on Mister Luke Munsen and his lady-friend here, Christine. How come you didn’t catch up with us sooner? It sure took you long enough.”

“What?” Ron found himself getting even more confused. “Catch up with you? I don’t think we could have caught up with anybody if we’d tried. We walked here from Tennessee.”

The boy shook his head; he looked skeptical. “Don’t try to tell me that you walked here from anyplace. I saw you there inside that train car, traveling like some bum in a hobo movie. You can’t fool me that easy.” He eyed Ron impatiently. “You going to tell me or not — how come you took so long getting up with us?”

Ron sighed. Coughed. He was beginning to get it, he thought. The point was that there wasn’t any point. The answer was that there wasn’t any answer. “Okay then,” he said, “I guess I’m not going to tell you. And if I’m not, I might as well be up front about it, right?”

Luke seemed to be enjoying himself; Ron got the feeling that his friend had been through this before.

The boy looked just a little off balance himself. Or maybe deflated was a better word. “I guess so,” he said. And spotted Tom the dog. “Hey, what’s your dog’s name, huh, Mr. Ron? He looks like a real cool dog.”

“Tom. Come on over here, huh, Tom? Somebody wants to meet you.” The dog stood, with some considerable effort, and walked toward them unevenly. “You know how to introduce yourself to a dog, don’t you, Andy?”

The boy glared at him with eyes that could have turned water into stone. “Of course I do. What do think I am, stupid?” Frowned. “How about you tell me how you’d go about it, though? Just for comparison purposes.”

Ron grinned. “Like this:” he said, and held his hand out toward the dog, “so that he can sniff the back of your hand, get to know who you are.” The dog was licking Ron’s fingers. “If he’s okay about that, you can pat him on the head and get to know him a little better.”

“Huh. How about that.” And then, “Cut that out,” when the dog started licking his arm half-way up the elbow.

Luke slapped Ron’s shoulder, not too hard. “Come on. Let’s go get the car. Then we can drive it back here.”

Ron nodded. He followed his friend up the embankment at an angle that took them to the near end of the train.

It was good to hear voices again — real, honest-to-God voices speaking in English that he could hear with his ears. It wasn’t something he’d realized he’d missed.

When he got near the top of the embankment he saw that the train lay out of kilter in its tracks — derailed, but not fallen over. A few paces ahead of him Luke was saying “Dear God,” and for half an instant Ron thought he was swearing at the damage to the train. Then Ron caught a glimpse of the city of St. Louis, over the embankment and across the Missouri River, and as soon as he saw it he knew that whatever was wrong with the train didn’t amount to anything at all.

Fire.

Fire across the river that stretched from one edge of the horizon to the other, leaping, bursting towers of flame that spun off into fiery twisters and dust devils that spread the damage like a plague.

“Sweet Jesus.”

Ron stepped forward, caught a glimpse of the far side of the train with the corner of his eye. Saw the brown paint that had covered the railroad cars was now scorched — burned and blister-peeling in fist-size flakes.

“We’d better get to it,” Luke said. “No telling how long it’ll be before it spreads across the Missouri.”

And then they were off, trotting across the field that lay before them, toward an old gas station. Into a weathered Dodge in its parking lot. The car’s paint was blistered all along its rear — which had faced into the blast — but otherwise it looked whole to Ron. Luke took a good look at the thing and seemed to come to the same conclusion.

Five minutes later they’d all crammed themselves into the Dodge, and Luke was wheeling the car up onto I-70.

And they were all heading west, toward Kansas.

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Chapter Forty-One

NEAR FLAGLER, COLORADO

Leigh Doyle got lost on the road from Denver to Cheyenne County.

It was an incredible thing, damn near: there wasn’t road enough to get lost on out here. And the President’s directions had been so clear. “Take Interstate 80 East from Denver, across the state and into Kansas. Get off at Kanorado, just over the Kansas border. Take the county road north, on up through St. Francis, and past it three miles until you see a dirt road open up on your right. Old Road. The name is written large on a wooden sign; you won’t be able to miss it. Follow that road until you come to the edge of the Lake of Fire. When you get there, park the rental car and wait. After a while, you’ll know what you have to do.

“It sounds like an awful trip, I know — driving from Denver to Kansas. There’s a little airport not thirty miles from where you’re going, but you won’t be able to find a plane that’ll take you there. It’s too close to the . . . to the site of the explosion. Even getting to Denver will be difficult. And anyway, the drive won’t be that bad. Two hundred fifty miles of wide, empty freeway — you ought to be able to cover it in an afternoon.”

That was all the time it would have taken, too, if she hadn’t stopped to get herself a soda in Flagler. Such a little town — it ought not to have been possible to get lost in it. The grocery where she’d stopped had been just out of sight of I-70, and when she got out she hadn’t been sure whether the way back was left or right. She guessed wrong, of course. Even that wouldn’t have been a problem if she hadn’t been so caught up in thinking about the wild goose chase she was on that she’d driven twenty miles before she realized what she’d done.

It was a wild goose chase, too.

Had to be.

The call that started it had come two days ago, while Leigh was sleeping late in a clean soft bed in a tourist hotel in Helsinki. Yesterday someone in Moscow had finally decided to deport her, along with the rest of the Westerners in that barracks-cum-prison. They’d been disorganized about it, and the plane had taken forever getting off the ground, and then after it finally landed the Finns spent three hours deciding whether they were going to let any of them into the country. Which they did, finally, when the American ambassador came down and vouched for all of them. She hadn’t got to the hotel until late, and when she did she slept the sleep of the dead. It’d been the first good sleep she’d had in a week, what with the lousy quality of the bed in the Russian hotel, and then the nasty little mattresses in the barracks.

When the call came, at seven, she’d been so deep asleep that she’d almost ignored it. But whoever it was was persistent, and after the seventh ring Leigh and reached over and lifted the receiver off its cradle and mumbled into it something that wasn’t quite a word.

“Hello? Miss Leigh Doyle? This is Paul Green, the President of the United States. I need to speak to you.”

That’d woke her up, real fast. “What? Who?” Why me? What would the President want with me? “How can I help you, Mr. President?”

Mind you, now: Leigh Doyle had sworn that she was going to start reading the newspaper headlines. At least for the duration of the crisis. Avoiding them had got her into trouble that was above and beyond what she wanted to live with. All the same she hadn’t seen a newspaper since she’d got into the country; there had been no time for that last night.

She had no way of knowing that the President she was talking to had died — died forever — more than a week before.

She had no way of knowing that a ghost had called her on the phone.

“There is a mission, Miss Doyle, that I need you to undertake for me. A peculiar mission, but a vital one nonetheless. And it is a mission that only you can accomplish.”

Leigh caught sight of herself in the mirror, looked away. Rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“I don’t understand, Mr. President. What kind of a mission? And why me?” What was she saying? This was the President she was talking to. She recognized his voice. A body couldn’t go around saying no to her own President. Just couldn’t. “I mean, of course I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but. . . .”