Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (33 page)

The police commissioner reports similar third-shift problems in most of the city’s precincts.

Hank braced the thick wood-and-steel bar across his door, then checked his window shutters to make sure they were locked down good and tight. Now—

A knock at the door.

Who the hell?

He stepped closer but made no move to lift the bar.

“Yeah?”

“Mister Thompson,” said a familiar voice on the other side. “Ernst Drexler here. May we have a word?”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“I’d prefer not to shout through the door.”

“Well, that’s the way it’s gonna be. New rule: My door doesn’t open after sundown.”

“Please, Mister Thompson—”

“Speak your piece or move on.”

A pause, a sigh, then, “I find myself in an awkward position.”

“Meaning?”

“I have no accommodations for the night.”

Hank knew what was coming, but no way he was letting the white-suited twit off easy.

“I guess that means you couldn’t find anyone to put up storm shutters.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Too bad.”

“I was wondering…”

“Yeah?”

Another sigh. “I was wondering if I might share your quarters for the night.”

Hank paused, as if considering it—which he wasn’t.

After a lengthy silence, he said, “Nah.”

“Hank, please. I have no place to stay.”

So it was “Hank” now? And had he ever heard Drexler say “please”?

“Sorry, Drexie. Not keen on roommates.”

“Need I remind you that you are here at the leave of the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order, of which I am a member and you are not?”

“You’ve reminded me of that more times than I can count. But you’re still not getting in here tonight. You can stay in the basement with the guys. No windows there so you’ll be safe enough.”

“Now listen here—”

“No,
you
listen: You and your Order can do what you want—try to evict us, whatever. But no matter what, I’m spending the night alone and not opening this door till sunrise. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.”

As Drexler began pounding on the door, Hank turned away and flopped onto his bed. Pretty soon the pounding stopped. He closed his eyes and searched for sleep.

Carol stood beside Bill at Glaeken’s picture window. He watched the park but she watched the living room instead. Jack and Glaeken stood in huddled conversation on the far side. Jack had arrived earlier, jubilant that he’d heard from someone named Gia over the shortwave. Now, as he and Glaeken conversed, they’d occasionally glance her way, but she realized they were really looking at Bill, and that made her uneasy.

She turned to the window and saw lights and bustling figures below.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Bill said. He lifted a pair of binoculars from a nearby table and peered through them. “They were dropping some sort of depth charges in it earlier today. Looks like they’re going to try spraying them with insecticide again.” He passed the glasses to her. “Take a look.”

The Sheep Meadow swam into focus through the lenses. Carol remembered watching a similar scene on TV last night, a scene that had ended in bloody horror.

“I can’t believe they’re going to try this again,” she said. “Those men down there must be either very brave or very crazy.”

“I’d venture they’re neither. They’re doing a job. Everybody else can go nuts, throw up their hands and say nothing matters anymore, the world’s coming to an end so screw everything and let’s party, let’s go wild, let’s do all the things we never allowed ourselves to do when we knew there’d be a price to pay. Let’s get drunk, get stoned, rape, pillage, kill, destroy, burn everything to the ground just because we feel like it. But we’ll always have a certain small percentage who’ll go on doing their jobs, people with an overriding sense of duty, of responsibility, of obligation to try to keep things running, to ignore the end-of-the-world zeitgeist and simply keep going. People who know that to let yourself go crazy is to say that your day-to-day life has been a sham, that you’ve been a hypocrite, that your lifestyle has been little more than play-acting; like saying, ‘Hey, you know everything I’ve said and done up till now? It’s all been a lie.
This
is the real me.’ No matter what Rasalom throws at that small percentage of humans, they’re not going to back down. Some of them are around that goddamn hole right now.”

Carol found herself staring at Bill, a lump in her throat, tears in her eyes. She knew she was standing next to one of those people. The sound of applause made her turn. Behind them, Jack and Glaeken were clapping.

“I bet you used to give some wicked sermons,” Jack said.

Bill looked sheepish. “Sorry. Preaching to the choir. I got a little carried away.”

“No,” Jack said softly. “It was cool.”

Glaeken was smiling. “You’ve just demonstrated one of the reasons Rasalom hates you so. The type of person you describe is the only threat to his supremacy. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them. If the percentages were reversed, however—if there were as many people sticking to their posts, holding on and refusing to allow fear to rob them of everything they believe in, everything they’ve lived for, as there now are people falling victim to their fears—Rasalom wouldn’t have a chance. But the opposite is true. The violent anarchy growing outside feeds his power, helps him shorten the days even further, which increases the fear and irrationality, which in turn makes him stronger, and around and around it goes until he is the victor.”

A flash of light from below caught Carol’s attention. She turned and stared out at the park.

“Oh, look!”

The others joined her at the window as she raised the glasses and watched as the men around the Sheep Meadow hole sprayed fire at the things winging up from the depths.

“I’ll be damned!” Jack said from over her left shoulder. “Flamethrowers! King Kong flamethrowers!”

“I think it’s working!” Bill said.

And sure enough, the fire did seem to be working. The things flying out of the hole were caught in the crossfire. Arcs of flame streamed inward from all sides. Powered by the pumps on the trucks around the rim, they crisscrossed over the opening, waving back and forth, catching the winged things as they tried to escape into the night. Doused with gasoline, or whatever the hoses were spraying, they caught fire and hurtled out of control into the darkness, twisting, turning, tumbling, fluttering up and down and about like windswept embers from a fresh-lit campfire.

A thrill ran through Carol. The things were dying! They could be contained! Here was the spark of hope they’d all been looking for!

“Do you know what this means?” she said, lowering the glasses and turning to the others. “If they can set up flamethrowers around all the holes—”

“Hey, what’s going on down there?” Jack said.

Carol peered through the glasses again. The arcs of flame were wavering, faltering, some dropping, falling, pouring straight down into the hole; others were backing away from the edge, spraying the ground along the rim with liquid fire. And then Carol saw why.

“Oh, no!”

The flying things weren’t the only creatures leaving the pit tonight. Through the lenses she saw other shapes—bulbous creatures with hard, shiny, black bodies; sinuous, multi-legged crawlers as long as a man and as thick around as a muscular thigh, and more—moving along the rim, crawling over the edge, worming their way onto the grass. They leapt upon the men directing the flamethrowers, began tearing them to pieces.

Carol snatched the glasses from her eyes and held them away from her. Jack took them, watched for a moment in silence, then handed them to Bill.

Bill’s voice sounded dry, quavering. “Every night some new horror is added to the others.”

“And each night is longer than the last,” Glaeken said. “But come away from the window for now. We have something to discuss.”

Carol was glad to retreat to the lighted space of the living room. She huddled next to Bill. Despite the warmth of the apartment she felt cold. She almost wished he’d put an arm around her and hug her close. She’d spent the last few nights alone, but tonight she
felt
alone.

Jack sat across from them. Glaeken remained standing.

“Jack is leaving for the Central Pacific tomorrow. The object of his mission is crucial to our survival. However, even if he’s successful in retrieving the necklaces, I fear they won’t be enough. We need something else. One more component. And to obtain that, someone must travel in the opposite direction. Jack can’t do both—there’s not enough time. I need a volunteer to go the other way.”

A sick feeling grew in the pit of Carol’s stomach as she noticed both men staring at Bill.

He said, “How … how far in this other direction?”

“Romania.”

Carol grabbed Bill’s hand and squeezed.
No!

“How can I get there? The airlines—”

He’s already decided! Carol thought. They didn’t even ask him and he’s already making travel plans.

“I know some pilots,” Jack said. “A couple of brothers. They run an executive jet service out on Long Island.”

“They’re still flying?”

Jack smiled. “You know the kind of people you were talking about before—the ones who keep on keepin’ on, no matter what? Frank and Joe Ashe are two of those. They don’t back down—I don’t think they know how.”

“Frank and Joe,” Bill said. “They sound like the Hardy Boys. Will they fly me?”

Jack nodded. “For a price. I just spoke to them. They’re not crazy about heading into Eastern Europe, but for the right price—in gold—they’ll do it.”

“Gold?” Bill said. “I don’t ha—”

“I have plenty,” Glaeken said. “Are you willing to make the trip?”

“Of course.”

“Bill!” Carol gave his hand a hard squeeze. “Maybe you should think about this.”

“What’s to think about?” His clear and untroubled blue eyes stared into hers. “Somebody’s got to do it. Might as well be me. I want to be useful, Carol. I’m tired of feeling like a fifth wheel. I need to
do
something. Hell, I’m not needed for anything else around here.”

I
need you!

The intensity of the emotion behind that thought startled her.

“You could be killed.”

“We’ll all be dead if we don’t do what we can now.” He looked at Glaeken. “When do I leave and what am I supposed to get?”

“You leave tomorrow morning—”

“Oh, no!” Carol couldn’t help it.

“—and you’ll be searching a rocky ravine for scraps of metal, shards from a sword blade that shattered there in 1941.”

Bill looked shocked. “Do I have to get them all?”

“Just a few. Just a sampling is all we need. You must—”

An explosion rattled the apartment windows. Carol followed Glaeken, Bill, and Jack to the picture window.

Below, in the Sheep Meadow, flames billowed high into the night air. One of the tank trucks supplying the fuel for the flamethrowers had exploded. In the flickering light, even without the binoculars, Carol could see that the entire Sheep Meadow was now acrawl with the new horrors from the hole. They were on the move, spreading out into the city streets in a glistening, wriggling, undulating carpet.

She wondered if something similar was happening in Atlantic City … to Nelson and his new woman. No reason she should worry about the man who’d abandoned her, but she did. All those years together …

She glanced up and saw the moon rising huge and orange over the rooftops of the city. But something was … different about it tonight.

“What’s wrong with the moon?”

The others stared along with her. Jack spotted it first.

“The face—the man in the moon face is gone. Jeez—even the moon’s been changed!”

“Not changed,” said a flat voice by her shoulder.

A small cry of surprise escaped Carol as she turned and saw Nick standing directly behind her. But he wasn’t looking at her. His attention was focused on the moon.

“It’s the same moon. It’s just been turned. You’re looking at what people called the dark side of the moon.”

Carol turned back and stared up at the vaguely threatening orb that had been a symbol of romance for ages.