The Scream (27 page)

And in that moment, he could almost believe it was true.

There would be no more talking now. He no longer thought in words. It was the shared vocabulary of passion and sensation that spoke through him now, spoke in goose bump braille and illiterate moan. His heart was pounding beneath her touch, and his tongue danced mute and madly with her own.

And he ached, God he ached, at the root of his being, to be inside her.

Inside her.

Before it was too late . . .

But then she rose again, sliding up instead of down him, and he was helpless to do anything but whatever she willed. That was the crazy thing about bondage games. Dominance. Submission. He had abandoned his power to act independently when he let her tie him down. He had abandoned himself to her and to his own desire. Now she could take anything she wanted from him.

And he would gladly give her everything he had.

"
Your soul
," she whispered. Guttural. Animal.

Then she took his temples gently but firmly in hand and lowered herself onto his face.

His tongue came out to greet her, to taste her heady womanfolds. And her taste was succulent primal madness. Intoxicating. Overwhelming. He lapped at the nectar that was its form. She ground herself against him, arched and tensing.

A massive tremor erupted in her belly; he sensed it seismographically.
Can she really be coming that fast?
he wondered, making a strategic drive for her clitoris. She wouldn't allow it, only ground in deeper and let out a desperate moan.

The tip of his tongue touched something hard.

A question mark formed in the grooves of his brain. The word
hymen
appeared before it. It sent such a shock wave of doubt and confusion and sudden inexplicable resurgent dread through him that his tongue, for a moment, forgot to move.

"Ah!" she cried, grinding harder, almost painfully. His eyes shot open, found themselves staring up at her perfect belly. Staring with suddenly perfect horror.

Something was pulsating under her flesh.

And it was moving lower.

He tried to pull away then; of course it was impossible. For the first time he realized how strong her grip on his head was. No longer gentle, her hands held him in place.

"AH!" she screamed, pushing down nearly hard enough to snap his jaw . . .

. . .
and then the secret membrane snapped within her, and the vileness began to gush down his open throat. He tried to scream. It was muffled and throttled. He felt his soul begin to lurch, tear free of its moorings with a sickening rending sound that meshed perfectly with the blinding searing horror of his final moments, the vomitcumshitslime abomination that sluiced in and infested his skull
.

Then Tara screamed, letting go entirely, and his soul went out shrieking to nestle like an egg in her poisoned womb.

As she buried her thumbs in his eyes.

And the Passage began.

The bone-white Cadillac found its own personal space on the far horizon of the JFK parking lot. An hour and a half before showtime, and the place was already all but jammed to capacity.

The top of the Caddy was down, of course and thank God; when they were in motion, Kyle barely smelled his passengers at all. But the motion was over, and the morning air already held ninety swollen degrees of humid heat.

"Alright," he said, careful not to breathe through his nose. "Here's your tickets, boys and girls. Have a nice fucking time. And remember: be fruitful.

"And multiply."

Outside the little groundskeeper shack that sat on the south side of the mountain-roughly halfway between the house and the lodge-there sat an enormous white satellite dish. It squatted on its cinder block base, blunt snoot pointing skyward through a niche in the trees, looking altogether imposing enough as to suggest some nefarious Stavro-Blofeldian missile base, replete with underground armies and a fake volcano opening at the top of the mountain.

Cody Adams liked to entertain the notion, even though he knew darned well that (a) the mountain was not hollow, and (b) the antenna sent its signal to the tier upon tier of audio/video gear that packed the interior of the shed. On one monitor, James Bond-not Roger whatsisname, but Sean Connery, the
real
Bond-was busy fly-walking his suction-cupped way across the set of
You Only Live Twice
. Cody chuckled and took another hit off his first joint of the day, pleased that the film was appearing on Showtime. His mind was elsewhere, even while his fingers were busy.

But then, that was Cody. He was a drifter and a dreamer; always had been, probably always would. That was just line by him; to Cody, what other people invariably mistook for a lack of ambition was merely a radically different set of priorities. Cody Adams had been, at various times in his thirty-nine years, a carpenter, technician, electrician, pro surfer, truck driver, acid head, cemetery groundskeeper, pizza chef, warehouse worker, and war protester. He had left each in its turn, not because he couldn't handle the task, but rather because he had gotten out of it exactly what he required to continue on.

It was a trait that drove his parents crazy, right up to the day they died. Cody suspected that to the end they held out that their fair-haired eldest would any minute wise up and pack off to medical school-or more likely Tuscon Community College-get a job in something boring and stable, find a nice girl, and settle down to spawn. It never happened. But they never got over hoping.

Even his baby sister, Rachel, who was always the responsible one, seemed honor-bound to continue the tradition as best she could. She settled for talking Jake into offering him a job as caretaker/babysitter/bodyguard. Cody didn't mind. He liked it here on the mountain. It was peaceful here.

Sort of
.

He ran one big-knuckled, tanned hand through his wheat-colored shock of hair, brushing it out of his face. He had the look of the perennial beach bum: lean, muscular build that showed very little of its nearly four decades wear and tear, strong, nimble fingers, a craggy, open face that usually sported a three-week growth of sandy beard, ice-blue eyes, and a hairline that receded so gracefully as to be a blessing. He and Rachel hailed from opposite ends of the parental gene pool in just about everything, from looks to temperament to political orientation.

But there were some things they held in common. A deep, abiding love: for each other, for Mother Nature, for good ol' rock 'n' roll.

And for magic on the big screen.

Which was exactly why Cody was putting the finishing touches on his pièce de résistance. It was one thing to stay up all night rigging twenty VCRs to tape the entire twelve-hour run of Rock Aid on as many networks, another to edit them into a cohesive whole after the fact. But
this
. . .

This was gonna be something special.

Baby Sis had judged that a sweltering concert was no place for a nine-month-old and had reluctantly stayed home. Ted and Chris had cycled down on Ted's new scoot. Baby Sis had resigned herself to watching it all on the tube and had invited up a few girlfriends to do it with her.

Cody twisted the last hex nut on the last coaxial cable into place and squeezed around the clutter to seat himself on his throne: a pneumatic swivel chair in front of a battered Apple computer, a budget video mixer, and his little switcher box. Baby Sis was bummed.

Not for long.

With this setup he could simultaneously record uninterrupted and play mix-n-match on the homefront with any of the one hundred and seventy-eight channels that the dish pulled in. A video camera on a tripod was aimed squarely at the chair: Cody turned around, focused the camera, stuck a joint between his lips, and grinned into Monitor One.

"So who needs to be there," he said. His finger poised on the switch that would fire it all up.

Here goes nothin'
, he thought.
It'll work, or it'll blow every circuit in the building. What's life without risk?

Cody took one last hit. James Bond blew the missile base.

And Cody pushed the button.

Inside the house, Rachel and Natalie were strolling through the Twilight Zone, a dining hall that had been converted into a sort of community fun house for the group. It was an airy, spacious room with large windows, Ping-Pong and pool tables, and a central seating area dominated by a Toshiba rear-projection TV with matching bootleg videotape library. Rachel had just breezed through with her squirming armload and a bowl of dip when the set fired up and a voice boomed out, "
This is COH-DEE TEE VEE
. . ."

Rachel looked up in shock.

". . .
bringing you the finest in on-the-spot coverage of the Rock Aid concert broadcasting and other choice bits of video wizardry
."

The face on the screen donned shades and turned grim, forty inches of flat, deadpan delivery. "
I know what you're thinking
," it hissed. "
You're thinking, 'Do I feel lucky?
'" Then he smiled.

Rachel stared, agog.

"Well, you should. Because even though you can't be there, even though you're feeling like the chains of motherhood are keeping you from the event of the decade, there's no need to be sad and blue.

"Because you, Sister dear, are in for the media blitz of a lifetime. You will soon take your rightful place in the global village, thanks to none other than that Modern Day Pirate of the Air Waves, Commander Cody Adams!"

Rachel giggled and sat down on the one of the leather sofa modules that ringed the tube. Natalie turned in her arms, bracing herself delicately with one hand on Rachel's cheek, and gazed at the screen. "Dahh," she chimed. "Dahh-bah-dah-bah-PFHHHT!" Rachel smiled and kissed her.

"Well, boobie," she said, "this might not be such a bad day, after all."

"
You're darned tootin', it won't!
"

Rachel was startled. "You . . . you can hear me?"

"
Yup
." Cody beamed. "
See you, too. Look on the mantel
." He pointed offscreen. Rachel looked: a handicam stood perched above the fireplace, red eye winking dutifully. "When did you do all this?" she asked incredulously.

"
In the dead of the night, my dear. I told you, I'm a genius
."

"I guess . . ."

"
I'm also starving. Could you make me a sandwich?
"

Rachel laughed. "What? You didn't wire the kitchen, too?"

"
Only for reception. Bring me something yummy, okay?
"

"You got it. Watch the midget, okay?" Rachel got up and deposited Natalie into the playpen at the corner of the sofa. Natalie looked momentarily as though she were contemplating turning on the waterworks, when Cody came to the rescue.

"
Hey, Swee'pea! Yo!
" Natalie looked up at the screen, confused. "
Hey, don't cry! It's Pee-wee time!
"

Back in the shed, Cody flipped over to CBS. A full-color, forty-inch Jhombi was busy granting Pee-wee his wish for the week. He looked on Monitor Four: Natalie stared in wobbly awe at the image.

Then she smiled.

Yup
, he thought.
This is gonna be great
.

Click

Black-and-white clip of a young Mickey Rooney as Puck in
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, hopping about to the sound of the pipes as a Burgess Meredith-like voice-over solemnly intoned:

"Music censorship is nothing new. Aristotle said that 'the flute is not an instrument that has a good moral effect; it is too exciting.'"

Cut to silent film footage of stiffly swirling men and women in black tie and ball gowns
.

"And the waltz, in its time, was loudly pronounced to be 'disgustingly immodest,' and 'will-corrupting.'"

Cut to herky-jerky film clips of happy Negros in straw hats and summer dresses, dancing the cakewalk
.

"Ragtime was rife with lewd gestures and obscene posturings,"

Cut to "Elvis the Pelvis" on the Ed Sullivan Show:

"and Elvis Presley's first television appearance could only be broadcast from the waist up . . ."

Fade to black. ROCK AID logo bleeds up in bright white letters, along with the toll-free number
.

"Rock Aid.

"Because some people
never
give up . . ."

Click

Medium shot of Bernard Javits, in sweltering suit and tie, sweaty CNN microphone in hand
.

"I'm standing in front of JFK Stadium in Philadelphia," he began, "where an estimated ninety-six thousand people are gathered for today's Rock Aid festival. Despite a storm of controversy and protests from various factions of the radical right, both the concert's promoters and the crowd seem confident that this will be a great day in the history of rock 'n' roll."

Cut to a pair of too-cute teenyboppers, Carol and Cheryl, with matching streaked-and-moussed explosions of hair
.

"I think it's disgusting, what these people say about rock music," said the one on the right. "Rock is the greatest! If they think they can take it away from us, they're crazy . . ."

Click

Cut to a throng of sign-waving protesters some fifty strong marching around and around. Note the
700 Club
logo in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Focus on the stationary form electronically identified as REV. WALTER PAISELY, his big sweaty frame dominating the screen as the marchers maintained their spiraling orbit
.

"They say that they aren't anti-Christian. They say that they're just standing up for their civil rights. Well, if you believe that, I got this nice bridge in Brooklyn that I'd just love to sell ya.

"The fact of the matter is: No matter what they say, this concert is a slap in the face of God Almighty; and in all honesty, it wouldn't surprise me too much if the Lord took a mind to smite everyone involved . . ."