The SONG of SHIVA (43 page)

In the shadow of the apocalypse, social order teeters. Then one day it is gone. Only a single imperative remains. Personal survival.

“What kind of question is that? Of course not. He saved our lives. We can’t toss him to the wolves now. Besides, darlin’,” he said, shaking his head with an ironic chuckle, “in case you haven’t noticed, we ain’t doing so good ourselves.”

In Thailand’s final days, Fremont had urged the NSA to hit the second node. For whatever reason, the Thai government had balked. When the order finally arrived from Washington to move unilaterally it had bee too late. Too many people integral to the plan’s execution had already fallen ill. Within days the airwaves had gone silent. Phone service abruptly followed. One by one the power plants failed. Glimmering campfires had burned feebly in the belly of the city for a few nights afterwards, but left unattended, they had long since gone dark.

“I just wanted to hear you admit it,” Nora said.

“Hey, three heads are better than two. It’s like you said, we’re in this together. Fremont may be an odd wheel, but he’s
our
odd wheel. I only meant that we’ll probably outlast him.”

In a civilization that seamlessly spanned the entire globe, every traveler, every businessman, every school child, mailman, grocer, pharmacist, laborer, street vendor, family member and friend, every familiar robin and crow, even the starving dog or cat that might in desperation, feed upon a corpse, had all become viral-toting coconspirators. Burials ended long before the dead outnumbered the living. And most of the few survivors, far from being the lucky ones, had fallen victim to even older scourges like cholera and typhoid.

“He’s hardly at death’s door,” Nora replied. “Frustrated, worn out maybe, but he hasn’t become a liability.” Outside, the first few stars had pierced the darkening sky.

“I didn’t mean that either.”

“What happens if we outlive him anyway? Is there a prize for being the last people left on Earth?”

“But we won’t
be
the last. There’ll still be Pandavas ― and the
Pra Yee Suu
.”

“Right.
The Manifestation
. The Man.”

Under cover of chaos and broadcast static, a well-equipped band had stolen into Bangkok. Days had passed before the city’s few survivors knew of their arrival. But Lyköan had known. He had witnessed their approach from afar, but had been unable to do anything about it.

The new spiritual essence had already arrived when Lyköan’s astral projection had first stumbled upon the caravan that night on the empty road. A new occupant in the great wheel of creation, an unobservable inky shadow, effectively cloaked from Lyköan’s gaze. But there was no doubt ― the One they awaited had finally arrived.

Installed on the Amarin Winitchai Throne in the royal palace, the Presence had wasted no time. Within days of its arrival armed squads had occupied the city’s main power and water treatment plants, television and radio stations, food and fuel distribution centers, even the WHO laboratories. Nora was headed for an offsite inoculation and barely avoided the first wave of armored vehicles. Allowing Fremont to tag along, she and Lyköan had fled the city on foot, broken into the Bangkok auxiliary armory a few days later and liberated the weapons and ammunition. Since then it had been hand-to-mouth thievery that had kept them alive. Under the circumstances no one would miss the stuff.

At another place and time the new ruler might have been hailed as
The Anointed One
or
The
Mahdi
,
perhaps even
The Parusian Presence
. What’s in a title? Führer, president, premier, boss. For when offered a clear cut choice, most men will choose life. No matter how queerly rigged, they will board even a boat of questionable salvation, rather than suffer mortal consequences ― rather than have their heads shoved into the black sack. After escaping the plague’s horrors, the promises of this godlike
Manifestation
and its grand dewan, Pandavas, were downright appealing. Initially by ones and twos, eventually in droves, the remaining survivors had rushed gratefully into the welcoming arms of the new administration.

“It’s getting brighter every night,” Lyköan acknowledged, as the faraway glow of electric light brilliance replaced the sinking solar orb.

“And closer,” Nora added.

In just the past few days, Manifestation crews had restored power to much of downtown. Even so, it remained a ghostly place, sparsely inhabited and still hiding who knew how many unburied bodies? During the day, caravans of corpse-filled trucks snaked their way through town, depositing their grisly cargo in landfill trenches outside the city. But the evil
phi
― the malicious spirits of the dead ― were not so easily assuaged. Old beliefs die hard. In their minds, many survivors wondered whether there was enough spirit-house magic in all of Thailand to propitiate the evil that had been unleashed in this one city alone.

“Sometimes I think Sun Shi was lucky,” Lyköan admitted. “He was spared all of this.”

“Ning and Marty too.”

“Your old boss?”

Nora nodded, then looked into Lyköan’s face. In each dilated pupil an identical reflection of the distant illumination burned ghostly.

“What the fuck are they up to down there?” he asked offhandedly.

“Maybe it’s better we don’t know,” Nora replied.

Pockets of civilization might still survive somewhere, but right here, right now, evil held the upper hand. Watching from this remote hideaway in the enveloping darkness, she felt beaten. She had not heard Dana or Emily’s voice in what felt like an eternity ― couldn’t stop thinking about them. Her only consolation was that Newhouse had made good on his promise. The girls and Diana’s family had all been vaccinated. How they were faring at this moment, how well they had weathered the pandemic’s horrid sweep through America ― and its aftermath ― she had no way of knowing. Isolation was total and Shiva’s reign certainly off to a smashing start.

“I know you never put much stock in the smoke and mirrors,” Lyköan managed after a long silence. “The Hermetic Transformation ― the infinite layers of the universe ― the rest of the hocus pocus... Especially our other lives...”

Nora didn’t hear him. Her thoughts were thousands of miles away.

“Too bad you didn’t know Sun Shi better,” he wished aloud.
He might have convinced you
. Was she even listening?

Raising a hand to her forehead, she brushed a few errant hairs out of her eyes. Egan might believe wholeheartedly in such things, but she saw no value in holding that same belief. Even if the supposedly unseen undercurrent existed, had it helped them avert the end of the world? No. She had witnessed everything that had happened, had lived every detail of the sad, sorry adventure step for step alongside him, and yet, had there been one instance of anything more otherworldly than some madman’s horribly misapplied science?

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, E. Not that I won’t accept the possibility. It’s just beyond my personal experience. In all the craziness I can’t point to a single thing that doesn’t fit nice and tidy within the familiar universe I’ve always known. But I believe
in
you, E. Isn’t that enough?”

“I don’t know.” He decided not to tell her the rest. About the whispering that had come with the Manifestation’s arrival. The high-pitched, unintelligible ringing in his ears. Was it really a voice or simply his imagination?

Instead he told her, “Fremont’s not the only one capable of unraveling. Even enhanced beings have limits. We certainly have ours. If we do, then Pandavas ― even the Man ― must have theirs. I just wish we knew what they were up to under those lights.”

There were other troubling changes that had arrived with the whispers. For one, his Hermetic immersive ability was waning. The signpost-like ley lines were fading. Travel beyond the five senses had become more difficult. The harder he pushed the more the universe seemed to resist. Applying more concentration only increased the drag. If it continued, before long he would once again be confined within the parameters of his physical body. The thought of losing that otherworldly freedom now was terrifying.

“If it’s any consolation,” Nora attempted in honesty, “there
have
been a few things I can’t explain. Escaping Hoole, for example. And whatever it was you did inside the Node. But none of them seem to have changed the course of events. If there
are
any deeper movers at work, they certainly don’t seem to be our friends.”

“Maybe not. Are they supposed to be?”

“You’re the phantom traveler, mister. You tell me.”

“I have no idea.”

Blossom rose from the floor where she had been sleeping on the other side of the room and trotted over to the window, pushing her muzzle into the discussion. Lyköan lowered his voice.

“I think the mutt’s trying to tell us something. It’s a pointless argument anyway. She and I can take it from here. Why don’t you get some sleep. I’ll wake Felix at midnight. You can take over at four.”

“What, and pull my own weight?” she asked, the light of sarcasm returning to her face.

“All for one and... no favoritism.”

“Don’t be afraid to wake me when you come off shift,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. Then patting Blossom on the head, she headed out of the room without a backward glance.

* * *

Lyköan looked at his watch. Eleven seventeen. Bending over the table, he snuffed out the candles. Returning to his chair, he raised the blinds and opened the window. Checking the safety and angling the weapon through the opening, he stepped out onto the fire escape. Motioning silently for Blossom to follow, he closed the sash behind them both and sat on the cool metal landing, his back against the warm brick.

An artificial glow filled one corner of the sky, beyond the canyons of darkened buildings. Light and shadow trickery. Like time and memory. One minute you’re fighting the good fight ― and the next minute ― this sterile, silent graveyard.

And like a graveyard, not a body in sight. The streets were surprisingly open and empty. After the hospitals had filled, the increasing waves of victims had been redirected to Ministry of Health containment centers like the one at Wat Tee Pueng Sut Taai. Breeding grounds for more contagion. Once it became common knowledge how lethally virulent and communicable the viruses were, most people had simply scurried indoors and perished out of sight.

The toll in human lives had been mirrored in the city’s soi dog population. Death seemed too cruel a punishment for obeying an instinctive dictum and feeding upon the flesh of their former benefactors. But as a result, they too became infected and, sensing death approaching, had crawled off into the shadows as well. Blossom might be the last soi dog left in Bangkok.

Ghoul-like crews stuffing corpses into garbage trucks and armed patrols scouring the streets for survivors snaked through the city daily. There seemed to be no shortage of willing hands to assist with the ongoing nightmarish clean-up. A picture of smoldering Gehenna. Nora, Fremont and he, determined to have nothing to do with what was going on, were keeping their distance. Out here on the as-yet-unelectrified fringe of the city there was still hope. After more than one narrow escape, trailed by crackling bullhorns, exchanging a few rounds with their pursuers, they could only guess what might be happening under the downtown lights.

In the distance, the illuminated city beckoned, offering answers to these questions. A warm breeze brushed Lyköan’s face. Blowing through Blossom’s mottled coat, the air snapped sporadically with blue-green static sparks. Grabbing the thirty-six with one hand and the painted railing with the other, Lyköan pulled himself upright.

“Stay here, girl. I’m going up top for a better look.”

Each footfall on the single flight of honeycombed-metal stairs echoed like a pistol shot in the darkness. The stairs ended at a vertical ladder. Grasping a rung, he began to climb. Leaping over the low parapet wall at the top of the ladder, he landed silently on roofing tar still soft from the heat of the day. Above him, the building’s water tower rose another ten meters into a moonless sky. In the background, the wind was moaning through the city’s web of wires.

Climbing the narrow ladder he found affixed to the sheet-metal, he soon reached the top of the tower. Scrambling onto the flattened conical roof, he sat down on the rusting, corrugated edge, laid the rifle across his thighs and, legs dangling in the air, relaxed. Inhaling the stiffening breeze, absorbing the stars and the depth of the night, he slipped effortlessly into the now familiar stream and let the ever-was and ever-will-be melt once again into the single thread where creation and oblivion are one.

The temple of the night filled with pure melody ― where tone and hue and flavor, form and function surrendered to the beckoning. Leaving the confines of mere physicality, he was soaring in the ether, buoyed by invisible thermals, a creature home again in the grand design, propelled by the current rushing of the underlying absolute. Joyful in the riotous spray of unnamable colors and finding no void in the measured tolling, no delay in the tick, tick, tick of passing time, reveling in this tracing of the siren song of the universal sine.