The Witch and the Werewolf (5 page)

“
Dad, I really don’t want
to,” he told his old man but his old man was drunk already. Drunk
meant showing everyone what a big man he was. Showing what a big
man he was invariably meant picking on Jeremy.

“
You’re gonna look at the
single greatest thing man has ever done, boy. You’re going to look
at it so you can tell your grandchildren you were there when they
saved the planet. When they pull this off it will be like flipping
the bird to the universe. Forget the dinosaurs. If they’d have had
nukes, we might all be reptiles.”

He half understood what
his father was trying to say, though the man made very little
sense. His father stood, coming to him, and held his head towards
the brightening night sky as missile after missile slammed into the
approaching asteroid. He clenched his eyes tight, unwilling to look
up.

“
No, damn it boy, you’re
going to look.”

His father kept him pinned
to the chair with his elbows and then forced his eyes open with his
fingers. He saw a missile strike the asteroid, the light so bright
it hurt his eyes. Once he started watching, however, he couldn’t
stop. The light show was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. The
colors were more vibrant than any he’d ever seen in life. His
father let go, finally, staring up at the spectacle himself. He
felt genuine power course through him, a feeling of gentle warmth
and tingly electricity. For a moment he thought everything was
going to be all right after all. After a few moments of watching
the wonder Jeremy’s world went black and he felt hot, gooey liquid
streaming down his cheeks.

“
Dad?”

“
Oh my god,” his father
said drunkenly. “Oh my god.”

“
Dad, I can’t see,” Jeremy
said, suddenly very afraid. The darkness was all encompassing and
absolute. It was worse than turning off the light switch at night.
When he reached up and felt his eyes he found hollow
sockets.

“
I can’t see either, son.
I can’t see anything. Oh my god… I am so sorry Jeremy. I’m sorry I
made you look. I’m a jerk. I’m always such a jerk.”

He wanted to say something
to his father but light began fading back into his vision. It
wasn’t so much that he could see. It was just color. Dull shapes
were outlined in supple grays. He could make out the house next to
them, slightly phosphorescent. He turned and looked at his father.
The man was outlined in a dull purple aura and mostly blurry. But
Jeremy could tell he had his hands up to his face, holding the
empty holes where his eyes should have been.

“
Dad,” he said softly. “I
can see something.”

“
I don’t have any eyes,”
his father replied. “My eyes are gone. I can’t see anything. How
can you see anything?”

“
It’s just colors,” Jeremy
said, standing and looking at his newfound world. Everything glowed
with its own color. The house across from them was gray but he
could see the people inside. Mrs. Smith, who always made the kids
in the neighborhood cookies and was just about the nicest person
he’d ever met, glowed with a bright blue. Mr. Smith who tended to
scream at kids on his lawn and trap stray dogs and cats, was a
bright red. The nuclear missiles continuing to plow into Wormwood
made a golden colored star and the comet itself, including the
piece he saw falling to the Gulf of Mexico, was a dark, crimson
red. The color itself gave him the shivers and he felt something
with it. Danger, fright… it was hard to put his finger on the exact
emotion but he knew Wormwood was evil in the truest sense of
evil.

“
Jeremy? Are you still
there?”

“
Yeah dad. I’m
here.”

“
And you can see
stuff?”

“
Sort of.”

“
But your eyes are gone
too, aren’t they?”

“
Yeah.”

“
What are we going to
do?”

Jeremy didn’t answer,
instead looking south. A giant wave of water, the aura strangely
green, was racing up from the Gulf. Funny that he could see it from
so far away, he thought. It was like his mind was pointing out
danger to him. The water was coming to them, he knew.

“
I think we hold on right
here for a while dad.”

“
Why is that? What good is
it here?”

“
Water is
coming.”

“
It’s bad, isn’t
it?”

Jeremy nodded and then
realized that his old man couldn’t see him nodding.

“
Yeah, dad. It’s the end
of the world.”

“
I’m going to call for
help,” his father said, standing and walking towards the edge of
the house. “I’ll get us an ambulance.”

“
Dad, no!” Jeremy said,
too late.

His father fell off the
edge of the house and smacked his head on the air conditioner unit.
Jeremy watched as his life force spilled from his body, sinking
into the ground.

Robert Bawker stared at the prisoner chained across from him,
wondering what the easiest way to break the man’s neck might be. If
only he’d lean a bit forward.

The prison van was stopped
in bumper to bumper traffic on the Sydney Sherman Bridge, the part
of Loop 610 in Houston that went over the sprawling Houston Ship
channel. He, along with three other prisoners, was chained to
benches along the sides of the van. He wasn’t sure of the man
across from him’s name or crime.

“
What are you looking at,
con?” Bawker asked him. “You lose something over here?”

“
You’re the one they call
Junior, ain’t ya?” the tattooed and heavily muscled white man asked
him. The man’s ink was a guide to his life and crimes. The tear
drops under his eyes were people he’d killed, the cards a
representation of his gang affiliations.

“
No one calls me
Junior.”

“
Yeah, you’re him. I know
you. Everyone calls you Junior,” the convict said. “And not because
your daddy was senior. It’s because you like them young, right? How
are you still alive in the joint?”

“
Pipe down back there,”
the guard said from the van’s passenger seat. They were separated
by heavy steel mesh.

“
And what are you going to
do if we don’t?” the con asked. He had the same thing on his mind
they all did. The world was ending and here they were, stuck in a
prison van. It could be worse, Robert thought. I could be back in
the can, staring at walls. At least in the van he had a chance. A
chance at what he wasn’t sure of yet.

The guard drew his gun and
pointed it at the con. “I’ll kill you.”

The convict was genuinely
shocked. Robert smiled. “You can’t do that. You’re a cop. You’ve
got rules and shit.”

“
The only rule I see,” the
guard told him, “is up there. And up there says nobody cares if a
van load of convicts makes it anywhere this night. Up there says if
I put two in your head as you’re trying to escape,” he tapped his
buddy, the driver, on the shoulder with a big grin on his face,
“then nobody cares. Hell, at this point I’d be doing the world a
favor, right?”

Robert laughed out loud
and the convict, unable to do anything about the guard with a gun,
turned to him. “And what are you laughing at, Junior?”

Robert had always hated
the nickname he’d been given after his crimes. Junior, they’d spat
at him, always trying to shiv him or hurt him. They hated him for
loving little ones yet none of them said the first thing about the
moans and groans filling the prison in the middle of the night.
They called him a pervert but they were hypocrites, bent over each
other huffing and puffing like animals in the night. He’d put a
stop to it, though. They didn’t call him Junior to his face,
anymore. Except this guy.

“
I’m laughing at an idiot
that doesn’t know he’s dead,” Robert said calmly.

The other two prisoners in
the van were righteous brothers in their own right. In any other
place they’d be the intimidating ones. But they knew more about
Robert Bawker than the new guy did.

“
Dude, you need to watch
it,” one of the other convicts warned the new guy.

The convict leaned
forward, grinning with a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Oh yeah? What’s
he going to do about it?”

“
If you call me Junior one
more time, I’m going to kill you,” Robert said easily and
confidently.

“
Oh yeah,
Junior?”

Robert moved lightning
quick across the narrow confines of the van, stretching the chain
that bound him to the floor to its full length. He reached out and
looped his handcuffed hands around the other convict’s head before
the man could move back. He grabbed the sides of the man’s head and
jerked violently. The sound of snapping bones filled the van. The
guard looked on in horror as the other convict slumped to the
padded seat.

“
I told you not to call me
junior.”

“
Holy hell,” the guard
with the pistol in the passenger seat said. “You just killed that
man. Right here in front of me. I saw it. You ain’t ever getting
out of prison you child molesting murderer.” The man fumbled with
his gun as Robert settled back into his seat, judging the distance
to the steel grate.

“
And what are you going to
do about that, Mr. Pig?” Robert said with a laugh. He half hoped
the man would shoot him. It would be better than dying under the
comet’s impact.

“
I’m going to kill you,”
the man said, but Robert could hear the fake resolve ringing like a
bell. He wasn’t a killer, not like the men in the back of the
van.

“
Then please,” Robert
began. “Open the back of this van and come back here and kill
me.”

“
You’d like that, wouldn’t
you scum?” the guard said. Bright light filled the van and Robert
knew that the UN’s missiles were beginning to strike the comet in
the last bid effort to break the world killer into smaller
pieces.”

“
Sweet Jesus would you
look at that?” the driver said and the passenger seat guard turned
and stared up out of the van’s window. “Oh my god.”

Robert glanced at the two
other prisoners in the back of the van. He whispered, “Don’t look
at it. I’ll get us out of here in a minute.”

He listened as the guards
up front first awed at the site of the missiles striking Wormwood
and then screamed out as their eyeballs melted in their face.
Despite the light filtering into the van Robert resisted the urge
to look up, knowing all those who stared at the explosions stood a
very strong chance of losing their vision. He heard screams up and
down the bridge as people suddenly realized they were going
blind.

“
Knew that was going to
happen,” he said with a laugh.

“
Oh my god… I can’t see,”
the guard said, letting the pistol fall to the van’s floor. “My
eyes.”

“
What’s the matter up
there,” Robert said with a wicked grin. “Did looking at that comet
melt out your eyes?”

“
You shut up,” the man
said, fumbling in the floor searching for his pistol. “Just shut.
You’re a dead man. I don’t care if I can’t see. Filth like you
isn’t going to survive the night.”

Robert edged as far
forward as the chains would let him and waited until the guard
finally found the gun, sticking it through the mesh. He held the
handcuffs up right in front of the barrel.

“
Where are you? Where are
you, you baby killer,” the man said, pulling the trigger. The
bullet blasted through the chains, freeing his hands. He pulled the
gun away from the guard, turning it on him.

“
No,” he said coldly. “I
don’t think it’s me who’s not going to live through the
night.”

The gun rang out once,
then twice, both blind guards dead. He turned the pistol on the two
men in the back of the van.

“
You’re either with me or
against me, boys,” he said, grinning as the fireworks show
continued above.

“
We don’t want any
trouble, man. None at all. Whatever you want. That’s what I
want.”

“
Good,” Robert said,
looking out at the mass of cars packed onto the interstate. It was
the birth of a brand new world.

Dutch knew a chunk of Wormwood had broken off and slammed
into the Gulf of Mexico even without looking into the sky. He could
hear the roar of the tsunami down at the coast. He realized that if
he could hear it, some forty miles away, it was a monster big
enough to wipe out the city. He wondered for a brief second just
how water resistant the old priest’s shelter was.

The streets were packed
with blind partiers. Many who’d watched as the missiles struck the
comet were left without functioning eyes, some even to the point
their eyes had melted from their face. The missiles finally stopped
but the lights had gone out with them. Dutch could only figure that
enough EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, had traveled back to the
earth to short electrical components. Not that the newly blind
would be able to see anything, but the streets were
dark.

Dutch considered himself a
hardcore sort of guy. He’d been around the world and seen a lot of
death and misery. He’d seen things back in the Sandbox that he
wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. But nothing he’d ever done or
heard prepared for him for the horror of thousands of blind people
in the streets of downtown Houston panicking at once. Men grabbed
for each other, begging for help. Women and children cried in the
streets. None of them would survive long, he knew, not with that
wall of watery death pushing north from Galveston Bay.