torg 01 - Storm Knights (2 page)

A pretzel vendor who Alder knew by sight moved his cart closer. He nodded to Alder as he adjusted the volume on his radio. An announcer's voice emerged from the tiny black box hanging from the cart's umbrella, describing the scene at Shea. "Here they come," the radio announced, "the New York Mets!"

Now the crowd was standing and cheering, welcoming the home team to another great season. But Alder wasn't listening anymore. He was watching the sky. The clouds directly over the stadium were crackling with flashes of lightning, jagged streaks of white slashing through the blackness. "My God," said the pretzel vendor, "what's happening? Come on, man! Tell me what's happening!"

The horse paced nervously, but Alder didn't notice. Suddenly he was seeing two separate events that were occurring simultaneously. His eyes were watching the sky, fixed on the boiling clouds and lightning. His mind was imagining the scene in the stadium, forming pictures from the radio announcer's words.

He saw the clouds swirl as the wind picked up.

He heard the stands rock with thunderous applause as Walter "The Truth" Jones stepped to the mound.

He saw the fear reflected in the pretzel vendor's eyes as a bolt of lightning cracked the sky.

He heard the thunderous hush as The Truth's arm pulled back. He felt every eye turn to watch as The Truth's leg kicked up. The first pitch of the new season was about to be thrown, full of all the promise and anticipation of the new baseball season.

Full of possibility.

Alder watched, in fascination, as something moved behind the clouds. Something
was
coming.

"And here's the pitch," screamed the announcer, "it's a rocket heading on a straight course for Salter's outstretched glove! What a fastball! What a pit ..."

Suddenly the dark clouds erupted, spewing forth a wave of crackling energy that rained down around the stadium for as far as Alder could see. Inside Shea, the ball never reached the plate. Outside, the radio announcer never finished his sentence. The radio abruptly stopped broadcasting, the lights in Shea snapped off, and even Alder's walkie talkie stopped squawking. Alder barely noticed, though, because the clouds were still rumbling. They parted then, and a . hole opened in the sky. That was the only way the police officer could describe it. A hole! And in that hole, an even more terrible storm whirled.

The horse was trotting away from the stadium, snorting and neighing its protest to the unnatural events. Alder did not try to control her trek. His attention was locked on the events occurring overhead.

With a powerful clap of thunder and a display of lightning, something fell from the sky. It dropped onto Shea Stadium, crushing a huge section of the facility and the crowded parking lot beyond into rubble. It was a twisting, living mass of greens and browns, more than half a mile across, a fairy tale beanstalk formed from a gigantic, impossible jungle. Had it fallen at a different angle, had it missed its mark by a dozen yards, Alder would have been crushed too.

The beanstalk arced broadly upward, a growing, ladder of cable-thick vines, broad, man-sized leaves, and impossibly long, sharp thorns. Massive, it curved upward past the edge of visibility, back into the dark clouds. The horse was picking up speed now, and Alder tightened his grip unawares. He could not look away from the ruins of Shea Stadium.

How many were dead in there, he wondered. But the scene had not really registered in his mind yet, so he only watched.

Next, from the hole in the sky, another wave of swirling energy swept down the beanstalk and exploded over what remained of the stadium. Then it rolled out in all directions, smashing into Alder and his horse and sending them sprawling. Pain wracked the officer, but he was able to raise his head and watch as the spectacle continued.

Down through the thick growth marched, crawled, slithered, hunched, and flapped a terrible assortment of creatures. It took a moment to register, but Alder recognized these beasts. They were dinosaurs and other prehistoric monsters, or at least someone's warped version of such — including those that walked on two legs and carried spears and other weapons. They covered the top of the jungle beanstalk completely, an unending stream of monsters moving down from the storm and into Shea. They walked upon the growing pathway, standing perpendicular to its broad expanse. Unlike the fairy tale beanstalk, this was not a ladder. It was more a bridge, connecting Earth to ... someplace else.

Alder could not see into the stadium, but he heard the screams. Whoever that bridge did not kill when it smashed to the ground, the creatures dispatched — swiftly, and from the dying sounds, with no remorse.

Giant serpents that stretched over thirty feet slithered down the jungle bridge, their green and brown scales rippling as they moved. Small feathered lizards leaped from branch to branch. Four-legged beasts with tentacled snouts pushed through the twisting vines. And an odd assortment of almost-creatures rushed down into Shea. Almost, because while they resembled the dinosaur toys Alder played with as a boy, there were startling differences.

There was an almost-Tyrannosaurous Rex with large Godzilla spikes jutting from its back. There an almost-Paleoscincus with three thorny tails smashed through the overgrowth. And there an almost-Allosaurus flapped its great wings and swooped toward the ground.

Alder struggled to his feet. He had his service revolver, his radio, his nightstick, and for a moment he contemplated some desperate action. But then he saw the stream of monsters part, making way for an almost-Triceratops. The large, one-horned monster reminded the police officer of the three-horned dinosaur with the armor-plated head he had loved as a child. But there were important differences, not the least of which was the large dinosaur man riding its back and the single horn jutting from its head.

That dinosaur man was the leader, Alder knew. He felt it in his gut. And nothing that Police Officer Rick Alder could do against that being would be enough to save the people inside Shea.

Simone had remained nearby when Alder had fallen. The officer assumed that with all the craziness going on around him, the horse had decided to focus on something familiar. Like the guy in blue who took her for a ride every now and then, and gave her sugar cubes. So Alder struggled back into the saddle, trying to ignore the pain in his right knee. Then, without a look back, Alder and his horse rode off.

They only galloped for a few seconds when the sky opened again and the rain fell. Alder noted wryly that the storm was as bad as he imagined it was going to be.

He didn't know that the storm was just beginning.

And it was going to get much worse.

3

Christopher Bryce pulled the collar of his coat tight around his neck. For a spring day, it felt like late fall. The sky was gray and a chill wind whipped down the quiet streets of Queens. All he needed, on top of everything else, was to catch a cold while taking a stroll.

He walked on, no real destination in mind. His physical actions were a reflection of his mental processes; as his mind wandered, so did his feet. He found himself in a shopping area, one of those neighborhoods in the boroughs of New York that were trying to appeal to Manhattanites who didn't want to — or couldn't afford to — live in Manhattan anymore. Bryce stopped at a bookstore window out of habit, glancing to see what was on display.

What he saw was his own reflection.

His bulbous nose and red beard were visible beneath his Totes hat. His coat collar had slipped open again, revealing the white of his priestly collar. Thirty-four years old, Bryce thought, and my face carries a mark for every year. He clasped the collar of his secular outerwear, covering up the evidence of his priestly calling.

Calling, Bryce thought as he gazed at his unimpos-ing reflection. What did "calling" really mean, he wondered, and would he ever get an answer? Wasn't that the crux of his problems?

Bryce turned to go when a book cover caught his eye. It was a book on Arthurian legends, all about King

Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The illustration on the cover was of a regal Arthur, decked out in his finest armor, his mailed hands resting on Excalibur's mighty pommel. Such a simpler time, when knights battled for chivilry and honor. In those days, you knew the good guys from the bad.

A bolt of lightning illuminated the sky, startling Bryce. The rain was going to begin falling soon, and the priest did not want to get caught in the open. He resumed his walk, hurrying to beat the storm.

He would never make it.

As he hurried through the streets, Bryce continued his private reverie. He was currently on leave, back home visiting his parents, as he awaited his next assignment. His missionary work as a Jesuit priest had taken him to Australia, the Middle East, and Europe over the years. He, like the knights in the bookstore window, followed vows. Only Bryce's were vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. His was the duty to act upon any command the Holy Father put to him, to work for the glory of God and defend the Roman Catholic faith from heresy, to educate the young.

But recently he had begun to doubt certain things, not the least of which was his role in the Great Plan. Recently? No, not recently. Bryce's doubts started back in college, at Loyola, and later at Georgetown. They followed him through every foreign country, forcing him to seek answers to unasked questions. But answers, if there were any, always eluded him.

In a few days he would get called back for a new assignment. He was sure that, instead, he would ask to leave the order. Perhaps on his own he could discover the true meanings behind those areas that most fascinated him — and frightened him.

He was still quite a number of blocks from his parents' house when a wave of energy rippled through the streets. Bryce turned to watch as the glowing wave rolled down the block. As it passed, store lights snapped off, car engines died. The wave hit Bryce and threw him to the ground. Before he could pull himself up, large drops of rain began to splatter the sidewalk.

In a matter of moments, Father Christopher Bryce was soaked to the bone.

4

In his walk-up apartment on Flatbush Avenue, Mario Docelli snarled one last brutal snarl at the television as he kicked in its picture tube. The TV, the lights, the digital clock in the radio — everything had stopped working at once. And the storm had finally broken outside, dropping huge amounts of dark rain onto the Earth.

So much for the ball game, Docelli grunted.

He flung his window up and stuck his head out into the rain. The foul water soaked his head, plastering his hair to his skull. He roared at the elements, not even aware that only minutes before he would never have done such a thing.

Docelli turned to look in the direction of Shea Stadium and saw the jungle bridge. It appeared to drop straight out of the storm itself, one end lost behind houses, buildings and other obstructions, the other end hanging in the sky. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was calling to him, touching some primal place in his soul.

Docelli walked down the three flights of stairs and out into the street. As he made his way past stalled cars and screaming people, Docelli changed. His shoulders hunched, his jaw thrust forward, and his knees bent as his shambling, knuckle-dragging walk carried him toward the ruins of Shea.

5

"... ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Amen."

Andrew Jackson Decker let the rose fall from his hand into the hole. He watched it drift down, a burst of red against the black of the hole, the gray of the day. Then the dirt was shoveled in, and the crowd started to depart. Most paid their final respects, heads bowed as they repeated some words of comfort to Decker, then moved on.

That was the way of the world. Live, die, but life goes on. Decker felt the crumpled paper in his suit pocket and pulled it out. It was a telegram, from President Douglas Kent, expressing his sorrow over the loss of Victoria Decker and regretting that he could not attend the funeral in person. Decker let the telegram go. He didn't notice which way the wind took it.

"Ace?" Decker looked up. Standing beside him was Jonathan Wells, Speaker of the House. He was one of the few people who remembered Decker's old nickname, and one of the few that still used it. "Come on, congressman," Wells said, "you'll have time to mourn later. Right now we have to go."

"Go?" Decker asked. "I have to go home. There are people waiting and ."

Wells gripped Decker's arm firmly. "Ace, I know what you must be feeling right now. Vicky was a wonderful woman, I'm not denying that. But we have an incident. There is going to be a special session of both Houses to discuss it in half an hour."

"Incident? John, what are you talking about?"

Wells looked up at the taller, younger congressman from Pennsylvania. "New York has been ... well, we're not sure what. Terrorists, a foreign power, youth gangs, a simple blackout, we just don't know. All communications have ceased over a rather large area of the northeastern United States, including portions of your constituency. Ace, the President and Vice President are in New York. We . have no word yet on their condition."

A possible attack on the United States? The top elected officials in danger? Decker couldn't focus on the concepts. It was unthinkable, unreal. "I don't understand ."

"Neither do I, Ace," said Wells. "But they need us to figure it out and decide what to do before someone else makes a terrible mistake."