End Time (11 page)

Pebbles. Not the soft green sward, but sandy, salty dirt.

Back to Sonora. He'd fallen on his face. His mouth completely parched, the 100-degree sun beat down on his neck. Where the hell was the Madrona water? And just at the thought of water, he seemed to swoon again. How long had he been stumbling about? He saw his forearms streaked with dust, the knees of his pants torn.

Where was everybody?

Another two hours of stumbling blindly about he was no closer to an answer. When he twisted his ankle on a rut, he walked on the throbbing thing for another hour. Then his face blistered and he gave up, lying back against a stone. When the Gila monster climbed up on a rock and started talking to him, he knew his time on this Earth was pretty close to done, the soufflé cooked and ready for the spoon.

The Gila monster flicked its pink tongue, stared at him with pale eyes, and spoke, just like something out of Carlos Castaneda in the
Teachings of Don Juan.
God, he loved that fellow's books, read them as a teenager, how the magic happened, how you put it together, with what plants and ceremonies and powers. Marijuana, mushrooms, and Castaneda—they all seemed to go together in a far-off magical place called extended adolescence. No, he'd never get back there again.…

But the Gila monster wouldn't let him dream; the reptile was going to say his piece and Lattimore was going to listen. A phrase really, part in German, part English. And that was perfect Castaneda—who the hell said the Gila monster had to speak Spanish?

“Peenemünde. Sound familiar? Mittelbau-Dora. Remember?”

The Gila monster didn't really have to explain. Lattimore knew what the animal was trying to tell him. Something Pop Lattimore had told him about, years ago—told him right after his folks' odd disappearance and sudden return. When things settled down; it seemed the right time. Something important young Clem should know; after all, if he was old enough to play with toy soldiers and deal with crazy parents—he was old enough to know.

Peenemünde was a place. The River Mouth of Penne. You pronounced it Penna-MUHN-dah. And the Gila monster did it pretty well in a soft German tongue. A city off the Baltic. Werner von Braun made his rockets there during World War II—with a lot of help from an endless human supply at Buchenwald. When the British bombed the Peenemünde place off the face of the Earth, von Braun saved his precious papers from the fires. Smart man.

And opened up another slave labor shop.

This time at Mittelbau-Dora. Middle Block D, get it? And this time deep underground. Pop showed young Clem a few old cracked black-and-white pictures. Men working in a dungeon in rags. It looked like hell. Slave labor. Then the next old B&W photo changed the impression of death and hell from dirty to clean and bright. The beautiful curve of a V-2 rocket body, blinded by the sun in an open launching area. File photos—God knows where he got them.

“I started us on the way to the moon,” Pop explained. “But first we had to bomb London.”

Then a philosophical shrug—what was done was done and Pop couldn't change it.

“One of Werner's team contacted me—when I got out of the DP camps, the displaced persons camps, maybe ten years after the war. Von Braun's buddy asked if I wanted to join them at White Sands. That's a place in New Mexico where they built rockets. Von Braun's guy remembered me. All the work I did. Bombing London. He had my number, so to speak. But I was more happy teaching physics in Pennsylvania.”

That's when Clem saw his father's arm in a new light. He'd known the tattoo was there, the tattoo that itched all the time; the little blue numbers from the camps. Jew Numbers, his father dryly called them, with his characteristic shrug. Nothing to make a fuss over. So Clem never really thought about them, like his father's suits or his shoes—they were just part of Pop. And if Pop didn't make a fuss, why should he?

Now Clem understood the significance—they marked all the slaves in the dungeon to keep them in line, the little blue numbers fading with age.
Yes, they had his number.

A wry, dour smile came to his father's face. “They only gave the numbers to us really important ones.” Then he chuckled at his tasteless joke. “Besides, I'd already gotten a good job. I'd met your mother and she was pregnant. We'd even decided to change our name from Lattner to Lattimore, in order to fit in. But more to the point, all those old Nazis can go to hell—even if Herr Werner von Braun was friends with Kennedy. You remember Kennedy, right?”

Sure, everyone knew who President Kennedy was. Who got shot in Dallas just before Thanksgiving. A black November weekend. He'd seen it on TV. Everyone had. Everyone was crying.

The Gila monster looked away. Satisfied.

Lattimore didn't feel regret, or even panic at the thought of dying. The thirst and the heat so overwhelming, there seemed nothing to do but let it incinerate him as he lay on the burning rocks. That's when the figure came out of the shimmering air at the end of his sight. At first he thought it was his father, Pop, and tried to say “Dad”—only nothing came out but a croak. And that's when he first saw his Indian Scout. “Easy now, Kemo Sabe,” a voice from the silhouette told him. “Man, you really look like you need a drink.”

Lattimore came back to the library.

Throughout his daydream he'd been holding the TV remote, clicking through station after station on mute, letting the different colors flow before his eyes on the big flat-screen across the room. He stopped clicking and put the remote down.

The advertisement playing on the screen gave him pause. A tall, gaunt man in black top hat and tails pranced around a brightly lit nursery with cloud-pattern wallpaper and pastel lighting; hanging over the crib was the Tiny Love Sweet Island Dreams mobile—a smiling monkey, a smiling giraffe, and a smiling bird of paradise all dangling under a soft plastic palm tree—while a sweet, lovely baby cooed with pleasure.

The tall gaunt man took a large gray rat out of his hat. The rat wriggled for a moment and bared its teeth. Then the man dropped the rat in the crib—

What the hell?
Lattimore pressed the volume control but hit the wrong button. When he found the channel once more, the commercial was over and they were selling V8 juice instead.

 

7

One If by Night and Two If by Train

In peaceful Fairfield life had returned to normal; no unruly crowds trashing lawns or scaring homeowners. The Finn House picket fence had been repaired, the grass grown over the burnt spot—even the brass plaque returned to its place by the front door.

The last thing Guy and Lauren Poole expected that rainy Sunday afternoon was a visit from Lauren's sister who lived deep in the heart of Texas. Their quiet weekend interrupted when Eleanor suddenly arrived out of nowhere, a wet, bedraggled mess.

So far it had been the coldest spring anyone could remember, raining every other day for weeks. Now, in mid-June people were already calling it the year without summer. Little League and soccer cancelled at every opportunity, this weekend no exception; so Fairfield's families stayed at home while the rain pelted the windows. At the Poole household, Guy and Lauren started a Parcheesi game in the den while the TV showed a golf tournament; then Lauren went off to bake something. The golfers were playing the U.S. Open in Farmingdale, the whole affair a slippery gully-washer punctuated by bright umbrellas. It looked like they were about to cancel play as most of Long Island was under water, not to mention Bethpage's world-renowned Black Course. For a couple of turns at the game board Guy played both sides for the dogs, but after a while gave up.

Now a man of leisure, he sat with his feet up on the hassock not really watching; he'd come down to rework his resume, in addition to playing Parcheesi, and the papers fanned across his lap, barely touched. He vaguely noticed the red banner along the bottom of the screen warning of a severe storm period between 5 and 6 p.m.

He could hear Lauren in the kitchen, the mixer whirring, then shutting off, then whirring again. She liked to bake and had woken up first thing that morning, rolling over and saying to him, “What do you think about Boston cream pie?” As if that was the most natural thing in the world. What does one say to a question like that?

Easy. “Boston cream pie is very nice.”

The pelting rain suddenly grew louder, clacking now. Hail. Hail the size of golf balls shattering on the patio outside. Suddenly the TV picture pixelated into colored bytes, then went black with a yellow flickering notice on the upper left-hand side informing them of the obvious:
POOR SIGNAL
. The power surged, the house lights brightening—then shut off all at once. Lauren's mixer suddenly died. A slash of lightning lit the gray sky outside the windows and a moment later a crack of thunder that sounded like it was right overhead, rattling every door and board in the house. Corky and Peaches leapt to their feet, scattering the Parcheesi pieces.

Everyone gravitated to the front room to stare out the windows. The street outside grew white with falling ice. Lauren held a spoon covered in vanilla cream pudding. “Anyone want a last lick?” She meant the dogs too. Then she glanced out the window; a tree limb across the street dropped with a splintering rip, landing over the sidewalk and into the roadway.

“Jesus!”

A family of deer exploded out of nowhere and clattered down the pavement, running full out. A Mama doe and three Bambis skittered along the road, then vanished into a huge clump of brush.

Which is when they all saw the car skidding up the street.

An inch of hail ice had fallen, and the car, a little Prius, wasn't handling it well. The Prius skidded toward them at about 30 mph, the engine grinding and leaking smoky exhaust—then ran into that unlucky length of fence again, knocked down by the PIG protestor thugs back in May.

Guy Poole sighed. He had finally gotten around to fixing it and whitewashed to match only the week before. “Well, I still have paint left,” he remarked casually. “I just need more slats.”

The crippled car came to a wheezing halt on their lawn and died with a sigh. A haggard woman opened the car door and leaned on it for support. Hail fell on her head, and she covered it with a free hand. Lauren recognized her sister at once. “Eleanor! Guy, come on!” They bolted to the front door.

Outside Eleanor staggered from the car; then she fell to her knees, but struggled to her feet, and the hail seemed to beat her down again. Lauren ran down the front steps, suddenly realizing her sister who'd lived in a wheelchair half her life
now stood again
.

She hustled Eleanor inside. Guy snatched a blanket off the couch, and Eleanor clutched it around her shoulders, shaking the hail from her hair, then awkwardly shuffled across the oak wood floors on her own.

The woman was a wreck. Pale face, dark raccoon eyes, lines about her mouth that weren't there the last time Lauren saw her sister. Eleanor wore a T-shirt, a pair of tartan men's boxer shorts, wrapped all over in a terrycloth bathrobe, the belt tied in a dirty knot. On her feet a pair of very wet, cheap, Walmart sneakers.

Her bathrobe fell away for a moment, and Lauren got a good look at the T-shirt. It must have belonged to somebody else; Eleanor wouldn't have been caught dead in the thing. One of those political-poseur T-shirts; the image showed the famous McDonald's Golden Arches in a red field. The caption: M
C
S
HIT
.
Lauren clutched at her sister's robe, tugging it closed.

Shakily Eleanor took one step and then another, a manic twist to her face.

After a moment Lauren found her last ounce of common sense, the wit to say,

“Jesus, Eleanor! Where's Bhakti? You're—”

Walking?
But the word died on her lips. Maybe because Lauren was afraid that if she spoke the obvious Eleanor would go back to being a cripple.

Instead she asked, “What the hell's happened?” Which is when her sister sagged into Guy's arms. They stumbled toward the Keeping Room, and found Eleanor a deep chair.

Guy put water on for tea, thanking heaven for gas stoves that worked even with the power out, while Lauren tried to get some sense out of her sister.

Which proved worse than knowing nothing at all. A stream of horse-hockey came out of Eleanor's mouth as she began to mechanically sing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”—the children's version:

The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah.

The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah.

The ants go marching one by one,

The little one stops to suck his thumb

And they all go marching down to the ground

To get out of the rain, BOOM! Buh-BOOM!

Guy came back into the Keeping Room with the steaming mug of tea, his eyes veiled in caution. He'd heard Eleanor's ditty clearly enough from the kitchen, and it chilled him as though he'd been the one covered in hail.
How far gone was the woman? What nutty thing came next?
Running little cars over white picket fences might be the very least of it.

Lauren shared a dark, questioning glance with Guy, his wife's eyes worried to death, her mouth a grimace of doubt.

Eleanor had given up her kiddy's song for the moment. Looked at the tea, thought a moment about it, as though wondering what was being offered. Then it dawned on her. She brushed the matted hair from her damp forehead and took the steaming cup. But before she brought it to her lips, she looked straight at Guy and asked in a very reasonable tone of voice, “Are we doing the Ant Dance? Are you a Red Ant or a Black Ant?”

Guy Poole didn't answer at once, but considered the question. In a wild stab of insight he quietly said, “I'm Adam Ant. The First Ant. What happened Eleanor? Can you tell us?”

Eleanor looked at him with wide puppy eyes, cocking her head, then replying, “The Myrmidons are here. They came for me. They tried to trick me into thinking they were the bold and loyal black ants of brave Achilles—but they're not. They're bad ants—red ants. Medieval ants. I saw them in their ant colony. All plague-riddled red ants. Every one.”