End Time (53 page)

Storms over Greenland and Scandinavia.

Storms from the Alps to the Himalayas, covering Europe and Eurasia and as far down as New Delhi. Storms smothered China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula. For the first time in history Ho Chi Minh City saw snow and freezing rain.

A great cloud formed over Kamchatka on the Bering Sea, crossed the Pacific and approached Canada and California. The mother of all storms picked up steam across the High Sierras and even more steam over the Rockies, dumping snow from British Columbia and Manitoba to Mexico City.

Lattimore held his breath. Jesus.
That's
what they were planning? The HAARP antenna array was going to rearrange the
weather
? He could almost feel the pulse and throb of the ultra-low frequency coming out of the damn screen. And now Lattimore understood why his Takers had mind-glided him to that cold spot in Alaska where he'd chased a cafeteria tray into a stream. It was their way of showing him, so he'd understand.

Up there in the far north, some bright boy at HAARP had either figured it out for himself or been tipped off that the annoying whining in his ears was mosquitoes spreading disease. And because there were so many multiple pathologies, the best way to counteract the plague was to go after the contagion. In this case a bug. Kill the bug; kill the spread of disease. How do you kill a bug that needs killing? Spray the world with DDT? There'd never be enough DDT.

Bring on winter. Bury it in snow and ice. Freeze its buggy ass.

So lemme get this straight,
Lattimore thought to himself.…

What are we seeing here?

One government outfit run by Herr Doktor Frankenstein, a geneticist working overtime to inoculate a fraction of the U.S. population with ancient alien comet dust laced with Girl God particles. All in the hope a few lucky souls would survive, despite overwhelming evidence that showed inoculation turned average young geneticists into malformed, asbestos-skinned, deep-sea divers whose brains blew up.

Swell plan.

While another government outfit far from the Lower 48 was warming up their antenna array, getting ready to blast thunderbolts of ultra-low-frequency waves into the stratosphere to suck the jet streams from their normal global pathways, drawing moisture into colder climes. Move the weather around. Send an ice age to North America before all the leaves fell off the trees, and the insects were still flying out of their breeding swamps.

The brilliant Plan B.

Two government outfits working against each other: one group working underground, sending mosquitoes to select the chosen, while a pincushion of antenna heads in Alaska tried to kill every bug by shooting lightning bolts at the heavens.

What could possibly go wrong?

Lattimore gently closed Jasper's laptop. If government guys still wanted to kill him for those two state secrets, they should have their heads examined. The diseases had already flown from coast to coast.

Lattimore flipped on the TV, only to see smiley-face news programs featuring lower-level government officials talking in circles. The White House had brought in experts for consultation and was monitoring the situation. They expected things to turn around any day now,
and no, there was no emergency to speak of.
No, nobody from DC was going to ride in on a white horse to save the day.

Yet even at the end of October the mask of civilization sat firmly in place as power stations with skeleton crews kept the juice going. A saving grace. Nobody born in the country had ever lived
without
electricity. The nuke plants might go for years, but sooner or later the coal-and-oil-fired installations would run out of fuel as train freight slowed to a halt. Spot outages would turn into rationing, which would turn into favoritism. Emergency regulations would require that residents in big cities only flush their toilets on alternate days, turn on their tap water either a.m. or p.m., and ride an elevator only if they dared.

On impulse, Lattimore rose from the couch, went into his spotless kitchen, and opened the refrigerator.… Leftover cream of tomato soup, wrinkled carrots, limp celery, an onion. A-1 Steak Sauce. No steak. A tin of anchovies, the thin metal cover peeled back. Great. Only a matter of weeks before the human marsupials would be fighting over Princella sweet potatoes in the canned vegetable aisle.

As if to punctuate this thought, a fire engine siren rose from the streets, and he was drawn to the bronze-colored windows overlooking the city. Doubtless, some fire departments would still respond to fires, some emergency rooms still treat patients, but you couldn't know who and you wouldn't know where. Without mass communication, the gasp of despair could only travel as far as the human voice could carry. If the wandering sickness didn't get you, you'd still have to survive bad weather as Plan B went into effect. Sure, life would go on, an epic scrounge for food and shelter.…

The siren's wail faded into the distance; then, as if to mock him, the carefree chimes of the Good Humor Man reached his ears through the thick bronze glass. At the company entrance, the Good Humor Ice Cream truck pulled up to the curb and came to a halt in the No Parking zone. A figure emerged from the driver's side. A woman went around to the side of the white truck, opened the door, and began to unload frozen boxes from the interior. A very familiar woman.

Mildred! Mildred the dowdy cashier from the Cosmos Café downstairs. What the hell was she doing? Unloading ice cream crates out of the back of an ice cream truck? No, not ice cream. The crates looked like boxes of frozen burgers: meat and fish and chicken. Then it dawned on Lattimore.
Hah!
Mildred was scrounging whatever she could from local supermarkets or dead people's refrigerators.

Food. Food for when things got ugly.

Impressive foresight. Damn near took your breath away.

A middle-aged woman on the lowest rung of the company showing the great captain of industry how you hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst. Put frozen supplies in the Cosmos Café food locker.
Smart thinking, Mildred.

Lattimore tore himself from the window.
Go and help the lady, chucklehead.

Stairs or elevator? Don't be an ass. Stairs.

 

28

The Last Halloween

Billy Shadow stood outside Granny's silver trailer. The overcast sky made him want to bow his head. An October wind came over the burnt hills, luffing his jacket like a sail. How strange the place looked, newer and larger than he remembered; the high silver door of the trailer seemed to tower above him, the sage grass beyond the path nearly reaching his waist.

He looked at his own hands—grungy kid's hands that didn't get washed often enough. The dungarees, the scuffed Keds sneakers; he was a youngster again. He'd come to show Granny the wolf whistle. Staring at it in his hand, he brought the whistle to his lips and gave it three big wolfie whoops.
Woo-Woo-WOO!
Then patiently waited for Granny Sparrow to come to the door.

But no one came. She didn't answer.

Gingerly, he climbed the wooden trailer steps, unlatched the door, and stepped inside. The place seemed very dark and very quiet. Granny Sparrow lay in her bed under the trailer's rear window; the American flag tacked up to dim the light from outside cast a purplish hue across Granny's covers. She was gently sleeping, but as he approached, her eyes opened. Her face on the pillow turned toward his own. She looked old—older than history, older than death.

“Billy boy.” Her voice was dry as parchment. “Do you know what people want right before they die?”

Granny was talking about your last wish. He shook his head no. Billy didn't know what people wanted right before they died. He fingered the silent wolf whistle in his hand. Granny Sparrow breathed hard, eyes challenging him to understand.

“You want to be naked,” she told him. “So God can see you as he made you.”

She smiled at him, the smile of life out of a face of a thousand wrinkles. Her bony fingers plucked a bit of quilt off her shoulder, revealing her old nightgown, and over that her old housecoat, which she wore even under the covers. “Almost as naked as God made me.” She smiled. But Billy knew what she meant: naked to your core, naked to your soul.

Silently, he offered her his shiny silver wolf whistle. So she could call him when she wanted him. No matter where he was, no matter how far away—

A bony claw drew him closer, face to face. Granny Sparrow whispering a children's ditty like they read in kindergarten:
“Ring around the rosie, pocketful of posies, ashes, ashes … We All Fall Down!”

A hand slapped Billy's face, bringing him back to the interrogation tent. The hand wore a powder-blue nitrile glove.

“Ring around the roses,” Billy slurred.

The hand in the latex glove struck him again. Spittle swiped across his chin. No, not spittle, blood. How long had the roadhouse folks been at the field command? More than a few days. A week? Three weeks? Time came and went. It felt like a long time.

“Pocketful of posies—” Billy mumbled.

Whap,
the hand came back. “C'mon pay attention,” a voice said sternly.

“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

Whap
. “C'mon, don't make me keep asking.”

Billy glanced down at his wrists cuffed to the camp chair. Plastic restraints. He didn't feel like moving anyway. Major Todd's face swam in and out of his vision, the man's expression less indulgent, more hostile. Something else about the officer. Major Todd had grown
older,
his face deeply lined, pouches under his eyes, and wattles where his Adam's apple used to be. Major Todd was trying to explain something, but Billy couldn't follow the man's moving lips. They doped the food or water; doping made a prisoner more cooperative, easier to handle. But it also made you stupid.

“You know there are guys around here who want to make you into sushi, serve you on rice with pickled ginger, figuring you're some kind of fountain of youth.”

Why not? Very understandable. Billy and the others had traveled halfway across the country without catching so much as the sniffles; hard not to see them as powerful medicine. Major Todd's voice rattled around in his head.

“Others around here want to bow down and kiss the hem of your robe.”

Major Todd twisted Billy's face toward his own. He pointed to the wrinkles, the sagging skin. He bared his lips, exposing his mouth. Major Todd's bloodless gums had turned white, his teeth black. Methuselah. “You know what this is, my good Red Buddy?”

Nopey-dopey.

“Cutaneous erythropoietic protoporphyria.” Quite a mouthful. “
Porphyria
for short. Literally, ‘skin blood cell purple,' a metabolic disorder. I'm not quite purple yet, but there are other side effects. Usually not fatal. Just grotesque. Ignorant peasants used to think people with this condition were vampires. But if it keeps advancing, I'm thinking this affliction is going to leave me at the pearly gates.”

Major Todd saw he'd lost his doped-up prisoner back at “cutaneous.” He tweaked Billy's ear to get his attention. Billy's head jerked up; his eyes made contact.

“You see, some of my desperados are looking for a few pints of Kickapoo Joy Juice. My hotheads are more than ready, willing, and able to drain you dry, drink every drop, and throw away the husk.” He let that settle in for a moment. “While the other half of my men think you're fucking God, and should be worshipped. Are you fucking God, Your Worship? Is that who's keeping you alive? Fucking God?”

Billy's ears hurt at the sound of these ugly words. He didn't know the answer. Major Todd was afraid for his life. And terrified men say terrible things—the shameful, the profane. Did the man even want a real answer? Perhaps he wanted nothing but to know God existed. Lacking faith, you demand proof.
Proof in exchange for faith.
Deal or no deal? Sorry, Major Todd, no deal.

Whap,
the hand came again. The tent went away.

Then Billy woke up again. How long? Maybe an hour; maybe a day. A profound quiet seemed to pervade the temporary holding compound. Major Todd sat across the table just as he had for ages; the freezer tote with the magic remains between them, the dog tags and religious keepsakes in a tangled pile. The limp blue gloves tossed aside. The old soldier's head was folded to his chest. Bleached white skin sagged from his skull; livid purple streaked the craters of his cheeks, a fright mask of decrepitude. Prune-face. Major Todd had died of extreme old age.

Billy felt he should comfort the man, maybe pray for his salvation.…

A minute and a thousand years too late.

Billy tried to rise, but his wrists kept him pinned to the chair. He'd forgotten about the plastic cuffs. Overhead the tent creaked a little, a lonely sound. Billy tried to reach the plastic bands around his wrists with his mouth. No luck.

Too bad he couldn't do the Skin Walker thing now, turn into a puddy tat and slip his paws out of the shackles. Faintly Billy could hear Granny blowing the wolf whistle all the way back in South Dakota, the forlorn sound like a lonely train coming down the line. The spiritual rang softly in his head:
“People get ready. There's a train a-coming. You don't need no baggage. You just get on board. All you need is faith. To hear the diesels humming. Don't need no ticket. You just thank the Lord.…”

He saw a tiny cut on his wrist where he'd been tugging at his straps.
Yeah, yank that thing.
A couple more days sitting in this camp chair he'd have a nice infection. Paralysis. Gangrene. Rot to death. Oh, there's a train a-coming—

The tent flap whisked back, and Billy caught a flash of chain-link fencing, the soft light of dawn. Bhakti stood under the metal-shaded lamp. The Punjabi scientist glanced around for a moment, examined the dead soldier at the camp table. Not much reaction; Bhakti had hardened to the point where dead people didn't impress him so much anymore. The
Indian
Indian frowned at the American Indian as though he'd caught Little Drunken Feather snoring off a night of Jim Beam.