End Time (70 page)

Eleanor stroked the metallic urn in her arms; the woman's eyes flitted from one companion to the next. Cheryl's cocoa skin had become quite green. Billy's too. Beatrice could barely look at the thing that had once been her brother; the big woman's eyes falling to the ground.

Eleanor took a step to the waiting door.

Cheryl lunged to stop the crazy lady, but Beatrice restrained her friend with a hand on her arm. Nothing good here. Yet everyone felt the same thing at once.
No, Eleanor, don't go in there. Stay.
While the Webster enhancement held open the door, silently bidding her to enter. What was there to keep Eleanor from going through? Husband dead, child gone. Nothing left of life worth living. Beatrice unclipped the safety strap to her weapon—to use on the Webster creature, to stop Eleanor? Big Sis didn't know herself.

Eleanor's eyes drifted to the gun. Her face stoic and calm, as though resigned to her fate, as though contemplating one last duty to perform. She looked lovingly down at the metal urn cradled in her arms. Janet, poor Janet, what was she going to do with her? Reluctantly she offered her daughter's ashes. “Janet wouldn't like it here,” she said to Cheryl. “She'll be comfortable with you. She doesn't belong here.”

The metal urn with her daughter's ashes made the last long trip hand to hand, woman to woman. Cheryl cradled it in her arms just as the other had done. Eleanor dwelled on the unfastened gun in Beatrice's holster.

“May I borrow that?”

As if in a dream, as if she didn't even own the damn thing, Beatrice slowly handed her sidearm over. The gun found its way into Eleanor's hands. Everyone stared silently, too paralyzed to move. Eleanor took it gingerly, now oddly calm, weighing the weapon for a moment. Satisfied, she tucked it in her waistband. “Don't worry,” she reassured everyone. “I'm from Texas.” After a moment adding, “I think you're going to have to let me finish this.” She meant the women in the room, especially the desperate Mrs. Quaid. “Something I should have done before I left. I'm just waiting for Bhakti; he promised to help, and he'll be along shortly.”

Eleanor entered Trimester Three.

The security door automatically closed behind her.

Had the poor woman lost her mind for good? Obviously. Suddenly Billy and Beatrice snapped out of it, clamoring to the glass wall. But Cheryl shrank back, clutching Janet's ashes, knowing in her gut it was too late for a sane outcome.

Eleanor ignored the thumpers at the glass. She hobbled over to the waiting hospital bed and hoisted herself on it. Pushing up against the pillows, letting her legs dangle over the side. She looked at the big gun in her hand, popped the clip, and counted the rounds.

“Don't let my Janet get lonely.”

On the far side of the transparency, her companions could hear the infants crying for their mothers' teats again through the open intercom in the wall. Feeding time came often with such marvelous enhancements. The elongated ex-Webster began his helpful rounds once more; if he saw the gun it made no impression. His sole concern was the women in the beds. Sounds of contented suckling filled the room.

Eleanor stared at the weapon, contemplating what she had to do. Kill babies; babies with fragrant, moist, healthy human skin and green eyes and parrot beaks where their pink gums should be. No abomination worse in the world than to slaughter innocents, and it took Eleanor a little time to get her mind around it. You had to tell yourself these were monsters in baby-skin. Making the decision point clearer and clearer, this was not sacred life—not human, not human life at all. They had come too late to the battle for human life, and now you had to murder to keep things human. These were the by-products, the excrescence of men, men like the pathological three-fingered professor, men who had taken Janet from her, who had taken her husband—taken everything.

Even her sanity.

Eleanor slapped the clip back into Big Bea's large black gun, then looked at Mrs. Quaid and nodded gently. The panicked woman's eyes finally relaxed—all this wouldn't matter soon. She knew what was coming. Long overdue.

Eleanor spoke to the glass wall. “I'm going to take the chance that the professor behind the bulletproof glass is exaggerating when he says there's no such thing as death in this place.” She glanced at the four women in bed cradling their infants, then gazed with cold eyes at the grotesque remnant of Big Bea's brother. Model-A wasn't going to leave Trimester Three either. Webster stared back at her with open, uncomprehending eyes. His job was to help the mothers feed their babies. That was all.

“So if it's all right with you, I'll stay here.”

The onlookers crept back from the glass resigned, letting go.

Eleanor glanced down at her thighs hanging uselessly over the mattress edge. Whatever they did to her had finally worn off. She massaged the muscle as though by kneading a wad of flesh she could bring her legs back to life. You could see in her face the certain realization her legs would never return. She gently kneaded her thigh with her free hand. Nothing.

Legs gone for good now.

“I can't get up.”

 

42

Looking Glass Girl

Lauren stood on the porch of the gabled house overlooking the snowbound hospital grounds. Under the eaves, beyond reach of the swirling snow, she watched Billy Shadow and the women leave in the bus. The rumbling yellow dragon drove out toward the main gate, the chains clanking and the cowcatcher plow spraying white frozen slush.

Two desperate inmates dashed out from the trees as the bus reached the main entrance. They must have survived the night somewhere on the grounds. One fell facedown into the snow, but the other grasped onto the cowcatcher plow and tried crawling onto the hood. The bus didn't slow for a second, took a heavy bounce and bumped the clinger loose; in a blink of the eye he got sucked under the wheels. A faint shriek as the bus rumbled out of sight.

The engine faded into the distance, and the snow fell thickly. A quiet hush returned, under the forsaken weight of a woman on her own. Make that, with a child, a sick man to care for, and snooping security cameras. A woman alone.

Young Alice came outside and gently took Lauren's hand.

“We better go inside,” the girl said. “There may be more.”

Lauren yielded; she locked the gabled house door firmly behind them. Guy, on the couch, stared with dark fevered eyes. He was shivering again, and the two dogs had managed to wedge themselves into the warmest spot on the couch. He tucked the pistol Beatrice left them safely into the crack of the cushions. Better than a holster.

“I've been thinking,” Guy said, his teeth chattering a little.

“Well, don't strain yourself, darling,” Lauren replied. “I'll get you another cup of tea.”

“No, listen.”

Lauren and Alice indulged him, taking up parlor chairs.

“Did you ever wonder how Alice came here?” Guy asked. “Or why? Now just think about it for a moment.” He paused, tugging the blanket under his chin.

“There has to be a gateway, doesn't there, Alice? A portal. Somewhere in our house, the Finn House back in Fairfield. I'd guess it works on the stairs where I first saw you. Maybe the ice storm opened it up and you slipped through. Maybe it only opens at certain times, like the time we walked into the past through the old Keeping Room and you couldn't see us. Maybe as things got crazier and crazier in the real world, the past and the present—our time, your time—got all mixed up. Sort of like a Jacob's ladder with the angels climbing up and the angels climbing down.”

Guy took a ragged breath.

“Except now you're always with us. Which makes me think that since we've been away from Fairfield you can't go back. That the gateway or portal, whatever it is—is actually part of the house. And I'll bet we have to get back there for you to go home again.” Alice stared back at him and squirmed in her chair.

“Don't you want to go home?” Lauren asked.

The girl avoided their eyes. Apparently, Alice wasn't in such a hurry to go anywhere. Which meant that whatever awaited her back at home might be worse than here and now. Maybe Yellow Jack was worse; the dead laden in carts, the sorrowful, smoky torches. Maybe that's why the little girl ran away. The only thing waiting at home were mom and dad dressed in their Sunday best posing for their death photos.

Guy stared at the puddle of dissolved sugar at the bottom of his tea mug.

“This is where the whole thing starts to get weird. The
why
. Maybe you were supposed to come here, Alice. Maybe if you'd stayed in your own time, Yellow Jack would have claimed you too.”

Guy put the mug aside. “If young Alice dies in an epidemic of yellow fever in the nineteenth century she has no children. She has no grandchildren. No Granny Whitcomb, no Auntie Whitcomb. Maybe you're not even born, Lauren; we don't get to live in the Finn House and so we never see young Alice on the stairs.”

He paused to clear his throat, trying not to cough.

“If Alice dies in a yellow fever epidemic she doesn't join us. If she doesn't come into the future, Eleanor never sees the drawings, never returns to Hillsboro. Everything hinges on getting Alice back to Fairfield. If she stays here, she'll die here; she will have never existed. A time traveler who dies in the future never gets to live out his life in the past—”

This ended in a fit of coughing.

Guy recovered and took another deep, ragged breath:

“God works in mysterious ways, right? Occasionally he has to bend time and open doors and close them. Sometimes he needs the same soul in two different worlds. So Alice came ahead and she warned us, and that's good. And the gang went to kill as many worm-people as they can, and that's good, but the young lady can't stay here. She's gotta get back, live a life, have some children who have children. Leave the Finn House to her descendants so she can come visit us. You see, this is where the
why
gets more complicated. She came here to tell us about the Rolpen disease, so the others could kill the little monsters. How did she
know
? How'd she get the idea? I'm curious how she knew to draw insects and fossils. How did you know, Alice?”

Alice looked down in her lap, almost embarrassed. Very softly, she explained, “When the yellow sickness came, I hid in the root cellar. Whenever things got bad, that's where I went. When I thought it was safe again I came upstairs. But all the stairs in that house are funny. The cellar stairs or the Keeping Room stairs took me away. Away to where the world was different. Cleaner. Nicer. But the longer I stay here with you—the bigger a fuss there'll be when I go back. They'll miss me.”

She paused, looking side to side as if afraid she'd be overheard. Her voice dropped; she whispered confidentially, “Down in the cellar there are thousands of dead worms everywhere, even in the foundation of the house, even in the stone. And in Mama's diary I saw the place in Ohio where the worms come from, where the worms go to be born. They go home to Thanksgiving.”

For the first time, Lauren spoke, trying to get her mind around all this, repeating incredulously:

“You learned about Ohio and the worms in the cellar at home on Thanksgiving?” But Lauren never finished the sentence.

In the upper corner of the parlor, the security camera whirred softly and the dish towel slipped from the lens. Guy instantly regretted not smashing the thing back when he was feeling better. The camera panned across the room and stopped, the video Cyclops staring at Lauren and the young lady.

“They're much hungrier now,” Alice whispered.

Guy looked at Lauren in alarm, and the two dogs Corky and Peaches snapped their heads to the locked door as if sensing something outside. The doorknob rattled, and both dogs leapt off the couch, dragging poor Guy's covers.

Several things happened at once. A white-haired man appeared from the kitchen—Gramps, a man about seventy, with white unshaved whiskers, blood from his last meal still around his mouth.
Could they have been so stupid they forgot to lock the back door?

Then the front door banged open. Lauren got the fleeting impression of a scruffy teenager with lots of studs, lip piercings—and a pouch-faced sad sack of a woman. These were no horror show zombies, but fairly healthy people. The teenager and the woman went directly for Guy on the couch. The two brave dogs snarled and snapped. Gramps went for Alice, who shrieked.

Lauren grabbed the closest thing at hand—a table lamp—and swung it as hard as she could. Unlike stage props in cowboy movies, this didn't fly into pieces. The lamp base connected with the back of the teenager's skull, denting it in a good inch. He dropped like a stone.

Guy fumbled over Big Bea's gun in the cushion crack while the pouch-faced woman tore at his stocking feet. The gun finally went
bang,
barely missing Guy's toes, and took off most of the woman's face.

Gramps had cornered young Alice by the kitchen door; she struggled wildly as he tried to get a grip on her wriggling arm. Too many flailing limbs for a gunshot; Lauren used the lamp again,
whang,
and stove in his white-haired dome.

The place went quiet. Alice shivered up against the wall. The two adults caught their breath, and snow from outside flew into the parlor. Corky and Peaches stopped tearing at the scruffy teen. After a few moments, Lauren staggered to the front door. The inmates had used an extra key card from security. She took the key card out of the lock, shut the door, and came back to deal with the mess inside.

“Jesus.”

Guy looked three kinds of pale and almost managed to rise from the couch. “Let me help you clean up.”

Lauren just shook her head. “Stay where you are.”

The two dogs pressed into Alice by the wall, nosing her over and over, trying to get her to pet them. She stopped shivering for a moment and took both animals' heads in her hands. Tears and fear now.