Ghostbusters (31 page)

“He's coming!” Erin said. “Cross them up!”

He was already on the far edge of Times Square.

Erin entangled her beam with Abby's, Holtzmann's, and Patty's. With a tremendous jolt four beams became one, and everything began to shake. Their arms. Their legs. Their heads. And the focal point of the beam shook as well, but straining, they managed to keep it near the center of the whirlpool. A fraction of a second later the portal lit up like Christmas in hell, but it didn't reverse.

“The portal's too strong,” Abby said as they quickly stood down. “We still don't have enough power to reverse it.”

“How do we get more?” Erin said.

“We need to one-eighty the polarity with a high-concentration electron blast,” Holtzmann said. “We just need my negative-charge containment canisters.”

“Where are they?” Patty said.

At that instant
ECTO
-1, still driven by the hearse-jacking Slimer, sped around the corner and raced toward them. A gaudy female Slimer was hanging all over him. There were even more drunken ghosts hanging off the car, which swerved wildly.

“On top of our car,” Holtzmann said.

“Erin, remember how we used to flush cherry bombs down the toilet in high school?” Abby said.

“Just light 'em up and toss 'em in?”

As they watched the oncoming car, Slimer veered with one hand on the wheel and the other squeezing Slimer babe, this to avoid the looming portal. The unsmooth move sent the hearse into a four-wheel skid, which the drunken passengers cheered.

“Yep,” Abby said. “Let's narrow the target.” She pointed with the business end of her proton wand, indicating a pair of streetlamps across the street from the portal. No other instruction was needed. They took aim and fired at the bases of the streetlights. When the beams hit the bottoms of the lamp poles, they exploded, and the streetlights crashed down across the road next to the portal.

Slimer was in the middle of a lip-lock with Slimette when the poles went down, blocking his intended route. He cut the wheel over to miss the collision without touching the brakes. Big mistake. His ghost eyes grew wide as he realized there was no way to avoid the portal.

The
ECTO
-1 zoomed up a ramplike piece of tilted cement on the edge of the abyss and went airborne. As the car nosed down toward the spinning eye of the portal, Slimer and his lady friend screamed a duet in the front seat.

“Aim for the silver canister!” Holtzmann said. “Now!”

They blasted their beams into the canister on the car's roof an instant before it plummeted into the portal. Half in, half out—
ba-boom!
A blinding flash of light and a shockwave sent the Ghostbusters flying backward. Erin left her stomach on the ground while her body once again arced helplessly through empty space at high speed.
This is really getting old,
she thought, then hit pavement with a bone-jarring crash and slid out of control on her back.

Shakily, she regained her feet. When she looked up she saw the portal had stopped spinning and changed color. Then it started to turn slowly in the opposite direction, rapidly picking up speed. The ground beneath her rumbled, a howling wind rose up, and the portal started sucking everything incorporeal back toward it. The creepy balloon floats—Potato Nose Pinocchio, the Strong Man, Uncle Sam, Crazy Rabid Chihuahua—went in and vanished down the spinning drain. All the ghosts they had encountered—including Gertrude Aldridge—were sucked past them, windmilling, clawing, and screaming, back into the bottomless pit whence they came. The biggest, baddest ghost of all, Ghost Rowan was clinging desperately to the side of a skyscraper while the lesser spirits he had summoned were vacuumed up like ants.

“It's working!” Erin said.

Buffeted by the supernatural wind, they watched the incredible number of released spirits tumble by. A creepy clown ghost they hadn't seen before flew past their heads.

“Glad we didn't have to deal with that one…” Patty said.

The clown suddenly reappeared above them, fighting wildly hand over hand to hang on and not be swept away. It got right up in Patty's face, straining to keep its grip.

“
Ahhhhh!
” she cried.

The suction was too powerful; creepy clown let go, and like a leaf in a hurricane it zipped away so fast it was like it had suddenly disappeared. Ghost Rowan was hanging on to the building with both arms, fighting the force.

“He's too strong,” Erin said. “We can't close the portal with him still there!”

“I'll get him in!” Abby said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'll get him to chase me into it. Keep firing and hold it open.”

“That's crazy. How would you make it back?”

Abby ran over and picked up the end of a cable from a winch on the bumper of an overturned fire truck.

“This thing runs pretty long,” she said as she pulled out the cable and tied the free end around her waist.

“That's insane,” Erin said. “You can't expect that to work!”

“I gotta try.”

“Abby, no—”

Abby's expression softened. “Erin, I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't done much else besides this. I've been wondering what's on the other side my whole life. And I get a peek!” Looking away, she added, “I'm gonna come back! You just gotta pull the cable. Okay?”

Erin studied Abby's face. She knew what this moment meant and was suddenly filled with regret.

“Listen, I—” What she wanted to say was,
I'm sorry for all my shortcomings as a friend. And I'm grateful, so grateful, that you believed me way back then.

Abby shook her head. “Hey. No need to even say it. All right, let's do this! Once I'm in there, you just pull me out!”

Abby gave Erin a reassuring smile. As she walked out to the center of the street, trailing her lifeline, Erin, Holtzmann, and Patty cut loose, firing their beams into the portal to hold it open.

“Well, this is a real choice I made,” Abby said. “Isn't it.”

Erin wasn't sure who she was talking to, but watched over her shoulder as Abby stepped out into the middle of the intersection, in plain view of Ghost Rowan, and started waving her arms. “Hey!” she hollered.

Ghost Rowan's head swiveled and his eyes lit up. He saw her, all right.

“Yeah, you, you dumb idiot.”

He swung around the skyscraper like Jack's giant on the beanstalk or supersized King Kong on the Empire State Building and faced her, glowering. What humanity he had once possessed was gone. Abby was staring into the face of evil incarnate … and evil incarnate was a big honkin' cartoon ghost.

“Look at yourself!” Abby shouted. “You look ridiculous! Running around here. Can't even catch a bunch of girls. You don't seem very powerful.”

Abby powered up and zapped him a little with her proton pack. He growled back and then snapped at her with a mouth big enough to swallow a small airplane.

“Yeah, you don't like that, do you?”

She zapped him a little more, a little longer. Same spot. He growled louder, and clearly pissed off, moved out from behind cover to try to grab her and smash her like a bug.

Erin knew what was coming; it was exactly what she would have done. Abby fired her proton beam right into his interstate cloverleaf of a crotch. Howling in pain, Ghost Rowan let go of the beanstalk.

“Okay, I have his attention—”

Abby turned and ran, flipping him the middle finger behind her. Ghost Rowan boomed after her, the suction of the portal helping him gather speed. Abby was almost to the sidewalk when the fire truck cable came up taut, stopping her cold and jerking her backward.

“Oh no—” Erin said. Abby was stuck in place with Ghost Rowan bearing down fast. There was enough cable before. Erin looked closer. A loop of it had gotten caught under the fire truck. As she started to run to it, she shouted, “Hold on! I'll get it loose!”

Abby looked over her shoulder. Ghost Rowan was only two giant ghost-steps away.

“There's no time,” she said. And with that, Abby untied the cable from her body.

“No, wait!” Erin cried.

Freed, Abby ran and without hesitation jumped into the portal's spinning eye just as Erin unsnagged the cable. Propelled by the vortex's suction and his own insane fury, Ghost Rowan dove into the portal right behind her.

Patty, Holtzmann, and Erin stood there in shock and disbelief as Ghost Rowan vanished. They were both gone. Forever. Erin took a step forward, suddenly choked up and at a loss for words.

“Abby—” she said. Then …

No way. Not like this.

Picking up the end of the cable, she charged toward the portal. As she ran she tied it around her waist, cinching the knot tight as she leapt off the sidewalk, legs driving for distance like an Olympic long jumper. She fell through the portal opening headfirst.

“Erin!” Patty cried in horror as the portal's spinning slowed and it finally began to close.

Its final blast of unearthly light and sound knocked the two surviving Ghostbusters off their feet. Overhead, the dark clouds faded and daylight returned. It was over.

They sat up and watched smoke rise from the sealed portal; it grew thicker and thicker, obscuring their view. Neither of them could speak. Then,
shooomp!
As if they had been shot out of a cannon, Erin and Abby burst from the portal and crashed to the ground.

Holtzmann and Patty ran over to help them. Both were covered in ectoplasm and looked bewildered. Also, their hair had turned stark white.

“Oh!” Patty said, looking at their hair.

The Mercado building re-formed, all the chunks of plaster, shattered glass, and tenants' possessions—clothes, body creams, Bee Gee records, and porn magazines—streamed back into the structure, ostensibly returning to cabinets, nightstands, and between mattresses and box springs.

“What did I just see?” Abby said in wonder.

“What year is it?” Erin said, dazed.

“Twenty forty,” Holtzmann said, keeping a straight face. “Welcome back.”

Abby and Erin looked around, then said in unison, “We did it?”

“You did it,” Holtzmann said.

“We all did it,” Erin said.

It was a truly joyful moment.

“That's right,” Kevin said, leaning casually against a building. “We all did it.” He smiled proudly.

“All right,” Erin said, “we didn't
all
do it. What did you do?”

“A lot, actually. I'll have you know I went over to that power box”—he gestured—“pushed a few buttons, then everything got sucked into the portal and it closed up.”

“That had nothing to do with anything!” Erin protested.

“No,” Abby said, “that may have helped. Good for you, Kevin!”

“It did not help!” Erin said, noticing that he was holding a half-eaten sub. “Where did you get that sandwich?”

“I was looking for you and I looked in that deli over there.” He smiled kindly and wisely at her, like a cut-rate version of Obi-Wan Kenobi. “Listen—let's not turn on each other now. That's not what the Ghostbusters are about.”

“He has a good point,” Abby said.

 

24

On a TV, the channels kept changing.

Click:

The reporter was saying, “—in the aftermath, still trying to understand what happened—”

Click:

The reporter on another channel: “—the government trying to claim the event wasn't supernatural—”

Click:

A man on the street: “I'm telling you, I did not evacuate. I saw this shit. I got in a cab being driven by a skeleton. Don't tell me that was no science experiment gone wrong.”

Click:

A reporter was asking Mayor Bradley: “You're honestly going to sit here and tell me that we didn't see ghosts and our water was tainted with hallucinogens by terrorists?”

“Yes,” His Honor said firmly. Then he blinked. “Wait. What?”

Click:

Another reporter: “—the Ghostbusters have been quiet about taking credit—”

A smiling woman shook her head. “Oh, it was the Ghostbusters. I saw them. It was
bad
.
Ass
.”

Click:

The channel changed to a Yankees baseball game.

The TV was hanging on the wall of a crowded family-style restaurant. Erin watched tables of people talking and laughing while others got into the game. Then she turned her attention back to her tablemates: Patty, Abby, and Holtzmann. She and Abby had dyed their hair back, but it looked a bit off—the same, but different somehow. Holtz said they looked edgy. Erin wondered if she could embrace the edge with as much enthusiasm as she had embraced the cusp.

Abby was craning her neck around looking for a waitress. Erin figured that if hottie Kevin had shown up by now, they'd certainly have drinks and probably free snacks, too.

“Saved New York and we still can't get someone to serve us,” Abby grumbled. Holtzmann stood, raised a drink, and said, “I'd like to make a toast.”

Erin made a show of rolling her eyes. “Oh, here we go.” She prepared herself for a sly joke or maybe even a Class 6 prank.

“When I first met Abby,” she began, “I was so happy to finally have my first real friend. And now with all of you, I have my first real family.” Her eyes gleamed. “I truly love you guys.”

She sat down. Erin could see that the others were as startled by Holtz's lack of teasing as she was.

“Damn, that was like a real thing,” Patty said.

It was a bonding moment, sweet and real. Their relationships had been tested in the crucible of an interdimensional apocalypse, and they had come out best friends forever—“forever” being a metaphorical term … or maybe not …