October (25 page)

"Open this now!" he shrieked. He kicked, the door burst back, meeting a chain. He jammed two shells into the shotgun, rammed the door.

He heard a heavier voice, foot treads, coming toward him.

He aimed at the chain, blew it off the door, kicked the door open. He faced a large man, shirtsleeves, receding hairline, glasses, dress pants, newspaper clutched in one hand.

The man raised a finger to point as he fired the second barrel into the face. He cocked the shotgun open, fed shells to it. More shouts through the house. A loud television. A commercial ended, music out of a haunted house.

He marched down the hallway.

The teenage girl in the kitchen was sunk to her knees, phone receiver to her ear. He fired off one shot. More commotion; the stairs in the front, someone banging down them.

A woman's scream; a weaker one. The mother turned to see him advance from the kitchen. She clutched a child to her, in costume, round plastic bear mask, smiling. One shot at the mother.

The boy let her go, ran for the front door, arms outstretched.

"Yes!"

Some of his enthusiasm returned. One careful shot in the back. The boy went down, mask twisted off by the impact.

He stepped over the bodies, reloaded, moved on.

The dog could walk. Kevin didn't know what they would do if they had to run. But the dog was less hobbled now.

The dog voiced its thanks by laying its head in Kevin's hand. It made a sound nearly like a purr.

"Good boy," Kevin said.

Kevin followed the dog out of the back of the orchard to a rock wall. The dog held back. Kevin climbed, lifted the dog over.

"Okay."

The dog huffed, went ahead of him, led down an unperceived trail. Kevin stumbled after in moonlight, holding his collar against the wind.

The bus station loomed into view. A bus was just pulling out, windows dark as slate. Pity. They would escape. When did the next bus leave? A half hour?

Never.

He smiled.

Perhaps, one day, he would tire of his game, his piecemeal destruction of a foolish race, and do them all in at once. Occasionally, he thought of it. A chain of command, a line of used bodies until he obtained one with a finger who could push the button. Even in their moment of holocaust, they would blame one another. After watching the beginning, the first tall radioactive clouds tearing up into the atmosphere, as the eyes of his inhabited body were burned out, he would drop out of the screaming mouth, burrow deep into mother earth, and await renewal. How long would it take? Years? Centuries? What would he find when he surfaced? A new race of mutations, swarming like insects over a ruined landscape? Nothing at all? What would he live on? Wouldn't that be the loneliest existence of all?

Could he live in a world alone, without even these slug-like humans?

The boy's body shivered.

Wasn't it better to live like this, killing them slowly, using them, making them pay for all eternity for their abdication of his godhood?

"Yes!" he said, holding the shotgun up like a trophy.

He walked into the gas station next to the bus depot, crossed the median until he came to the nearest pump. He removed the pump head from its socket, flipped the switch, then locked the handle in an open position and began to pump gas out onto the tarmac.

Someone shouted. A young man was running from the filling-station office, greased fatigues, cap pushed back on his head. The attendant had a soda in one hand.

Davey laid the pumping nozzle carefully on the ground, turned, aimed the shotgun, fired one barrel.

The attendant clawed at his chest, collapsed.

Davey turned. A woman stared at him, her own gassing complete, pocketbook open.

He fired the other barrel.

He opened and reloaded the shotgun, walked to where the woman lay on the tarmac. He found her car keys in her bag and pocketed them. Another car was just entering the island; the driver looked out at the woman on the ground.

Davey aimed one barrel through the driver's window. The driver screamed, threw his hands to his face. The car swerved, banged one of the gas pumps hard enough to dislodge it from its base. A line of gas ran from the bottom, pooled, grew.

Davey walked from pump to pump, turned them on, locked them. The island was awash in petrol.

Davey went to the woman's car, got in, started it. Vehicles were stopping in the street, drivers straining to see.

Davey pulled out to the street, stopped, rolled down his window. He pointed the shotgun back at the pool of gas, pulled the trigger.

A rushing ball of fire shot up into the air, rolled around on itself, then fell to consume the gas station. Cars honked their horns, stopped in the middle of the road.

The garage in the gas station caught fire. A tongue of flame shot next door to the bus depot. The pool of gas, still alive, ran into the street, beneath a bus. The bus's gas tank exploded, lifting the vehicle up off its rear wheels.

Davey pulled away, drove until he found a darkened corner with another gas station on it. In a kiosk, a lone attendant sat reading a paper, pooled in neon light, leaning back in his chair.

Davey pulled in, braked, got out of the car. He unhooked all the pump heads from their moorings, locked them into position, turned the levers on. Nothing happened. His eyes traveled across the gas pump, read, PLEASE PAY BEFORE PUMPING.

He approached the kiosk, shot the attendant as he was rising, leaned over the body, switched on the pump register. Outside, gas spurted from all the open nozzles.

Davey ran back to the car, dodging gasoline flows, got in, shot at the petrol, drove away.

A roar of fire went up behind him.

He lit three more stations in quick succession, nearly ringing the town.

By the time he heard he first fire engine siren, the wind was already helping.

Kevin was halfway down the hill leading into town when he heard a
whump
.

The sky brightened on the far side of New Polk. There was a second explosion, more decisive. A dart of pumpkin-colored flame rose, fell back.

A dim orange glow capped an area near the university. It didn't diminish. Soon, it grew.

"Jesus," Kevin said.

Another
whump
sounded, east of the first. A ball of fire was thrown into the air, settled back, drew toward the first. Firelight began to overtake moonlight.

Kevin started to run down the hillside.

In the distance, he heard screams.

Another whump. A half-circle of fire wrapped the outskirts of New Polk, moved inward with the wind. Kevin felt a shimmer of distant heat on his face. Another explosion sounded, nearly completing the fire circle of the town.

"My God," Kevin said, watching in awe as the conflagration, fed by wind and oxygen, built to a firestorm.

A lone siren went off, stopped in mid-wail.

Not many would escape. No one in this foolish town could possibly know the workings of a firestorm, the terrible, quick, inescapable trap.

He had seen enough firestorms, of course; in Germany, in Japan. Once, in Tokyo, in the days just before the atomic bomb, he had watched, inhabiting the body of a young Japanese girl, as Curtis
LeMay's
planes completely missed their targets. Most of their incendiary bombs fell harmlessly into the water. But he had, with the help of the girl's body, placed a few well-set fires into the wind, then watched those paper-like houses go up, feed on one another. Before it was over, a half-mile section of the city had burned to ashes.

Those were not good days, the war. They killed so many of themselves he had felt deprived. So, for a time, he had played one of his other games, riding a single human for years at a time to dissolution. Sometimes he used drugs, sometimes alcohol, or sex. For a while he enjoyed watching the depths to which a human being could be driven: bestiality, necrophilia. As with that Japanese girl . . .

Of course, he had, riding humans, traveled everywhere, done it all before: in ancient Greece, in Rome; and in early Britain, when the Celts had made him a god, and later, when they had transmogrified and merely feared him. He thought of the devil worshipers he had ridden, been among; only the mad ones paid homage to him, now. . . .

He smelled burning leaves, burning oak wood, and a fresh rage filled him. The Celts had burned oak for him. He hadn't realized how much he missed true godhood.

Perhaps he could have it again.

He had one final task before he could climb the hills outside New Polk and enjoy his Druidic bonfire. Driving fast, avoiding cars filled with panicking drivers, he screeched to a halt in front of the huge, open garage doors of the firehouse. Its siren, mounted on a high pole outside, screamed.

He got out of the car, walked to the open doorway, looked in. Men in black slickers were loading their trucks frantically with equipment. The hook-and-ladder driver was already mounted. He leaned from the window of his cab, yelled impatiently for his fellows to finish their work.

Two firemen hopped onto the rear of the truck, signaled their readiness. The driver in the cab put the diesel into roaring life, threw the truck into gear.

He saw Davey blocking the truck, braked, leaned out of the window.

"Get the hell out of the way! Are you crazy!" he yelled. Davey walked to the fire truck, hoisted himself up on the running board.

The fireman put his arm out, pointing. "Move that goddamn car—"

Davey shoved the shotgun into his neck and fired.

Two firemen jumped down from the back of the truck, walked forward. Davey stepped off the running board, shot one of them. The man went down, holding his thigh. The other ran.

Davey calmly reloaded. He walked to the back of the fire truck, found the large, silver-colored gas-tank cover, twisted it open. It fell off, hanging on its chain. He tore strips of cloth from his shirt, tied them end to end. He led one end deep into the fuel tank and pulled it out, soaked. He led in the other end of the strip.

"Don't, man!"

The fireman he had shot in the thigh stared at him from the floor. Davey raised the shotgun, fired. The man was silent. Davey walked to the body, searched the pockets, came up with a book of matches.

Appropriate
.

He went to the other fire truck, uncovered the gas tank, soaked another length of cloth. He lit a match, touched it to the soaked rag, walked to the hook and ladder, repeated the operation.

He went back to the street, got into the car, pulled out. A half block away, as he headed for the hole in the bottleneck that had become hell in New Polk, he heard the firehouse siren go mute.

There was a booming explosion in the center of New Polk. Standing on the road in front of the farm stand, Kevin was blinded. Waves of heat flowed out at him. A wall of fire rode the wind like a hinge, was slamming the town shut.

A single car tore out of the closing flames, its rear edged in fire. It skidded on the road, hit the far curb as the gas tank exploded. The automobile was engulfed in flames.

Kevin ran toward the car. A second explosion sounded, under the front hood. The engine blew free, landed twisting on the roadway. Screams within were silenced.

Kevin approached, saw a feeble arm in the front seat stop moving, covered in fire, turn black. A face fell toward the open window, dead, burning—Raymond Fillet.

“Jesus."

The rear windows blew out, pushing fire out at Kevin, the scent of roasting flesh. There was a final scream, and Kevin saw the visage of Charles Steadman push out of the window, seeking oxygen, before collapsing dead into the blazing interior.

A sound. Kevin turned. Another car roared through the flames, untouched. Behind it, the door shut, walls of fire climbing up one another in greeting, fusing into a solid barricade.

The car thundered past, braked thirty yards beyond in a slicing skid. It reversed, slowly backed toward Kevin.

The dog's ears went back. It tensed on its haunches, growled angrily.

The car stopped ten yards away, the door opened. Davey Putnam got out.

"Davey!" Kevin cried.

The dog barked savagely.

Kevin said to the dog, "It's Davey!"

"Yes, it's me, Rusty," Davey said.

The dog ran forward, leaped as Davey drew his shotgun from behind his back.

As the dog struck, Davey fired.

The shot took Rusty in the hind legs. His angry growl turned to a wail of pain.

Howling with rage and hurt, the dog tore at Davey Putnam's neck. Davey beat at the dog with his fists, tried to pull it off by the back of the head. He tried to angle the shotgun up but could not. He dropped the gun and put both hands on the dog's head, tried to twist it away from his neck.

The dog held on as Kevin approached. Blood poured from the dog's leg wounds, running down Davey Putnam's front. Davey tore at the dog's face, pulled its mouth apart, angled his thumbs at the dog's eyes. Still the dog persisted.

A wheezing sound began in the back of Davey Putnam's throat. His hands tightened convulsively on the dog's head, ripped it away from his throat.