The Scream (47 page)

But inside was radiant clarity: sound and light and taste and heat and smell. All of them wicked.

All of them Hell.

And the thing was smiling, smiling with its teeth so long in its jaws so wide. It talked to him, confided in him, showered him with praise and molten breath, thanked him profusely for what he'd done and told him how much it loved him.

It will all be over soon
, it said,
and then we can be together
.

But first I have to tell you about what I'm bringing you
.

And the wonderful completion it implies
.

There were no more screams left inside Alex. His cancer was of the spirit, and it had eaten away his bones. No more legs to stand on. No more spine to hold straight in the face of adversity- What muscle remained was slack and limp.

Bearing no more fight.

At all.

I've brought you something you just won't believe
, the voice continued. A black tongue licked cankered lips.
I've brought you . . . no, don't thank me yet . . . an actual sample of the
moment of conception. Can you believe it? Myself, I was too stunned for words.

But you know what I always say: Pray hard enough, and the Good Lord will provide
.

The thing laughed, its teeth so close that he could feel the razored whistle of their movement.

That's only the beginning, though
, it continued.
I also brought the one who made it. She's wonderful, brilliant, a real musician. Almost as brilliant as you are
. It laughed again.
And beautiful, too
.

I really think that you'll like each other a lot
.

Alex had thought that he was beyond pain. The moment proved him wrong, once again and forever.

In his mind's glowing eye, he could see her clearly. Momma wasn't lying. She was truly beautiful. The fact of his life's long loneliness jammed itself through his core like a hot lightning rod.

And it was too late, too late . . .

Best of all, though, is the fact that she's pregnant. That's right. She's still bearing the little shaver that's sampled on her disk. Just think about that for a second, Bucky: you can get it coming in and going out, all at once
.

He tried to work up a scream. It would not come.

Of course, I will need you to modify things. The signal she brought is too clean. It's too . . . nice
.

But, of course, I will need you to be strong for this. And you are so close to me. Your strength is nearly gone
.

That's why I've brought you something else
.

That I want you, now, to see
.

The vision changed, in his inner eye. He could see himself. He could see the room. He could see the IV, his needled arm. He could see the flagging waveforms on the monitors beside him.

He could see the door as it slowly opened.

And Tara stepped inside.

It was the first time that he'd ever seen her. The blindness had come to him years before. Retinitis pigmentosa: a degenerative disease, eating away at his vision's periphery. Narrowing it down, a centimeter at a time, like the walls closing in on the heroes in an old Universal Pictures horror film. Several feet. One foot. One inch. One microscopic sliver of light.

And then gone.

Leaving him open to the other side of darkness.

And in that darkness she came to him. He knew it was her. He knew her by smell. He could see, now, exactly why she frightened him so . . . why the human fodder of fandom was so willingly drawn to her oven for the slaughter.

She was beautiful.

Too beautiful to be real.

And she was coming toward him now, expressionless as she slipped the tie on her robe and let it fall open to unveil the exquisite nakedness beneath. Her breasts were perfect, not too large or too small. Her hips held sway over his inner vision. The triangular fur that crowned her depths was dark and yet revealing.

Her eyes were only for him.

This is the moment of ultimate giving
, she said to him, in a voice as soft as silk.
This is the time where I give to you, as you have given to me
.

She touched him then. So soft. So sweet. For a moment he could almost forget the teeth behind the apparition.

I love you
, she whispered.
I always have. I never meant to hurt you
.

But we were born for this moment, you and I
.

And so we must come together
.

Erection was beyond him now, no matter how hot her charms. He simply didn't have the wherewithal; his body was too far gone. Evidently that didn't matter. She straddled him anyway, her wet crease taut against his impotence. She ground there, meticulous, her hands on his chest, and lowered her left breast to his lips.

Miraculously, his lips began to suckle her.

Miraculously, he began to grow hard.

Oh, yes
, she sighed.
Oh, yes, my love
. She kissed him on the forehead, and he grew harder still. The spark within him began to flame. His arms came up. His fingers came to light upon her perfect ass and held there, caressing, as she brought her mouth to his.

We were born for this moment
, she whispered once more.

Then her lips parted to take him in.

And her own eyes gave way to her fingertips.

And, together, they were reborn.

SIDE FOUR

RAISING HELL

Click

. . .
and as opposition mounted in an eleventh-hour effort to halt the scheduled Scream concert in the wake of the Rock Aid riot, the ACLU and Bedlam records attorney Denny Isham again refuted any connection between the band and Saturday's violence, in which sixty-seven people were killed and scores more wounded. No one has yet claimed credit for the attack. The governor has refused to order a halt, stating that it would be unfair at this time to penalize the victims of the attack, although he has suggested that Philadelphia's mayor boost police presence at the Spectrum. The mayor responded in a press conference earlier today that the governor's recent budget cutbacks have left a serious manpower allocation problem, and additional police presence will be difficult. This has been a WYCS news blip
. . . .

Click

Buzz Duffy was a blue-haired boy with eyes to match. It was a radiant cobalt hue that offset his sunken cheekbones and stubbled temples. Both eyes and hair were flecked with the barest hints of green and red as well. It was either a cosmetological mutation or a political statement, depending on how you looked at it.

Buzz knew how he viewed it. He also knew how his parents saw it; and their pastor, and his stupid goddamned probation officer. In fact, most of the authority figures in his life considered it rebellious or sinful or socially maladjusted.

What the hell. Buzz Duffy wasn't there anymore, and they weren't here.

Lucky for him.

Because here, on this day, Buzz ruled. He was in his element, which was a crowd currently estimated at about fourteen thousand and counting.

Technically, he'd run away from home again, seeing that his folks wouldn't allow him to come legitimately. Technically, he was in a shitload of trouble. So what the hell. It was worth it.

He'd been here all day, watching the scene grow from circus sideshow proportions to near-mythic status. The parking lot was jammed up by noon and had even started spilling onto Pattison Avenue. There were news crews and Holy Rollers and cops and protesters and vendors and scalpers and dealers and cops.

But mostly, there were kids. The kids outnumbered absolutely everybody, and the kids were really rocking. White-hot metal thundered out of scores of car stereos and boom boxes as thousands clustered around their cases and kegs and pipes and bongs, getting stoked for the evening's big event. They threw Frisbees across the parking lot. They threw bottles at the Dumpsters. They blocked traffic. They scared the piss out of passersby. He'd heard ambulances go by three times, heard stories of overdoses and a couple of fights. But no arrests. Not yet.

It was like the hordes of Genghis Khan had overrun the Spectrum Sports Arena, and anybody who didn't like it could suck eggs and walk on the shells. And it was like they knew it, too.

Hell, not five minutes ago he saw six guys mosey up to "the weeping wall," the flat expanse of poured concrete on Spectrum's southern side-brewskies in one hand, wangers in the other-and whizz their way to stardom while some geeks from Channel Four caught it all on tape and a cop on horseback just sat there, watching 'em. They peed out a big wet message for the nightly news:

H-I M-O-M-!

Then they just walked away, laughin'.

Yeah, he could feel it, all right.
Try and stop us
.

Cop didn't do shit.

It was great.

There was an edge in the air, potent and electric. It was the sense of Something Coming. Buzz couldn't rightly say what; but whatever it was, it was gonna be a blast. And Buzz could hardly wait.

This was his lucky night.

He did, after all, have something that his so-called best friend-that stupid little chickenshit Tommy Schaeffer-didn't. Namely, Tommy's ticket. He'd picked up both tickets at the Ticketron yesterday; Tommy was supposed to drive down in his old man's Malibu. It was gonna be a blast.

Until Tommy's old man caught wind of it, that is, and restricted him until sometime just before the dawn of the next Ice Age. Of course, Buzz's folks did, too, but that didn't stop him.

He just ran away again. No bigee.

Whereas Tommy Schaeffer wimped out, leaving his best buddy Buzz to fucking
hitchhike
all the way down from Wilkes-Barre alone. Took all damned night. He figured that forfeiture of the ticket was the least Tommy could do, under the circumstances. It was doubtless for the best.

It was also doubtless what got him his mystery date.

He'd first seen her hovering near scalper's row, looking all willowy an' lost an' stuff. Buzz prided himself on his ability to read a person's body English, and he had amused himself all day by guessing at each person's secret identity as he cruised the lot, thinking: Head. Head. Dealer. Head. Slut. Scalper. Narc. Head. Scalper . . .

And then he saw the girl. She didn't fit into any of the aforementioned categories. In fact, the only category she did seem to exemplify was one that seemed glaringly out of place amongst the hucksters, druggies, con artists, and cops.

Damsel.

Like, In Distress.

Now there was something you didn't see every day.

So what the hell. He talked to her.

She said she really needed to get in to the show, but she didn't have a ticket, and she didn't even have any money, and she didn't seem to have much of anything going for her beyond a kinda decent body and a kinda cute face and a look in her eyes that made him feel like maybe this was his lucky day, after all.

So what the hell. Buzz Duffy to the rescue.

The doors were opening. The crowd pressed toward the series of big blue sawhorses the police had set up to sort of funnel the hordes down through the search points. Security was ultratight since all that shit went down on Saturday. Buzz had only seen it on MTV, but it was enough.

Hell, it was half the reason why Tommy and him had wanted to come in the first place, and most of why their folks wouldn't let 'em. They were afraid their little babies would get hurt or something. It was, in Buzz's estimation, a waste of some perfectly good fear.

They queued up to go in. His mystery date stood beside him. Buzz thought about it for a second, decided what-the-hell, and slipped his arm around her waist. She let him. It was a nice waist. His hand, for want of a better place to rest, found her hip. She let it stay.

This was Buzz Duffy's lucky day, after all.

They were almost inside.

"Hey, I fergot to ask ya," he said. "What's yer name?"

She didn't look up, just said, "Mary." Her voice was real soft. He liked that.

They were next in. Buzz handed over the two tickets with a flourish and said, "Well, Mary, don'tchoo worry 'bout a thing." He smiled. "This's gonna be a blast."

Walker didn't have time to answer questions. The operation was too complex; there were too many places where things could go wrong.

The crew had trained for this well in advance. Everyone knew exactly what to do, how to do it, where and when. Since ten this morning they'd been at it; only a handful of minutes till showtime remained. He had time to check and double-check, to nudge and ride and stay on top.

But no time for incompetence.

And none whatsoever for questions.

So when Debbie Goldstein from the Spectrum front office appeared in the backstage corridor, looking so cute and perky but for her occasional nervous ticking, he suppressed the urge to slit her pretty throat. Not a good idea at this stage of the game.

Besides, he understood her dilemma. She was being very professional: he had to give her that. She had to treat him with the same respect she granted the folks from Disney on Ice, for example, and she did so.

Or tried to, anyway. She had never been anything less than courteous and helpful. But it was clear that she was frightened in some vaguely irrational but indisputable way that he knew she'd be hard-pressed to voice. Oh, well. Most likely, she would not survive the hour.

Play nice
, he told himself.
What have you got to lose?

Walker slipped immediately into his Mr. Friendly-Enough-but-Too-Busy-to-Talk mode, pretending not to see her, studying his charts, letting her take the First tentative step.

"Umm . . . Mr. Walker." She came up beside him.

"Yes?" he said, gaze still on the chart.

"I . . . we've got a situation out in the parking lot . . ."

"I can imagine." Noting the spaces checked off under the pyrotechnics heading. "And?"