Under the Beetle's Cellar (30 page)

So he looked to Samuel Mordecai. “Prophet Mordecai,” he said, using for the first time the term of address the man preferred. He did it because he wanted the inhalers and because he had no shame left. “Prophet Mordecai, please. Let me take those inhalers to Josh.”

Mordecai turned to Walter. He smiled his dimpled movie-star smile. “Still hung up on earthly inconveniences, Mr. Bus Driver? You are the sort of man who in the middle of the great battle of Armageddon will be fussing over dirty laundry.”

“But it won’t hurt anything,” Walter persisted, “and it will calm everyone down. The kids get really upset and hard to manage when Josh gets sick.” Samuel Mordecai’s smile stayed fixed. Walter pulled out all the stops. “The end is coming, I know. It will be easier for all of us if you just let me take those inhalers”—he pointed at them sitting on top of the cabinets—“back to the bus.”

Mordecai glanced at the inhalers. Then he looked over Walter’s shoulder at Martin. He gave a nod.

Walter’s heart hammered. He was going to allow it.

That’s when Martin slammed the gun barrel into the back of his head. Walter saw hot sparks behind his eyes. He staggered and began to fall, but caught himself by grabbing on to the desk. He didn’t realize until later, after he had staggered back to the bus and sat down, that blood had soaked his hair and was dripping onto his shirt.

Now, hours after the incident, he couldn’t bear to tell the children about the inhalers. He felt it would introduce them to an idea he found too evil to share with them—the idea of a world so random and uncaring, so indifferent to human suffering, that it chilled his soul.

“What else did you see in the house?” Lucy asked. “Are there mothers and children there? Kids our age?”

“I saw some women, but no children.”

“Maybe they’re in school,” Lucy told the others. “It’s a school day, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Wednesday. That’s probably where they are,” Walter said.

“But maybe,” Lucy said in a quivery voice, “maybe the children who live here are buried in a bus, too, just like us. Maybe they’re in our bus that we came in. Maybe they’re lambs who are chosen, too, and maybe—”

“Dummies!”

The hoarse voice came from the back of the bus. They all turned to look. Philip Trotman, who hadn’t spoken a word in more than ten days, was kneeling on his seat, his nose cherry red, his eyes bloodshot from weeping. “Lucy, you’re such a dummy. He’s going to kill us. That’s why we’re here. He’s going to kill us and you know it.” Tears dripped down his face. “He calls us lambs. Firstborn. I go to Sunday school. In the Bible, lambs get killed and then burned up—burnt offerings. And in Egypt the firstborn all got killed one night.”

They were all silent. Lucy looked as if she’d been slapped.

Walter had tried with all his might to avoid this discussion. How would he keep them calm now?

Then Josh began a furious high wheezing, violent and wracking. Kim slipped her arm around him and was holding the wet towel for him, crooning his name.

Walter walked to the back, where Philip was still kneeling on the seat. He sat down and reached his arms around the boy. He pulled him in tight and held on to him, rocking him slightly from side to side. Philip’s slender body was rigid in his arms. Into his ear he whispered the only words that seemed to make sense. “Philip, it’s so good to hear your voice again. Keep on talking. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You could be right. But keep on talking. Whatever happens, we’ll all be together in it.”

The raspy sound of Josh’s tortured gasping drowned out Philip’s muffled sobs. Walter closed his eyes. He pictured the yellow inhalers sitting on top of the file cabinets, four of them lined up, smiling at him, full of promise, false hope.

He let go of Philip when Josh let out a wheeze that was so high-pitched it was almost a scream. The sound was so full of distress and panic that Walter knew this would be the worst yet.

“Philip.” He moved back and held the boy by his skinny shoulders. “We are in this together. I promise you. Keep talking. I’ll be back right after I check Josh.”

He strode up the aisle. Josh was leaning forward, his hands pressing down on his knees, his shoulders hunched up. Kim was sitting next to him, humming softly, but not touching him. Walter didn’t touch him either because he knew from experience it was best not to when things
got this extreme. “Josh, honey, would water help?” It was all he had to offer.

Josh made an annoyed shake of the head. He was engaged, heart and soul, in trying to get enough air through his lungs. By now they had weathered probably ten of these really bad spells, and Walter knew that Josh was already past the point of being able to speak or do much of anything other than struggle for breath. At all other times he was a kid full of goofy good humor. But when he was in the throes of an asthma attack, he was like a creature possessed. He refused to waste even a scintilla of energy on anything except drawing the next breath.

The other kids all stayed where they were, hushed and still. They’d learned, too. Crowding around him or trying to help only made it worse. Kim was still valiantly humming out of tune, her voice shaking badly.

Walter spoke in a very low voice. “I’m here, Josh. This will pass. You know what to do, how to get through it. We’re all right here.”

Josh gasped and threw his head back. His face was dotted with sweat and even in the dim light Walter could see that his skin had gone dead white around the nose and mouth. His eyes were wild with panic.

It was horrible to watch. Walter had seen men die in Vietnam. There had been pain and screaming, rivers of blood, limbs blown off—horrors that still haunted him. But this was worse. Watching this kid slowly choking, starving for air, drowning inside himself, was the absolute worst. Maybe because Josh was so young. Maybe because Walter felt so responsible, so completely, unforgivably responsible for allowing it all to happen. For not being able to take care of him.

Josh was panting, gulping, as if there were not enough air in the world. In the next seat Sue Ellen, whom he’d never seen cry before, was weeping quietly, her forehead pressed against the black window.

Walter felt his fury building to a hot boil. Goddamn all this—Samuel Mordecai and his Apocalypse, goddamn this bus, this pit, this grave. Goddamn Martin, that weasel who treats us like we’re already dead. Goddamn these kids. Goddamn the telephone he should never have gotten. Goddamn Josh and his faulty bronchial tubes. Goddamn those yellow inhalers. Goddamn the God who lets this happen to children. Goddamn that feckless, useless negotiator he had talked to on the phone—Stein from the fucking FBI. Why the hell didn’t they
do
something? Forty-eight days! What the fuck were they waiting for? Why didn’t they come in with force? If they didn’t do it soon, there would be nothing to rescue but corpses, or those goddamned blood statues Mordecai kept babbling about.

Walter hadn’t allowed himself to think about what the end would be, but he’d been listening. He knew what Mordecai intended. He knew
what was waiting for them when that last Band-Aid got scraped off the window.

Even if they did live through this, which seemed increasingly unlikely, they’d be damaged beyond repair. His anger was boiling over. He felt like smashing the windows, ripping up the seats. He felt like tearing Samuel Mordecai apart with his bare hands, taking the Bible and stuffing it into his mouth page by page.

The raspy desperate sounds coming from Josh were nonstop now, full of panic. They drowned out Kim’s feeble humming.

Walter paced the aisle and found the children looking up at him with round, frightened eyes. God, you couldn’t do anything here without it upsetting everyone.

He grabbed the towel from Kim and soaked it again with water. Desperate for something to do, anything, he held it above Josh’s head and twisted it gently so water dripped on his head. “Imagine it’s a shower, Josh, steamy and hot. That’s what it is. Yes. Yes. Feel it. The steam is rising. Breathe it in. Into your throat. Into your nose. Way back in your head. It’s so warm. Opens everything up.” He twisted harder, making rain. “You’re soaked. In the shower. Steam’s rising, all around you, hot water pouring down.”

Kim was looking up at him wide-eyed, terrified.

Now Josh was gasping, his head flung back. His chest had grown big and barrel-like, as if it were ready to explode. He had air, lots of it, but he couldn’t get it out. His hair was plastered to his head, and he was trembling all over. He was going to explode.

Walter wanted to put his mouth on Josh’s and breathe for him, to suck the trapped air out and breathe new air in. He wanted to take hold of him, work him like a bellows, force him to breathe. He’d asked Josh after one of the attacks if it might help for him to try CPR. Josh had just laughed.

Now he was making a sibilant rasp that didn’t sound human.

“Josh, listen. Can you smell the bread? The bread you and your dad make in his machine. That white bread, all hot, with butter and sugar melting into it. Mmmm. Let the smell come in. Open your nose. It’s right in front of you, honey. Open up for it. Take it in. Smell it, Josh. Let it flow.”

Josh was making a rattling way in the back of his throat.

God, who could tolerate this?

They had to have help.

He dashed to the front of the bus, out the door, and into the pit of black earth. He looked up at the wooden slab covering the hole. He reached up and beat his fists on it. “Help! Martin, we need help down
here. We’ve got an emergency.” He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. “Martin,” he called louder, “Martin, come here, please. Pull the slab back. Please!” He looked back to the bus to see if he was panicking the kids, but without his glasses, he couldn’t see that far.

“Open up,” he called. “Prophet Mordecai, come here. Please.” His voice was rising in spite of his efforts to control it. “God would want you to. At the end of the world or any other time. Josh is real sick. Please come help. We need you down here. Help! Help!” He found himself screaming, his throat raw with it.

He stopped to listen for a response.

Nothing.

He looked back to the bus. Now they knew. The situation was hopeless. And he was worse than useless. A man with a long history of letting people down in the crunch, a man of no use to anyone, a man who made mistakes when it really counted. Images fired through his head—Jake, long-legged and whole, as he had been before Trang Loi, before Granny Duc. Before their lives got ruined. The kids getting on the bus that morning laughing and singing that ditty he hated—
“the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.”

Tears spurted from his eyes. He couldn’t hold them back anymore. They poured out of him—twenty-seven years of stored-up remorse.

He reached up and beat against the wood again. “Please, please, come down here!”

From the bus, he heard Kim calling. “Mr. Demming! Mr. Demming!”

He raced back.

When he got close enough to see Josh, he felt like screaming in horror. The boy’s head lolled back. His eyes were twitching and popping out of his head. His lips had darkened to navy blue. His mouth was wide open, his tongue protruding. A dark wet spot was spreading outward on the front of his jeans.

Sitting next to him, Kim was shaking, her arms wrapped around herself.

Walter Demming could think of nothing in the world to do.

His lips started to move. From the past came some words that had once given comfort to friends of his. “ ‘The atmosphere of Titan,’ ” he said aloud, “ ‘the atmosphere of Titan is like the atmosphere outside the back door of an Earthling bakery on a spring morning.’ ”

The kids were all staring at him, their wet eyes wide with shock.

“Say it along with me,” he said. “Come on. ‘The atmosphere of Titan is like the atmosphere outside the back door of an Earthling bakery on a spring morning.’ ” Several of them joined in the third time, falteringly.
“ ‘The atmosphere of Titan,’ ” more voices joined, “ ‘is like the atmosphere outside an Earthling bakery’ ”—they were all in chorus—“ ‘on a spring morning.’ ”

He looked down at Josh. His head lolled back on the seat. His face was pale blue, his eyes closed. He’d gone silent.

Walter fell to his knees in the aisle next to the boy. He started to say it again: “ ‘The atmosphere of Titan …’ ” but he stopped. It was inadequate. Utterly inadequate.

A prayer he didn’t even know he remembered came to his lips instead. “Our Father”—the words forced themselves out like a groan—“which art in heaven.” He didn’t believe it, any of it, but it seemed to be coming from somewhere beyond him. “Hallowed be Thy name.”

The children joined in: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

He had forgotten the next line, but the children took it over. He listened and then joined them at the end: “But deliver us from evil, for thine is the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

He leaned over and rested his forehead on Josh’s leg. The wetness had spread down. Walter felt the warmth of the soaked denim on his forehead.

Deliver us from evil. Please.

And then he tried Jake’s old mantra one more time, very low, just for Josh and for himself: “ ‘The atmosphere of Titan is like the atmosphere outside an Earthling bakery on a …’ ”

He stopped because he imagined he smelled, not urine, and terror, and death, but fresh bread baking somewhere.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”

P
ROSPERO
,
T
HE
T
EMPEST

They arranged to meet Sandy Loeffler Hendrick at six-fifteen in the snack bar at her health club on San Pedro. Bryan Holihan had done the talking on the phone, saying it was an urgent and confidential FBI matter. He suggested they meet someplace other than her home. Before they went into the spa, Holihan called Santa Fe to tell the agent there that they were about to make contact.

Molly spotted her right away, sitting at a table with a lipstick-stained coffee cup in front of her—still blond and lithe at fifty-two in a shiny black Lycra sports bra and tights. She greeted them warily and, when Bryan Holihan flashed his ID, she took it and laid it on the table in front of her. She stared at it for such a long time Molly wondered if she’d gotten stuck. Eventually she stood and asked them if they’d like juice or coffee. Both declined.