Virgin (43 page)

"Please
don't do that."

A woman's
voice. He looked around.
Who
--
?

Then he looked
down. The cadaver's blue eyes were no longer dull and unfocused. They were
bright and moving in their sockets, looking at him.

The scalpel
clattered on the metal table as he jumped back.

"Jesus
Christ!"

"Please
don't take His name in vain," the nun said, staring at him as she levered
up to a sitting position on the table.

Darryl felt his
heart hammering in his chest, heard a roaring in his ears as he backed away.

She's dead!
She's dead but she's talking, moving!

She swung her
legs over the side of the table and slipped to the floor. Still backing away,
Joe dumbly watched her naked form cross the room like a sleepwalker and pull a
white lab coat from a hook on the wall.

Darryl's heel
caught against something on the floor and he fell backward, his arms
pinwheeling for balance. He grabbed the edge of a table but his fingers slipped
off the
shiny surface and he landed on his
buttocks. His head snapped back and struck the painted concrete block of the
wall.

Darryl tried to
call out but found he had no voice. He tried to hold onto consciousness but it
was a losing battle. The last thing he saw before darkness closed in was the
dead woman slipping into the lab coat and walking out the door, leaving it open
behind her.

IN THE PACIFIC

24deg N, 120deg W

Reconnaissance
flight 705 out of San Diego is buffeted by tornadic winds and blinding

torrents as it
fights its way toward the center of the huge, mysterious Pacific storm that
shows

up on satellite
photos but not radar. An unclassifiable, logic-defying storm with the combined

properties of
an Atlantic hurricane, a Pacific typhoon, and a Midwestern supercell. All that
can

be said of it
from orbit photos and fly-by observation is that a towering colossus of violent

weather topping
out at fifty-thousand feet is crossing the Pacific in the general direction of

northern
Mexico.

Reconnaissance
705's mission is to classify it, but right now, hemmed in by roiling clouds and

radar that
shows clear, calm, open sea ahead of them, they are truly flying blind. The
pilot,

Captain Harry
Densmore, has never experienced anything like this. The barometric readings

are in the
mid-twenties as he approaches what should be the center of the storm. He wants
to

turn back but
he needs to know what's at the heart of this monstrosity. There's no eye
visible

from orbit, but all indications point to an organized
center. One look, one reading, and he'll

turn tail and
run. This monster hasn't killed anybody yet but he's afraid he and his crew
might

change all
that. He'll count himself lucky if he sees San Diego again.

Just a little
farther . . .

Suddenly the
plane is buffeted by a gust that knocks it forty-five degrees off line. Metal

shrieks in
Densmore's ears and he's sure she's going to come apart when suddenly they're
in

still air.

"It's got
an eye!" he shouts. "We're through the eye wall!"

But an eye
should be clear. And in an eye this huge, blue sky should be visible above. Not

here. It's dark
in this eye. Very dark. And raining.

Maybe it'll
clear up ahead.

The copilot
calls out the barometric reading: Twenty-three.

"Twenty-three?
Check that again. That's got to be
wrong!"

Then lightning
flashes and Densmore sees something through the rain ahead. Something huge.

Something dark.
The far side of the eye wall? Maybe this eye isn't as big as he thought.

Maybe--

"Oh,
Christ!"

He turns the
wheel and kicks the rudder hard, all but standing the plane on its wing-tip as
he

banks sharply
to the left. The shouts of alarm and surprise from his copilot and navigator

choke off as
they see it too.

He finishes the
turn and levels off on a circular course around the center of the eye, catching

lightning-strobed
glimpses of the cyclopean thing in the heart of the storm. His copilot's and

navigator's
hushed, awed voices fill the cabin.

"What in
God's name
is
that?"

"I don't
know."

They are at
20,000 feet and whatever it is reaches from the ocean below and disappears into

the clouds
miles above them.

Densmore
realizes that what he sees before him is impossible. He knows his physics, and

something that
big breaks all natural laws. Just like the storm itself.

Which means
something else is driving this storm that breaks all the rules and defies the

world's most
sophisticated radar tracking system.

And God help
whoever is in its way when it makes landfall.

Suddenly he
wants to be as far away as possible from this unnatural phenomenon.

"Take some
pictures so people won't think we're all crazy, and let's get the hell out of
here."

Moments later
reconnaissance flight 705 reenters the eye wall but instead of flying through,
it

is tossed back
by the hellish fury of the tornadic winds. Densmore tries again and again to

pierce the eye
wall but each time his craft is rejected like an unwanted toy.

The storm won't
let them leave. They're trapped . . . in the eye . . . with that thing . . .

Densmore
resumes a circular path along the eye wall, staying as far as possible from its
center.

They're safe
here in the relative calm of the eye--safe at least from the winds--as long as
their

fuel holds out.

But they've
only got a few hours' worth left.

P
art IV

Assumptions

23

HURRICANE WATCH

THE NATIONAL WEATHER
SERVICE HAS

ISSUED A HURRICANE WATCH
FOR SANTA

BARBARA,
VENTURA,
LOS
ANGELES,

ORANGE AND SAN DIEGO
COUNTIES.

BRING IN LOOSE OUTDOOR
OBJECTS,

FILL UP YOUR CAR WITH GAS,
AND STAY

TUNED FOR FURTHER
DEVELOPMENTS.

The Weather Channel

Manhattan

Neither Father
Brenner nor Mr. Kesev of the Shin Bet wanted a drink, but Dan didn't let that
stop him. Monsignor Riccio had come by to offer his condolences. He seemed to
know Kesev--apparently they'd met on the street awhile back.

The Monsignor
didn't say, "This is what you get for recklessly going public with the
Virgin," but Dan guessed he was thinking it. He was gracious, however, and
sincerely wished for the speedy capture of the killers, then he left. Father
Brenner had sat up with him awhile, then he went to bed. Now it was just Kesev
and Dan, sitting in silence.

"Sure you
won't have one?" Dan said, crossing the front room of the rectory to pour
himself a third Dewar's.

"No,"
Kesev said, "and I do wish you would not drink too much."

Dan stopped in
mid-pour. Kesev was right. This wouldn't do him any good. Wouldn't ease the
pain, even a little. The wound was too wide, too deep, too fresh.

"This is
my last. But what's it to you? What do you care about me or how much I
drink?"

"I'm sorry for you and for that poor dead woman. But
I'm concerned for my own sake as well. You see . . . for many years I have been
the Mother's guardian."

"The
Mother,'" Dan said softly. "The Virgin. How Carrie loved her."
Then the rest of Kesev's words sank in. "Guardian? We had a fake scroll
supposedly written by the Virgin's guardian back in the first century."

The memory of
Carrie's girlish excitement over that scroll punched a new ache through his
chest.

Carrie,
Carrie . . . why couldn't you have just let them take her?

"Yours was
a forgery, a copy of another, but the words were true, as you discovered."

"Any idea
who wrote it?" Dan said.

"I
did."

Dan stared at
him. "You must know your first century, Mr. Kesev. That was a pretty
convincing scroll. Where'd you learn all that?"

Kesev shrugged.
"From life."

"You mean
from the guardians before you, passing it down. Who are these guardians anyway?
Members of some sect?"

"No. Only
one guardian."

This
conversation was getting strange.

"You mean
just one at a time . . . one guardian from each successive generation,
right?"

Kesev shook his
head. "No. Just one guardian. Ever. From the beginning. Me."

"But that
would make you a couple of thousand . . ."

Kesev nodded
slowly, but he wasn't smiling.

"No . .
." Dan said. "No, that would be--"

"Impossible?"

Dan was about
to say yes when it occurred to him: Was anything impossible anymore?

And then he
heard the rectory's side door open. He stood up and started to cross the room.
Now
who was it?

Paraiso

"So this
is what all the excitement is about."

Arthur Crenshaw
stared down at the mummified body where it rested before him on the glass
coffee table.

Paraiso was
empty except for him and Charlie and Emilio. Decker and Molinari had returned
to their respective homes directly from the airport. Arthur had sent all the
help--domestic as well as nursing--home for the night. The fewer who knew about
his "borrowing" of the relic, the better. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling
windows of the great room lay the unrelieved gloom of the night and the ocean.
No starlight broke through the restless mantle of cloud that stretched above
the Pacific like a shroud. The only sound in the great room was the swoosh of
the wind against the glass and Charlie's labored breathing.

He walked
around the table, examining the body from all sides. Not very impressive.
Hardly lifelike at all. You could tell it was somebody old and female, but that
was about all. Could this be the actual remains of the Virgin Mary? Didn't seem
possible. All right, possible, yes, but highly improbable. You'd think there'd
be some sort of glow or aura about it if it was really Mary.
So maybe it was
just the nicely preserved remains of an early saint.

Whatever it
was, could it save Charlie?

Arthur sighed.
Apparently it had healed others--many others--back in New York. No reason why it
shouldn't do the same here.

But whatever it
did, it had better do it quickly. Charlie was fading away before his eyes. The
latest try at a new experimental therapy had failed. Charlie's CD-4 count was
lower than ever. He didn't have much time. This relic was his last chance at a
cure.

But how to go
about it?

Charlie was
running one of his fevers again, semicomatose most of the time, and when he was
responsive he was
delirious--no idea of who he
was or where he was or even that he was sick. He couldn't pray to this object,
couldn't ask it or anyone else for help.

So that left it
up to Arthur to do the praying.