The Scream (52 page)

Six feet, the hilt of the knife never more than a split second from his hand. There was the tall one with the ponytail and the greasy little lump. Pennycate estimated that the skinny one would be tougher to tangle with but would go down easier if caught from behind, if only because there was less meat in the way, and as he closed in to three feet his hand was wavering in the direction of the hilt of the blade, but at the last moment he chose not to draw it because there was a very good chance that he'd be five feet past them before they knew what to do and ten feet past before one of them started to pursue him, barring an instant death by gunfire that the odds were against, and by that time Heimlich would have signaled the van, which would pull up to the lip of the loading ramp and surprise the shit out of them, at which point the door would be open for them to roll right in.

All this trundled through his mind in the moments before he pushed between the guards, saying, "'Scuse me, this place sucks, you people give me the shite," and started meandering at a considerable rate up the ramp, counting the seconds, waiting for the holes to open up in his head or his chest or his belly, clenching his teeth right up until the moment that he heard the word "HEY!" and the footsteps slapping their way up behind him, at which point he knew that he was home free, because even though he couldn't see Heimlich he knew that Heimlich was there and the van was coming so fast that it was not to be believed and all he had to do was keep walking, arms swinging free, giving no indication whatsoever that he was counting the footsteps behind him and waiting for just the right moment to strike.

And all of this was fine, right up to the point that the footsteps started closing in severely and the van was nowhere fucking in sight, at which point Pennycate allowed his all-or-nothing philosophy to prevail, measuring the millimeters between his pursuer and himself and his hand and the hilt of the blade as he reached upward with practiced speed and took the hilt and withdrew the blade and turned just in time to set the process of gutting the ponytailed man in motion, driving in and lifting upwards, feeling the soft organs give and the fluid pour forth while he waited for the sound of gunfire to interrupt his reverie, and when it came it was from somewhere above and behind him, which was good, because the greaseball at the bottom of the ramp had his gun out now and would have gleefully fired were it not for the
phut phut phut
that made his face evaporate with barely a sound.

Thank you, man
, Pennycate psychically sent to Heimlich as he finished up with the ponytailed man and let the wet husk collapse to the pavement.

Then the van pulled up, and the doors flew open, and the men in black ski masks came running down the slope. One of them came up beside him, handing off the Uzi, the ammo and a ski mask he could keep all for his own.

"Everybody's bacon is crisped in there if we don't move right now."

"So get your mask on, you beautiful little motherfucker," Heimlich said, smiling. "And lead the way."

"
This
. . .
is our
. . .
last
," her voice halted and stammered, "
con
. . .
versation
. . .
till
. . .
we meet
. . .
face
. . .
to face
.
"

"Yes, I know," Walker replied. Strange. She sounded perfectly lucid for whole minutes, then contact would suddenly frazz out. It was happening in cycles, the last two of which he'd actually timed. It was happening.

"Every three minutes now," he said.

"DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?"

He turned toward Debbie Goldstein, who was standing beside him in the narrow confines of the press box. He shook his head and said, "No, dear. Nothing."

"WHAT?"

"I SAID,
NOTHING
!"

"OH."

At one hundred and twenty-five decibels conversation was reduced to its most fundamental building blocks. She nodded, and Walker watched as her head kept right on nodding with the beat.

She was enjoying herself: apparently she'd loosened up a little as the evening wore on. He was surprised; he would have thought her too delicate to appreciate the grotesquerie that played simultaneously across the full view of the hall and in excruciating close-up on the giant ArenaVision screens. The cameramen were doting alternately on Tara's crotch and Momma's face, with only the occasional reference to Rod or Alex or the rhythm section tossed in as a sweeping blur of sound and color and motion.

And everyone was eating it up, dear sweet Debbie included. He found himself seriously contemplating letting her live, which might not be the kindest thing in the end and was at the very least out of character.

But he was thinking about it, all the same.

"MY GOD," she yelled into his ear from a foot away; he could just make it out. "THEIR SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE
WONDERFUL
! THEY'VE GOT A BIGGER PRODUCTION THAN
DISNEY ON ICE
!"

Walker smiled grimly and nodded. "It gets better."

"WHAT?"

"I SAID, IT GETS BETTER!"

"I CAN'T WAIT!" She nodded and turned her attention enthusiastically back to the show.

"
She's . . . adorable
. . .
" Momma hissed, burning coals that gave off no heat in his brain. "
You can have . . . her by the end of the night. You can have a hundred like her
.
" He winced; it would be a kindness, after all.

"
AFTER
. . .
"-another spasm-"
After. You take . . . care
. . .
"

"
. . .
of me
.
"

Walker nodded, deliberately out of pace with the music. The enormous squatting harlot on the stage turned at that moment, leaning back on its haunches and twisting its grotesque head until it seemed to be looking right at him. The jaw snapped open and shut several times.
Snap snap
.

"I wouldn't dream of doing otherwise," he whispered.

"YEAH! GO, BABY!"

Hook clicked in, on cue, with the taped effects. Stage Three slid effortlessly into the mix: a thousand voices in a digitally enhanced altar call, going, "
Magdhim DIOS! Satanas DIOS! Asteroth DIOS! Ellylldan DIOS!
" in dreadnought-class counterpoint to the established beat. The effect was like the sound of continental plates shifting: huge and grindingly majestic and deadly.

The response was as immediate as it was gratifying. Sixteen thousand voices joined in. The pheromone level skyrocketed on the meters. They were almost there.

"ALL RIGHT!!" Hook laughed like a fucking maniac and slipped on his gas mask.

He never knew sonata form could be so much fun.

The four of them were gathered at the mouth of the corridor, hidden behind the piles of road cases. It was Hempstead, Heimlich, Pennycate, and himself. The two dead guys were there as well, but they weren't saying much.

And it was time to talk.

"Very quickly," said Pennycate. "Aside from those two clowns, I saw nobody backstage."

"What does this mean?" Jake asked.

"It means there could be any-fucking-body there," Pennycate elaborated. "The one thing I know is that I saw nobody, and nobody saw me. They got some men up on the front and at the sides of the stage. Lots of techies, but they don't matter. They're busy. Except . . ."

"Except what?" Heimlich said.

They got three guys up on these things above the stage. It looks like they're running the lights, but they've got some things mounted up there that look like fucking M60s to me."

"Maybe special effects?" Heimlich suggested.

"Uh huh," Hempstead said. "Jes like our buddies here." He jabbed the ponytailed stiff with the suppressor at the end of his Uzi's barrel.

It was hard for Jake to tell his friend from the others, what with their ski masks and all. Just one happy gang of terrorists, invading the local rock concert. He was all too aware of how important it was to keep his head on straight-he was the payroll man, he called the shots-but it was getting pretty hard for him to cope right now.

They had killed two people
. That was for starters. They had lifted this operation straight out of trespassing and into Murder One. There was no going back. Only forward and through. To the end.

That rated a big number one.

Then there was the absolute fucking
insanity
of the situation, which was no small change and so ranked number two. Then there was the very real possibility of failure, the possibility that Jesse was already dead, which wasn't bad as number three . . .

. . . except no, wait, scratch all of the above, there was one little soul-blasting realization he'd neglected to mention, which was that he had brought this war onto himself and now he was here and he didn't like it a bit, which led to the biggest realization of all, which was that he might very well be sitting on the last two or three minutes of his life . . .

"Shut up," he said, and instantly knew it was wrong, because suddenly everybody was looking at him, and he didn't need to see their faces to know what they were thinking.
He's losing it
.

Which, in battlefield vernacular, amounted to
Well, he can kiss his ass good-bye
.

"No," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm back."

"Does that mean we can go now?" Heimlich inquired.

Fuck you
, Jake thought, then said, "Let's do it."

And then they were up and running, silence not being the issue now, The Scream were making more than enough noise to cover any sound they could possibly make as they ran down the corridor, toward the back of the stage . . .

. . . and they were a death machine, yes, they were, the old feeling was back and Jake felt himself a cog in a larger device that was intrinsically self-contradictory, you were fighting for life and therefore you would kill, you would kill anything that got in your fucking path, you would do anything to save yourself and the ones you love . . .

. . . and the ones he loved the most had already been taken to death's door, it wasn't an abstraction, it was a fact of life, he could still see the faces of Rachel and Natalie and, yes, even Ted, see the terror there and think
I will not be able to rest until I know for a fact that these people are dead, I don't have to look over my shoulder and wonder if one of them is sneaking up behind, they're dead and I'm safe and my people are safe and I never have to worry about them dying again
. . .

. . . and then there was no time to think about it, because they were at the end of the corridor, the music thundering in their ears, and Hempstead went to the right and Pennycate went to the left and Heimlich hung back, guarding the exit, and Jake went straight for the stage. There was scaffolding to either side, scaffolding that held the tons of sound reinforcement equipment aloft. It would do the same for him, give him a bird's-eye view of the stage.

Quickly, silently, he moved to the left.

And began to climb . . .

. . . as the music downshifted into the tightest pocket Ted had ever heard, and everybody around him started bouncing like rubber room rejects, chanting like they meant it, like they were really fucking
buying
whatever the band was selling.

And it was scary. He didn't like the edge they were walking one bit. He didn't like the look on Tara's face or the way the slash of Mylar across her eyes reflected the lights back at him. He didn't like the huge hulking thing behind her, which was looking less and less like a great stage prop and more like something sentient and predatory with eyes that followed his every move.

And he especially didn't like the hole that was opening up ominously in the floor of the stage right behind Tara's widespread legs. Opening like some secret missile silo.

Or a mouth preparing to scream . . .

"AAHHHHHH!!"

Jesse cried out, as the cross tipped back and sent her swinging. It was lost in the pounding of the stage above them, lost in the roar of the show. "NOOOAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

The pain was beyond all comprehension. Her whole being strained against the onslaught from the weight of her body sliding down as they hoisted the prop into place. The ligamentous destruction in her wrists and ankles raged against the ropes until the blood ran. They had crucified her, while her own beloved watched, and they had hauled her into a gravitationally excruciating position of blasphemy.

Amazingly enough, she was still lucid. She had remained so throughout the kidnapping, the stripping and the shaving and the insane violation, and remained so right up to this moment.

But she didn't know how much longer she could fight.

"PEEETE!!" she shrieked, hands clawing into utterly useless fists. "PETE, MY GOD!! HELP ME!!"

"Yeah, babay! EEEAYOW!!" he shouted. "Dontcha just love SHOWBIZ???"

The blood pounded in her head like air-sledges to the temples; her arms felt ready to dislocate any second. Her beloved was also shaved and wired at the temples, only he was dressed in a rotted cassock, holding a lethal-looking ceremonial dagger. And he was laughing, alternately cooing and stroking her. And he was rotting, fingers leaving little fleshy smears wheresoever they roamed.

And he was going to kill her. He said so, repeatedly.

Once the platform had fully risen.

"PETE, PLEASE!!" Jesse tried to see his face, but she couldn't orient herself to the sensory overload. She was clad only in a gauze winding sheet, with her breasts and belly exposed and quivering. Sticky white electrodes stuck painfully to the side of her head where the hair had been sheared away for better adhesion, corresponding to points along the cerebral cortex meridian.

Jesse dry-heaved as an entire reality map overturned, internal gyroscope spinning in a mad dash to reassert itself, the data of dissociation being funneled live to the computers below and the keyboards above.