The Scream (53 page)

And the platform rose.

Light and color and sound and heat and death flooded the world into which she was rapidly ascending.
I WILL NOT LOSE IT!
She screamed internally. Externally, it came out a much more fundamental "EEEIYIAAAHHH!!"

She strained against the bonds, feeling the pinch of rope and Pete's dead hand crawling across her exposed flesh.
NOOOO!! NO!! I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN! I WILL NOT GIVE UP I WILL NOT GIVE IN!!

As vows went, it was downright commendable.

But it didn't slow her ascent one iota.

She felt the sickening lurch of vertigo as the platform edged up. The music punched through to the cochlea of her inner ears with all the finesse of a coping saw. The dread inch-by-inch ascent into madness continued, as Pete cackled and fingered the blade and the platform slid to a pneumatic whooshing halt and Jesse stared in wholehearted bug-eyed disbelief.

Into the faces of sixteen thousand faithful . . .

. . . and Tara went into what looked like a trance.

The cross had erected at the apex of the Momma's thighs, just ahead of the drummer and about a dozen feet from the lip of the stage in what was a truly lewd effect, and the naked form writhed under the grasp of a rotting priest that leered like an undead game show host and wielded a knife that made the one in Ted's boot look like a goddamned potato peeler. The priest turned to face Ted's way.

Ted shrieked. He had seen the priest before.

And it didn't take much to figure out who the woman on the cross was.

The music went through a wild series of shifts right then, mutating from Gothic phantasmagoria into lunatic heavy metal power-dirge, as Rod strode purposefully up to Tara's mike and boomed, "
IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN!!
The rhythm section kicked in agreement. "
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ONE AND ALL, COME ON DOWN TO THE ALTAR CALL!
"

Ted started half-pushing, half-bashing his way over the hurricane fence on the side of the stage as Rod scanned the waiting hordes and cried-

"When we all come together in blood and bone

In flashing light, in crumbling stone . . .

The Father will spit on all their fears

As the Mother slits the veil of tears . . ."

The audience couldn't agree more. Rod's face screwed up in melodramatic intensity, and he bellowed, "YOU ARE CHOSEN! YOU ARE CALLED! SHE IS RISEN! SMASH THE WALL!"

The chosen responded . . .

"SMASH THE WALL!"

The chosen adored . . .

"SMASH THE WALL!"

All storming the fences . . .

"SMASH THE WALL!"

And climbing on board . . .

. . .
and in the hive-mind, the bright spark flared: signaling the end, the opening of the Way, and the last great task remaining
. . .

. . . and Mary Hatch could feel the dark thing moving, moving in a hundred different directions at once. From her seat at the top of the balcony, she could taste the frenzy . . .

. . .
the feeding frenzy
. . .

. . . and she fell to her knees as the first supplicant fell to the stage at Tara's feet. She would not watch the obscenity. She would not take it into her eyes. She would not become a part of it. She was praying like crazy to Father and Son and sweet Holy Spirit to save her.

To please, God, save them all . . .

. . . but Buzz Duffy wasn't worried about salvation just then. He was having a blast.

There had been some confusion on the stage for a second: one bouncer in the trough, tripping over the cameramen and looking around confused and screaming for backup, the backup slow enough in coming for
ten
guys plus Buzz to get over the fence and move in, forcing Tara back as the altar call chant built in intensity; the naked chick-
naked
, fer Chrissakes-upside-down on the cross and screaming her head off, the dude in the robes holding the knife up in front of her and laughing, Tara holding her knife up as she motioned them forward, the enormous Momma looming above him and watching it all, and the Buzzer up and over and smack in the middle of it . . .

But then the most incredible thing had happened, because Momma had seemed to look right
at
him, real personal; and before he knew it, a big guy in sunglasses was dragging him forward while three other guys tossed the rest of them back over the side.

It was then that he realized the awe-inspiring truth.

Out of all the limp dicks that had crawled to the stage, he alone had been Chosen . . .

And it was the most wonderful moment of Buzz Duffy's brief life. The taste of victory lay sweet in his mouth. He gave it voice with a full-throated, "EEAYAAOW!"

And they ushered him forth.

He didn't begin to feel the terror until he was nearly two feet from Tara. Only then he could really see what was happening to her belly, and that gave him serious second thoughts. He started to turn, but the guy in the suit had a crusher grip and before Buzz knew what was happening he was flat on his back, pinned on the stage, staring up as Tara moved toward him.

Buzz had time for one last look at the audience. A sea of squirming faces gleamed back.

They certainly seemed to be enjoying the show.

Then Tara was astride him, her ankles to his ears, and she was saying something that he vaguely recalled as being like the wine-and-biscuit shtick from his family's church, the yewka-
Eucharist
, that was it-and he could see up her skirt that she wore no panties, he could see her belly bulge and squirm as she plunged the blade into it, he could see the trails of red worms oozing down her inner thighs as she lowered herself right onto his face.

"TAKE THIS AND EAT," she sang.

He screamed.

"FOR THIS IS MY BODY . . ."

Behind and above them, Alex engaged the digital sequencers.

The last phase of the Great Passage had begun . . .

. . . and Pete was just beginning to slit her throat, the silver chalice steady beneath her jugular, the words "THIS IS THE BLOOD POURED OUT IN THE
NEW
COVENANT" booming in her ears, when he jerked and dropped and Jesse never even saw the top of his head exploding . . .

. . . and Jake said
Good-bye, Pete
from his awkward, precarious sniper's position on the scaffolding, and he began to aim again before his late friend even hit the floor . . .

. . . and Hempstead crashed through the door of the press room and found no Walker and everyone dead, and he
knew
the sonofabitch was backstage somewhere and they hadn't found him downstairs and he
must
be here, and he yanked back the goddamned door to the press box and jumped out into the dark and the noise and there was a six-foot insect turning toward him with a walkie-talkie in its hands, only it wasn't an insect at all, it was Walker with a goddamned gas mask on, pressing the call button like crazy, sending a signal to someone somewhere, and Hempstead raised the Uzi to blow his miserable fucking ass away . . .

. . .
and then the whitelight wall of heat slammed home, scorching and blinding him as just under two hundred gallons of homemade napalm went off on the floor of the arena, sending a solid wall of fire rocketing toward the ceiling in great smoking sheets, throwing Hempstead hard against the door and into the black silence of oblivion.

The shock wave hit several milliseconds later, flattening every single person standing in the arena as the air pressure slammed outward, then back in to suck any available air molecule into the growing pillar of fire. Thousands trapped in the uppermost tiers of the stadium blacked out, as eardrums imploded and lungs deflated like toy balloons and thick coils of black poison choked off everything above the exit ramps.

The ramps themselves became miniature wind tunnels, each one funneling fresh, colder oxygen in to feed the firestorm. Over two thousand people died in the first five seconds, from smoke and shock and blast.

Many more followed
. . .

By Hook's estimate the nape would spray up and out almost twelve feet on detonation, covering everything it touched in viscous, blistering death. He wasn't far off the mark in his guess. It coated very evenly along its entire circumference, consuming another four thousand in a blazing cylindrical inferno. The stench of several tons of frying human flesh was instantaneous, a vast gaseous presence so incredibly thick and hot and foul-sick-sweet that it brought on a retching gag reflex even through the four-stage filter of his mask.

But he didn't heave. He was ready for it.

It brought back memories.

He reached for the second switch, marveling at the transformation.

The concert hall was gone. In its place was Hell: an instant scale replica, so perfect, so easy, so there for the making. The enclosed vault of the ceiling had miraculously become a Dantean sky, black smoke boiling above them like the wrath of an angry god; the floor before him a roaring lake of fire. He drank in the majesty of it a moment longer.

Then he hit the second switch three times . . .

. . .
and two D batteries responded to the overture, sending tiny sparks of electrical current racing through the detonation cord leading to the five steel pillars, each one of which contained mounted within its frame exactly thirty-three for a grand total of one hundred sixty-five claymore antipersonnel devices, each one of which cost exactly sixty-two dollars on the open market and which gave a tremendous bang-per-buck ratio, as each one come packed with approximately four point oh four for a grand total of six hundred and sixty-six pounds of BBs, each one of which promptly blew outward at a sixty-five-degree angle to pulverize and shred absolutely everything in their effective killing range, all of which Hook had artfully deployed to create the shape of a star, an enormous overlapping star-shaped pool of liquified humanity, with some chunks of living flesh
still remaining along each side's seventy-five-foot length but absolutely none left in the middle, where all five paths converged and collided and conspired to reduce every living being within to the consistency of warm, runny Jell-O
.

It was a fucking masterpiece.

The backlash of the blast had killed some and maimed more in the shower of chicken wire and plastic and papier-mâché, of course, but that was nothing, that was the paint flecks that framed the canvas of his great work. It was a marvel of economy: of cost, of construction, of impact. As performance pieces went, it was world-class. How could it not be? It demanded total sensory involvement. Taste, texture, smell . . .

It would be a couple of minutes yet before he could hear clearly, of course, to enjoy the sound.

But sight-wise, it was stunning.

The tinted lenses in his mask afforded him considerable blast protection, for which he was eternally grateful. It would have been a shame to miss the sight of the burning ring, the blasted columns, and the razor-sharp lines of decimation that the claymores had carved through the mass of stoned, swarming wasteoids that packed the floor of the hall. His only regret was that he missed the all-important aerial view.

Of course, it wasn't often that one was afforded a ringside seat at the unveiling of a stadium-sized raw-meat flaming pentagram, and that in itself was really something special.

But he'd still have loved to see it from above . . .

Walker stared down from the rim of the press box: his own private box seat for the grand opening of Hell. He could afford the luxury. He was responsible for it.

He was humbled by the spectacle before him.

For this was the Inferno, live at last. A sight to make Dante blanch and Doré turn pale, running mile-wide rings around the visions of Ernst and Bosch and St. Peter and all who had tried to bring that ultimate horror to life. Not even the war, for all its monstrosity, had ever created such a set piece of evil and then granted him such an island of immunity from which to observe it. The smoke, the flames, the pool, the writhing bodies everywhere, the giant demon on the stage, the limp forms surrounding it.

The smoke burned in Walker's good eye. He swiped at it, but the gas mask was in the way. He thought about removing it, knew that was madness, somehow refrained. The pain got worse. His one eye watered, muddying his vision.

"Momma." He couldn't hear himself. It didn't matter. "Momma." If she could hear him, she would speak inside his head.

But no.
This is our last conversation
, she had said,
till we meet face-to-face
. There was no reason to doubt her word, at least with regards to that. She was busy now, busily being born, too busy to be bothered with what he did in these last few strokes of the clock.

So what now?

On the press box floor, Hempstead lay dazed. Walker had stripped the ski mask off. The gun in Walker's hand tracking loosely with the movements of his head. So they had come, after all.
Just like Momma
said. He wondered how many and where. Not that it mattered. Not anymore. A bullet in the face would put an end to him, sure; but for some reason, Walker just couldn't see the point.

In his mind's eye (and wasn't
that
a touch of levity!) he could see himself back at the ambush, all those many years back; he could still see the bloody sap, oozing down the trees.

And it flashed on him then that maybe the snipers had had a point: that maybe-if he'd not given in, if he'd let himself die, as God or Fate or ordinary life had most likely intended-none of this would have happened at all. He had succumbed to the darkness and the evil at each successive turn, and it had returned the favor, in turn, by selling each of them out in a gradually tightening knot of betrayal.

Until there was only himself and it.

Then it sold him out.

"
God damn you!
" he spat.

The burning in his eye was worse. His brain began to ache.

He looked at the arena. It was bad.